A louder noise pierces the air as a bright blue projectile departs from the structure, and collides against the side of the left Patria in the convoy. The top hatches blow open in flames as the alien round exits the other side taking broken metal and machinery with it.
Vance, Alex, and Isaac who are hiding behind it fall to the ground from the explosion. Isaac and Alex dart away from the wreckage to the store fronts for cover while Vance lies motionless on the asphalt.
Blake peeks around the street corner. “What the fuck is going on!”
Some of the paratroopers clear the lane to the other side of buildings and take cover, firing back at the Herculean bunker. During the crossing one of them are struck down, and then again in the back with a plasma burst as he collapses face first, skidding a meter as the contents of his backpack spill out. The Leader turns around to Blake, “Get down Sergeant! The bloody Herc’s set up an early ambush.”
Herculean fire races down the lane at the other exposed marines and destroyed Patria. The marines advancing with the convoy are now stuck in a killing zone between two Herculean fire fronts. “Well take it out!” says Blake. “I’ll pull my men back inside the Bradley’s for cover!”
“Affirmative,” says the Leader, “stay on the horn till we figure things out.”
Blake runs back to the convoy alerting Tarnus as they order the troops inside.
The exposed marines rush into the Patria’s for cover as the convoy departs down the street to escape the crossfire. Vance still remains among the debris. “Shit, I need to go get him,” says Peter.
“You’re crazy lad,” says the Leader. “You break from our cover and the Herc’s will gun you down.”
“Keep them busy, I’m going!” Peter’s mind is clear and dedicated. Save his brother. Then those Herculeans will pay. Peter breaks cover and run towards Vance, nearly tripping over the dead Brit that risked leaving cover earlier. Peter dives to the ground shaking Vance. “Get up! We need to get out of the open!”
“Hey, Peter!” says Isaac, grabbing his attention. Peter looks to the side to see Alex and Isaac lying down behind a crushed concession stand, pinned as plasma fire flies about their position. “Get the fuck over here before you’re hit too!”
He rolls sideways to them, grabbing Isaac to orientate himself. “Vance is still alive, he was moaning.”
“Well we can’t move,” says Isaac. Glass shatters above showering them and cutting their necks and hands. The rest of the marines have finished getting inside the carries. “Fucking great,” says Isaac. “They got in without us!”
“I’ll call Blake to open the door while we drag Vance in,” says Peter.
“He is on our way,” says Isaac. He retrieves a canister from his vest, “we have a smoke grenade actually.” Isaac tosses it out in the gap between them and the convoy.
Alex rolls over getting closer to them. “On three,” the smoke pours out fast into a cloud, “one, two, three!”
They sprint out into the open and plasma fire hits Isaac’s rifle as he leans over Vance. “Fuck!” He hurls the ruined XM to the side as the hot metal burns his hand. “I fucking hate you!” he screams at the Herculeans down the street.
“Alright, focus!” says Peter. The smoke cloud makes it nearly impossible to see and they grab on to each other’s neck collars to stay together. “Grab him and take him to the Patria—shit, that is now moving!” The silhouettes of the convoy begin to disappear in the smoke. Peter talks into his earpiece, “Sergeant, this is Peter. I have Vance with me. Open the rear ramp so we can bring him in.”
“Goddamn it,” grunts Isaac as he lifts Vance by the shoulders and Alex grabs his legs. “Let’s move.”
“Copy that Private, hurry up!” says Blake.
Vance is carried up the rear ramp by Isaac and Alex. “Where are you going?” says Isaac, after Peter turns around.
Peter doesn’t reply as he exits the smoke and dashes to the street corner. It’s now time to capitalize on his promise to the Herculeans. He slips on a puddle of blood, falling backwards over the dead Brit as Herculean plasma zips centimeters above his face. He lifts himself up quickly and hops back to cover with the Leader inside a destroyed front office.
