by C. E. Martin
One by one, the sleepers quietly sat up in their beds and proceeded out of their rooms and across the street. Where Colonel Kenslir waited for them at the diner.
Kenslir wore black combat pants and boots. His shirt was skin-tight, black- made of a material similar to what standard troops wore. A garment designed for maximum comfort, able to wick away sweat- not that he ever really sweated. The shirt bore a name tag over his right breast: ANTAEAN.
Over his shirt and pants, Kenslir wore a dozen different straps and belts, supporting a variety of weapons and gear. A large submachine gun hung on his right thigh. Ammo pouches were on his left thigh. A huge, semi-automatic magnum hung under his left armpit, just above his belt. More ammo pouches hung under his right armpit. On his belt, grenades and more ammo pouches were aplenty.
But Kenslir liked reliable, ammunition-less weapons as well. Like the twin, twelve-inch Bowie knives hanging on his chest, handles-down, supported by his combat harness. And on his back were two simple iron rods- each twenty-inches long and nearly an inch in diameter. Heavy, but as useful as any hammer, baton or any other crushing weapon ever designed.
Kenslir supplemented all this equipment with his main weapon. A modified M82A1, semi-automatic, anti-vehicular sniper rifle, firing .50 caliber rounds that were capable of penetrating armor plate or engine blocks. Instead of the small ten-round magazine conventional forces used with the heavy rifle, Kenslir had a special drum magazine over a foot in diameter holding a hundred rounds.
The Colonel watched the mesmerized travelers come across the street one by one through large, goggle-sized, wraparound sunglasses. The glasses was equipped with a heads up display, earpieces and microphone so he could stay in contact with his team. The tactical targeting visor also provided night vision and real-time satellite feeds.
After the first few travelers had gone into the diner, sat down at tables then laid their heads down and resumed sleeping, Kenslir leapt onto the roof of the building. He was careful to land as light as possible. With all his gear, and his own immense weight, he tried to avoid property damage whenever possible.
Kenslir set up his massive rifle to cover the room the target was staying in and waited. Echo was nearly done with his removal operation.
For Echo, the whole thing was a little unnerving. He wasn’t used to field work. As rare as telepaths were, he was used to being in an office, with subjects brought to him for memory retrieval. The few times he’d left a secure facility, he’d been under the close supervision and protection of at least a dozen armed men.
Echo also wasn’t sure about his new commander. It was unnerving for a telepath to meet someone who’s mind could not be read. Truth was something Echo had grown up with- no one being able to hide their thoughts, or lies, from him. He wondered just what the Colonel really thought of him and this mission. And whether he had been given all the details.
When Echo had been awakened in the middle of the night, he had seen the fear in his regular handler’s mind. The intel on the target was disturbing. Echo absolutely understood the importance of stopping the creature and whatever plan it had in place.
So, after a long flight, a terrifying High Altitude, Low Opening parachute drop into the Arizona desert, and then a very undignified ride through the desert on the back of the much faster-running super soldiers, Echo found himself dressed in smelly clothes, standing outside a sleazy motel room door.
Echo reached out to the sleeping traveler inside.
Ted Marshall was a middle-aged salesman from Oklahoma, on his way back from a convention in Las Vegas. His dreams were filled with nightmares about paying his mortgage and supporting his family.
Echo carefully eased Marshall out of bed. He was glad this one was wearing clothes. The salesman wore boxer shorts and a dirty white t-shirt. And at least a quart of sweat. Echo had not enjoyed dressing the last man.
Echo steered Marshall out of the room. Marshall robotically closed the door to his room then walked across the pavement parking lot of the Motel, toward the street. Along the way, his bare feet stepped on small bits of gravel. They’d be sore in the morning.
Marshall crossed the dark street with no difficulty, then entered the diner.
Inside, the other travelers were all sleeping- seated at tables, their arms crossed, their heads laid down. They were a varied selection of Americans. An elderly woman in a nightgown. A large-chested, Hispanic, twenty-something woman in a thin negligee. A grungy-haired, blonde twenty-year-old man in tattered jeans.
