Infinity Squad

by Shuvom Ghose

  I ran for the hangar door, their bullets following me and dove through, but not before I saw what they were bringing back in the helicopter.

  A huge, dripping mass of seaweed.

  Okay, I had to tell the Squad what I had just seen. And to attack in this lull, before the next wave of clones were sent out. And to come save my ass. Without tac implants or going to Comms. There was only one way.

  I sprinted to our barracks and tried to push away the naughty feelings of rifling through Ann-Marie's trunk as I looked for a very personal item. Her cellphone. I hit the speed dial for Juan's number.

  It rang ten gut-wrenching times until he picked up.

  "Butcher?"

  "Juan, it's me, Lieutenant Forrest!"

  "Oh, sorry, sir! I know I'm not supposed to-"

  "Shut up Juan. Tell Red-Stripe to attack."

  "But we just heard two choppers land."

  "They were empty! Tell Red-Stripe to send the siege-breakers, now!"

  "Okay. I'm telling him." A pause during which I heard the sound of constant gunfire. "Done."

  I loaded and stuck my spare Colt .45 in my belt as I asked, "How's it going?"

  "It's rough, sir. Two more hit but not dead. The spiders helped us throw them back a few time-FUCK! Whew. Okay. It was getting really hairy right when you called."

  "Why the hell did you pick up the phone then?"

  "I thought you were Butcher," he said.

  "You can see Butcher."

  "Oh. Yeah."

  "Tell everyone NOT to die," I said, opening the door to our barracks and peeking out. "The Immortals are bringing the slugs back here. I bet they're going to put them in the tanks. If you die you could wake up infected."

  "Okay. Oh shit- it's happening!"

  "What!"

  "The spiders are charging!" he yelled. "Fuck yeah!"

  "What's happening? Tell me!"

  "They're all like, fucking mowing them down! From over there! And there too!"

  "Damn it, Juan. Put Zazlu on the phone!"

  Sounds of bullets, running.

  "Zazlu."

  "Zaz, what's happening? Juan couldn't narrate a silent movie."

  "The spiders caught them from behind like perfect siege-breakers. Two groups, galloping up silently, got most of them before they could turn and fire. If they did, we got them. Two spiders hurt, but... there…they got them all! There's still a Heavy in the woods, but we're looking good for now, sir."

  "Okay, great," I said, exhaling. "I think the Immortals are infecting the tanks, Zaz. Don't die or you could wake up Hector's best friend."

  "Roger."

  "And, uh, any chance you could come get me? We've got to stop the next wave of clones from being infected. And the next."

  There was a pause. "We've got wounded."

  "Leave Steve there with the wounded and bring the rest here."

  "Steve is one of the wounded."

  "God damn it! How does he always- never mind," I said. "Okay, leave one healthy private to talk to the gray shells about triage and bring the rest here with all the hunters Red-Stripe can spare."

  "That will just be me, Butcher and Juan. And about five spiders."

  I sighed. Against 45 soldiers, 30 BlackShirts, and thousands of psychic brain slugs.

  Lighter, smarter, faster.

  I guess it had to be this way.

  I did my best Flores walk and checked two Stinger missiles out of the armory. I don't even know why we had those here.

  Then I snuck outside, waiting for the next set of troops to run out to the returning auto-piloted helicopters. As they took off, I locked the shoulder-fired anti-air missile onto the first helicopter and then let the Stinger loose. The first helicopter exploded, giving 5 clones the second shortest mission of the day. I did the same to the second helicopter, as I imagine the soldiers were screaming at the auto-pilot to climb faster. Sometimes machines just aren't the answer.

  That left only one working troop helicopter on the entire planet, the one still wet from the Immortal's cargo. I let that be and climbed on the roof of the cafeteria to watch the cavalry come in.

  I noticed that they weren't sending clones out that same hangar door anymore. Real Flores in TacOps must have learned. Or maybe the freshly resurrected soldiers just had other prey on their mind.

  "Come on guys, hurry," I said into Ann-Marie's cellphone, thinking of Doc Murphy or Dakota running from a horde of infected.

