From the Ashes

by Mark Tufo

  “When do we plan on leaving?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere.”

  Dee cocked his head. Endearing on a puppy, not so much on a Geno.

  “Dee, I know you don’t want to fight the Genos and I’m not going to ask you to. And don’t give me that honor bound shit. I’m positive I couldn’t do it if the roles were reversed and I’d be the biggest hypocrite if I said otherwise to make you come. Before you protest, I’m going to ask you something that is much more important than the protection of mine and Tracy’s lives.”

  Dee closed his mouth.

  “I’m asking you to protect my legacy.”

  “I know not what you are asking, Michael.”

  “I’m holding it...my legacy, I mean.”

  “Your son? You wish me to protect your son?”

  “I can think of no one more worthy or up to the challenge.”

  “Is this manipulation on your part?”

  “Just a little, but I’m serious, Dee.” I swallowed some bile before speaking again. “If I go down and fuck I hate to say this…” I brought my fist down on my thigh, “and...and Tracy as well, you’re the best chance of Travis’s survival.”

  I thought for sure he was going to protest to his high heaven. “I would be honored to do this for you, Michael. I believe if I possessed tear ducts that it is possible that the feelings I have now would be manifest in tears.”

  “I’ll miss you by my side, but I will have great comfort knowing that you are watching out for him.”

  “No harm will befall him. However, your mate made me promise that I would not allow you to follow.”

  She knew me pretty well; that I was going to follow was a foregone conclusion. I already missed her. “And what of it?”

  “If we should meet again, I will tell her that you over-powered me.” We both looked at each other before laughing. I had to hold my side it hurt so much. “I knew you would find a way to get to her whether I tried to stop you or not. I did not wish to delay you. In the event you perhaps got there too late, you would never have forgiven me and I could not have lived with that burden of guilt.”

  “Again, Dee, thank you. How am I ever going to repay you?”

  “We will work something out should the time arrive. Michael, there is more. I must admit I have not yet learned all the intricacies with which your kind communicates, especially in the deceptive realms. That such a vast part of your societies rely on this confounds me.”

  “You’re off-track.”

  “It is about the General. He had valid arguments in regards to sending your wife out there but he had other and better options. I got the impression that he was sending her in the hopes that you would go as well.”

  “Are you saying that my best friend sent my wife out on a suicide mission knowing full well I would follow? Why doesn’t that sound as strange to my ears as it does speaking the words?”

  “I do not know this for a fact. He is very adept at hiding the subtle clues in his physiology and he also had on an abundance of cologne, which interrupts my sense of smell.”

  “This is Beth’s doing—all of this can be laid at her feet. I’m not saying she told him to do it, but she may have driven him to it.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I really didn’t like the sound of that or the implications it could present. I was thinking on that when a different doctor came in with a syringe that looked more appropriate for a hippo.

  “Yum, lunch,” I told him.

  “I’m Doctor Lymond. Doctor Samuels told me of your request and I don’t recommend this. However, I know enough about you to realize that arguing would only waste time for both of us.”

  “Thank you for that.” I meant it, even if a part of me wanted him to talk me out of this shit.

  “I mixed this with a heavy sedative so that you will get the optimum rest.”

  “Just keep it coming, Doc. I need to be out of here in forty eight hours.”

  “Right.” He didn’t delay as the needle plunged into my arm.

  “A head’s up would have been nice,” I growled. Heat and a searing pain radiated out from the spot of the injection. “Shit, that hurts.”

  “That’s another reason why we generally put people under,” the doctor said, although it was already beginning to sound like he was under water, or maybe I was.

  “Bye daddy!” Travis was making his fist open and close.

  I distinctly said ‘bye’ but now I’m more convinced it sounded like ‘rah’. Then I was asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen - Tracy

  “You picked a hell of a time to make this request, General. Why me? Certainly there are more qualified people,” Tracy said as she bounced Travis on her hip. “Mike is still in recovery.”

  “I’m not going to mince words with you, Captain. If I had another choice in this matter I would take it. Yes, it complicates matters that you’re married to my best friend. The Genogerians are attacking all over the planet. In the U.S. alone there are six major battles going on. I’ve had to field promote twenty-six officers in the past few days alone. They are over-running everything we put in their path. I can’t get close with bombers—their anti-aircraft outclass anything we’ve ever seen. My next rapidly approaching option is nuclear.”

  Tracy hesitated. Mike was out of danger but he certainly hadn’t cleared the forest yet. “What about my son? I can’t just leave him by Mike’s side in a play pen.”

  “He can stay at the base daycare until such time as Mike can pick him up.”

  “No,” Drababan said in no uncertain terms. “I will watch Travis.”

  Tracy was warming to Dee but the thought of leaving her son with him was tearing holes in the lining of her stomach.

  “I will not leave the hospital,” he told her, trying to allay her fears.

  “General, what can I hope to accomplish with two battalions against so many?”

  Paul’s head nodded slightly. “I need them slowed down before they destroy what little remains. It appears that they are heading for one of our major fighter manufacturing sights on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I need time, Captain, time to either figure out how to stop them or time to move that facility. That factory is vital to our survival and I cannot afford for it to be destroyed.”

