Reapers: The Shadow Soldiers

by Josh Collins

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she moaned. He shook his head and crouched next to her, which was a bit of a task with his wound, but he managed to achieve it.

  Looking at the resolute cannon below, he couldn’t believe that such an impressive piece of technology existed. It was massive. Its thick base seemed nearly impenetrable, and its long, bulky barrel stretched seemingly into the heavens. The most impressive part about this gargantuan weapon was the fact that it circled the planet. Thick tracks cut through the valley, allowing the cannon to pivot around the entire world. If the asteroid attacks were so daunting that they required a weapon of this magnitude to stop them, Burns wondered why anyone had lived here at all.

  “Look!” Carmen shouted, patting him on the shoulder and bringing him to attention. He turned his head to her and saw that she was pointing at something. He stood to get a better view.

  A carcass of some sort of craft lay a few miles away with black smoke billowing from its innards. Using his helmet’s binocular functions, Burns magnified the image and got a better view. He didn’t like what he saw.

  “That’s not good,” he grumbled. Carmen stood.

  “What? What is it?” she asked impatiently. Burns took a deep breath.

  “It’s the Dusk-Falcon,” he told her. Carmen seemed to look at the ground.

  “Maybe I interpreted the message wrong,” she suggested. “He could have been saying that the others were already dead.” Burns shook his head—that was unacceptable. He wouldn’t believe that Rhett and Brosi were gone, not until he found proof.

  “I’m gonna try their comms. If they are near, they’ll work,” Burns said, returning his helmet to its normal view and trying the communications.

  He went for Brosi first since the man had previously gotten through. However, it was nothing but static. He tried Rhett next, and couldn’t get through to him either.

  It seemed desolate. Maybe they were the only ones left. Burns looked back up at Carmen. She’d put her helmet on as well.

  “I see tracks leading up to the ship and then walking away from it,” she told him, using her own binocular functions now.

  “It could be the Lobitar patrol,” Burns mentioned, but she began walking toward it anyway. He shook his head again.

  “Where are you going?” he shouted after her, following a little.

  “I’m going to inspect the footprints, see what we’re up against. You get the truck ready and meet me there!” she ordered, running ahead now.

  “Wait!” Burns yelled after her, but the cry caused his wound to flare up. He was in no condition to follow on foot, that was clear.

  Through the pain and frustration, he let out a growl and swung his arm out, punching the cold air.

  “Damn it!” he growled to himself. Carmen was definitely a civilian. She followed her own path and couldn’t be bothered to listen to orders. Despite the fact that this wasn’t the time go rogue, Burns was secretly charmed by her rebellious attitude. It reminded him of who he had been before he’d joined the army.

  Returning to the truck, Burns fired it up and backed down the hill.

  Turning around, he tried to follow another more hidden path to the crash site. He hoped Carmen didn’t end up in trouble. If Brosi and Rhett were truly dead, and she was to follow, then Burns would be left alone in this icy hell.

  This thought only succeeded to make him more frustrated. So much so that when he finally arrived at the crash site, he considered not letting Carmen in the cabin again. She really did need to follow his orders, now more than ever.

  However, this wasn’t boot camp. They were a mile from the most heavily occupied ULC asset on Silverset, and they needed to move. He unlocked the doors and let her in. Immediately, she began to speak.

  “Good news or bad news?” she asked, seemingly out of breath. Burns shook his head, frustrated with the game.

  “Good news?” he guessed.

  “Well, good news is those tracks belong to our boys,” she told him, raising Burns’ spirits a bit. “I matched the prints with my own boots, and they were identical.”

  “And the bad news?” he asked, hoping it wouldn’t be too crushing.

  “Well, they seem to lead off into the mountains. They were running…from something,” she said. “The tracks are thick enough that I think we can follow in the truck.” Burns nodded back at her. Shifting gears, they sped along the tracks in pursuit of their comrades. Burns knew they couldn’t be far away, not anymore at least.

