“Of course there isn’t, you have been informed of everything that you need in order to keep you alive.”
What does that even mean? Did he just say to me that there’s information that’s being withheld from me? I sigh as quietly as I can. There’s something important that he’s not telling me, something’s made his trust in me disappear. Maybe it’s because I’d been in captivity for two cycles; maybe Weber thought that they might have turned me against my fellow soldiers.
“Alright General, I’ll depart right away then.” There’s a good chance that the General doesn’t want me anywhere near the fleet when it’s in combat with our own fighters, maybe he’s unsure if I’d start attacking our own. In any case, it doesn’t matter for the moment, orders are orders and I always do my best to follow them.
“You’re dismissed Colonel.”
I stand up and give a quick salute to the General before walking over to the door and opening it. I walk out with my head held high, trying not to look disappointed. It’s an insult to my allegiance for them to be questioning me. Sending a skilled pilot on patrol routes is almost an even greater insult.
Hopefully there’ll be a good crew onboard the ship that I’m going to pilot; it always helps to have good company on missions.
The directions that the console had given me when I accessed them told me to go to level 6. The flight deck obviously has to be pretty close to ground level for soldiers to get in the air quickly in the event of an attack on the base.
I step into the vacant lift; hopefully it’ll be empty for the entire ride up to the surface. All I want to be right now is alone, orders on the other hand make that impossible. The mission log that I read earlier said that I was going to be flying in a cargo ship modified for the militaries need; I’ll also be flying with a dozen or more soldiers from T.A.R. command.
The lift only takes a minute to reach the flight deck level; the door opens up revealing the massive flight bay. The man on the other side of the door makes me jump back.
“Good to see you again boy!” Jayon shouts at me.
“So, you’re the captain of the cargo ship that I am using?”
“That’d be correct,” he nods, “we best be hurrying up, the rest of the marines are getting a bit edgy from the waiting. Come along then Colonel, we have to leave immediately.”
He grabs me by the shoulder and starts walking. This livens up my orders a tiny bit; Jayon always makes good conversation.
****
Day 33: Cycle 3: Period 2: Year 2397
Being inside the cockpit of Comets End feels nice; nice and familiar, I was surprised at first that we were actually taking a civilian ship out. Although the log did say that it’d been outfitted to help military purposes -which matched up perfectly to what this ship has been upgraded with-.
The one difference on the ship that I can find is that the bays where the escape pods were located has been changed. In a short way to explain it we’ll all be screwed if we need to escape, seeing as they had them removed to hold all the T.A.R. marines that are riding along.
“It looks like the battle isn’t going to well,” Jayon states.
“How do you know that?”
“I’m tapped into commands intercom, shhh,” he grins.
“How many have we lost?”
“Almost a quarter,” he says, the sound of distaste ringing through the air. He obviously doesn’t approve of the military’s tactics.
“Jesus,” I look at the console, every few seconds there’s a little blip noise as one of the symbols disappear from the screen, the symbol represents our ships that are currently in space doing battle with the enemy fleet.
“They’re dropping like flies.”
I should be up there right now with them, flying alongside my kin in the defense of the planet. The worst part is I can’t take a chance guessing whether or not we’ll make it out of the battle alive.
It doesn’t take long for us to reach the heart of the city -which is now the destroyed city- the sight of it almost makes tears come to my eyes. My entire life I’d walked among those streets and buildings, now what remains of it seems unfair in a way. We could’ve made an agreement with the Hakorians; we should’ve been able to reason with them. Now all that we can hope for is to survive.
“Uh oh, take a look at this,” Jayon points at the screen to one of the readings that the ships scanners are picking up.
“What kind of energy is that?”
“I have not the slightest clue; it’s unlike anything that I’ve ever picked up before.” Jayons fingers are flying over the controls on the console. “It’s emanating from the main ship. Oh my god, its targeting our own, it’s basically just a pulse wave that will destroy anything in its path; we need to contact HQ and tell them to pull those fighters back before they’re obliterated.”
The console begins blipping at us constantly, “too late.”
“I bet now you’re glad that you’re down here instead of up there right about now.”
“Are you always cheery?”
He shrugs his shoulders, “only when I’m awake.”
“Look,” I point to the coordinates that our own ships are at, “someone up there must have ordered a retreat.”
“Somethin’ is not right though; these readings are reporting that there are no power readouts from those ships.”
“Which ships?”
“Ours of course. The enemy ships are unaffected.”
“They’re coming back down to the planet,” he pauses for a second to inspect new readings that are streaming onto the console, “as well as the enemy ships.”
I peer out the port window, yellow and orange streams of light arc across the sky, “take a look at that, are those ours or theirs?”
“Those are definitely not theirs, see? These ships are on an uncontrolled re-entry.”
