The Fifth Battalion

by Michael Priv

  I heard the second Fed turning the corner and in position behind my back, and I hit the roof, expecting a shot in the back. Then I heard the soft slap of a bullet and the sound of gravel shuffling, as if somebody were stumbling around in small circles. There was the thud of a body and everything went silent again. Without having to look, I knew that the second FBI man was just as dead as the first one. A search of the dead sniper yielded a cell phone, a Glock, and his wallet. His rifle was too bulky to lug around, so I left it where it was. The dead sniper’s name was James Burk. The driver’s license of the other, older Fed, identified him as Frank Silezny.

  Smack in the middle of a war again. What else was new? There was always a war somewhere, and I was usually smack in the middle of it—except the delusionary period when I lost my memory. It occurred to me that losing my memory was a blessing. Back to reality.

  Finances, communication lines and weapons were three of the five pillars of any successful military operation—and probably any business operation, too, for that matter. The only difference being equipment and tools instead of weapons. I was armed. My finances and communications, although not entirely non-existent, left a whole lot to be desired. The two additional pillars were personnel and intelligence data. Personnel was only me now that I had lost my friends, and I had no intel whatsoever, not a clue, except that I was expressly and specifically not the assassination target at this time. Clearly, it would be much easier to shoot me than to kill two FBI agents just to implicate me in their murder. Somebody wanted something from me, which meant I was safe till they got it, whatever they wanted. That was all I knew. Somebody wanted something else from me, not the thumb drive. We already made that arrangement with Siryoumoron. Right? Or had we? I mean, them being psychos that they were? Did we have an arrangement?

  I looked at my watch —10 p.m. The party was starting, but I was considering not attending. Many quickly approaching sirens announced the arrival of several emergency vehicles, mainly cops. I heard an approaching helicopter. Bad news. The place was swarming with Feds or cops. They were yelling down by the building, sirens blaring, tires and brakes screeching. The cops had arrived in force. Time to go.

  I ran to the edge of the roof and jumped to the balcony walkway below. Having recovered my balance, I found myself looking at an apartment door with sloppily painted numbers 4-1-6. Hide inside? A Large window offered a view of a sparsely furnished living room. An elaborately gaudy Crucifixion tapestry occupied most of the living room’s far wall. Christ was clearly suffering, a bit like me. However, unlike me, he seemed fully committed and cognizant of what the hell was going on.

  A pretty Latina, obviously pregnant, in a simple, oversized housecoat, had fear in her eyes as she rushed out of her living room when she saw me outside the window. I decided against entering the lives of the people there.

  I strolled down the fourth-floor walkway and down the stairs. A fire truck, there for no reason whatsoever, was blocking the exit from the parking lot to several cop cruisers and an ambulance. The most interesting vehicle of them all was an idling SFPD cruiser, the driver’s door wide open, near the curb below me. That was exactly what I needed, except my ride was unfortunately facing the wrong way. The fire truck blocked the driveway entrance, but I had a clear shot through the lawn over the curbs—an obstacle course in reverse.

  Cops on the second-floor landing were busy questioning a Mexican guy or harassing him—sometimes you couldn’t tell. I excused myself and smiled, as I approached the group calmly, squeezing between an older cop and the railing, keeping both cops and the Mexican to my left and the railing to my right. The older cop glanced at me blankly, obviously preoccupied. But an instant later, with a sudden shock of realization, the cop’s lips formed a sound, an alarm call perhaps. His shoulders squared, and his hand shot down for his gun. I pushed him hard toward the others with my shoulder, cleared the handrail in one motion and descended into the bushes.

