by Trent Falls
Julie didn’t exactly understand what had just happened but she did as her uncle instructed. She got in after him to sit in the middle seat. Alex hopped in and sat beside her.
Rhodes slid the side door shut. He then opened the front passenger door and got in, slamming the door closed behind him. He looked back over his shoulder at John, Julie, and Alex. They were strapped in and ready to go.
“It’s a short drive to the spaceport but we want to make sure you get there safe.” Rhodes explained. He eyed Julie, remembering his promise to John to shield her from the grim legal fate that awaited her uncle. “Traffic is hell this time of morning. Hence the police escort.”
“Ah.” John nodded. He knew Rhodes was lying a bit.
The metal gate at the far end of the parking area slid open automatically. The razor wire atop the metal gate jangled a bit as it oscillated with the imperfect movement of the automatic gate. There was light traffic beyond the gate opening. A yellow wheeled taxi sped by, followed by a hovering utility van. One of the guards that had been standing watch over the vehicles ventured out into the street. The guard had a submachine gun strapped to his chest. Visibly armed and with an extended palm to the oncoming traffic he certainly imposing enough to stop any local vehicle in its tracks. With traffic stopped the black SUV caravan pulled out of the secured parking area and out onto the street.
Julie took a good look around her, craning her head around her uncle and Alex to get a view of the city. The streets of New Australia seemed much cleaner in the morning. Perhaps it was the long rain or simply the light of a new day that made it all look better. The shops that were once beacons of cheap neon light and jumbled arrays of chintzy product were now shuttered over. Markets that weren’t yet open looked a lot cleaner simply by having their doors and roll down shutters closed. All the street dwellers that had been out in droves the previous day and night were gone for the most part. Julie saw an elderly man walking his Doberman. Trash was being collected down the following street. About a half a block up, the convoy passed a lone man jogging down the street; possibly one of Rhode’s deputies based on the physical condition of the man.
“It’s incredible how much this all looks like Earth.” Julie observed aloud as she looked out on the passing roadside.
Rhodes shifted in his chair, with a little difficulty due to all of his gear, and looked back at Julie. “This is your first trip to New Australia, Miss Stevens?”
“Yeah.” Julie answered indirectly. She met Rhodes’ gaze for a second and then looked out again to the rain washed streets.
Rhodes turned his head to look forward again. “You should be very proud of your uncle, Miss Stevens. He helped make this town what it is today.”
“It wasn’t just him, man.” Alex exhaled, almost as a laugh.
“Oh, sorry. Mr. Scoffield here helped a great deal as well.” Rhodes added indirectly. “You were one of the first group of pilots on the planet, Mr. Scoffield?”
“Yes I was.” Alex looked around to the surrounding streets passing by their windows as well.
“How long have you and John known each other?” Rhodes asked.
“What? Fourteen? Fifteen years?” John looked at Alex.
“Something like that.” Alex confirmed. “We worked together four years here. It wasn’t anything like this, though.”
The convoy of black EEF SUVs pushed on ahead through an industrial sector. Julie noticed that some of the streets they were moving along were those they had walked along the previous day. She recognized the shopping square they had passed through after leaving the spaceport. The rumble of aircraft moving through the air above became more evident. Ahead, the outline of a y-shaped freighter banked in the distant sky; its lumbering mass obscured as grey in a near silhouette against a brightness of morning. They were getting close to the spaceport.
The convoy turned down a back street. A few repair shops line the two lane road. Many of the small garages seemed to cater to the airport. The sign on a storefront warehouse to the right noted artificial gravity repair. The shop next to it was orbital salvage. A pair of large white space pods were set on a flatbed trailer next to it. The space pods each had large powerful robotic arms mounted to their sides. Each arm contained a number of cutting and grabbing tools; likely for use in orbital repair and salvage. Further down the road was a long shop with grey stucco walls that advertised spacesuit repair, certification, and sales.
