by Kyle Noe
Giovanni lifted a fork and pointed to a group of soldiers in maroon berets. “Kaibiles,” he said softly. “Guatemalan special forces.”
Quinn nodded and studied the men, who were short but powerfully built.
“And those are Tigres,” Giovanni said, pointing to another group clad in jungle camouflage. “Spec-ops from Honduras.”
“How do you know?” Quinn asked.
“I know lots of shit,” Giovanni answered, his black eyes never leaving hers.
“So who invited them to the big dance?” Quinn asked.
“They know the jungle,” Milo answered, looking over.
“This is their territory,” Renner added, slurping down some hash.
Quinn traded looks with a young Guatemalan soldier with high cheekbones and a shaved head. A moment of understanding passed between them as the other soldier nodded. Quinn nodded back.
***
A little later, the Marines headed to the armory to weapon up.
The armory was octagonal in shape and lined with rows of metal lockers (like upright coffins, one Marine muttered) filled with all manner of weapons. Standing ramrod straight in front of the lockers was a Marine clad in battle armor and missing one eye, his hair so oddly situated on his head it looked as if he’d been scalped.
“Marines, my name is Master Sergeant Keiboom. I am the base’s de-facto weapons monger,” the one-eyed soldier said.
Renner nudged Quinn.
“I heard about that dude,” Renner whispered. “Did four tours of duty in Syria and was in the first wave that assaulted those islands in the South China Sea. Fucker’s a straight up O.G.”
Kieboom heard the whispers and silenced Renner with a look. Then he grabbed up a short-barreled assault rifle and held it over his head.
“Marines, as you undoubtedly know, this is your best friend. R&D’s newest generation Fusion rifle, a kinetic weapon capable of firing the latest and greatest uranium-depleted, energized sabot at whatever motherfuckers are stupid enough to enter our atmosphere.”
Cheers and laughter went up from the Marines as Kieboom continued to extol the virtues of the weapons assembled before them, albeit muffled by hoots and hollers of praise he basked in. Then Kieboom took special delight in holding up a Hafnium surface-to-air launcher, which had a gray gripstock, yellow thermal battery, and five-foot launch tube painted in jungle camouflage.
“Who here has heard of Hafnium?” Kieboom asked.
There were a few mutters, but no hands went up.
“The reason you’ve never heard of it is because SouthCom was too fucking scared to mention it to anyone. Hafnium’s a nuclear isomer that if weaponized can melt flesh, penetrate hardened bunkers, and eviscerate entire city blocks. In short, it’s a goddamn miracle, a gift from the gods of war. Problem was, we couldn’t figure out a way to harness it. Until now.”
Kieboom eased the launcher down on his shoulder and aimed it at the Marines.
“With one pull of the trigger, we’re gonna protect our house and bring the hammer down on any alien sonofabitch stupid enough to wanna take one inch of our goddamn world!”
More cheers went up as Keiboom continued to discuss the weapons the Marines would have at their disposal.
When the presentation was over, Quinn and the other Marines were inspecting sniper rifles and the Hafnium launchers while Renner gushed about them, reminding anyone in earshot how a gram of the Hafnium isomer had the same power as one-third of a ton of TNT.
Hanging above the rifles were sets of armor—interlocking ceramic plates infused with high-tech materials that resembled the black scales of a dragon. Quinn reached up and brought down a set of armor that weighed barely more than eight pounds.
“They call it the ‘birthday suit,’” Renner said.
“Why’s that?” Quinn asked.
“Try it on and see. It’s got some kinda classified, nano-shit inside.”
Quinn quickly slipped down to her tank top and shorts and shrugged on the armor. She felt it cinch around her neck and laddered midsection, conforming to her body. She thought the sensation was not unlike slipping your hand into a latex hospital glove. She had to pinch and pull a bit, but ultimately she got it. The armor felt like a second skin, rugged and elastic.
