by Logan Jacobs
When the smoke cleared and the cacophony of death ended, the platoon lay in chunks of gore across the courtyard.
“Flash?” Tempest’s no bullshit voice floated down from the second-story window tentatively. The call and response was the designated “password” for knowing friend from foe for the Allied forces.
“Thunder,” I replied as I waved for Nova and Aurora to join me. I ejected the spent box magazine for the Thompson, pulled a spare from the pouches on my web belt, slipped it in place, and racked the slide on the top of the sub-gun. Tendrils of grey smoke drifted from the barrel in ribbons of recently satisfied carnage. I picked my way over the bodies, alert for any alien Nazi who might still be kicking, but the bullets had done their jobs well and could rest in bullet heaven knowing that they’d fulfilled their ballistic destiny.
“Havak?” Tempest asked and poked her orange haired head out of the window. “Oh, hey Nova, Aurora.”
Her head disappeared, there was a rustle from inside the tavern and a few moments later the blue-green alien with attitude for days came out of the door. She looked worse for wear than the three of us. Her fatigues were mud stained and ripped in several places and one sleeve of her jacket was completely gone. She popped her rifle on her shoulder and placed her other hand on her hip cockily.
“Thanks for helping me out there,” she grinned and pulled the stub of a small cigar out of her jacket pocket and popped it into her mouth. “Thought my goose was cooked. Goddamn, Nazis.”
“That’s exactly how we felt about them on Earth,” I said.
“Yeah, what dicks,” she nodded. “You guys have any idea where the rendezvous point is?”
“Sure do, sugar,” Aurora said as she reloaded her carbine. “Wanna tag along?”
“Why the hell not,” Tempest nodded. “I like you guys. I mean, you kicked our ass during the last match, which has made my life all kinds of fucking complicated, but I hated Hann-Abel with a red hot burning passion, so, you know, blessing in disguise maybe.”
Tempest spoke very fast and very sure of herself with a charisma that radiated out of her like the glow of a lamp.
“Well, that’s settled then,” I said. “Come on, we should get going. I don’t want to be around if these guys were waiting for reinforcements.”
“Hold up a second,” Tempest said and began walking around the fallen alien Nazis while she slung her Springfield sniper rifle over her shoulder. She kicked a few lifeless limbs this way and that until she found what she was looking for. She bent over, rummaged around and came up with an MP-40 in one hand and a canvas pouch that held six extra magazines for the stamped metal German submachine gun. She racked the slide expertly to check the round in the chamber, then held it loosely in both hands down at her hips.
“What are ya’ll waiting for?” She shot over her shoulder dryly. “Let’s make like a tree and leave.”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. I know I must have looked ridiculous as I nearly doubled over in belly laughs. But her use of the silly pun was such a stark contrast to the destruction around us that it tickled me in a way I couldn't begin to comprehend.
Nova and Aurora stared at me like I was insane. Tempest grinned. After a few moments I got myself under control and cocked my helmet back off of my forehead. I glanced around and checked our bearings before I took point once again, and we left the village to the dead and departed as the heavy artillery guns pounded out their symphony of destruction.
“So, what happened to you guys?” Tempest asked as we walked down the side of the road that lead out of the village.
“The drop got majorly fucked up,” I answered. “We were going too fast way too low to avoid being blown to smithereens from the anti-aircraft guns.”
“Yes,” Nova piped up, “we were at least ten miles away from the drop zone when we had to bail out. It was an interesting experience. My fellow knights back home would be very impressed.”
“I landed in a freaking pond,” I admitted. “Had to cut my pack loose and lost almost all of my gear and my map.”
“Sugar, I nearly got stuck in a tree,” Aurora drawled.
“Well,” Tempest began, “I was in some kind of goddamn glider thing with a bunch of other aliens I’d never met in my life being towed behind a freaking plane. When the shooting started they cut us loose toot-sweet, and that fucking glider flew like a rock. And by that I mean not at all. Did your ancestors really use those things in one of your greatest battles?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “We abandoned them pretty quick. The early part of the Twentieth century was pretty interesting. We were just starting to figure shit out.”