  Indeed, soon they heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. From Burns’ assumption, the rifles sounded like Rekras, the standard issue assault rifle for fringe world rebellions. They were cheap and durable but inaccurate, not something the Dominion would use. Their presence then meant that the Collective had caught up to the others. Burns and Carmen had to catch up before it was too late.

  Yet there was still no sign of anything but snow falling from the sky. He couldn’t believe how hard it was to find two men sealed in dark gray armor on a planet that was almost entirely white.

  More shots rang out, and this time they sounded much closer. Carmen shifted a little, readying for a fight. Burns took a deep breath—round two with the Collective was near.

  As expected, the battle soon came into range. Through the hazy snow, they encountered a platoon of ULC militants. The men surrounded a downed Rhett and Brosi, who were fighting off the Lobitar Bloodhounds.

  Brosi threw one of the toothy beasts aside, only to be forcefully shoved to the ground by another. The surrounding militants prepared to fire on the downed man.

  “Suppressing fire!” Burns ordered. Carmen silently nodded back and then opened her door, standing out of the side of the vehicle and aiming her rifle forward as she took the first shot. It was on point. A militant crumbled to the ground.

  Noticing the coming ambush, the perimeter militants focused fire on Burns and the truck. Bullets shattered the windshield and tore apart the seating. Burns armor managed to keep him intact. Rolling down his window, he returned fire.

  Finishing off the last of the carnivorous Bloodhounds, Brosi regrouped to fire at the militants surrounding him.

  Finishing off what was left of the perimeter guard, Burns slid the truck to a stop near the others’ position. Leaping from the vehicle, he laid down heavy suppressing fire with both of his submachine guns.

  The militants’ line fractured, and the survivors fell back. Carmen continued to harass them from afar while standing on the side of the truck. Under her cover, Burns proceeded toward his squad.

  “Damn, am I glad to see you, Colonel!” Brosi exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” Burns asked, noticing Rhett was still unresponsive. Brosi sighed.

  “He fell into a frozen lake trying to get those scent dogs off our tail.”

  “Right, we’ll handle it. Fall back,” he ordered to Brosi as he knelt down and removed Rhett’s helmet, feeling for a pulse. It was cold and things were tense. He couldn’t get a reading.

  “Carmen!” he called out to the medic, who was still attempting to finish off the last of the militants. “Carmen!” he called again. “Rhett needs medical attention!”

  “We’ll have to attend to him on the move,” Brosi yelled, pointing to an ominous blizzard on the horizon.

  “Lift him up!” Burns exclaimed to Carmen as she arrived. She nodded silently and grabbed the man. Together they carried him to the truck and then hoisted him in the back. Carmen then jumped in the back as well.

  As Burns returned to the driver’s seat, a few militants began to return fire as the storm quickly approached from behind them. Burns exhaled loudly at the situation. He knew the odds of them all surviving the next few minutes were minimal at best.

  DESPERATION

  “Carmen! Progress?” Burns shouted to Carmen, who was crouched down and attempting to revive the nearly frozen Rhett.

  “I’m working the best I can! Just turn forward and drive!” she yelled back. He grunted as he tur
ned forward and attempted to start the old truck. The vehicle first growled a little, whined, and then cut out entirely.

  “Where is my heat?” Carmen shouted from the back as she began removing the frosted bits of Rhett’s armor. Burns turned the key again. Something inside the vehicle stuttered but would not start. He turned to her.

  “Looks like the cold has finally gotten to it,” he said. She shook her head as she continued to peel off the frostbitten upper half of Rhett’s flight suit. Brosi was standing above them, checking any compartments he could find in the back. He pulled out some wrinkled miner uniform and threw it to Carmen.

  “Here, something he can wear if he ever comes around,” Brosi noted. She didn’t seem too happy.

  “Blankets—I need blankets!” she shouted at him. Brosi shook his head, looking back inside the bare compartment. He saw nothing but a few stale packages of bread.

  “Not everybody carries blankets with them!” he responded to her. She looked back up at him.

