Syndicate Wars: First Strike (Seppukarian Book 1)

by Kyle Noe

  “Maybe they saw you and got scared,” Milo quipped.

  Quinn wanted to believe that, but she believed the Syndicate was just biding its time. The chaff continued to fall, and Quinn realized the aliens were probably probing the mountain, looking for weaknesses just like any other military force would do.

  “I still don’t see shit,” Renner said, holding the pair of binoculars to his eyes.

  “The cap is still on the end, ace,” Quinn said. “Give them to me.”

  Renner tossed Quinn the binoculars and she looked up to the clouds, squinting, searching the heavens. She floated a dial on the binoculars, zooming in, and against the brushstrokes of an angry sky, she finally saw them clearly—the Syndicate Armada. It appeared so vast it almost didn’t seem real.

  A nervous snicker escaped Quinn’s mouth, but there was no levity in her face. Her stomach churned and she felt a prick of fear that coalesced into something more substantial, working itself up over the knobs of her spine.

  She said nothing for several heartbeats. She didn’t have to. Most of the others had seen it too. Had seen the ships heading directly for the mountain.

  “Shit. They … they’re here,” Quinn said, softly. “But it’s worse than I expected.”

  “How many?” Milo asked.

  Quinn set the binoculars down, the blood draining from her face. “Um … all of them.”

  Chapter Five: Angels

  CRACKBOOM! A concussive blast rocked the mountain from somewhere high above the Marines’ position. Fiery debris waterfalled over the soldiers, banners of smoke obscuring visibility as pulse cannons and missile launchers opened fire.

  Quinn watched missiles streak across the sky like flares, curling up thousands of feet where they impacted against Syndicate ships and tore them apart as the flaming wreckage crashed into the jungle, setting it ablaze.

  Enemy hovercraft, launched from the belly of hundreds of dropships, circled over the jungle, disgorging Syndicate troops far out over the dense vegetation.

  Quinn’s heart fell when she saw the faintest outline of the Syndicate soldiers exit the ships down into the jungle. It wasn’t their appearance that caused her concern, it was the fact that the invaders simply jumped out of the ships that were at least a hundred feet off the ground.

  “Holy—did you see that?” Renner asked.

  Quinn nodded.

  “They—they fucking jumped. They just—shit, how far up are those ships?”

  “Far enough,” she whispered. “And they don’t have wings, which means we’re out-teched.”

  “Alright, Marines!” Hayden shouted. “There’s been a mission evolution!”

  All eyes ratcheted around to Hayden, who had slid his combat helmet on.

  “Command has ordered us down! Now! Every boot-licking one of us is to go down right now!” he screamed.

  Quinn grabbed her weapons and gear. She knew the plan had originally been for the Marines to act as a kind of lure, a temptation too good to be true. Take out the best first, then sweep to victory. Intelligence across the globe had agreed that the Syndicate Ships would land over a clear landing zone with no obstacles, so it was best to surround the largest clear landing zones with their best forces.

  And if there were no natural obstacles such as a mountain or jungle, they planted the trees and shipped in gravel, rocks, sand, and even massive drops of landfill trash to create artificial obstacles surrounding the best landing zones. The Marines took the intel seriously, but made a significant modification that no politician could own up to, but was a necessary evil.

  The Marines would allow some troops to be positioned in the cleared-out landing zone as a lure, and then the rest of the forces would be waiting to counterattack from the mountain and other obstacles while using the surrounding terrain and artificial obstacles to their advantage. Confronting the Syndicate head-on.

  Sirens continued to wail and rockets and gunfire ripped the air as Quinn rose and silently vowed to herself that whatever happened, she would find a way home to her daughter. If she didn’t do that, then this war wasn’t even worth fighting.

  Then she slid on her combat helmet and followed after the others.

  The Marines pounded down through the center of the mountain, and soon they were through the massive metal doors at the mountain’s base. They fanned out and charged across a hundred yards of cleared space that had been hacked around the mountain. Once across the open space, the Marines would be into the jungle proper.

