MissionSRX: Confessions of the First War

by Matthew D. White

  Away from the ship we tumbled, falling through empty space. I could see very little: only a few specks of dust and the occasional brief glimmer of starlight through the porthole. We quickly hit the atmosphere of the planet. The chaotic winds below, combined with our furious speed, made our pod spin out of control. I held on with all my strength and watched the glass before me frost over in a matter of seconds.

  Regardless of our destination, I was ready for the ride to be over. The monitor by the door release lever showed our altitude estimated at only a few hundred meters. The temperature was minus 120 degrees and the wind speed was maxed at over 250 kph. I felt the retro engine kick in and slow us down as we slammed into the ground, barely avoiding breaking our necks.

  The noise outside didn’t die down. The wind howled from beyond the door and I couldn’t see anything. I snapped back to my senses and began issuing orders.

  “Everyone out, now! Quick, before we get frozen in this gaddamn box!”

  I pushed the lever down, releasing the heavy latches holding the door in place and pushed out like I did before. The hatch didn’t move a micron. I adjusted my footing and pushed all my weight against it again, but to the same effect. In that moment, I saw the cords from my radio hanging down a good 45 degrees forward. Our pod came in sideways and had entombed me in the ice.

  I could hear the voices of the other soldiers in my squad from the outside. Most had gotten out without much trouble, and we were indeed near our target.

  “Hell, I’m trapped in here!” I shouted through the microphone.

  “Grant’s on the bottom!” I heard one of the men announce. “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get you out!”

  “No!” I ordered. “Get inside the base! I’ll make my own way out.” I pounded the wall with my fist, my eyes darting around, trying to make sense of it all.

  I turned the radio off and never felt so alone in the cold, unforgiving darkness. I thought through the schematic of the pod for a few seconds and remembered that I sat beside a weapons cache. Bracing myself along the wall, I pulled my seat out and found a small hatch in the rear bulkhead.

  Pulling the panel back sharply, I revealed a tiny service crawlspace. Pipes and wires from the deceleration rocket were only a decimeter away. The metal was smoking hot from the burn despite the cold, but I didn’t have a choice. I pointed my rifle forward and squeezed into the passage.

  I only got a meter or so before I felt a few of my equipment bags get caught on the hundreds of protrusions along the walls. I pushed harder and allowed them to get torn off. I didn’t have a choice.

  Another hatch was in the wall ahead and I figured that I was on the opposite side of the ship by now. There was no internal latch, so I aimed my rifle along my stomach at the general area and squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst tore the wall apart, and I adjusted my arms to remove the damaged metal.

  Somewhere behind me, a discarded magazine of M1 ammunition was leaning against the wall of the rocket. The heat got the better of it before I even had half of the panel removed. I heard the shots ignite, knew what was coming, and worked feverishly to get out of there before I was hit. Bullets bounced around the chamber, and a ricochet slammed into my temple, drawing blood from my forehead and giving me my first real dose of pain for the mission.

  I got the wall down and dove through as more rounds lit up. I was in an equipment storage area and had nearly shot a full case of ammunition when I took out the wall. All was well, so I crawled along the rest of the way up toward the outer hatch. Here there was an inner latch, so I reached up with one hand to release it. The door gave only a centimeter before I felt a blast of icy air force its way into the chamber.

  Instantly, the hurricane of ice ripped the door off its hinges and into the night, sending me flying out of the pod like a rag doll. I landed hard on my back on a glare of ice as hard as earthen granite. I rolled onto all fours, trying to figure out where my squad was.

  It was nearly night with some strong moonlight seeping through the swirling storm of ice. I could see the outline of the landing pod in the darkness and looked about for the dome. I found its dim, frosty-white outline to my right beyond our crash site. Trying to maneuver closer, I realized that I was a great deal lighter than I had been on the ship and on Earth. I made it to my feet and half stumbled closer to the dome’s wall, hoping to find my squad along the way.

  I did just that. On the far side of the pod lay one of the men, his arm severed about three-quarters of the way above the elbow. The inside of his visor was coated with ice and I couldn’t see through. The glass wouldn’t budge until I forced it up. Half of it broke off under the stress, and through that opening I could see a man’s face, whitish-blue and frozen in a look of pure terror. I cursed under my breath at the sight.

  “Sir, over here!” I looked up. One of the others had seen my approach and was now waving me over to where a number of the soldiers were standing guard.

  “What happened to him?”

  “A door from the pod hit him. He never had a chance.”

  “Neither will we. Get us inside!” I shot back.

  “We’re trying!” another soldier spoke up while trying to force his way through the outer airlock.

  I was through waiting.

  “Screw this,” I muttered and pulled a block of explosive compound from my stash and mounted it in the center of the door. “Everybody get back before you get blown away.”

  Most dove away as I made the announcement. I took a few steps to the side, knelt down, and ignited the charge. The blast shook the ground and tore the wall to bits.

  “That’s it! Everybody in!” I ordered and ran in along with the rest of my remaining men.

