Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  Warboys bearhugged the blur with the full strength of his mechanized grip until he thought his arms were going to pop out of the sockets. He could hear metal screeching, and system alerts were sounding inside the cockpit. Then something felt as if it gave way. Red and green glowing liquid squirted in every direction like a bursting water balloon filled with paints. The glowing liquid oozed over his tank, but the whirling dervish of a creature he had been holding had stopped fighting him.

  “That’s two!” he said to himself.

  “Warning, enemy targeting system detected!” his Bitchin’ Betty chimed in. It was too late. A blue beam similar to the ones fired from the large ships zigged across in front of him then turned a full ninety-degree turn and hit him directly on the chest section of the tank. The impact knocked him backwards several tens of meters.

  Sir, shields are at fifty percent! his AIC said into his mind.

  “Warlord One is down!” he heard Two shout over the net.

  “I’m up,” Warboys rebutted. “I’m not dead yet, Two. Where the hell did that come from?”

  “I didn’t see it!” Two replied. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Warlords! QMT to next set of coordinates and stay at it.” Mason triggered his QMT random jump and repositioned himself as he reappeared in reality space.

  He quickly scanned the battlescape view in his DTM. The Maniacs were currently doing their pukin’ deathblossom thing and were alleviating some of the ground stress. The Archangels and three clone squadrons were also mixing it up above and on the surface. The fighters helped. But as far as Mason could tell both the tankheads and the AEMs were getting their teeth kicked in.

  “Alright, Warlords, let’s take out a that nearest cannon spire a quarter klick at the following coordinates.” He DTMed the location to the tank squad. “Stay in phalanx charge at full speed.”

  “Roger that, One!” the Warlords replied.

  “Keep an eye out for whatever is firing those blue beams!” Warboys ordered. He pounded his tank at top speed across what could only be considered a street. There were vehicles that could have been considered cars. There was just no way of knowing as none of the oddly shaped things were moving. The only motion was from either the red-green blurs or the fighter porcupine-like things that were bouncing about overhead and strafing the shit out of them every chance the bastards got.

  The street led in straight paths and made abrupt turns. There were no curved paths. The street was similar to that strange blue beam in that regard.

  Find me a path to that spire, he told his AIC.

  Got it, General. His AIC responded by highlighting a path in his DTM view.

  Warboys took point in the phalanx charge down the street. The red-green blurry things were coming out of every nook and cranny in the cityscape.

  “Guns, guns, guns!” he shouted as he fired his shoulder-mounted cannons into what he hoped was the torso of one of the aliens. The tracers tracked across the façade of one of the buildings, blowing holes and flinging shrapnel in every direction, and finally hit something that became another paint-balloon splatter effect.

  “Look out, Six! One behind you!”

  “He’s on me like stink on shit!” Warlord Six shouted.

  “Don’t break ranks!” Mason ordered. “They’re trying to scatter us and pick us off!”

  “I’ve got him, Six!” Warlord Four replied. “Fox Three!”

  Mason could see in his DTM that the missile hit home. Six was cleared, but then four more of the damned blurs dropped in right in the middle of them as if they’d just fallen from the sky.

  “He’s on my back,” Two shouted.

  “Shit, I’ve got two on my three-nine!” Five sounded terrified.

  “Keep it together, Warlords!” Mason shouted over the net at his squad. “Guns, guns, guns!”

  He turned and went to his cannons, bull’s-eyeing the blur on Two’s back. Five was already on the ground being pounded. One of the arms of his tank was being torn free. Mason reversed direction, throwing up chunks of whatever the street was made from as he fired his foot thrusters. He dove headfirst on top of Five, driving a metal fist the size of a refrigerator through a blur’s midback. His fist went through the thing and he could hear a screech that was beyond anything he’d ever heard before. It was horrific, but Mason pulled the thing off of Five and staggered backwards. The blur seemed to turn itself around and tendrils of red and green wrapped around the cockpit dome of his bot mode tank.

  The tank groaned against the stress of the thing’s grip. Mason struggled and flailed wildly at the alien with his other mechanized arm, but the alien thing had little if any solid geometry.

  “Hold still, you son of a bitch!” He continued to swat at it and push it back from his face.

  “Three is down!”

  “Shit, they’re all over me!”

  Then it began raining aliens—hundreds more began to fall from above. Mason could only assume that the aliens had managed to get reinforcements. Either that or they had just stumbled into the middle of a hive.

  The Blue force tracker in his mindview flashed Three from yellow to red and then black. Then Seven went black. The Warlords were being devastated, and he was under a pile of alien blurs and could do very little to save himself.

  “Evac out now! Warlords! I repeat! Evac QMT now!” Just as Mason started the QMT algorithm, his canopy was pulled free. Another alien tendril ripped precious technology from the torso of his tank.

