by Isaac Stone
“Good choice,” he agreed. “So who do you want for the other squad?”
I told him the name of a guy named Kelly from Louisiana whom I felt had the right kind of leadership abilities. He agreed again and we went down the line finding people who could do the job. The Force had their backgrounds saved on the file system they maintained. We could access it on the starship. I was relieved to see that all of the men we had to choose from had no serious mental issues. The Force had done a good job removing such people from the application pool.
I received applause when I went back into the mess area the next day. I hated to hear it. How would they react when I had to discipline them? At least the Force didn’t do scourging or keelhauling as they did in the old days, but it didn’t change what was expected of me. There’s a reason the image of the tough old sergeant endears so long.
I worried there was something about this rescue operation the Force wasn’t telling us. When it came to these kinds of missions, I was told, there was always a “need to know” level that we weren’t placed upon for some reason. If there was something really serious down on the surface, we wouldn’t know until it was too late.
I moved out of the common bunk area of the Raptors and was given a small room next to Zhuang. Since he was still the senior NCO, Zhuang had the better quarters. I didn’t mind and would’ve stayed in the original place, but there was an image that needed to be maintained.
The next day, I was summoned to the colonel’s office. I was glad he wanted to see me, as I needed to ask about Terry’s condition. I was certain they would send us down there with the same dinosaur we’d used on our previous missions, but I had to be certain. I knew how Terry would react in combat. Any other dinosaurs, I didn’t know how they would perform. They all had great reputations, but it was different fighting with one you understood. I knew what Terry would do out there and felt confident how I could lead the men around him. Also, I hoped Captain Daphne would be there with him, because if you’re gonna die might as well see a pretty lady before you go.
I pulled myself into his office after checking in with the aide he had stationed outside, some college-educated kid who tried to hide his sneer when he saw me. The kid was a first lieutenant and could lord it over my rank, but I didn’t care. He put his space suit on one leg at a time, same as anyone else.
“How do you like your command, sergeant?” the colonel asked me when I floated into his office. My eyes widened at the title, as I was still not used to it.
“I’m still learning it, sir,” I told him. “You put me with a man who’s more than capable, so I have a good instructor.” I grabbed a handhold to keep from floating away as we talked.
“Sergeant Zhuang is one of the best men out there,” he replied. “It was his recommendation that elevated you to sergeant. I want you to know that.” This was something I suspected.
“The reason I called you in here has to do with your objective on the planet Chaos,” he told me. “There has been a slight change in plans.”
Somehow, I suspected this would happen.
“Anything critical, sir?” I asked him, doing my best to act the way the rough old sergeants did in the videos.
“You primary objective has changed,” he told me. “We need you to rescue a small mission post south of the capitol city. The main body of Force Jurassic will take out the Invaders who’ve laid siege to the civilians inside the city. Your group will rescue the missionaries in the forested area. This is not the same kind of dense forest you’ve dealt with before, such as one on White Skull. This resembles a Pacific Pine Forest, like the one in Northeastern North America.”
Now I was concerned. Missionaries? Was I expected to pull out some group of crazy fanatics who would treat us like the army of Satan? The Force was home to every kind of sect and religious group you could ever imagine. There were hundreds of chaplains trained in all the faiths. The only miracle I ever witnessed was how well they cooperated inside a unit.
The hatch to his office opened and a goddess in red floated inside.
She had to be in her late twenties and had light tanned skin. She wore a crown of flaming red hair. Her hair was thick and the color of fire on the plains. I knew there was no way her hair was that color naturally; this had to be some artificial treatment. She wore no shoes, which was common on the starship since you seldom put any weight on your feet. However, she was barefoot, a little strange as most of us wore some kind of protective covering. She wore a red dress to match her hair, which was tied down at the bottom by a strap. It was open in the front, just enough to allow the viewer a glimpse of her full breasts. She didn’t need to wear a bra in free-fall. They floated in two different directions inside the light cover her dress gave them.
“Am I here on time, Colonel?” she asked him while grabbing a step off one side of his office. The office was lined with all manner of handholds to be use in deep space.
“Yes you are,” he told the woman. “Exactly when I asked you to arrive.”
“Sergeant Claymore, “he said to me, “This is Tara Rex of the Sisters of Babylon. It’s her Order’s mission we need to relive on the surface of the planet. We also need to remove the settlers outside her mission.” He then introduced me to her.
“Tara will serve as your civilian advisor when the rescue is underway,” he told me. “She is attached to us via her Order and has strict instructions to obey your instructions while on combat.”
Green eyes. She had green eyes.
I was happy that erections didn’t show up while in free-fall. You still got them, but gravity didn’t pull your clothes down, so it wasn’t on display.
I knew a little bit about these Babylon Sisters. They had some small temple outside the building where we lived when I was a kid. My mom attended a local church when she was sober on Sunday mornings. She dragged me along when I was younger. To get to the church we had to walk past the Babylon Temple. I learned very quick not to ask my mother questions about it unless I wanted a smack to the back of my head. As I grew older, kids would try to sneak up and see what happened inside it, but the temple guardians, always these pasty fat men, would run us off. The official entrance was in the back of the temple and away from the street. I remembered the parking area was underground so no one could be seen going inside.