  My rifle was already up as I went across the threshold. Three aliens were trapped between us and the sealed inner door. I shot the nearest one in the head, blowing off the right half of its skull before it could even regain its footing. The second took a round to the base of the neck, bleeding profusely a deep purple as it fell. The third was scrambling toward the door control panel, trying to operate what looked like a palm sensor.

  It looked back at me and fumbled with the controls. I was faster and cracked it across the face with my rifle.

  “Hold him down,” I ordered the soldier beside me.

  He put a heavy foot straight down on the creature’s chest. I jammed my left foot in a similar manner onto its forearm. I switched from my rifle to my axe and began sawing off the alien’s arm at the center joint with the rear serrated edge. I could hear a gurgling protest from its throat over the attenuated storm outside. With only a few lines of tissue remaining, I returned my axe and yanked the blood-soaked appendage free.

  “Let him go,” I ordered the other man, who released his foot and stepped aside.

  The alien curled into the fetal position as I pulled the glove off its hand and placed it on the panel. The door opened instantaneously.

  “Let’s go!” I gestured with the hand before tossing it inside as the squad entered. I turned back to the creature on the ground and picked it up with one hand grasping its chest. Even across the galaxy, across the races and time, its face portrayed nothing other than a feeling of intense pain. I pulled the outer visor back on my helmet, revealing my face. It opened its eyes, squinting through the pain.

  For that one instant, our two sets of soulless eyes met. I imagined it begging for mercy, but it got none from me. I wore not a single expression as I stepped forward and hurled it out onto the plain of swirling ice and snow before joining the rest of my squad inside.

  They had already been engaged by a small force in the first passageway. One of our men had been wounded, which tied up our medic, while the rest of them tried to move forward under limited cover. Only two had been able to salvage their pod shields, and now four and five were attempting to hide behind them, respectively. The rest were pressed up against the walls, trying to use small protrusions and supports for cover.

  I peeked out from my corner and saw the aliens firing he
avy weapons from bunkers at the end of the corridor. There appeared to be less than ten of them remaining, but they had us pinned down. In less than a second, they shifted their fire to me, putting shots into the metal beside my head. I switched my rifle to grenades and fired three rounds into the wall to the right of the enemy position.

  “Take cover!” I shouted to the squad as I ducked back myself.

  The aliens saw what was about to happen and dove out into the open to avoid the inevitable blasts. The charges detonated with a huge force in the small space, and my men rushed in to engage the exposed aliens. They hardly put up a fight, and we cleared the room easily.

  We formed up at the next door, and I assessed our situation. We had one more man down.

  “Radio.”

  My radio man turned to me. “Sir,” he acknowledged.

  “Find out how the other squads are doing. If they’re close, have them come through our door,” I ordered, before placing the alien’s severed hand on a panel by the next door. “See if there’s a way we can remotely open the other doors, too.”

  The doors opened into an extensive domed city. Roughly human-scale structures were sprinkled all over, with gracefully flowing streets crossing the open areas in between. At first glance, the entire complex could have been human if it were not for the buildings’ eerie alien architecture. I entered with my weapon raised, and my soldiers followed close behind and spread out across the road.

  Dozens of aliens were milling about farther into the city, and for a brief moment, we watched each other without either side making a move. I felt my heart beat once before addressing the squad.

  “Kill them all,” I stated as I took the first shot. Every rifle lit up, and we advanced quickly, keeping the body count rising. The exquisitely clean scene turned into a war zone as more defenders arrived, and soon every structure was stained with blood and riddled with bullet holes. My magazine ran dry, and I ducked down to switch it out. In addition, I added grenades and began lobbing shots into and over other buildings, into the streets beyond my line of sight. Several others followed suit.

  “Sir, two more squads have broken through the dome. Another has followed in behind us,” the radio operator informed me.

  “Good. Get them in here, and don’t let us fire on them,” I responded before addressing the others. “We’ve got humans incoming. Watch your fire.”

  I realized with some disdain that we didn’t know anything at all about the layout of the city. We were going to have to figure it out on our own. More humans rounded a corner a hundred yards down the street, and I knew we couldn’t go much further. I rallied my squad up and pointed to a tall building to the left about twenty yards down.

  “Listen up. We’re taking that one and going straight to the roof. First team comes with me, second team secures the perimeter.”

  Charging across the street, I didn’t stop to see if anyone was following. The first door I saw took only one swift kick to buckle and splinter apart. Two aliens were crouched in the back of the room and tried to run out as I entered. I gave them each a single shot to their backs and stepped over their still twitching corpses on my way to find some stairs.

  A set of stairs, wound into a tight spiral, was set in the very center of the structure. I carefully looked up the shaft and didn’t see any movement in the shadows. I didn’t expect much more resistance here than I had already seen, so I double-timed up the steps, which opened up onto the roof after about six stories.

  Once out in the open again, I could see across the entire cityscape. Columns of smoke rose from several points, and I guessed they marked the other entrances of my soldiers. Sounds of intense gunfire continued to rattle off the walls, but was not overbearing. I turned to my radio operator, who had followed me in.

  “Get me a map of this place. I want ranges to each control point and locations of all the other forces.”

