“Yes Sir, it’s always nice to get out of that armour and have a nice shower, shame the rain is freezing cold though,” he says through shivers.
I look at the rain with distaste, getting the sweat of my body would be nice, but nothing is worse than a freezing cold shower, unless you happened to have major sunburn.
I step into the hut and sort through the wood, making a teepee with the larger pieces and stuffing the inside with twigs. Within minutes, we have a roaring fire heating up the inside of the hut. A hole in the roof with a chute leading up and out so the smoke from the fire can get outside, ingits design allows nothing to enter from the top though.
T-Rave steps through the opening, shivering and soaking wet.
“You look cold,” I say.
“You know,” he says, looking around the hut for something to dry off with, “you also have a knack for stating the obvious.”
“There should be some towel-like things in those bags over there,” I say, pointing to the side of the hut towards two bulky compartments.
“I still can't believe all this fits into that little package.”
“Yeah me neither, but that’s technology for you, it’ll surprise you in ways you can't imagine, even if it’s only a place to live and not some super advanced weapon.”
“Yeah, this hut thing is a good idea, but we should really focus on perfecting medicine, it could save a lot of lives, instead of making more weapons to take lives,” T-Rave says, wisdom flying out of his mouth for once instead of cold retorts.
“I agree. We should be looking for ways to preserve our race, not ways to destroy it. If we wanted that to happen we should have just stayed on Earth with the people that chose to remain behind.”
“Well, if you don’t like it then why did you join the T.A.R. forces?” He says.
“I joined because of my father; in the past he did his part for humanity, now I’m hoping to do the same. My wife doesn’t want me here anymore; as soon as we repel these aliens I’m handing in my resignation.”
“Why? Don’t you like it? Daring missions, the opportunity to travel, what's not to like?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love being in the military, I take pride in my work that I get done, it’s just that my wife doesn’t really like me going away and leaving her behind. Not knowing what could happen to me really disturbs her, and I agree with her on that subject, she has a right to be worried about me. That’s why I’m leaving; I’m doing it for her. I will not leave until every single alien is dead or gone first though,” I say.
A personal subject, but who else can I tell, and given the fact that we could very well be dead by the end of tomorrow who could T-Rave possibly tell?
“That’s deep; well I can understand her motives behind that request, how come you didn’t just drop out now? Instead of going on this mission that we both know we likely won’t get out of alive.”
“I won’t abandon humanity to their doom, you should know that already. The General did think that I wanted to drop out though.”
T-Rave snorts, “well can you blame him? He’d get into big trouble if he let one of his best soldiers go, right in the middle of a war.”
“No, I can't blame him, and I wouldn’t really call this a war, more like extermination,” I say.
The fire crackles and hisses between us, the smoke getting sucked out the roof vent.
T-Rave sits there in front of the fire, still shivering as he stretches out his hands to warm them up.
“Well I’m going to take this opportunity to go and rinse myself; there should be some rations in your belt compartments, so don’t wait up.”
“So, I guess that means that you didn’t catch any wilds animals out there?”
“Sorry, nothing will be roasting over the fire tonight.”
I begin to strip down to my underwear, revealing massive purple bruises all over my body, I hadn’t realized that I had them; they must’ve been caused from the crash.
It takes only a few minutes to take off all the armour plates. All repetition. When I first joined the army they drilled my entire squad on how to take apart and clean your weapons. I must’ve done that single drill hundreds of times; the steps burnt into my mind forever.
The cold water is wonderful at first; shortly after beginning though it feels as if thousands of hot needles are breaking through my skin. The water is too cold for it be anything more than a quick rinse. A very quick rinse.
I step back into the hut, shaking my head to dispel any water that could have attached itself into my relatively short hair.
T-Raves sitting in front of the fire, nibbling on what looks like a ration bar.
“Hmm, that looks tasty.”
On the verge of spitting it out he looks at me and says, “not overly, you’d think being in one of the military’s top recon unit they could at least give us decent food.”
“Yeah well, that’s the good thing about ration bars; they are small and carry the right amount of nutrients to survive off of.”
“Yeah, well they still taste like shit.”
“I’ll eat yours then, more for me.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Well then, be grateful for what you have and stop complaining., I say, sitting down near the fire, the towel wrapped around my upper body.
“One of us should keep watch while the other sleeps, just in case one of those things stumbles upon our location,” I say.
“And I’m assuming that you want me to be the first watch?” T-Rave says, a look of hope gleaming in his eyes, he must’ve wanted to get some shut-eye.
“Well, look at you. Taking initiative and all, thanks for volunteering.”
T-Rave stands up and goes to the pile of gear that’s behind him, he begins to clip the armour plates back onto his body.
I reach for my own gear and find the belt compartments where my food had been stored.
T-Rave was right the food does taste awful.
“Alright, how long are these watches going to be?” T-Rave says.