  Tracy had her doubts and some major ones. She realized she and the two battalions were merely being used as speed bumps and there was no chance, no matter how heavily fortified their position, of holding out against such a vastly superior force. Mike was still injured and she was about to leave her baby with the enemy, albeit a trusted enemy. She was a wife, a mother, and a soldier in a world that desperately needed all three. “When should I be ready for deployment?”

  “A reinforcement unit is being assembled and will be ready for insertion within the next twelve hours.”

  She hoped the look of shock on her face went unnoticed. So little time, she thought, looking at Travis’s face. “I’ll be ready.”

  “Good.” Paul said not another word before walking out of the room.

  Drababan could sense that something was wrong but he was having a difficult time picking up on what it was. Something about the General wasn’t ringing true. The curt way in which he left raised more questions than it answered, almost as if he was afraid if he lingered longer he would reveal something he wished to keep in the dark.

  “You’ll be alright?” Tracy asked Drababan, although she was looking at Travis.

  “I will treat him as I always have, Tracy.”

  A tear rolled down Tracy’s face as she looked upon her son. She wiped it away and looked up, saying, “You....you called me by my name again. Why? Why now?”

  “What you are doing is brave beyond words. You feel that you will not be back, that you are sacrificing yourself for a mission you know will possibly fail. Yet, you are doing it to protect Michael because this mission should be his. You are also doing it to hopefully protect your son. In the off-chance that you succeed, you will thwart the Genogerians from destroying t
he facility and thus giving Earth more of a chance of survival when the Destroyer comes.”

  “Mike always thought you could read minds. I thought he was crazy, now I’m not so sure.”

  “Oh, I can assure you that Michael is, indeed, crazy. However, I cannot read the thought waves that emanate from your mind.”

  “Thank you, Dee,” Tracy said, reaching up and stroking his cheek. She strode out quickly to go back home and get ready.

  She was back at the hospital in under an hour. She had precious few moments left with the ones she loved and she would be damned if she missed the opportunity to be with them. When the shuttle showed up in the hospital parking lot, she kissed Travis and then her husband. “I feel like Snow White in reverse.”

  “Rest in peace,” Dee told her.

  “That saying is generally reserved for those who have passed or are near to passing.” Tracy said, correcting him.

  Dee did not respond and she wondered if that was indeed the meaning in which he’d intended. A cold finger traveled up her spine. A corporal snapped off a salute as Tracy approached. She returned the salute and got into the transport, taking a cursory glance around before she found a seat. “Looks like a bunch of scared kids,” she mumbled. “Where in the hell did the General find them—at a high school? Well, at least the pay is good,” she laughed.

  “Something funny, ma’am?” the corporal who had escorted her onboard asked.

  “Nothing worth repeating.”

  “Do you think we have a chance, ma’am?”

  Tracy noticed for the first time how truly young he looked. And scared, definitely scared.

  “I wouldn’t have gotten on this shuttle if I didn’t believe that,” she lied. So that’s how Mike does it, she thought, referring to how Mike would continually and with ease gloss over hard truths with lies and platitudes.

  Two hours later the shuttle landed in the old Marine Corps base of Twenty-Nine Palms. The name was a misnomer much like how, according to popular legend, the Vikings named Greenland. Twenty-Nine Palms was a harsh desert environment of dust, sand and scorpions.

  “This is our heavily fortified location?” Tracy asked over the din of multiple shuttles in the process of taking off and landing. Soldiers and machinery were moving about in a controlled cacophony.

  “Captain Talbot!” She heard her name yelled and it took her moment to find out from which direction. “Captain Talbot.” A man pushed his way through the throng. “My name is Staff Sergeant Alex Carbonara and it’s my job to get you up to speed.”

  Tracy looked at the man. She figured late twenties to early thirties, medium build, dark brown hair and a pencil thin mustache which normally she found to be hilarious, although on him it somehow looked right, distinguished even. Here was the first true soldier she’d seen that day. She hoped for all their sakes it wasn’t the last.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’ve got twenty-seven tanks hidden up on the ridge, camouflaged as best we can, even dug them in a bit. They have the range advantage over the Genos but once they get close those plasma cannons cut through them like they were made out of tin foil.”

  “Would it not be better to keep them mobile so they could fire and run?”

  “They can back out easy enough and that may end up being the case because the Genos also have some decent targeting weaponry. It’s much better against aircraft, almost infallible in fact. Something about ground clutter seems to mess it up. I think it was designed for space battle and they’ve somehow adapted it for ground warfare.”

  “It seems our guests are properly prepared.”

  “Too much so. If you ask me, ma’am. We have machinegun nests spread out along the ridge as well to take as much advantage as we can of the high ground.”

  “What is the probability that the Genos will hit here and not just circumvent our fortifications?”