  Quinn looked at the troops around her. The Marines were accompanied not only by the other Special Forces she’d seen back in the base, but also by drones—large battle drones and smaller ones that some of the other soldiers were flinging into the air like javelins.

  Yet, she wondered if all this advanced tech was still too far behind the tech the enemy possessed, and had already demonstrated in a show of force. What if the first wave was simply to intimidate and provoke deserters?

  But there was no time for second-guessing. The battle was already upon them.

  Fear and excitement equally leavened Quinn’s steps. Adrenaline coursed through her body and every neuron fired at once, giving her a rush of vertigo.

  The temporary push of confidence made Quinn sure they were going to make it to the jungle unscathed when—

  BOOM!

  The earth out in front of her blasted apart and several Marines simply vanished from sight, atomized by the explosion. Gone.

  Quinn charged forward, not thinking, and stagger-ran as bombs fell. The ground thundered as if gripped in an earthquake, the staccato sound of anti-air ordnance melding with the WHOOSH! of Hafnium rockets launched from portable launchers and the metallic screech of the battle drones as they wheeled into combat.

  Far above the field of battle, the Marines that had been left atop the mountain did their best to provide cover for the assault force, showering the sky with a curtain of chaff and starbursts designed to cripple enemy ordnance. The countermeasures were effective until the mountain was overcome by incoming fire.

  Quinn and the other Marines in the assault force were less than fifty yards from the jungle when the air around them sizzled and a note echoed, a deep haunting BOOM! that sounded like the world’s largest tree crashing to the ground.

  The sound came from somewhere out in the jungle, and the Marines cautiously entered the tree line.

  Quinn took cover behind a fallen tree and caught her breath. The air smelled of cordite and blood and piss, and the leaves on the trees shook as bombs continued to blast all around.

  Quinn was momentarily disoriented. She searched for any sign of Milo and the others, but saw only a clutch of Honduran special forces soldiers near a clearing. One of them took a step toward her when—

  BOOM! A missile impacted and immediately vaporized the man and his squad, leaving bloody stains on the nearby, shredded trees.

  Shrapnel and debris rained down over Quinn, the soldiers blasted apart so badly she could no longer recognize the components of their bodies.

  Next came what sounded to Quinn like mortar rounds, shearing off limbs and buckling the ground. Quinn hopped over the fallen tree, covering her head in a reassuring, yet futile, motion as rounds dropped to the left and right of her.

  A particularly close explosion lifted her off her feet and into a stand of shrubbery.

  “C’MON!” someone shouted, and Quinn looked up to see Milo emerging from the foliage. He screamed at Quinn and reached a hand down and pulled her up.

  Quinn followed, and then hazarded a final look back just as an alien fuel-air explosive detonated over the mountain in a burst of blinding white light, liquefying the granite and the Marine defenses hidden inside.

  The mountain disappeared.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t see it. It was that the Syndicate had destroyed the entire fucking mountain.

  It was gone.

  Her bladder almost failed her.

  With no other options, Quinn turned and bolted into the jungle, smashing
through the foliage and catching up with Giovanni, Hayden, Renner and the others.

  The Marines expected anything and were ready for hell.

  They didn’t have long to wait.

  Cresting a rise, they could see the Syndicate fighters—Quinn would later come to know them as the Syndicate Crimson Brigade—falling through the trees and amassing in the jungle. Their blood red armor was unmistakable, and jarring when juxtaposed against the dark green of the foliage.

  Quinn stood, dumbfounded, watching the invading army. And then something else appeared, objects jettisoned from the bottom of the dropships. Metallic forms that looked like shipping containers.

  The containers hit the ground and opened, and hundreds of things emerged… creatures. Quinn couldn’t be entirely sure what they were, but from a distance, the monstrosities appeared to be biomechanical war machines conjured out of some madman’s fever dream.

  The machines were covered in carapaces, like giant beetles. Their muscular arms and legs glistened, hissing and popping like pistons as they moved forward.