“Well, if we stay here for three hours that gives us another four hours of darkness to scout out our objective. It should take almost three hours to get to the base of operations. So we should have just enough time to get our baring’s.”
“Sounds good, I’ll wake you in an hour and a half,” he says, walking outside.
I only eat half of my ration bar; the bars are just so compact it’s like eating several meals in just a few bites.
I put the rest of the bar back in the compartment and begin to put my armour plates on. Probably the smartest thing to do, if someone attacks in the middle of the night then T-Rave would have only seconds to warn me. In those seconds it would be impossible to gear up completely. If anything, I’d be able to put on my chest plate and my helmet.
Before I know it I’m fully geared up, shortly after that I’m fast asleep on the cold floor. The only part of my body that’s exposed is my head, I wouldn’t want to sleep with my helmet on, I could if I wanted to, but it’d be quite unnecessary. Fresh air’s much better than a filtration system.
****
My eyes open, I have no idea what time it is. Still dark out, that’s for sure. T-Rave would’ve woken me up if I overslept.
I pull myself up and walk towards the hut entrance; I poke my head out the flap and peer into the darkness. T-Rave’s nowhere that I can see in the surrounding area.
“Captain?” I say into the darkness.
No response…
I hurry back inside and grab my helmet that’s lying on the ground, and my assault rifle.
The neck seal hisses as the helmet is pressurized.
Walking out the hut rifle first as I scan the surrounding area for a bio signature. The icon in my helmet blinks at me once, notifying me that it picked up a reading just a hundred meters away.
“Captain, is that you?” I say over the helmet intercom.
The bio signature’s moving towards me at an alarming speed. I drop to my knee and aim my rifle.
A lone figure comes running through the trees towards me.
I flash my outer helmet lights in hopes to blind the target, as well as projecting my intercom on the open channels.
“Stop!” I yell.
“Colonel?”
“Captain! what the hell are you doing out here?” I wave my arms around.
“Well, I was out taking a leak behind one of these trees when I heard some noises over here, so I grabbed my gear and then I went searching for whatever caused the noise,” he explains.
“Did you find anything then?”
“Nothing, there was nothing out here; it must’ve been just a tree creaking or some animals in the area,” he says.
“How long until your watch is done?” I ask him.
“About fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll take my shift now, just go and sleep. I’ll wake you if anything interesting happens.”
“Alright, thanks Colonel.”
We walk back to the hut in silence.
I pop my helmet off.
The night’s warm breeze is nice, I never even noticed that it stopped raining; the adrenaline from when I woke up to realize something was wrong put me in a fighting mode.
“Just gimme a second,” T-Rave says as we reach the campsite, “I never really got a chance to relieve myself.”
I sit myself down on a log near the entrance to the hut, not the most comfortable place, but at least I’m not standing up.
“I’ll wake you in an hour and a half Captain.”
He nods at me.
I sigh; it’s going to be a very long day.
Seven
Day 9: Cycle 1: Period 2: Year 2397
The darkness makes me feel like I’m the last person on the planet, the blackness feels like its pulling me down.
I shake the feeling off and walk around the campsite. Thankfully, it’s almost time to wake up T-Rave so we can get the hell out of here. I never wanted to make camp in the first place, but we desperately needed the rest.
I walk inside the hut; T-Rave’s still passed out on the floor, cradling his assault rifle like you would a newborn child.
I nudge him with the tip of my boot. He remains still. I nudge him again, harder this time.
He wakes violently and raises his assault rifle in the direction of the intruder.
“Relax Captain, it’s just me. Get up; it’s time to move out.”
I walk over to the burnt out logs. I had completely forgot to keep the fire going when I was on watch, although now that I think of it the fire had been dead when I got up to take shift. I pick up the small pieces and throw them out the entrance, I’m not going to bother sweeping up the ashes.
Other than the ashes in the middle of the floor there’s nothing else to clean up.
Me and T-Rave step outside.
I place a hand on the floor of the hut and access the controls. I run the command procedure that’ll dissemble the hut. I watch as it basically deflates in front of me; returning to the normal size that’ll be able to fit back in my leg compartment.
“Wow, those things almost never go back to proper size, next thing they need to do is make that work with sleeping bags, those things are impossible to get back in their bags.”
We laugh to ourselves.
T-Rave’s right behind me, sealing his helmet to his neck seal, “we ready?” He asks.
“Let’s move out, I want to reach the facility before sunrise.”
“Yes Sir, we better hustle then. By my readings we have another three hours and fifty-seven minutes before the sun will peak over the horizon.”
“Alright, let’s head out,” I pick up my rifle that’s leaning up against a tree.
I walk in the direction that my HUD is pointing towards.
****
We get to the mining facility earlier than we thought; it’s nice that we have more time to plan and scout out the location.
T-Rave taps my shoulder, “Colonel, I’ve got movement coming from a hundred meters away.”
I blink at an icon in my HUD; my display zooms in and goes infrared. Three figures are moving around a building that’s’ in the middle of nowhere.
