by Tim C Taylor
With only eight soldiers, I decided reluctantly to forgo taking positions on either side of the road. Instead, we set up in the third and fourth floors of the Museum of Xeno Culture, which was situated at the intersection of Highway 7 with the outer beltway.
The exhibits were still there, but the museum had long been closed to anyone except drunks, drug users, and fugitives, who had left a desperate detritus of soiled bedding, spent needles, and a richly human stink. No matter; I was planning on making a mess of the place myself if anyone headed north up the highway.
We might have been a scratch force with little idea of why we were there or what we would face that day, but we took comfort in our kit: a mix of missile launchers, assault rifles, a cyber-attack unit, SAM pods and my tool of choice, the PAW-66. I chose one of the PAWs myself. It’s a marvelous weapon, a portable machine gun with small caliber yet highly penetrating rounds, with exotic metal tips for penetrating power, and zero-point charges to ensure whatever you hit didn’t get up again.
It was a blend of human tech and alien, engineered within an inch of its life to be light, rugged, and yet simple enough for a hundred-year-old grunt suffering from post-thaw trauma to swap out a barrel in the heat of combat.
I missed out on the invasion, but the reason we lost seemed clear enough. The damned Hardits had appeared out of nowhere and took out our space navy before they knew what hit them. Once the enemy had orbital superiority, our surface forces didn’t stand a chance. And yet, every time our military met the much vaunted Hardit janissaries in anything like a fair fight, we wiped the floor with their furry carcasses.
And so it proved at Cairo. We came from a hidden cache of cryo-suspended soldiers, a scratch task force of men and women from different training regimes, using unfamiliar weaponry in some cases, and suffering from the kind of jet lag you only get from waking up after sleeping for decades. Our opponents were Hardits, well equipped and supported, and with the natural advantage of defending a prepared position on ground of their choosing.
We knew in our bones that the enemy didn’t stand a chance.
And as the sounds of battle came to us from the north, we told ourselves that all of this mattered.
So much of what we did and why so many died that day still makes little sense, but then I remind myself that the enemy waited. The furry bastards held back their most devastating arsenal until our task force had blown the comm facility sky high – until they had nothing left to defend.
And then they hit us hard.
Even before then, they’d thrown everything they had our way, short of the weapons of brute destruction. The collaborator militia passed beneath our position first, racing up the highway in light trucks. Earlier that day I had been asleep, having gone into suspension at a time when the Earth was as much at peace as it’s ever gonna get. Now I’d not only had to accept that Earth’s armed forces had been slaughtered in the Hardit invasion, but that the subsequent years of occupation had bred collaborators. As I caught their soft vehicles in my PAW’s firing arc, I shot burst after burst at them, screaming curses at the traitor scum all the while. Then I remembered myself and shouted to cease firing. We had plentiful supplies, but we needed to keep our fire discipline and preserve our ammunition. This could be a long day, with plenty of killing work still ahead.
Then the Hardit regulars arrived. Janissaries they were called – some kind of specialist warrior caste. They were better armed and disciplined, but they were being thrown piecemeal into the desperate defense of the comms hub. Instead of working their way into the buildings opposite and then storming our position, a handful of janissaries laid down suppressing fire while the rest attempted to run past our gauntlet. Only a few made it through alive, but my detachment took casualties.
The smoke of battle was now exposing dancing beams of red light: lasers fired by orbital platforms. Probably they had been invisibly killing since the operation began, but only now was there enough smoke to reveal their deadly traverse of the city. I knew those lasers meant that the roads would now be deathtraps for our vehicles. I started to look resentfully at my PAW-66. If I was getting out of here, it looked like it would have to be on foot, sneaking building to building out of orbital sight, and lugging the weapon and its ammunition all the way. It was light, but not that light.
Did any of this matter? Did the Hardits tremble, fearing that our Cairo attack was laying the groundwork for a liberation from space? Because it wasn’t. I know that now. What they built before, they can build again. Despite all the deaths, there is still a plentiful supply of human slave labor.
