by Rod Porter
According to Myriad, carrier planes like the ones they were flying had been used by the military before the invasion mostly to transport equipment and supplies. This explained why there was ample space for its forty-plus passengers. The initial takeoff had been quite a tense moment for everyone involved. Considering that none of them had ever been in a plane, the troops were all terrified at the thought of being miles above the ground and above an ocean. Once they were in the air, though, everyone relaxed. Myriad flew the plane expertly, with almost no turbulence. She told her passengers that they were now in the hands of the calm. The calm was what they had taken to calling the friendly skies back at the flight academy.
It was a humbling experience. During the early hours of the flight, there had not been much conversation amongst the passengers. They were hardened fighters traveling into a new frontier, on a mission that could determine the future of their race, but for the moment they were content to look out the windows like young children, taking in the view. They had never dreamed that they would one day fly among the clouds. Nor had they ever expected to see the clouds and the night stars so close. For all the damage mankind and the aliens had done to the planet, the sky was still beautiful, day and night.
These sentiments were perhaps stronger in no one than Troy himself. Earth was a beautiful place once. Human beings had forgotten that. They had taken it all for granted and destroyed their home world. Perhaps it was poetic justice that the aliens invaded-Troy often wondered. Ironically enough, the alien invasion may have prevented the human race from destroying the planet entirely.
There was a chance here for redemption. And Troy hoped that they would be one step closer to it, as their plane sped towards the continent of Africa. He hoped that the other planes would touch down safely in the other designated countries and report back with good news.
Troy had waited until everyone was asleep to head for the cockpit of the plane. They had been flying for hours now, and Troy was going to seize the opportunity to be alone with Myriad. Troy knew that the smart thing to do would have been to just get some sleep, like the rest of the troops, but he could not help himself. He found Myriad alert at the pilot controls.
“How goes it, trooper?”
“Fine, sir.” She kept her eyes forward.
Troy took the empty copilot seat.
“The night sky looks amazing. I never thought I’d ever be this close to it,” he said. He desperately wanted to talk with her. Every fiber of his being screamed for him to tell her of his feelings. His heart began to beat a little faster as he tried to quash the internal struggle. “You’ve done an amazing job with the flight academy, Myriad. You should know I’ll be promoting you when we get back to Jade.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s nice to know that my efforts have been noticed,” she said with a smile that made Troy want to melt. He felt like a clueless teenager again.
Troy could not contain himself any longer. “Myriad…”
“Yes, sir?” she responded, busying herself with some buttons on the flight panel.
Troy wanted her to stop fidgeting and look at him. Reaching out, he placed his hand on top of hers. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he managed to say.
Myriad was caught off guard by the sudden physical contact. Troy now had her full attention. “What is it, sir?” She noticed that he was struggling with something. “What’s the matter?”
“I-” Troy hesitated. Her hand felt warm and smooth under his. “I-”
Just then, something struck the plane, causing it to jolt violently.
“What the hell was that?” Myriad snapped out of it.
“We coming up on some rough winds?” Troy offered.
The plane was struck by something a second time, but this time it was followed by an explosion. Lights on the plane’s instrument panel began to flicker and a series of alarms sounded.
“Something is shooting at us,” Myriad realized.
Myriad reached for the collision alarm and activated it. The loud repetitive alarm woke the crew.
“Can you keep us in the air?” Troy asked coolly.
Myriad struggled with the controls for a moment.
“Yeah, we’re good. We’ve still got the engines. As long as we don’t take another hit, I can find us a nice spot to set her down.”
Myriad spoke too soon. The plane was struck by a third projectile. This time, Myriad announced over the radio that the passengers should brace for impact for an emergency landing. The plane was going down.
AFRICA
Troy assessed the situation in his head. The plane had crashed into the African jungle, far removed from the intended plan to find a suitable landing zone where they would be able to take off again at the first sign of trouble. The jungle was unlike anything Troy had ever seen. There were plants as large as people and all manner of insects and small animals. Fortunately, the temperature was only moderately hot, with dusk drawing near.
“What do you think?” he asked his first officer, newly-promoted Colonel Cartwright.
Luckily, the plane had sustained reparable damage and there had been no fatalities in the crew.
“Whatever shot us down is going to be coming for us,” Troy stated flatly. “Best bet would be to move to cover, but we can’t abandon the plane.”
The Colonel agreed. Not only were the rations and supplies stored in the plane too abundant to transport, the plane’s comm system was their only way of keeping contact with Jade and the other parties that had flown around the globe. Communication was particularly vital because their plane would not be flying anywhere anytime soon. Between the damage it had sustained in the crash, and the fact that they were in the middle of the jungle, their hope of ever leaving was dim.
Troy examined the African sky.
“It’s going to be nightfall soon,” he said to Cartwright. “Go ahead and put a perimeter up, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir.”
Reentering the plane at the bowels where the communications were, Troy was greeted by sparks flying and a stream of heavy curses. Rufus, the lead technician in the Unconformed, had been fiddling around with the plane’s controls and frequently beating his head against the mainframes in frustration.