Renner reached down and lifted an eight-shot, revolver-style grenade launcher and bandolier of forty-millimeter grenades. “Now, this puppy is a piece of engineering divinity,” Renner said, admiring the weapon while tapping a button on the launcher so that the eight-shot cylinder spun wildly.
“Just remember one thing,” Quinn said, looking over as she grabbed a rifle and a rucksack filled with magazines and ballistic grenades. “The folks who designed that piece of engineering divinity were on the government payroll.”
“Yeah. So?” Renner replied.
“So all of our shit was built by the lowest bidder,” Quinn clarified.
Renner’s face fell as the other Marines laughed.
Quinn reached down and inspected a magazine of ammunition. She slipped a sabot round out and held it up as Giovanni sidled over to her.
“You know what that is?” Giovanni asked, taking the sabot from her.
“What?”
“That’s the last round,” he said.
“You’re the master of obvious, Gio,” she replied.
“What I meant is that that’s the one you keep for yourself.” Giovanni placed the round back in Quinn’s hand. “You know, in case ...”
They shared a look that said she got it but didn’t want to acknowledge a situation where she would need a bullet for herself. Finally, Giovanni stood, nodded and trudged off, leaving Quinn staring at the ground.
She could never take her own life, not when her daughter was still out there. As long as she was alive, there was always a fighting chance she could return, that they could be a family once again. With a heavy sigh, Quinn grabbed her gear and headed out after the others.
Chapter Three: Underground
A base liaison officer led the Marines from the armory down a short set of stairs and through various anterooms until they hit a catwalk bolted onto the far side of the mountain. The catwalk extended behind an armored bulwark called “Block Thirteen,” which was notched with cubbies where Marines could sleep or shoot through firing holes.
Here and there were missile batteries and robotic chain-gun cannons pointed at the sky that could fire one thousand thirty-millimeter rounds per minute. Next to the weapons were phalanxes of anti-missile devices hooked to their own targeting systems—close-in cannons on swivel bases that fired chaff and tungsten penetrator rounds, designed to destroy any incoming alien missiles and artillery.
The Marines stopped and Hayden went down the line, assigning each a cubby. Quinn humped her gear down toward the end of Block Thirteen and dropped it in a cubby next to Renner’s.
Quinn stashed her rucksack at the back of the cubby and peered through a gun slot. Everything was green, the immense jungle below spreading out in every direction. She made sure the others weren’t looking, then withdrew her cellphone, a battered iPhone that had seen better days. She opened her photo album and started at the beginning, flipping through photos of her daughter from the moment she was born up to the present, her eighth birthday. Sammy aged right before her eyes and Quinn fought to suppress the tightness in her throat, the burning at the edges of her nose. She wanted badly to call her up, to check on her folks, but she knew that was forbidden. Intel had briefed the Marines and warned them that the use of cellular devices might be used by the enemy to track movements and positions. Knowing SouthCom like she did, bastards who cared about nothing more than winning, she figured they probably had cellphone suppression around the base anyway.
Music echoed, and Quinn set down her phone and peered around the side of the cubby. Renner was on his stomach, listening to some classical music while staring at a collection of religious figurines.
“You know we’re not supposed to play tunes, Renner,” Quinn said.
&nbs
p; Renner looked back. “This here ain’t tunes. This is music.”
“Difference without a distinction,” she replied.
“Not to me. See, Quinn, I did three years in college ‘fore I joined up with you snake-eaters. I was a music major, and this is partially what I was immersed in.”
“Get the hell out,” she said, surprised.
“Seriously.”
“That’s a helluva tough transition, Renner. Building things up and now burning them down.”
He shook his head.
“Believe it or not there’s some overlap between the rhythm and meter of songs and poems and the sensitivity of initiation in explosions. That is especially so when yours truly tears it up.”
“What happened to the pen being mightier than the sword?”
“The pen is,” Renner said. “But it can’t compare to one of these,” he continued, smiling and holding up a forty-millimeter grenade from his launcher.
“Just keep it down, then, okay?” Quinn asked, smiling back.