  “We’re on an ice planet! Am I wrong for hoping?” she yelled back. Burns turned around and cut in.

  “Hey! This isn’t gonna get better if we tear each other apart!” he growled.

  “Oh, I’m sure you have a brilliant plan!” Carmen said sarcastically. Though she was right to be frustrated. He really didn’t know what to do.

  “Well, first we need to get the truck started.” He began to spitball a plan. “Brosi, are you good with vehicles?” he asked. The man nodded back.

  “It’s how I got interested in technology,” he confirmed.

  “Good. Get out there, and see if you can get this thing running before the Collective gets their bearings!” he exclaimed. Brosi gathered his weapon and then jumped out of the back of the truck and into the blizzard. Burns then turned to Carmen.

  “Carmen, you have to get Rhett going,” he ordered. She exhaled, seemingly exhausted,

  “I’m not sure. He’s completely unresponsive. We may not be able to—”

  “Not an option. If we can’t revive him the conventional way, then we’ll have to think of alternatives. We have to!” Burns ordered. He didn’t really know what he was saying. He just needed her to fight as hard as she could. They couldn’t lose Rhett. He may have sacrificed himself to save the mission, but his death would still deal a serious blow to morale.

  Carmen got to work shortly after that, trying her best to revive the man—or at least think of a way to.

  Meanwhile, Brosi hadn’t responded in a while. It was only after another round of Collective gunfire clanged off the truck somewhere that Burns realized Brosi was still working. The man returned fire with the iconic sound of a Dominion RR-7, but it didn’t sound like he was aiming to kill. Burns couldn’t see out of the windshield because of the blizzard, which meant Brosi probably couldn’t see his foes either. His aim was to scare them off with the vague hope of possibly hitting one.

  “That’s it!” Carmen exclaimed from the back, finding a possible idea that would work.

  “Let’s hear it,” Burns told her. She came to her knees.

  “Well, Rhett was previously kept at the Syncopate because he knew too much to be set free, but they aren’t going to want to use government research funds to feed and board him. They would have found alternative methods to keep him secure.” Burns realized what she was getting at.

  “Cryostasis,” he blurted it out. She pointed at him.

  “Exactly, he’s been frozen like this before.” Burns nodded back.

  “How do you get someone out of cryo? It’s not exactly common knowledge.” She seemed to know the answer.

  “Well, as I understand it, the subject is given an injection of chemicals that bond with their blood. When put into the cryostasis chamber, the chemicals are activated, and they overtake the veins and slow everything in the body down to a snail’s pace. The only way then for the subject to be revived is by being given new blood. The warmth breaks down the chemicals, and the composition bonds with them,” she told him. Burns shook his head.

  “So, I guess the only way to save Rhett is by blood transfusion,” he said. Her face looked bleak.

  “Most likely. It would be the only chance.”

  “How much are we talking?” he asked, somewhat apprehensive of the answer.

  “A quarter from each of us.”

  “That could end badly,” he cautioned.

  “Like you said, we have no choice,” she reminded him, and Burns knew what they had to do. He bowed his head affirmatively to her, and she began to get the right tools ready.

  Suddenly, there was some banging on the front of the truck, and Burns swiftly jerked forward, expecting it to be an armed ULC militant. Instead, it was Brosi; he was giving a thumbs-up. He seemed to have fixed the vehicle. Leaning forward, Burns turned the key once more and held his breath. Thankfully, the truck roared into existence. As soon as Brosi jumped back into the bed of the truck, Burns began driving. The blizzard made it difficult to see where he was going, but anywhere away from the militant patrol was good enough.

  “Any word on Rhett?” Brosi asked. He seemed out of breath and had a slight frost over his gray battle armor.

  “He’s intact, but we’ll have to give a quarter of our blood to him,” Carmen responded. Brosi’s now focused demeanor wasn’t perturbed.

  “Right,” he said, removing one of his gloves and exposing his bare arm.

  “Any diseases floating around inside you?” Carmen asked as she prepared the needle.

  “Nope,” he answered simply.