“Talk to me, Rufus.”
Rufus looked over at Troy. “We’re in a bad spot here, sir. I’ve been trying to repair this damn thing.” Rufus punched the console. “But I can’t seem to figure it out. Our communications are shot. I can’t raise Jade or the other carriers, sir.”
“That’s a problem, considering our only way home now might have to be hitching a ride with one of the other carrier planes,” Troy said. He knew that Rufus could take the pressure. “If you don’t get our communications back up, we may be staying here permanently.”
“Yes, sir. We might want to try taking a portable transmitter and getting it to high ground. If we can pick up a signal, I can patch it through to the comm link here.”
“Do it.”
“There’s just one problem, sir.”
“What?”
“The transmitter was damaged in the crash.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yes, sir. But I need some time, sir. We’re talking days, probably.”
“You don’t have days. Something blew us out of the sky and, whatever it was, it’s going to be on its way to finish us off.”
Mickey had been designated Rufus’s personal assistant in repairs. The mention of possible violence spooked him. “Was it roaches, Troy?”
“Too early to tell, but most likely. Not much else could have shot a plane down like that.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Rufus.
“Probably hours,” Troy estimated. “I’ve set up a perimeter, and hopefully we’ll be able to fend them off. Just get that transmitter fixed. We’re expecting a lot of company.”
Rufus, and a highly motivated Mickey, vowed that they would.
It had been almost two days of waiting for the impending assault that never came. The rat
ions were holding up well, and the repairs to the plane were progressing. Myriad had been working tirelessly to get her plane back into shape. The landing gear had not been damaged, so theoretically, if she could make her necessary repairs, the plane would be able to fly again.
Troy stood by Colonel Cartwright at the eastern side of the perimeter they had had up for two days now. The situation made no sense.
“Something shot us down,” Troy said to Cartwright. “Myriad confirmed it from the damage to the plane’s hull. Why haven’t they come to finish us off?”
Cartwright was tired of speculating, as was the rest of the crew. Saying that the troops were on edge would have been an understatement. No one felt comfortable in the jungle. On top of being shot down and totally vulnerable to attack, the African jungle provided rather harsh surroundings to stand around and wait for something to happen. The heat was extreme during the day, and with the crew trying to conserve water and rations, they had to call upon their utmost levels of discipline to keep their thirst and hunger at bay. The jungle made seemingly dozens of new sounds every hour, and it made the men jumpy to see all kinds of exotic life forms. What if they were associated with the roaches that shot them down? There were mosquitoes and flies the size of a human fist that were an incessant annoyance. Larger animals looked down on them from the trees above and the sky regularly.
The time to make a tough decision had come. The Unconformed traveled to Africa to find independent resistance bodies, and that was what they were going to do. Troy informed the Colonel he would be taking Delta squad and scouting ahead. Cartwright was given strict orders to maintain the perimeter at the crash site and check in with Delta squad by radio every thirty minutes.
“Sir, maybe it would be better if I took Delta out.” Cartwright was thinking purely of his General’s safety. Just like a good first officer would. “That way, we keep you safe. I’ll radio back to you the minute we come upon something.”
“I appreciate the concern, Colonel,” Troy said, clutching Cartwright’s shoulder with affection. “But,” he said, gesturing at the jungle surrounding them, “if there are potential allies out there, I think it’s important that the first person they deal with is me.”
“And me.” The two had not noticed Mickey eavesdropping on their conversation.
“I can’t allow you to come along, Mick,” Troy said. “Too dangerous.”
“All I have to do is keep my head down and stay behind you and Delta,” Mickey interjected. “I’m here as an emissary of the Catholic Church, and it is vital that I be among the first to interact with any potential allies.”
“You do realize that there’s a good possibility that we’ll get into a firefight out there?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And that, if that’s the case, we probably will not be able to protect you.”
“I do. It’s my choice, General.”
Troy stepped closer to his friend. He spoke under his breath to keep his words as private as he could. “You don’t have to die for the idiot. Any allies we meet will interact with the rest of us in time.”
“Like I told you, Troy, I’m not a representative of Demoskeena. I’m a representative of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Troy sighed. He could see that Mickey was determined. He had to chuckle as he remembered some of Jackson’s many warnings to him about religion. “They will make people behave very irrationally, almost to the point of insanity,” Jackson had warned. Troy had to admire their commitment to their faith.
“Okay you can tag along, but stay behind us.”
“Thank you, General, I will.”
“Go get a vest from the plane,” Troy growled to Mickey. “Hopefully if you take any fire it will be in the chest.”
Cartwright saluted Troy.
“Good hunting, sir.”
