Epic: Dawn of Destiny

by Lee Stephen

  “Any foreseen problems?”

  “Aside from the talk-seller—that’s Mathis—I don’t know. Nothing is glaring. It’s just inexperience. I don’t know about Rhodes and Valer, I’m not too fond of two alphas making up our medical crew.”

  Lilan’s expression grew pointed. “I’m not fond of two girls making up your medical crew.”

  “I’m not either,” Tacker answered, “but what can we do? We take what they send us. That’s the trend right now. I’m glad Henrick has a medic with high marks, at least.”

  Lilan harrumphed and returned Tacker’s assessment of Henrick. “The only thing he’s missing is a clue.” Tacker restrained a laugh, and Lilan continued. “You know what I want you to do. Right?”

  Tacker met Lilan’s eyes, and he nodded. His attention returned to Henrick. “Yes sir. I do.”

  “The chaff will show. Given time. And an opportunity.”

  Tacker only stared ahead.

  They remained in the hangar for several more minutes as Henrick continued to address Delta Squad. Once Henrick had concluded and dismissed his operatives, Lilan offered a cordial nod of departure to Tacker. It was returned, and Lilan stepped away. Tacker remained behind only for a minute as Delta’s soldiers retrieved their comms and made their own exits.

  He left shortly after, and the hangar was abandoned.

  3

  Saturday, April 2nd, 0011 NE

  2020 hours

  The crack of pool balls echoed over the banter of the Black Cherry, Richmond’s premier nightclub. As soon as the orientation of Falcon Platoon had come to a close earlier in the afternoon, the men and women of Charlie Squad—minus Major Tacker—gathered together to plan their celebration. It was their first official day as active members of EDEN.

  The Black Cherry wasn’t the largest club in Richmond, nor the most elite. The reason for its popularity was simple: it felt good. When someone was at the Black Cherry, they were home. That was what prompted the members of Charlie Squad to enter its darkened doors and partake in its flavorful smells. Smells of liquor, smells of nachos and cheap finger foods. Smells of good times. It was the perfect way to kick off a new career path.

  The group borrowed several excursion vehicles, intended for free operative use in public transit. Once they arrived, they claimed a pair of oval tables near the front door. Though conversation saturated the drive, it wasn’t until they took seats together that words flowed with vigor. As could be expected, it centered on their new careers.

  Henry was the first to bring the commanding officers into the discussion. “Can you guys believe that speech Colonel Lilan gave us? Was that supposed to be motivational or something?”

  Sasha smiled as she sipped her beer. “Somehow I don’t think motivation was very high on his list.”

  “I know! What kind of dung was that?”

  Scott only half-smiled as he watched Sasha drink. Nightclubs weren’t his thing, nor were alcoholic beverages. Apparently they were for most of the others. He, David, and Jayden were the only three who refrained. “It was honesty,” he answered. “We’re not what he expected, he just came out and said it.”

  “Don’t you think a little encouragement would have been nice, though?”

  Encouragement? This was war. “I guess it would’ve, but it’s not necessary. It’s not like he’s obligated to make us feel good.”

  “He’s righ’,” Becan said. “I mean…I know yeh must remember all the talk in Philly abou’ commandin’ officers. We just got a rough one’s all.”

  “But still!” Henry said. “All I’m saying is that he could have been nicer.”

  David sipped his soda. “He’s not paid to be nice.”

  “Exactly,” Scott said. “I mean, yeah, I guess as far as motivation for the unit goes, it probably wasn’t the most uplifting speech in the world, but it still struck me as honest.” Scott thought honesty was a good thing. It was always good to see it reflected in people.

  Sasha smiled. “Well I’m just glad we got Major Tacker. He seems a bit more personal.”

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “Lilan could have been more like Tacker, I think.”

  “Anyway,” Sasha said, “I bet the colonel is sweet. He just has to be serious about his job.”

  “Sweet?”

  “Yeah. All old men are sweet.”

  Becan turned to David. “Yeh hear tha’? She thinks you’re sweet.” David’s eyes narrowed.