  "Almost there," Zazlu answered. "Riding Hell-Spiders is actually pretty soothing. If we made the right saddle, it'd be smoother than a luxury car."

  "On the trip home, we will ride you," Blue Wave answered him, as I saw them at the edge of the Cleared Zone, three humans riding three spiders, followed by two other hunters.

  I squinted to make them out. "How come Ann-Marie got to ride Red-Stripe?"

  "She is the prettiest," the knives-on-knives voice said. The group paused before the Cleared Zone. "Lieutenant Forrest, how are we going to do this?"

  I sighed. Had Ridley ever been asked that question this many times in one day? I took a breath to think.

  "Okay, the base is laid out like an 'H'. The clone rooms are at each end of the H, and we have to take all four out. We're too few to do them all at once. But the first thing we need to hit is the armory. Come in through the cafeteria."

  "I sense a growing number of brain-slug hosts inside," Red-Stripe said. "That is troubling."

  "We're going to reduce that number," I sighed. "First rule: anyone you sense infected with slugs, kill them with a blow to the head, not the spine, or knock off their buffering band first. That goes for us too, Zaz, Butcher, Juan."

  "Hoo-ah."

  "Anyone in a black shirt, wound first, kill if necessary, but leave their band on. Same for anyone with the 2nd Chance logo. Don't chase anyone who runs from you, they're desk pushers, not a threat. And don't kill the females."

  "How do we tell which ones are the females?" Blue Wave asked.

  We all shouted "Shut up Juan!" before he had a chance to say anything.

  I made the cooks and busboys clear out of the kitchen, ordering them to lock themselves in their rooms and say no to slugs. Then I brought the team in. The humans went first, the spiders following as I led them out the same glass cafeteria door I had kicked in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  We moved down the hallway fast, almost to the armory when Red-Stripe said, "Two humans with hostile thoughts are approaching, from our left."

  "Spiders forward," I hissed. "Remember the rules. And do it quietly!"

  Two hunters took position around the corner, and when the BlackShirts turned it, claws flashed and cut the shotguns from their arms and stabbed their knees almost faster than I could see.

  "Black shirt, no kill," I felt the hunters think and both knocked the BlackShirts heads into the wall before the guards were even reacting to what they saw.

  They hit the ground unconscious, in less than two seconds after they had turned the corner.

  "Holy shit," I said to Zaz. "We may win this thing."

  That's when ten Omegas fresh from the tanks came pounding down the halls and we ducked into the armory as bullets came our way.

  Now, of all the places to be trapped, the armory is a pretty good one. You've got all of the guns, bullets, grenades and flamethrowers you need right in the room with you. But we were trapped; armories usually only have one door.

  Zazlu knocked the stunned desk sergeant out as he was still trying to breathe from seeing five Hell-Spiders and four war criminals burst into his office.

  I closed the armor plated door and locked it as we tried to think.

  "They didn't have many weapons," Butcher said. "Just sidearms. They were probably coming here for rifles."

  "They've got the BlackShirts' shotguns now," Juan replied.

  "They were infected," Red-Stripe said. "I could see it in their minds. And even now I can hear them telling the slug network of our position."

  "Then we're not staying long,"
I said. "Zazlu, flamethrowers."

  "I'm not walking around these tiny halls with a flammable gas tank on my back," he shot back. "Besides, I think we'll need these more." He was holding up bullet-proof riot shields. Why did we even have all this stuff?

  We got ready, then I asked Red-Stripe, "Are they looking at the armory door right now?"

  "Yes."

  "From which side? Left or right?"

  "Right."

  We opened the heavy door six inches and rolled grenade after grenade out to our right, like a broken grenade vending machine. It's not like we didn't have enough.

  One shotgun blast panged off the door before the explosions started.

  Red-Stripe turned his head, sensing the air. "One is killed. The rest are fleeing."

  "Which way?"

  "Right."

  We went right.

