by Peter John
Charlie rose to Sánchez defense, putting his arm around the diminutive Latino. “You limeys always got some beef with the details. We made it, stop complaining.”
John laughed. “I’m not a limey Charlie. You know I’m from New York. I’m as American as you are.”
“Americans only come from Texas bud and ONLY drink Tequila.” was Charlie's profound reply, “Now drink up man, drink up and let’s sing the best song known to man…” He cleared his throat and in his deep southern accent broke out into said song:
“Silver wings upon their chest.
These are men, America’s best.
One hundred men we’ll test today,
but only three win the Green Beret!…”
Some other soldiers in the room, perhaps also Green Beret’s joined in and the slow cadence and catchy rhythm got me tapping my feet to the classic song, a big smile stretched across my face. A group of Russian soldiers, probably Spetznaz judging by the style of uniform they wore were sitting across from us and started singing one of their songs and it soon became a contest of who could shout loudest rather than who could sing what.
Major Stone caught my eye and beckoned me to go with him. I grabbed my mug and moved off. The songs resounding louder as more people joined in with their respective preference. With the power of the songs building around me, I felt a sense of what pride these men and women held onto and fought for. It may not be their original country; It definitely wasn’t their original life but instead, it was as part of something much bigger. Defense of Earth. Pre-emptive and surreal, these were the guys who had made it and lived to tell the tale.
Major Stone and I found a corner where it was relatively less noisy and private. Putting an arm around my shoulder, he huddled me close for a conspiratorial chat.
“Armpit, we need you brother, I put in a good word with my controller and he said we could have you in our team for the next mission. It also means we will join in your next few Sims to build a bit of momentum.”
I stopped him and asked my own question, “What mission did you just get back from? Does it have anything to do with an Alfred Malabourne?”
Stone’s surprised eyes were answer enough. “You seem well informed for a trainee Colonel. How could you possibly know that?”
“Never mind that. I’m just curious if you recovered him?”
“Recovered him? No! no, our mission was to scout for him.”
“What? isn’t he a captive of the Reapers?”
“Yes, we were doing a reconnaissance of the facility. John Stiles was right. It was a near thing, but we got out without being detected. We had to dispose of a few sentries but Lt. Sánchez managed to make it look like local animals had done it. So we are pretty confident that they don’t know we were there.”
“I see, so you want me to be part of the rescue?”
“That's it exactly Colonel, our team doesn’t have a heavy duty magical user and since we have been there already, we are the ideal team to go back”
“Did you see him? or anyone else held prisoner at the facility?”
“Someone else? He was alone when he was captured. Who else could be there? The facility is far from the Reapers core power. It is quite remote. I doubt there are many prisoners although the place is plenty big enough. But with the way the Reapers are, he probably doesn’t have much time before they move him or kill him. The Reapers are not known for keeping prisoners longer than the time it takes to extract knowledge and then drain their life “
“Do you know he is a Prodigy?”
“Deary me, you really are well informed. Yes, he is the prodigy that Hugo mentioned before. A very experienced one at that”
“So how will we make a difference if, with all his power, he can’t make a difference and save himself?“
“Aah, well Colonel, I don’t like to blow my own whistle much but we are the most effective team the Absinthe have at the moment. We have more successes than failures, and we haven’t failed a mission for the last 121 outings. The next most successful team is that group of Russians. Ex-Spetnaz chaps. Their tally is only half of ours. Truth be told, Hugo is our ace in the hole. I’ve yet to see someone or something match his strength and resolve.”
“Okay, so what you saying is I should be honored to join your team?” My eyes twinkled mischievously
“Aye, ye be right in that, and similarly we are lucky to have the first pick of the new recruits.”
“Okay, now that we have finished stroking each other's egos, I have one more request. Can we include Sarah in the team? That woman has bigger balls than me. She literally carried me to the island on Nico Sim.”
Stone chuckled. “Aye, she does at that, okay Colonel, I will see if I can arrange it, but in the meantime, I have to help you get into shape. Your body has not had a proper exercise for at least a week, and we have to get the in-Sim stamina across to the real you. Follow me.”
Major Gladstone appeared to have sobered up quite a lot and he led me towards an alcove in the room that had a few pool and snooker tables, some table tennis tables and half a basketball court with hoop all set up. We moved past them and the few people using them and into an adjoining room. As I walked in, I heard the clank of metal on metal and the sour smell of sweat that every gym ever made reeks of. It was a familiar smell, like a homecoming. I beamed from ear-to-ear. Arrayed before me was one of the most unusual and advanced gyms I had ever seen. Several people were going at it, some on treadmills, some doing reps with floating bars and several machines seemed to open like clamshells where you placed your arm or leg in. All those who were training had fierce and determined expressions. I had yet to see someone not in shape. This whole ship was a thriving community and I was beginning to feel a part of it.