  “How old do you think the colonel is?” Scott asked. “He’s got to be in his fifties or something.”

  Zigler set down his mug of beer and entered the discussion. “I think he’s in his upper fifties.”

  Donald, the giant demolitionist, shook his head. “All’s I know is he’s for real. I don’t wanna make him mad, man.”

  Henry scoffed. “Come on, you? I know that old lunkard doesn’t scare you.”

  “I had coaches, man. Them old coaches is for real. Don’t ever tell them they old.”

  Scott smiled. Donald was right. Tell a football coach he’s old and you were liable to get a helmet thrown at you.

  “Enough about Lilan,” Sasha said. “What do you guys think of Tacker?” Natasha grinned at the mention of Tacker’s name. “He said something about we’re better than Delta Squad, or something, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but what do you think we’ll all be doing?”

  “No idea,” Henry answered. “Shoot stuff.”

  Zigler gave Henry a patronizing look and said to Sasha, “I’d imagine if there’s a choice, we’d lead an assault over Delta. I don’t think anyone expects much out of us as alphas. At least out of most of us, anyway.”

  “Of course,” Becan said with a sage look, “I am the greatest warrior in the world, so he expects more out o’ me.”

  Zigler mouthed the word “idiot” before he went on. “I don’t think we’ll be given anything serious until we prove ourselves. I wanted to say something about age, too. Don’t forget that Klaus Faerber is forty-eight.”

  David snapped his fingers. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Henry answered, “if we’re going to talk about Klaus Faerber. And I didn’t mean that age makes people useless, thank you. When I said that to Donald I meant that he could probably take the colonel if he wanted to.”

  “I ain’t said nothin’, man.”

  Zigler turned to Henry. “You were making a claim about age, and you were wrong. Faerber proves you wrong.”

  “Righ’, hey man, lay off him,” said Becan. “He wasn’t makin’ anny claim, he was just—”

  “Was I talking to you?” Zigler asked.

  Becan’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “Fellas,” Scott said.

  Zigler glared at Becan as he pointed to Henry. “He was making an argument that wasn’t worth of a pile of dung, and I shut him up.”

  “All righ’,” Becan said. “Someone better shut down this bucket o’ snots or he’s goin’ to get lamped out o’ it.”

  “Guys, calm down.” The last thing they needed was a unit full of anger to kick their careers off. “Nobody meant anything, just calm down. It’s our first day, we’re all a little anxious, let’s get it off on the right foot, okay?”

  Becan waved it off. “Righ’, righ’, whatever. Not worth it, let’s be movin’ on.”

  Henry frowned to Zigler. “I didn’t mean to upset you, man. I wasn’t trying to say anything.”

  “Whatever. Change it now, I don’t care.”

  Sasha cut in before the argument could be revisited and turned to face Jayden and Michael. “You guys don’t talk much, huh?”

  “Just listening,” Michael said. “I mean…nothing really to say. I do think it’s cool that Captain Faerber is forty-eight and he’s still the best leader in EDEN, but I mean…the conversation wasn’t really going there.”

  “Well it’s going there now, just for you,” Sasha said with a smile. “Anyone here met Klaus Faerber?”

  Scott was skeptical. Met Klaus Faerber? He didn’t know anybody
could meet Klaus Faerber. The man was a military legend, the commanding officer of Vector Squad—the most renowned and respected unit on the planet. They held as much weight as anyone in the High Command. “Does he even show up at the Academy?”

  Zigler shook his head. “No. The only time he works outside of Berlin is when it’s something serious. He wouldn’t waste his time in Philadelphia.”

  “Isn’t his son a cadet in Philadelphia?” Natasha asked.

  “Strom Faerber, yeah. He’ll probably be the most hyped soldier of the century. He’s still got a ways to go, though.”

  Michael spoke up. “I saw Strom a couple times in the weight rooms. Looks just like his dad, blond hair and everything. Not quite as big, but still chiseled like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  Zigler took a swig of beer. “If he takes his father’s footsteps, he’ll climb the chain of command like it’s nothing. Klaus has been rocking the Alien War since it began.”

