Field of Heroes

by Craig Saunders

  We were at peace. Now, we are not.

  Something rose up from the sea. Gill heard Captain Chen of the Nielson saying something, but sound drifted away. Gill’s second grabbed his arm and the sensation of the suddenly frightened grip on his upper arm woke him up to actually look from the bridge windows. The thing rising from the sea directly ahead of the Bohr was incomprehensible. Not massive, but insane. A ten or fifteen metre long-necked sea creature more saurian than mammalian. It looked like a plesiosaurus, but cyber-augmented – it bristled with shining metal parts, tubes, ports. Small organics seemed to be attached, too, like symbiotic fish, or lichen, or barnacles.

  ‘Two contacts! It...they fired on us!’

  ‘Is that...a dinosaur? Armed with missiles?’ said someone from behind Gill, a voice he didn’t recognise in a growing haze almost psychedelic in strength.

  ‘Hard port, full...’

  His voice was distant. Everything was crazy.

  Even the automated defence systems of the Bohr couldn’t save the ship. Twin impacts rocked the destroyer, spume rose, the ship breached by water so suddenly and overwhelmingly it was way beyond the ability of its systems or design to save it.

  That’s that then, thought Gill and heard himself give the order to abandon ship as damage reports flooded his senses, but as though he were already hearing them under water.

  Too late, though, even to get his sailors clear of the destroyer.

  Gill closed his eyes as something bright that looked like a yellow hard-beam laser sliced through his ship.

  I deserve it.

  He didn’t get to say anything else. The hard-beam did for both him and the ship. In moments, the A.U.S. Bohr was torn asunder, just two giant smoking halves waiting to find out they were dead. Not sliced bow and stern, but mid ships. A loaf cut lengthways.

  The creature sank back to the depths.

  All hands were lost as though they had never been. Just as those hit by the nukes at Fayetteville, the entire fleet were just memories in those families they still had.

  *

  That was the first week.

  By the end of the second month, Americas Unity and Non-border designated nations understood more than they ever wished to know about the possibility of sentient extraterrestrial life. First among those facts was that the invaders were not friendly. Secondly, those everyone came to know as the Zoan and the Cephal had become masters of the sea.

  12.

  The Rout of Fayetteville

  – Alante Brockner

  Alante Brockner slowed – movement and thought both – and when she forced herself to breath and then to think she saw the layout of the battle. The advance was screwed.

  We charged in like the Bear Rampant, alright.

  ‘Fired retreat! Back up.’

  ‘Gunnery Sergeant, rescind that command now!’

  Fuck you, she thought. My platoon is not dying right now. Not for you.

  She was brave, angry, and she was great at what she did. She wasn’t stupid. Just like you can’t win a war against stupid, this wasn’t a battle for winning. They were fighting something they didn’t understand. It was their home ground advantage, sure. But then, it wasn’t, was it? The 245th didn’t know war, and this wasn’t the Fayetteville they knew from leave. This was rubble and a minefield made of some kind of organic mines which didn’t show to heat or radiation sensors. Tiny, spry crab things were leaping and killing KES and D-Guard units before they even closed on the ship.

  They knew next to nothing of the enemy. Weren’t you supposed to know your enemy? Wasn’t that warfare 101?

  We don’t know shit. Armed with blind hate and no advanced intel is a dumbass way to fight a war.

  It was only when that thought crossed her stunned mind that she figured it out; what those useless men and women in the command carriers way back from the action were doing.

  It’s us. We are the advanced intel. What happens here goes live.

  To sacrifice the 245th, though? For information?

  Fuck you are we going to be text on some data feed for you bastards.

  She disabled command comms and switched to local.

  ‘Carl, Giordina, Asheed,’ she said, straining for calm tones against her own panic. All around, missiles from the large autonomous guns in the distance flew toward the enemy force and the battered alien ship.

