The Tetra War

by Michael Ryan

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  Cat two signified that the victim was breathing and that blood pressure wasn’t at a dangerous level.

  So she was unconscious, but not bleeding out.

  I used a minor backdoor hack she’d helped me install in both of our systems so I could take over control of her firing system, and I launched all of her grenades and followed with mine. By the time I’d confirmed the extent of the damage our grenades had caused, the pickup was scheduled to lift off in two minutes and fifteen seconds.

  With sixteen of the mini-HE grenades, I’d taken out at least eight of the engineers, but I didn’t have time to confirm the exact toll. I took a few quick pictures and put the offensive part of our mission out of my thoughts. It was time to move to the retrieval.

  I connected and coupled our suits, and then ran like the devil was chasing me. The extra weight of an armored infantry soldier on my back slowed me, but not enough to keep from hitting the LZ in time, provided I didn’t step on a land mine. The engineers had their hands full, and I could see the mines clearly enough at the rate I was moving.

  After thirty seconds, I was clear of the field and headed in the right direction.

  Distant flashes of light appeared in the sky, but I didn’t have time to scan to see if incoming aircraft were a threat or if the pyrotechnics were a high-altitude battle. For all I knew, it was our heli-jets and other retrieval craft getting smoked.

  Maybe I’d end up as a slave in the mines after all.

  Or perhaps the Teds didn’t take prisoners like me, and I’d be gunned down like a rabid dog.

  We were vulnerable, but there was nothing I could do about it except move as fast as possible.

  A small pop-up in my DS kept me informed of Juliana’s condition. She’d been stable at the start of the run, but her blood pressure was steadily dropping. This generation of armor was less effective than later models in delivering medical treatment. Advancements in hardware often come after the fact as political pressure was applied by civilians, who seemed to forget that war killed until they’d watched the news for a year or two.

  I could make out several groups from the Fourth ahead of me, and I got in line.

  Squadrons of support fighters circled above. Our heli-jets touched down, and fighters piled into the craft.

  I glanced back at the fields, which were belching smoke as though a volcano had erupted.

  I took the lack of incoming fire as a good sign.

  ~~~

  A day later we were debriefed. I uploaded all my intel, pictures, videos, and statistics into the company server.

  Juliana nearly lost her leg, but with the timely and expert medical treatment she received on the Vellerment, a support submarine that took us on in the middle of the gulf, she was back to normal inside of ten weeks.

  Visnaal didn’t make it.

  We mourned our friend and tried to comfort Valsea. She took a psych discharge six months later, unable to stop the nightmares that reminded her of watching her partner getting blown to bits. I tried to stay in touch with her, but on a Christmas Day several years after our first mission, she drank a liter of vodka, swallowed a bottle of pills, and walked off the roof of a thirty-story building.

  I felt guilty for not doing more, but sometimes a soldier is killed on the battlefield but doesn’t stop going through lifelike motions until later. The direct suicide rate was classified, and the indirect suicide rate, the lifestyle choices that led to premature or accidental death, was impossible to decipher from the few notices I received of former friends and squad mates who died in seemingly innocuous ways in the years following the war.

  Our performance over the following months earned Juliana and me two promotions, moving our rank to the highest level of private, PFC-5. We continued to fight in the lower part of the former American continents after our desert mission and before the fateful trip in the Northern DZ that took Juliana’s life.

  And which ultimately sent me to advanced training, where I met Callie and became part of an SDI sniper team.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Only sex and sleep make me conscious that I am mortal.

  ~ Alexander the Great

  Callie and I returned from our African vacation cut short by Command due to a secretive mission on Purvas that was tightly scheduled. Mexico City had become subject to martial law after dark while we’d been on leave. To say that circumstances had spiraled out of control during the time I’d advanced from a mere private with Juliana to the rank of sergeant with Callie was an extreme understatement.

  Things had gone from dangerous and fragile to deadly and fractured. News from the war fronts was increasingly troubling, and there were even reports of a rogue Ted regiment exterminating entire cities on Earth. If true, it would be a major escalation, but I never believed that kind of wartime hyperbole.

  Politicians, aided by the nightly news, downplayed the events leading up to the current situation as being minor conflicts and setbacks that would soon be rectified.

  I didn’t believe those reports either.

  What I eventually realized was that I couldn’t trust anyone’s rhetoric, and I believed that even Command wasn’t being forthright about what was happening.

  It didn’t change anything for Callie and me.

  We were going back to Purvas.

  Once again we’d be part of the Fourth Platoon, Delta Company of the Seventeenth Regiment, Guritain Joint Armed Forces.

  ~~~

  We weren’t booked onto a civilian starship for the trip to Purvas, another confirmation that the upcoming mission was time sensitive. The Telsohretic-class military starship Onesicritus was a troop carrier, heavily armored but with little offensive capacity. We made the leap from Earth’s solar system with an escort force of four Velorshertic-class cruisers.

  After waking from our medically induced sleep, we were ordered to enter emergency pods once we’d crossed into the Purvastian solar system.

  “What’s going on?” Callie wondered out loud. She knew I was as much in the dark as she was. “Are we under attack?”

