Kneel Or Die

by Michael Anderle

  Tim spoke first, “Ten in my tent. Mostly late teenager or younger twenties. One bed was messed up but empty, it smelled of the one who was out at the latrine.” Pete nodded. The rest of the group went around. While there was occasionally an older guy in the group, most were young.

  Finally, Pete looked at Rickie, “And what is your excuse? You fucked up our perfect record.”

  Rickie looked confused, “What record?”

  Pete replied, “The one we won’t have now that our first op was fucked up! What were you doing, mouthing off with each one of your kills?”

  Rickie’s sudden flush told everyone there that was exactly what he had been doing. Pete asked, “What, did you have to say something snarky with each and every kill?”

  Rickie tried to answer Pete, but every time a justification came to his lips it left just as quickly. Finally his shoulders slumped, “I screwed up.”

  Pete pointed at Rickie, “That’s going to be another two rounds with Gabrielle when we get back. Each time your mouth says something, I’m going to ask she provide a counterpoint to remind you to keep your yap shut.”

  Rickie groaned at just the thought of rounds with Gabrielle. He truly had worked hard to control his desire to always be a cut-up. He couldn’t help it if he found everything in life to be so fucking funny! And it just seemed like it was in his blood to provide his own, unique, brand of commentary.

  Except when sparring with Gabrielle one-on-one. That wasn’t fucking funny at all.

  They were interrupted by Scottie’s accent coming down from above them. The Guardians looked up to see Scottie leaning out the open doors of his Pod. “Ya think we might put a sock in it and move on to the next camp? Light’s going to be here soon enough and discussing your little sparring match isn’t going to help get the other bag of terrorists meeting their maker any sooner.”

  Pete nodded. There really wasn’t much to do until Todd confirmed he had what he wanted. “You know what?” His Guardians looked at him. “What do you think it would do to those who find this mess if they find a bunch of wolf tracks everywhere?”

  Matthew spoke up, “Probably confuse them, the native wolf isn’t very big. Even the pipsqueak wolf over there would frighten them.”

  Joel spoke up, “Who the hell are you calling ‘pipsqueak’?”

  “Tim,” Matthew replied.

  “Oh, well in that case you’re right.” Joel smiled. Except for Pete’s hybrid form, Tim’s wolf was the largest of the group.

  Tim just walked past Matthew and slapped him on his back, “Nice try, dipstick receptacle.” Matthew took a step before getting his balance. He rubbed his shoulder to ease the pain. When Tim hit someone he hit really fucking hard!

  Pete went around to confirm the dead and was good for four of the tents, but he came out of the fifth with his thumb and forefinger rubbing his eyes. “Rickie!” A tan wolf came around the corner from two tents away and padded over to him, looking up at him. “Change you ass!” Pete commanded.

  Rickie changed.

  “Yes?” Rickie stood before Pete naked, smiling at what he figured Pete must want from him.

  “Can you give me a fucking practical reason you put half those guy’s heads into the other half’s crotches in there?” Pete thumbed over his shoulder back at the tent.

  “Just thought I would fuck with the enemy, sir!” Rickie smiled.

  Pete considered Rickie’s response. “You know what? I’ll accept that this one time. Next time however, you will request permission before you go off and pull a stunt like that. I’ve no idea what will come of this and if it screws with the plan, I’ve got to accept the blame for your shit. If you ever do this again, you and I will have our own attitude adjustment session, you understand me?” Pete’s eyes were flashing in the night, his anger obvious.

  Rickie swallowed and nodded. While he didn’t want to spar with Gabrielle, he sure as hell didn’t want an ‘attitude adjustment session’ with Pete. Rickie would probably be healing for an hour, painfully. When Pete decided that a ‘physical attitude adjustment’ was called for, a person’s life was incredibly painful for a while afterwards.

  Pete looked around and noticed Todd coming out of the tent, “Get fucking dressed and don’t pull that shit again.” Pete walked away from Rickie heading towards Todd.

  Five minutes later there were seven Pods available for everyone to jump in. Todd threw his backpack of papers into one of the Pods and sent it away back to the ship.

  Todd spoke to everyone assembled, “Ok. We’ve struck silently.” He eyed Rickie, “make that mostly silently. Now we are going to show these fuckers what happens when we strike loudly. You guys stand back and let the Guardian Marines show you pussies how to really fuck up a camp!” The human marines all smiled and gave him an ‘oo-rah!’. The Guardians grinned toothily, the small rivalry between the two groups was as strong as ever.

  The plan for the second camp called for the marines to lead while the Wechselbalg had their back.

  However, there was one thing that Todd hadn’t shared with Pete, wanting to keep it as a surprise.

  Todd loved working with the Wechselbalg, but they could really stomp on a marine’s ego with their damned skill and ability to take a beating, so Todd figured he would have to up the amperage of their own ability to deal death to keep up.

  There was only one person Todd felt could help them step up and Todd had made sure to speak to her.

  Now, the Guardian Marines were officially going to kick some ass.

  Tonight, Todd’s people were pulling out guns no service had ever used, guns provided by none other than Jean J. Dukes herself. From here on out, if the Guardians radioed for ‘shock and awe’, they were calling for their marines.

  Tonight … death would literally rain from the sky, and even God himself would be challenged to sort them out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Todd got into his Pod, pulling the door shut. He reached up and locked it. Then he swiped his hand across the glass to pull up the menu.

  “Gentlemen… and Rickie.” His voice went across the ether to each of the Pods in his group. Todd smiled at the laughs his comment produced.

  “The Guardian Marines would like to request you pay attention to the forward viewports in each of your respective Pods. Each of your second generation Pods has been modified by the Queen Bitch’s Navy on the Ad Aeternitatem to load out a new weapon introduced by the wickedly delightful Jean J. Dukes.” Todd ignored the wolf-whistle, “Besides being our very creative gunnery officer for the Polarus, we have co-opted her as our very own weapons consultant.”

