by S D Tanner
Judge obligingly fired another bullet at the creature which also stopped two feet from its scaly body. Walking across the room, Judge and Stock studied the cooling bullet suspended in the air.
“How’s it doing that?” Judge asked.
He was damned if he knew. Although the creature continued snarling in what he’d assumed was a savage way, he was beginning to suspect he was misinterpreting it. Being only two feet from the creature, it could have torn off his face, but it was as docile as a lamb and allowing them to inspect its harness.
Stock was peering into the creature’s face and then he pulled back, waving his hand under his nose. “Damn, stinks like crotch rot.”
Judge had pulled the bullet from the air and was rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as if testing the weight. “Do you know that from personal experience?”
Shrugging as if there was a possibility he might, Stock replied, “The army was working on similar tech to this when I died.”
Puzzled by Stock’s comment, he asked, “What is this tech?”
Turning away from the creature and giving him a lopsided grin, Stock flicked his thumb at the harness. “Shields.” Frowning at the memory, he added, “Not that us front-liners got ‘em. They only had a prototype.”
“How do they work?”
“Can’t speak for this guy, but the ones the army had absorbed the force of high speed projectiles.” The way it was explained to me was as an invisible two-foot pillow that inversely absorbs the energy that hits it, so that the harder it’s hit the more likely it is to stop it. The shield only reacts to something hitting it hard and fast, like a bullet. It’s also one-way, so you can’t shoot in, but I can shoot out.
“But I can touch him.”
Stock nodded knowingly. “That’s what makes ‘em clever. You can penetrate the shield providing you breach it slow enough.” Tapping his forehead, he added, “Think about it. If the shield extends two feet around your body, how would you walk through a door…or take a leak?” Sniggering to himself, he added, “Hell of a splash back”
The creature was patiently snarling at them and he grinned at it. “What else can you do?”
Stock and Judge stepped back and he waved the creature forward, hoping to indicate they wanted a demonstration. Seeming to understand, the creature grumbled and growled as it stomped toward one of Robert’s hanging robot bodies. Raising its gloved hand, it sliced downward without touching the robot’s body, and the deflated legs fell to the floor. When the creature raised its arm again, the flattened body split straight down the middle.
“Woah, it didn’t even touch it. How’s it doing that?” Judge asked.
The harness with the metal arms and gloves did more than stop a bullet, it created an invisible blade that cut through metal as easily as he might slice through butter. Turning to face him, the creature tipped back its head, letting out a long and loud snarl.
“What’s it doing?” Stock asked.
If he were to hazard a guess, it was probably laughing at their ignorance. The harness was more than a shield and probably a weaponized exoskeleton. Compared to their armor, for functionality, protection and lethality, it made them look primitive.
Although he’d left Joker on the Bridge, he would have been watching their antics on cam. “Joker, how many of the harnesses did you find inside the dome?”
“We haven’t taken a full inventory, but I’d say we have maybe sixty or so.”
The creature had returned to stand beside him, growling softly as if waiting for him to get with the program. Catching its eye, he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. We need to free more of you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Killer Logic
Just as Joker had said, they had sixty harnesses that were now lying in an untidy tangled pile on the docking bay floor.
“What’s the plan, Tag?” Judge asked.
For once he had weapons and no soldiers, but he knew where to find more of the lizard-like creatures. Ash and his platoon were waiting inside the city, all he had to do was give the word. Even sixty loyal and armed allies were better than what he had now.
“We’re freeing our allies.”
“And arming them.” Narrowing his eyes at him, Judge asked, “Shouldn’t we find guns for the Dead Force first?”
He didn’t disagree, but given he didn’t know how to do that, he was going to do what he could. “Adapt and improvise. We’ll have to steal weapons from the enemy, but I need to know where they’re being made.”
Judge flicked his thumb at the creature who was crouched next to the harnesses. “I get that Grunt here is loyal, but do you think the rest of his kind will be?”