  I shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “You don’t seem worried.”

  “I’m not a starship pilot. I’m not even a starship crewman. What would I worry about?”

  “Impending death.”

  “What would be the point of that?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Shit, we’re about to die, and we’re standing in a line.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “No, just irritating.”

  A scratchy voice emitted from somewhere in the long metal hallway. “Please move in an orderly fashion to the proper E-mod. Please obey all directions and instructions. This is a level yellow alert.”

  “What’s yellow?” I asked. I’d never studied the starship manuals; for non-crew members, there weren’t any flight- or leap-related tasks. A trip was usually uneventful. Soldiers, tourists, colonists, and freight nearly always got loaded up at point A, traveled to point B, and disembarked. Problems usually meant the trip was disastrous. Whether a faulty drive, terrorism, or an attack at the tail end of a leap, history didn’t record many survivors.

  “Yellow means our escorts are under attack,” Callie said.

  “You read that stuff?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I like to know what’s about to kill me.”

  “I’d rather just be surprised.”

  “Turn left up here,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Don’t you at least read the emergency procedure brochures?”

  “Didn’t see a need.”

  “Of course. Leave it to the woman.”

  “I am.” I smiled and turned left at the intersection of the two halls.

  We entered the proper E-mod and strapped ourselves into position. “Now what?” I asked.

  “We wait.”

  “Until?”

  “Until our escorts kick the shit out of whatever Tedes
conian crafts had the discourtesy of attacking us on leap-escape, or we get blasted out into space.”

  “What happens then?”

  “Well, because we’re a military transport, we’re a legal and acceptable target, even in an E-mod.”

  “Nice.”

  “Exactly. And because we’d only be fired out into space if our cruisers were destroyed–”

  “The Teds could save on ammo and simply put a single kinetic round through our worthless…this is just a fancy coffin.”

  “It’s procedure.”

  “If you’d told me beforehand, I’d have stayed in our cabin. Or I’d have slid back into my drawer and injected myself with an overdose of sleep-juice.”

  “Don’t be so fatalistic.”

  “Ever the optimist.”

  Twenty minutes of painful waiting finally ended with the announcement that we’d returned to level green. That was one level I always understood. I found out later that our cruisers had performed admirably. One of the starships had been destroyed, but the remaining three accompanied us into Guritain airspace. Eventually, after standing in more lines, entering data into various screens, and going through a medical screening, we found ourselves back aboard the Amphoterus.

  ~~~

  “Corporals, this way,” Master Sergeant Veetea said when we entered Fourth Platoon’s on-ship headquarters.

  “Sergeants,” I corrected. Our new rank was official, although we would still be taking orders from Veetea.

  “Are we back in your squad, Sergeant Veetea?” Callie asked.

  “You are,” he said. “Captain Seeteaa remains the company commander. He has a new XO, First Lieutenant Vesantered, who you’ll meet shortly. Our LT in the Fourth is still Maybeeta. I’m still Blue Squad leader. You’ll be meeting the other team in a little while – Corporals Thompson and Velabeltiria.”

  “Andrew and Maaly?” I asked.

  “You know each other?” He smiled. “That’s the army for you. Trying to maintain the whole ‘You fight for the guy in the trench with you’ philosophy. Where’d you guys serve?”

  “I met Maaly back in Substratal Training. Andrew was partnered with her when we got stationed at Riogrand. We were friends.”

  “Makes sense,” he said. “Take a seat in the conference room.”

  I followed Callie into the hushed chamber and sat beside her in a row of blue chairs. We were early, and as the room began to fill, I noticed new faces among the old.

  Each of the five rows had five chairs, and seating assignments were based on rank and position. Squad leaders sat in the center chair, with the senior partnership team to the right and the junior team to the left. This allowed the platoon leader, or any other speaker – the CO, XO, specialist, etc. – to quickly ascertain who was who. Military meetings like these were both incredibly important, with life-and-death decisions made, and at the same time long, boring, and repetitive.

  “Avery,” someone said.

  I turned. It was Andrew. “Nice to see you,” I said. We embraced, and I was struck by how much older he looked. I turned to Maaly and took her hand. “How’ve you been?”

  “Kicking ass,” she said. “As usual. But you know.”

  “I know.” We didn’t speak about Valsea and Visnaal.

  After introductions with Callie, we took our seats. An hour later, Sergeant Veetea showed up and sat with us in the blue chairs. Shortly afterward, our platoon leader walked into the room and called us to attention. We stood while the CO and XO entered. Captain Seeteaa took the podium and ordered us to sit.

  We obeyed like well-trained dogs.

  ~~~

  Captain Seeteaa began the briefing for our upcoming mission.

  “Central Command has verified that the Tedesconians are building a new weapon: a virus. An aggressive and deadly pathogen released into the world, both on Earth and Purvas, would be devastating. The war would be lost. Millions, or billions, would die. We cannot allow this evil to happen.”

  He paused and studied us before continuing. “The use of so-called superweapons are banned by treaty, but Command believes the Teds, who are losing the war, have reached a point of desperation. Their economy has tanked. Their currency has hyperinflated. Their population has fractured into splinter factions. There are Ted groups openly protesting against their own government. Some are calling for an end to the war, while others are demanding an escalation.”

