Assault Troopers

by Vaughn Heppner

  “They are mere workers indeed,” the Jelk said. “Their poor marital performance against you attests to their lack of fighting ingenuity, at least in face-to-face encounters. A truly combative species would have quashed your struggle at the outset.”

  “And if I refuse your offer?” I asked.

  The Jelk appeared surprised. “Come, come, the outcome of refusal is obvious on several levels. At the most lenient—if I returned you to Earth—you would die within the next few weeks from the bio-terminator lacing the air. But of course, I won’t return you, but simply let vacuum and space take care of your sullen aggressiveness. Then I will gather other humans as my space-assault troopers.”

  I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him or the Jelk Corporation he represented. But he controlled the ship’s engine and I believed he had the power to back up his threats. Besides, I was thirsty, hungry and wondering how to get the bio-suit off me.

  “If we becoming your mercenaries,” I said. “How will you pay us?”

  His eyebrows rose again, and those dark eyes glittered. “You will be fed, housed, given medical treatment and sexual servitors—”

  I interrupted. It was clear we’d be his fighting slaves. He thought of us as animals after all. But I had plans that didn’t include serving the Jelk Corporation my entire life. A judge had once sent me to prison, but I’d found a way out of that. First, I had to survive and I had to help the last remnants of humanity endure our world’s destruction.

  “I have one request as part of our payment,” I said.

  “Speak,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “You spoke about millions having survived the Lokhar attack,” I said. “But it seems clear the Earth has become uninhabitable or nearly so.”

  “Quite,” he said.

  “It seems to me you’re probably not going to recruit all of the survivors,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “It wouldn’t be profitable.”

  “My payment is that you house the survivors, helping them overcome the bio-terminator.”

  His upper lip lifted, showing me those pointed teeth of his. “Am I to understand that you believe your service can pay for such costly planetary reconstruction?”

  “Think about it for a moment,” I said. “I led these humans with nothing but our wits and fighting ability. We beat your Saurians even though they had every advantage. I realize the Jelk Corporation had observers here once. Yet you’ve already admitted that they failed to fully appreciate our abilities. We humans fight a whole lot better if we feel we’re fighting for something noble and useful. Your space-assault troopers will give you their best if they know back home humanity still exists, that they’re buying that existence with their sweat and blood.”

  “I find it interesting how you ape civilized behavior,” the Jelk said. “Hmm, I do have several ventures that could use highly motivated assault troops. I suppose I could land a freighter or two on the surface, dismantling—” He paused, thinking for a moment. Then he held up one of his red-skinned hands. “Earthbeast, I agree to your proposal.”

  I had no idea if he kept his word or not. If he was lying…I went for broke and asked him how I could trust him.

  He made barking noises. I learned later that it was Jelk laughter.

  “You can trust me,” he said, “because you have no other options. Refuse, and the last of your species—on the planet, at least—surely dies. Accepting my offer gives them the chance of life. Besides, as I said, en route are a host of space freighters. Some are always near their end of usefulness. Instead of sending those particular vessels back, I’ll junk them on your world by landing those that are able. They will serve as the centerpiece of the various planetary life-support stations.”

  How could a few freighters house several million humans? I didn’t like his cavalier attitude, but he was right about one thing, I had little bargaining power. It seemed as if this would be the best I was going to get.

  “We’ll fight harder if we know Earth has a chance of survival,” I repeated.

  “I believe you’ve already stated so, and I agreed to your terms for now. If you’re as good at fighting as you claim you are, I’ll want more assault troops later. Thus, I have the best of reasons, enlightened self-interest, to keep you Earthbeasts breeding for now. Let me add this caveat, however. If the Lokhars struck here once, what is to stop them from striking again?”

  A cold feeling worked through me. “A Jelk battlefleet standing guard,” I said. “Isn’t Earth now part of your empire?”