  The landing spot was well lit. I heard shots. The way I was coming down, I would hit two large evergreens. Turning my body ninety degrees midair, I aimed for the clear spot and landed squarely between the bushes. There were sounds of cops yelling. More shots fired—damn those cops. The car door ajar, a hole appeared in the windshield in front of me, as I jumped into the cruiser and put it in reverse. Tires screeched. Another shot. More shots. My windshield shuttered under fire. Very bumpy going over the curbs. I turned me steering wheel roughly. More screeching. Then shifting to drive. I was out. Marooned in the parking lot by the fire truck, the cops lost the race from get-go. The helicopter search light, however, was reaching toward me. I only had a minute or so before they’d spot me from the helicopter. The police car was too conspicuous. I had to change cars or take my chances on foot.

  Zigzagging through the neighboring streets, I quickly found what I was looking for: another car. I saw them from afar. A young man was done getting his female companion seated, closing her door, and getting into the driver’s seat, when with the siren blaring and tires screeching, I slammed to a double-park stop next to his car. The helicopter’s chopping sounds were getting close, and so was its search light, groping the terrain.

  I pulled the startled guy out of his Audi and jumped in. A glance at the passenger put me at ease. A small Asian girl, under a hundred pounds, not much to contend with—especially when duly terrified by her abduction. I took off as if trying to set a new 0-60 record. With a wild shriek, my small, docile hostage was suddenly upon me, ripping the wheel out of my hands and pounding my head with her small fist—as if I wasn’t up to my butt in trouble already. Banshee out of hell!

  Fighting her off with my hand, I yelled , “Sit quiet or I’ll kill you and rape you and rob you and cut you into little pieces! Sit down right now!”

  Terrified, my hostage shrunk back from me. I was gassing it up on Market now with the helicopter way behind me, searching in a wrong location.

  “I meant to say I’ll rob you, rape you and then kill you— in that sequence,” I explained in more reasonable tone of voice. “I didn’t mean that I kill you first and then rape you, okay? I’m not a hemophiliac, I mean—whatchamacallit…” I glanced at her again, startled by the mask of utter terror on her face. “Yeah! Don’t you give me any excuses, lady! You wanna get yourself killed tonight?!”

  The girl suddenly opened the door in attempt to jump out of the speeding car. I barely succeeded pulling her back in.

  “Stop it!” I yelled. “It’s not about you, okay? I will not harm you. Just bear with me for five more minutes!”

  The chick eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Nothing!” I barked. “Just trying to get away from the cops. Do you mind?!”

  “What have you done?” she yelled at menow.

  “Stop pissing me off!” I snapped. Then added in a softer tone, “Have a heart. I had a difficult childhood.” Careening into an opening between two houses, I turned off the lights, letting half a dozen police cars pass. The cops bulleted past me doing at least eighty. I glanced at my hostage. She wasn’t convinced. I had to either push her out of the car or get her to calm down.

  “Yeah, a clear case of parental abuse. My green drink had nothing but kale in it. Can you imagine the trauma?”

  The girl visibly relaxed and even allowed herself a small smile. “So, you’re not going to kill me?” she asked. “ Me?! I wanted to ask youthe same question! The way you jumped me—man! You got guts! Scared the living crap out of me. Whew!”

  She puffed out her thin chest proudly, giggling, more comfortable now. “Fine then, as long as you’re not a hemophiliac,” she said, smiling pretty.

  “You aren’t either, I suppose. Hey, I’ll get out in a sec, could you do me a favor and drive off straight up Dubois for a few blocks before you call the cops on me and all that?” She just nodded. “Thank you. You take care now,” I said, stopping with a flare at the Dubois overpass and jumping out.

  “Take care,” she replied, waving her goodbye
and taking off up Dubois. Stopping at the crowded corner of Dubois and Van Ness gave me a better chance to escape, in my estimation. I reversed my jacket from black to orange, pulled the hood over my head. It was drizzling a bit, nothing suspicious. My goal at was, first and foremost, saving Linda, which meant laying my hands on two million dollars, then survival and, thirdly, figuring out my exact situation.

