Grunt Hero

by Weston Ochse

  “It won’t bring him back,” she said.

  “That’s the thing about death. It’s fucking permanent. There’s nothing we can do to bring him or anyone else back. But remember, just as funerals aren’t for the dead, revenge isn’t for the dead either. Revenge is for the living and for some of us, we can’t survive without it.” I lowered my voice. “You see, revenge is a tool. Revenge is power. It gives us the opportunity to do something. Without revenge there’s only helplessness.”

  She’d stared at me with wide eyes throughout my mini-speech. Then she nodded. “You’re right. You are the only person who can talk to me about this.”

  “We’re a very special elite club.”

  “Bloody damn great. Welcome to the Lover Killers Club.”

  I laugh softly. “Has a ring to it. Might get it tattooed on my ass when this is all over.”

  Now she laughed. “I’d like to see that when you do.”

  I clapped her on the shoulder. “Not in this lifetime.”

  I smiled, turned away, and walked back to the others, thoughts of Michelle and our one and only time together beneath the Kilimanjaro plains, the sound of the generator hiding the sounds of our lovemaking.

  If the enemy is in range, so are you.

  Unknown

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  SEVEN HUNDRED VIPERS lifted off at the same time from three different locations on the planet. The three hundred and twelve located in Odessa carried four hundred EXOs. Only one Viper remained on the ground, to be flown by Alpha, his sole mission to watch. Despite his protestations, he wasn’t to participate in the fight regardless of what happened. He was to watch and record, then if we failed, head into space and rendezvous with the orbiting Khron ships and provide them a comprehensive report of the battle. Only then would the Khron be able to mature their tactics and cease repeating the mistakes of the past.

  Hero Squad, or what was left of it, was assigned to Khron semfled 8. Ohirra and I were in the first ship. Chance was in the second ship with Olivares’s body. She’d insisted that she take him into battle and I didn’t argue. Stranz and Charlemagne flew in the third ship. We stayed in our EXOs, locked to the walls on either side of the door, ready for combat when we arrived.

  Through the NIDs we were able to project in our HUDs the various video feeds from Vipers on station. They’d remained undetected, using their ferrofluid skin to help render them invisible to the naked eye.

  Thirteen adolescent UMI floated in the harbor. Although the fragmented offspring of the larger Umi—which still lived in Earth’s oceans—were now bereft of their intelligence, each was roughly the size of a flattened house. Beneath each one had been detected a net made from some yet-to-be-determined material. Estimates were that these nets were ten to twenty meters beneath the surface. What their use was was still unknown, but some of the Thinnies had postulated they were some sort of transportation cradle. Because the Khron had never survived their battles with the Umi, they’d never been able to determine specifically how they got off this gravitational well and into space.

  The Vipers on station had reported furious underwater activity by Umi-controlled humans, activity which had clearly been going on prior to the Khron’s arrival, so whatever they were building was probably some sort of transportation system. Whether it was rockets or some other more advanced alien tech—or a combination—we didn’t know. However, we did know that in the last twenty-four hours the activity had stilled and each Umi had had netting placed beneath it.

  I marveled at the absolute transcendence of the Umi. They were almost god-like in their ability to transfer memory through procreation, maintaining knowledge that spanned epochs. Using client species to perform the functions they could not was ingenious. The spore which, had at first appeared to be nothing more than a way to control the survivors, had created automatons to perform functions necessary to move the Umi into space. Part of me wanted to watch and see what kind of science-fiction-brought-to-life tech the Umi had directed be built. But another part—the military part—wanted to destroy it before it even had a chance to rise.