“Clearly,” she huffed. “Anyway, we smashed apart in a field, half the folks inside were bent at angles they shouldn’t have been bent at. I grabbed a few of the troops who could still walk, and we ended up stumbling into the little Nazi convention in that village.”
“Aurora and I had to rescue, Havak,” Nova chuckled.
“Wrong, very wrong,” I argued. “I had them right where I wanted them.”
“Yeah, about to shoot you, sugar,” Aurora grinned.
“You know I outrank all of you, you know that right?” I pointed out.
“And?” Nova smirked with a slight challenging tone. “Oh, I’m sorry, yes sir.”
The three of them giggled.
“Im’ma sir you,” I shot back. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense but I didn't care. I loved the ball breaking my gals could dish out and take. It helped break the tension of constantly being seconds away from potential death. That, and when it came down to it, they had my back, and I had theirs. When shit hit the fan, as it often did, they never questioned what we had to do.
We made short work of the two-mile hike and soon crested a hill that looked down upon a makeshift command post. There were maybe forty or fifty Allied troops gathered in and around a small tent. Several guns whipped in our direction the second we walked over the hill.
“Flash!” Someone called out.
“Thunder.” I responded with the appropriate password.
I made our way through the battle hardened soldiers gathered around the tent and walked in. What I saw damn near stopped me in my tracks.
Hann-Abel, decked out in a full bird Colonels uniform stood over a makeshift table with a huge map spread out over it. Green smoke puffed out of the pipe clamped in his teeth in the corner of his mouth. He looked up from the map and stared at the four of us as we were backlit in the small entrance of the tent.
His eyes showed shock for the briefest of seconds, and then he stowed it away, and a smile crept across his face. Hann-Abel had been the leader of Tempest’s alliance. The one that we had beaten in the train heist challenge. He looked like he had managed just fine since. He was a member of an alien race that excelled in strategy and tactics. Made sense that he would be leading the Allied forces behind enemy lines.
“Lieutenant Havak, nice of you to join us,” he said somewhat dismissively. As if we were late.
“We had to take out a platoon of Nazis, sir,” I said through gritted teeth. “Put a cramp in our time.”
“Hmm,” he grunted and then turned back to the map. “We need to take out those guns, soldiers. They are keeping the majority of our forces pinned down. If we can’t get those troops off the beach, then the Allies are going to lose this match.”
“Sir,” I grunted, “I think I have something that would interest you.”
“Unless it’s a phased plasma gun drone, I doubt that, Havak,” he retorted.
“How’s this instead?” I dug into my shirt and pulled out the Nazi map and tossed it onto the table. Hann-Abel fumed for a moment but then his keen tactical brain took over and he opened the map.
“Well done, Havak,” he said after he studied the map for a moment then pointed to a spot on the map. “To reward you, I want you to take a small squad and take out this gun battery.”
“Sir?” I uttered somewhat surprised. “Um, I’m pretty sure there is going to
be a whole shit ton of alien Nazis guarding those. A squad could never--”
“I don’t want excuses, lieutenant,” he said with an evil little grin that only I could see, “I want those cannons disabled. Yesterday.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and saluted him. “Come on, guys, let’s go.”
Tempest hung back for a second and just stared at Hann-Abel who held her gaze.
“You too, Tempest,” I said and pulled her after me. I didn’t need her trying to start a fight with her former alliance mate while we were deep in enemy territory and close to losing.
We walked back out into the mass of troops milling about outside the tent.
“Marc,” Nova said, concerned, “we will be at a distinct tactical disadvantage. Those troops will be well dug in and the guns heavily defended.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled and scratched my head hoping it would stir a brilliant idea. That’s when I saw two alien GIs lugging around a .30 caliber light machine gun and tripod. “Hey, you two! Grab a couple of boxes of ammo for that heater and follow me.”
They looked stunned, but I’d said it with enough authority that they fell in line.
