by Isaac Stone
We dropped to the ground and opened up with our plasma rifles, although we didn’t want to damage the drop shuttle. It wasn’t that large and couldn’t hold a kaiju, but Command wanted to get every piece of Invader technology they could locate for study. The four idiots who tried to shoot us were torn apart by the plasma bolts. I mean, it was ten to four, and they were probably just pilots from the look of them.
We went over to assess the slain. Hans was on point and kept his rifle up, still looking for that dinosaur trophy. No more Invaders came out of the shuttle and I let Command know what happened. As I waited for a response, we went over to the ramp where the bodies lay and looked at what remained.
The worst was the one who starred at the half of his torso blown away by the plasma as it sheered through his suit. I couldn’t see what remained of his face in the helmet, but I had the sensation he was surprised to see his body separate the second before he died.
Command let us know later that most of the Invader landing force had retreated from the planet and made it back to their jump point after Battle Force Jurassic arrived in orbit. We were one of the few detachments who were able to engage the enemy. Somehow, they noticed the fleet headed in their direction and decided it was too hot for them. The Force even located a few people in the forest who hid there when the Invaders arrived.
Hans wanted to go up inside the drop shuttle and take a few souvenirs but I wouldn’t let him. “Oh, come on!” He argued. “How am I ever going to prove to the girls back home what I did?” He really wanted that dinosaur trophy.
“Nope,” I had to inform him. “We don’t know what surprised the Invaders have inside there. As a matter of fact, I think we should walk back into the tree line and wait for Command to tell us what to do. If they’re leaving right away, wouldn’t it make sense for them to blow it up and not leave anything we can use?”
We moved back into the tree line and waited.
The Invaders never did destroy the drop shuttle, no remote detonation and no self-destruct either. That was unexpected. As with many things they did, no one could ever understand their motives. We waited for another hour until given the order to meet up with the remainder of the marines on the tiny planet at the original rally coordinates.
By the time we arrived at the rally point, the first wave of Jurassic Force was already on the surface. They were only met with lite resistance, just a few anti-air batteries and a few scattered units of stalkers. No elites. No kaiju save for the one we encountered.
We walked into the landing zone where the Raptors stood around without much to do. A number of dinosaurs and marine escorts were dispatched to the forests around the landing zone to look for any more signs of Invaders. They found plenty of abandoned military hardware, but the main force departed hours before our arrival. Somehow, they found out the army was on the way and got out fast. I would have thought they’d stay and fight, considering how much effort they seemed to have put into seizing White Skull.
EIGHTEEN
We found Zhuang soon enough. He was on the edge of the field with Terry and his rider. A number of Raptors from our group was there too. Zhuang wasn’t surprised to see us since the Force told him about our unexpected success prior to arrival.
“No kaiju?” he asked us when we told him what happened. “I’m not doubting it; just find it hard to believe the Invaders didn’t have any waiting for us. There again, you’re talking about an army that keeps its troops in bio suits so they can’t run off or be captured. I guess anything is possible. I’m sure military intelligence will give us some insight eventually.” He told us to fall in with the rest of the company.
Two very boring days of fruitless patrolling later, the Force decided to pull us off the planet. There were no Invaders anyone could find and the fleet was needed elsewhere. The Invaders made an appearance closer to Earth and Command decided they needed to put us into the fire again. Our Raptor unit was sent to a numbered star close to Earth’s solar system that I’d never heard about.
We were sent out to have one more look-see at the terrain before the drop shuttle would pick Terry up and take him to the next objective. We didn’t expect any trouble because everyone thought the entire Invader corps moved on with their invasion force. Terry had his armor on, but only his arc cannons were primed, those missile racks were empty. We fanned out around him while Zhuang communicated with Captain Daphne as usual.
Our group was just about finished policing the area when the trouble started.
It was a mortar round. We were out of visual range of the landing zone when I heard a thump and a bright object hurled out from the nearest tree line in our direction.
“Get down!” I yelled when I saw it fall and realized what the object meant.
The explosion knocked me off my feet, and already as I tried to rise I could hear the screams of dying men and the roar of Terry thundering through the trees.
The next thing any of us knew, there were mortar bombs that rained down from the sky from multiple positions. The Force would later figure out that they’d left a few sappers behind to cause us some trouble. I don’t understand the Invader mentality, because why would you stay if your death is the only thing that would result? To take out the dino mechs once we got lazy of course.
Terry took a round to his chest and almost went down. The type of impact weapon they used on him was built to hit his armor hard enough to either punch through it or at least throw him into cardiac arrest. It was brutal, primitive, and effective. Captain Daphne managed to get Terry in reverse before another round struck him. The tyrannosaurus was spraying arc cannon fire in all directions as he fought the captain’s influence, because all Terry wanted was to charge the enemy. Now that he was right and truly wounded he just wanted to kill, and sadly that’s how friendly fire casualties happen.