  “Firstly, battlefleets cost money,” he said in a dismissive voice. “Secondly, your star system is definitely not part of our empire as we have none. We are a corporation. We have emporiums, resource centers and trading partners. Your planet might have become a temporary resource node, but not after the Lokhar devastation. Still, if you Earthbeasts can truly fight…well, we shall see what the future holds.”

  I couldn’t figure out how to get more from him, at least not at the moment. These Lokhars…I yearned to dust their planet with a bio-terminator. I also ached to capture the commanding officer and the entire crew of the enormous vessel that had devastated Earth. They would die: every one of them. First, I had to keep myself and my planet alive.

  “Yes,” I said. “I agree to your terms.”

  The Jelk barked again—laughed again. I’m not sure what he found so amusing. But that was how I and the others found ourselves as Jelk Corporation space-assault troopers. I didn’t know it then, but our troubles had just started.

  -8-

  The next few weeks were hell.

  It started with the lander’s slow approach toward seven monstrous vessels that waited between the Earth and the moon. The Jelk Corporation ships had running lights blinking along the sides like an old neon Christmas sales sign that changed colors from red to green, to blue and back to red. By comparing the lander to them I realized each of their vessels was kilometers in circumference and shaped like an oak leaf. The seven ships were arranged in a pentagram pattern that I found ominous.

  I didn’t know if these were freighters, Jelk battleships or what. Our lander headed toward the nearest and soon entered an open bay door. The hangar was huge, with five other landers parked on a red-colored floor space. We made the sixth lander.

  “Time to go,” I said from the control chamber.

  We hurried to the exit where Saurians in battle armor greeted us. At gunpoint, we filed out of the lander onto the floor. They ordered us into a long column and marched us deeper into the ship. Rollo tapped my shoulder and pointed back.

  I turned and quailed at the sight. The stars and the lonely blue Earth were visible through the huge hangar door. It hadn’t closed, and in that moment, I expected escaping air to pick us up and launch us toward the opening into space.

  “Another membrane,” Rollo said.

  Of course, that made sense. A membrane kept the atmosphere within the hangar bay. Thinking about the membrane and touching my battlesuit brought home to me that the Jelk liked to use bio-material instead of just inorganic metal. What did that tell me about them? I guess the obvious. They were different from us and thought differently.

  I let my gaze rove over our column of marching men and women. There were more humans in the lander than I’d expected: a good three hundred of us. The Saurians had been busy these past few days. As we neared the edge of the hangar bay and neared several large doors, the Saurians separated Rollo, Ella, Dmitri and me from the others. We were taken left while the rest of the column marched to the right.

  Did the Jelk think of us as the ringleaders, or were we the ones most dangerous to them?

  After winding through a maze of corridors, the guards forced the four of us into an empty chamber with showerheads. A heavy door clanged shut behind us and liquid immediately hissed from above.

  “Don’t look at me,” Ella said.

  I began coughing instead of looking at our scientist. The water tasted awful, like metal. Then my bio-battlesuit melted off m
e and I felt the hot liquid pelting my bare skin. It was a strange sensation, with a pang of parting, like losing a good friend. Through the heated fog I saw the other suits melting or oozing off Rollo and Dmitri. The living armor didn’t become blobs again, but slithered like powerful snakes for small portals that looked like rat-holes along the sides of the shower room.

  At the sight, the good-friend sensation dwindled. An alien-grown thing had been covering my skin? I’d always hated snakes, and watching the last of the armor slither through a hole, I had an atavistic reaction. I never wanted to become used to the symbiotic creature. Being a Jelk’s space mercenary—what would be our life expectancy and who would we fight?

  “The water’s changing color,” Ella said.

  I looked up and got sprayed in the eyes. It stung like powerful soap and I kept my face aimed downward after that. The trickle by my toes had become orange.

  I realized they were hosing us down like horses. Ella speculated it was in order to get rid of any contaminating bio-terminator.

  By the time I was starting to feel like a prune the spray quit, the doors opened and battle-suited Saurians entered. They prodded us along another corridor. I tried to keep from looking at a naked Ella. She had her hands in front of her. The one time she looked back at us, I made sure I was staring elsewhere. The lizards forced us to a smaller chamber with benches along the sides.