  “Warning, QMT system failure . . .” His Bitchin’ Betty trailed off.

  Mason reached over to tap the emergency personnel wrist band QMT snap-back system, and to his surprise, his left arm was not there. He looked at the sealed-off stump of his armor suit in horror. He had not even felt the injury. Then he was torn free from the tank and could only see a whirl of motion spinning about himself.

  Son of a bitch! This is it, ain’t it, Brenda? he thought to his AIC.

  I think so, sir! It was an honor.

  Detonate my suit, Brenda. Authorization Warboys One Warlord One, Mason thought. His mind was no longer able to keep up with what was happening to him. The world spun as the aliens tore him apart. Only the last bit of stims and immunoboost had kept him alive this long. He still wasn’t sure why he had felt no pain.

  Did any of the Warlords make it out?

  I don’t know. Suit detonation now.

  Chapter 51

  June 16, 2407 AD

  Alpha Lyncis

  203 Light-years from the Sol System

  Friday, 8:19 AM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “The QMT bait and switch is working, General!” his XO shouted over the thud of enemy missiles hitting the barrier shield. Moore kept a tally on the shields the same as he did the countdown clock to the blue beams. They had managed to avoid being hit a single time by the zigzagging menacing death beams so far.

  “Keep hitting that tuning fork spire, Gunner!” he said.

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Thirteen seconds, General!” the XO shouted.

  “Shit, there just isn’t enough time to do enough damage!” He pounded his armored fist against his armored thigh. “We need to stay on that target longer.”

  “Ten seconds!”

  Then jump, but to a place with the same target in range, Alexander. His AIC highlighted a location in space on the other side of the alien ship in his DTM battlescape view.

  You are brilliant, Abigail! Pass the coordinates to the Nav now!

  “Nav! Change the jump coordinates to the ones you are receiving now!”

  “Got it, sir!”

  “Five seconds, General!” the XO shouted.

  “Go, Nav!” Moore gritted his teeth. The QMT jump flashed just in time. The Madira sling-forward maneuver placed them in reality space at almost the mirror-image location of where they had been.

  “I’ve got the target acquired, General!” the Weapons Deck Officer shouted.

  “Well, don’t waste time telling me about it,
Gunner! Fire, dammit!”

  “Twenty-nine seconds, General!” the XO started the clock over.

  “General, I’m picking up a huge EM buildup around the tuning fork spire!” the STO said.

  “Zoom in on the screen!” Moore ordered. The spire was cracking all about the base and upward through the center between the tines. The blue arcs jumped from time to time like the thing was about to fire, but then orange and red plasma ejected out around it in all directions. The spire exploded in a mix of blue arcs and red and orange plasma with the force of a small tactical gluonium bomb. Secondary explosions raced longitudinally up the ship until there was one final huge blast, throwing pieces of the supercarrier-sized ship into a nearby swarm ship, breaking through parts of its exterior armor.

  “Nineteen seconds!”

  “Gunner! Target the damaged area of the second ship!”

  “On it, General!”

  The red and green beams from the DEGs tracked across into the open wound of the Chiata ship. The cannon spires on the side facing them were mostly wiped out by the explosion of the first one. The other fleet ships nearest the Madira were occupying the local swarm enough so that they were managing to minimize damage. The Buckley-Freeman shields were holding solid.

  “Give me a missile in there!” Moore ordered.

  “Aye, sir!” the gunner replied and toggled several other controls. A nuclear-tipped missile tracked out from the ship and corkscrewed about the DEG beams all the way to target. The missile vanished past the burned-through armor and then exploded in the interior of the alien ship. The Chiata vessel bulged in the center then popped from the overpressure. The ship was nearly torn in half even before secondary explosions began.

  “Nine seconds!”

  Then a blue beam zigged from out of nowhere and slammed into the aft barrier shield. Moore felt the jolt, but this time his crew was fully armored and strapped in.

  “CO, CDC!”

  “Where the hell did that come from, CDC?”

  “Sir! I have two hundred more ships just dropped out of hyperspace jaunt right on top of us!” the CDC replied.

  “I have them confirmed, General!” the STO replied.

  “Communications Officer, sound the retreat call!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Nav, get us out of here now!”

  A second blue beam zigged across the sky in front of them into one of the Thatcher fleet ships. Then another. The ship exploded before it could QMT. From the looks of it, Captain Seeley’s ships were getting hammered as well. The Madira was slammed just as the sling-forward algorithm kicked in.

  “Shields are down to forty percent, General! It looks like, oh my God,” the XO paused in disbelief.

  “What is it, XO?”

  “General, seventeen fleet ships are lost, sir. The rest of the fleet managed to QMT out,” the XO explained.