No, don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question. I don’t want the truth.
Then the litter of shell casings, needles, and glass rattled like a home-made snare drum as a huge explosion leapt over the skyline to the north. We cheered. We’d done it! The comms hub was destroyed and we’d hit the Hardits hard.
With the other survivors of my detachment still punching fists into the air and screaming taunts at the dying janissaries below us on the road, my thoughts turned to what we should do next. We were a small strike force, not an army that could take and hold an entire city. We’d been told to rendezvous to the south, on the western edge of the fertile belt beside the Nile. But the details had been vague enough that I’d interpreted our orders as ‘every soldier for themselves’.
To the north, above what had been Tahrir Square, a pall of black smoke was reaching up to the sky, but then the heavens reached down with black rain, as if two demonic hands had met between air and land to crush the city center.
Downtown Cairo was obliterated. The pelts in orbit had dropped kinetic torpedoes, simple titanium needles the size and shape of sharpened telegraph poles. Thousands of them struck the city at terminal velocity.
They spared the rest of Cairo… up to a point. Instead of razing it to the ground, they left the city’s structures intact and fired an intense artillery barrage of smoke and gas shells.
We had our gas masks on sharpish, but the enemy had combined their nerve agent with a choking gas that our masks couldn’t entirely keep out. The backs of our throats were simultaneously tickled and rubbed raw by chili-coated rasps. It was a hideous sensation. Private Maru couldn’t bear it any longer and took off his mask. Within a minute, he was on the ground, shaking with creamy white foam pouring from his mouth. A corporal injected him with anti-nerve agent serum, but it made no difference. A minute later, Maru’s shaking ceased. No one else removed their mask.
The Hardit smoke munitions only added to the confusion, although they provided vital cover from the orbital lasers under which we prepared to make our escape.
We heard a truck motoring towards us from the city center, the unmistakable rumble of its ancient hydrocarbon-electric power plant signaling that it was a human vehicle. We raced out of the old museum, and I stepped into the smoke and gas-choked road to flag down the truck.
Looking back, it was a stupid thing to do. It was only a million-to-one chance that the smoke briefly cleared enough for the driver to see me before he ran into me. It was one of the trucks the task force had pressed into service as personnel carriers. The soldier in the cab wore captain’s insignia on his lapels. This was Captain Greyhart.
The truck slowed but didn’t stop.
“All aboard!” Greyhart called out cheerfully through his mask amplifier. We ran for the rear where friendly hands reached down to haul us up.
I took in our surroundings as Greyhart picked up speed. Only three of us had made it out of the museum and there were four more in the vehicle. The covered cargo area had lost its tarp, the bare ribs exposing us to the gas but would give us good visibility of the skies if they should ever clear. By the look of old animal feces ground into the bed, it had been pressed into service transporting animal livestock – guess they didn’t make secure livestock trucks any more – but it was now stacked with boxes of ammunition and other supplies. When I saw they included two portable SAM pods, I dared to hope I would escape Cairo alive. T
he soldiers we joined had clearly been in the thick of the action, their uniforms black, shredded and bloodied, but I sensed they were still up for a fight.
I nearly asked them whether anyone else had noticed the eyepieces were missing from Greyhart’s gas mask. Why hadn’t the gas killed him like poor Private Maru? But I held back. Surely I was mistaken, confused by the smoke and adrenaline blur. Now I think my initial impression was correct. Greyhart was immune to the nerve agent, and made little effort to obscure the fact.
The Hardits overdid the smoke. There didn’t seem to be any tactical need for it at all, and at the time I despised them for their incompetence. Knowing the pelts as I do now, I think they wanted us isolated and confused so they could enjoy hunting and killing us like prey. The smoke blanketed the entire city far out into the suburbs. We made it about two miles beyond the smoke cover, and then we heard the buzz of three aircraft headed our way in pursuit.
