Task Force

by Brian Falkner

  His T-board idled on the road and she grabbed it, throwing it over the fence before discarding the helmet and ill-fitting jacket and starting to climb. Others would be coming. Kriz had to get away before they got here.

  The metal rails of the track were too narrow for the T-board and the center of the tracks was a series of wooden planks. But the shoulder was smooth concrete. She jumped on the T-board and jammed her toes down on the speed control. Crouching, she hoped to keep out of sight behind the metal wall of the railway overpass.

  Just for a moment the danger was forgotten. At school she had been a champion T-board racer, and the rush of the wind in her hair, the hum of the wheels, and the ground flashing by brought back the thrill of the races.

  Nothing made sense. Chizel had been on the island. Now Chizel was here. Something bad must have happened on the island, and now a flotilla of human vehicles was infiltrating her city. But Chizel was a Bzadian, not a human. Why would a Bzadian attack the SONRAD station? Why would a Bzadian assist a human invasion? Why would a Bzadian try to kill her?

  There was something else going on here and she had to get to the bottom of it. But her first priority was to get back to the command center and raise the alarm.

  The wheels of the T-board ran across the concrete of the bridge at full speed, sprinting toward the northern bank, toward safety. Wind ruffled her hair, and her calf muscles were beginning to ache, but it was a good ache.

  “Azoh! Chisnall’s down!” Price yelled. She had raced to the sound of the shots and found him lying in the street, blood seeping out from beneath his body armor. He was conscious but gasping for air.

  “LT?!” she cried, jumping off her T-board and sliding down on one knee beside him.

  Wilton arrived just after she did. “Skipper, you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Chisnall managed. “I’ll be all right.”

  Price watched the blood soaking Chisnall’s battle tunic and thought that he was wrong. Very wrong. But she said, “Looks minor, just a graze. You’ll be fine.”

  Wilton opened his mouth but caught her eye and shut it again.

  “Get after her,” Chisnall managed in a voice with no air.

  Her! So it was a female, Price thought. Her hands fought with the clasps of the body armor.

  “The railway bridge. Get after her, Price!” Chisnall said.

  Price stood. “Stay with him, Wilton,” she said. “Monster, get over here. Come to Wilton’s location. Chisnall’s down. He’s … Oscar Kilo … but you should take a look.”

  “On my way,” Monster said.

  The “Oscar Kilo” was for Chisnall’s benefit, but her tone made it clear that she wanted Monster to get the heck over there right now.

  She ran for the metal fence and threw her T-board over it, then leaped up, grabbed the top of the fence, and swung herself over. “Barnard, Tsar, the target is on the railway bridge, heading in your direction. See if you can get to the end of the bridge and cut her off.”

  “On it,” the Tsar said.

  Kriz was nearly halfway over the bridge when she glanced back to see another soldier, on another T-board, crest the slope on the overpass behind her.

  She crouched lower, grasping the front of the board as she had done so many years ago. Whoever was behind her would not be able to catch up. She risked another look back. Her pursuer was also crouched, gripping the front of the board, either imitating her stance or an experienced racer. Kriz crouched even lower, willing the end of the bridge to arrive and with it the downward slope that would give her even more speed.

  A signal box blocked the path ahead. No problem. Kriz jumped the board up onto the railing, sliding sideways with sparks flying from underneath, then leaped back onto the path on the other side.

  The end of the bridge approached, and she picked up speed, shooting through a tunnel beneath a major roadway.

  Incredibly, the rider behind her was gaining. That soldier might be younger and lighter, Kriz thought. But I still have a trick or two up my sleeve.

  “It hurts,” Chisnall said, although the truth was that the pain was gradually reducing, sinking into a dark pool inside his brain. He didn’t think that was a good thing.

  “You’re fine, LT,” Wilton said. If it was the Tsar who said it, Chisnall might have believed him. The Tsar was a much more convincing liar.

