by Lea Tassie
The young man slowly shifted his gaze from Dave's face to his feet and quietly said. "I don't wear socks; my feet are bare."
Dave was stunned, "Holy shit, you speak English?"
In Dave's ear was a small two-way transmitter, and on the other end was a very excited Sergeant York, trying to ask dozens of intelligent questions all at once. To Dave, each question seemed to use bigger and bigger, more complex words. "I… wait… slow down damn it… I'll get to that in a sec… no… I did… ah, hell," said Dave to the ear piece as the young man wearing white stared in confusion. Dave called Mac over. Mac hesitated, looked at Charger, and then reluctantly moved over to Dave's side. Dave pulled the ear piece from his ear and stuck it in Mac's long and furry pointed ear. He could just make out York saying, "Don't you remove that transmitter, don't, not in Mac, damn it, Dave!"
Mac growled, then sighed, then looked at Charger and whimpered, raising a hand to remove the ear piece. Charger gave Mac a stern look and the Lycan hunched down.
"So you understand English? That's a good start. Can you tell me why you're here?" Dave cautiously asked the young man.
"My name is Nigel. I am one of the group that broke away from Earth. We took the cargo ship and flew here to build a paradise, which you are now destroying. Please stop."
It was like having a conversation with a six-year-old child, Dave thought. The young man seemed so innocent. "Can you come to our camp and explain this to my commanding officer?" Dave asked as he motioned with his hands in a sweeping direction back toward the military encampment placed at the city gates.
"I will if you stop your hostilities," replied Nigel.
Pulling the ear piece from Mac and cleaning it on his pants, Dave said to Nigel as he placed the transmitter back in his own ear. "I can guarantee that if you accompany me, we will not act aggressively toward your people."
"May I bring our leader to your camp too?" asked Nigel.
"We would be honored," Dave replied.
The small group returned to face a waiting York and his command. Dave and Mac were out front, followed by Nigel and the Tasker leader, who was easily the same size as a heavy battle tank, with Charger bringing up the rear. Cameras were placed all around, sending information up to the orbiting command ships, which then transmitted the results to Earth.
As the Tasker walked, it did not make sounds like metal in motion but instead a soft buzzing. Which, considering its size, was quite remarkable. This particular Tasker was far bigger than any the command had faced before, and lacked the large wings they usually sported. The coloring was also very different. Instead of bright, vibrant blues or greens, this one was jet black and, as it walked past the troops and cameras, seemed to sway in an almost threatening manner.
In order to reduce any appearance of hostility, only a small group of soldiers attended the commanders and the Tasker with his aide, Nigel. A large monitor transmitting information to the command ship was set up at the meeting, which went on well into the night. The Tasker, speaking through Nigel's transmitter, described their past and the philosophy behind the decision to occupy this world. There were many bitter words exchanged regarding the loss of so much life, but Sergeant York did an amazing job of preventing the words from escalating into hostility. He was truly the best and brightest mind there that night.
Most of the soldiers and Hyborgs had been placed at key points around the base to ensure the opponents didn't try to attack them during peace talks. Thus, when the blinding flash of light from the center of the camp erupted, followed by a thunderous roar and a destructive shockwave, only a few survived.
In the moments following the destruction, Dave and his squad positioned themselves on the southern perimeter, or basically the back side of the camp. An eternity of confusion passed as soldiers scrambled to regain their senses and tried to determine what had happened. Dead and wounded littered the area everywhere. Then gunfire erupted as soldiers began firing weapons at the countless Taskers bearing down upon their positions.
Bill helped his brother, Dave, back to his feet as Dave began shouting out orders to define a defensive position. In the ensuing chaos, only the Hyborgs seemed unaffected. Mac and Jill could be seen tearing apart advancing Taskers, followed closely by Charger and his flashing weapons of destruction.
