Mozari Arrival

by Jack Colrain

  ‘Below the west tower, but we’re cut off. What happened?’

  ‘Sniper, but I’m OK.’

  Then the world turned to screaming red light, soaking into every fiber of her body.

  Daniel rocked back at the sheer strength of her agony, and he knew instinctively what had caused it. He had just seen it, after all.

  “Charlie Actual from Delta Actual,” Rausch’s voice came sharply. “Bravo Actual is fucking burning. Molotov. Regroup with Bravo Team. Repeat: Regroup with Bravo Team.”

  “On our way,” Daniel yelled. He glanced back along the wall, looking to where they had entered the compound. Figures were moving down there, and they weren’t wearing uniforms. With a curse, he beckoned to Kinsella and Bailey. “We need to link up with Bravo Team.”

  “We heard,” Bailey said. “We’re on it.”

  Daniel nodded, his heart rate frantic. He could use some of that mental protection that Hope had thought suits might offer right now. Focus, he told himself, fucking focus! He could see clearly with the suit, and knew where he had to go, and how to get there; that was reassurance for now.

  “They’re on the other side of the towers. We’re cut off from the sewer infil point, so we’ll have to go overground. Superman, I want a distraction between the towers. Get them looking the other way somehow. Kinsella, keep south of the garden embankments and take out targets of opportunity at this end of the east tower. We should be able to see them before getting into their field of fire.” They nodded and set off, heading deeper across the southern half of the compound.

  Bailey switched out the rounds in his M-203 for chalk rounds and fired them between the towers as they passed south of them. The chalk rounds burst in puffs of sparkling dust, and he finished off with a couple of smoke rounds. The pool, which Rausch had already been spotted in earlier between the two arms of the V made by the towers, was now filled with billowing smoke and dust, just right for concealing movement within it.

  The cultists began to fire into the cloud and away from Charlie Team.

  A large explosion blew concrete and bodies from the balconies overlooking Hope’s position. Daniel could see the light of the flames enveloping her, though fortunately she was sheltered from gunfire by the floral embankment.

  Svoboda put another rocket from her LAWS into one of the tower’s upper floors as Charlie Team arrived. Buapeuak was throwing earth from the embankment over Hope, and for a moment, Daniel had the surreal and repulsive sensation that he was watching some bizarre burial ceremony. In fact, the earth was doing a better job of dampening the fire than rolling her on the ground would have.

  Daniel wanted to just grab her and run to a hospital but knew he couldn’t. He could barely sense her, even though he was crouching right next to her now, and that had to be bad. “Sit-rep,” he said to Svoboda.

  “We’re taking heavy fire from enfiladed MGs on the lower balconies of both towers.”

  “Snipers on the roofs,” Buapeuak added.

  “Take care of the snipers first,” Daniel said to Kinsella.

  “The angle’s too steep. You want us to breach and fight our way up?”

  Daniel cursed; fighting their way to the top would divert too many of the squad from their objective, and it could potentially take a long time if the interiors were heavily—or at least competently—defended. And while the fire that had been eating away at Hope was out, they were still in a bad position, and she needed to be in a hospital yesterday if she was to have any chance of survival. He wanted to clench his fists and scream. Instead, his hand jerked open and upwards, like Kinsella’s had before.

  The whole sleeve, BDUs and Exo-suit, puffed into dust and shot up towards the roof of the tower, twisting in a wind that may or may not have been there. The dust was nanites, he realized, and, as he watched, they hit the uppermost part of the wall near the roof and were absorbed upwards into it. As a piece of roof collapsed, a sniper lying up there tried to roll aside before he fell. The cloud of nanites followed, staining his clothes, and staining his skin like a tattooist’s ink.

  As Daniel watched through suit-enhanced eyes that could see further and clearer than a regular person’s, the not-ink kept digging, leaving stubble and skin flakes to slough off as the sniper’s eyes and teeth shrank inward and crumbled. He was screaming as his shining-clean jawbone fell away, but not for long. When he stopped screaming, the cloud fell back like soot, drifting down and thickening around Daniel’s arm until his Exo-suit and BDU sleeve were whole again.

