SNAFU: Resurrection

by Dirk Patton

  Barnes saw the breach but could do nothing to prevent it. He charged down the slope to the pit, putting a burst into the creature as it tore into the remains of the two men, then jumped in after it and began firing at the aliens in front of him. The stink of human and alien blood and flesh mingling at his feet stoked his anger again, and it took everything he had not to give in to it.

  In the background, heavy weapons fire resounded as Williams opened up with his over-and-under. Somewhere, there was the soft cough of mortars that had finally been given clearance to fire, and the shouts of terrified men and the screams of the dying … but none of it mattered. It was just the aliens in front of him and the rise and fall of his trigger pressure.

  The aliens died by the hundreds; their battle howl slowly subsided as their numbers dwindled, replaced by shrieks of anger and pain as they lay dying in the killing ground to the front of the platoon.

  Barnes became aware that someone was calling his name, and realised Williams was on the comms channel.

  “Barnes!” he said, urgently. “Priority message from Piper, tune yourself back in!”

  “Tango! Tango! Tango!” Piper’s voice cut through the noise into his command net. “Portals opening all over Sector Twelve! I can make out a dozen clusters and their outliers, but with my limited drone cover there’s likely others that I can’t see.”

  Barnes cursed. A dozen clusters was a major assault, and there wasn’t much in Sector Twelve that could cope with that.

  “Piper, keep an eye on things, let me know where they’re headed,” Barnes said, climbing out of the pit. He had planned to head back to Sector Eleven but couldn’t leave a rookie platoon to face things alone.

  “Roger that, Hunter One,” Piper said. “You and Williams stay safe, it’s going to get ugly in there.” Barnes felt Piper drop off the Sector Eleven net.

  “Aries One, this is Hunter One,” he said on the local command net. “We have portals opening all over your sector. Are you aware?”

  There was a long pause, and Barnes was about to ask again when Miles replied.

  “Hunter One, this is Aries One. We have no reports of any portals in our sector. Where are you getting your information?”

  “Sector Eleven Command has sent some drones on a fly-over,” Barnes said. “Twelve clusters, maybe more.”

  “You’ve got a nerve flying drones over our turf, Sergeant,” Miles said. “But I’ll check with Sector Twelve Command, see if they can confirm.” She cut the connection, and Barnes went back to check on Williams and draw fresh ammunition from the resupply drones.

  * * *

  City North Subway Line

  Gibbs could hear the aliens ahead. By their sounds he figured there were hundreds of them, and he wasn’t in too much of a hurry to catch them in the confines of a tunnel system. On the surface he could make better use of terrain to maximise the range of his weapons.

  Underground, they’d come at him in a wall of teeth and claws and sooner or later something was going to get through.

  In the distance he could make out the sounds of firing. It was faint, and his map AI placed the noise around the next known clear exit in Sector Twelve. He had no idea what troops were there, but whoever they were they seemed to be dealing with the aliens quite nicely.

  Then, the noises changed. There was a sharp explosion, and then chaos as dirt and concrete tumbled about. The alien noises scrambled about furiously, and then suddenly turned back his way.

  Something had happened, and that wall of teeth and claws was now heading right back for him.

  * * *

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon

  “Hunter One, this is Aries One,” Miles said over the local command net. Barnes thought she sounded pissed off, which matched exactly how he was feeling. “There’s no confirmation of anything happening in Sector Twelve, you might want to tell that Piper of yours to mind her own business and get her facts right.”

  “Command, this is Hunter One,” Barnes said over his command net. “You there Piper?”

  “Always here, Barnes,” Piper said.

  “Lieutenant Miles doesn’t seem to believe your reports of major alien activity, thinks you might have it wrong,” Barnes said.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Piper said, “and by ‘that’s interesting’ I mean she can go fuck herself.”

  “I’ll have you charged when this is all over,” Miles said, clearly angry. “I’m not sure how Sector Eleven does business, Sergeant Barnes, but this is unacceptable.”

  “I’ll take it up with Command HQ when this is all done, ma’am,” Barnes said. “Until then, you might want to take Corporal Piper and her drones seriously.”

  “There’s nothing out there!” Miles said. “Sector Twelve HQ can’t see anything, portals or aliens!”

  “No disrespect, ma’am,” Piper said, “but Sector Twelve drone coverage is worth jack. You want the direct feeds from my drones in your area?”

  “I’d advise you take the offer, ma’am,” Barnes said. “If your drones are down, and it’s as bad as Piper makes out, we’re going to need everything we can get our hands on.”

  There was a long silence, and Barnes could feel Miles struggling with a decision.

  “Fine,” she said at last. “Put it through to my command terminal.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Piper said cheerily, and Barnes felt Miles drop from the net.

  * * *

  City North Subway Line

  Gibbs ran as the aliens swarmed towards him. Knowing he couldn’t outrun them, he looked for a choke point he could use to hold them off.

  After backtracking a few hundred metres he found an area that was mostly caved in, with only one track accessible. That still gave him a frontage of six metres to defend, and a lot of aliens could pour through a hole that big.