  “Where are we, Nav?” Moore hoped that at least they were where they had planned to be. Seventeen ships. That was over three hundred thousand souls, assuming the clones had souls too. Moore hadn’t expected, and nobody had known or could have known, that the damned Chiata could target while in hyperspace.

  “We are at the planned evac point in the Oort Cloud on the opposite side of the star where we previously were, sir. At least another five days away from the alien fleet,” the navigation officer replied.

  “And the mecha and AEMs?” Moore held his breath for a moment.

  “They are all accounted for, sir. The fighters are nearby waiting for the ground troops and mecha to clear the hangar decks,” the XO said. “And several of the hangars are still on fire, sir. Fire crews are working the problem. Also, sir, with so many ships lost, we have mecha out there not knowing where to go. There are tanks and AEMs floating in free space.”

  “Okay, give me a moment to think.” Moore took a deep breath and then pulled up the casualties list. Dee wasn’t on it. He exhaled. “Start the emergency QMTs, wounded, then AEMs first, followed by tanks. The mecha jocks won’t mind flying a holding pattern for a while.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Abigail, give me the summary, he thought.

  Yes sir. We lost twenty-seven percent of the ground forces, including General Warboys. Sixteen percent of the fighters were lost, a little heavier on the clone pilots, which is as planned and expected. Of the total sixty-five supercarrier class ships we started with on this attack wave, we lost seventeen. We are down to forty-eight ships, sir.

  We can’t keep sending in soldiers to the meat grinder like this, Alexander thought.

  What else can we do, General?

  We can go home and rethink our plans. Clearly, what we’re doing ain’t working.

  Yes, sir.

  How could I have thought we could hold this system? Moore wasn’t sure if he was getting overly confident in his old age, or incompetent. This was as bad as the first Martian Desert Campaign that he had sworn never to let happen again.

  Perhaps we continue to underestimate the Chiata strength? Abigail suggested.

  Or overestimate our own.

  Epilogue

  June 18, 2407 AD

  Alpha Lyncis

  203 Light-years from the Sol System

  Sunday, 7:19 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  It had taken most of two days to orchestrate a complete rescue. There was always the fear that somehow the relentless Chiata would find them and get to them before they could get further away. But in the end, that didn’t happen and the Chiata were at least limited in technology to hyperspace jaunt propulsion. They were limited to speeds of about seventy-five times the speed of light. That was still way faster than human hyperspace technology. Had it not been for the QMT systems, things would have been a lot worse.

  “XO to CO.”

  “Go, Firestorm.” Deanna listened as her father talked to the bridge crew. The XO was finally out of the wheelchair and was back on active duty.

  “That is the last of the survivors, sir. All the ships report loaded and ready to snap back to Alpha Ursae Majoris.”

  “Understood, XO. Hopefully, the bots are finished building a big pad so we can leap all the way back home. Otherwise it will be a long seventy-two hours,” Moore said.

  “Yes, sir. Any other orders, sir?”

  “Are the bots in place here?”

  “The busy bastards are already turning a nearby comet into thousands of other bots, sir.”

  “Good. I’d hate to leave without giving the Chiata a parting gift.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sound the general retreat, XO. All ships to return to rendezvous at Alpha Ursae Majoris as soon as their Nav is ready.”

  “Ready to go, Daddy?”

  “Looks like it, Princess.” Deanna cringed when he called her that. But with a bit of thought she knew she didn’t mind. In fact, it helped her feel that she was safe and things were okay in the universe. The feeling of the safe little girl in her superhuman daddy’s arms quickly vanished. The Chiata were right out there. The alien menace was only one light-year away from where she was standing. And there was nothing that humanity had been able to do so far to stop them. Maybe they slowed them down, but most likely, Dee figured, they’d just pissed them off.

  Deanna looked out at the red star in the distance and thought she’d be glad to put as much distance between herself and it as soon as possible. She knew that she’d meet the Chiata again someday soon. But for now, she just wanted the hell away from them.

  “They know we’re out there now,” she said to her father as they stood looking out the window of the lounge. “They’ll be coming.”

  “They knew we were there all along.” her father replied. “They were already coming. We just didn’t know it.”

  “Grandmother did,” Dee replied.

  “So she did.” Alexander agreed.

  Dee turned and looked at her father. He had always been larger than life and bigger than any odds and as strong or stronger than any situation had ever required him to be. But this
was different. They’d just gotten their asses kicked and the bully that did it was still coming after them.

  “Daddy, what are we going to do?”

  “We will do what any good Marine has always done since there have been Marines.” Her father put his arm around her and looked her in the eyes. “We will improvise and adapt and we will overcome. We will fight.”

  “What if that isn’t enough, Daddy?” Dee longed to get out of her armor and simply hug her father.

  “Then we will die fighting.” her father told her.

  “Ooh-fuckin’-rah, Daddy.” she whispered.

  “Ooh-fuckin’-rah, Princess.”