  A normally enjoyable walk down Van Ness Avenue was a lot less enjoyable now. I had to think in the usual heavy traffic, several police cars, sirens blaring, and through lots of foot traffic. I was nearing the Tenderloin, the best part of town to get mugged or killed, which made it a promising place to lay low. I could take a right on any of these streets, Jones or Turk or whichever, and get lost in the Tenderloin, hole up in one of the cheap hostels. It was still drizzling— perfect night for disappearing. Not for me. I had people to kill, money to make and Linda to save.

  I had an idea who might have killed the FBI agents, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. I called Siryoumoron to check my suspicions.

  “You, psychopath, why did you shoot the two FBI agents?” I asked, bluffing. “You know why,” the psyc ho laughed. “Give me the flash drive and we’re out of here.” These morons did it! “But we already have an arrangement, you idiot! Don’t we? We’re already working on you getting that stupid flash drive. What else do you want?”

  “I still don’t have it in my hand. I want it in my hand. Stop stalling.” “ No more senseless killings, you hear me? Or I swear you’ll never see the flash drive. I mean it. I’ll wash it down the toilet myself and then gut all your little cocksucker friends in front of you and make you watch. And then I’ll gut you. Clear?”

  “Fuck you,” Siryoumoron hung up on me. Was somebody in charge of these crazies? Were they complying with actual orders from their Command? I’ll kill them all, I’ll rootout thatscourge all the way

  up their command channels, I swearto God,ALL THE WAYUP! Fuming, I took a cab to Union Square.

  14

  Stretched out on the bed in my hotel room, I mauled the situation over in my mind. We, the ever-decreasing contingent of still cognizant officers and crew of the 5th Battalion, had been attempting to escape from this planet for five millennia. We needed the Guards’ spaceship. We had located it once in the Pyrenees hundreds of years ago, creating a brief but ferocious armed conflict, which unexpectedly prompted the Catalan War among the local hicks. Our crusade had nothing whatsoever to do with the locals. Goes to show how volatile this planet is—and always has been—a black powder keg of rampant psychosis waiting for the slightest spark.

  Our Pyrenees campaign was as futile as everything else we tried. The incorrigible locals, however, kept on hacking each other for nineteen more years, finally wiping a charming Roussillon Kingdom off the face of the Earth in 1659. Sorry, you guys. I felt bad about the whole thing.

  Earth and its people were definitely charming, in a juvenile delinquent kind of way, and I couldn’t wait to see how it all turned out, but come on! I wanted out of here so bad.

  About five thousand years ago, give or take a few, we landed some place in the Andes to set up a base for the main contingents of the Fifth Invasion Force. Our outfit’s full title for that reason was the Advance Battalion of the Fifth Invasion Force. In official communications, we were addressed as the A5th Battalion or A5B. Ages later, we started calling ourselves the 5th Battalion, but that was a misnomer. In any case, our mission was to establish and secure the base.

  Who knows why Baltizor Confederacy wanted this planet. It was all strictly irrelevant to me. As a gunnery sergeant, my interests in life rarely overlapped with those of the Command. A valorous confederate soldier to the core, I was almost as gluttonous, womanizing, hell raising and lazy as the next guy. I liked to think I was a little better than most since I was blessed with a daughter, Mia, my little angel. Her mother couldn’t stand me, which wasn’t unusual. No matter. I had a daughter when I came here. In every lifetime I always want to have a daughter. I usually strike out. I seldom live long enough to have a daughter. Dying young has an advantage of cutting down on illnesses and the suffering of old age.

  My assigned duty title at the time had a rather manly ring to it, I thought, Lancer Gun Commander. Girls liked it. We were assigned to the Second Surface Crawler; I had a turret with a Lancer gun under my command and a crew of two. We sure had fun firing that crazy thing at our training and demonstrations. The time expectancy to fully set up, fire the gun and destroy any target within range was thirty seconds. We were still honing it down to do it in under three minutes. Meanwhile—what can I say? The enemy would have to wait just a little bit longer to be blown to pieces by our Lancer gun.

  We only spent a few months on P-3, or Earth as we called it now, before we were instantaneously wiped out, all two thousand of us, including the added construction troops and eco contingents, in a rather gory but efficient manner.