I had no idea what they preached, as the women didn’t go out of their way to tell people what they were about. I knew one girl who pledged them, but dropped out before she went too far. There were strange rumors about who was behind the temples and paid the bills for them.
“Just follow me and you’ll be alright,” I told her. Tara nodded, but those green eyes did something to me.
The colonel dismissed us and we went our separate ways. I would have lied if the colonel or any of the senior officers asked if she had an effect on me. Tara had an effect on every man in that starship. Since this was a Battle Force Jurassic ship, the crew was about ninety percent male, most all of them hardened criminals. I watched her float down the shaft with grace, no stranger to zero gravity. Heads turned from all angles as she went away. Tara Rex caused all manner of reactions from the young men on that ship. I prayed the Force had enough sense to keep her under watch at all times. By Solar, they were going to send her down there with us? Why? How could she be of help? All she was going to do was turn heads at the wrong moment and get somebody killed.
FOUR
I had the chance to ask her the next day when we made the drop. We were armored up and strapped into the drop shuttle with our weapons ready. I could feel the acceleration push us back into the seats. This was a small drop shuttle designed to take a squad down to the surface of a planet. With me was one unit of Raptors and two corporals to look over the hundred men when we hit the surface. Tara, flaming red hair tied over her shoulders and dressed in a simple body glove of rich burgundy, sat next to me. She had a calm look of serenity on her face as the acceleration increased. We couldn’t see the outside of the shuttle, but I could hear the sound of the ai
r as the atmosphere bit into the sides. The shuttle would heat up until it broke through to the upper atmosphere of the planet. It was similar enough to Earth’s so we wouldn’t need any kind of respirators. The Babylon Mission was located near a small mining community, although the miners fled at the first sign of Invaders.
Terry and Captain Daphne would join us the moment we cleared a landing zone for them. This was supposed to be a hot zone where we would land and the Raptor plan was to exit the shuttle with raised guns. Orbital had softened up some of the Invader positions, but they didn’t get them all. We would have to burn them out once we reached the ground.
“I suppose you want to know why I’m here, Sergeant.” Tara asked me from her seat. I was quiet on the way down, as were most of my men, who prayed in silence or thought about what they had to do when we landed.
“I did want to ask,” I told her. “But there wasn’t time. Are you some kind of good faith token?” I gripped the side of my acceleration chair.
“The Sisters won’t listen to anyone but me,” she explained. “It’s part of their vows. They won’t leave with you unless I’m there. They take orders from no man.” She had to see my eyes roll.
“You don’t seem to have problems with men,” I pointed out to her. “At least I’ve never seen a temple turn a man away, not the well dressed ones.” I caught a little smile from her.
“Men are important,” she told me. “They have their uses. Like right now. But their place is not to tell us what to do.”
“But you don’t have a problem following my lead,” I pointed out to her.
“No I don’t because my job is special. The other women don’t have the same function.”
I really, really wanted to ask her about this special function. I needed to know what it was. The officers hadn’t said a thing, they acted as if there wasn’t time and I would know soon enough. I didn’t like to be sent into a dangerous situation with little knowledge of what it was about, but the rescue was the most important thing right now.
I decided to find out any way. “Okay, so about this special ability you have...” I began to ask, but never finished.
The moment I spoke, the red lights came on inside the drop bay. We were in a hot zone and it was time to dance.
I felt the shuttle come to a sudden stop on something. This wasn’t the slow, steady descent we were accustomed to feeling, but a jerk that shook us in the acceleration chairs. I reached out and unsnapped the harness that kept me in place. I heard the sound of one hundred Raptor marines as they did the same. The next sound was that of the helmets snapped into place, followed by one hundred plasma rifles coming online.
“Prepare to engage!” I yelled and watched the timer began its countdown on the exit doors. I made certain Tara was safe next to me. Hamid and I spoke about her earlier. He was supposed to keep her in sight at all times.
I could hear the nervous shuffling of boots and weapons behind me as the men found their position in the two columns I had them form earlier.
Now the counter was down to five seconds. It was up to the observational post in the cockpit to make the call and he was letting it run out.
Then I heard two things at the same time.
The first was a voice in my earpiece that said “Hostiles!”
The second were the crash doors of the shuttle that flew open.
I lowered my plasma rifle and fired three bolts out the door, taking down a stalker that stood right in the middle of the doorway.
“Let’s go marines!” I yelled at the top of my lungs and ran out of the shuttle.
I could hear Raptor Nine scream in unison behind me as we flowed out to the exterior, rifles sending out deadly charges of heated plasma into the landscape.
Without Terry and his driver, we were on our own.