The black SUV’s seemed to be headed towards a back entry to the spaceport; likely a private hangar or air terminal. The warehouses and the road the SUV convoy followed seemed to follow the perimeter of the spaceport.
There was a sudden shriek. An earsplitting KLANG followed. The SUV John, Julie, and Alex were riding in suddenly had a massive hole ripped into the hood of its engine compartment. The driver instinctively hit the brakes, causing the tires to screech. The SUV slid a bit to the left as it braked hard. Julie screamed out loudly with the shriek of a terrified girl.
“What the fuck?!?” Rhodes shouted, bracing himself against the side of the windshield as the SUV braked hard.
The lead and trailing SUV’s were hit in kind and almost simultaneously. The result was a near three car pileup, but the drivers of each vehicle were skilled in their trade. The black SUV’s came to a quick stop.
Rhode’s right hand immediately reached for his holstered pistol. “One! What the fuck is going on?!?” he yelled into his headset radio.
John scanned back and forth. He wasn’t fearful following the attack. He knew what was going on. He knew what had hit them. Smart mortars – fired from probably over 1,000 meters away. The projectile lacked a conventional explosive but instead had a shaped charge much like a HEAT round. The mortar round was targeted to the engines of the SUV’s and were intended to stop the vehicle. John had heard about the weapon but had never seen one used.
John immediately knew what was happening. It was an ambush!
Smoke tendrils shot out into the street towards the SUV’s. Grayish blue smoke hissed out from tear gas canisters fired in rapid succession at the vehicles.
“HQ be advised we were just attacked!” Rhodes shouted into his headset com. “Multiple unknown belligerents have us pinned down! Requesting immediate backup!”
“We need to get out of here.” John observed aloud.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Rhodes shouted back over his shoulder at him. He then looked quickly to the deputy driving. “Keep an eye on them. Don’t let them leave the vehicle.”
“Yessir!” the deputy replied quickly.
Rhodes jumped out of the SUV, slamming the door behind him. Once outside he pulled out his 9mm pistol.
Rhodes was barely out the door when John caught sight of their attackers. He saw one man at first then a second. Both were wearing a silverish white body armor and what resembled an old-style hockey mask. They held a tube-shaped rifle up to their sights as they rushed in at a quick stride through the smoke.
It all passed very quickly, like a dream. Deputy Myers was out of her vehicle aiming her 9mm pistol at one of the silver armored soldiers. Three rounds cracked from her pistol. The rounds staggered the oncoming silver armored soldier slightly but didn’t drop him. He moved forward, unaffected, taking aim on Myers with his rifle. A blue white tendril of electricity shot out of the rifle, striking Myer’s in the chest. She fell immediately. Four other silver-white armored thugs moved efficiently out of the smoke towards the SUV’s. Electricity flashed out of their weapons in rapid succession.
Baxter was struck down by the lightning gun. Ramos had his gun trained on another but was struck by an electric bolt before he could fire. His limp body bounced off the SUV and hit the pavement.
“Go! Run! Go!” John urged Alex to exit the vehicle.
Alex threw the door open. Julie screamed.
“Go! Go!” John pushed her out.
Smoke had enveloped the vehicle. The deputy driving the truck was caught in panicked indecision. His prisoners were escaping while the
y were under attack. He was about to yell out for John to stop when a bolt of electricity flashed through the glass, striking him in the chest to knock him out.
It was all a blur from there. John was running by Julie’s side when she yelled out. An electric bolt hit her in the back. She collapsed in stride.
“JULIE!” John stopped and spun around to help his ward.
In that second he was a panicked parent. He took a step back towards Julie’s body when one of the silver armored attackers emerged from the mist. For a split-second, John caught sight of the brown human eyes behind the silver hockey mask. The tube-shaped rifle was up to his sights.
The world flashed over and suddenly fell dark.
It had been years since John had dreamed of Wendy. He could barely remember her face. She was blonde, had blue eyes, and a light complexion but beyond that she had become a blur. For some reason, though, she appeared to him as a ten year old girl. Or maybe she was twelve. John knew at that time that he was about ten or twelve himself, which didn’t make sense as Wendy was three years older than him.
