by Michael Ryan
Dinner tonight? So, we can talk?
I do still love you. I’ve admitted that to myself,
Dale
Dale re-read his email twice.
He hit send.
The email bounced.
Error: Address not in the system.
Dale stared at the screen.
Ërin, are you there?
Yes, Dale. I never left you.
What happened?
I can’t tell you.
Can’t or won’t?
I can’t, I don’t know. She’s out of the system.
How is that possible?
She could have transferred to a different ship. The communication system only works on the ship you’re in during missions on planet, sorry.
Why would she do that?
Now you’re asking me to interpret human behavior. Female human behavior. Sorry, I can’t do that either.
Shit.
You’d better contact command. If they find out you’re carrying that jewel…
You’re right.
Dale sent an email to Captain Redding and requested a meeting with command, but he didn’t tell her what he wanted, only that it was important.
He entered their conference room after noticing that a new corporal sat at the desk where Nancy, the spy, used to occupy. He didn’t bother to comment. He didn’t care, and he didn’t want to know.
“Sit, Corporal,” Captain Kelvão Aquino said. “I assume this is vitally important?”
“Give him a chance,” Captain Julia Redding said. “He’s the only survivor of his platoon’s mission. I’m sure he has something important to tell us, besides the fact that he’s lovesick and misses his girlfriend.”
“Sir?” Dale looked at her.
“Enough breaking his balls, Julia, honestly. Let’s hear your report, Dale,” Captain David Beck said.
Dale looked at the three captains.
Captain Aquino eyed him like he was a bug he wanted to squash. Beck had an impatient look on his face, but the beautiful redhead smiled, winked at him when his eyes met hers, and said, “go on.”
“I’ll just show you,” Dale said.
He removed the Jewel of Sartozel and set it on the table.
+20,000XP
Congratulations! You’ve gained +10% increase in Stamina capacity.
Congratulations! You’ve reached Level 12
Congratulations! You’ve qualified for advancement to the rank of sergeant.
“Holy Shit!” Redding said. She reached out and picked up the stone, which still had traces of dirt and mud on it.
“Okay, Dale. Talk,” Captain Beck said. “Let’s hear the story.”
Dale told the officers the entire tale, to the best of his ability. Dale told them everything except for the current personal feelings he held for Amy and the returned email. He didn’t want to pick a scab.
When he finished speaking, Captain Beck told him that he’d earned the right to take leave.
“You want to go spend some time in the real world?”
“Are you serious, sir?” Dale asked.
“I shit you not.”
“Okay.”
“Welcome to the UEDA Training Facility Ohio Station. You’ll find transportation in…”
Dale ignored the rest of the announcements. They were mostly designed for new recruits and volunteers, and besides he knew where to go. It felt strange to be back.
He caught a train to Cincinnati and went home, arriving late at night.
“Get some sleep, son,” his father said, “we’ll talk in the morning.”
Bright and early, Dale walked into the kitchen. His parents were up early, even though it was a Saturday and they were both home from work. His little brother was watching old-fashioned cartoons—The Jetsons. A show with robotic maids and flying cars.
At least Murray Chapman got something right, he thought, thinking of Rhith Hov-jets. Looking at the sink full of dirty dishes, he wished they had a robotic maid.
“There’s coffee, son,” his mother said. “You don’t look like you got enough sleep.”
“I’m fine, mom.”
Dale poured himself a cup of coffee.
He opened the pantry and picked up a box of Captain Crunch. It was empty.
“Sh—”
“Dale?” His mother glanced up from her e-reader.
“Nothing. Sorry.” Dale looked at his brother, who was completely engaged in his television show.
“Riiigt Roarge!” a talking dog said.
Dale wished he had a talking dog, too.
“Actually, I wish I had a talking puppy,” he said half to himself.
“Why’s that son?”
“Do you know how many chicks I could pull with a talking puppy?”
His little brother had a half-eaten bowl of cereal sitting on the coffee table.
Dale settled for a bowl of granola instead.
When he finished, he walked towards the stairs, stopped, looked at his mother, and then back at the sink. He returned to the kitchen, rinsed his bowl along with the other dishes, and put them in the dishwasher.
At his computer, Dale searched message boards and chat rooms for answers to a question burning in his mind.
Was Rohini Talargo an NPC?
Or was her smile real, and a foreshadowing of his next adventure?
Thanks for reading World War VR.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Turn the page to read an excerpt from The Tetra War
Excerpt from
The Tetra War
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Ryan. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
Murder is forbidden; therefore Tedesconian murderers are punished unless they kill massive numbers to the sound of prayers.
~ Judge Telloc Hallibone
November 17, 2299 Human Common Era
Arctic DMZ, Earth
I’ve always hated escort missions.
Being attached to an eccentric team of researchers headed into the Arctic Demilitarized Zone seemed like easy duty when I first received my new assignment. Command often made decisions or gave orders that befuddled troopers and grunts, but I’d never heard of mixing regular infantry with Specialized Drop Infantry until I was notified I was headed north.