There ensued five days of retreating and hiding from the Taskers, five days of patching broken soldiers and gathering troops into a fighting force. Five days of dirt smells, rain and mud, accompanied by the fear of falling asleep and being killed in the night. Five days of moving away from the main Tasker city, high up into the hills, in an attempt to reach a mother ship deliberately brought to land on the planet to act as a base to hole up in. Five days of hell, and finally the handful of human survivors reached the crashed mother ship thankful for the many Hyborgs that kept them safe.
"We have determined that the black Tasker leader was obviously the bomb that detonated in camp, killing almost everyone there," the captain of the crashed ship said to Dave, now the highest ranking surviving soldier. "You have been promoted to full sergeant, if that means anything to you," the captain continued. "When you're ready, we have a video of the meeting, and the events that happened up to the explosion for you to review."
The captain left the medical room where Dave and his squad were being patched up and breathing air recycled through the mother ship's filters to prevent any ill effects from New Eden's atmosphere. They did not have the luxury of time to heal; the Taskers were constantly scratching and tearing at the hull of the ship, hoping to rid this world of the invading humans. So, within hours of their arrival, Dave had a new command of thirty hyborgs and thirteen human soldiers gathered on the flight deck of the ship.
The ship's crew were added to the ranks of Dave's command, bringing the total of humans up to eighty. Cooks, medics, and mechanics, the lot, even members of the command structure were melded into Dave's ranks. They watched as the main monitor revealed what had happened, the words that were exchanged, then the blinding light.
"Well, that's it, you have now all seen what we face: an enemy with no regard for life, an enemy that perceives us as the invaders," the captain of the ship said from the podium next to the monitor. "We have learned that the Mavens from Earth, the ones we built to help in the back engineering of the alien crafts on Earth, are indeed the ones that have colonized this world, they are indeed the group who stole the cargo ship and came here. We are facing our own kind here, a kind that is twisted and full of hate and vengeance toward our forefathers."
"I believe we have no business being here, but that is not for me to decide. Our orders are clear: we take this world, we stop this insanity, and then we try to make amends for our transgressions. We trust in God that we are doing the right thing here, for if there is to be peace, we must bring this fighting to a stop. I cannot believe that any human, Maven or not, would want God's only creation destroyed. We must find those who believe as we do, and support them. Or, God willing, destroy all those here who want a world based on some form of communist structure."
The captain stepped down from the podium and retreated into the ready room to make seemingly impossible plans with Dave for the conquest of New Eden.
Chapter 4 The Tasker massacre
"New Eden! It's anything but!" Bill snarled to Foster and Jimmy. "If you ask me, I think we should have just bombed the whole place back to the Stone Age."
"Yeah," Jimmy replied.
"Don't know which big brass dreamed up this battle strategy, but I'm guessing he did it from some office," Bill growled, waving his arms theatrically.
"Hell, yeah," Jimmy said.
"Wow, Jimmy, that time you managed to string two words together," Bill said. "Yeah." Jimmy looked puzzled.
Charger walked over to the group, followed closely by Mac and Jill. As he approached, the three instantly stopped talking and turned to face them. "I always have that effect on people," Charger grumbled.
Sergeant Dave Kent joined the group moments later and Bill
asked, "What's the word, bro? Do we stay or do we go?"
"We go," Dave said, his tone serious. "The plan is to carpet bomb a path through the forest all the way to the smaller city to the west. Intelligence figures that's where the command center for the bugs is located. We're going to ride just behind the bombardment as it travels. Go too fast and we get whacked; go too slow and we get mobbed by whatever bugs are still moving."
"That rocks!" Bill laughed. He was in a much better mood now.
"Don't be an ass, Bill," Dave said as he placed his hand on his brother's shoulder. "This won't be a cake walk. Both the Intrepid and the Eisenhower will be bombing blind. Crashing this ship means that the ships still in orbit are working with less than effective digital resolution equipment."
"So, situation normal then?" Bill was still smiling.