  The Americas Unity forces were turning the giant ship to tatters...but thousands of weird, impossible creatures were suddenly freaking out her threat sensors so almost her entire visor was a field of red and her green lights were blinking out too rapidly to count as the 245th were slaughtered all around.

  ‘Pull your platoons back,’ she told the leaders of other platoons without thought to the fact that they were mostly equal ranking, or that she was lower in rank than some. She did figure right then simple good sense was the ranking officer above all. ‘Get to Company, get Captain Ushido to call this fuck-stick into Brigade and get us all the fuck out of...’ she paused, seeing something ahead, emerging from the embattled enemy ship, ‘...this place. Get everyone back. We’re getting massacred.’

  She didn’t wait to see if any of the seventeen platoons in the attack obeyed, but hit record and uploaded direct to command without her audio, so she could work getting her troops out and not dead, and maybe scoot over some shit later on (if there is a later...) when they reamed her out, demoted or stuck her before a court martial.

  Alante tried to keep her voice steady and measured as she called into heavy guns, aware her voice might have been a little hysterical but unable to get a complete grasp. She thought maybe she wasn’t doing all that bad considering they were getting creamed and though she was career, and damn good in a D-Guard, she’d never been to war and under real fire.

  Heavy guns and armoured support would be watching the same action as the feed from her cams across screens showing footage from a hundred soldier’s head gear. It would all be streaming into those shielded mobile command units lording over their defeat from a safe distance.

  Bastards, she thought.

  But the real enemy were coming out from the ship. She’d heard the rumours, and then, one of her unit yelled something into her ear at the same moment she understood what she was seeing.

  ‘Command intel at last – those things coming out now are in charge! Kill them...kill them now!’

  She couldn’t see the leaders of the alien armies from her vantage point. She stood just below the ragged lip of a recent crater and even with her height boosted in the D-Guard her vision was limited. There were more kinds of enemy units than Alante could count, and she certainly didn’t have names for them. They were spewing from the ship under fire, dispersing in every direction it seemed, far and wide. If they were taking a battle formation it made no sense to her. Those creatures were so impossible, so outlandish, she couldn’t believe they were real. Things that slid under the dirt as soon as they emerged from the shining ship full of blast holes and scorch marks from the assault that looked like trilobites. These were slow, and hideous, with crested spines that wriggled as they burrowed their way into the hard ground or even through concrete. Fast units poured out like streaming ants in a clatter of long limbs, but eight, or ten. Not insectile. She couldn’t process the sight. Arthropods? It was insane.

  These new threats were definitely organic, and unlike the spiteful, leaping crab-mines that had decimated the 245th on their approach these signatures did show to her sensors.

  Slow, cumbersome things emerged, too. Those heavy units bumbled from holes the distant autonogun’s powerful weapons had torn. The enemy’s armoured?

  They look like turtles.

  It was a nonsense thought, because they were big as a city bus, but it was the only thing in her experience which came close. They seemed to drag themselves across the land on giant, strong flippers, like footage she’d seen of turtles on beaches.

  Fires took hold inside the ship now, so that gouts of noxious, black flame like might come from burnt flesh b
illowed from the many holes in the ship. Alante wasn’t firing yet. She was recording. She was only vaguely aware of the explosions the D-Guard’s sensor arrays deadened for her human ears. In her peripheral vision her platoon fired like their fingers were having spasms on their triggers. Some were dying. The exodus from the ship was nearly done, she thought, because when the last monsters rolled out it was surely impossible to fit anything larger through any of the holes in the shell of the vessel.

  These things were similar to giant snails. They were largest and slowest. These, she could have sworn she’d only ever seen in geology classes. They reminded her of ammonites – prehistoric. Extinct and impossible.

  Not impossible, is it? They’re real. I’m seeing them.

  It was all crazy. Armoured were getting pounded by all manner of artillery and weird fire from the enemy. The screams were real. Her sweat was real. The enemy were real.