They were both playing in the front yard of their house in York, Pennsylvania. It was the middle of the afternoon by the looks of the afternoon sun and the shadows cast on the ground. The grass was bright green. The leaves were still on the trees, which themselves were swaying very slightly in the wind. Donald Murphy, a forty something neighbor that John hadn’t seen in nearly thirty years, was busy washing his car. His wife Linda was gardening in a flower bed just to the left of their front door. Two kids raced their bikes up the street.
Everything seemed as it was in John’s youth.
John remembered the way the sunlight caught his sister’s blonde hair. In the breeze it looked like strands of spun gold glowing in the afternoon sun, swaying with effortless grace. Wendy sat cross-legged on the grass near John. Wendy, twelve or so, was brushing the hair of a baby doll with long straight blonde hair much like her own. She seemed a bit younger than twelve somehow yet still too old to play with dolls in some odd way. All the same, his sister’s attention was focused joyfully as she brushed the baby doll’s hair while humming some unfamiliar yet sweet melody.
John was playing with his Star Marines, a group of 2 ½” action figures he enjoyed in his youth. One figure was an astronaut-like marine in white zero-g armor. The other was a black uniformed bad guy with a laser rifle and a black hood. A small Star Marine shuttle rested in the grass next to him. John played with the action figures in the grass a few feet from his sister. Like her, he was involved in play and didn’t seem to care about the world around him. The Star Marines were on a rescue mission to one of the colony worlds when the evil black uniformed Scourge had attacked them. The shuttle had been damaged and the astronaut marine needed to defend his ship until help could arrive from the fleet.
Something had caught John’s eye. A shadow maybe. He wasn’t sure what it had been. He looked up from his toys to look at the Murphy’s across the street. He looked at Mrs. Murphy for a moment in particular. She was gardening in jean shorts and a bikini top. He watched how she worked vigorously in the dark soil, her gloved hands digging in the dirt to then plant some kind of flower. He turned his head to look down his side of the street. Melissa Chen, a teenage neighbor, was out in front of her house talking on her mobile. John guessed she was talking to her boyfriend again.
His eyes turned right. He saw a little girl in a window but looked down at his toys. Stricken by the realization of what he had seen, John looked up again.
She was there… in the window… the eight year old girl from the Arkaday Center. The sight of her was terrifying. She had thrown open the drapes in the window of the house across from John’s. Unlike the Arkaday Center attack, she looked thinner and pale. John, frozen with fear, realized the little girl looked like she was dead. Her black wavy hair hung limply over her shoulders. A look of angered conviction was fixed on her face. Her skin was grayish white. Her eyes were sunken in within dark circles. A small dot was on the left side of her neck. At first the dot looked like a giant pimple but John realized it was more like a bullet hole; a bullet hole in the skin after the blood had stopped flowing and the wound had been cleaned away.
The sight of the girl staring back at him through the window absolutely terrified John. He dropped his toys on the ground as he shivered in terror.
“What’s wrong?” Wendy asked her younger brother.
John turned his head quickly at Wendy. As he did he noticed a sigh even more frightening than the girl in the window. A Xen shock trooper, in full black riot gear, stood over Wendy. The black armored soldier absolutely towered over Wendy, who was unaware of his presence.
“What is it?” she looked curiously at her brother.
John didn’t answer. He acted on instinct. His right hand went to the ground where he, somehow, found a 9mm pistol that had been lying next to him. The weapon was only a little difficult to hold in his young hands. He shot the barrel of the pistol up at the Xen soldier’s head. He lined up the three-dot sight in that flash of movement and fired. Three rounds cracked loudly from the pistol.
Wendy screamed in terror at the sudden and deafening sound of gunfire. She didn’t bother to look behind her at the Xen soldier as he fell. She couldn’t; Wendy simply acted instinctively out of blind fear. Wendy ran away, her blonde haired dolly in her arms.