  “What if his body won’t accept our blood?” Burns asked as Brosi knelt down.

  “We just have to hope,” she murmured, finding a vein on Brosi and beginning the process.

  Hope, Burns thought sarcastically to himself.

  After only a few minutes, Carmen had finished with Brosi. Though, Rhett was still unresponsive. Moving on, she connected the transfusion to herself. Despite a few grimaces, she didn’t appear to have much of a struggle with this.

  It was then Burns’ turn. Figuring they were well out of the Collective’s way by this point, Burns stopped the truck and put it in neutral, not daring to turn it off again.

  Pulling off one of his gloves, he put his arm through the open window that peered in back. Easily finding a vein in his fair skin, Carmen forced the needle into his arm and began drawing blood.

  Burns quickly started to feel lightheaded. It was quite possible that he didn’t have enough blood to give. He didn’t let this bother him. In every regard, Rhett was worth more than him. Dying so that the man could live would be a worthwhile sacrifice.

  Soon though, he’d given his quarter and made it through alive. Yet Rhett hadn’t risen.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” Brosi murmured, but they waited patiently anyway. The minutes passed with little movement. Carmen began to agree with Brosi.

  “I’m gonna call it,” she grumbled. “I’m sorry, guys.” Burns sat still. He didn’t like to throw in the towel on people, but they really needed to get moving. He bowed his head and turned forward.

  “What are we gonna do with the body?” Carmen asked. Burns turned around swiftly.

  “He’s not dead yet,” he barked. Brosi then spoke.

  “Colonel, we have to prepare for the eventuality that—”

  “I’ve lost a soldier before,” Burns snapped. Brosi was quiet after that, and Burns was able to get the vehicle moving again.

  The ice and snow became monotonous, and soon he became just as doubtful as his teammates. Just because he’d lost a soldier before didn’t mean he knew how to deal with it, and this one hit him harder than ever. He wondered if this unfortunate fate awaited them all on this frozen hellhole? It had to have been eating away at the others too, because everything had become eerily silent. Burns once again felt like he was in some sort of purgatory, and his team looked it.

  They sat helmetless, bodies pushed up on the walls of the truck bed with drained c
olors in their skin. It wasn’t just Rhett’s departure that beat them—it was also that the gravity of the mission was just realizing itself. They were stuck on a planet overrun with hostile forces, and they were as good as dead. Burns didn’t know if it could get much worse than this.

  “Hey, Brosi,” he called back from the driver’s seat, “what exactly happened to maroon you and Rhett like that?” He looked at the disheveled man through the rearview mirror. The look was quite the change from when he had first met the man.

  “Well,” Brosi’s voice crackled, “we went into the cannon, just the two of us—” Burns stopped him there.

  “Why? We were supposed to meet outside the cannon,” he grumbled.

  “Sir, it was Rhett’s decision,” Brosi retorted. “It doesn’t matter anyway. In fact, it’s probably for the best that you weren’t there.” Burns lowered his eyebrows.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because,” Brosi paused, looking down at Rhett solemnly, “it was a trap.” Burns turned his head and actually looked at the man.

  “What do you mean?” he asked stringently.

  “I mean they were expecting us. They had the whole thing rigged up like a honeypot. The moment I got in and turned the cannon off, it turned itself back on and sounded the alarms. Had you been there, you would have probably ended up dead too.” Burns looked forward again with a grimace. Their mission was no more. They had been sent down to turn off a cannon that couldn’t be shut off. They had no objective, no plan, and no escape. Intelligence should have known it was a trap, but they had sent them down anyway. Had he gone through with his objective, they’d all be dead. He was right not to trust Intel—he was always right.

  Now, because of his failure to believe himself, Rhett was dead, and the rest would soon follow. Worse yet, Brosi had a fiancée waiting for him off-world. Burns punched the head of the passenger’s side seat in frustration.

  He immediately regretted this outburst. He was supposed to be the leader here. Even when no one had faith, he was supposed to carry on and keep calm. Otherwise, the others might lose it too.