The marines scattered as we ran from the mortar fire and from the dino mech. Official casualty reports later said that all twelve of our dead were from mortar fire, but I saw at least two guys get cut down by Terry’s wild fire. So much for keeping my guys alive as a lance corporal. It’s a wonder we survived to return to the landing zone. It was a slow tactical retreat back to our lines, with the captain fighting Terry for every step backwards and us marines doing our best to maintain a steady rate of fire behind us while avoiding hitting each other and Terry. Hans rushed into the tree line and disappeared, shouting about killing stalkers.
“Got caught napping!” I heard Zhuang swear under his breath. “Alien bastards sat back there and waited for us to slip up and get lazy.”
We eventually made it back to our lines, but the stalkers kept coming at us the whole way. They stayed behind the tree line, snipers mostly, and though we gave them plenty of plasma hell they took a bite out of our ranks the size of twenty-two men. The Force sent Shiva and Bert out with their Raptor escorts for a counter-attack, and while they wiped out the sapper group the damage had been done.
Terry wasn’t doing so well.
Veterinarians for giant green dinosaurs were few and far from White Skull. Battle Force Jurassic brought along enough medication to knock out one lizard if things really went south, but it turned out they needed a lot more medication to sedate him than anyone thought about. The optimal way to take care of a lizard that is sick is to put him in a confined area and make observations. At Terry’s size, that was just about impossible. Standard procedure, we were told, was to just put them out of their misery and grow another dinosaur in the lab to replace the fallen. Terry, though, he was special, the poster boy for the Force, and they weren’t about to let him go out like that. Captain Daphne tried to have a pen created for him, but it took too long to make and it didn’t give him enough room. In the end they left Raptor Nine on the planet to take care of Terry until another drop shuttle could be sent to transport him to the nearest jump point. As most of the drop shuttles that were his size were in use, it would be a long wait.
We were forced to let Terry roam around the encampment and keep him as close to the
landing zone as we could. There was plenty of food for him, but he had some serious injuries from the mortar round he took, not to mention all the small arms fire. Captain Daphne was concerned he might pick up some infection on the planet. It was terraformed to match human needs, but the planets often had something that remained that could cause severe infection problems. New colonies were equipped with autodoctors that looked out for alien infections, but we didn’t have one for Terry. Besides, a special one would have to be constructed just to get him inside.
“I don’t like the way he’s listing to one side,” the captain said to me one day after mess.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked her. “Ma’am.” She turned and looked at me in the face.
“Cut the formal crap marine,” she told me, “We’re out in the weeds here.”
“In regards to your question, we need to get him out of here,” she continued. “I don’t think he’ll last another two days on this planet. Look at the way he doesn’t seem to know where he’s headed. I’ve worked with this dinosaur a long time. We have to get him back to one of the training bases on Earth if he’ll survive. I don’t think he’d last very long if we’re attacked. I don’t want him euthanized, for God’s sake, and that’s where he’s headed if something isn’t done.”
Two days after we had the conversation a dino-sized drop shuttle picked both Terry and Captain Daphne up from the surface. I was relieved to see Terry get the help he needed, but was going to miss the captain.
We were alone on White Skull for the next three days until another drop shuttle could come and pick us up. There was only room in the one that came to get Terry for the dinosaur and his rider. The Force was stretched to capacity by the latest appearance of the Invaders and we had to make do the best we could until another shuttle could be routed to get us. Battle Force Jurassic and the Invaders were going toe-to-toe all across the galaxy now. Like I said, the war had become a real shitshow ever since the Invaders started using those transpace drives.
TWENTY
Zhuang didn’t let any of the squads relax. He was on me constantly to keep the men occupied with some task, since I was the corporal. I learned the worst thing I to do was allow him to see the men sitting around. He’d pull me aside and tell me to have them do something.
We knew there might be more Invaders out in the forests, and avoiding them just wasn’t going to cut it. The settlers all left with the fleet, so they weren’t a concern at this stage. However, the Invaders nearly got our squad and dinosaur killed with a mortar attack. It was possible they’d left behind some fallback troops to make it difficult to recolonize the planet. After the money spent by the government on White Skull, to allow the planet to languish unoccupied would be a sin. No one wanted to see it wasted, which is one of the reasons we still remained.
Zhuang had us make patrols of increasing mileage out into the forest. We found evidence the Invaders had posted pickets here and there, but no signs of fallback troops. It seemed as if there was nothing to worry about. The mortar attack group seemed like they were the extent of the Invader holdouts.
My squad was out in the forest a day later when the next attack came. So much for getting cut a break.
We were roamed around, looked for trouble, and it found us. Trouble came by way of an Invader elite brigade they’d left behind to claim control of the planet. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was a key way they thought. So long as one armed group of Invaders was on a planet, they considered it “held”. It was a crazy strategy, but one way they could inspire the troops to fight. The Invaders weren’t just holding onto a strategic location, but the sacred soil of their people. Or at least that’s the official line we were fed by command. It was a bizarre way of fighting a war, like an invasion made up of all these little insurgencies, but it was certainly taking its toll on our ability to fight on so many fronts.