  Everything she saw was like something born of the sea, but moving on land. They didn’t move awkwardly, either, but slow, careful, purposeful. A few of the ammonites began to roll, turning, ‘til some kind of hole faced toward half-beaten forces from Fort Bragg.

  Alante was still gawping, still figuring things about gravity, and Goldilocks planets, and divergent evolution while those ammonites were warming up. There was a fizzing feel to the air she could smell, or maybe taste, through the filters of her war machine. A brewing storm.

  She tried to communicate a warning, but her mouth was dry. She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, desperate to work up enough spit to speak.

  Does anyone else see this? And this is just Fayetteville. What about the world?

  In that instant, considering a giant rolling ammonite that looked like a grown-rock, bullets whining away from the shell, the immensity of their doom hit home for Alante.

  She was a soldier, though. She routed energy from her powerful rear legs, set herself, and let her shoulder cannons speak.

  No point in bitching on comms when you’ve got twin shoulder mounted .63 caliber multi-barrelled cannons to bitch with.

  While the smaller of the enemy units were running, rolling, burrowing, scuttling away from the battle, blue energy like wet electric crackles began to form at what might have been the giant anus or mouth at the end of those concentric shells.

  She knew what covering fire looked like. The smaller, lightly armoured aliens were spreading far and wide across the battered and crushed landscape of the city, and the ammonites were going to blast them a hole.

  Her voice worked as her guns spat fat bullets at the shelled monstrosities.

  ‘The blue fire!’

  She didn’t know what she meant, but she just didn’t have the words. Her comms to command were still off and her local comms returned only silence. Maybe her entire platoon was dead. Before she could turn her attention, and her streaming rage-filled bullets, from the ammonite turret guns or whatever they might be, Alante saw the force driving the myriad creatures for the first time. All thought of doing anything other than fighting for her life just dropped away, until it was a dark pit where there was only death or survival.

  The things she finally saw were just like the rumours. They were whatever passed for commanders among the alien forces.

  In the shadows of the great ship were armoured and armed humanoid creatures.

  Even in her wonder and awe at her first sight of what must be an alien intellect, Alante was turning her cannons from the ammonites to track the new threat.

  They had longer arms and legs than a human with a bony skull atop that was more like a shell – a part of the creature – rather than some large, elaborate helmet. The armour they wore was bright, created from a strange pearled golden material that flickered in the early light, as though camouflage didn’t matter. Their guns were long and thin like their limbs, and didn’t seem heavy. They wield those like they were light as air, and they didn’t fire bullets or bolts but solid beams blasting a laser show all around her.

  The humanoids broke left and right. They were fast on their feet.

  Guns already warm, Alante switched a broad field of fire to pure murder mode. A soldier now, an observer no longer. The switch was pure, a thing between on and off, black and white. Alante let herself feel hate for these things killing the Earth.

  She missed the leaders, and missed, because they were so damn fast. She marvelled at their speed, the sun glinting from their domed, shelled heads, until one of those heads finally exploded from a sweet hit from her .63 shoulder cannons and it jittered and blew backward in a beautiful arched bridge built of a whole lot of burning bullets.

  It was the only one downed by her of perhaps ten or fifteen Alante missed. Like trying to shoot mosquitoes from the air. She saw another few smacked into oblivion by mortar fire. One vaporised in a long shell from a CATTLE mobile platform that she recognised because of the distinctive bark that came before.

  The twin cannons at her shoulders whirred and smoked, spent. Her visor jittered, glitching and a heavy static whine filled her ears. Panting, though her D-Guard took the brunt of any physical effort, Alante realised what they – she – had done.

  We went for the Queen on a chessboard and forgot to check for castles.

  The ammonites blue fire spurted up, and out, and over her head.

  *

  The heavy ammonite units’ blue missiles were energy made solid, like plasma. That crackling, slick energy was slower. Not whip-quick like lightning would strike. Stately. Huge pulsating cannonballs streamed out higher and higher. She was able to follow their trajectory by naked eye. Then they fell. One hit an autonomous platform gun, and coated it in something slick. It fizzle, cracked, and the long gun atop fell silent.