  And on the other side... the Khron. A technologically advanced collection of human-like species who’d been chasing the Umi across galaxies only to continually come up short at every last battle. Where the Umi had the advantage of memory, the Khron had the advantage of determination. They’d chased and fought, and chased and fought, only to finally arrive on Earth. When they’d tried to bully us into assisting, we’d stunned them by offering to kill ourselves instead. We were such an obstinate, stubborn, and bullheaded species. A sociologist would probably say something about how these traits were evolutionary developments that helped us survive, but I knew it was just an everyday grunt’s Take no shit attitude. If the Khron had presented a worthwhile strategy, I might not have balked. But they didn’t, and they couldn’t, because they’d never succeeded and they’d never discovered why they hadn’t.

  And these were to be my people.

  Well, at least now we had a chance.

  The NID made an announcement. Phase One was about to go into effect. After much argument, I’d convinced the Khron to move one of their Kaleidoscope ships into low earth orbit above Sydney. We needed the ability to jam the Umi’s control of the anti-aircraft forces around the harbor. In addition to over nine hundred spidertanks bristling with extra weaponry, the Russians had provided 290 ZSU-23-4s, seventeen state-of-the-art Tor Missile Platforms, four hundred towed ZU 23 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, and an unknown number of RPGs, ready to rip into any aircraft that might come near. I’d been told that the Vipers couldn’t jam the Umi command signals alone, but with the help of one of their Kaleidoscope ships, they believed they could manage it. The problem was orbital decay. The Kaleidoscope ship could only stay on station for six minutes before it had to depart. Otherwise, the gravitational grip of Earth would be too much for it to overcome and the whole damned thing would come crashing down. Our hope was that with the Earthling Khron free of Umi control, they’d direct their weapons against the Cray. In fact, phases two and three depended upon it. Without a reduction in Cray, we’d never be able to get close enough to the Hives to do anything.

  The argument was that the spore-infected who hadn’t gone through the cure process were little more than zombies. I’d agreed, but then pointed out that zombies couldn’t be employed building space ships, nor could they be employed to work complicated military mechanisms. My rationale was that the Umi must have certainly found some who’d been through the cure process, probably from China or Russia, then forced them to create the conditions necessary to cure many more. While spore-infected zombies might be fine for Cray Queen food, they had neither the will nor the dexterity to perform complicated tasks.

  I absolutely believed in my hypothesis, but I was also aware that the fate of the world depended upon it.

  Speeding towards Sydney at more than two thousand miles an hour, we watched through the feeds as the Kaleidoscope ship suddenly appeared as it lowered its orbit to an altitude of one hundred and sixty kilometers. I knew nothing about the ship, but it was immense. And it had to be. Alpha had mentioned to me that they repaired and created Vipers during the long galactic night between conflicts. Not quite a generation ship, but it had to house multiple versions of clones as well. Now, at one hundred and sixty thousand kilometers, it was barely visible. That it was visible at all was impressive beyond anything I’d yet imagined. It was as like Battlestar Galactica, and The Expanse had created a lovechild spacecraft and named it Kaleidoscope.

  Now, would the jamming work?

  I set a timer in my HUD as I watched and waited.

  Ten seconds ticked by.

  Twenty seconds.

  Thirty seconds. Still nothing.

  Didn’t they realize they only had six minutes?

  At the fifty-three second mark, Chance called out. “There. Look on the M4.”

  Then I saw it. The long lines of the damned were disintegrating. The hundreds of thousands of spore-i
nfected humans destined to be food suddenly had no guidance. Instead of waiting silently to be eaten, they began to move in all directions, spreading out, away from the hives, randomly moving into joyful chaos.

  Suddenly the ground around the harbor opened up as thousands of tracer rounds and missiles shot to the sky, finding their targets by the hundreds. Cray began to fall, splashing dead into the waters of Sydney Harbor.

  Ohirra and I cheered and we could hear cheering across the NID from every EXO as they, too, watched the feeds. That Phase one had worked gave everyone a tremendous surge of hope. We might just get through this yet.

  More Cray surged from their Hives, until the sky was such a thick mass of black and gray we couldn’t see the ground. Now for the other shoe to fall. Would they do what was natural to them? I waited and watched, realizing that I was holding my breath.