“Grunt?”
“It needs a name.”
Snorting loudly, Stock called from the other side of the bay. “How about Dogbreath.”
He screwed up his face in disgust. “You’re not calling him that.”
Speaking from the Bridge, Joker asked, “How do you know it’s a dude?”
Hunkered down with its rounded knees widely spread, Grunt, as he was now called, heaved another harness upright and appeared to be checking it. There was nothing feminine about its gnarled spine, leathery skin, foul breath and huge claws. If Grunt was female, then he never wanted to meet its male counterpart.
“Let’s just say it is.”
Stock snorted again. “Dogbreath is genderless.”
“We’re not calling him that,” he said sternly.
“Grunt is genderless as well,” Joker added unhelpfully.
Rolling his eyes at Stock, privately he was pleased at how seamlessly the Dead Force were working together. Although they had died across a period of a hundred years, clearly the army hadn’t changed much in that time. The easy camaraderie was one of the things he’d most enjoyed about being enlisted.
“Enough of the trash talk.” Narrowing his eyes at Stock, he dared him to argue. “Me, you and Grunt will head back to the stadium. Joker, we’re going to need emergency evac. Between the grunts and Dead Force, there’ll be over a hundred of us, so bring everyone into the docking bay.”
“Umm, that won’t work. I can either bring back known persons and anyone they’re in contact with, or I can teleport everything inside a zone, but you’ll need to lay pulsers. Which is it?”
“I just need to get the grunts and our guys out, so you tell me.”
Jessica interrupted Joker before he had a chance to reply. “We can set the teleport for biological matter only.”
“Err, that’s not a good idea, Jess. Our guys are part mech.”
He hadn’t realized there was a difference between teleporting inanimate objects and living tissue. “Are you saying the robot gunners will teleport with us?”
“If you’re in contact with one then yes.”
Judge was glaring at him with his mouth was twisted downward, making him look like a dissatisfied wife. He didn’t need another argument with Judge and he turned to face him. “What’s wrong now?”
“The way I see it is we have two priorities.” Judge raised his forefinger. “The first is to get us air cover and I’ve been working with Hawk and Jack on that. Ash has found us about thirty pilots, and Rok had another eight on the arks on the dark side of the moon. Flak came back from the arks with Rok, so that’s another experienced pilot.”
He hadn’t asked Judge how the mission planning had gone, but he was unsurprised to hear it was already set up. “Where are the pilots?”
“Here on the Extrema. Hawk is briefing them on the controls, and Joker can teleport them into the beacons. If the clone onboard the beacon resists then they have orders to kill them.”
“I think they’re human.”
“I don’t care if they’re goddamned angels on Earth. If they get in our way, then they’re dead.”
Conceding the clones might end up as collateral damage, he shrugged. “What are you going to do with the beacons once we have control of them?”
“Hide in p
lain sight.”
Raising his eyebrows, he looked at Judge skeptically. “What does that mean?”
“We’ll leave them in orbit. The clones don’t talk and our enemy is arrogant. I doubt they pay much attention to the beacons unless they want to use them.”
It sounded like mission planning to steal beacons was advanced and they were ready to go. “Ok, let’s do it.”
Raising his hand, Judge shook his head. “Woah, slow down. We have more than one mission. I’m not happy about having twenty thousand barely armed troops in enemy territory.”
He didn’t disagree, but he still didn’t know where their weapons were being made. “Merc moved his army to the city, and we’ve stolen weapons from the robot gunners.”
Judge’s eyes widened in surprise. “And you see that as a solution?”
“No,” he snapped irritably. “But instead of pissing on my plan, why don’t you give me a better one?”
Sighing, Judge replied with exaggerated patience, “You know the drill. If you don’t have an answer, then make one up.”
Despite his frustration, he gave Judge a wry look. “Is that what you think they taught us in officer training? If reality doesn’t meet your expectations, then punch it until it does.”