  Monster spun around the corner on his T-board, dismounted, and ran over to where Chisnall lay. He began to undo Chisnall’s shattered armor.

  “Hey, Monster,” Chisnall managed in small gasps. “How’s it looking?”

  “Just a scratch, I think,” Monster said.

  He wasn’t a good liar either.

  “So is this the universe’s grand plan?” Chisnall asked, each word a mammoth effort.

  Monster laughed. “For everything bad that happens to you,” he said, “equal amount of good will come.”

  “Then it’s gotta be a walk in the park from now on,” Wilton said. “Because this mission has been a real bummer from the get-go.”

  “If you focus only on the bad, then you will not always see the good,” Monster said.

  “LT, I think we need a new Monster,” Wilton said. “This one’s faulty.”

  Monster was exploring Chisnall’s chest. When he took his hands away, they were bright red with blood.

  “Where are you guys?” Price yelled.

  “On our way,” Barnard replied.

  “On your way is not good enough,” Price said. “Get over here now!”

  She bounced her T-board up onto the railway track, as she had seen the Bzadian do, in order to bypass the signal box. It was no different than riding a skateboard and she had been doing that almost since she could walk. The T-board skidded sideways for half a second as she landed, nearly toppling her, but she corrected and planted her foot hard on the speed control.

  Now she was on the downward slope. Ahead of her the Bzadian disappeared into the gloom under a roadway. Price hit the release for her coil-gun and sprayed a volley of shots at the Bzadian, but quickly decided that firing at a moving target from a moving platform only worked in the movies. The shots were wild, and it was slowing her down.

  “How’s Chisnall?” she asked, stowing her weapon and almost flattening herself on the board for speed.

  If Chisnall was killed or incapacitated, she would be in charge. Was that the reason for the pain in the pit of her stomach?

  “Monster! Talk to me!” she said.

  “Just got here,” Monster said in her ear. “Chisnall looks … okay.”

  A gasping sound on the comm sounded suspiciously like Chisnall, but Price forced herself to ignore it, to believe the words Monster had spoken, to continue barreling down into the murk of the tunnel.

  Kriz leaned into a sharp corner, then saw that two railway lines now crossed directly in front of her. She jumped, bouncing the board over the rail, landing easily on the other side with a short laugh. Try and match that!

  In the same instant she realized her mistake.

  The railway line ran right alongside the command center, but a sheer rock wall blocked any access. She might be able to climb the wall, but not before her pursuer would be on her.

  Kriz elected to stay on the tracks, heading away from the command center. Here the tracks were a twisted tangle of metal rails, at least eight merging lines, crisscrossing like a child’s play set. Every cross meant a metal bar across the path and she grinned, confident of her returning skills. She hopped and leaped from track to track, sometimes running on concrete, sometimes on gravel, each time landing squarely on all wheels, with her balance intact. Surely nobody would be able to match such skill. Even the great Tzukich, the world champion T-boarder, would have been proud of such moves.

  Behind her she saw her pursuer jump a track, then another, then fall after a sideways skip across a rail, losing valuable time.

  Kriz skipped across another of the heavy rusted metal rails and landed square.

  Perfect!

  A rising slope
took her to a bridge where a flimsy chain-link fence separated the railway line from a small parking lot.

  She glanced back again. Her pursuer was well behind, getting up after another fall. She had time. Kriz jumped off the T-board, threw it over the fence, and climbed over. Gunning the T-board once more, she took a road that she knew looped right back to the command center. She took the curve at maximum speed, leaning low, fingertips brushing on the ground. The road straightened, only a short stretch now to the command center. And safety.

  Kriz didn’t see the runaway T-board until it was almost on her and by then it was far too late. She tried to veer out of its way, but that made matters worse—she was off balance when it hit her broadside.

  Tumbling sideways, she hit the rough asphalt at speed, gathering grazes and scrapes as she came to a halt, in time to see the dark figure in the side street raising a coil-gun at her. She felt a kick in her chest and gasped air back into her lungs, knowing even as she did that it was the wrong thing to do. With the air came the acrid taste of powder, but that only lasted for a brief, terrible moment before the blackness rose up like a sheet and covered her.

