by Michael Ryan
Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me behind the group. Callie, Mallsin, and Abrel came tumbling behind me.
I linked into the direct comm of the soldier who’d dragged me to safety. “Who’s in charge here?” I demanded.
“No idea,” he said.
“I think the enemy,” said one of the other troops.
“Our PL is smoked,” said the third.
My screen identified them as all corporals. “I’m taking you into my squad,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” they replied as one. Although I wasn’t an officer, my authority as acting platoon leader gave me the temporary rank of lieutenant until another officer took charge, which couldn’t happen fast enough as far as I was concerned. I switched to a private comm and asked Abrel for his opinion.
“Everyone runs out of ammunition eventually,” he said.
I returned to the squad comm. “Okay. Let’s fire two missiles each at the most likely source of that blinding light. If we can knock them out, we can use night vision and heat maps.”
“HE missiles, sir?” one of the corporals asked. I could sense his anxiety.
“Yes. You take the far right. Your buddies the center and left,” I ordered.
I switched to the private comm. “Callie, you think we could set up the CFMG?”
“I’m not sure I could target anything.”
“But we could try, right?”
“Sure.”
I relayed my plan to Abrel and Mallsin. The centrifugal machine gun was ready in less than a minute.
“Fire another round of missiles,” I ordered the corporals.
The four of us joined them. I targeted a laser and exposed a drone of unknown design. I didn’t stop the machine from continuing its work, but at least I’d gotten a glimpse of what we were up against. Another two self-destructs echoed from farther in the cavernous vault, which I’d decided must have been a warehouse of some kind.
“I got one, sir!” the first corporal shouted. “Look!”
Sure enough, a drone at the far end of the warehouse was billowing smoke.
“What’d you do?”
“Kinetic round aimed a second ahead of where it actually was,” he said proudly.
“Fantastic,” I said. “See if you can get your targeting transmitted to your buddies.” I paused. “Abrel, you and Mallsin switch to kinetic rounds, and don’t stop firing until you’re out.”
“You got it,” he answered.
I switched back to private with Callie. “Okay, my guess is that nobody leaves a warehouse completely under the control of drones and auto-sequences. Something sentient is down here. I want to be ready with the CFMG when they show up.”
“And targeting?”
“On the fly,” I answered. I thought for a moment. “You have another idea?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What is–”
A fireball lit up the room and a shock wave knocked us to the ground; then the ceiling collapsed. For the second time in a few days, I found myself buried in tons of dirt and rubble.
Unable to communicate, I began the slow process of digging myself to the surface through the darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.
~ William Wilberforce
It only took an hour to climb out of the destroyed subterranean structure. The moon cast an eerie silver pall over all the newly exposed earth. Callie, Abrel, Mallsin, and the three corporals made it out in roughly the same time as I managed. The seven of us searched for other survivors of the blast and eventually found thirteen.
“We’re in a massive crater, Avery,” Callie said, pointing out the obvious.
“I see that.”
“There were families here. Children.”
“I know,” I said. I knew about losing children. We hiked to the rim. We were surrounded by at least a dozen craters; the city had been destroyed, and there was not a living thing in sight. I tried to fathom why Command had employed such catastrophic measures, and what the reasons could be for leveling an entire city.
I wondered if they’d expected us to survive.
“Avery,” Abrel said to me in a private comm, “you’re ranking. You’re a field captain, sir. It’s up to you to make a decision on what to do next.”
It was still dark. I needed to set up comm, but had to be cautious about drawing enemy fire to our location, which I would if there were any enemies in the vicinity waiting for the move.
“You’re my second, Callie,” I said to her. “Establish a perimeter and scan for threats.”
“Sir,” she said.
After twenty minutes I felt confident enough of our isolation to reach out to Command.
I was juggled around for half an hour.
“Explain who you are again?” a frustrated major said.
“This is Delta Company out of the Fifth Battalion, sir,” I said slowly. “I’m acting captain, sir. We’ve faced heavy losses.”
“And you say you’re Master Sergeant Avery Ford, from…hold one, Sergeant.”
I held five.
“Okay, my intel says you’re on patrol with Delta Company, Urban Assault. You’re out in…hell, you’re in the middle of nowhere. What happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, sir.”
“Okay, this is above my pay grade. I’m going to have to get back to you.”
“Sir,” I said, “orders in the meantime?”
“What was your last standing?”
“We were seeking out insurgency groups, sir.”
“Well, carry on, son. I’ll get back to you in a day or two.”
“A day or two, sir?”
“You’re not currently under fire?”
“No, sir,” I admitted.
“And you’re all suited up?”
“Sir.”
“Then I don’t see the problem. You’re the acting captain of Delta Company. Do your job.”
“Sir.”
He ended the communication. I wanted to kick something.