“It’s the green way.”
Joker’s voice sounded from the Bridge. “What about the city with the beacons?”
He screwed up his face. “I thought you were going to board the beacons in orbit.”
“Yeah, we are,” Joker replied. “It’s less risky than getting cornered inside a city, but…”
They’d spent so little time in the city before falling down the slide into the production room, he had no idea what else the city might manufacture, and he could see where Joker was leading. Interrupting him mid-sentence, he said, “We need another recon.”
“I checked through the cam footage and those beacons use raw materials, but the production line looks like a copier or replicator.”
“How does that work?”
“The clones fill it with a single material at one end and a beacon pops out the other. I think the processing lines are like three-dimensional photocopiers.”
He glanced at Judge. “Can they do that?”
“Wrong question,” Joker replied sharply. “We could do that and the aliens have much better tech than we ever had.”
“What’s the right question?”
“Judging by what you guys caught on cam, there were at least twelve production lines. Even if it takes a few days to copy a beacon, they can pump out twelve at a time, but I’m betting they can do it faster than that.”
There were thousands of beacons orbiting Earth, meaning they were mass produced, so he suspected Joker was right. “So, what?”
“I’ve spoken to Hawk and he says the beacons are primitive, like a bullet. It means they’re probably a one-time use. A shoot ‘em and dump ‘em kinda deal.”
If the beacons were no more than ammunition to the enemy, then the scale of their war machine had to be much larger than they’d seen to date. Wincing, he asked, “Where’s their main army?”
Judge nodded. “Now you’re seeing the size and scope of this war, Tag. Even fifty armed troopers like Grunt won’t do us much good. You need to think bigger.”
Like any Commander, he found himself torn between leading the war from the front, or analyzing their tactics from behind the lines. Neither solution was ever ideal, but with no command structure to rely on, he had little choice other than to fight alongside his men. It meant he couldn’t be everywhere at once, nor was he being given any time to think. There were no heroes in war, only good soldiers working as a single mind against a common enemy. He felt lucky for the first time since waking on the Prognatus. They might argue like an old married couple, but Judge had his back, filling in the gaps he didn’t even know he had.
Nodding to Judge, he hoped to convey his appreciation. “I hear you. What do you advise?”
“Beacons first. We can use them to attack the city producing them.”
“What if that’s all it makes?”
“Joker thinks we might get lucky.”
“Is it worth the risk?”
Judge shrugged. “Worst case scenario, if we don’t find any other weapons, then we shut down their beacon production by nuking the city with one of the spare arks.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Flying Blind
Judge’s briefing about the beacons emphasized how little intel they had on their enemy, and Joker hadn’t been joking when he said the gear they were finding didn’t come with a manual. They had to learn everything the hard way, but it was like testing a bomb by detonating it. If he was going to be an effective Commander, then he needed to know more than he did. That line of thinking led him to Hawk and Jack who were in the arterial corridor on the Extrema briefing the thirty-eight supposed pilots.
Somehow Hawk had managed to steal one of the console sticks from a beacon and he was holding it in front of him. “The controls are basic, but the beacons are fast. Joker recorded us at Mach six in the atmosphere.”
The toggle control had been torn out of a beacon by force and pieces of wire trailed from the bottom of the two-foot wide platform. Tilting it so the pilots could see the surface, Hawk said, “The stick works simple like. Left goes left. Right goes right. North goes down.”
A woman at the front of the group tilted her head at Joker. “And what does South do?”
“Whoosh!” Jack replied, waving his hand upward, his face alight with delight.
Sounding unimpressed, the woman asked, “Where’s the brake?”
Placing his hand on a rotating ball on the panel, Hawk rolled it under the palm of his hand. “Spin it toward you and the beacon slows down. Spin it forward and it accelerates. Push down on it and the pecker takes off like a rocket. Red button fires whoop-ass.”