  We absorbed his words in silence, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “This is mostly good news. We can celebrate the job we’ve done that’s driven the enemy to their knees. But a wounded animal is often the most dangerous. Knowing it will soon die, it becomes reckless and unafraid. Command believes that the current Ted government will fail and one of the various factions will enter the vacuum. During this dangerous period, we cannot allow them the option of using a weaponized virus or biological superweapon.”

  Seeteaa turned on a projector, and a holographic image of a map of Purvas appeared in the air over the table. He motioned to it with an old-fashioned wooden pointer – a retro conceit.

  “Insertion will be here,” he said. He indicated an adjacent spot on the map. “This is dense jungle. Fourth Platoon will have this area of responsibility.” He advanced the image to a close-up of the jungle with a grid overlay. “Grid Bravo Seven is your assigned A of R. The mission carries must-accomplish status.”

  The captain spoke for another fifteen minutes about the righteousness of our cause, the importance of duty and loyalty, and how he expected Delta Company to exceed all expectations. “I will now hand this meeting over to your platoon leader. Soldiers, I’m proud to be your commander, and I expect each and every one of you to live up to the ideals of our force. Lieutenant Maybeeta?”

  We all rose with our platoon leader, who saluted and approached the podium. After a moment, he released us to sit again. My head was spinning with a flood of unasked questions. I shuddered involuntarily, as if I were reliving my experience in the ice. Callie threw me a concerned look, and I brushed her hand with mine to reassure her.

  “Fourth Platoon,” Lieutenant Maybeeta began. “I’ll begin our briefing with the macro and then get down to assignments squad by squad. Please hold your questions until I invite them.”

  Maybeeta explained in as much detail as the available intel enabled him to that Command had concluded that a secret bio-lab existed somewhere in the jungle. Our mission wasn’t to go in and just destroy the lab; our mission was to take possession of it and acquire whatever research, including samples, that we could. We were also tasked with taking all research personnel as prisoners. We were given strict protocols on whom we were allowed to kill and whom we shouldn’t.

  “Why are they sending in infantry? This sounds like a job for the clandestine group, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “There isn’t time for stealth,” Maybeeta said. “This is a blunt-force-trauma approach that the compressed timeline requires. There is also too much ground to cover for spies and spec-ops groups. We’ll be looking for a pebble in a rock pile.”

  The rest of the questions were logistical.

  By the time the briefing was over, my guts were twisted in a tight knot. It was painfully obvious that the plan, if you could call it that, had been hastily conceived, and if there was one constant I’d learned in my years of service, it was that plans made in haste usually got a lot of friendlies killed.

  ~~~

  Callie and I sat with Andrew and Maaly at evening mess.

  Because we were aboard the Amphoterus, there were no speech restrictions. Every crew member was mission briefed, so we discussed strategy and offered each other opinions.

  “Tell me about these giant dino-lizards,” Maaly said.

  Callie grimaced. “What do you want to know? They want to eat you, and they’re damn near indestructible.”

  “If you put a few hundred rounds into their heads at point-blank range, you’ll score a kill,” I added. “The problem being that at point-blank range, you’re a
lready being eaten.”

  “How does the TCI hold up?” Andrew asked.

  “If you lock your suit down, it’ll hold. But if you’re not locked down, they’ll literally death-roll your limbs off.” I gave him a wry smile. “It’s best to avoid the jaws.”

  “What else should we be worried about?” Maaly asked. She and Andrew had never dropped onto Purvas, but they’d heard rumors.

  “I nearly got eaten by dino-lizards, a big-ass snake, and a group of lionlike animals with nasty temperaments,” Callie said. “And then a school of tiny fish came pretty close to stripping my flesh to the bone. But in the end, it was infection that nearly killed me. Of course, the odds are you’ll never be out of your suit, so you won’t have to worry about that.” She hesitated and moved her hand onto my thigh. “Avery’s the only reason I’m alive.”

  “You’d have done the same for me,” I said.

  “I wonder if any of us will survive?” Andrew muttered, voicing the question none of us had dared ask.

  “We’ll look out for each other and get through this. Our squad leader has one of the best records in the company for mission success and survival rates. All we have to do is follow protocol and watch each other’s backs,” asserted Maaly.

  “She’s right,” I added. “I’ve gone through the briefing notes twice. The target has been purposefully left unguarded by the Teds. They must have figured any large force would draw attention to it. If this plays the way it should, we’ll spend most of our time hiking like vacationing backpackers.”

  “Sounds awesome. Only you left out all the things that will be trying to eat us,” Maaly said.

  I nodded. “Yes, but wearing armor and working together, we have little to worry about from nature, even if we run into an army of natives or a herd of lizards.”

  “What about defenses at this lab?” Maaly asked.

  “Assuming we find it, you can bet it’ll be dangerous. The place will probably be well hidden and guarded with all the expected traps.” I paused and studied my fingernails. “And then there’s the unknown unknowns.”

  “I hope we get in and find this superweapon. Damn Teds won’t be able to complain if we use their own weapon against them,” Andrew said.