Delta squad and Troy decided to head inland. They figured the further they got from the exposed shores, the more likely they were to encounter human beings. There seemed to be no end to the jungle. Delta squad had marched for three days with little rest. They had checked back in with the crash site every night. Rations were still well stocked, and Rufus had announced significant progress on the repair of the portable transmitter. Most importantly, there had still been no sign of any enemy forces or search parties. This unsettled Troy very much. Like everything else, Delta was an elite unit when it came to recon missions. There was something not right about the jungle. It was as if it had eyes and they all felt it. Whatever had not had the fortitude to attack the fortified crash site was stalking Delta’s every movement; they were certain of it.
“I say again, we are under attack!”
The radio broadcasts were of no use. Delta was repelling the enemy while Troy tried to raise Cartwright and the rest of base camp. The aliens were jamming the transmission somehow. It had been close to day five in Delta’s hike. There had been no signs of any human life. There was nothing but the cursed jungle they had been in for what felt like an eternity.
Delta was fighting a small platoon of soldier aliens. The spider-legged creatures were accompanied by some form of super-soldier similar to the ones from the island offensive. The resistance had come to refer to them as juicers. The juicers’ suits were much thicker than the soldier aliens’, and they were faster, better with their weapons, harder to kill, more agile, and more intelligent.
Delta fought valiantly for hours until they ran out of ammunition. The aliens flanked the small operations squad and closed in. Totally exhausted, and with no more bullets, Troy and Delta had to surrender to the alien patrol.
It had been two days since Troy, Mickey, and the rest of Delta had been captured. The aliens had lost no time transporting their new prisoners. They blindfolded them and attached a metal collar to each of their necks. A thick chain linked all the collars together, and the aliens marched their prisoners in one direction for hours. At one point, Mickey collapsed with exhaustion. He cried out that he could not go another step, but at the urging of Troy and some of Delta, he had gotten back to his feet and kept moving.
“Hell with these roaches!” Trigger shouted at Mickey. “Get on your feet and keep moving! Don’t let these things break you!”
“It ain’t going to be that easy!” Doc Patterson chimed in, taunting the aliens through his blindfold.
At one point Corporal Mac Roberts had dropped to his knees in pain. One of the soldier aliens foolishly came over to prod him back into walking. Mac pulled the knife from his boot that they had forgotten to take from him and relieved the soldier alien of one of its legs. This set off a rumble of laughter and good cheer amongst the captives, Troy included. Mickey, like everyone else in Jade, had heard the stories of the famed Delta squad, but he had thought most of them exaggerated. Clearly, they had not been. These soldiers were crazy! Ironically enough, their lack of sanity was what Mickey swore gave him the strength to make it back to the alien camp.
The aliens left them blindfolded and tied them all to some kind of wooden stake. Troy took it upon himself to strengthen his unit’s resolve. They might not be able to see him but they could hear him.
“This is what they do,” Troy began. “They mostly operate through sensory deprivation. It was the same way in the prison camp. First they take your sense of sight. Then auditory and so on. The most important thing we can do is maintain. Whatever we do, we need to keep it together long enough for the Colonel to send out a search party.”
“We’re with you, sir.”
Troy recognized Balls’s voice. He just hoped he was right about the search party. Delta would go that night without checking back with base camp. Hopefully Cartwright would have enough sense to send out a team. The colonel knew that Delta had headed east. The only question was, what direction had the aliens taken them in?
After three days, the aliens removed the blindfolds. Delta was secured to a large wooden post in the middle of some kind of alien camp. The three days had been some of the longest of their lives. Every few hours, the aliens would take one
of them inside the interrogation tent. Nothing emanated from this tent except screams of human anguish; the interrogations were nothing more than torture fests. For three days, Delta had been beaten, cut on, burned, sleep deprived, and starved. Many of the torture tactics were similar to what Troy had experienced in the prison camp.
They had all but given up hope of being rescued. It seemed apparent that Colonel Cartwright could not track them. There was a voice in the torture tent that spoke English, but it was digitally altered, and whenever the voice was present, the person being interrogated was blindfolded. It was the same digitally-altered voice that Troy had heard in the prison camp interrogation rooms with the one-way mirrors. It broke Troy’s heart to hear his friends being tortured, to hear their cries for help go unanswered. Seeing the desperation in their faces was more than he could bear. He knew that they were going to die a slow, painful death, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Until one day, the jungle came alive. People seemed to grow up from the ground like sprouting plants. Human beings dressed in camo, clutching assault rifles, suddenly appeared in the trees. They sent down a hailstorm of bullets on the alien guards. As quickly as they had appeared, they destroyed the alien campsite. There were at least fifty of them, maybe more. They blended in with their surroundings so well, it was as if they were an extension of the jungle.
The leader of the band came to stand in front of the prisoners after the firefight, and addressed them in a foreign tongue. Delta understood none of what he was saying. This frustrated the speaker. He directed his men to raid the alien camp for supplies. To Troy and the rest of Delta’s dismay, the fighters did not remove their restraints. Instead they brought them to their feet, blindfolded them, and marched them off deeper into the jungle, just like the aliens. Hopefully Delta had not just been rescued from one nightmare only to become part of a new one. Mickey prayed that they were now in the custody of what would prove to be friends sympathetic to their situation.