  The cultists who were up on the tower had stopped shooting now, for the most part, but that wasn’t enough. They still resumed firing when anyone made a move to try to get Hope to proper safety.

  “Screw this.” Daniel tucked his M16A4 aside in its tactical sling, hanging down past his left hip, and unshipped the XR-01 from his shoulder. He could feel his attention switch to it, and his Exo-suit rebalance him and itself to use the much heavier weapon. Kneeling, he drew a bead on the uppermost balcony on the right of the west tower, gripped the railgun as tightly as he could, dialed the launch power up as high as it would go, and loosed a three-round burst of its projectiles at the machine gun emplacement.

  The effect was startling: The whole upper right corner of the building simply burst, a chunk of roof caving in on the gun’s position, while several feet of wall plummeted to the sidewalk below. The balcony itself sagged and fell apart, sending the gun and body parts from its operators tumbling from the sky. Beyond the tower, several yards of glass office roof from a building a block behind it exploded into shards that rained into the street.

  Daniel was too blinded by rage to have noticed before he’d fired again, smashing the entire top three stories of the tower into spraying rubble and wind-whipped dust, and collapsing more roofs beyond it. Jagged cracks spread down the tower wall from the ruined heights, and cultists scrambled for safety.

  “Holy shit,” he heard Kinsella exclaim.

  While the cultists were running for better cover, they weren’t firing on Hope, and Daniel felt the falling and twisting sensation from her start to subside. From what he had seen there today, he knew that meant her suit was beginning to heal her. She would still be out of action for the moment, though, and the cultists were still a clear and present threat.

  Inside the First Church of the Mozari, Charles Kebbell winced at the screams. There was only one circumstance in which he liked to hear screams, and that entailed the squeals of pleasure and pain mixed together when he favored a new girl. But he forced himself to ignore the sounds; the insurance which his shell companies would collect made them more than worthwhile.

  He turned to an aide. “Are the demolition charges prepared?”

  “They’re all set. Shall I begin evacuation procedures for our people?”

  Kebbell paused for a moment, as if thinking, and then said, “Pass the word that we’ll be looking for volunteers to man defensive positions, and that everyone else should gather the minimum necessary belongings and await transport by the Mozari.”

  “You’ll be contacting them?”

  “Of course,” Kebbell lied, “I already have—” His words were cut off by a massive explosion tearing out one of the doors of the church. Statuary, pillars, and even stone walls cracked and split under multiple rapid impacts. Kebbell ran for his panic room as a man strode in through a new smoking hole in the wall, a bizarre weapon in place of one hand punching through the very fabric of his church.

  Behind the intruder, two other soldiers ducked into cover, shooting at the armed guards around the hall. Kebbell’s loyal guards fired back, but in moments, the entire chamber was filled with smoke and sharp blasts. Men, women, and even children fled, some of them falling as they tried to cross between the combatants and were caught in a vicious crossfire.

  The leading soldier was just a blur, fading through the smoke and fire, and coming straight for Kebbell. Kebbell began filming with his cellphone—live-streaming on social media, he hoped. He knew they may have jammed the signals
, but he hoped otherwise. “Look at the abominations!” he cried. “Using the Mozari’s stolen works to slaughter peaceful innocents—”

  “Elementary school children are innocents,” the leader growled. “Innocents don’t shoot each other.”

  Kebbell dropped his phone and turned to flee. He got two steps before one of the soldiers, a woman, shot him down.

  “Sit-rep,” Hammond demanded when he and his team arrived, having followed Daniel’s example and used his railgun to decimate resistance on the other faces of the towers.

  Daniel kept his reply terse, biting back frustration. “We’ve lost Peters, and Captain Ying is wounded.”

  Hammond was silent for a moment. “OK. Palmer, Pipsqueak, stretcher party. Evans and Bailey, keep them covered for evac. West, you’re on point. Our priority right now is getting out without losing any more soldiers.”