They’d all ended up at this particular motel, exhausted after a day of whatever life had thrown at them. And all were now sleeping a deep, deep slumber in the diner, courtesy of Echo.
The telepath opened his eyes. He reached up to his earpiece to signal the Colonel. It struck him how odd it was that a telepath should even have to use a radio. But then, he couldn’t exactly telepathically communicate with the Colonel.
“All clear- that was the last one,” Echo whispered. The earpiece picked up his words and transmitted them in burst form- a split-second digital transmission.
Across the street, Colonel Kenslir whispered a reply into the wire-thin metal microphone boom coming down from his tactical visor.
“Move to safe distance,” he directed.
Echo nodded, and carefully walked away from the room, staggering, but not too much, back across the parking lot. It took him at least three minutes, but he was finally off the lot. He then circled around, crossed the street, passed down an alley, and finally entered through the back exit of the Diner.
There, Echo hid in the kitchen, watching over his sleeping charges. He still thought the best plan would have been for him to just seize control of the shapeshifter, telepathically, then let the soldiers capture it.
The Colonel had absolutely forbidden that plan. He had tersely pointed out to Echo that all telepathic connections created a two-way bridge of information, and if something went wrong, they simply could not have this shapeshifter running around the country with operational knowledge of the Detachment.
From his rooftop perch, Kenslir looked through the scope on his rifle. Thermal imaging showed the target still in bed, sleeping.
“Knock, knock, squad,” Kenslir directed into his radio.
Like wraiths, the other four members of the squad emerged from hiding.
Each wore a uniform similar to the Colonel’s, with the same augmented-reality tactical visors. Their choice of weapons differed slightly from the Colonel. They each carried a large, belted-ammunition machine gun, and only one large pistol held in holsters on their right thighs. They carried far more grenades than the Colonel as well. And only one Bowie knife each, hung on their chest harnesses.
And all four of the men were made of stone.
The United States military had spent years trying to develop a super soldier for any situation. In the 1960s, Kenslir had worked with a variety of parahumans with different abilities. But with few exceptions, they’d all been mortal. They could be, and sometimes were, killed in combat.
It was Kenslir’s own wife that had started the project in 1960. Her plan was simple- find a way to petrify a human being into a living, moving, thing of gray stone. A soldier who didn’t need to eat, to drink, to even breathe. Who wouldn’t get tired. Who was bulletproof. And who would be far stronger than normal men.
Kenslir’s current squad was the culmination of that research started fifty years ago. And for the past three years, the squad had gathered an impressive mission completion rating under Kenslir’s careful direction.
A shapeshifter would be child’s play.
First, from his concealment behind a parked car, came Atlas. A former Navy Seal, with no family, Atlas had been selected for his combat skills and extensive training. He had developed into Kenslir’s second-in-command in the field and was a very apt soldier.
Atlas moved in quietly, drum-fed machinegun held tight against his shoulder, ready to fire. With his hairless, granite-colored head, Atlas embodied the mythical Tita
n he was named for.
Cronus was the second soldier out. Cronus had left a promising career in Marine Recon to become part of America’s most elite. Like Atlas, Cronus and the whole squad appeared to be moving, bald statues. Because hair didn’t hold up well when petrified.
Cronus approached from a different direction, covering the far end of the motel by the office.
From behind a dumpster at the far end of the motel, Perses advanced. Perses had been recruited from Delta Force. He was the only member of the squad to have been reluctant to become petrified. Perses was smart like that- he wasn’t planning on staying a soldier forever.
Behind the motel, the final stone soldier emerged from the brush. His name tag identified him as HYPERION. A knee injury had removed him from Air Force pararescue training. But his record prior to that, and his unmarried, no-family status had brought him into the program. Fixing his knee injury had been all part of the petrification process.
Atlas hesitated just outside the door to the target’s room. The tactical visor superimposed the thermal image of the sleeping form into his field of vision. The visor also displayed ambient air temperature, compass heading, barometric pressure and a variety of other information about the world in real time.