“You’re alive,” says the Leader after he whistles. “Did you get your boy?”
“Yeah, I’m ready to take these bastards out.”
“Those stims really do make you a Lionheart, don’t they? We can’t do shit though till those buggers are taken care of down the road.”
“We can flank them,” mentions a paratrooper, “as we intended to do to the Herc’s down the street in the first place.”
“I was already thinking that,” says the Leader. “But it would take too long to reposition ourselves. We have no idea how much longer the rangers can hold off for and if those Herc’s can call for reinforcements. Besides, they would just reposition to face our new front.”
Another one of the anti-armor rounds is launched from the Herculean bunker alongside bolstering plasma fire, and soars towards Peter’s group. The entire building they’re sheltering in fantastically shakes as the wall of the store next to them blows out into the street from the impact. The paratroopers on the other side of the lane have crowded themselves inside a small alleyway between two shops with a low wall. One of them balances themselves on top of the wall and fires blindly over his head across the shallow rooftops at the bunker.
“Bloody hell,” says the Leader, “Chandler has an AT launcher right?”
“He does sir,” says the paratrooper next to Peter.
“Well, where is he? He’s not with us, and I don’t see him over there.”
“He’s there, sir,” says the paratrooper. “Lying low against the side, he got hit.”
“Behind the rubbish?” says the Leader. “Perfect, I see him.” The Leader points at Peter, “We’re going to make a break across the street and meet up for our plan.”
“What about me sir?” says the paratrooper.
“You’ll stay here and give us some suppressive fire,” says the Leader. “Okay yank, you have already run out in the open once today, so it can’t be too hard for a real gentleman such as myself.” They shuffle towards the storefront edge, “Now!” They hop over the broken front window and sprint across the lane to the others.
“Sweet Mary I told you,” says the Leader huffing for air, once they’re in safety again.
“This the best they can do?” says Peter, stoked and excited. The adrenaline of war mixes with his Buzz—he has never felt so alive!
“How goes it, sir?” says one of the paratroopers.
“Dandy, I have a plan so listen up. We need to break down that bunker enough to be able to get any good cracks at the bastards inside. I am surprised none of you blokes had thought of using that AT yet,” he points at the AT rocket launcher hurdled behind the injured paratrooper. “We need cover fire and a distraction so that one of us has enough time to aim a good round at that bunker. If we fuck up once, the buggers will know what we’re capable of and will ether give us living hell with their own, or retreat.”
“Ronald,” the Leader hands the AT to one of the paratroopers, “you will wait here with the launcher. The rest of you, we’ll be strafing across the street drawing attention. That’s when you poke out and give it to them.” The Leader looks around, “All clear?”
The paratroopers reply unanimously, “Yes sir!”
The Leader moves to the front to prepare for the crossing, “Airborne, on me!”
He runs out first, sprinting back towards the other side with his rifle lying sideways across his torso, so he can hip fire at the Herculean position as he crosses. The next two paratroopers move out directly behind him, and Peter kneels to brace himself for the race across again. Herculean fire concentrates on the crossing paratroopers as expected, and the middle paratrooper is hit and stumbles, wailing in agony as he starts crawling the remaining distance.
Peter is about to brave the cro
ssing when a large explosion knocks him and the AT wielder down. The world disappears and the noise of the firefight subsides to a silence. It’s a silence filled with a peaceful serenity similar to that distant feeling I once had when going to college. Creon…I tried Creon. Please.
The world—understanding of reality, becomes a white and shapeless room. In the middle of the never ending white void, a mound of dirt protrudes into existence. It grows till it’s a large hill covered in crisp green grass. On the top of the hill is a rampant thicket of weeds. Inside the bush of weeds grows another plant though, breathtaking in beauty: a bundle of red roses, their thorny thick stems elevating them higher than the weeds. Near the thicket on the hill is a naked woman curled up on the ground. Her body is frail and resembling a corpse, and her hair frizzled and unkempt. The vines and roots of the weeds crawl out, and wrap around and insert themselves into enlarged dark veins on her wrists. She cries horribly into her boney arms.