There were simple devices, fat drones about eight feet across and with a bank of six pivoting propellers that made them highly maneuverable. They were cheap weapons platforms rather than agile fighter jets, but I didn’t underestimate them.
At first they tried taking us out with missiles, but our SAM pods sent up a volley of miniature missiles that destroyed them. When we retaliated with our own spread of missiles, the drones tilted up on their ends and blasted them out the sky with a furious volume of railgun fire… which didn’t bode well for our immediate future.
With neither side able to take out the other at long range, the drones closed in to deliver the killer blow, and I readied to play my part. I had kept my machine gun with me when we withdrew from the museum. Having reloaded with the supplies in the truck, one of the other soldiers made my day when he explained, with a big grin and a wrench of metal, that the cargo bay ribs could be reconfigured as mounting points to deploy machine guns as anti-air defenses.
It felt as if we were taking part in a bizarre military reenactment festival. I wasn’t using any targeting system other than my eyes and the gunsights. And instead of an auto-stabilizing firing platform, I was on the back of a truck, jolting at a surprisingly high speed through dusty and barely maintained roads.
As the three drones moved in, their banks of motors allowed them to evade our fire in jerky fashion like annoying fruit flies. I had a lucky burst of fire at a thousand yards and the three drones we faced became two. Everyone cheered. We might have come from different eras, but we were all IFDF, and we weren’t going down without a fight. The remaining two closed quickly, the ground erupting in explosions.
Greyhart swerved to avoid the fresh craters shot up by the drones. I realized the enemy machines were in the same situation as us: swerving to avoid my machine gun fire and struggling to either get a good aimed shot in or to close as fast as they wanted.
I shot down another at 500 yards distance, a fleeting fireball that warmed our faces but superheated our spirits.
Just one more to go. This should be easy now. I blasted away – so did the others with their assault rifles and missiles – but the drone shot down or evaded everything we threw at it, tilting onto its end in the most un-aerodynamic way imaginable. I couldn’t bag the damned thing. And then the PAW-66 let me down. Instead of explosive rounds, the gun was giving me a warning buzz and a flashing red light. Red was not good. I looked down… the barrel had overheated, warped. I had to swap it out.
A bulky, half-shaven corporal held a spare while I released the hot metal.
You could tell by the way they were thrown casually together that we were facing mass-produced drones – hardly top-spec fighter craft – but the last drone was not stupid. It registered that our fire rate had slackened and launched itself at us: an alien machine with its mechanical heart filled with hate, and its head with but one purpose: to kill us.
The air hummed and whined as the drone’s railguns rapidly charged and discharged, hurling a flurry of darts through the truck. I ignored them all and concentrated on locking in the new barrel.
I heard screams. The corporal who’d handed me the spare gave a truncated shriek and then fell out the truck. I watched him rolling limply along the road.
But I was ready now. It was me against the drone.
Before I could shoot, I was flung across the truck as, with a screech of brakes, Greyhart fought hard to control the truck. I would have followed the unlucky corporal out the tailgate if not for the strong hands that grabbed my webbing belt from behind.
I swiveled my PAW in its mount and finally brought the drone into my firing arc. It was hovering, shooting at us but with smaller caliber rounds – I think it must have spent most of its ammo on us by then.
I squeezed the trigger and stitched it full of zero-point rounds, compliments of the International Federation Defense Force.
The dammed thing erupted before our faces. We’d felt heat from the one 500 yards away but this was far closer. I thought my eyes were going to boil in their sockets, but then the heat died away and I was watching debris rain down behind the truck, fast shrinking into the distance.
I took a deep breath. We were picking up speed; the skies were blue and clear of the enemy. Four of us were still alive in the bed of that truck, armed and ready.
I don’t know what happened next.
I remember hearing a loud crack from the transmission and then I was tossed around the back of the truck. This time I wasn’t sliding; I was tumbling over and the truck with me. I grabbed hold of one of the frame ribs and held on tightly as someone’s head shot into my gut like a cannonball. I kept holding on, which turned out to be a big mistake.
