by Isaac Stone
“What are we supposed to do here?” the young guy, Hamid, grumbled at my right when he saw our charges. “These things don’t have the brains to follow basic instructions, they’re just eating machines.” He folded his arm across the grey tunic, which we all wore, and frowned.
The air smelled of raw meat and blood. I was told the handlers fed the dino mechs in the morning before they brought them out and this was the source of the odor. The ground vibrated as they stamped their feet and responded to the controls used by the minders on the ground. With care, the minders halted the advance of the lizards and turned to face us. Just to make sure we would understand the level of control, the lead handler adjusted something on his hand held box and the middle reptile bowed to us, then it rose back up.
“Good morning, children,” a voice spoke from my earpiece. “As Raptor Marines of Battle Force Jurassic you will act as infantry support for the dino mechs. As we speak yet another planet, Turios, is falling before the might of the Kaiju armada. Your time to train alongside the mechs before deployment will be short, so let us make the best of it.”
As he talked to us about our roles, I saw something I never expected to see. A young woman of no more than thirty, who couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds, walked out onto the field and greeted the handlers. They saluted her and stood at attention. Five minutes later, a new truck floated onto the field with a large capsule in the bed. The woman, who had red hair and pale skin, smiled at us and climbed into the capsule on the back of the truck. The truck floated up to where it was level with the dinosaur's head and flew around back. It attached the capsule to a harness on the dinosaur, stood in place for a few minutes, and then flew back across the field.
“In case you were planning to ask,” the lead handler said, “that was Captain Daphne. She’s the most experienced rider we have. Most of you will be acting in the role of support today, these boys move fast and fight fast, so expect to be pushed to your limits.”
“Just boys?” a rube that stood next to me asked. “You don’t use female dinosaurs at all?”
“Their maternal instincts make them impossible to control,” the old man informed him. “We attempted it a few times, but after much loss of life it was determined that they cannot be tamed.”
We spent the day learning how to move in formation with a dinosaur. It wasn’t too hard, but we weren’t wearing battle armor. In addition, the dinosaur didn’t have any weapon pods attached to it, so it could move around without much hindrance. It was surreal to work with a living and breathing dinosaur, but Captain Daphne was a master of her craft, and managed no to squish too many of us when we zigged instead of zagged. You learn quickly when around a beast of that magnitude, and after a week or so we began to move and fight in a way that was close to effective. Well, close enough for government work, as they say.
SIX
The Force pushed us every day, keeping our training at an accelerated pace, and rightly so, as news of Turios burning had been confirmed.
“They’re already on Earth,” another recruit named Paul told me during one of the few days of rest we had been granted since joining the penal force. We didn’t get too many opportunities to chill and every day off was sacred.
“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “Last I heard they were still fighting at the outer colonies.” I had a cup of coffee in my hand.
“Not what I’ve heard,” he went on, “I talked to one of the guys from the unit next to ours, Raptor Twelve I think. The Kaiju pulled a surprise landing in upstate New York. Nobody expected it and a whole herd of those things are on their way to New York City.” He leaned back and let the information sink into my brain. Nah, we’d have heard something official if that was true, and the whole of the Solar Force would be there to stop them. Isn’t that why they pulled back and abandoned the frontier to fend for themselves against the kaiju invaders? At least until we showed up.
The men of my unit, Raptor Nine, were called into the command dome later that day.
Colonel Lockhart, or the old man as we came to call him, was a veteran of several rebellions and at least two insurgencies. People had strange ideas about what they could do after the government dumped them on some habitable world. Many times, once their income level was beyond subsistence, the government quit sending them supplies. When they didn’t have to worry about starving, the colonists began to think about independence.
It was the same trajectory every time. The local planetary governor would be locked up. After a few demands were made, the government was forced to send in a few brigades. Most of the time this did the trick, but sometimes the locals were resourceful and it took more effort. This was when the Solar Force brought in people like our commanding officer.
“At ease,” he told us and we sat down on the ground. There were too many recruits lately and too few chairs.
A screen materialized behind him, which showed us the plains outside New York City. The island of Manhattan was built on three levels and extended over the rivers to the mainland. It was still busy as ever, but in the distance, smoke could be seen rising in the hills. I was surprised they didn’t use a holographic screen, but I guessed the funds weren’t allocated for one. The image on the screen zoomed in a hundred miles and a battle was in progress. On the ground, Invader troops in their metal suits advanced while the kaiju under their control smashed everything in sight. These nightmares were equipped with weapon pods that hammered away at the departing human troops. The humans had no dinosaurs and the armored tanks they used in the retreat were difficult to maneuver in the built-up area, so they were easy pickings for the kaiju beasts. It didn’t look good for the humans.
“As you can tell by these images,” the old man began, “the Invaders are on Earth. The Kaiju armada slipped a strike force through our defenses and have established a beachhead. The enemy starships sacrificed themselves in a stand up fight with our fleet, and that gave the landing party a window. Right now, they are working their way toward New York City. It’s the opinion of Force Command that they want to take the city not for its strategic value, but for psychological purposes. With the entire area under their control, it will send a message to the rest of the Solar civilization that they can and will strike whenever they please.”
