Fight

by Doug Burbey

  Colonel Grubs looked at the Air Force Lieutenant General sitting at the side of the room. "Sir, that's your program. As the senior intelligence officer and classification authority for Lockbox's security classification guide, what would you recommend? Do we have to think up some form of bogus code name or something like that protect the technology?"

  The Air Force General smiled and with a tired look on his face answered directly to Mrs. Smith. "Ma'am let's just make this easy on everybody. We can just say we saw them on satellites. Everybody already thinks we've got orbital death rays floating in space, so we can let them assume whatever they want. Just say satellites."

  Mrs. Smith wrote a note on her pad. "Understood General, we tracked them on satellites. I'm sorry for the interruptions, Colonel Grubs, please continue, but," Mrs. Smith paused hesitantly before broaching the next subject. "General, what about the Southern European Task Force we sent in? What should the Secretary of Defense say?"

  General Williamson immediately stood up at the question and walked slowly to the center of the room as Colonel Grubs moved to the side. He turned to face the audience with a look of controlled anger expressed in his posture. "I'll take this question Colonel. The First and Second Airborne Battalions of the 503rd Infantry from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, based in Italy, was deployed and en route to Egypt when Cairo fell to the Zenos. All the battalion's air transports were redirected to the Sinai Peninsula with the mission to secure the Ismailia tunnel crossing point of Ahmed Hamdi under the Suez Canal."

  The general placed his hands loosely behind his back and slowly swept his gazed back and forth across the faces of the people in the room as he continued speaking. "At approximately 2035 local time yesterday, both battalions conducted airborne insertions and successfully linked up with the Egyptian border control forces while establishing blocking positions to keep the Zenos from using the tunnels to cross the Suez and continue advancing into Israel. At this point, the casualty estimates from Cairo's fall was in the millions and the mass of Zenos was not slowing down as it headed east across the open desert. Our soldiers had less than an hour to prepare defensive positions before they came into direct contact with the enemy and then requested additional support."

  General Williamson walked towards the large central monitor displaying a map of the region surrounding Egypt and used a laser pointer to outline a specific area of the Suez Canal as he spoke. "After our forces engaged with the Zenos at the tunnel, the Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, Jordanians and Israelis began to hit the mass of creatures with every bit of ranged artillery and rocket systems they could get oriented. This included everything from BM-21s, SCUDS and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. Either this barrage did the trick, or the Zenos had accomplished whatever their goal was. We're not sure, but after that, they turned around, moved back through Cairo and then through the ring closing it behind themselves somehow."

  Declan was standing against the back wall of the room, having lost his seat to a Brigadier General from the Army Operations Office. He leaned forward to hear Mrs. Smith's next question, one she barely whispered. "General Williamson, how many American casualties? How many of our people died?"

  The General's face softened slightly. "Cassandra, I know your husband is also a soldier. So, you also know, as a soldier's wife, that we don't discuss casualty figures until the families are notified. That will take a bit longer to do I'm afraid."

  Mrs. Smith visibly stiffened her back and voice cracked slightly as she asked again. "General, the President and the Secretary of Defense will be asked, and they have to have the answer. Everyone needs to know what happened. Some of my own friends need to know too."

  General Williamson looked directly at her. "Cassandra, our current casualty estimate is still pending the official by name jump manifest, but the number is assumed to be 960 American casualties."

  "Oh my God General! How many KIA versus wounded?"

  "That is the number of killed in action, Cassandra."

  Declan watched Mrs. Smith's body shake slightly as she asked her follow up question. "What was the total number of soldiers in the airdrop General?"

  "Cassandra, there were 960 paratroopers in the airdrop. The casualty rate is currently presumed to be 100% KIA." His voice didn't waver as he confirmed the total loss.

  Declan turned and began to walk out of the room as the Public Affairs Officer lost her fight to control her emotions and began to cry quietly at the front of the room. Declan had friends in the 503rd himself, and strangely he could now remember the names of each of their children.

  Chapter 6

  Volunteered for what? 0437 September 25, 2014, Fight to El Paso

  Declan adjusted the reading light over his seat on the military chartered flight from Baltimore Washington International airport to Fort Bliss, in El Paso Texas, where he was told to report for some for some classified training. He was surrounded by two hundred other soldiers packed into the same plane. All of them had been 'volun-told' that they were lucky to be selected for training on how to fight future incursions onto the earth by the creatures.

  Yeah, how lucky we are.

  Declan elbowed his snoring best friend in the seat next to him. Major Shane Gris had met up with Declan at the BWI airport to catch the same chartered flight to Texas. "Dude, you're supposed to read all this background shit before we land too, you know?"

  Shane grumbled "Screw that, you read it. Sum it up for me when we land, would you? Thank you much." He rolled back to his side and quickly started snoring again.

  Sighing, Declan opened the background folder again and started skimming the unclassified information releases. The first one that caught his eye had come from the Public Affairs Office in the Pentagon.

  Oh, I know this one very well already. I watched it live.

  He read the excerpt.