“We have to go help them! I won’t just sit here while our own men are getting shot down out of the sky.”
“Colonel, there is absolutely no point in trying to rush to their aid. They are falling to fast for us to be able to save them in time.”
“You don’t understand Jayon, they might be spacebourne crafts, but however that doesn’t mean that they can't have ejection cockpits,” I point out, it’s a standard requirement for all single manned crafts to be able to eject in the case of emergency.
His eyes light up with realization, in piloting a cargo ship he must’ve forgot about regular air craft standards.
“The computer’s reading life signs all over the place, you were right Colonel.”
I jump into the pilot’s seat and man the controls.
“What are you doing!?” Jayon barks out, for the first time he almost sounds angry.
“The mission parameters have changed Captain.”
“What, you planning on rescuing them from the city?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. It could be planned successfully, if you haven’t noticed we do have three squads of marines.”
“True, but first thing is first, no one pilots this ship but me, scoot over,” he gestures to the co-pilots seat.
I didn’t notice before that Krystil is not onboard.
“Where’s your usual co-pilot?”
“Who, Krystil? She was injured during our last mission when one of the valves in the cargo bay went off.”
I don’t want to push the subject further, by the sound of it it's a touchy topic.
“What's your plan once we get there?”
“Search and rescue, I take it we can accurately pinpoint the locations of the pilots?”
“Down to a couple hundred feet,” he says confidently.
“Is there anything that I can do?”
“Yeah, go to the communications console over there and let HQ know what we are doing. I don’t like taking unscheduled detours.”
I hop out of my chair with grace and run my fingers over the console, I find the frequency icons and fiddle with them for a second or two to tune into the prope
r military frequency.
“HQ, HQ, this is Colonel Mavrik Woods, We have received information about our air units, they have all been neutralized by some sort of energy wave.”
“We read you Colonel, new orders have been decided. You and your team are going to break off your current path and head north towards the main city complexes. You are on a search and rescue mission now, confirm that you have understood these new orders.”
I’m surprised that new orders have already been authorized.
“Confirmed HQ, Woods out.”
Jayon looks over his shoulder at me, “that was quick.”
“Yeah it was, doesn’t matter though, divert to these coordinates that I’m uploading to your console.”
Jayon doesn’t hesitate before he tilts his two joystick handles in the general direction of the coordinates.
“Don’t you actually need to punch in the coordinates?”
“Why yes we do, all we need to do now is go in the direction of the city center. Once we get close enough then I will get the precise location into the computer.”
“How long until we arrive?”
“We are two minutes out.”
“That fast? Ok I need to get to the marines and brief them quickly about our new orders.”
I hit the pad on the side of the cockpit door to open it.
Although the ship has a rather large hull you can’t say the same about the inside sections of the ship, luckily it doesn’t take me to long to get where I need to go.
It doesn’t take much of a guess to figure out where most of the marines will be. The mess hall.
I tap the small intercom that’s attached to my ear.
“T.A.R. unit report to me at the mess hall.”
I get several replies almost instantly, they must’ve been waiting for a call to come in, most men get anxious right before they depart for a mission, especially one of great importance.
I round a hallway corner, the mess hall door is already open, voices are coming from within. I step through the door, ever single marine is already there. They must have hauled it to get here before I did, maybe in fear of their unknown superior officer, and what they might do to slackers.
They all look at me, raising all their arms at once to salute me.
“At ease soldiers,” I give them a quick salute back, “alright gentlemen, I’m going to make this quick seeing as we don’t have too much time.” I glance around the room; I have the utmost attention of them all. “Almost all of our ships that we had in orbit doing combat with the enemy fleet have been deactivated and or destroyed by a pulse wave of some kind. Now, I’m not going to lie, we most likely lost a lot of good soldiers within the past few minutes. For those of them that survived re-entry have now evacced their ships and have landed in the city ruins. Our orders are now to retrieve anyone who is still alive. Any questions?” I stare at them, only one raises his hand.
“Sir, do we know if there will be any contact on the ground with the enemy?”
“A good question; at the moment we do not know if there is any enemy ships following the survivors down to the surface, Captain Cofield though will keep us appraised if there is any change in hostile activity. Any more questions? No? Move out then T.A.R. unit, and soldiers, full gear; we are going to need it. Dismissed.”
They stand up as one and give me a salute, “Sir yes Sir!” They bark out. I salute them back and then step back out of the mess hall.
My intercom chirps, I tap it with my finger, “Woods here.”
“It’s Jayon, we are coming up on the first target locator now; we will be at the first set of coordinates in thirty seconds.”
“Thanks Captain, keep me up to date on any Intel you can get. I’m going to take the Base equipment and set up camp, we will rally any survivors there, your job will to pick them up and get them medical attention.”
“Alright Colonel, good luck out there.”