  Then it happened. The Cray descended and began targeting their attackers. The mass of black, writhing Cray dropped from the sky and fell upon the battlements around the harbor. RPG rounds detonated at a hundred feet. I imagined that with such a thick contingent of Cray descending upon them they didn’t even have to aim. For a moment there were two distinguishable sets of forces, then they came together as one.

  All equipment that depended on electricity suddenly ceased to function, killed by the Cray’s biogentic EMP blasts. Those which had a purely mechanical means to fire continued, but soon it was evident that it was a massacre. Calculations were pouring in that indicated nearly three thousand Cray had been killed, but that number paled to the estimate that all five thousand human defenders were now dying at the claws, spiked knees and elbows of the Cray.

  I closed my eyes, remembering my own battles with the wretched aliens. The EXOs were created specifically to defeat them. Anyone without a suit was no more than a bag of blood waiting to be ripped open. It must have been terrible. For one foul moment I commiserated with my fellow Russian grunts. Then I dismissed them, their traitorousness disallowing any further empathy.

  Phase two began in earnest as Vipers from three different directions flew past Sydney Harbor at two thousand miles an hour, firing plasma cannons at the now unprotected adolescent Umi. They made pass after pass as the Cray scrambled to return to their sentry duty. With each hit, we cheered. It was a glorious moment when seven plasma bolts hit one Umi and it erupted in gouts of flame. We managed to destroy five Umi before the Cray were redeployed and intercepted the bolts, killing themselves so that the Umi might live. The Vipers made two more passes, firing again and again, but the Cray had managed to create a blanket of protection in the clear morning sky.

  “Get ready, Heroes,” I shouted through my coms. “Ten seconds to show time!”

  With all the Cray focused on protecting the Umi, they’d left the Hives unprotected.

  Semfled 8 headed directly towards Hive Eight and hovered. The doors opened and we leaped out, grabbing at the edges of the Hive to keep from falling. Eight other Semfleds performed the same maneuver at the eight other Hives. I watched out of the corner of my eye as an EXO failed to grab hold and fell more than a hundred meters to his death.

  “Inside!” I shouted, and we all scrambled into launch tubes.

  “I’m doing this for you, Francis,” I heard Chance whisper. He’d only come as far as the Hive. The Viper driver promised to later give him a burial at sea.

  Charlemagne began to sing low and deep, “Tiens, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin. Pour les Alsaciens, les Suisses et les Lorrains. Pour les Belges, y en a plus, Pour les Belges, y en a plus, Ce sont des tireurs au cul.”

  My HUD translated it from the French:

  “Look, there’s the pudding, that’s the pudding, black pudding here

  For Alsatians, Swiss and Lorraine,

  For the Belgians, are over, for the Belgians are over,

  They are shooters in the ass.”

  I couldn’t help laugh along with Chance and Stranz as their own HUDs translated.

  “What kind of song is that, Charlemagne?” I asked. “You singing about black pudding?”

  “And what about the Belgians?” asked Stranz. “What did they ever do to you?”

  “This is the song of Legionnaires,” he said, his voice bright with optimism and the customary French accent. “It is the song of my people.”

  “And the pudding?” I asked.

  “Is the things we carry.”

  “And the Belgians?” Stranz asked.

  “Is the Legionnaires who do not fight.”

  “There’s a song about it?” Stranz pressed. “Now that’s weird.”

  “Easy, Stranz,” I said. “It’s his tradition. Sing it for us, Charlemagne. Sing us into battle.”

  And Charlemagne began to sing, his voice low, patriotic, and filled with emotion.

  My HUD displayed the complete text of the song like some sort of opportunistic battlefield karaoke. I heard the others start to sing it haltingly along with Charlemagne. Once I joined in, even Ohirra lent us her regal tenor. I felt the fluttering of pride in my heart. This was what battle was like. This was why I’d always be a grunt. Even though death was my shadow, I still smiled, happy at last to be doing what I did best.