Everyone on the ship had been ordered to gather at the center. Barriers had been placed all around in preparation for a bombing from orbit in an attempt to kill as many Taskers on the outer hull as possible. This would ensure that the soldiers exiting the craft had a fighting chance to move on their chosen target unmolested.
What followed was pure pandemonium. Huge sections of the outer hull were destroyed as excited communication officers relayed information to the orbiting cruisers. Any Tasker within the bombing area was vaporized instantly, as was much of the crashed ship, but the soldiers survived. They emerged unscathed and ready for battle, moving rapidly. The eighty humans rushed to load their gear on transports so they could stay just behind the orbital bombardment now clearing a path to the western city.
After a short while, the Taskers seemed to catch on to what the humans were doing and, as was expected, they flooded the area with their mechanical bodies in a haphazard fashion, trying to block the human advance. This merely led to many thousands of Taskers cramming the path the orbital bombardment was taking. It left only huge craters and broken bodies with scorched vegetation for the troops to bump and rumble over in their transports.
The western city was several miles from the space ship, and the comments heard from the transport drivers summed up the feelings of most humans in the group. They were mortified at the devastation of so many Taskers, whose bodies covered the area. They were also confused by the tactics these bugs employed.
The Taskers clearly had a vast intellect, capable of developing magnificent cities with a variety of technologies, but they fought with a hive-like mentality, rather than with a strategic one. The eighty human soldiers moved almost unmolested to the western city as the Taskers fell by the wayside and, after a few hours, they reached the very heart of the small capital. Stopping their transports at the entrance to a large central complex, the human army encircled their vehicles much like the settlers did with covered wagons in the American past when confronted by Indians. Before they could leave the vehicles to assault the building, they spent a few hours firing thousands of rounds at advancing Taskers, as the two orbital cruisers continued heavy bombardment of the city from orbit.
"So did this plan include us having ammunition when we storm this place, or are we supposed to gather sticks from the forest and whittle them into spears?" Bill yelled to Dave over the deafening gun fire.
"Shut it, you brat, we're on this," Dave yelled back, as he fired his guns at another advancing bunch of Taskers.
It took some time before the Taskers dwindled in number and, when things had become more manageable, new orders were given. Twenty Hyborgs and twelve humans blasted the doors to the complex open and poured into the building, leaving the remaining soldiers in the transports to hold the ground.
"Son of a bitch!" said Foster to Jimmy as he entered the building and stared in amazement at the complexity of the interior. "Have you ever seen anything like this, even in the movies?"
"Yup, once. There was this time, back in Oklahoma," Jimmy said, but was suddenly silenced by a slap to the back of his head from Dave as he moved past.
"Shut it, we are here to fight, not sightsee!" Dave snapped.
"Has he become more of an ass, now he has rank, or is it just me?" Foster asked Jimmy quietly.
"Well, I think…" Jimmy's reply was interrupted by a slap to the back of his head from Charger, who was walking past.
Charger scowled and the two of them fell in line immediately.
What greeted the human army as they entered the building was magnificent. Crystal pillars towered in a glistening white room, with vibrant red and blue vertical bands of light emanating from the walls at various points. The ceiling was solid, but reflected the stars in space like a gigantic monitor attached to a camera in orbit. There, floating above the planet were the cruisers, clearly visible and firing ordinance down on the surface below. A band of thick yellow smoke about five inches high hung over the floor, parting for the soldiers then rejoining behind them. The room made a distinct humming sound, with distant clicks echoing off the walls at different locations, followed by an odd breathing sound every now and then. The air was heavy and smelled like vinegar, with a noticeable taste of musk. From random points in the room, small objects, like glowing balls of lightning, shot past the soldiers and disappeared into the walls, causing a flurry of bullets.
"Hold your fire!" Dave ordered the nervous humans.