  General Brell made an executive decision to set up camp higher up in the mountains but on a low spot, in a small valley surrounded by rock protrusions and grassy knolls. The intel data indicated that the planet was populated by technologically-undeveloped humanoids who had no advanced weaponry, communications, or social order to be of any danger to the mission. So Brell’s main concern was concealment. He did not expect any attack other than by ground forces armed with sticks and stones—as the absolute worst-case scenario. We were not even supposed to fight the locals; it was not that kind of an invasion. We just needed a safe base up in the hills.

  We all worked twelve-hour construction shifts building bunkers and digging tunnels. The work shifts were followed by four-hour guard, barracks or kitchen duty and the rest of the time was pretty much unassigned.

  At the time, I was madly in love with Zea, one of the female traffic coordinators from Signals. I had a hard-on for her the size of my Lancer gun. What indecent and reprehensible daydreams were induced by her cherubic lips and full breasts! My futile attempts to score with her in various indirect ways finally prompted me to approach her off-duty, brief her on my Lancer gun situation, and ask her point-blank if she wanted to make love up on the hill on the grass. She glared at me rather angrily. “Absolutely not! You’re a creep! I don’t want to hear about your hard-on! Stop stalking me! Go away! I’ll file a complaint, I swear!”

  A definite no, wasn’t it? Well, it wasn’t. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there—on both sides of the ramparts. Their eyes tell the story. “Oh, I’m really sorry, Zea, didn’t mean to offend you.” And I honestly didn’t. Why would I? I liked her a lot. Her eyes softened. “I just really wanted to kiss your lips. For a long time.” Her eyes softening and misting over. “A very long time… and hug you and then kiss you all over… your other lips.” Her stare hardening. Back-paddle fast. “But really, I like you a whole lot and wanted to hold you close and kiss you tenderly, if you’d let me.”

  She said yes.

  War is Hell, I always say, but it has its moments.

  We never made it to the hills. Walking away from the Base, holding hands, and conversing amicably, we were suddenly hit by a wave of pain, utterly unreal in its intensity. A deafening, grinding sound drowned our cries of agony. I momentarily felt a rapid vibration, akin to an electric shock, that started shredding my body, pulverizing it within seconds into pink mist. I bailed out of the body dizzy, blind and disoriented after the first few instances of pain.

  Brutal. Mere memories of that death were torturous. Electromagnetic vibe machines, the disgusting indiscriminate weapon, pulverized everything alive and caused serious harm and birth defects well beyond the range perimeter. Genetic mutations in humans and animals prompted a complete ban on these weapons by the galactic community, although they were still used by warring sides if cornered or whenever they believed they could get away with it, despite the threat of a death sentence. The offending side’s only savior in such cases was complete annihilation of all witnesses and obliteration of any remains and residues.

  G
etting the place aired out to oxidize the residues, some sun radiation and rain, would effectively destroy any physical evidence within a few weeks. The people, of course, the actual witnesses, were indestructible. There is no way to eliminate the witnesses. Ever. But they could possibly be made to forget—difficulties in accomplishing that end notwithstanding.

  The annihilation of the battalion derailed the entire invasion. Somebody had to hang for this. The obvious choice was our Commanding Officer, General Brell, who was now a wanted criminal. Military Police had been hunting him down ever since. We had an MP contingent assigned to our battalion.

  Ancient history. Who cares now?

  15 Linda called, rattled with all the excitement. Eugene apparently had her picked up by three large, pissed-off men. They made her strip naked and change all her clothing, including underwear, in some alley, drove her to some house blindfolded and locked her up. Needless to say, she was not in a good mood. She was currently being guarded by armed men—from me as much as anybody else, a little insurance that I didn’t skip town with the two mils.

  “Do you know where you’re being held?” I asked. “No idea,” she replied with a sigh. Obviously. “But you should see the sweat suit these idiots got me. Atrocious! And the underwear is three sizes too big. I feel like a homeless person.”