John didn’t linger on the sight of the dead Xen soldier. He remembered, even though he imagined he was a boy, that he had seen dozens of them dead. He had killed more than he could remember.
Three more Xen soldiers, also in black riot gear, were approaching from across the street. They all carried assault rifles as they came up from behind the Murphy’s. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Murphy knew the fate about to befall them. They didn’t notice the Xen soldiers approaching.
“Look out!!!” John shouted across the street.
Mrs. Murphy looked up from her gardening. She squinted at John across the street while rubbing the sweat from the side of her face with the top of her wrist.
She was too late.
The Xen soldiers behind Linda Murphy raised their weapons. She and her husband had barely caught sight of them when they opened fire. A look of terror crossed both Donald and Linda Murphy’s’ faces as the bullets from the automatic rifles cut through them with a deafening ratatatatatata!
John aimed at the soldiers. Despite being out of effective range he fired on them with the 9mm pistol. The pistol jerked with each shot as it was a tad oversized in his ten year old hand. He focused to keep his right arm straight as he fired; his right eye dead straight on the sights. Most of his shots missed except one which tagged one of the Xen soldiers in the shoulder. The hit only spun the Xen’s shoulder back, barely staggering him.
The soldiers advanced on John. Each raised their assault rifles up to aim at him. John bolted before the first shots were fired. He scurried to the family car to hide behind it length-wise. He hoped the battery cells and the engine block would be enough to stop the machine gun fire. The high velocity rifle bullets whipped past him, snapping past his head. One ricocheted off the asphalt near his feet. It was only a matter of time until he was hit. His little heart pounded.
A shadow moved to John’s left. Another Xen soldier appeared from around the corner of his house. John acted without thinking. He shot the black armored soldier in the head, dropping him instantly. The bullets from the approaching Xen unit continued to whip past John as he dropped with the body of the soldier he had just killed. The soldier he had just shot in the head was also carrying an assault rifle. John pulled the dead Xen’s combat knife from its sheath and cut the strap of the assault rifle, freeing it so he could pull it away.
In another second John had the assault rifle up to his sights as he leaned out over the car. He shot one of the closing Xen soldiers in the head, then another. It took three rounds to drop the third.
Yet another Xen appeared behind John. He threw the stock of the rifle in his hands out to crack against the jawline of
the masked Xen soldier. John then turned his rifle around and shot the soldier three times in what looked like a soft spot in the armor.
Another enemy soldier fell from the ten year-old’s wrath.
Another appeared across the street. John took aim and shot the soldier. Bullets flew every direction. John was stunned he wasn’t dead already. He had no time to think. Terror and his sense of survival drove him to act. He killed any Xen he could spot.
He was running low on ammo.
The Xen were also getting closer. With everyone he killed, another seemed to show up even closer to his position on the front lawn. One appeared from within his house. John turned around quick and shot the Xen soldier with his last two rounds. More Xen soldiers were pouring out of his house.
John pulled the combat knife of the nearest Xen he had killed. Its eight inch blade and serrated spine looked like a short sword in John’s small hands. He rushed the Xen coming out of his front door. They were too close to shoot him with their rifles.
John was without mercy. He shoved the combat knife into the side of one Xen soldier. He moved past him in a quick stride as his body fell, thrusting the combat knife into the gut of the next Xen. The knife then went up into the chin of that soldier. He cut through the wrist of a Xen taking aim on him with a pistol. Young John slashed another’s throat. Blood whipped everywhere from the edge of his flat black metal blade.
A small unit of Xen were walking up the street. Soon enough they were the vanguard of an army.
John grabbed yet another nearby assault rifle. He crouched behind the pile of bodies around him, using their body armor as cover. He fired in blind rage at the Xen soldiers. The Xen soldiers were firing back. John would kill as many of them as he could before they could kill him.
Then the fury of gunfire subsided. The Xen army up the street backed away, covering their own retreat with sporadic weapons fire. John stood still, wondering what might have come over the Xen soldiers.