While I was talking to Jayon I was retracing my steps to the halfway point to the cockpit. From there I add a few new turns and find myself in the cargo bays, which is where I was going all along. The bay looks different seeing as they’d taken out the pods that I’d flown in during my first mission.
The entire unit is already in full gear and are ready to debark. I’m not nearly as ready as they are; all I need are my weapons. Before I’d boarded Comets End I had donned on my full s.m.a.r.t armour. Time conservation is always smart, otherwise now I’d be screwed because the fastest someone can get fully into the armour is two minutes and thirteen seconds, that’s time that we can’t afford to waste.
I go over to the gun rack that had been installed and pick up one of the sniper rifles; I clip it into the back slots on my armour. Next I quickly search for the rifles that are lined up nice and neat against the wall parallel to the snipers. I’d completely forgotten that my pistol is still in its holster, my trusty pistol that’s killed many Hakorians in its time.
I take in one deep breath of fresh air before I unclip the helmet that’s attached to my side. I place it over my head. It’s pitch black inside for several seconds before the HUD activates; information of my surroundings flashes into existence in front of my eyes.
While I’m busy getting my weapons the unit is setting up a rappelling system through the opening bay in the floor, where the escape pods launched from.
My intercom crackles to life, Jayons voice comes through quietly.
“Colonel, we’ve arrived at the destination, prepare for drop off.”
I wonder why his voice is so quiet; maybe something’s wrong with the reception.
“Unit one, go, go, go!” I bark out to the troops.
Every soldier grabs the rope and loops it through a buckle that’s slightly protruding from the waist. Each goes down rather quickly, they soon disappear as they leave my view once they rappelled. I do a quick double check around the room to make sure that everyone’s disembarked.
I grab the rope with one hand and loop it around and through the buckle. Most have a hard time falling into nothing but air, but I’m trained for this. Out of all the training exercises that I did during my training, rappelling is by far the most exhilarating.
It takes a second for the rope to absorb my fall, I pinch the rope tight with both hands. Luckily, my gloves are designed to withstand enormous amounts of heat. However, I can still feel the burning heat as the friction goes through my gloves; it almost feels like ten thousand tiny blades are constantly piercing my skin.
My boots hit the ground hard, the impact goes all the way up into my body, it makes my teeth rattle against each other. It took several attempts during training and pure common sense to keep your mouth shut when rappelling quickly. As I recall one of my fellow cadets had actually bit most of his tongue off as he hand slipped from brake position. The kid yelped out in surprise, that’s when his feet made contact with the ground; severing his tongue in the process.
I let go of the rope and reach around to my back, I unclip my assault rifle; now that I’m armed I crouch down low to the ground and survey the scene. We’d rappelled to the very bottom; it’s been a long time since my feet have been planted firmly on real ground.
What I’m staring at is almost nothing, all that remains of this section of the city is rubble, and some building chunks that’d managed to survive. Tears almost begin to form on my eyes, it’s a sad sight to see my entire home destroyed.
“Ground team start making a perimeter, we need to set up a base camp for survivors to rally to,” they don’t hesitate one bit following those orders.
They instantly spread in groups of three, all four groups going in their own way, scouting ahead to see if there’ll be any hostile contact.
“HQ, come in,” I pause.
I gaze around, as far as I can see there’s only destruction. Something catches my eye for a split second in the sky before it disappears again. Before I try to track it down again my intercom chirps at me.
“Colonel Woods this is HQ, status report.”
“Acknowledged. Proceed with the plan, you are designated Aspin Base, you are to hold your position for ten hours, after that time has passed you have clearance to begin searching. Good hunting Colonel.”
“Aspin Base out,” I switch off the intercom, there’s nothing else to do now but wait for my team to get back from their sweep. It’s going to be a long and dark day, one that’ll determine the fate of mankind.
****
Day 34: Cycle 3: Period 2: Year 2397
It hadn’t taken long for my team to get back, after a few short minutes after our arrival we’d set up a base of operations, unfortunately it’s not in the best location. The northern side of the camp’s on the side of a hill, it’s the best location that we’d been able to drop into.
We’d brought with us a portable material that engineers designed to expand when introduced to a certain liquid, once it’s introduced the material then hardened into a very dense metal. It isn’t indestructible but it can withstand bombardment from human based weapons for some time. The base is shaped like a dome, with a mounted turret protruding from the top that we have attached.
Hours and hours go by, it’s regulation that we stay by the base camp for a certain amount of time and make sure that there’s no sign of the enemy.
The relay that we’d brought along is broadcasting a certain signal that any soldier can decode, all that’s contained in the transmission is a set of coordinates; the coordinates of the base camp.
I peer through one of the windows that’s located in the northern wall. I look up to the sky; something catches my eye again. I get as close as I can to the window with my helmet still on.
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 25