  On the back of the things were pods of what looked like rockets, tethered to the machines with camouflaged webbing. The things dropped on all fours and there was a flash, then small rockets were exploding all around.

  Quinn instinctively raised her rifle and opened fire.

  Hayden waved his arms, and every soldier and battle drone nearby let loose, sending a fusillade of fire down toward the machines and the Syndicate fighters.

  Some of the enemy machines went up in flames, and the Marines, fueled by this small victory, turned back toward the battlefield and charged forward.

  Quinn ran alongside Milo and Giovanni, accompanied by a pod of battle drones that flew into action.

  The Marines pulled up on the other side of a fallen tree the size of a school bus and scattershot at the Syndicate lines.

  The battle drones surged forward and engaged the Syndicate’s biomechanical machines.

  Quinn watched the Marines’ drones shoot down the enemy machines, pumping them full of sabots and rockets.

  Yellow oil or blood (Quinn couldn’t tell which), spurted from the Syndicate machines as they toppled over, but there were so many that it appeared as if the Marines were making little progress in culling their numbers.

  She watched a drone’s arm distend, and a cutting blade came out as it hacked at one of the Syndicate monstrosities. The thing’s arm fell off, which caused an unexpected result of the thing then blowing to bits, but not before rocket fire from the Syndicate lines spewed into the air and blocked out the sun.

  The Marines’ battle drones were instantly overwhelmed, and Quinn and the others were on their feet again, firing as they advanced—

  In seconds they were in the thick of it, engaging the Syndicate’s weapons of war.

  Quinn slid under the outstretched arms of one of the biomechanical killers and emptied her gun into the thing’s exposed belly. It erupted in a font of yellow, and the machine fell sideways. With a grunt, Quinn slapped a fresh magazine into her gun and fired into the side of another machine, which loosed a metallic shriek.

  This machine fell, wounded, and was set upon by a handful of Guatemalan special forces who hacked it to death with battle-axes.

  Then they turned, and Quinn watched them run full-bore into the approaching enemy machine. She couldn’t believe the bravery as the lightly armed men and women engaged in what amounted to hand-to-hand combat with machines.

  But the machines dwarfed the soldiers, who couldn’t match them stride-for-stride. The spec-ops soldiers continued darting between the legs of the machines, however, thrusting and chopping with their axes, severing wires and ruggedized tendons and hose-like conduits.

  The fighting was blurred as the axes slashed and the machines wailed and fired—often accidentally at each other—unable to get off clean shots because the fighting was so close quarters.

  One of the Guatemalan commandos had the brass to mount an enemy machine like a bronco, riding the thing while hacking at its back as if it were a cord of wood.

  The fighting continued for several seconds, until the commandos were spent physically, then cornered and shot to pieces by more of the machines. Enraged, Quinn and the Marines fired at the machines, cutting them down in rows.

  She noticed Giovanni peripherally, watching him hoist two Fusion rifles from a fallen soldier, then turn and mount them on top of a fallen Syndicate warrior. His mouth distended and he triggered both weapons as sabots flew like tracer rounds, battering the Syndicate machines.

  Quinn urged him on, then slung her weapon over her shoulder as a light arrested her attention.

  “Oh shit…” She said, as a familiar sound pierced her ears. A split-second later, she pulled back as a Syndicate rocket landed nearby, tossing four Marines into the air and sending shrapnel in all directions. Something tore into her cheek, pain shooting through her body and then she was screaming, her skin burning as if she were on fire, but there were no flames. Next thing she knew, she was screaming as she collapsed and slid down the side of a shallow trench. When she finally opened her eyes and caught her breath, realizing she wasn’t dead, she saw that she was nearly on top of the body of a grenadier.

  Staring into the Marine’s glassy eyes, she saw death peering back.

  “Not today, asshole,” she said to death, and picked herself up for the fight. But when she turned around, she couldn’t help but accept the reality of their position. No matter how hard they fought, no matter how much valor, they were outmatched and outnumbered.

