by Kyle Noe
He joined in with a scream, and then the guns opened fire as the jeep behind started shooting at the guns. Bullets were flying, but the jeep went faster and faster, and then they were at the wall—
BOOM!
They slammed into it hard, knocking out the section of the wall where the explosions had hit it and screeching to a halt on the other side. A group of workers in hard hats rose from their tables nearby a construction site, not fifty feet off.
The other jeeps followed through the wall. Calee revved the engine to lead the way, but it sputtered off. The front of the jeep had taken the damage, and Giovanni was more surprised that they weren’t dead than that the jeep wasn’t working.
“Hop in, quick!” one of the resistance fighters said, motioning them over.
Giovanni darted over and scooted in next to the woman in the back, then glanced back to see Luke join him while Calee stripped the jeep of some weapons she had stashed. She ran over, threw them in, and squeezed in the third jeep. Their van came behind them, and then the sound of more gunshots.
What had been a dust cloud was now two Humvees and several jeeps like their own, but with armed assailants on the other side.
“Go!” Luke shouted.
The woman next to Giovanni reached under the seat and pulled out a rifle, turning and aiming in at their pursuers. As fast as their jeep would carry them, they careened across the desert, occasionally firing shots until the pursuers pulled back.
“Why’d they stop?” Giovanni asked.
“The wall’s their territory,” Luke explained. “They get caught by the Syndicate this far north, they’ll be in serious shit.”
“If they aren’t with the Syndicate then, what, they sold out their own kind?”
Luke nodded. “Lots of that going around nowadays, or so I’m told.”
They drove past a ravine on their right, and the sun emerged from behind billowing clouds, casting bright shadows across the desert. Giovanni had been doubtful, but at least this part of the trip had been successful. No casualties, unless he counted the jeep.
He leaned back, scrunched between the woman and Luke, and closed his eyes.
Chapter Twenty: The Descent
Quinn had her eyes closed as the glider throttled and blasted down toward the surface of the Earth. Her thoughts turned to everything that had transpired over the last several days.
She began to think about how the invasion had played out. What would Earth look like? Who would be left? How would they be received by the survivors? Her eyes opened and strayed to the Syndicate armor now protecting her, and she realized if they were greeted at all, it would likely be at the end of a gun.
Her eyes skipped from the faces of the Marines she knew and had served with, Milo, Hayden, Renner, to those she didn’t. A motley assortment of twenty-six men and women, some soldiers, some Marines, others covered in what might be prison ink, their mouths set in perpetual sneers.
All had been offered the same deal, fight for the Syndicate and live, or refuse and take a trip to the med bay where your brain would be wiped clean. The twenty-six ranged in age from early-twenties to mid-forties, and if there was anything about them that gave solace to Quinn, it was that they looked like they’d been serious shit-kickers back on Earth.
Still, the fact that they’d been tossed together with very little instruction or formal training gave her chills. She felt petrified at the thought of the hastily assembled unit assaulting any position, let alone one manned by battle-hardened irregulars fresh off a scrape with the Syndicate war machine.
Once the glider had descended toward Earth’s upper atmosphere, Quinn slid down the outer visor on her helmet and powered up the HUD.
She watched a kaleidoscope of imagery and information blur past: her vital statistics followed by top-down, grayscale imagery of what she believed to be the ground below, coordinates and vectoring, illuminated paths and avenues of attack, ammunition supplies, hot-zones, and thermal imagery of everyone within a kilometer of the landing zone. Her eyes watered and her head swam as the data was downloaded and re-routed and sorted into something that she hoped would be usable.
Her eyes scanned the top-down footage of the ground below. Other gliders were already doing a circuit three thousand feet over the landing zone, the exact distance showing up as a transparent display on an altitude bar on the side of her HUD.
Quinn could make out the faintest hint of a mountain range and a wide sweep of what might be desert with what appeared to be a handful of buildings at its edge, there for an instant and then gone. She didn’t know the location, that information wasn’t provided, and she wondered, worried whether it was anywhere near where Samantha was.
She tapped a button on the side of her helmet, hoping that she’d cued something for communications.
“General Aames? Do you copy, sir?”
There was a crackle of static, and then the General’s voice was audible.
“Affirmative, Quinn.”
“I’m getting overloaded with info, sir,” Quinn said.
“That’s to be expected,” Aames said. “Mother is downloading the order of battle.”
“What’s the specific target, sir?”
“I’ll repeat what I said before. A resistance outpost,” Aames said.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but why even use us? Why not just nuke the whole area?”
“Because we’d lose our ability to recover the grail.”
She paused. This was the first time anyone had mentioned recovering something. “What might the grail be, sir?”
The general chuckled. “The grail is like porn, Quinn. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Quinn let her guard down for a second and shot a nervous glance at Milo. He looked like he wanted to reach out and comfort her, but they were strapped in. He winked instead and mouthed the words, “We’ll be fine.”
She frowned. At least it distracted her from her nerves.
She felt her sweaty palms inside the armor. Her eyelids were blinking and her breathing was arrhythmic. She was totally not ready for what was to come.