The landing zone became a mass of plasma bolts and laser beams as the two sides fought it out. I looked in front of me and saw a small hut made from corrugated metal with three stalkers shooting at us. As usual, they didn’t have the talent for close quarters firefights that humans seemed to, and we started putting a big dent in their numbers. Lucky for us there was no fire from the right or left. I heard a thud behind us and turned to see the drop shuttle’s roof gun firing away at movement in the distance. The shuttle carried a whole display of guns. They were only useful when the shuttle was on the ground. Now they paid for their down time, as every gun directed fire on the Invader ground forces in the distance.
I looked back to make sure all of the men were still with me. So far we had only sustained minimal fatalities, but our luck wouldn’t hold out forever.
“Take ‘em out!” I yelled at the guys to my rear and pointed at the stalkers in front of the shed. Thank Solar, they remembered their training and blasted the metal suits with a barrage of plasma. The suits fell apart with the contents of the spilling out on the ground. Why the hell hadn’t they retreated? Where did the Invaders find these idiotic troops? Or did they grow them in test tubes?
I yelled at the handful of marines nearby to follow me and rushed into the shed. It wouldn’t serve as any kind of protection if the Invaders decided to concentrate their fire on it, but it could give us a moment to stop and think about what to do next. I heard the men rush in behind me. I looked out the slit windows and watched the shuttle blast away at the movements around it. The stalkers were scattered but would regroup soon. We didn’t have a lot of time to think about what to do next.
I turned around and looked at the men gathered around me.
“Hamid,” I snapped at my nearest corporal, “Have the men sound off and get me a casualty count.”
It only took them a few seconds. “Eleven men down Sarge, estimate thirty plus stalkers pushing up daisies,” Hamid told me. Kelly told me the same thing the next second later.
And then I noticed something I didn’t like. Tara Rex, the Babylon advisor, was gone.
“Where the hell is Tara?” I yelled. “Did anyone see where she went?” Everyone stood and looked at me with empty faces.
“She was here a minute ago,” Hamid said. “I thought she was with Kelly’s squad.”
“I thought she was with yours,” Kelly returned.
“By Solar,” I said. “I don’t need this today,” They all shook their heads.
“Hey, Sarge,” said one of the fresh recruits who was in his first combat situation. “You might want to look out here. I think we got some company.” I ran over to the hole in the wall he starred out of and looked at the forest.
In the distance, I could see an Invader kaiju on its way to us. It had a full suit of battle armor on it and a rack of weapons attached. We needed to secure the area fast if we planned on surviving. Should the dinosaur and its rider reach a firing position from us, the landing zone would never be secure enough to bring down Terry and the captain. Just when you think you’re getting the day started on the right foot…
FIVE
The only good thing we had going was a specialist with a railgun. The Force gave us a man from the regular military who could fire one of the small railguns and do it with accuracy. They were miniature mass drivers that would send a small bolt in the direction it was pointed. The gun accelerated its projectiles at insane velocities by the use of magnetics inside the barrel. Even against the armored kaiju, they were rather deadly. The only problem with the railguns was you had only one chance to get your target. The magnetics needed a few minutes to recharge between firing and this was enough time for a rampaging monster to tear you and your friends apart.
“Who’s got the kaiju-killer?” I called out to the rest of the men. A soldier I didn’t recognize raised his hand. Wild, I’d never even seen him before, some sergeant I was.
“Come with me,” I yelled at him. I called out to three of the other guys I trusted as backup.
“The rest of you marines get ready to move when I call you,” I told them as we flew out the door.
Outside the hut, I could see the shuttle guns cease to fire. The stalkers were mo
ving out of the way and sliding back into the forest where they would be harder to see. Even with remote imaging, it would be difficult to find them. They had to know the kaiju was on its way.
We had to put that thing down to claim the landing zone. I calculated we had maybe three minutes before the Invader kaiju and its support troops reached us. If the beast came within its weapons range, it would unleash everything it had on us and we’d be rubble.
I turned and looked at the trooper with the kaiju-killer. It was much larger than a standard Raptor plasma rifle, but had the same basic design idea: point and shoot at your target. There was a scope mounted on the top of the stock for him to sight on his target. Once he had the kaiju in the sight, all the trooper needed to do was squeeze the trigger. The gun would calculate wind speed and drop angle to make sure the projectile reached its destination. In this case, the projectile was a long aerodynamic tube of titanium metal packed in a case of uranium.
One chance.
“You ready to show us how real soldiers get things done?” I asked the trooper, who really wasn’t much more than a kid, just had a better upbringing than the average Raptor and so got himself a job with Solar Force.
The tag on his chest insisted that his name was Flash. Nice.
Flash already had the long rifle powered up and the tripod stock unfolded on the ground. He lay down and looked into the site. I saw his brown eyes widen and his grin increase by a few inches.
“Won’t be no problem, Sarge,” he told me. “I can get this old boy in one easily.” The green light of the charge unit was already at full.
I activated the farsight feature in my helmet’s display and saw in the distance the Babylon Mission we were supposed to relieve, lots of hostile forest between us and the objective. Where the hell was that advisor? Outside the mission, there’d been a battle of some kind. I saw green metal suits ripped open by some kind of small arms that where fire scattered on the ground. Someone had put up a spirited defense.