  “It’s safe to say pretty high. They’ve been on a straight line since they left Arizona. Like someone drew a line on a map and the Genos can’t deviate even a degree. They’ve waded through rivers instead of using bridges just a couple of miles away. We’ve thrown up blockades before and they don’t seem concerned at all with engaging even though we were slaughtering them at range.”

  “How many blockades?”

  “This will be our fourth attempt.”

  “Shit,” Tracy muttered. She was feeling as if she was a little bit in over her head here. “What is the effective range of their weapons?”

  “It’s really not much more than a couple of hundred yards. The problem is they just don’t stop. We can’t put enough rounds through our barrels. We were completely overrun on our first attempt, lost a full ninety percent of our fighting force in that attack. We’ve since learned to pull back when they get to that two hundred-yard point. We’ve got it marked out with some destroyed machinery over there.” Alex pointed to a crane that was overturned. “The problem is there’s only one more rally point worth its salt between here and the fighter factory. The General wants us to hold this as long as we can before withdrawing.”

  “How much closer can we allow them and still be able to withdraw?”

  “With your approval, I’d like to have the machine gunners break down their gear at the two hundred-yard mark. Once they are secure we’ll get the foot soldiers into the trucks as well and then have the tanks cover our withdrawal until we can get out of range.”

  “What kind of casualties can we deliver and expect?”

  “Best estimates have it at ten to one.”

  “We are killing ten Genogerians for every man?”

  “That would be a conservative guess. We just don’t have the man power to sustain.”

  “What is their method of attack?”

  “Best I could describe it is ‘horde’. There does not seem to be any leadership. They are just spread out, running over anything and everything with a single-mindedness like I’ve never seen before. We keep our line spread out as thin as we dare, making sure that we don’t get flanked.”

  “Do you have any booby traps set up?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Minefields, bombs, fire trench?”

  “No, it’s all we can do to get the men dug in, get some food in their bellies and maybe a few minutes of shut eye before they start up again.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “A few days. The only thing that has kept us in this fight is that they don’t drive and they don’t have air support.”

  “Do you have two men to a fighting hole?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright, I want you to get one man out of each hole and get them down here. We are going to lay down as many nasty surprises for those ungrateful bastards as we can.”

  “Ma’am, I realize you’re fresh from a safe zone and have yet to see any action, but my men are tired. They haven’t slept or eaten properly in days and...”

  “Did I say anything about wanting to hear excuses?”

  Staff Sergeant Carbonara snapped to attention. “No ma’am.”

  “These men aren’t yours, Staff Sergeant, they are mine. As for just leaving a safe zone, you’re right. I left my toddler son in the care of a Genogerian while my husband recovers in a hospital from life threatening injuries he sustained at the hands of these Genos. Not that I need to explain myself, but I’ve seen more combat both human and Geno than any man with boots on the ground here. I was on Mike Talbot’s extraction team.”

  “In France?”

  “Yes, in France. And I was also one of the original defenders of the Hill. I know how to fight, win, and more importantly, stay alive. I will not have my orders second-guessed, do I make myself clear?”

  “You do, ma’am.”

  “Besides, as my big green friend says, is it not a good day to die?”

  “It is, ma’am.”

  “Bullshit!” She spat. “I want to live; I want every man and woman here to live through this day and the days that follow. That’s not likely, but I’m going to do
my best to see as many make it as possible. Now do as I ordered, or I’ll have you shot and replaced. Or replaced and shot, whichever I can do faster.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Staff Sergeant Carbonara saluted and ran off.

  “I think I’ve been around Mike too long.” She smiled and began to survey the upcoming battlefield. She wished she could sustain that smile as she looked around, but that wasn’t to be the case. Yes, the Genogerians would be exposed for close to a thousand yards as they charged at the beleaguered defenders. Yes, they would have great casualties inflicted upon them. She just couldn’t get the image out of her mind of so many swarming across the ground like an angry, disturbed anthill. And, like the African Fire Ant, they would destroy everything within their path.

  Men were already beginning to come off the ridge top as the Staff Sergeant commanded them to do so. She could tell they were complaining by their exaggerated movements but not a one of them said anything as they passed her by. To bitch and moan while in the service was pretty much a tradition and Tracy had no problem with that as long as they showed professionalism and deference when she was around. That was the sign of a well-run unit. She would make sure not to shoot the Staff Sergeant.

  After the battlements were in place, Tracy called for a muster. She wanted all of the troops front and center minus the scouts and the lookouts. It took a few minutes to get all the personnel assembled and a fair amount of griping as well.

  She caught snippets as the units streamed by. “Typical officer, doesn’t she know we have a battle coming...”

  “Probably wants to make sure we have our wills filled in correctly...”

  “Think she’s going to want us to re-up?”

  She heard ‘fucking stupid’ no less than three times and ‘this is bullshit’ at least six but she wasn’t really counting.

  “All personnel present and accounted for.” Carbonara saluted and turned to be next to her as she walked down the front line of men and women. Some wore the disgust openly on their features. Others more hardened and used to the typical dog and pony show wore a mask of indifference. The majority looked scared. A crow cawed in the distance, a pack of coyotes yipped somewhere over to their left.