Atlas glanced to his right, then left, to ensure Cronus and Perses were in position, only twenty-feet away.
“In position?” Atlas asked into the radio.
Hyperion had just stopped in front of the door to a room on the back of the motel, directly adjacent to the target’s room. The door, two sheets of drywall and some 2x4s were all that separated him from the target.
“Ready,” Hyperion answered.
Atlas stepped forward, kicking the door so that it exploded inward, in a spray of splinters.
The target was awake immediately, sitting up in bed. It wore the form of red-haired, skinny woman. Atlas didn’t know it, but she had been a drug addict on the streets of Oklahoma. A high school dropout who had run away from uncaring parents, hoping she could make it to Hollywood and become a star.
Instead, she’d had her heart ripped out.
Atlas fired his 7.62mm, M240 machinegun directly into the surprised shapeshifter. Each individual round of the weapon was designed to be able to kill a man, or woman. The bullets could penetrate concrete blocks. They moved at nearly two-thousand, six-hundred feet per second. The M240 could fire nine-hundred of these bullets per minute.
Across the street, Colonel Kenslir watched through his thermal vision scope. The flare from the muzzle of the M240 was a large, white ball of heat. The body of the target jumped and twitched as small streams of heat, the 7.62mm bullets, tore into it.
Atlas stopped firing after only five seconds. All seventy-five of his fired shots had found their target.
The redhead from Oklahoma was a splattered mess, her blood and most of her internal organs painted on the wall of the motel behind her bed. Her face was frozen in place with a mix of surprise and pain. The blankets and sheets that had covered her body were bloody and shredded.
Scratch one murdering fiend.
Atlas lowered his rifle. “Target down.”
Across the street, Kenslir leaned back from his scope. Relieved, but a little worried. This had gone far too easy, even for his stone soldiers.
Inside the motel room, Atlas suddenly came to the same conclusion.
Despite being a pulped mess, the redhead from Oklahoma sprang out of her bed. The leap from her horizontal, reclined position was instantaneous and brought her on top of Atlas in a split second.
Atlas, despite being a nearly-indestructible mass of living stone, was frightened by the sudden movement. As the gory redhead landed on his chest, he stepped back.
The shapeshifter immediately changed- abandoning the shredded form of the teenage drug addict for a lanky, blonde-haired, clean cut boy from Idaho. He’d come to Arizona seeking work.
Despite being rail thin, and a good head shorter than Atlas, the blonde shapeshifter smacked the M240 out of Atlas’ surprised hands with ease.
Atlas recovered from his momentary shock and reached down for the pistol on his right thigh. The shapeshifter was faster, catching his wrist with its left hand. Then the shapeshifter grabbed the stone soldier by his various straps and harnesses and threw him across the room and into the wall.
In the motel parking lot, the wall beside the door to the shapeshifter’s room exploded as Atlas was hurled through it. The stone soldier sailed a good ten feet through the air before hitting the ground and rolling several times to a stop.
Perses, Cronus and Kenslir were all surprised. The Colonel grabbed up his rifle and looked through the scope. In the motel room, the shapeshifter casually picked up a t-shirt from the nightstand and slipped it on. Then he stepped into a pair of shoes, and walked toward the exit.
Atlas was back on his feet now. His hand snaked down for the pistol on his leg. The holster was empty.
The shapeshifter emerged from the hole in the wall. He wore blue jeans, tennis shoes and his fresh t-shirt. He twirled a large, over-under, double-barreled pistol around his right index finger by its oversized trigger guard.
“Lose something?” the shapeshifter taunted. Despite having just been killed, and now facing three soldiers made of living stone, the shapeshifter was extremely calm.
Atlas reached up for the Bowie knife hanging from his combat harness. If shooting didn’t work, maybe beheading would.
The blonde from Idaho extended his seized-pistol toward Atlas and fired a single shot.