In spite of my reservations, I was a soldier with a job, and of course, I did it. Admittedly, my pride had been wounded – I’m SDI, and SDI aren’t regular army. We’re an elite force that carries enough integrated hardware on our backs to overthrow a small country. Specialized training and nanogear isn’t cheap, so having the Blue Squad, Fourth Platoon, Delta Company of the Seventeenth Regiment babysit scientists in the DMZ seemed at the time a waste of resources.
But seemingly insignificant international disagreements over trade routes, tariff rates, or the laws regarding the collection and sale of Amazonian aquarium fish could spark a war.
So I imagined Command had their reasons.
I liked my new platoon leader well enough. Lieutenant Williamsburg was an Earth-born Guritain with a surname that undoubtedly had resulted in many brawls as he grew up.
As a mixed-blood earthling who was a quarter Guritain I’d faced a few of those myself, but I’ll say this about putting on a uniform: the distinctions between human and purvast, whether born on Earth or Purvas, turn to dust the moment you kill your first Tedesconian.
No Teds were expected in the DZ when we began our trek, but the cold was a merciless enemy, and anyone who’s ever set foot in a recruiting station knows how much reliance to put on military intelligence. A significant number of human and purvast soldiers died as a result of the winter’s fury long before Tedesconian forces landed in the demilitarized zone, shattering the murmurings of peace talks.
On day one of our mission, our strange platoon had a full complement of soldiers. With a mix of humans and purvasts, we had six TCI-Armored infantry, twenty non-armored soldiers, and eight scientists. By the end of day twelve, we’d been reduced to half that number, with most of o
ur losses caused by a combination of falls and extreme cold.
We’d also lost a scientist to a polar bear.
Any soldier who’s spent time in the field knows that nature can be as much of a killer as any army.
The All-Troops Sat-Comm News & Messages download didn’t arrive as usual on day thirteen. On day fourteen, our platoon leader announced we were deaf, dumb, and blind to the rest of the world. Our primary mission changed from research to survival.
On day fifteen, our point walked into an ambush.
~~~
“Who the hell’s attacking us?” someone shouted over the all-platoon comm line. Standard procedure in the frozen wasteland was to use a comm line for all tactical communication even if the other parties were standing next to you.
“Keep the comm clear of chitchat, goddammit,” Lieutenant Williamsburg ordered. “Purple leader, I need a sit-rep.”
“Sir, Purple is off-line,” one of the infantry troops announced.
The lieutenant greeted the news with an incredulous pause. “The entire squad?”
“This is Private Avery Ford, sir,” I said, breaking into the communication, my words distorted by my ragged breathing. “They’re buried under ice, sir.”
“That doesn’t explain why they’re all dead,” the lieutenant snapped, clearly exasperated.
“No, sir. HE-89s killed them.”
“Say again?”
I paused. “They’re using Tedesconian hardware, sir.”
“Jesus Christ, Avery,” he blurted, his tone dejected.
A sense of dread washed over me. “Sir?”
Another long pause.
When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “Avery, do your best to keep the IQs alive.” After a moment of silence, he muttered something unintelligible. The lieutenant was one of those who believed decades of war between the Gurts and Teds was about to end.
His optimism was misplaced.
~~~
Two hours earlier, at first contact, we’d driven the transport into a small ravine and buried it, with the six surviving scientists aboard, under snow. A research transport wasn’t armored, so we’d gone with natural camouflage as a defense. The fifteen remaining soldiers were spread out over roughly a square kilometer.
We were fighting an unknown enemy in the middle of the most treacherous terrain on Earth.
Because we were escorting a scientific research team into neutral territory, we weren’t carrying the usual complement of missiles, rail-guns, mines, and centrifugal machine guns.
A TCI-Armor suit is versatile and compact. On routine ops I’d normally carry my favorite combination of kinetic-round missiles, high-explosive mini-grenades, and a lightweight mini-rail capable of lobbing a plethora of ordnances.
I’d often wondered why Tedesconian hardware and ammo was generally interchangeable with Gurt weaponry, but when I had lunch with a stock trader who was trying to convince me to put my military paycheck into a fund he managed, my worldview changed. We were on opposing sides of a war, but the arms manufacturers supplied both sides. Same as it ever was.
My display flashed red in warning.
<
A missile had locked on my heat signature, leaving me scant seconds to react.
I was equipped with a standard-issue Gauss assault rifle, a few percussion grenades, and a dozen flares – nothing that would serve as a countermeasure against a missile. I also had a flamer, which I freed and used to torch a hole in the ice just above my right shoulder. When it was five feet deep, I set off a flare and tossed it into the opening.
<
I waited, standing by the opening, and counted, fighting to remain calm.
Four seconds doesn’t sound long, but believe me, when your expected lifespan is measured at four point one, time slows to a crawl.
TCI-Armor can’t withstand a direct hit from a high-explosive device as large as the HE-89, but it can survive a near miss – or a near hit, depending on your perspective. I was down to an eighth of a second when I hit the deck. The missile’s internal tracking system noticed. However, physics are physics, and its momentum worked against it.
I believe its internal sensors did everything they could to alter course, but its speed prevented it from doing so. Perhaps the missile mistook the glacier wall for the sky and adjusted its flight to attempt a second run; maybe it confused the flare for my heat signature, as I’d hoped when I’d taken a chance with a desperate gambit.