  “And the mission?”

  “Kebbell’s dead,” Evans said with a note of satisfaction. “The cult’s out of business here. Black-bagging Kebbell would have been a bonus, but you heard what Colonel Tucker said about those bastards.”

  “Let’s get Captain Ying the hell out of Dodge while we can,” Hammond said.

  “Understood.” Daniel re-slung his railgun and made sure his rifle was fully loaded and in good working order. Then he started to scuttle back towards the ruins of the parking lot. He kept his eyes peeled for IEDs or, more likely, any cultists who had used the pause in fighting as an opportunity to flank them.

  “Delta Team,” Hammond transmitted, “Alpha Actual. Recover Peters’ remains. I’m not leaving one of my people here.”

  “Roger.”

  “Let’s go.”

  In the church, Kebbell’s cellphone lay a couple of yards from his corpse. On its face, a countdown was running. There were only thirty seconds left on it.

  Daniel jogged ahead, relieved that at least the resistance had ended. There were still plenty of people in the way, though, milling around and clogging the streets as they tried to escape through damaged buildings.

  Behind him, Buapeuak and Palmer were carrying Hope as quickly as they could towards the street where Daniel recalled hiding in a McDonald’s with Chloe. Rausch was carrying Peters’ body over his shoulder while Hammond and the others kept their weapons raised in case of further attacks. The weapons also seemed to encourage other fleeing cultists and residents to keep out of their way.

  They had just passed a line of low-rise apartments when a deep booming rumble sounded out. That was the only warning they got to pull up, before the church’s dome collapsed under the force of an explosion behind them. More explosions followed as what was left of the apartment towers began to implode.

  Nearer to them, blasts hurled chunks of the low-rise buildings’ roofs into the morning sky along with the sunrise. Hammond looked back at them, then shouted, “Pick it up—haul ass!”

  The unit ran, carrying their dead and wounded, and Daniel glanced back one last time, and what he saw stopped him. “Oh shit.” A woman was trying to pull someone from the window of one of the nearer low-rises. It looked like a child. Another child was screaming at them from an upper window.

  Hammond caught Daniel’s expression and followed his gaze as he halted beside him. “Shit is right,” he sighed. “Keep going—I’ll get them.”

  “You’re in charge, Chief. I’ll go—”

  “Do as you’re told, West. Take command of my unit until I get back. You got that, too.” Hammond turned and ran back to the low-rise. Daniel hesitated, but then decided the chief was right and only one soldier’s hands were needed; he’d get those people out safely. Daniel ran on, keeping pace beside the recumbent Hope.

  There was a series of dull thuds from somewhere in the heart of the building behind them then, and Daniel turned at the sound just in time to see all of the windows blow out, filling the street with a cloud of flying glass. The whole building lurched like a ship hit by a wave at sea, and it began to lean and slide. An almost solid wall of filthy, brown-white dust and smoke punched out through the lower floors like a tsunami of mud and sand, which then billowed up into the air, pushed by the piston that was the collapsing upper floors.

  The road of shattering brick and concrete was deafening, but not as deafening as the electronic screech in Daniel’s earpiece as Hammond’s comms went off-line.

  Twenty-Six

  Daniel was frozen in disbelief. “No...”

  Evans paused beside him. “What happened?”

  Daniel pointed with his rifle. “The chief... he went to pull a family from that building, and then... He’s gone.” The words sounded as if someone else was saying them, from a long way away.

  Evans grabbed his shoulder. “So are we if we stick around and there are more demolition charges.”

  Daniel allowed himself to be pulled along beside her. “You think that’s what it was?”

  Evans nodded. “It sure as hell wasn’t artillery. Kebbell must have had the whole compound wired to blow.”

  Daniel’s ears still rang, and his nose and mouth were filled with dust. He glanced back at

  the stretcher party carrying Hope, and felt he needed to be accompanying her, but at the same time knew that was selfish. “Take the squad,” he said at last. “I’ll go and—”

  She held his eye. “No.”