After the stone soldiers had been made, the question had come up on what to equip them with. Their inhuman strength and stone physiques made them lethal to normal people, but the stone soldiers weren’t made for fighting normal people. They were made for fighting paranormal people. Fists might not be enough.
Heavy weapons designed for use mounted on vehicles had been an early choice. But they were unwieldy, and overly-large, even if the stone soldiers could carry them around with no effort. What had been needed were small, hand-held weapons, easily aimed even in confined places, but which had the stopping power to take out armored vehicles, if necessary.
Enter the M79 grenade launcher- a rifle capable of firing grenades at the enemy from safe distances and used extensively during the Vietnam War. Originally made with a shoulder stock and a long barrel for accuracy, the gun lobbed 40mm grenades, one shot at a time.
Adding another barrel on top of the breechloading weapon had been a design improvement borrowed from skeet shooting shotguns. And the lobbed grenades were replaced with more lethal rounds that didn’t need to travel a safe distance before arming and exploding. The barrels were shortened and the shoulder stock replaced with a pistol grip.
Atlas remembered this all in the split second it took for the baseball-sized projectile from his own pistol to slam into him with the force of a cannon shot. The hard, armor-piercing round flattened against the dense stone of his chest, then its shaped-charge core detonated.
Atlas exploded as well- his granite-like body not so indestructible after all. Large, stone pieces flew out in all directions- Atlas’ uniform and gear blown apart by the shot as well. Only his boots and the legs of his pants remained where he had been standing.
The shapeshifter was surprised by the dust and stone pieces. He lowered the pistol and walked over to the pile of debris. He picked a piece up and examined it, sniffing at the piece, then pitching it aside.
Cronus and Perses were amazed. They had been briefed they weren’t truly indestructible. That they had to avoid certain things, like direct cannon fire or anti-tank rockets. But they had survived so much. To watch one of their own, cut down by his own pistol, with such relative ease... it was shocking.
But they were professionals. Cronus and Perses snapped out of it and unleashed their machine guns on the shapeshifter. Simultaneously, Hyperion crashed through the rear room of the motel, smashing through the wall into the shapeshifter’s room. He too began firing his machine gun, riddling the
shapeshifter with rounds.
For every second of time passing, the shapeshifter was being slammed with forty-five bullets from three directions. Bullets that tore through his body, bursting organs and shattering bones.
But he was a shapeshifter. As soon as organs popped or bones snapped, they swelled back together. It was like trying to hold back a wall of water with machine gun fire. Forty-five bullets per second just weren’t enough.
The stone soldiers did not realize this. They just kept firing to make sure the target died. Their two-hundred-round drums of ammunition provided thirteen seconds of continuous fire. Thirteen long seconds.
When the firing stopped, the shredded body of the shapeshifter, torn by the constant stream of lead almost faster than it could repair itself, hung in the air for but a moment. Then it dropped to the ground, as if the machine guns had been suspending it.
Hyperion was now standing in the shapeshifter’s room. He and the other two soldiers dropped their empty drums, and pulled fresh ones from the mini packs on their backs. They began the slow process of reloading while the shapeshifter’s body lay broken, shredded and oozing on the ground.
The shapeshifter suddenly sat up. He extended his arm and fired the other barrel of his stolen pistol. Again, the terrible grenade pistol boomed, sending its armor-piercing, shaped-charge round out. This time into the surprised head of Cronus.
Where before Atlas’ body had been reduced to large chunks, Cronus’ head all but vaporized- blown into a cloud of sand-like grit. His clothes and gear were blown off the body nearly to the waist. The windows of a car parked nearby shattered from the shock wave.
Cronus’ body dropped the M240 it was holding, then it slowly toppled over and smashed onto the pavement, a headless, shirtless statue.
The shapeshifter dropped the pistol he was holding as he sprang to his feet. As he moved, his body rapidly transformed again, this time into an older man, in his late 50s, with thinning hair and a large stomach- a truck driver from Missouri who’d taken in one hitchhiker too many. Beneath the shredded t-shirt, the new body was fresh and undamaged.