The Hyborgs paid little attention to the perceived threat, instead they seemed almost hypnotized by the room. All but Charger. He leaned down to Dave and placed a large hand on his shoulder, stopping his movement. "Not good!" was all he said, as he motioned to Dave to look more closely at the other Hyborgs. It was true, the other Hyborgs were not moving, and they seemed almost pinned to the spot where they stood, gazing intently at the glittering lights.
"Ah, nuts! You, and you!" Dave snapped to a couple of humans. "Get these Hyborgs out of here! Put them on the line and get me the rest of the humans, pronto!"
This was only the first room they had entered and, vast as it was, the following rooms might prove to be even more of a problem to the Hyborgs, so using humans was the only recourse. Even Charger willingly left the room, though he was less affected than the others. Dave's humans swelled from twelve to twenty. It was all he could do.
They advanced in pairs from the first huge room to a narrow hallway angling downward, keeping a small distance between the pairs. Dave and Bill were in the lead, followed by Foster and Jimmy, who were followed by the other groups.
The second room, at the bottom of the descending hallway, was much different. The ceiling was only five feet above the floor, but the room seemed to go on forever. Seeing the other side was impossible.
"So, which way, bro?" asked Bill.
"How the hell should I know?" Dave replied. He divided his small force into three groups, each taking a different direction, with orders to travel for no more than five minutes in each direction. At that point, they would stop and radio what they could see, if anything, in this vast space. The ceiling looked like the smooth reddish paving stone that one might see on a residential sidewalk. The floor was dirty gray soil.
After exactly five minutes of travel, the groups stopped and started radioing what they saw. Dave's group had traveled straight forward from where they first entered the low room, and could still see no end in sight, even using digital magnification. The other two groups reported the same, and it was decided they would regroup at the entrance to decide the next course of action.
Dave's group met up with the second group, but the third one did not appear. Frantic radio calls elicited no answer and, since there was no sound of gunfire or other chaos, the two groups decided to find the missing soldiers and discover what had happened.
They got their answer quickly. On the gray soil lay soldiers' gear and blood. Panic swept the group. There were no signs of a fight; the soldiers were simply gone.
"Keep it together, people," said Dave firmly. "Circle up. The only way this could happen is from the ground. I want lines of fire here, and here." Dave pointed outward. "We move back to the entrance, but we move slowly, and we stay close. I
don't want anybody shooting one of us, so check your fire."
The group moved safely back to the room's entrance without incident. It seemed that large groups were less vulnerable then small ones. "Okay, this time we move with shock blasts leading. I want protective shields set up in front of us," Dave said quietly to the group. "Something is down here, and my guess is it might be the bugs' boss."
Shock blasts were just what they sounded like: a small explosive device that a soldier would throw out ahead of the group. The device would orient itself so that the concussive blast would be downward. The explosion did not leave a crater, but instead sent a wave of energy penetrating deep into the ground, stunning or killing anything below the surface to about twenty feet in depth.
With small blast shields unfolded at the ready, the group began advancing across the room, with Dave leading. "Whatever's down there can't be that big. The tunnel entrance has to limit its size," Dave said confidently.
"Hell, that's good to know! Isn't that good to know?" Bill said to Foster in his usual snarky manner. "I feel better knowing that. I don't know about you, but that info just makes me feel so much safer."
"Shut up, idiot," Dave said. "Sometimes, little brother…" Suddenly a thrown blaster sent a cloud of choking gray dust into the air and a large blood-red metallic Tasker, similar in size to the Black Tasker seen earlier, rose out of the ground.
"That's not small!" Bill said, as he started firing his weapon at the thing. The group began firing everything they had at this Tasker as it jerked and rolled from the impact of the gun shots. The soldiers moved apart, forming a semicircle and emptying round after round at this blood-red Tasker. It twisted and lashed out, trying to reach one of the group, but the soldiers kept firing and moving around, making it impossible for the shattering mass of metal to reach any vulnerable soldier. Its massive limbs would hit the occasional shield, sending a soldier tumbling backward in the confining space, but the remaining members would lock-step and protect the fallen until balance could be regained.