“Listen up,” I announced on the all-company comm. “I’ve been instructed as acting captain to carry on our mission. What that means is that we need to do concentric sweeps. I’m going to say go out a hundred and fifty clicks, just to be safe. Record, stamp, file with me. Assuming there’s no enemy contact, when you’re finished, we’ll set up a sleep schedule. I know everyone’s tired, but let’s not leave any areas unchecked.”
I sent out a drone and watched the video feed on my display screen as the landscape passed beneath it: nothing but shrubs, small trees, rocks, and a small road. I followed the dirt strip for eight kilometers until it ended abruptly at a small stream.
Nothing.
My hope for an uneventful day or two until someone arrived to collect us was shattered by a call over the all-company comm. “Contact!”
“Transfer image,” I commanded.
The drone was circling a group of four armored fighters moving swiftly across the plain to our southeast. A streak of white heat trailed a missile that struck the drone and ended the video feed, but we had a location. We also had a lot more drones.
“Move it,” I ordered. “I want a good click between each of you as we move our line after the enemy.”
We fanned out. Our net spread roughly twenty clicks, and between our sweep and drone coverage, I felt confident the four escaping fighters couldn’t evade us. “Abrel, I want you in charge of the drone coverage. Stay just…” I hesitated. “Sorry.”
“Sir,” he said, acknowledging my order and ignoring my apology.
He knew how to do his job. The last thing any company needs is a temporary commanding officer micromanaging tasks they all know how to accomplish.
He sent me a private comm. “Avery, don’t get anxious. You’ve got a good team.”
“I know,” I said.
We moved for another two hours without gaining much ground. Abrel kept the drones out of range of t
heir missiles, but close enough not to lose them. The drones also worked in reverse; the pursued knew the pursuers were close. After another four hours passed, we’d corralled them in a valley ringed by towering cliffs.
Or they’d led us into an ambush.
Steep walls of rock squeezed our group together. We climbed a slope that became steeper as we got deeper into the valley. I ordered a full stop. I wanted to be confident we weren’t being led into a trap; after being funneled into one only days before, the lesson was still fresh.
“Status,” I asked Abrel.
“I’ve got four drones up,” he said.
“And?”
“And it looks like they’ve boxed themselves in.”
“Nothing else up there?” I asked. I didn’t trust that we’d gotten lucky.
“Not that I can see,” he said. “Here, look at this.”
He transferred a feed. The drone was hovering high above the four soldiers, and it appeared they’d decided to make a stand. They were in positions with good cover, weapons at the ready.
Then they disappeared.
“That’s some impressive camouflage,” I said.
“I have them marked. I have enough juice in that drone…shit.”
The feed went blank.
“Hold on,” Abrel said. “Bringing another drone into place. There.”
“You think they’re in the same spot?” I asked.
“Have to be. Nobody moves that fast,” he answered.
“Okay,” I said. “But every time I’m that sure of something, the rules change. Let’s send out a team and sweep that area.”
Three hours later we were still searching, with no success.
“Hell,” Abrel said over the private comm. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Not your fault.”
“Sir,” he said.
“Quit calling me ‘sir’ on the private comm,” I said. “I’m the same guy.”
“Habit,” he said.
“Everyone gather around,” I said over the all-company comm. “We need to set up a–”
One of the icons went off-line.
A warning blared. “Contact!”
“Holy hell, sir. Phillips is hit.”
“Get someone there, now,” I ordered.
“Where’d the shot come from?”
Nobody answered.
Another soldier went off-line. He triggered self-destruct, and his suit detonated in a fiery blast.
“That’s half a click away,” I said.
“Sniper can be anywhere,” Callie said. “We need to dig in; we don’t know what direction…”
“Roger that,” I said. I switched to the all-company comm. “Listen up, Delta. We’ve got two shooters minimum, probably four. We’ve got no idea–”
Another soldier went down.
“Position yourselves between rocks or under a ledge. We need to get a fix on the shooters.”
We were down to seventeen, but that number only lasted twenty minutes. The snipers were excellent marksmen, systematic and careful. Over the next twelve hours, we lost another ten of our quickly diminishing unit.
Whatever light-bending system they were using, it was highly effective. It was evading our scans even in direct sunlight, which was almost impossible in any but our latest generation tech. I lowered myself into a crevice and had a decent field of fire, and with Callie behind me to protect my six, I felt reasonably confident. I positioned Abrel and Mallsin as overwatch for Callie, and surrounded them with my remaining soldiers. The seven of us remained frozen in place for hours without any additional enemy contact, and eventually a rescue party showed up.
They blew away a good third of the valley and surrounding mountains.
“I think if they were still there,” I said to the pilot after he accepted my ping, “you’ve taken them out.”
“Never can be too careful with these Prostosi scum, sir,” he said.
“Roger that.”
We loaded onto a heli-jet, the locations of the fallen marked for later retrieval. As we left the wilderness, I wondered if the four snipers had escaped. Perhaps the heli-jet bombing had done the job, but it was also possible they were long gone before the rescue mission arrived.
We arrived in Mexico City hours later and were ordered to Central Command. After de-suiting, we went through four days of debriefing.