  'Tacticians, in retrospect, determined that the emptiness between Cairo and the Suez Canal prevented the first demon incursion from inflicting even more devastation on humanity during the first day of the war. The time required for the demon horde to cross the open terrain allowed for the standing military forces in the region to activate their ranged weapons systems and engage the horde with indirect artillery fire. The usage of light infantry tactics employed by the US Army during the first incursion was determined later, thru forensic evidence, to be ineffective and of no significant tactical value. While we know a large number of demons were killed in the artillery barrage, an exact count of their losses was never tallied. The demon horde pulled back to the portal and it snapped closed, leaving the world in shock.'

  Declan recalled how the subsequent panic had encircled the world, militaries mobilized, and people demanded answers from their leaders. The world had remained at each country's highest military alert level for three months but nothing new occurred. No portals and no demons reappeared. If not for the deaths, and ruin of Cairo, it might have been a worldwide bad dream. Declan had started spending a lot of time in the bars around the Pentagon during those months.

  The next set of summaries in the folder was from Reuters.

  'August 25th, 2014, they came back. A portal snapped into existence outside Minsk, Russia and devastation rolled out. The portal appeared in the center of the city and by the time they reacted, the death toll had skyrocketed. Minsk became a wasteland in an hour and the horde, bigger, faster, and moving with a speed that even railways couldn't match, swarmed towards Moscow.'

  'The Russian army tried to maneuver into position, but they couldn't get organized fast enough. Demons razed the city. Moscow was one of the few modern cities fortified, by cold war design changes, to withstand the effects of modern warfare. But these city fortifications became mostly just barriers to the human's ability to fight the inhuman hordes. This was the first time that a handful of military and governmental witnesses survived to provide more information on the composition of the demon hordes. New types of demons were described, larger than anything filmed in Cairo. Even the Russian main battle tanks had a ha
rd time killing the biggest ones. Not as much information was streamed into the internet, as Moscow didn't hold the same tourist population, but the pictures taken afterwards, of the remains were burned into the fabric of civilization. Tanks, missiles, flamethrowers, even knives were used against the horde and it barely slowed down. This time, however, with Moscow in ruins, another portal snapped into existence and the demonic mechanizations called "harvesters" with storage tanks full of human blood along with the horde of demons streamed back through it and were gone.'

  Yeah, that one really shook people up. The public freakshow was in full panic mode after the Russians got massacred.

  Declan read the rest of the article.

  'The bodies of the demons that had been killed were immediately snapped up by government agencies around the world for study, everyone was trying to figure out if there was a solution to stop them. Many prayed for a biological weapon solution that would exploit some demon vulnerability, but the results all came back negative. Resolutions were passed unanimously allowing the use of any, and all, force by the U.N. member nations to defend humanity. And the world waited.'

  'The world's unaffected nations offered aid for Cairo, Minsk, and Moscow, but the devastation in those cities could only be compared to Hiroshima. Some of the demons had been big enough and strong enough to knock down smaller buildings. Many people who had survived the demons, by hiding in the larger buildings, were killed by our own weapons as collateral damage when the armed forces were trying to stop the invaders.'

  'It was at this point that strange stories came out of soldiers creating fireballs or sinking into a berserker state and killing demons in close combat like the Vikings of old. Some of the demons were also apparently using what could also only be described as magic-like abilities. Where a year ago the stories would have been dismissed as the ravings of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, the scientists listened, everyone wondering about the blood. Why was the blood of humans so important? Could magic be real? That was when blood became everything. Was it the key to fighting these invaders? Had the demons come just to harvest our blood to fuel their demonic magic in some religious zeal for power?'

  Declan looked over at Shane and poked him. "Hey dumbass, do you believe that magic shit people are saying? You know fireballs from magic that are usable as weapons?"

  Shane grumbled back semi-coherently. "Fuck yeah… Fireballs are cool. I want to get me some of that shit. Now go to sleep man…"

  I don't know. Real magic? That can't be a good thing.

  Declan reached up and turned off the reading light and shut his eyes to sleep, but his mind wouldn't let him. His jumbled thoughts of what he'd seen and heard collided with trying to understand where he was going to fit into the middle of everything. He knew that more demons kept coming in. Several reliable sources had reported smaller raids, ten to twenty demon soldiers with portable blood harvesting machine on their backs, killing and draining the humans they encountered. They had left desiccated bodies drained of blood behind them. People were fighting back but each new raid resulted in dozens to hundreds of dead around the world. Armed civilians were now banding together to patrol with the police against demon raiders in areas that the military just couldn't cover. But the body counts almost always favored the demons.

  One thought kept nagging at Declan mind though.

  The demons are not invincible after all. They can be killed. Humanity, we, just need to understand how to fight the war we're now in.

  Chapter 7

  Prepare to Fight, 0800 September 27, 2014, Fort Bliss Texas

  "Come on in people. We don't have all day, and I've got a shit ton of information to cram into your skulls, so put your ass in a seat and pay attention." The whip crack of the voice from the general standing in the front of the room in his service uniform kicked Declan Kenner into gear. With Shane Gris on his six, he made a beeline for two desks in the back of the room and slipped into them. The military staffs and lower priority missions had been stripped of their combat-experienced officers and NCOs as orders were cut for the personnel to report to Fort Bliss Texas immediately. Shane and Declan had both arrived last night. They were just a little bit hungover still from an evening that consisted largely of drinking lots of bourbon and sharing invasion conspiracy stories they had both heard in the news lately.