Quinn shimmied back into her cubby and stared at the photos of her daughter again, waiting for her eyes to grow heavy. She drifted off against the clatter of the other Marines and the white noise from the base’s mighty air handlers, and then…
She was back.
Back at the family’s farm in rural Ohio, where she was young and carefree, running through the woods. There was a path, little more than a depression on the ground, that she remembered so well she could traverse it blindfolded. She galloped over the path as it curled beside a small creek where she and her brothers used to corral tadpoles.
She stopped to catch her breath. Glancing down, she was surprised to see how skinny she was, her legs long and spindly. How old was she? Twelve? Thirteen?
The light spangled down through the canopy, and Quinn heard laughter. She turned to see figures racing toward a faraway field. She called out, but the figures didn’t stop. Giving chase, Quinn exited the woods to see three figures maneuvering toward a cornfield. She could tell by the contours of their heads that it was her brothers, Eric and Mike and John Junior. All of them together again. All of them alive. She yelled and they stopped but didn’t turn around.
Their attention was riveted on the field before them.
And the skies over the field.
The air was filled with shadowy objects.
One of Quinn’s brothers raised his hand and—
BOOM!
A fireball landed and smeared across the field. Then another and another, and in seconds an ocean of red was spreading across the corn like a tsunami.
The fire swept over her brothers. One of them, her older brother Eric, turned and stared at Quinn as the fire licked the flesh from his body. His husk-like corpse turned to charcoal as Quinn screamed and—
WHAM!
She rocketed back into real time, covered in sweat, glancing around. Quinn startled, her eyes wild. It was a nightmare, and she was back on Block Thirteen. Renner’s head was visible. He was peering around the edge of the cubby, a single finger to his lips.
Renner pointed up, but Quinn didn’t have to look.
She could sense it.
Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong. The hairs on her arms stood at attention and her teeth rattled.
They were here.
Sweat roped Quinn’s forehead as she reached for her Fusion rifle. She crawled out of the cubby and saw everyone was looking up. She was terrified, yet comforted by the sight of her fellow Marines tense, waiting, weapons at the ready. There was reassurance in their numbers and training. If anyone stood a chance of repelling the invasion, it was them.
Quinn gathered her thoughts and followed their lines of sight up to the skies.
Chapter Four: Sleeping Giant
The sky was the color of burning gold and heavy with chaff, which Quinn surmised the Syndicate had deployed to distract their surface-to-air weapons.
Quinn and the other Marines heard the invaders before they saw them. The Syndicate Ships were discernible first by the subtle change in the air, almost like the vibration from a tuning fork, as the impossibly long space ships (the word “dropship” immediately sprang to Quinn’s mind) appeared and sliced through the upper atmosphere.
Quinn stared long and hard, wide-eyed with disbelief as her worst nightmare became a reality. Everything she’d prepared for up to that point, all the training, all the drilling, and all the theory and practice was about to be tested. Her jaw locked and she gnawed at the inside of her cheeks, anxiety taking over.
She knew the Marines would prove themselves that day or die trying. There was simply no other way. Knowing there would at least be a final outcome gave her some respite, allowing her to steel her nerves and gather her thought to get into the right state to fight.
Next came more of the chaff—the alien-plastic countermeasures, flurrying down over the Marines in an effort to swamp radar and spoof anti-air ordnance. Multiple klaxons sounded, and the Marines roused from their stunned surprise, grabbing weapons and taking up positions along the bulwark.
Hayden appeared and gave orders, splitting the command. Half were to stay in their cubbies, half were to follow him, including Quinn. Quinn and Renner grabbed their weapons and followed Hayden and the other Marines out onto a catwalk concealed behind another massive, reinforced breastwork of steel and ballistic cement.
This breastwork had certain areas covered in thick, reinforced glass that provided views out over the jungle. Quinn stopped for a moment, overcome by the beauty of the world below, of the world that might soon cease to exist.