  He nodded, launched a small floating probe, and began taking notes on a compact tablet. As I surveyed the layout, I could see there were five buildings that clearly stood out from the rest. They were shaped oddly, sharing none of the architectural features that characterized the rest of the city.

  “Send a squad to each of those five misshapen ones,” I ordered, but I quickly rethought my position. “Actually, send four. We’ll take the nearest one. Stay here and finish the survey.”

  I dropped down to the ground one more time and rounded up my defenders.

  “We’ve got another target. Follow me.”

  We turned and took a narrow side street between the buildings, and I estimated that we were going in the right direction.

  I burned through another magazine on the second street before we entered a cleared area surrounding our target. The ground was paved with a bright white stone. It was extremely smooth, almost more like marble than cement.

  Up close, the building looked more like a temple than anything else. Two tall stone doors stood at the center under a glistening tower of stone. I held up my fist and the team took a knee. Keeping my rifle up with one hand, I armed a satchel charge with my right and tossed it directly at a seam.

  The explosion blew the doors to bits and buckled the frame. A few stones crumbled from the wall above and left a tall pile of rubble in its place. Shots blasted out of the space inside.

  “We’ve got contacts in the structure!” I shouted. “Move in!”

  Whatever was firing from the smoke-filled interior obviously couldn’t see us, since it didn’t exactly come close to hitting us. I pitched a grenade and let it explode before we cleared the pile of rubble. Ten aliens were defending the site, but half were blinded and had dropped their weapons in the aftermath of the blast. I gave each one a three-round burst to the chest, and I continued into the center of the building.

  A single round room filled the interior. Spanning the entire thing was a huge spiral staircase. I looked over the edge and saw that it extended from the top of the tower down to darkness far below.

  “We’re going down,” I announced, and started down the steps.

  Each tread was easily three meters wide, and close to two deep. Our footsteps echoed around the room as we went along until we finally reached the bottom. I casually counted about eighty steps.

  The lowest level was an open area, carved into the rock deep underground. The floor was clear, with the only feature being a set of large open blast doors that led deeper into darkness. It appeared to be a long, straight maintenance corridor.

  “Range it,” I ordered.

  The nearest man raised his weapon and shot a laser line straight down the passage. “At least 20 k’s, sir, maybe more. I can’t get it much more stable than that.”

  I nodded. “It doesn’t matter. It connects us with another route for the enemy. Drop some satchel charges beyond the doors and collapse the roof. We don’t need them having another way to reach us.”

  The soldiers set to work rigging up a series of explosives while I stepped back and radioed the other teams.

  “To all men breaching the temples, we’ve discovered a series of passages deep underground. You are ordered to use explosive charges to destroy these targets before enemy reinforcements arrive.” Barely a second after turning off the radio, I saw the others take cover and I duck down as well.

  They blew their charges, and the room shuddered as the roof of the hallway collapsed in on it. I looked up and saw about twenty meters down, what was a long shaft into the planet was now a wall of crushed stone.

  “Good job,” I congratulated the squad. “Let’s get back to the surface.”

  Back up on the surface, most of my forces were still engaged around the city and busy exterminating the indigenous life forms. My radio operator was on top of a building across the lot from me. He waved when he saw us emerge from the temple’s dusty interior.

  “How are we doing?” I inquired.

  Looking away, I saw the shadow of another alien sneaking along an alleyway. I took one shot and tore off the lower half of its leg. It fell, sq
uirming, to the ground, still trying to crawl its way along. Bringing my rifle to my eye, I could see its head rise up and look back at me. I put one more shot into the side of its face.

  “They’re not putting up much of a fight.”

  “Yes, sir, so far we’ve encountered only mild resistance,” he answered. “There are a few stray contacts outside, but nothing even remotely close yet. Probably more colonists like we’ve seen here already.” The man looked down at his display. “There may be one problem.”

  To hear him mention a problem didn’t hit me too hard. I was amazed we made it as far as we did without a disaster. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve received confirmations from four of the five teams sent to destroy the tunnels, including yours. There have been no communications with the squad at the center structure.”

  “Alright, we’ll check it out,” I offered. “What’s the quickest way to get there?”

  He pointed with the blade of his hand. “Straight down that street a hundred meters, take the third left and go another two hundred meters or so. It will be on the right.”

  I nodded. “Good. Keep it up.” I studied the situation momentarily. “Switch some squads away from offense to build and man some DFPs at every entrance. We need to be prepared for when more show up.”

  Snapping my fingers, I addressed my team. “Everybody up, we’re moving to the next temple.” Most had taken a knee while I confirmed our next move, but they hopped back up and fell into formation one more time.

  The quick jog to the second temple was uneventful, and we found our target in nearly the same condition as we left the previous one. The front doors were blown to bits and shards of stone had been chipped free all around from bullet impacts. Several alien corpses were draining on the steps outside, and many more within. I estimated the defenders numbered almost double what we faced.

  “That’s not a good sign,” I mumbled as I checked several bodies for signs of life. There were no fallen humans and no red blood on any of the white walls, so we continued down an identical set of spiral stairs.