“You palookas got any buddies?” I asked. They nodded. “Well, go get them. Make sure everyone loads up on whatever ammo there is and each person takes two grenades a piece. Meet me back here in five minutes.”
The ladies and I walked over to where a bunch of guns and ammo had been piled up and began to load up all our clip pouches with full mags. The .45 slugs the Thompson fired were crazy effective for ripping through just about anything, especially bodies, but it was heavy as hell. When all was said and done I had six full thirty round clips for the submachine gun, four reloads for the Colt pistol, a couple of blocks of TNT in my rucksack, and two pineapple grenades. I wouldn’t be winning any hundred yard sprints but I would be able to maneuver pretty quick and lay waste to just about anything that got in my way.
Nova was stuffed to the brim with twenty round box magazines for her BAR as well as having added two over the shoulder “tanker” holsters that sat just above each hip so that should could cross draw identical .45 Colts that she had found in the pile. She caught me staring at her.
“What, I’m traveling light,” she said, “should I get a few more guns?”
“No, Nova, I think you’re okay,” I shot back. “You’re carrying more firepower than some tanks.”
“Compared to a full load of Paladinian Armor and plasma cannons,” she shrugged, “This is nothing.”
Aurora kept her .30 caliber carbine but had thrown two full bandoliers of ammo pouches over each shoulder so they criss-crossed her front like some kind of bandito. She’d also found a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and smoked one as she leaned against a large crate.
“Well this is an interesting habit,” she said and blew a line of smoke out of her pursed full lips. I was never one to think that smoking made a girl look sexy, but goddamn if smoking didn’t make Aurora look even sexier than she normally did.
Tempest grabbed a lightweight canvas messenger bag and literally dumped a whole crate full of pre-loaded .30-06 spring clips into it. She tossed the small crate behind her where it bonked an alien GI in the head, barely closed the flap over it, and then slung it over her shoulder. She picked up an M1 carbine, weighed it against the German MP40 and then put it back down. Somewhere along the way she’d also found a fresh, thin cigar, which she popped into the corner of her mouth.
“What?” she asked with a mouthful of cigar when she saw me looking at her.
“Very demure,” I joked. She responded by flipping me off.
“This here is Frackas and Frickas,” she said and jerked her head toward two burly aliens that looked like orangutans with gills.
“Hey,” Frickas grunted.
“How's it going?” Frackas added.
“You found me Frick and Frack?” I asked almost dumbfounded.
“Yeah, didn’t you hear me?” She said and looked at me like I was an idiot. “Frickas. Frackas. I know them from The Breach. They’re alright. Can’t play cards to save their lives, but they can shoot real good.”
Frickas and Frackas patted the M1 Garands that were slung over their shoulders.
“Frick and Frack it is,” I said just as the two machine gun aliens came running over with four aliens in tow. “Okay, good job, guys.”
“Thanks, sir,” the alien with the .30 caliber machine gun propped on his shoulder with his hand wrapped around the barrel said. He was bright pink and kinda squishy looking. “My name is Private Huh-Uhp-Tee.”
“And I’m Duh-Uhp-Tee,” his buddy who carried the tripod and ammo belts for the gun said. “We’re champions from sister planets… Oh, and cousins.”
“Humpty and Dumpty? Is someone fucking with me?” I asked honestly and looked around to see if someone was pranking me. “Nevermind. Who’d you bring with you? Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?”
“No, we couldn’t find them sir, I think they may be dead,” Huh-Uhp-Tee replied seriously. “This is Ehhney, Mhhney, Mhhiney, and Mhhoe.”
“Go and fuck off right now,” I blurted out as I stared at them completely stupified. Ehhney and Huh-Uhp-Tee looked at each other and started to take off their jackets. “No! No! It’s an expression. Oh my god, I’m leading an attack against an alien Nazi cannon battery with fucking nursery rhymes. Officially weirdest moment in the Crucible of Carnage hands down. Period. Let’s go.”