  Killing aliens and breaking things.

  The interior of the Hive was recognizable. The last time I’d been in a Hive had been in L.A. when I’d deposited a backpack nuke, then flown to safety on the back of a Thompson-controlled Cray. The time before that had been worse, Olivares and I coming up through the volcanic tunnels and blowing the hell out of the Queen and her offspring. That’s where I’d gotten the idea. Without the Queen, the Cray ceased to function. Destroy the Queen, and we could destroy the Cray.

  Phase three.

  I pulled myself into the launch tube until I could see the central chamber of the hive.

  We were a hundred meters up, so we had to climb down the inside face of the hive.

  Charlemagne continued to lead us in the Legionnaire’s march.

  My back itched as I began to move down the inner face of the hive. My HUD was up and told me that there was activity below. In addition to the mother, there were between sixteen and thirty juvenile Cray. The numbers continued to fluctuate, which I couldn’t understand. I was about halfway down when I noted several Cray launching from the Hive floor. I got a good place for my feet, held on with my left hand, then straightened my right, activating the flechette cannon and firing a twenty round burst at the oncoming Cray. Everyone else did the same, creating a wicked web of moly-coated flechettes that struck true, sending dead Cray back to the floor.

  I continued climbing, hurrying before more launched at us, or worse, others came back inside, a situation which would put them above and below us. I was counting on the Umi’s influence to be more powerful than the Queen’s. We were about to find out.

  I jumped the last five meters to the ground, absorbing the impact by dropping to a knee.

  When I stood, it was with the four surviving members of Hero Squad.

  The song ended and we were silent.

  The Queen glowed and pulsed on the other side of the chamber. She was moving, like an immense slug into a tunnel, probably to protect herself. Behind her were juvenile Cray, too young to have wings. They formed a protective line, bared their mouths at us and hissed, but didn’t try to attack.

  I raised both my arms and fired, as did the rest of Hero Squad, and it was like an old-fashioned firing squad. The Cray fell without a sound.

  Then we stalked forward, firing at the retreating Hive Queen.

  When we got closer, we grabbed our blades and began to hack at her. Her light began to dim as we cut and slashed. Soon we revealed a cluster of her unborn Cray. We hacked at those, too. We kept going until we were certain the Queen was dead—unmoving, dark and lightless.

  Ohirra turned to me, an expression of concern on his face. “Either your plan was magnificent, or something’s wrong.”

  I felt it as well.

  “This was too easy,” Stranz sai
d.

  I tried to communicate with the other squads, but the Hive was blocking coms.

  “Let’s get out of here and see what’s going on,” I said.

  Ohirra climbed onto my shoulder and leaped for a handhold. Once she got it, she pulled the rest of us up. Soon we were moving upward. When we hit the first set of launch tubes, we made it easily out of the Hive. We stared towards the harbor and were shocked to see the Cray still in formation, flying and protecting the adolescent Umi. My HUD told me that there were more than six thousand of the savage aliens.

  Even as I watched, a Viper flew too close and was hit with an EMP. Its flight turned into a somersault, ending abruptly as it crashed into the Opera House.

  One by one the other Semfleds checked in. The Queens of all nine hives had been killed. On the one hand, they wouldn’t be eating any more humans. On the other, the Cray were still functioning. The Umi must have had total control over them. This was something completely unexpected.

  I descended to the ground and began trotting towards the harbor, which was only two kilometers away.

  “Come on, grunts. We got work to do.”

  They fell in line behind me.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what we’d be doing, but we had to do something. I was sure opportunity would rear its ugly head.

  A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.

  Christopher Walken in Man On Fire,

  directed by Tony Scott

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  WE HADN’T GONE two hundred meters before spore-infected humans saw us and gave chase. I had no desire to kill any more humans, so I poured on the speed. Soon we were running, with an ever-increasing group of the infected running behind us. I ignored them, my mind working on a way to get the Cray out of the way so the Khron could get to the Umi.