  Price skidded to a halt alongside Barnard, who was dragging the Bzadian into a small park, concealing her in a stand of bushy shrubs.

  “Where were you?” Price asked. “Where’s the Tsar?”

  “We couldn’t get to the end of the bridge in time. There were security fences. She climbed them. I figured out where she was going and cut her off here.”

  “You figured out where she was going. How?”

  “She recognized Chisnall just before she shot him. That meant it had to be the Coastal Defense officer he spoke to on the video screen on the island. Their command center is at the old Victoria Barracks, so I figured that was where she was going and beat her to it.”

  “That was smart,” Price said.

  “Try not to sound so surprised,” Barnard said.

  The Tsar arrived, skidding around a corner on two wheels. Price stared at Barnard for a moment, then shook her head and spoke into her comm. “We got her.” She stilled her breathing and asked calmly, matter-of-factly, “How is Ryan?”

  “Oscar Kilo. Will be fine,” Monster said.

  “No, seriously, how is he?” Price asked.

  “Seriously, he fine. The first bullet messed up the armor. Second bullet is doing the damage. It crack a rib. Nothing more.”

  “He’s really Oscar Kilo?” Price asked, daring to hope a little.

  “He going to be fine. Seriously,” Monster said.

  “Thank God,” Price said.

  “Thank Monster,” Barnard said.

  Wilton said, “That’s what happens when you take on real bullets with popguns.”

  12. THE RACE FOR AMBERLEY

  [0540 hours Local time]

  [Ipswich, New Bzadia]

  CHISNALL WINCED AT THE SHARP PAIN IN HIS CHEST. HE eased forward a little, pushing aside a branch, giving himself a clearer, wider view out of the small group of young trees he was concealed in. There had been no movement in his sector since they had arrived and set up a secure perimeter, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  They were in the small city of Ipswich, inland from Brisbane. The first major destination of the task force. It was here that the fleet of MPCs, tanks, and artillery would emerge from the river to continue the next stage of the journey, Amberley Air Base.

  The others were lying or crouching among bushes, but he was standing. Lying would put pressure on his chest, and the way he was feeling now, he would probably black out. Chisnall adjusted his new body armor, trying to get comfortable, but no matter what he did, the heavy material weighed on his aching ribs.

  He was lucky to have the armor. One of the first few MPCs to emerge from the river had been a supply vehicle.

  Chisnall zoomed his NV goggles on the trees at the end of the road to check out some movement. Nothing. Just leaves muttering idly in an early-morning breeze.

  The scent of the river—a pungent, musty smell—was strong here. Recent rain made the ground soft. A column of ants, the nightshift from a nearby nest, was marching in single file across the edge of the sidewalk. Like soldiers, he thought. And their existence was almost as precarious. He could wipe out the entire column with a single footstep.

  The clandestine part of the mission was nearly over. There was no way to conceal the emergence of the task force from the river, particularly in the orange-gray early-morning light.

  The rest of the Angel Team was spread out to his right. Like him, in concealment, watching, wary, every sense alert for anyone, anything, that could compromise the operation at this most delicate stage.

  The Demons were to his left. He could hear shuffling and the occasional murmur or laugh as they talked among themselves. His own team was quieter and better disciplined.

  The two teams were arrayed around a park on the south side of the river. On the north side, where there was little danger of detection, the operation was taking place in the lee of a huge shopping mall that was silent and empty at this time of the morning. Mission planners had assured him it would be deserted, but even so he had tasked Wilton to keep an eye on it with his long-range NV scope in case anyone was prowling its corridors in the darkness.

  Time passed. There seemed to be no progress extracting the vehicles from the river. Chisnall checked the time on his wrist computer more than once, growing increasingly conscious of the timeline they had to stick to. But there was nothing to do but wait. War was not like the movies. He had discovered that long ago. Movies were full of action and excitement. War was hours and hours of tedium punctuated by short moments of sheer terror.