  They turned to fire at Zazlu and Juan, who were on point, crouching behind riot shields as they ran. Butcher and I popped over the shields to fire, because you couldn't hold the shield and a rifle at the same time. We chased the nine Omegas into one resurrection room at the end of the hall and paused outside the door.

  "Zazlu, Butcher, you hold the hall with two spiders. Juan, rest of spiders, you're with me. Kill all infected."

  We paused to breathe, and then Juan kicked in the door with me poking around his shield and the spiders behind me.

  Non-Murphy resurrection doctor was dead on the floor and nothing was moving in the room. Just three by thirty rows of sleeping clones lay in the tanks before us. All wore buffering bands. All were naked.

  "They took off their clothes," Juan said, nodding towards the piles of fatigues next to the door. "There's no way to tell which ones they are!"

  "Oh, we're not even playing this game," I said, starting to fire my rifle into every single tank up the nearest row.

  Eight clones sprang into motion in tanks throughout the room, pulling handguns or shotguns out of the water. Juan and I ducked as the spiders surged forward.

  In a short, intense, fire- and claw-fight, we got them all. We tried for headshots or razor claws through their skulls, but about half the Omegas would be resurrecting again, somewhere. One spider was hit twice in the side, blue blood oozing out, another hit once in the knee. Damn it.

  We pulled all the wires from of all the clones' heads, then I went to the main panel and read it before I grenaded it. There were four other resurrection stations active besides this one, the other three rooms and the one working lifeboat in orbit.

  We came back out to the hall to see that Butcher and Zazlu had advanced all the way up to one junction of the 'H' and were involved in a rough firefight there. Made sense. If you were going to hold a hallway, you didn't want to hold just an end of it and get trapped, you wanted to hold an intersection. I heard the two grenades I had left on the main panel go off behind us. Three rooms to go.

  We ran up to the intersection, two spiders limping.

  "Phoenix and Immortals," Ann-Marie said between shots. "Some BlackShirts." And Omegas we had just killed, running up still dripping from the res tanks.

  We needed to get past. Waiting only brought more enemy towards us. But these guys had rifles and shotguns, and I wasn't going to kill myself to get behind them again. We were pinned.

  "Hey sir," Butcher said, crouching next to me. "Do you think any of these spiders can do a good Oakley impression?"

  I started laughing.

  It turned out White-Sort-of-Boobs could, even with a bullet in his knee. What the soldiers fighting us at the intersection heard in their heads was, "This is General Oakley. If you are fighting in one hallway, retreat to the other hallway! NOW! We are re-cuddling there."

  "Re-grouping!" I whispered, sending him a better mental image.

  "We are re-grouping there," the spider corrected.

  And like good soldiers following the voices in their tactical implants, they retreated. Well, the BlackShirts and some of the Phoenix did. The infected listened to their own psychic voices in their head and stood their ground, not afraid to die. We weren't afraid to kill them, so it worked out. We kept their heads down while the spiders advanced but most clones died with their buffering bands on. We ran to the door of the other res room in this hall. We paused outside of that one too.

  "Three, two, one-" I said, and then we kicked the door in.

  This time the inhabitants did fire back right away, hard, and before the riot shields started cracking I looked up and saw clouds of seaweed hanging from the ceiling, just waiting to drop slugs on us. The clones waking up in the res tanks, probably the ones we had just killed, were already being showered with the white insects.

  "Back! Back!" I yelled, and we rushed backwards out the door.

  I looked over at Zazlu. "Gee, this would be a great time for a flamethrower."

  He sighed. "Hold on."

  He ran down the hall with some spiders to our barracks, where he had hidden the last working flamethrower before we had blown the armory up. They returned with it thirty seconds later, fresh human blood on his arms and the spider escort's claws.

  "We got rushed by a group with clubs," he said, strapping the flamethrower on. He nodded at the res room. "They're probably waking up in there right now."

  We set up. Standing well to the side of the door, I kicked it in once. A hail of bullets from at least three different guns went where I should have been standing. I kicked the door open from the side again. Same result. Kicked again, and fewer bullets this time.