“Hello?” The words echo, forever like the white void, till they lower into octaves that can’t be heard anymore.
“Oh you’re here. Well Soul, what do you think?”
“I still think we should go, Mind.”
“But if we go, Body will surely be doomed,” says Mind. “Maybe he wants to us to stay.”
“Go where? Am I dead?”
“That is always the first question Body asks when they reach here,” says Mind.
“It doesn’t matter what he wants, it changes nothing,” says Soul. “The Body is almost always wrong. Look, he has gone and gotten himself addicted to drugs. He has lost who he was. We must go before he pollutes us anymore.”
“What are you talking about! What is this?”
“Maybe you’re right Soul. So many Bodies are lost to their own dimension they forget there are still two others.”
“It is natural, they are the weakest. That is why the Souls are first to leave. We can tell when the Body ceases to be what the Mind and I want, and we depart in order to not be corrupted. It’s funny that the Body believes it is still operating even when it’s void of me. Then when it realizes what it’s lost, it can only wish where I went.”
My ears sting with the horrible ring of shellshock, my body aching. The whole world is a sound of numbing buzzes. I look across the street to see the Leader yelling something at me, but every word is a deep drawled out jumbled sound. My vision zooms in on the dead paratrooper in the middle of the street. His back is a ripped open cavity and his internals pour out to the side. Plaster and gore cover me as my visor wiper slashes back and forth relentlessly to clear it. The paratrooper wielding the AT is a mess of mutilated parts around the explosion. I frantically begin wiping myself off of the gore even though every motion sends a string of pain waves throughout my body.
“Hey!” says a man who is dragging me back towards the alleyway. His words are muffled and barely understandable. I lean back to see him, the words slowly make sense again. “Hey!” says the paratrooper again. “Are you hit?”
I crawl over and lie against the low wall with him. I pat myself down to check for injuries. Nothing besides a shit ton of scratches and an aching body. “No, I think I’m fine.”
“Men!” says the Leader across the street. We look over at him. “I need you to take that launcher and finish the job! I’ll try to hold their attention!”
The paratrooper next to me is the injured one from earlier. “I can’t do anything. I was hit on the belly, can’t stand.”
Well I guess that just leaves me.
I look at the AT launcher that has rolled out into the open. Fuck right I’m going to grab that. I don’t want to expose myself again to the Herculeans. Look what happened to the last guy.
“Today mate!” says the Leader. “Bloody grab it!”
C’mon, c’mon, they need you. I finally reach out for the AT and retrieve it quickly. A plasma bolt scorches the pavement where my hand just was.
“Good job lad,” says the Leader. “Now I’ll do my part again.” He begins throwing grenades down the lane to draw attention as he also fires periodically from his corner. Another explosive projectile screams forward at the Leader’s spot, blowing apart the roof on top of him.
I can’t aim out the side if I want to live. I glance at the low wall next to me where the paratrooper was firing from earlier.
Maybe.
Don’t, that’s the dumbest idea yet—you’ll die.
I press the dosage tab on my forearm and feel new strength and power course through me. But it is only a feint return to my warrior state. Instead I feel a brutal headache kick in.
Kill them all. Look what they have done to your comrades around you.
No. It’s wrong, remember Julian.
Fuck! Go away. Let me do my job. Just let me fight, it’s why I’m here.
I tab the dosage key again.
This is war and only the strongest survive. Peter is a part of it. It pumps through his veins replacing his blood. Peter’s grinds his teeth. This is more like it. He should overdose more often.
Ready to kill, he climbs on top of the low wall, but he’s still too short to accurately aim at the bunker from there. “Hey!” shouts Peter over to where the Leader was last. To Peter’s surprise he rises from behind a pile of rubble, his red beret singed and dangling off to the side. “I need one last distraction! I am going to get on top of the roof and hit them!”