An excited murmur of voices rang through the corridor. Handing the ripped panel to Jack, Hawk raised his hand. “Don’t get cocky, folks. The controls are highly responsive. Turn too fast and you’ll be tossed out of the cockpit. Fire before you’re lined up on a target and you’ll miss it. This is literally point and shoot, just like a gun.”
A man next to the woman snorted loudly. “Are you saying that we’re inside a rifle?”
“Exactly. The beacons carry up to one hundred missiles. We can’t see any way to reload them and they carry no spare ammo. Once you’re out of incendiaries, then you’re outta business.”
Surprised by Hawk’s summary, he asked, “Are you sure there isn’t a way to reload these suckers?”
Hawk shrugged. “If there is then we don’t know where or how, but I don’t think it works that way. The missiles are inside bubbles that cover the beacon like a shield. They rotate into position and when they’re fired it tears open the bubble, which effectively damages the outer hull.”
“Why would they design them that way?”
“Re-use is a byproduct of production effort. Anything that’s easy enough to make might as well be a one-time use. It saves on resupply, logistics and maintenance.”
“How are they powered?”
“Let’s put it this way, we didn’t find a refueling cap on the hull.”
“What’s the reach?”
Shaking his head, Hawk shot him a worried look. “We don’t know, but we took one out for six hours and it didn’t stop.”
The man next to the woman gave an even louder snort. “So, basically you don’t know shit.” Shaking his head and clearly unhappy, he muttered, “You don’t need pilots, you want suicide bombers.”
He was about to tell the man to pull his head in when the woman next to him spun on the heel of her boot. “Shut up!” Flicking her hand at Hawk, she shoved her face at the man. “It’s this or nothing. Do you remember what it was like?”
Pulling away from the woman, the man’s face filled with worry. “You know we don’t.”
“Exactly,” she said firmly. “We did
stuff we weren’t supposed to do. People died.” Turning to look at Hawk, she waved at him. “Carry on, sir.”
Hawk grinned at her. “Yes, ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Ginger.” Running her hand over her smooth scalp, she smiled wryly. “If this ever grows back, I’m a redhead.”
“Ever flown a bird, Ginger?”
Clearly Ginger was no pilot and he couldn’t help smirking at Hawk’s question. Her chin tilted down and the blue eyes widened like a naughty child caught in a lie. “Don’t make me leave.” Stepping forward, Ginger began pleading for her position in what the man had aptly called a suicide squad. “I’m a fast learner. I won’t let you down, I promise.”
Now laughing, Hawk raised his hand. “Relax, Ginger, this is volunteer only and you’re in.” Looking past Ginger at the group of men and women, he added, “It’s true that we don’t know enough, but…” He turned to look at him. “…these guys need air cover.”
The man who had called them a suicide squad stepped forward until he was standing next to the woman. “What’s the drill?”
“What’s your name?” Hawk asked.
“Mackie. Short for MacDonald.”
“Ok, Mackie, you’ll be teleported onto a beacon. I’ll give you five minutes to familiarize yourself with the controls, then we need to head into space.”
“The beacons are spaceships?”
“They’re capable of space flight, but they have no facilities so it’s not comfortable.” Brightening, Hawk added, “But we can stay in comms contact.”
“How long are we in space for?”
Hawk turned to look at him and raised his eyebrows. “Tag?”
Although they needed to mount the attack on the floating city with Jessica soon, he didn’t know when they’d be ready. Worse than that, he didn’t know if they could ever be ready enough. The Dead Force were still unarmed and using Merc’s men to supplement them was no solution. He had three arks hiding on the dark side of the moon, but they were also unarmed. Looking at the faces of the men and women in front of him, although the beacons were armed, forty-one didn’t add up to a decent-sized flight squad. Nothing he did could shore up an inadequate army against an unknown enemy. Even his psyops was a bust and, other than locating the Dead Force, Lolo had been useless.