  He could hear them easily now without his enhancements and raised his Gatling gun, bracing himself for the onslaught.

  * * *

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon HQ

  Miles watched the video feeds coming through from Piper’s drones. The early footage showed a dozen clusters of portals, all opened, and she recognised the areas, so it clearly wasn’t dummied-up data to put the wind up a newbie officer.

  She also knew the sector well enough to know there were areas the drones clearly hadn’t covered, and there might easily be another few clusters out there Piper hadn’t found.

  “Command, this is Aries One,” she said as she sent the video footage directly on to her own Sector Command. “We have a potential situation here.”

  “Aries One, this is Command… where are you getting this data?” Miles didn’t even know the name of the person at the other end – they seemed to change daily – and she felt a moment of envy at the relationship and trust between Barnes and Piper.

  “Sector Eleven has lent us some drone support,” she replied. “Looks legit, I might need support out here.”

  “Aries One, we have no way of confirming that data at this time,” the voice said. “Resources are currently allocated to higher priorities.”

  “When will you have confirmation?” Miles asked. “If it’s real, I need to know, and soon.”

  “We’ll have satellite coverage over your position in two hours, Aries One,” the voice said. “Until then, hold tight.” The connection went dead.

  Miles looked at the data feed. The images looked real enough, and Miles had seen the resupply drones come in for Barnes and Williams… Piper was good enough to get drones through that far, so could easily have sent recon drones in as well.

  Outside, the sounds of firing had stopped, replaced by the sounds of cheering. For many of the men, this was their first battle, and she’d lost only a handful, and that would lift morale a little.

  “All hands, this is Aries One,” she said, making up her mind. “Tango! Tango! Tango!”

  * * *

  City North Subway Line

  Gibbs fired burst after burst at the horde surging towards him. His
Gatling burned hot as he pumped out hundreds of hollow-points and tungsten rounds, but still they kept coming. He’d never worried about running out of ammunition before, but now he knew he wasn’t going to have enough.

  Alien bodies continued to explode and paint the subway tunnel as Gibbs slowly backed up. Then his Gatling ran dry, now nothing more than a whirring machine. He threw it to the ground in disgust and drew two long trench knives.

  Rather than wait for them, he charged, roaring and slashing wildly with both weapons. Their soft flesh gave no resistance at all to his razor-sharp blades and supernatural strength, painting the walls with blood and gore as a pile of victims grew around him. But still they kept on, showing no sign of relenting.

  * * *

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon

  The live feeds were being streamed directly to Barnes and Miles now. It looked bad because it was. A swarm of thousands upon thousands all heading towards 1st Platoon’s position.

  Miles joined Barnes at the rear of One Section’s position. She was out of her depth, and she knew it. This was her first command, likely to be her last, and she owed her men the best chance they had of getting through it. She knew she wasn’t it, and found Barnes in the position he’d made for himself at the rear of One Section.

  “Sergeant Barnes,” she said quietly. “I think I need your help,”

  “Sure, ma’am,” Barnes replied. “What do you need?”

  “My platoon sergeant is dead,” she said. “I need a replacement and can’t afford to take one of my corporals away from his section.”

  Barnes looked surprised. “I didn’t realise they’d got through to your command post.”

  “They didn’t,” Miles said, putting her finger under her chin and cocking her thumb back. “He took the easy way out but left me in the lurch.”

  Barnes nodded, he’d known many men who’d gone the same way rather than been torn to pieces by aliens. “Are you sure, ma’am?” Barnes asked. “Williams and I haven’t been exactly met with open arms since we arrived.”

  “We’re in this together,” Miles said, and then shrugged apologetically. “Besides, you’ve done all right by us, and if we’d listened to you in the first place, we might be in a better situation about now.”

  “Any word from your Sector Command, ma’am?” Barnes asked, knowing the response wasn’t likely something he wanted to hear.

  “Nothing helpful,” Miles replied. “And if I get through this alive, I’m going to make whoever’s responsible pay.”

  “Looks like we’re on our own then,” Barnes said. “I know Piper is working on support, but it’ll take a while for her to get anything here.”

  “If it comes,” Miles said bitterly.

  “Oh, it’ll come,” Barnes said. “Just a matter of whether it’ll be of any use to us.”

  “Fair enough,” Miles said. “So… what’s your best plan to buy time here?”

  Barnes surveyed the area. “We need to get your troops set up for all-round defence. The aliens are going to try and overwhelm us from all directions – we can’t leave any gaps.”

  “Makes sense,” Miles said. “I was thinking of moving further up this hill and digging in up there.”

  “That’d work if we had time,” Barnes muttered, “but I don’t think we have more than ten minutes or so before they get here.”

  Miles frowned, thinking furiously. “How about we pivot the two flanking sections outwards, pull Four Section in to cover the rear, and bring the Heavy Weapons section into the centre.”

  “Sounds good, probably the best option we have. I can give you Williams to coordinate the Heavies, he can add to their firepower, and I’ll stay with you as a counter-penetration reserve.”

  Miles nodded and moved away to give her section commanders their orders.