  A human-seeming doctor in white and with outrageous eyebrows beckoned us near an alcove. She held a huge hypo filled with yellow liquid. The needle was bad enough and far too long. I squinted at the sludge she no doubt planned to inject into me or us. Little metallic-looking particles floated in the solution.

  “What is that stuff?” I asked.

  The doctor glanced at a Saurian as if I’d spoken gibberish. The lizard pointed his gun at me.

  “Go ahead and give me the shot,” I said. “I’m not stopping you. I’m just asking.”

  The doctor scowled, the lizard hissed and the woman plunged the needle into my arm. There was no warning, no rubbing my shoulder first. She’s doing it like a vet would to a cow or pig. I watched with loathing as the yellow solution with metallic particles disappeared in front of the plunger. The stuff was entering me, all of it. Seconds afterward, I felt nauseous and a copper taste filled my mouth. What was this stuff?

  The doctor spoke alien words, and she pointed.

  The room seemed to tilt and elongate. I stared at the door. It retreated as I watched. The doctor must have spoken again. Her words became distorted and much too loud. The sick feeling spread through me, reaching my groin and then my legs. I staggered to the exit, pushed through a membrane and found two more women waiting. They wore white, like nurses.

  I spat to get the copper taste out of my mouth. That was a mistake. I dry-heaved and the world, the room, spun around me.

  “What’s going on?” I mumbled.

  “This way please,” one woman said. At least she spoke English. That was good. They seemed to be trying to help.

  I raised my head to stare into her face. She had dark hair to her shoulders and brown eyes like soft, overturned soil.

  My mouth hardly worked and my tongue felt sluggish. “Are…are you from Earth?” I asked. I couldn’t place the accent.

  She pushed me. I stumbled, nearly fell but managed to keep my feet. My eyes must have rolled around in their sockets. I had to concentrate and that brought a pounding headache. The nurse propelled me to a trough of green solution.

  “Lay down,” she said.

  “You want me to lie in the water?” I asked.

  “You’re going to feel sick soon,” she said. “You should lie down while you can.”

  I tried to look around and regain my bearings. My vision swam and finally failed me. Everything became blurry and indistinct. What had they injected into me? My knees weakened. I almost fell on my face. The two nurses guided me, helping me lie in the warm solution. They must have put a mask over my face. I heard labored, Darth Vader-like breathing and I realized it originated from me. Then warm water surrounded every part of me. I submerged. It was the last thing I remembered before passing out.

  ***

  I awoke much different in feeling and awareness. Grogginess filled me, although I realized that hands helped me up out of a liquid solution. Vaguely, I recalled the injection and putting on a mask.

  I peered at one of the hands holding me: slender with a frail wrist. The hand possessed four fingers and an opposable thumb, and it had a silver-colored ring on the pinky finger with a tiny cross etched onto the ring’s surface. The wrist stuck out of a white sleeve. With my eyes, I followed the sleeve up to a shoulder, a pretty neck and a beautiful face with dark hair. It was the nurse.

  She gave me a nervous smile.

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  “Don’t try to talk just yet,” she said. “You’re disoriented. You’ve been through intense surgery. You must be a prime specimen to have neuro-fibers wired into you.”

  I couldn’t summon speech and I didn’t comprehend her words yet, but I did like her eyes. I tried to smile. I wanted to see her smile again. I wanted her hands to remain on my skin.

  She patted my arm. “This might hurt.”

  A stinging pain flared in my right pectoral. I realized there had been many such stinging sensations these past few moments. It’s what had woken me.

  Despite my grogginess and the allure of the woman’s face, I transferred my attention to the pain. I lay in a green solution, in a trough of some kind. Hands yanked tiny sticky pads off my flesh, a bunch of them, meaning a bunch of pads and hands. Each pad had a trailing wire on the end.