  EMP?

  She didn’t have comms switched to command, so while the majority retreated, covered by platforms and autonoguns, she was among the last to run and one of the few to see the turtle-looking monsters (later called ‘chelons’ by the big brains in Intel and Command) open up their weapons, too. The chelons fired something in huge gobs from long, tank like turret guns on their back, and these munitions spurted out in quicker succession as though they charged up faster. If the ammonites were comparable to tanks, then the chelons’ weapons were more like grenade launchers. Even the sound was similar – pop, pop, pop – a message coming from a tube.

  She thought it was probably acidic. It wasn’t explosive, certainly. It tore through armour harder than Chobham, or composite, and made a mockery of AI tanks moving in. The ships might be little more than giant transports with minimal shielding, but the things inside were bastards. The chelons’ munitions were the colour of yellowed, ancient parchment. The shots hit troops retreating under fire and left the ground smoking and soldiers dying inside their suits.

  ‘They’re nuking it!’ yelled a man she didn’t know with the Bear insignia. An Lt.

  ‘What? What?’

  She couldn’t hear, and he tapped his helmet.

  ‘Comms,’ she said, wagging her finger to let him know she was asking ‘what?’. Her audio was a buzzing fly in her ear. She didn’t pop her visor, though.

  ‘Nuke!’ The Lt. waved his hands like a bomb going off. ‘Run!’

  She glanced around and saw hardly anyone still fighting but her. Most everyone else had either died or had fled. Her lights were spasmodic inside her helmet. She’d fired both shoulder, both hip, and both forearm guns dry. The mad flashing lights in her periphery were telling her she was flat out of ammunition. The air smelled of hot metal, gunpowder, burned flesh, and something like cleaning fluid that was cloying and far more unwelcome.

  The acid, she thought.

  Bodies hit by the blasts from the chelons were dissolving nearby, steam rising as the acid ate armour and flesh alike. She wanted to vomit but wouldn’t, not inside her helmet.

  Heavy missiles flew from her own side toward the alien units remaining at the ship but battalion and heavy support were retreating. She was standing still, all four legs set hard now into w
hat she realised had once been someone’s backyard. Her heavy suit had dented a lawn someone had cared for. The house that had come with the lawn was flatter than the lawn. She saw ragged remains of bed sheets.

  She understood. It was mad. Sure it was. She was mad.

  Then, ‘nuke’ registered.

  The guy she didn’t know was already beating it through the ranks of the dead away from the doomed ship, and the crushed town and suburbs beneath. In about one minute, it’d be nothing at all.

  Maybe there had been a warning about the nuclear strike, maybe there was meant to be a warning and wasn’t, and maybe it was just a fluke and someone overheard something they weren’t supposed to.

  She thought the latter was closer to the truth. The 245th had been written off. Collateral. Expendable.

  Then why aren’t I moving?

  The simple imperative to survive broke her torpor and she skidded, driving full power, away from the site of the battle so her D-Guard legs tore up dirt and asphalt alike.

  Alante was two miles out when that distinctive double-flash came. She wasn’t looking at it but running from it on servos and a tired Po84 cell in her whining, smoking D-Guard.

  The nuke detonated in the atmosphere just above the ship. Low yield, but she closed her eyes against the blinding light anyway and urged her Dog to run faster than she ever had.

  She finally slowed after the wind and smoke and the rain of ash was still and found herself eight miles out from Fayetteville. She was the lucky one, because most of the 245th were gone.

  13.

  In the Name of Science

  Delphine Mamet

  -

  Delphine Mamet was always a watcher, one destined to take to the corners of any room while others took the limelight. She loved movies – to sit quietly, lost inside the stories of other people’s lives. Perhaps that love made her a watcher, or perhaps movies drew her in because of something innate to her. She didn’t know, but she watched the war unfold before her like so many others did across a torn world.