A blanket of mist covered the jungle’s canopy, swirling over old growth forest, bringing with it the mountain scent of days long forgotten, days spent camping and hiking, moments in life pushed aside for a struggle of survival. The mist-filled vegetation below was dense, a wilderness millions of acres in size, blanketed in double- and triple-canopy undergrowth. The breastworks jutted out of the mountain like a chin, rising over a sloped hillside that fell away to a jungle valley wreathing the mountain like a vast, emerald tapestry.
The jungle beyond the initial ring of jungle was hostile, and intentionally so. SouthCom had chosen this very spot not only because it surrounded the expected LZ, but also because it was so defensible and difficult to maneuver across.
While the Syndicate’s technology was unknown, there’d been significant chatter from the intel weasels that suggested the invaders would largely rely on biomechanical weapons of some sort, which might become bogged down in the uneven terrain.
Still, Quinn drew strength from the sight of the other Marines and soldiers from the United Global Military Front, taking up positions all around her. Every government on Earth had agreed for the first time in human history to band together against a common enemy. The truth, what they’d all feared for so long, was evident. There was proof in the sky in the form of an alien armada that the attack had finally come. And they clearly wanted something from the population of Earth, or they would have simply nuked the crap out of them.
“Get your claws out, you bastards,” Sergeant Hayden shouted, moving between Quinn and the others as the Syndicate ships unexpectedly turned back and vanished into the clouds.
Giovanni and Milo knelt alongside Quinn, eyes wide with anxiety as they fastened their combat helmets and checked their weapons. Giovanni threaded several impossibly long, high-energy rounds into his sniper rifle and unfolded a bipod so he could aim through a shooting slot.
Quinn watched Hayden shuttle down through the soldiers, moving past batteries of pulse cannons and rocket launchers that were being prepared and positioned toward the sky. He seemed unflappable, their senior leader. Hayden was the only one amongst the group to do multiple tours overseas. He’d reputedly signed up for three straight tours, heavy combat and ass kicking, and had the scars, broken marriages, and hair-trigger to prove it.
Rumor had it, a commanding officer had wanted Hayden kicked out because he’d flunked some bullshit psych eval, but t
hat the brass wouldn’t hear of it. The thinking was, if the Marines were headed into a knife fight, they wanted to be damned sure to take their one and only human bazooka along for the ride.
Hayden stopped and looked down at Renner, who was curled up around his grenade launcher, seemingly asleep.
“The fuck are you doing, Renner?” Hayden asked, spitting the words out.
Renner opened one eye slowly, then another. “Just practicing.”
“Practicing for what?” Hayden asked.
“I was thinking that maybe playing dead might not be a bad option.”
Nervous looks abounded, and Hayden dropped to his haunches and shot volcanic glances at his charges.
“You gonna have plenty o’ time to sleep when you’re dead, boy,” Hayden said. Then, with some real heat in his voice, “That time has not yet arrived. Up and at ‘em. The enemy is not gone. It’s a fake, and they’re gonna bring the noise and we’re gonna return whatever they give us tenfold. Get me, Devil Dog?”
Renner launched to standing, combat-ready at a second’s notice. “Aye, sir.” His tone was somewhere between sarcasm and fear. He pulled out his thermal binoculars to get a look at the battlefield, which was empty except for the chaff still raining down.
Quinn quickly checked and rechecked her armor and gear as Milo knelt alongside her. Milo ran his finger down the barrel of his Fusion rifle.
“The hell is this?” Milo asked, gesturing at the rifle’s barrel.
Quinn smiled and slapped two extra magazines against his combat helmet before flinging one at Milo.
“It’s called a rifle,” Quinn said.
“I know that,” Milo replied.
“In theory, Corporal, you pull the trigger and bad guys fall down.”
“I know that too,” Milo said, narrowing his eyes. He pulled the firing bolt back on the rifle. “What I meant is, why go with the Fusion, which is for close-quarters, when the fighting is gonna be at a distance?”
“I know as much as you. This is what intel ordered,” Quinn said. She pointed at the sky. The Syndicate ships were nowhere in sight. “They’re gone, for now, anyway.”