  "Why the fuck are we here again?" Shane whispered in a low voice. "We should be out fighting those monsters, not sitting in some cozy classroom." His voice had risen a bit at the last point, and Declan shot him a look.

  "Because we were ordered to be here, Sparky, so sit down, shut up and let's get this done so we can get on to killing things." Declan kept his voice low too, but the noise died and his whisper of 'killing things' traveled in the now quiet room.

  "Yes, that sounds like a good idea, soldier. Please stand, state your name and rank?"

  Declan snapped up standing by his chair, back straight at attention, even as he imagined ways to kill Shane. "Major Declan Kenner, sir."

  "Major," the instructor said inclining his head slightly, face serious. "I take it you want to be out killing these invaders?"

  Images of what remained of Ray in Cairo flashed through his mind, and coldness replaced embarrassment.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good, then sit your ass down, shut the fuck up, and let me talk." The intent look on the general's face killed any desire Declan had to be a smart ass and he sat down pulling out a notebook and planned Shane's death in very creative ways.

  The half smirk on Shane's face only fueled his creativity.

  I wonder if I spiked his Scotch…

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I am General Eloysuis Craig. What I am about to teach you is enough information for a semester's worth of learning. Until one week ago, everything I am going to talk about was classified Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information. It has been downgraded to secret and I expect the newspapers will have it in a week, but for now, my job is to shove it into your brains and make sure you have some understanding of what we are facing. Your job is going to be sending soldiers to their deaths, and make no mistake, the cost in lives for this situation is going to make D-Day look like a walk in the park in more ways than one." He cleared his throat and Declan fought to keep the confused look off his face.

  What the fuck is this guy on? TS/SCI dropped clearance? Killing my men? I don't send soldiers on suicide missions. They might die, but only if there was not a damn thing I could do about it. What the fuck is going on?

  Declan shook his head, getting his thoughts back in the game as he watched the General writing words on the whiteboard.

  Roanoke

  City of Z

  Atlantis

  Indus Valley

  Cahokia

  General Craig turned and looked at the classroom. No one laughed, though Declan really wished someone would say all this was a joke.

  "I'm sure some of you recognize these names, but for those that don't let me explain. All of those are cities or civilizations where the people just disappeared. No explanation, no indications of violence, and the people just went away. Various groups in governments around the world have known for years these were simply tests by these invaders. It is assumed they were scouting to see if Earth had a population dense enough to support their incursions. As seen in Cairo and Moscow, we apparently now do."

  He turned again and wrote Elijah and Dante on the board.

  "From information gleaned from multiple sources, and yes I just used gleaned. I've got a Ph.D. in History so get the fuck over it." The General growled. The little joke helped lower the stress in Declan's back, though he felt his heart beginning to pound harder as what the General told them started to sink in. "We figure Elijah wrote about meeting demons in his books. Yes, that Elijah, from the bible." He said as someone started to raise their hand. "Dante wrote about the various creatures and the rings of hell in a vain attempt to understand them. But we now use that nomenclature as a method to segregate the levels of power in
the various creatures. Because of his vivid imagery, the way it links to things described in many of the religious texts across the world, Demon is the word used most to describe them, and I don't have an issue with that. Plus, the President's use of the word Xenomorphs was just dumb. God only knows how the White House came up with that one."

  Declan fought the desire to raise his hand and enlighten the General on how that happened but thought better of it and decided to just keep that to himself.

  The general turned and wrote on the board.

  Blood

  Power

  Fae

  Angels

  Human

  "We have reasons to believe they might have been involved in the extinction of the dinosaurs, but I for one am willing to give them a pass on that." His smile reminded Declan of images of dinosaurs he'd seen in the movies, all teeth, and deadly intent. "I rather prefer mammals to lizards to share the planet with."

  A ripple of laughter surfaced then faded.

  "Here is what we have deduced and let me stress that all of this is subject to change as more information comes to light. We know they can use magic, and that we can too."

  Declan felt more than saw Shane straighten up and lean forward, and he frowned a bit.

  Magic, he can't be serious, can he?

  "We discovered the demons are after blood, human blood. If you want to know how we figured that out, I'll tell you the location of the vid file. Don't eat before you watch it, and don't plan on eating after." The grimness of his voice told Declan everything he needed to know and the desire to watch it completely disappeared. "What we also learned is blood gives you power to do magic, at least your own blood or the blood of a demon. But as part of that, we also learned that there are two other worlds that connect across dimensions. The Fae, which has been verified by direct communications from a member of their people, and the angels. At this point, no one can verify the actual existence of angels, but they are so woven into the mythology of our world that we are assuming they exist or existed. The existence of these Fae as still classified as TSC/SCI until they agree to publicly expose their existence to humanity. We expect that will not be long from now."