On day five, Command assigned us to a new company. Our new unit was based on Purvas, and our orders were to ship out the following week.
“I’ve never been to Purvas,” one of the corporals said.
“You’ll love it,” Callie told him. “The wildlife is amazing.”
CHAPTER SIX
If the Almighty One is for us, who can be against us?
~ Poems of Beelnt, Book of Truth, Index 2:49
Purvas.
When I was eight years old, I went through a phase where I watched an old science fiction movie with my grandfather nearly every day. The creative worlds and bizarre alien species that humans dreamt up back then seem like childish caricatures to me today.
Purvasts are like humans. Their sociopolitical landscape is complex. The ecosystems on their planet are diverse. Perhaps someday human and Purvastian explorers will discover a monolithic sand, ice, jungle, forest, or water-covered world like in those movies. Or a species of sentient reptiles. Or two-foot-tall aliens with oversized craniums who come in peace.
But it hasn’t happened yet.
Thankfully, the artificially intelligent supercomputer drones with the sole mission of clearing the universe of humanity haven’t made their presence known.
Reality, however, is deadly enough.
Command assigned the survivors of our last mission to a new urban assault company: Bravo Company of the Third Regiment.
Callie, Abrel, Mallsin, and I were assigned to Raider Squad of the second platoon. Our new squad leader was Second Lieutenant Bloostine, a hard-liner Gurt who made it clear from day one that in his opinion the only good Ted was a dead one. And he pointed out several times a day that his opinion was the only one that mattered.
“We’ve got a drop time slotted,” Bloostine announced.
We were eating together as a squad. “Chow time,” he called it. An opportunity to let down our guards and “be real” and “air our thoughts and concerns” to the rest of the group. It wasn’t a bad idea on its face, but I’ve yet to meet a noncom who wanted to share his intimate feelings with any officer, much less his squad leader.
“How’s everyone feeling?” he asked.
Silence.
“Hello?” he said. He looked each of us over slowly, like he was sizing us up for a fistfight.
“I’m happy to get back into my suit and go to work,” I said. I figured as the senior noncom, I’d better set a good example. “I’m getting restless.”
“Good, good,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that’s helpful to share. Anyone else?”
“I’ve heard we’re going to be dropped into the Biragon?” Corporal Setton stated the question as if he knew it was an unsubstantiated rumor. He was one of our two engineer specialists, and the mission was his first off-Earth assignment.
“No,” the lieutenant said. “We’re being attached to the Ninth as part of a shock, destroy, and intimidate incursion.”
“Isn’t the Ninth a space marines unit?” Corporal Slater asked. She was Setton’s partner, also on her rookie trip to Purvas.
“There’s no such thing as space marines,” Bloostine said. “Technically.”
“But the Ninth is a first-on-the-beach regiment,” I said.
“Yes, true. That’s where the space marine term comes from. It’s more of a human thing,” he said with a note of disgust in his voice. “Gurts fight as an army. Every cog in the machine is important.”
“But we’re going in as point?” Slater asked.
“Yes. Bravo Company will be joining Alpha, Charlie, Delta, and Elephant Companies,” he said, smiling as though we’d won a cosmic lottery. The Gurts had a c
urse word that sounded similar to the English word echo, so they’d made a substitution in the phonetic alphabet. In communication, most of us changed elephant to elfant, but it worked just the same. I was wondering what had happened to the Ninth’s own Bravo Company. The lieutenant continued as if he’d heard my thoughts. “Bravo Company was completely obliterated last month. Not a single survivor. So we’re in a position to regain the honor of those brave soldiers who…”
I tuned out the rest of his speech and toyed with my chocolate pudding.
“Avery.”
“Avery?”
“Avery!” Mallsin said a third time, with a sharp snap.
“Oh, sorry.” I smiled. “I was daydreaming. What?”
“Are you going to finish that?”
“What?”
“Your pudding?”
“Um. Yeah, of course. It’s great,” I said sarcastically.
“Are you two done?” Our platoon leader looked at us like we were preschoolers.
“Sir,” we both said.
“Now, as I was trying to explain, our drop will be a hump outside a terrorist camp.”
“Suspected terrorist camp, isn’t it?” Callie said. She looked up and added, “Sir.”
“Yes, suspected. But it’s terrorists; you can bet your chocolate pudding on that fact. They wouldn’t be out there in the Harea if they weren’t up to no good.”
“We’re going to the Harea?” Corporal Setton asked. “I thought we were going to the Biragon.”
“No. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“The Harea Desert is treacherous, hot, deadly, and…”
He continued with a twenty-minute recitation of facts and figures about the second-largest desert on Purvas. I didn’t pay any attention to most of his yakking, although his description of the sand-wolf spider was fairly entertaining. “As I’ve said a few times,” he droned on, “you’ve got to make sure that you avoid the lip of a sand-wolf’s funnel. Even in armor you can slip. Trust me, you don’t want to be dragged into one of their nests.”