The harnesses rotated back, pulling the Marines up so that they were at an extreme angle, hanging directly over the flooring. Some of the Marines took offense at the angle and somebody, Quinn couldn’t tell who, retched inside his helmet.
She glanced at Milo, who was singing quietly to himself to calm his nerves while Renner was fighting with the communications on his helmet. Renner fancied himself an electronics savant, and Quinn saw that he had pried a section loose from his helmet. She saw him bend a few wires and strip a few more, before twisting them together and tapping a button. Renner’s voice boomed through every helmet in the glider.
“I’d like to thank everyone for being here today,” Renner said, to laughs. “The first of many expeditions back to Mother Earth.”
“Isn’t it weird that we’re the invaders now,” Quinn said.
“What if we’re not?” Milo asked.
There was muted laughter at this.
“I’m serious,” Milo added.
“Fuck off, Milo,” Quinn said, dismissing him.
“Hear me out on this one. What if things are gonna be better off now? What if bad leadership and self-interest totally failed to make life better down below? We all remember how it was. How nothing could ever really be accomplished because there was so much bullshit. Maybe these Syndicate jokers are the good guys in some weird way. Maybe it’s time to restore a little law and order to the misguided.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Hitler said after he took office,” Quinn said.
“Stifle that shit,” General Aames muttered.
Quinn and the others were jolted as the glider rotated. Next came the hiss of depressurization as Quinn gaped out the window to see the outline of Earth. She stared at the continents and oceans, finding it difficult to imagine such a beautiful place torn asunder by conflict and war. The glider trembled for several seconds as the Marines waited for the assault cra
ft to rotate into position, a robotic voice audible in their helmets:
“The countdown is commencing … ten, nine, eight …”
Milo started humming to himself, trying to stay calm. “This little piggy went to market…”
The robotic voice continued: “Five, Four ...”
Milo tried to finish his ditty. “This little piggy went—”
There was a burst of static, and then Quinn saw Renner tapping the side of his helmet again as AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” began playing.
“How the hell did you do that?” Quinn asked.
Renner could be seen grinning through his visor.
“I got game, Sarge.”
The launch doors below the Marines heaved open, and before anyone could utter a scream, the Marines were violently shot out into space like missiles, heading on a collision course with Earth.
Quinn’s stomach heaved as she plummeted down into the nothingness of low-Earth orbit. Before she could react, however, gravity reached up and grabbed her wrists, and she was shooting down through the sky like a meteor.
She could hear Milo over the comms, humming to himself, “This little piggy went…” but soon he was out of breath and unable to complete the rhyme even as the AC/DC song continued to blare.
Quinn had completed a parachute drop course back in the Corps, but nothing could prepare for the impact of space-diving down toward the ground at five hundred miles per hour. It felt like she was somehow swimming without touching the water. The pressure began to build around her temples, and Quinn was terrified that she was going to black out.
She stuck out her hand to press it against her temple and relieve the pressure, but her hand was yanked back and Quinn with it. Her body contorted into a fetal ball as she spiraled down through the sky.
“GRAB YOUR LEG!” Milo shouted over the comms.
With much effort, Quinn’s right hand ratcheted out and grabbed her boots. This allowed her to reposition her body until she was able to bend back and face down.
“FOLD YOUR ARMS AGAINST YOUR SIDES!” Milo shouted again.
Quinn did, and the pressure on her forehead subsided as Milo sliced past her, a grin on his face as he led the way down.
“CHRIST, QUINN, WE CAN’T TAKE YOU ANYWHERE!”
She mustered a smile and focused on the ground visible down beneath, the air whipping past her, rolling over the contours of her body like a wave.
“Check it!” Renner screamed, and Quinn looked over, watching him do a variety of acrobatic moves, seemingly unaffected by the turbulence of the descent.
The ground was rushing up to greet the Marines, and now Quinn could see the faintest outline of the landing zone below, tucked in an immense desert dotted with rocky outcroppings and what might be a small city off to her right.
The same robotic voice as before came over comms. “Engage Reverse Rockets.”
Quinn studied her HUD and followed the directions, keying a button on the side of her armor as an electrical current spasmed in her boots. Instinctively she clenched her toes, and this movement forced a burst of energy from her boots that affected her positioning. In seconds, Quinn realized she was able to control her movement and rate of descent merely by the positioning of her toes. There was some kind of rocket or mechanical device planted in the boots that would enable her to land safely. A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. The Syndicate had thought of everything.
“Okay, you ugly, worthless, jerks,” General Ames said over the comms. “Our mission is a simple one: protect cooperative humans and suppress the resistance. You are here to serve the Syndicate and save the Earth from those who’d wage a war that’s already been lost. Focus on the goal and do not deviate from it, or I promise you will be cast down into a lake of fucking fire!”
General Aames paused, then shouted. “Time to play. Slow your roll!”
Quinn and the others keyed the reverse rockets in their boots, slowing their descent.
The squadron, with land in sight, shot one last burst of energy from their reverse rockets as they neared the ground.
“Deploy ‘chutes,” Aames said.