“That’s weird, aren’t mining facilities supposed to be really large and in huge pits?” I say.
“Maybe it’s an underground facility,” T-Rave suggests.
“Yeah, maybe. Let’s move forward for a closer look.”
I move quietly through the trees to get a better look at the patrols and the small building. The building looks different from normal man-made buildings; it has almost a shiny look to it, as if its exterior is made out of a beetle carapace.
It takes us only seconds to traverse the distance. We hide behind one of the larger trees that’s just north of what looks like the entrance. That’s the beauty about rainforests, the trees are so large that you could walk and even drive a large speeder right through the middle.
“Climb a tree,” I say, “we need to get to higher ground in case an alarm goes off when we take out those guards, they won’t expect us to be in a tree, which gives us an advantage.”
The branches start four meters off the ground, giving us an excellent opportunity to be in a snipers' den, well, not really a den, more like sitting on a log several meters up. Seeing as we don’t have time to build an actual snipers nest, -which would be pointless- unless there are dozens of contacts, making an actual den would be the best course of action you could take.
I grab some of the bark that’s jutting outwards from the base of the tree. A solid place to grab onto, but they quickly run out as I get higher and higher.
I make a fist with my left hand and hit all the pressure points in my glove to activate my gauntlet blade. It comes out with a Chuunk noise. “Sorry about this.” I say to the tree before stabbing the blade into the tough tree bark. I wish that I didn’t have to damage the tree in any way, but it can’t be helped.
“Good idea, otherwise we’ll never get high enough,” T-Rave says, he also ejects his blade and begins to climb using the same technique.
I reach the first row of branches and sit myself up against the main column.
“Alright, just gimme a sec before you go trigger happy,” I say.
“What for?” T-Rave questioned.
“I’m going to try and find out how big this complex is.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
“Well, the motion detector worked well for finding those three Hakorians. I think infrared would work best for this part. All I need to do now is maximize the range and power so that I can penetrate farther down.”
“Sounds good, just let me know when the shooting starts ok?”
I blink through the HUD and fiddle around with the infrared settings; maximizing the power output and adjusting the depth at which it’ll be able to scan. Usually it wouldn’t be able to penetrate layers upon layers of soil, that isn’t its main function. However If you know what you’re doing it’s simple.
“Holy shit, this place is a lot bigger than we originally thought.”
The building’s just the tip of the iceberg; it looks like there’s an elevator shaft at the entrance of the building that leads almost two clicks down. At the bottom there’s a corridor that connects to a large cavern.
“Well, as far as I can tell there is only one way down.”
“I’m assuming we need to get to that building?” T-Rave asks.
“Yeah, that leads to what looks like an elevator shaft that goes down over a kilometer.”
“Well that should be relatively simple, as long as there are no access codes needed to operate the doors,” he says.
“There is no reason there should be, we are in the middle of nowhere, and they wouldn’t bother having a secure system.”
“Hmm, they are either very smart or stupid; regardless of being in the middle of nowhere you should always have some sort of security.”
“Agreed, well, let’s get this over with then, shouldn’t be too hard.”
&n
bsp; “Ok, there’s only three targets; I’ll take the left one,” T-Rave says.
I pull my sniper rifle off my back and align the scopes to match the distance from the targets. I prop the barrel of the rifle on a twisted branch.
“Don’t shoot yet, my target isn’t in line of sight yet, damn trees are in the way.”
I can see T-Rave fidget in the opposite tree, anxious to fire.
“I got my target in my scope; its patrol pattern makes it so that it will stay that way for a few minutes, so take your time.”
My targets arm is the only part that’s showing from behind the tree.
“You know, won't these shots be able to go through trees?” He says.
“I don’t want to risk it, besides, he’s almost in range, just shoot after I shoot, I just don’t want to scare it off.”
The Hakorians head pops out from around the tree.
I squeeze the trigger.
A split second of travel time before the shot reaches him. The impact explodes its head and sends the body flying back several meters.
T-Raves fired moments after myself, the Hakorian drops to the ground with a giant hole in its stomach.
The middle target however had time to run after the shots were fired. He doesn’t run away however. He’s running towards us.
T-Rave and I have only seconds to think of a strategy, seeing as there’s only a distance of a hundred meters between us and the building.
“You think they can climb trees?”
“Yeah, I think so; just look at those claws eh?” I spin around and wrap my arms as best I can around the base of the tree. I slide my way down, my knees buckle as they strike the hard ground.
T-Rave’s doing the same thing; he hits the ground and trips over a root near the stump of the tree before going face first into the dirt and underbrush.
The rushing Hakorian must’ve seen T-Rave, it changes the direction that it’s running.
“Captain, get up!”
“Wha-” T-Raves voice cuts off as the clawed hand of the Hakorian wraps itself around his windpipe. T-Rave brings his knee up towards the area in between its legs.
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 11