  The Alien War. Scott hoped the conversation would go to it in general. “Speaking of the war, anybody have any theories about it? Why we’re even in it?”

  Natasha wrinkled her forehead. “You know what’s funny? They never once mentioned that in Philadelphia. Theories.”

  Zigler took another sip. “That’s done on purpose. They don’t want theories running rampant until they know something themselves.”

  “So when are they going to know something? I mean…how long has it been now? Ten years?”

  “Nine. They came two years into the New Era.”

  “That’s right,” Henry said. “It was that January. It happened a week before the Second Annual World Peace Celebration.”

  David smiled sardonically. “Ironic, huh?”

  Even though it was years ago, Scott remembered that day like it was yesterday. Everyone did. Friday, January 11, 0002 NE. The world was anticipating the World Peace Celebration. The WPC. The day that honored mankind’s transition from Old Era to New Era, an era of global harmony.

  It was 3:14 in the afternoon when first contact was made. It was in Hong Kong. It was the Bakma. Four of their Noboats—alien attack ships with the ability to completely dematerialize from view—appeared over the city. There wasn’t even time for humanity to hope for peaceful contact. The aliens engaged the moment they arrived. Thousands of citizens were killed before the Noboats vanished as mysteriously as they appeared, their ships dematerializing into the sky. In fact, it was their sudden dematerialization that gave birth to their names. When the ships disappeared, it prompted the commander of Hong Kong’s defense force to ask his radar operator how many enemy ‘boats’ were still in the air. The radar operator’s answer was obvious.

  The world panicked, and EDEN was formed. The Earth Defense Network. Earth’s unified attempt to defend itself from the very beings they sought to find for so long. For centuries, people wondered if they were alone in the galaxy. They finally had their answer.

  By the time the Ceratopians and Ithini arrived, in late May of that same year, there were three fully-functional EDEN facilities on Earth: Atlanta, Novosibirsk, and Berlin. It was amazing how quickly EDEN was organized with a global community at the helm. It couldn’t have been formed faster, as 0003 marked the year when the Alien War truly erupted. Incursions were no longer rare occurrences. They were commonplace. There were over one hundred and fifty alien attacks in 0003, as opposed to the five that took place in 0002. The increased attacks became the norm year after year. But they rarely consisted of more than a few spaceships. For some reason, the aliens never seemed to bring the full load. It was still a mystery why.

  Natasha returned to Zigler. “So nine years later, and we still don’t know anything. Doesn’t that strike anybody as a little weird?”

  Scott slid his hands into his pockets. Weird didn’t begin to cover it.

  “The news loves to talk about the Ithini Control Theory,” said Zigler.

  “Well, it makes the most sense,” said Scott. “The grays are the only ones that have been seen with both the Bakma and the Ceratopians.”

  “Then why don’t the Bakma and the Ceratopians work together?”

  “I don’t know. I never said it was the right theory.”

  “So what do you think is going on?” Natasha pursed her lips.

  Zigler stared at her. “The Ithini Control Theory is a joke, that’s all I know. If you had the Bakma and the Ceratopians at your fingertips, why wouldn’t you send them in together? Why wouldn’t you put them in your own ships instead of sending them in theirs? We’ve never even seen an Ithini vessel. Imagine a ship of Bakma and Ceratopians fighting side by side. How do you stop that?”

  “Why don’t we hear anything about interrogations?” asked Natasha. “I know they must happen.”

  “They do,” Zigler answered. “It’s just not something EDEN wants out in the public. That’s all on a need-to-know basis and none of us need to know. Our job is just to shoot. We know the aliens are hostile—that’s all that matters.”

  Henry turned to Zigler. “How do we know they’re all hostile?”

  “Maybe shooting people is their customary way of saying hello,” said Natasha.

  “Sorry. Forget it.”

  Natasha giggled. “I’m only pickin’.”

  Zigler sighed and prodded his glass. “The bottom line is we don’t know why they’re here. It’s just another aspect of the whole mystery. We may never know.”