It was a routine patrol until I saw a marine named Niles go down to the ground. He was a good kid who fell in with a bad crowd back on Earth and ended up volunteering to get his sentence reduced. Although now that I think about it, all of us were in the joint for reasons that had nothing to do with what we did. Or so we told everyone who would listen. Once again, humans can convince themselves of just about anything given the right motivation.
We had emerged into a clearing, which was a bad sign. Although the forest was the product of planetary terraforming, there were few places the ground cover wasn’t allowed to grow so much that it had empty spots. If you found a clear area in a White Skull forest, it was there for a reason. The way planetary terrain control worked, if they wanted an entire continent covered with pine trees, it was easy to do, all that needed to be done was make sure they grew fast enough in the right area. The trees would pop up from the seedlings and grow so fast it was astonishing. I’ve seen entire countrysides covered in two years that were barren before the process began. Once covered, the genetic encoding in the trees would kick in and they would slow their growths. There was supposed to be a way to regulate the progress from terraforming station, but it’s not a subject I know much about.
“I don’t like this,” I told Hans, who stood next to me with his rifle ready. “Why do we have a blank spot here when the map shows it should be covered?” Zhuang was on the other side of the expanse with another patrol, as he wanted to keep everyone busy until we were relieved in a few days.
“Beavers?” Hamid joked. “I see a pond ahead where the stream meets it.” There were no beavers on White Skull as the terraformers saw on need to bring them to the planet.
“No beavers here, smart ass,” I snapped at him. I scratched at the helmet I had on as it started to feel uncomfortable, another bad sign.
“Maybe I’ll find that kaiju yet!” Hans yelled and ran to the side of the clearing. Two of the other guys, Gunther and Fritz, started to follow him, as they knew about Hans and his dinosaur trophy fantasies.
The first shot went right through Hans’ helmet and killed him on the spot. There would be no kaiju trophy for him.
“Down!” I screamed. “Back to the tree line!” At least they all listened to me and dropped to the grass in the direction of the gunshot.
We’d emerged into the clearing, but there was enough of a forest entrance behind us to fall back to the trees. I ordered everyone back. Thank God, Gunther managed to pull Hans out of the clearing and back to us. I ran to him while the rest of the men returned fire with the plasma bolts. Plasma rifles don’t make a ton of sound when operated, but with enough of them firing wildly the sounds echoed all over our part of the forest.
I looked down at Hans and forced myself to remember we would all end up in his state unless I pulled everyone back in a hurry.
“We’re taking fire,” I transmitted to the sergeant. “We’ve lost Hans and I’m pulling everyone back.” I could hear him swear on the other side in Mandarin.
“I’ll meet you back at the camp,” he sent back to me. “How many hostiles?” I looked out and could only hear one rifle fire.
“No clue,” I told him. “Could be four could be a dozen, it’s a blitz out here. See what orbital can do when I get everyone back.”
For the second time since re-taking White Skull the marines of Raptor Nine fought a tactical retreat against aggressive sniper units, and again we came back with about a dozen men fewer than we started with.
Zhuang and his squad joined us about an hour later. They at least, given the warning by our encounter, had managed to outflank their would-be attackers and ambush them. Zhuang reported at least a dozen snipers in the unit they fought against, and there was no telling how many more were lurking out there in the jungle. White Skull was far from secure, maybe there was some logic behind the Invader’s strategy after all, considering that the entirety of Raptor Nine, a dropship, and a dino mech were now out of the larger conflict and relegated to some backwater frontier world full of snipers.
That evening we heard from orbital they’d located and killed another cluster of snipe
rs, but I wondered how many others remained in the forest. The Invaders appeared to be smarter than we thought.
That evening I sat alone in my tent and wondered what to do. Hans couldn’t keep his mouth shut and for once I missed it. It was a terrible way to end your life, on some strange planet in a part of the galaxy humans weren’t supposed to go. This wasn’t the first war with another civilization and I was certain there would be many others before we all learned to live in peace.
I toyed with the idea of resigning my corporal rank. It wasn’t that big of a deal, I could finish out this hitch as a marine of the bottom rank and not have to order anyone to die. I knew it wasn’t my fault Hans ran into the clearing, but I had a bad feeling I could have stopped him from acting like a fool. Being a fool got you killed on this place. This wasn’t the old war movie videos; this was a very real place where you could die in an instant.
There had to be more snipers out there and who knew what besides.
In the end, I decided not to resign and do my best to make sure none of the other men died under my command. Zhuang hadn’t said anything about my actions when I described Han’s death to him.
“You see what you did there?” Zhuang said to me. “By letting him run out there you killed him.”
The look on my face told the sergeant all he needed to know. “I tell you that because the only way you can keep from seeing the next one die is to keep it in mind,” he told me. “Look, you can’t save them all. It just doesn’t happen. One day you may be surrounded by twelve dinosaurs and then what will happen?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Have you ever been in that situation?”
“I was a grunt too,” he told me. “I came up through the ranks. No fancy titles after officer’s training school for me. I had the meanest bastard you could imagine as a gunnery sergeant. A big guy named Sergeant Abdullah. The man was a killing machine but there came a day even he couldn’t anticipate.” He sat down on the bench outside his tent and motioned for me to do the same.