  “Are you disobeying an order?”

  “You’re trying to, and that’s one that matters more, L-T.”

  It took another five minutes or so of walking until Team Hammond reached the cordon the police and National Guard had set up. Several ambulances were waiting, along with Colonel Tucker and Agent Kovac. Only Hope needed an ambulance, of course. The suits would heal the others, except for Peters, who was beyond even that.

  “What happened out there?” Kovacs asked.

  Daniel looked at him, trying to feel something, anything, and failing. “The battle plan made first contact with the enemy.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Camp Peary, VA.

  General Carver sat behind Hammond’s office desk, looking somberly through a pile of documentation. Daniel sat opposite, and to one side was a Latino man in a very expensive suit, who had introduced himself as a DoJ attorney.

  “Four hundred people dead,” Carver murmured. “Keith Hammond dead, Casey Peters dead... It’s a helluva church that wires half its building to explode. It’s hard to take in what happened last night.”

  The attorney stared. “What happened? What exactly happened? I’ll tell you what happened. It’s called negligence. Criminal negligence on the part of both an organization—the military—and one or more individuals. That would be you, West.” Carver glared at the attorney.

  Daniel had spent the past five hours being debriefed by both of them, and others. He had sworn to a timeline of events and described everything that had happened, and in excruciating detail. Excruciating was the word, he thought, and he was working hard not to shake as if he had a cold. He was too numb to rise to the attorney’s provocation, and just wanted it all to be over. His eyes tried to fall closed, but he knew he would see Hope burning if they did, so he bit his tongue and accepted the hostility from the lawyer because he must surely deserve it.

  “Me,” he said at last.

  “You’ll be fine, Lieutenant,” Carver judged. And then, after a pause, she kept going. “Well, as long as we learn from our mistakes, I have what the Joint Chiefs need.” She stood. “Be gentle, Alvarez,” she said to the attorney, and with that she left the office.

  Alvarez stood from his chair and slid into Hammond’s old seat. Daniel felt a sudden urge to throw him from the chair, which belonged to a better man, but he just managed to stop himself. “So, Mr. West. How much did your affair with Captain Ying drive your decision to use a weapon of mass destruction in a crowded public plaza in downtown Boston? On a scale of one to ten?”

  “What the hell do you think you’re asking—”

  “A perfectly legitimate and pertinent question. Another squadmate of yours
had already been killed, others in trouble, and you stuck to the rules of engagement; yet, when the woman you were in a romantic relationship with was injured, suddenly you decided to go off-reservation with this... alien technology. Bringing down entire buildings, dissolving men...”

  Daniel recoiled, retreating to the formal report pages. “It had become clear that tactical support was—”

  “Were you thinking tactically? There are reasons the military prefers to discourage relationships within units, and you’re now a shining example of why personal involvement is a tactical and strategic problem.”

  Daniel didn’t want to hear it. Was it pain or anger he was feeling right now? He couldn’t tell, so he stuck with facts. What he hoped were facts, anyway. “In my view, standard small arms didn’t have the firepower to deal with the threat.”

  “To deal with the people who hurt Captain Ying?”

  “Yes.”

  “To punish them.”

  “I wasn’t thinking—” before he could add ‘of it in those terms,’ the suit interrupted him.

  “Of that, right, I’m sure. You were feeling, rather than thinking, perhaps? Feeling hurt, offended, aggrieved...”

  “I was surprised.”

  “Look, I can’t blame you for wanting revenge; I’d have felt the same way.”

  Daniel had expected that line, so he didn’t take the bait. “Nobody knows how they’d feel about something until it happens to them—”

  “Of course. So... Why did you use an experimental weapon of extraterrestrial design—and hostile extraterrestrial design, at that?”

  The repetition was easier than thinking, and far easier than feeling. “My decision was affected purely by combat conditions in the area of operations. There were multiple hostile units in hardpoint locations, who had trapped members of my team—”