Chapter Three
Watching a 105mm cannon belch fire and destruction was quite an assault on the senses. The ragtag squad I’d assembled only twenty minutes earlier and I lay prone on a mound of earth under a long line of trees and I watched the guns boom in a stuttered rhythm. There were four of the cannons dug into placements that were connected by a series of deep trenches surrounded by thickets of dense bushes, trees, and were camouflaged with canvas netting. What looked like almost a full company, I stopped counting at sixty alien Nazis, operated and were tasked with defending the guns which were wreaking havoc on the troops three miles away at the beach head.
The trenches were laid out in a rough half-circle punctuated with the gun placements every hundred and fifty or so feet. There were three enemy machine gun positions tasked with defending the guns and trenches. One was just outside the second cannon and covered the entire distance of open ground in front of the cannons as well as most of the assault angles on the trenches. The second was dug in near the last cannon bank and covered all the ground from where the first MG’s range of fire ended to the end of the quarter mile long network of trenches. The third machine gun was dug in well behind the rough semi-circle created by the cannon banks and trenches and effectively prevented any assault from the rear. Each end of the semicircle was capped with coils of razor wire.
I lowered the binoculars and took a deep breath. I had ten soldiers, including myself, to take out six times as many, well dug in, and defended enemy troops.
“Yup, sounds about right,” I mumbled to myself as I rolled over and motioned for my squad to scootch down the hillock where we all took a knee. The hillock was not much more than a six foot high mound of dirt but it wound around most of the length of the trenches. I assumed it was the dirt that had to be excavated in order to make the trenches themselves that had started to grow sparse grass in however many months it had been since the cannons were put here. There were several small groups of trees interspersed down the whole length and at the other end a small forest began. The hillock and trees would give us cover if we were careful to get set up. A loose plan had formed in my head. I’d never had any formal training in military leadership, but, as I’ve said before, I played a shit ton of Call of Duty for a good four years during high school and beyond. That didn’t mean that I was some kind of Audie Murphy motherfucker, hell, I wasn’t even close to any of my peers who’d served in any branch of our military, but I had played enough missions to understand the general concept of an assault. Hopefully, I wasn’t about to get us all killed because I
’d been good at a video game.
“Okay, so, here’s what we’re going to do,” I started to say as I drew a rough layout of the gun battery and trenches. “Huh-Uhp and Duh-Uhp, you stay close to the treeline and set up here so that you can lay down some blistering suppressing fire on both the Nazi MG positions once I give the signal. As soon as we take out the first gun, then I want you to move fifty yards down the treeline and do it all over again, got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Duh-Uhp said as Huh-Uhp nodded.
“Once we take a cannon out, we use that area to stage our next assault,” I continued, “Nova, you and Mhhoe, skirt this entire curve and dig in near the opposite end of the trenches here. Keep the Nazis down there occupied while we move up the line. Mhhoe, bring a bunch of grenades to keep those bastards thinking twice about running from cover, okay?”
“Consider them occupied,” Nova said.
“Tempest,” I pointed at her and then over to the densest copse of trees, “take a position as high up in one of those trees as you can get without making it too easy to spot your position. Cover our initial run on the trench entrance down here and then pick off any Nazi who dares poke his head over the edge of the trench. Aurora, you stay below her and make sure no one sneaks up behind her.”
“Sugar, are you trying to get me all hot and bothered?” Aurora joked. She winked at me, and I could see that the humor was an attempt to hide her nervousness.
“Copy that, Havak,” Tempest said and chomped on her little cigar. It made her look tough and bad-ass.
“The rest of you,” I looked Ehhney, Mhhney, Mhhiney, Frick, and finally Frack all in the eyes, “you come with me. Keep your heads down. Keep moving. And keep pulling those triggers. Everyone good?”
“Hell no,” Tempest scoffed, “but I think we’re ready. Let’s do this, I’m getting hungry.”
“Okay, to your positions,” I said as I gripped the butt of my Thompson tightly. “You’ll know when to start shooting. Good luck, everyone.”