  The only way to fight back was to avoid death and retreat until they could fight on better terms.

  Without looking for approval from a higher-up, or even Hayden, she began shouting orders for the retreat. “Into the jungle!” she said. “We’ve got a better chance at taking them out under cover,” she lied.

  The Marines and other spec-ops soldiers jumped at the chance to get out of the thick of it. Except for Hayden, who glared at her for ordering them out of the action. But the deed was done, and everyone was moving off the battlefield.

  Chapter Six: Retreat

  Quinn charged back up the hill she had rolled down, remembering an old tip Hayden had drilled into her during basic training: focus on one thing, one very personal thing, and make the fight about that. To lose the battle would mean to lose that precious thing forever.

  She visualized falling under the feet of the Syndicate and of one of the machines going for her daughter. No way in hell was she letting that happen.

  The thought brought with it a dark energy that flooded her mind and body. She snarled and grabbed a dead Marine’s grenade launcher and bandolier of ammo.

  Quinn pushed herself back and rolled out of the trench to see Milo in a life and death battle with a Syndicate mech readying to finish him off.

  “AGGHHHH!” Quinn screamed, mounting a fallen battle drone and ripping off several blasts from her grenade launcher.

  The grenades twirled through the air and burst over the enemy machine, ripping it into smoking pieces, yellowed strands of wiring, and what might have been tendons or ligature.

  Milo muscled himself up, nodding at Quinn, thankful for the assist.

  The Marines turned to see that the machines were largely defeated, but the Syndicate fighters were charging at them en masse.

  Quinn, the Marines, and their special forces allies took cover and opened fire.

  Soon, the Syndicate fighters were falling in great bunches, and Hayden signaled a charge, leading the Marines on a rampage through the undergrowth. They fired at the attackers while tactical teams shot at the hovercraft with Hafnium rockets. Flames from the stricken ships were sweeping across the jungle as the Marines formed a crescent-shaped formation, moving collectively toward the advancing invaders.

  This strategy was done by design, a trap that high command had devised after revisiting some of the wars of old, including battles fought by the military genius Hannibal. The idea was to gradually extend the ce
nter of the Marine line, and then have the troops on the left and right fall off in echelon formation to produce the crescent. It was hoped that the Marines would break the forward momentum of the attackers and lure them into an area that had been set up with traps.

  The Marines ran down through the jungle, firing their weapons without worrying about a clear shot or even taking the time to aim. Quinn found her breaths coming in short, forced bursts, as if she had to remember to breathe or would drop dead. What kept her going were thoughts of her daughter and the fact that Milo, Giovanni, and the others were still there, still alive, fighting alongside her.

  Quinn inserted several grenades into her launcher as a form blurred past.

  It was Renner, and he was covered in blood, some of it red, but most of it yellow. The little man smiled, his features hidden behind a mask of gore and grit. He looked at that moment like a corpse that had just been freshly resurrected, though there didn’t seem to be a wound on him.

  “You know what I’m going to say,” he said to Quinn, his chest heaving, spitting out copious amounts of blood.

  “You should see the other guy?” she replied.

  Renner smiled through bloody teeth.

  “Fucking-A right,” Renner laughed, turning and blasting shots into the jungle. “Fucking get some!” he shouted, leaping over a fallen tree and plowing through the shredded undergrowth.

  Quinn rushed after him, feeling the excitement of the charge, shooting into the jungle, willing her sabots into the attackers.

  All around her, Marines funneled down over an embankment and into a large hole that had been seared into the middle of the jungle by the Syndicate bombing.

  Quinn soon found herself alongside Milo, Giovanni, Hayden, and Renner.

  “The time of our lives, eh, boys and girls?” Renner said, stepping up next to Quinn and winking before unleashing a new spray of bullets into the canopy. “Might as well make the most of it.”

  Renner opened the cylinder on his launcher, smoke billowing out as he inserted a fistful of grenades before running off, the other Marines in tow.