Quinn and the others pulled their ripcords and sailed through the air toward the dust of the landing zone as General Aames shouted.
“LOCK IT UP, MARINES! IT’S TIME TO DO BATTLE!”
Chapter Twenty-One: Black Sunshine
Landing with a terrific thud, Quinn steadied herself and went with the momentum, sliding to a halt and stirring up dirt and grime.
A glider shuddered and landed next to them. Red lights on the roof turned green, the glider’s rear dock lowered, and Marines poured out in a formation, protecting the scientists among them.
Hayden barked out orders to regroup, and the Marines rushed into formation.
In the rear, Cody stayed behind with General Aames and several advisors. They were positioned on swivel chairs in front of a battery of computer equipment, like drone pilots, but for humans.
Swirling dust clouded Quinn’s vision as she pushed forward, crowded together with the others. The madness of the conditions were largely muffled by her battle helmet, but Quinn was still reeling, the enormity of the situation weighing on her. She stumbled into Hayden.
“You got your claws sharpened, Sergeant?” he asked her.
She just stared at him, his face inscrutable under the helmet’s visor.
“What the fuck are we doing here, Gunny?” she asked.
“Come again?”
“You heard me. What are we doing down here? Assassins for the goddamn invaders.”
Hayden grabbed Quinn and motioned for her to remove her helmet so that nobody else could hear them. He removed his helmet first, then Quinn followed, the wind blasting grit into her hair, her eyes, her mouth.
“You start acting the fool and asking questions that weren’t meant to be asked, and you’re gonna get us all killed,” Hayden said, over the howl of the wind.
“We’re already dead, aren’t we? I mean, they’re never gonna let us go.”
“That’s some straight-up bullshit, Quinn. You think I like the idea of maybe killing some of our own people? Hell no. But we done it before. Anytime we went into combat we were ghosting people that weren’t that different from us. You know why we done it?”
“We were following orders?”
He shook his head. “We did it for each other and because the people we went up against were the enemy. Same as now. We got a job to do and out there are people who are gonna try and stop us. We can’t let that happen, so we pull our big boy pants up and we do what needs doing. You copy that?”
She nodded even though it still didn’t make sense. But she didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t do as the Syndicate commanded, if she didn’t fight … she died. No last farewell with her daughter, no holding her hand in hers telling her she loved her. Simply dead.
She slid her helmet back on, as did Hayden, the two pushing forward with the others, refusing to back down. If the resistance fighters wanted to go up against them, knowing full well that Quinn and the others were part of the assault and that they had no choice, well, then Hayden was right. Under the brutal rules that governed combat, they’d ceased to be humans. They were just the enemy now. .
Horns sounded, and Quinn shuffled into the sand as four armored, multi-terrain Thunderhead vehicles loaded with weapons and gear were driven off the glider by other Marines. She was glad she wasn’t inside the armored vehicles. That would be the first thing any legitimate resistance fighters would target.
Quinn, Hayden, Milo, Renner, and the other Marines stopped near a cropping of rocks at the outer edges of the landing zone and looked out over the horizon. Information flashed across the top of Quinn’s helmet HUD. She could see that the landing zone was situated in a remote area in southern New Mexico.
They were perhaps twenty miles from the wall that once separated the United States from Mexico. The wall had been built hundreds of years before, and then firebombed and built again only to
be destroyed by the cross-border raids that resulted after Texas seceded from the Union some thirty years earlier.
The ground underfoot was sandy and studded with scrub, forming a kind of natural trail that rose to a series of sand dunes. Beyond the dunes, stretching from the desert floor to the heavens, was a mammoth curtain of dust.
“A Haboob,” Quinn said, under her breath.
“Excuse you,” Renner said with a grin, looking over from the side of a Thunderhead he’d caught a ride on.
“Haboob is just a fancy word for a dust storm,” Milo said.
“Black roller,” Quinn added, searching the heavens. “It’s a little different.”
She pointed, and the Marines could see sickles of what looked like lightning in the middle of the storm.
“Used to see those all the time in Arizona,” Quinn said. “Super-charged. They can sometimes short out electrical equipment.”
“I’m sure the Syndicate’s already planned for that,” Renner said, with a sarcastic smirk.
Quinn could use a little less of his snark this moment. A little support, that’s all. That’s what she needed now. To be reassured that everything was worth it and maybe they wouldn't be forced to do anything against their will.
Quinn cued her helmet.
“You copying this, General?”
“Copy it? Hell, we ordered it up.”
“Suboptimal conditions,” Milo said, holding out his hand to catch a few particles of grit that was now falling in sheets.
“For the enemy,” the general countered. “They don’t have our tech. They’ll be operating blind. We won’t.”
Quinn looked over at Hayden, who nodded.
“Saddle up, Marines. Direct orders from General Aames.”
“Direct orders?” Quinn asked.
“Not all orders are broadcast out to every HUD. Some are direct. Part of the Syndicate’s compartmentalization to protect parts of the mission that could compromise the Syndicate’s mission to find the grail,” Hayden said. “And please don’t ask me what the ‘grail’ is. The General’s words. Not mine.”