  Hadn’t the woman spoken about surgery and wires? I managed a grunt and I tried to struggle upright.

  “He’s getting restless,” another woman said. “Jennifer, see if you can distract him again.”

  Fingers touched my chin. I tried to shake my head free of the touch. Two hands clamped onto my cheeks, one on each side. I resisted, but I felt terribly weak. Slowly, someone dragged my head where it didn’t want to go. The pretty nurse bent over me. She smiled down into my face.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You’ve received a heavy dosage of steroid sixty-five. In the next few weeks, you’ll experience massive muscle growth. The surgeons also wired you with neuro-fibers. Only the best commandos receive those. They will speed up your reflexes, and you’ll learn to use them well.”

  More stings told me the others continued to rip the sticky pads from my flesh. I quit fighting and relaxed, realizing I needed to gather my strength.

  “Good job, Jennifer. Keep talking. Your voice soothes him.”

  She soothes the savage beast, I thought to myself. Beast…yeah, I was an Earthbeast mercenary for the Jelk Corporation. But I wasn’t a beast; I was a man. One thing I knew, these women worked for the aliens. Could the Saurians have captured Earth nurses to train them this fast in alien procedures? No. that wasn’t logical.

  I shut my eyes and squeezed them closed.

  “What’s he doing?” a woman asked. “We’ve never had one of them act like this before.”

  “Don’t have any idea,” the head nurse said, the one who had told Jennifer to keep me occupied.

  I thought back to the words I’d just heard. There had been something strange about it. It hadn’t been English, but I’d understand the language perfectly. What had the surgeons done to me while I’d been under? What could they do that would let me learn or assimilate a new language so quickly?

  A feeling of violation surged through me. I wanted to lash out and attack, but this wasn’t the time or place for it. Yeah, yeah, everything was starting to come back. The militaristic Lokhars had wiped out the Earth and I’d made a deal with Mr. Jelk to help the world’s surviving remnants.

  My eyes flew open. I still couldn’t see more than blurs past the women around me. I shifted my head from side to side. I counted four women in their white uniforms.

  “Relax,” Jennifer said. “We’
re here to help you.”

  I opened my mouth.

  “We’re almost done,” a woman said. “Tell him that.”

  “We’re removing the implants,” Jennifer told me. “Then we’re going to help you sit up and move into a wheelchair. We’re taking you to the Green Room. You’ll get dressed there and after you eat—”

  “This one doesn’t eat until after the tests,” the head nurse said. “Shah Claath wants privation results—”

  “He’s listening to you,” Jennifer warned. “He understands what we’re saying.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the head nurse said. “He’s red-listed and has to test out. Either way, you won’t see him after this.”

  “He’s big,” Jennifer commented, “and looks strong.”

  “Maybe why Shah Claath is interested in him,” the head nurse said.

  Instead of becoming more lucid, I almost passed out. Vaguely, I was aware as these women helped me out of the solution and into a wheelchair as they said. They sprayed my skin with something cooling. My stomach rumbled. I craved a dozen Big Macs and heaps of fries.

  Matters proceeded in the manner Jennifer had told me it was going to play out. Naked and in the wheelchair, I moved down a corridor. I sat like an old man, with my head slumped forward so my chin rested against my chest. I drooled and couldn’t focus my eyes.

  In a different room, the women helped dress me in a jumpsuit: no underwear, no shirt, but they put slippers on my feet. Two of them maneuvered me off the wheelchair and onto a stool.

  I recalled stools. The Saurians in their alien tank and in the lander’s control chamber had sat on them. We’d killed every one of those lizards.

  “Why’s he grinning now?” the head nurse asked.

  A face pushed down near mine. I focused again. It was Jennifer.

  “Good luck with the tests,” she said softly.

  “Who…who are you?” I whispered.

  She laughed prettily, if a bit nervously.

  “Are you from Earth?” I asked.

  She glanced away, straightened and frowned down at me. Then she bent down and whispered in my ear, “They’re always watching. You mustn’t make them nervous, and—”