“We need you to train in here for the next week, at least five hours a day.” At my raised questioning eyebrows, he continued “ Your body will be able to cope. The machines are programmed with your details and will guide your regime but if you have any problems, just ask Grant to fix it. The nanobot stims literally put steroids to shame. It also brings me to another point. You will be training with us every day in Simscape too. Grant says that you have mastered all the survival Sims so far, and that putting you into more would be a waste of time.”
“Now hold on there Stone, I don’t want to be streamlined through. If there is training to be done, I should do it.” This time it was Major Stone who raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he chuckled. “Aye, the leveling up system is quite addictive.”
Reverting to my first name he said “Petros, five hours of gym and an additional six hours in the Sims training with us is not the easy road. Believe you me!” he stated in finality. “The real question is, can you handle it?”
When he put it like that I suddenly realized what I was getting myself into. Eleven solid hours a day of any type of intensive training for a week would be borderline insane. On the other hand, I had been doing training for the best part of my life, so essentially it would be more like refreshment training. Bringing muscle memory to the fore. Besides, what other choice did I have? I wanted in on this rescue mission. The worst that could happen is I would not be ready and they would go without me. I had learned long ago that the best way to do a thing was to Nike it, rather than ponder and reflect about it.
“Okay, so when can I start?”
CHAPTER 19
Enemy Revealed
“Before we begin, you should know your enemy.” With that cryptic Sun Tzu statement, Stone led me out of the gym and officers mess and out of the general quarters area. We walked along many corridors to a restricted elevator. He punched in a code, it did a retina scan and allowed us to proceed down several floors. I tried to ask where we were going but the Major kept his grim silence. At last we came to the brig. A large warehouse area with cells all along the walls. Several humans were mounted on translucent platforms within, similar to what I had been mounted on in my room. Major Stone ignored them and we walked to the cells at the furthest end of the
large area. When I first saw it, my skin literally crawled in response. It was not on a Sim platform at all, and instead the cell looked like a more traditional jail cell. Metal bars separated it from us, in addition to a barrier force field.
The creature was not looking at us; instead, it was methodically hitting its head against the wall. Blood and tissue smeared along the area it had been hitting. Its body appeared bipedal; perhaps it had been human at some stage, but that was not the case now. It stopped banging its head when it sensed us and turned its undead and horrendous gaze towards us. The mashed features of its forehead dripping gore into milky white eyes. The eyes themselves seemed blind and yet the creature was looking at us, there was absolutely no doubt. It opened its mouth in a hideous rictus and gave a full-throated roar, spittle flying in our direction. The jaws extending unnaturally wide. I could see its teeth were all sharp amidst the rufescent fetid flesh of its gums and immediately realized it had been an elf, although what it was now I could not rightly say.
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed in horror.
“Meet Elfie, ” said Major Stone in a low and understated voice.
“What the F…” I couldn’t even finish my expletive as my hand reached for my mouth. I was shocked and horrified to my core.
“Yes Laddie, what we face is nothing short of a pure nightmare.” Stone’s face was stern, “Elfie was one of the first to ever be contained. He was here long before I joined up. They have had him down here for a very long time feeding him rodent type creatures. It’s quite a shock to see them for the first time. This then is the enemy, a Reaper Devourer. One of their millions of ground troops. This particular one comes from Elf stock. He was infected and then turned when he returned to his people. They kept him alive and contained and have given him to us for our training. What you will meet out in the field will have the same basic characteristics although the Reapers use any sapient body form. We have taken to calling them Zombies. They see, but they are not using the eyes of the body they are inhabiting, so blinding them physically doesn’t work. They are literally animated cadavers and like all ghouls of stories past, the only way to make one dead is to cut off its head.
“Is it a virus? How does one get infected?”
Stone shrugged “I don’t rightly know, but I do know if they bite you and consume your flesh, then you will turn into one of them over time after a short agonizing illness and then death. A simple glancing bite or scratch won’t do it, so their saliva is not the contaminant. Your flesh has to pass down their gullet. Hugo was bitten once, lost part of his calf but he chopped off the creatures’ head before it had a chance to swallow his meat. He’s still going strong.”
Inwardly I cringed. I had trained with several K9 units in the past and those dogs were incredibly ferocious. When I saw them take bites and sometimes consumed what they had bitten off of human suspects had made my skin crawl. Those were just dogs, fair enough, they were large dogs, however, these were sapient, intelligent beings with no feeling at all and they wanted to eat you alive. I didn’t know quite how to feel about it.
“You say ground troops, but what about their officers?” I enquired, still mesmerized by the huge gaping maw that seemed to be stuck in an open-mouthed silent scream. Elfie had moved to the bar, and was trying to ram his head between them. Major Stone pressed a control that caused the barrier separating us to change color preventing Elfie from seeing us, but we could still see him. The creature… the zombie continued to try squeeze itself through the bars in our direction.