  He could hear a mosquito’s annoying, high-pitched whine, fading in and out as the insect made circles around his head. And he wasn’t the only one to be targeted. Chisnall heard a slap and Monster said, “Monster hate mosquito!”

  There was laughter from the team.

  “Big tough Monster, afraid of a tiny little insect?” Price said.

  “I can’t stand them either,” Wilton said.

  “They never worry me,” Price said.

  “They wouldn’t dare,” the Tsar said.

  “Do you think mosquitoes bite Pukes?” Wilton asked.

  “Probably,” Price said. “After all, they share most of our DNA.”

  “I still can’t figure out how the Pukes came to be so closely related to us,” Wilton said. “Don’t they come from a different galaxy or somewhere?”

  “I told you once before, Wilton,” Chisnall said. “Better minds than ours are working on that stuff.”

  “You know, the ancient Nazca people drew huge pictures in the desert that can only be seen from high above the Earth,” the Tsar said.

  “Did they race stock cars around them?” Wilton asked.

  “That’s NASCAR, moron,” Price said.

  “The pictures are so large that they could only be seen from an airplane or a spaceship,” the Tsar said.

  “Why? Back then they didn’t have airplanes or …” They could just about hear the cogs spinning in Wilton’s brain. “Oh, cool!”

  “Or maybe they drew them for their gods,” Barnard said.

  “The ancient Mayans drew pictures that look a lot like astronauts,” the Tsar said. “How cool is that!”

  “Seriously?” Wilton asked.

  “Some people think so,” the Tsar said.

  “And some people don’t,” Barnard said.

  “So it’s probably a coincidence, then, that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012,” the Tsar said. “That’s when the Pukes started arriving.”

  “I thought they came in 2014,” Wilton said.

  “The year 2014 was when the transporters arrived,” the Tsar said. “The first representatives were negotiating in secret with Earth governments from December 2012. The Mayans had it on the nail.”

  “They didn’t predict the end of the world,” Barnard said. “That was a misunderstanding of their writings.”
r />   “They sure as hell predicted something in 2012,” the Tsar said.

  “Wilton, how’s that mall?” Chisnall asked, trying to keep them focused. It had been a long night, but their concentration was as important as ever.

  “If you’re planning on a little shopping, you’re all out of luck,” Wilton said. “Ain’t nobody home.”

  “Keep an eye on it,” Chisnall said.

  In the Mater Hospital, on the south bank of the Brisbane River, Major Zara Kriz woke up. It was not a sudden awakening but rather a gradual shift from a gray world of indeterminate shapes to clearly defined faces and the white walls of a hospital room.

  Something tremendously important was troubling her, but she could not remember what it was.

  “Hello, I am Huzfa.” The voice came from a doctor who was leaning over her, examining her eyes with a bright light that hurt like a knife. Kriz blinked and turned her head away.

  “And you are?”

  “Kriz, Major Zara Kriz,” she managed.

  “Do you know where you are?” Huzfa asked.

  Two nurses were moving around her, doing things, although she had no idea what. Tubes ran into her arms from a machine by the bed.

  “Hospital,” Kriz croaked.

  “Do you know why?” Huzfa asked.

  Kriz shook her head.

  “Some kind of narcotic,” Huzfa said. “We found residue of it on your clothing.”

  Narcotic. That made no sense. Why would there have been a narcotic on her clothes?

  “You also have severe bruising on your chest and back,” Huzfa said.

  Even through the haze, the painful kick of the bullets was a vivid memory. She should be dead. She had not been wearing armor. Or was that just a hallucination?

  “You were lucky,” Huzfa said. “You were found in a park, and we were able to counteract most of the effects of the drug.”

  There was a disapproving tone in his voice as if he thought Kriz had somehow done this to herself.

  “Which park?” Kriz asked.