To this day I can’t be sure.
All I know is that at the last possible moment, the missile adjusted and slammed into the frozen wall above me. The resulting explosion caused an avalanche of glacier ice to rain down on me, knocking me flat on my back and burying me so thoroughly I was in near total darkness. I lay there trying to catch my breath, and after several incredulous seconds, I performed a damage assessment, which consisted of blinking away shock, flexing my fingers, and questioning my sanity for being in this frozen wasteland.
~~~
“I thought you were a goner,” said PFC-5 Juliana Toleman, my partner, over our person-to-person comm line. She and I had been paired together at our first duty station straight out of TCI-Armor school. I was young and idealistic at the time and thought we’d be together forever.
“Still here,” I replied with an uncomfortable grunt. I took several hesitant steps into a small ravine of ice and sent up a scout drone. “Sit-rep?” I asked her.
“Nothing to report,” she answered.
“Nobody knows who–”
The lieutenant broke in over the all-platoon comm line. “Any of you boots still breathing?”
The others checked in. There were only four of us left.
The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Blue Squad Actual, do you have an enemy contact report that’ll make me happy?”
“Sir, we got ’em,” my squad leader, Sergeant Daniels, answered.
“Good.”
“At great cost,” Daniels added.
“That’s why we make the big bucks, Sergeant.”
“Sir.”
“Let’s pick up the IQs and unwind this disgraceful mess.”
“The popsicles, sir?” Daniels asked.
“Leave ’em for now,” the lieutenant answered. “Free cryogenics.”
Sergeant Daniels remained silent. Each of us dealt differently with casualties; some used crass humor, others spoke in spiritual niceties, and many of us acted as if the dead didn’t exist.
The lieutenant filled the uncomfortable silence with a gruff bark. “Move your asses. The talent might still be alive.”
~~~
The science team was right where we’d left them.
We dug them out.
“What the hell happened out there?” asked Dr. Spencer, one of the scientists.
“I wish I knew,” the lieutenant answered.
Spencer’s tone barely disguised his surprise. “How can you not?”
“No sat-comm, Doc. No comm up or down. I can’t even tell you for sure who attacked.”
“Terrorists,” another scientist exclaimed. “Has to be.”
“That would make them an extremely well-financed terrorist group,” Sergeant Daniels said. “We were ambushed by armored drop troops with Tedescon–”
The lieutenant cut him off. “That’s enough, Sergeant.”
“I find it hard to believe a terrorist group would be this well-equipped,” another scientist, a female purvast, said in a hushed tone. “Maybe the war’s escalated, and this is no longer a neutral zone?”
“Maybe,” the lieutenant snapped. “But speculating won’t keep us alive. Troops, I want everything secured and ready to go in five minutes. Unless you’re dead, you will stay on mission. Is that understood?”
We replied in unison, “Yes, sir.”
The science team exchanged puzzled looks, but if any of the researchers had objections, they kept them to themselves.
After what we referred to as the
Tuesday Massacre, we were gifted with decent conditions and managed to travel for two days without incident.
On the third day, the weather shifted. A cold front moved in with startling speed and caught us by surprise. Under cover of a pitch-black night, a powerful blizzard buffeted us in an open stretch. With no place to escape the storm’s fury, we lost one of our two transports, as well as a scientist who’d tried to stop it from falling into a crevice. Our loss – magnified by the fact that most of our food and water went missing with the transport – forced us to travel at a slower rate and hunt polar bears for food. After several botched attempts, we downed a gigantic male and dined on the fatty slabs of protein at every meal.
All these years later, the thought of eating the gamey meat still triggers a gag reflex.
On day twenty-two we entered a canyon of ice that stretched deep into the glacier. As we made our way into the gorge, sheer walls of crystalline white towered above us, blocking any warmth from the sun and ensuring that even during the few hours of daylight we remained cloaked in shadow.
~~~
“Lieutenant, sir?” I relayed over a military-only channel.
“Go ahead, Avery,” he replied. The young louie had discarded military protocol since the storm – a disconcerting sign to me, but one I’d chosen not to comment about. “But make it quick.”
“We’re being hunted.”
A pause. “Damn. A hungry bear?”
“Looks that way, sir.” The comm hissed, and the lieutenant didn’t say anything.
“Sir?” I pressed.
“SAB, Avery. We might need the meat.”
“Sir,” I said, acknowledging the command.
SAB – same as before – meant falling back with Juliana. I held up a hand to indicate that we’d be hanging back from the rest of the column.
“Another bear?” she asked over our personal comm line.
“Think of it as a mobile buffet coming our way,” I answered.
We scooped up fresh snow and created a mound we could use for cover, and hurriedly set up blinds, hers thirty meters behind mine and closer to the far canyon wall. Camouflage requirements were simple in the demilitarized zone, where everything was various shades of white. Using the TCI-Armor’s LBCS for camouflage effect wasn’t worth the energy suck; you never knew when an extra hour of battery life would make the difference between mission success and freezing to death, trapped inside an armored coffin.