“The good news is that because the bulk of the armada is still on the edge of the Milky Way the landing party is cut off. However, and this is important, we’ve discovered that a splinter of the armada is on its way, likely to reinforce the kaiju that are beating down our local forces. If something isn’t done about this landing zone, these bastards will establish a permanent beachhead, which will be nearly impossible to dislodge. Most of the Force is tied up fighting the armada on the Black Road and I’m guessing the Invaders know it.”
“So how do we fit into all this?” I asked when it was time for question and answers. “We’ve only been training on Basic a few weeks.” I tried to look concerned.
“You unit, Raptor Nine, has shown the best mech-to-marine performance of them all,” we were told. “We need people down there defending the city and you are the best we have on short notice. We have battle-seasoned troops rushing back for the defense, but it might be too late by the time they arrive.” It was hot in that tent where the old man did his talk and we all sweated.
As the old man went over the data from the latest battlefield, he stopped in the middle of the rant to give us some perspective. Most of the men in my unit were gutter trash like me, which was no surprise given that we were in a penal force, but still, Raptor Nine did seem to be crewed by the worst of the worst. My two squad mates to the left were from the slums of Mumbai. At one time, the city occupied a prominent place in the Indian subcontinent, now it spanned over hundreds of miles. The people who couldn’t afford to leave Earth managed to survive on a government stipend and any other way they could find.
“The first known deployment of the kaiju war machines was on the frontier world called Precious,” he told the men inside the t
ent. “No one knew how the Invaders fought on the ground and we expected conventional tanks. Instead, we got these-“
The screen showed a column of armored kaiju stomping everything in their path as they took down the industrial part of a city. Buildings, roads, warehouses, everything went down under their massive feet. They resembled the fictional monsters of the old videos that I began to wonder if maybe somewhere in the past someone had been in contact with these creatures and turned it into fiction, now that would have been something. They were armored and had a complete array of weapons attached to them. Unlike tanks, they could crawl over their objective, burrow beneath it, or simply smash through it in ways that even super heavy battle tanks could not hope to try. Some could even achieve a sort of flight, or massive leaps at least, and each of them was equipped with anit-air weapon batteries. It was hard to keep looking, especially knowing we were about to dive right into the ring with those things.
We watched as the local militia troops and scrambled Force units were sent reeling from the combined onslaught of the enemy. Figures in metal suits followed behind them and scrambled around the giant beasts. It made sense to me that we were to be the answer to this incredible adversary. In most cases a direct hit from a missile in a vital area would kill one, but with the armor all over the creatures that was very hard to do. The kaiju were armor plated at every vulnerable point, and it was only when they moved that gaps in their armor were revealed. The battle didn’t last long at the humans fled in panic toward the end before whatever journalist captured the footage got his or herself killed too.
The usefulness of trained kaiju was not lost on the military commanders of Solar Force. Our own dinosaurs were a result of the terror unleashed by the Invaders. As with theirs, our biological mech warriors were equipped with armor plating and weapons.
One of my squad mates, a redneck named Willy, raised his hand and the colonel called on him. “Has anyone had a look at the Invaders?” he asked. “I see them in their battle gear, but not out of their suits. Surely y’all had one or two bodies to look at.”
“They don’t last long outside the suits,” the colonel explained. “We’ve seen them a few times and they resemble humans with gold eyes and greenish skin. The moment they leave those suits they begin to decompose.”
“If they fall apart on our kind of air,” the hick continued. “Why do they want our planets?”
“We don’t know. Best theory is that the alien soldiers are conditioned that way to keep them from desertion. You won’t turn and run if the suit you’re wearing keeps you alive. Some in the government seem to think that the rest of their population is much like the one here on Earth, and that we are fighting another sort of human civilization, as alien as it may be. Once they’ve conquered a planet, they move in settlers and industry, strip the planet and move on. Not much different from us really, except that this spinning ball of dirt belongs to us. So we fight. Does anyone else have a question?”
SEVEN
We were about to be tossed into a real battle with the kaiju. Our own dinosaurs were going down with us and they would be the main thrust of the counterattack on the Invaders outside Albany.
I stood that next morning outside the camp and waited for the drop shuttle to come down and take us up to the starship Tyrannis, one of the mech transports in the freshly minted Battle Force Jurassic, for return to Earth. We were close enough to the jump point that our passage wouldn’t take too long. In three days, we would be on the surface of Earth, good old terra firma.
Our official designation was of course Raptor Nine, but we had our own name for ourselves and that was the “Grunt Stompers”. In theory we were supposed to use the dinosaurs as shields while also protecting them from invader infantry, but no one knew how the dino mechs would react to actual enemy combat fire since this battle group was a new concept. It worked well enough for the Invaders, but they obviously had a lot of experience fighting with their kaiju.