  I looked at Red-Stripe. "Tell me which kick they're not going to fire."

  "Okay."

  "Don't be wrong!"

  "Okay."

  After about five more kicks with varying responses, he said, "This time."

  I motioned Zazlu forward, put Juan with a half-destroyed riot shield in front of him, then kicked again.

  We heard their screams as Zazlu emptied half his tank spitting fire up, down, left, right before they could fire back. But they died with their buffering bands on, even the ones that came screaming back into the same room we were killing them in.

  "This is just going to get harder," Zazlu said, noticing that. "Now they're all concentrated in two res rooms."

  Yes, it was going to get harder. Doc Murphy was manning one of those two res rooms in the other hallway.

  This main panel I smashed with the butt of my rifle. I only had one grenade left, and I was saving it. As it broke, it read three other res stations active. Two rooms down, two to go.

  As we were running down the long middle hallway of the H and past many panicking civilians who were trying to get themselves shot, I heard Oakley's voice in my head.

  "To the soldiers fighting in the hallway! Surrender! Now! Or face dire consequences!"

  I turned to White-Sort-of-Boobs, run-limping next to me. "Quit it."

  "It was not me, Bunch of Trees."

  I tapped my throat mike. "Oakley?"

  "That's General Oakley to you, criminal! Now surrender! This has gone far enough!"

  "Has it? Do you finally believe that psychic bugs are trying to take over this entire base?"

  "The only ones acting possessed is YOUR squad, you fuckwad!"

  "Yeah, that's right," I said, ducking behind a corner as a BlackShirt took a parting shot at me. "We're the ones that have been taken over. We're the ones trying to make every human into food in the bottom of a cave. We're the ones who put all that seaweed hanging over these res tanks so brain slugs infect this entire base. Why don't you put that in your report to Earth?" I said, only half joking.

  "I have already made my report through the wormgate! And you all are named! Every criminal act you have done has been reported!"

  "Not every act," Zazlu said, firing a quick burst to kill another clone who was charging us.

  Another three clones burst from the cafeteria as we passed, trying to ambush us with knives. One sliced Zazlu across the back but then the spiders attacked, killing two permanently but not knocking the headband off the last
one in time.

  "Do they even have any clones left at this point?" Ann-Marie asked, coming up after sniping another Immortal through the civilians running away from us. She started treating Zazlu's wound as Steve had taught us.

  "Have we killed five hundred yet?" I said back.

  "Not likely," she replied.

  "Then yes," I said. "Hey, Oakley! What are you going to do when we destroy the last res room and all your lights turn red? You still going to send soldiers out to die against us?"

  "What are YOU going to do, fuckwads, when I get a hold of you? Try taking these last two resurrection rooms! I dare you!"

  "Sir," Zazlu panted, grabbing my shoulder before I moved forward, even as Butcher was finishing bandaging his back. He covered his mike. "It's getting worse each time, sir. Next room it will be twenty or thirty of them. After that maybe forty or fifty."

  "And Oakley's got to be barricaded in one of the res rooms with the BlackShirts," Butcher said. "That's the obvious place to retreat to. That's the last stand location. We won't be able to take that."

  Juan came up too. "Yeah, what's the point? They're just going to rebuild them."

  "The point is," I started, then stopped. "It's the right thing to do."

  "But what's the point?" Zazlu asked. "We can't win. Not permanently. What do we want?"

  When the bullets had started flying, I had focused too much on the mission and not enough on the war. Ridley had warned about that. So yeah, what did I want?

  I wanted Three-Spot to be safe, and that was done, I guess. I wanted the brain slugs dead, but we had hosed that chance. Hector was out of reach, too. I wanted my squad safe, and half them were bleeding, maybe on their way to another death but definitely to jail. I wanted the spiders safe but they had been protecting us as much as we did them. But mostly, I wanted to ask my entire squad and a certain red-headed doctor to come with me, as I got out of this army, out of this war, off this planet, and just disappeared forever.

  I had one idea how to do that. It was a long shot, but I had been thinking about it for a long, long time and it was the only explanation.