  Despite his calm tone, Barnes wasn’t feeling particularly confident about their chances. He’d been in an attack like this in the early days, when everything was a surprise and no-one knew what to expect. Their defences had been breached within minutes, and the aliens had swarmed through and killed almost everyone. His company commander had called in an airstrike on their position, killing hundreds of aliens and dispersing them to be mopped up by the rest of the battalion, and it was only luck that Barnes and others had survived.

  Survived to become a cyborg, and that was a dubious privilege at times.

  “Hunter One, this is Command.”

  “Go ahead, Piper.”

  “Thought you might want to know Sector Twelve Command HQ has gone silent,” Piper said. “No signs of alien activity, just looks like everyone has left the building.”

  “Well fuck.”

  * * *

  City North Subway Line

  Gibbs was in trouble. Claws and teeth slashed at him from all sides, and he was finding it hard to move. Unlike Barnes, Gibbs had no problem at all in giving in to his anger, and his own roar of rage matched the alien shrieks as he struck with short thrusts into the creatures that pressed around him.

  Then something came writhing through the alien mass towards him, moving incredibly fast. It was long and serpentine, and it launched itself at his face, mouth wide with row after row of sharp teeth. He barely managed to get an arm up and block it, the jaws closing on his forearm and gouging deep lines in his armour. He tried to shake his other arm free of the mass of bodies to bring his other knife up, but the creature was too fast. Its tail whipped forward, driving a long needle-sharp spike of chitin into his right eye that punched deep into his brain, killing him instantly.

  His cyborg body thrashed on the ground as random electrical impulses swept through it. The aliens, seeing him moving, kept attacking, not stopping until they had finally torn his cyborg body to pieces and his random twitches stopped.

  The swarm moved on, leaving his mangled body in the darkness.

  * * *

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon

  The largest swarm Barnes had even seen was just over five thousand, and this swarm was vastly bigger, more than enough to completely surround the human position. Instead of attacking immediately, they milled about as their numbers grew.

  Their howling was different from anything Barnes had heard before, an almost triumphant keening, as if to signify to their waiting victims that death was gathering for them.

  The idea that the aliens could be taunting them was worse than the noise itself, and sent a shiver through Barnes he had to fight to control.

  * * *

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon, One Section

  One Section hadn’t had to re-adjust and was notionally the platoon’s strongest defensive position. It had lost a few men, including the section commander, but had good fields of fire and priority of effort from the guns of the Heavy Weapons section behind them.

  Lance Corporal Dillon, now in command, stood in the pit his former section commander had occupied. The bodies had been removed and his men had thrown in about a foot of dirt to cover what they couldn’t scrape out, but the place still reeked of death.

  The smell made him physically sick, more than the howling spewing from the swarm about four hundred metres in front of his position. He’d been told to hold until they were two hundred and fifty metres away before he opened fire, but the noise, the smell, the waiting and knowing he was standing in the very pit his predecessor had been torn apart finally got to him.

  Dillon scrambled to the edge of his pit and opened fire, a long burst that emptied his magazine in seconds. The men around him joined him, their fear and anger bubbling out into long screams. Even at that range it was hard to miss, and aliens started to fall, but the hollow-points needed kinetic energy to be truly effective, and very few of the creatures died. The wounded howled, turning their attention on the humans firing in the distance, then the rest of the swarm charged towards the centre of One Section’s position.

  Dillon fell back into his pit, scrambling to replace his magazine. He wasn’t sure how effective his fire had been, b
ut it had drawn their attention, and that couldn’t be a good thing.

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon, Heavy Weapons Section

  Williams cursed as Dillon open fire, too far away to be effective at anything other than pissing the aliens off, which he seemed to have done admirably.

  With command of the heavy weapons section – a combined group of light mortars and heavy machine guns – there was plenty of ammunition for the guns, but only thirty rounds for each of the mortars. The standard rate of fire for mortars in these circumstances was twenty rounds per minute, but Williams halved their rate, giving them three minutes of fire, which wasn’t going to cut it against a swarm this big.

  He had the mortar crews concentrate their fire on the ones streaming towards One Section. They fired by rote, the six seconds between shots enough to adjust the tube slightly and allow the natural variation of the charge bags to move the fall-of-shot a few yards from the previous round.

  The mortar rounds pulverised anything close to their point of impact, tearing bodies apart and scattering what was left. The aliens didn’t comprehend where the fire was coming from, but really didn’t care either – they didn’t bother taking cover, they just charged, their shrieks getting louder as they came.

  After three minutes the mortars were out, and Williams had the crew take up their rifles and form a screen in front of the machine gun positions.

  Sector Twelve, City North, 1st Platoon HQ

  Piper’s drone feed had an enormous field of view, but the aliens filled it, and more continued to pour in from its edges. They seemed endless, and Miles wondered where the hell they were all coming from.

  Dillon’s opening shots had triggered a response from the entire swarm, which charged, those too far away to reach the humans circling the position to find a way to get closer. With the support of the heavy guns, One Section seemed to be holding, the area in front of their position filling with alien bodies. The heavy guns could only support one front at a time however, and elsewhere things weren’t looking so good.