As we waited for our shuttle, we saw the rider come out of her tent and look at us again. Since Captain Daphne outranked us by several levels, we were supposed to salute her and then wait for her to return it. Most of us did salute, but too many of the guys with me stood there in fascination as she was escorted to the lift shuttle that contained her mech. We’d named the four dino mechs who fought in our unit and she would ride Terry, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, into battle. The other three were Bert, Shiva, and Vulcan. We didn’t see their riders during most of the training exercises as they were already mounted in their pods by the time any action got going.
“Whew,” a voice said to my right. ”I’d like to have her ride me.” It was Willy, another recruit who’d gone into basic with me. He was from New Jersey and rough around the edges.
The air had the same smell it always did on the training asteroid. Electric and full of the odor of raw meat from feeding the dinosaurs. At least my boots were shiny today as the old man was relentless on why we needed to keep our kit clean at all times.
The shuttle came down for us and landed two hundred yards away. Even though it was powered by hydrogen through a reactor, it still made plenty of noise when it made planetfall. I suspected the Force made them sound louder to scare the enemy. We were about to find out how it sounded against an inhuman enemy.
“Pick up your kit and move!” Colonel Lockhart yelled at us. “I’m turning you over to your new boss. And here he is!”
A tall man in a tan uniform stepped out of the shuttle’s crew department. He looked us over with contempt and made it clear in the first second we would need to earn any respect that came from him. He was a fierce man with a shaved head and the hard body of a custom war toy doll. His back was strait and his uniform crisp. He was to be our Raptor sergeant for the first engagement. A crackle of electricity went through the air as his voice amplifier switched on.
“You have three more days to live,” he told us in a voice that boomed across the field. “More if you listen to me and do what I tell you. I am Anton Zhuang, your sergeant for the first drop against the bastards who think they can take a piece of Earth and go home. Raptor Nine will hit the ground first, followed by the rest of the marine units once we lock horns and distract the enemy’s anti-air batteries. I want everyone on board this ship in five minutes because we’re taking this fight straight to them.”
The rest of us grabbed our bags and hurried on board the shuttle. Four hundred men and their gear boarded that shuttle in less than five minutes. Once secured in place, it blasted us into orbit. The initial boost pushed everyone in the acceleration couches as we climbed into the sky and to our destination. I loved every minute of it. All the damn repetitive training and the day finally came where we have to use what we learned. I was in heaven. Or soon would be there.
“I want to kill a kaiju so bad,” the marine said on my right. He was a small man in old school corrected lenses that held tight onto the arms of his couch as we made orbit.
The couch smelled of urine and sweat. It was used many times before this to move penal soldiers on and off world and would see more use. Even the porters who cleaned the holding bay between lifts couldn’t get the smell out. It reminded me of fear that turned to courage. Fear of what we would encounter and the courage to deal with it.
“Maybe I’ll kill two of them,” he said again. I tried to ignore him, as my bench mate was only a few inches away from me, but couldn’t manage to do it.
The shuttle made orbit. We could feel it as the acceleration ceased and the gravity faded away. Everything taken with us was tied down or stored for later use, but a few objects managed to float across the bay. There were twenty of us just in this section, who knew what else was floating around the massive ship.
“I really want to shoot some stalkers too,” he said again. “I’ve always wanted to kill a monster, even before the enemy showed up.” Many of the men had taken to calling the alien infantry ‘stalkers’, and though I did too honestly the term was a little scary, gave them a bit too much power in my opin
ion. But I’m a convicted felon, nobody asks for my opinion.
“You said that already,” I grumbled. Dear God, would I be forced to listen to his man for my term of enlistment?
“Hans,” he introduced himself. “Hans Guard.” He couldn’t shake my hand, fortunately, as we were both restrained in the acceleration couches.
“Mike,” I told him. “Mike Claymore, but everyone calls me Clay.”
“The common touch,” he commented to me and laughed as if it was the most original joke in history.
EIGHT
We didn’t get to do much once we were transferred to the starship Tyrannis. It took us through the jump point and we made a hard burn or Earth, which was still several days away. News was on the restricted level, which made me wonder what the Force hid from us, because from what I saw on those videos the kaiju were stomping on us hard and fast. Lots of bad things could happen in two days of pitched warfare.
I did manage to find out why some of the rest of the convicts in my unit were here. Hans seemed to be the only one who volunteered out of a desire to actually fight the enemy. The rest of us signed up prior to the invasion as a way to get time off from sentences, the same way we committed the crimes that were supposed to get us the hell out of the slums where we lived. It didn’t matter where you were from or what your race was. Earth was one big dump outside the major cities and administrative centers, and even those were highly stratified, with middle class living in the polluted ground levels and the wealthy in glittering spires atop the smog.
People on the outer colonies might visit to see the historic ruins or tour the party centers, but no one with real cash stayed planet side.
Two days after the jump, finally, Sergeant Zhuang ran us into the launch bay and had all of us suit up for the first assault. We were issued our plasma rifles, body armor, and were ready to be strapped into the acceleration couches again. He stopped at the front of the line of drop shuttles before he turned and cranked his voice amp so that all four hundred men could hear him over the roar of the engines.