The truck rolled far longer than seemed possible, and when it finally did stop, something heavy settled on me, crushing my chest. I could feel my ribs popping like corn.
Like I said, I don’t know what happened. Maybe more drones had sneaked up on us while we were busy with the first batch. It could have been a half-second laser burst from an orbital platform. Maybe an axle had snapped after the punishment it had taken, or maybe we simply hit a rut in the road.
Whatever the cause, the truck had rolled, and mostly on top of me. The smell of burning assaulted my nose. The vehicle was on fire. I was going to burn to death!
“Anyone still alive?” called out Greyhart. I thought at the time that he didn’t sound hopeful, but now I think it’s a question he’d rather not have asked at all. It would be mighty convenient for him if we were all dead.
“Get away!” I grunted at him. “Save yourself. The truck’s about to blow.”
Blood obscured my vision, but I had the impression he was standing over me, weighing up his options.
I tried to summon the courage and the physical strength to urge him once more to save himself. I was trapped. Even if I weren’t, I knew a man crushed as badly as me wasn’t long for this world. But I couldn’t find that courage. They say a hero is a normal person who makes an exceptional choice, that heroes only discover themselves when they are tested to the limit. I think that’s true because when I was put to that test, I discovered I was no hero. I prayed silently for Greyhart to save me, even though I knew it was impossible – even though I knew if he tried I would doom him.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he mumbled and crouched down beside me. “Don’t worry, old chap. Everything will be right as rain.” He reached over and I felt a sharp pain in my neck.
Then nothing.
— Chapter 4 —
I came to in a roadside ditch, shielded from aerial view and the scorching sun by a scrubby line of bushes.
The smoldering corpse of the truck was only a hundred yards away.
“It’s okay, son,” said Greyhart, who was sitting beside me.
“Son?” I laughed, noticing my lungs rattling as if stuffed with razor blades and splintered glass – and yet the pain felt as if it were happening to someone else. “You know, sir, I think I may be the oldest person on the planet.”
“Oh, I very much doubt that, and you won’t be getting older at all if you lau
gh. You’ve been shot up. Crushed. Burned. I’ve given you something for your wounds. Give it time to take effect.”
“Something to patch me up? Or ease my passing?” I asked, resentment building because I suspected the answer already.
“You did well,” he told me – the fact that he was changing the subject not lost on me. “The Hardits were hit hard today.”
I looked around. I could only see the two of us, though the smell of charred meat made me fear for the other soldiers in the truck. “Any other survivors?”
“Only you,” said Greyhart, his clinical expression as fixed as carved sandstone. “There were other vehicles headed out of Cairo, though. I ordered them to go to ground.”
“And me too, sir?” I asked with grim irony. “Is that what I should do? Go into the ground?”
His expression loosened a little, revealing a momentary hint of compassion. “Yes, Sergeant.” He rested a hand on my shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. “I regret, that is what you must now do.”
“I know I’m going to die, sir. Before I go, I want to know why. Is the IFDF rising around the world? Are we gonna kick the pelts back into space?”
Greyhart stared at me a long while before answering. This was only a few months ago but the strangest thing is that I can no longer picture him. He was… male. I can still hear his voice, but his looks…? I can’t say, but can remember the hairline crack in his voice when he answered.
“Cairo was a distraction,” he said. “While you occupied their attention, the main operation was carried out successfully about 3,000 miles west of here. And maybe… perhaps… something farther west that will be even more important.”
“We were decoys?”
“More than that, Sergeant. Far more. You gave the aliens a bloody nose that will sting for years. They think they have everything down according to plan, preparing for the Human Legion to arrive on schedule, in twenty years’ time. Right now, they’re on high alert and frantically trying to make sense of what you did in Cairo. The enemy commanders have no time to spend wondering why a small archaeological expedition on the other side of Africa disappeared the same day.”