“They have a sixth sense for life energy, a desire to eat any living flesh they can get their hands on. Without working eyes, they navigate fairly complex areas, understanding about doors, about going around or over things, and once aroused they have an uncontrollable urge to rend and kill. Their strength is inhuman, and as a group, they incite each other into a frenzy that increases their strength to even greater heights. When damaged, they can heal by eating living flesh. It has to be alive though when it passes their lips, and somehow they drain the life power from it and broken bones mend, stripped flesh grows and tendons and sinews even repair themselves. As I said, the only cure for this creature is to lop off its head. Their senses are not universal though. We have found they can see…” Stone made inverted commas in the air, “…in only one direction. Their hearing is pretty poor, but their sense of smell and sense of life is very capable. That cloak you are wearing would protect you from their scrutiny, but only beyond a ten-meter radius. Any closer and he will know you are there like he does now.” He then looked at me. “The Reaper officers are not seen often, they control these troops from behind the scenes. some kind of mind control. The officers seem to have a mind link that gives them full control of the zombie, which lessens the further the creatures are away from them. This zombie has never had a controller. The so-called officers control between 50-100 Zombies each. They, the officers I mean, are often encased in some form of armor and some of them even have magical body shields. In all our missions, we have never tangled with an officer directly, only their minions. You should well know that small teams tactics require we get in, achieve the objective and get out. We don’t mess around. Our orders are to stay out of these officers way and make as little contact as possible, preferably avoiding the Ghouls, which are smarter versions of Elfie as well as the Zombies. Our focus is on destroying their ability to find life rather than wiping them out.”
“So you are telling me that in all the years you have been fighting the Reapers, the 121 successful missions of your unit, that you have never fought an officer directly?” I asked incredulously.
Stone nodded resignedly. “Aye, our war on the Reapers is little more than an annoyance to them. Our main objective to date has been to disable their detection posts, hindering their ability to sense any emissions from Earth’s direction. The radio detection posts and similar type tech are used by them to detect sapient civilizations. The officers leave the ghouls and zombies to guard them once they have set up the posts. Sometimes an officer is present but even in that case, they stay concealed and protected, out of harm's way. Often the ghouls are remnants of the sapient life from that particular planet and the Reapers use the post to narrow in on those survivors left on those worlds. Eventually, the entire world gets wiped out. People of consequence are captured, tortured and whisked away to either be consumed or kept as a source of knowledge, but when the knowledge runs dry, they are consumed too. The planet we are going to has local sentients called Scalars. Large-scaled grey beings with four arms and two legs. They also have three eyes. Strange looking fellahs but with all that's going on, you should be used to strange beings by now. When they are turned into zombies or ghouls, they are formidable enemies.”
I shook my head. We were getting nowhere with this war if we only took out the troops. The masterminds behind it should be our targets. I kept my thoughts to myself as I asked
“Do we have a General or similar person in charge? Someone who controls our movements according to some overall master plan?”
“Well, no, not really in the way you mean it. The Absinthe has a command structure they answer to, but the Absinthe we work for are incognito. They are going against the wishes of their controlling bodies by enabling us and assisting us. The missions we go on are just missions of opportunity rather than any coordinated effort to undermine the enemy.”
I could see Stone was frustrated just by the way he answered me. “Colonel, you are the highest ranking officer that has ever joined us. We need someone stepping up and taking the fight to the enemy, but I think both you and I know that you are way under-cooked to be doing anything else except learning for the next while. My hope and I suspect the Absinthe’s hope is you will be our main man once you have gained enough experience.”
I took a last look at the terrifying creature and considered what I could do against a nation of undead creatures with only a few hundred trained men. Men who couldn’t even use modern weapons unless we acquired them in the field.
&n
bsp; I would have laughed if not for the overwhelming sense of wanting to cry.
On the way back to my room, I questioned Stone about the Scalars. They were a medieval level technology sapient race that was losing their world piece by piece, he hinted that besides us, an additional mercenary element was subsidizing their resistance, but he wasn’t sure who or what they were, but that they were supplying tech to help them. We were just spectators trying to slow down the Reapers progress from the sidelines. The Scalars didn’t even know we existed. It made little sense.
Major Stone led me back to my room, and I plugged myself in, not quite literally, but close enough. It involved lying down on the translucent barrier and assuming a relaxed, restful pose. The robotic arms would extend out and clamp my head, then something would happen, and I was immobilized completely. Grant's voice would reverberate inside my head asking if I was ready and then the stomach tube would insert and several other tubes would attach making bodily functions automatic.
CHAPTER 20
Preparation