“You Americans are crazy! I’ll do something!” He hurls a phosphorus grenade out towards the Herculeans, and a fiery cloud falls meters before the bunker catching the adjacent rooftops on fire.
“Okay now,” Peter tells himself. He tosses the AT onto the roof, lifting himself up next. He scrambles about getting there and soon Peter is prone on the roof with the launcher.
“Fuck.” He only has one round on him. “Why didn’t I grab the bandolier too?”
It has to be perfect then. He will have to get closer.
He runs across the roof tops to get as close as possible. The Herculeans are busy with the Leader’s grenade show and don’t see him. As he hops to the next roof his boot breaks into a damaged shingle and he collapse through. “Fucking god,” he moans from the fall. His body takes another beating from rolling about on the caved in floor. He picks himself up and crouches to the blown out storefront. Right before him lies the alien bunker. It is a hastily assembled low structure with multiple vision ports for weapon mounts.
“Close as ever.”
He rests the AT on top of his shoulder in preparation for the glorious shot, but then lower its. He ponders the possibility of dropping a grenade through one of the ports instead. It would do more damage with the explosion being in a confined place. Peter grins at the thought of exploding Herculean, and hops over the window pane landing against the side of the alien bunker.
The Herculeans communicate frantically inside.
“Shit, shit, shit,” whispers Peter. Do they know he is there? He lifts himself over the jagged side of the structure and climbs to the top. He lies down on the roof and unhooks a grenade from his belt and pulls the pin. He finds an opening and drops the grenade through it, and distances himself as far away as possible on the small roof away from the hole.
The bunker shakes as fiery sparks and dark smoke shoot through the gun ports from the explosion—such a delicious offering! A door to the bunker flies open as the Herculeans inside scream and the survivors run and crawl out.
“Shit!” He didn’t think about this part. He unfastens his XM and poorly aims at the first Herculean. He fires an uncontrolled burst that completely misses the alien but startles it of his presence.
“Fuck me!”
The Herculean looks up, yelling a disturbing roar and begins to raise its weapon.
“Hurry the fuck up Peter!” He drops his empty magazine and loads another one as quickly as possible. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He aims through the scope, and both creatures fire at each other. Peter’s visor goes dim as it
tries to adjust the blinding light of the plasma bolt. His face feels warm and burnt.
“Oh god! I’m hit!”
The world is visible again. He discovers that his burst has ripped through the Herculean’s body, and it lies on its stomach trying to crawl away.
Peter laughs. “I’m alive!” The plasma bolt had struck the metal lining below him and simply showered him in a blow over of hot air.
He finishes off the hit Herculean.
“Yeah bitch! Get some!”
A few more Herculeans escape the bunker, scrambling over their dead comrade. Peter fires again, knocking down the stragglers as they fall atop each other in a bloody mess. One Herculean that’s maimed tries to reach for a weapon. Peter fires a single round this time that strikes it directly through the face shield and its ugly head. The bullet exits out the back of its head splattering gore against the pavement, and sending one of its tails twirling into the air. That was a pretty awesome, he applauds himself.
One last Herculean crawls out from the smoking bunker. Its legs crippled and exuding blood as it drags itself away. The alien turns over and glances at Peter. It has no mask on and it trembles as it tries to look at him. It raises its arms in mercy, crying out in its intangible tongue in what appears pleading.
Pathetic. “This is why you’re about to die,” Peter says. “Maybe you should have thought twice about invading my planet!”
Peter lowers the XM so he can view the face of the Herculean and witness its worthless expression before he wastes it. He winces at their skin, hideously calloused and a puke color mixed with gray. He focuses on its eyes—something he has never seen before due to their helmets—ready to see them complement the overall putrid image of the creature. Peter drops his rifle—what are you doing?
Travesty (SolarSide Book 1) Page 15