  The room began to beep. Zigler blinked as the sound almost cut off his words, and the other operatives glanced about the room. The beeps were loud; they were sequenced. The operatives’ focus shifted from the room down to their belts.

  Their comms. It was a call to the hangar. Charlie Squad had a mission.

  For a full second, the operatives dropped their jaws and stared. Then all hell broke loose. Every one of them leapt backward from the table, and drinks and chairs toppled to the floor in their wake. The other patrons of the bar started at the sudden chaos.

  Charlie Squad bolted out of the door, and Scott flashed a glance to those behind him. “How much time did Tacker say we had?”

  “Five minutes!” David answered. “We got five minutes!”

  “We’re in the middle o’ the bloody city!” Becan said.

  Scott threw himself into the driver’s seat of one of the vehicles and engaged the ignition. “We can make it!”

  The drag race back to Richmond was chaos. Amid the screech of tires and the blasts of horns, the EDEN vehicles tore through the city streets. The military highway that led to Richmond base was on the outskirts of the city, and traffic was dense. By the time they got there, it was 2317. They had received the call at 2309. Richmond loomed far in the distance, and the accelerators were slammed to the floorboards.

  Scott radioed the EDEN checkpoints as they approached the airstrip, and clearance was given to them to bypass the gates and go directly to the field. It wasn’t until the vehicles decelerated to an inertia-pained halt that Scott made another realization. Uniforms. None of the operatives were in their proper uniforms. The clock read 2325. They were eleven minutes late.

  They reached the hangars twelve and a half minutes after the initial alert of the comms. As they gasped for breath, their eyes scanned the hangar for Falcon Platoon. They found only Major Tacker. He wasn’t difficult to spot—he was the only man in the hangar. Not even the technicians were about. The Vulture transports were there, though none were prepped for flight.

  As the pace of the operatives slowed, a wave of confusion washed over them. Something was not right. At that moment, Scott made the connection. He groaned, bent forward, and propped his hands against his knees.

  It had been a test. It had been a trashing test.

  From within the hangar, Tacker’s wicked glare brooded. The operatives knew they were in trouble as soon as he spoke.

  “I regret to inform the city of Cincinnati that, due to the inability of Charlie to reach its transport in time, a dozen citizens met untimely deaths while waiting for help to arrive.�
� The operatives buckled over in exhaustion, and the major spoke into his comm. “Thank you, Command,” he said. “It’s over.”

  “Our pleasure, major,” the comm crackled. The beeping stopped. The hangar fell silent.

  Tacker’s glare targeted Sasha. “Ms. Rhodes, how long did I tell you that you had to reach the hangar this morning?”

  Sasha bowed her head to the ground. “Five minutes, sir.”

  Tacker shifted to Michael. “Mr. Carter, how long did I tell you that you had to reach the hangar this morning?”

  “Five minutes, sir.”

  Becan was the next that Tacker scrutinized. “Private McCrae, can you vouch for that?”

  Becan’s gaze lowered. “Yes sir.”

  “Anyone want to take a guess at the time on my watch?” Tacker asked. None of the operatives spoke. “Oh, come on now, nobody wants to give it a guess?” Once again, no one replied. Tacker’s glare narrowed further. “Thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes. That, my fellow operatives…is not pathetic. It goes far beyond pathetic. This is absolutely pitiful. This is worthless.” The operatives bent forward as they caught their breaths.

  “Stand up straight!”

  Charlie Squad snapped upright. Their hands shot to their sides.

  “You have brought shame and humiliation to this squad, and you haven’t even been in it for a day! If this would have been a real call, people would have died because of you.”

  Scott’s stomach twisted. Stupid. How could they have been so stupid?

  “Since five minutes seems a little hard for you all, we’re going to tweak that a little bit. In future calls, you have three minutes to get from wherever the hell you are to the hangar, or you’ll find yourself looking for a new career faster than you can believe it.”

  Tacker drew a sharp breath. “I came prepared for this. I hoped it would have gone differently, but I came prepared anyway. Mr. Remington and Mr. Bell are familiar with suicide drills, I’m sure.”