  This run had been set up with Bethany Anne and TOM in advance. This set of Pods had been loaded onto the ship two days after Bethany Anne had spoken to them all and called Pete and Todd onto the table with her. Todd went to find Jean the very next morning and by that night, the Ad Aeternitatem had been pointed to another port where they were able to pick up the necessary armament.

  Todd hit the button to activate their next run. The new Pods screamed forward, yells of excitement and jubilation drowning out any other chatter.

  —

  Lord almighty, Todd thought, Jean and Team BMW have outdone themselves. It had taken every trick Todd could think of to keep the nosy Wechselbalg away from the banging and clanging going on in the lower bay where their Pods were being worked on. As the designated ‘Pod Carrier’, the Ad Aeternitatem was getting some changes inside and out. Jean wasn’t happy with the complete lack of any defensive armament on the ship, so she had three weapons added to the pickup list when they went for the Pods. Her team had come aboard to help install the guns and show Captain Wagner’s crew how to use them.

  Captain Wagner had set their direction south to get into the middle of the Mediterranean as clear of other ships as possible. Once they had the Pods below decks, out of the main bay area, TOM’s ship landed. Marcus, Bobcat and William had arrived with a large group of enhanced output engines which the Team then energized on TOM’s ship. Once that was
completed, TOM’s ship left to go back into orbit and Team BMW flew back to the USA. With the new and improved Pods, they were achieving unheard of speeds. For the longer flights, they would go up to the thermosphere and fly quickly around the globe before descending through the mesosphere and stratosphere to get back down into the troposphere and into the clouds and cloud cover. There was extra distance involved with travelling via the thermosphere (approximately 200 miles up). But, the slightly farther trip due to the larger arc was offset by the lack of atmospheric wake issues. The team’s trip was close to fifteen minutes from the Mediterranean to the base in Colorado.

  Todd had been standing by the last Pod to watch its enhanced engine get locked in when Jean Dukes came up, “How’s it going, soldier?” She slugged him on his arm, “Hey Todd, have you played patti-cake patti-cake with any assholes in dive bars lately?”

  Todd smiled back at Jean, the two of them plus John Rodriquez had an ‘altercation’ back in Nassau that left three previous friends of the original dirtbag owner of Bethany Anne’s super-yachts dead. “Without you and John along it just wouldn’t be like old times, you know?”

  The two of them watched as the ammo was loaded into the rotor housing area. Todd continued, “These things are a work of art. The amount of destruction is going to be a sight to see.”

  “I’m pretty proud of it myself. The electrical power those small Pod engines put out is, literally, off the charts. Being able to power these little railguns is completely within their abilities. But don’t expect to fire more than maybe a half mile out with them before you start to see degradation of their flight path. I’m sure we can do better, but this was on short notice and we slammed them together like this. The short test we did this morning at sea was phenomenally successful.” She turned to look at Todd, “Why did you want tracer plugs added to the mix? We don’t use bullets for this, it is simply quarter-inch diameter, three-inch-long metal rods. Cheap as hell and not something your enemy will see without using heat-detecting goggles. You’re possibly opening yourself up to return fire and for what?”

  Todd’s face turned from delighted to angry as he considered the video of the France terrorist attacks, “That’s because I want the motherfuckers to know that death comes for them. These six barrels’ fire once a second, so six rounds each second going downrange. I’ve had them place the tracers every fifty to ninety rounds. With TOM’s help, we’ve organized a dance that causes the Pods to rotate position and jink up and down through the dance. None of the Pods will ever cross each other and with the tracers being staggered like that no one on the ground is going to be able to draw a bead on black Pods at night moving so fast. Of course, I expect them to be dead in seconds once the onboard targeting system has them in its sights. Bethany Anne said no survivors.” Todd looked over at Jean, “And by God, I’m going to make damn sure we obey her command.”

  Jean looked, “These things are pretty fucking awesome, but somebody could be under metal and you would never know if you got all of the people.”

  Todd’s smile turned ugly, “That’s why I have one special package compliments of Team BMW to deliver as we leave.”

  With that, Todd’s face eased from his previously ugly thoughts, and the two turned to less deadly topics.

  —

  Arra Meer was pretty damn proud of himself. He had made it to Libya and worked his ass off to train and learn. In three days, he and his group would be sent out to use their training to fight the injustice against his people.

  He walked his designated perimeter a hundred meters from the outside of the camp. He enjoyed this early morning time to sit and contemplate his direction. France had been a cauldron ever since his people had effectively been segregated to poor suburbs and it had only gotten worse as the vitriolic speech of the hard right wingers and the National Front grew in recent years with various terrorist attacks. Before that, the riots in 2005 and the results from that action had festered for so long it continuously caused problems. That his people had migrated to France over the last seventy years but refused to integrate into their society never entered his mind as a possible issue. Arra Meer had no concept of proper behavior or personal responsibility. As far as he was concerned the fault was all with the French for keeping his people down. So, now he had learned how to fight back and soon he would go back to his neighborhood and see how he could help create a world-wide caliphate.

  It might not happen in his lifetime, especially if he ended up fighting in Syria or some other location. But, it would happen, he wouldn’t be wasting his life for nothing.

  Due to his distance from the camp, he was able to watch as the darkness was cracked open and a massive amount of destruction rained down on his camp. Arra was shocked to see little lights screaming down to the ground from different points in the sky around his camp. They were never from the same location and could come from close to the camp to farther away. Sometimes he would see one so close to the ground he thought someone might be able to grab hold of it and some were high enough he doubted he could use a pistol to shoot them.

  He unslung his machine gun and tried to aim. The uselessness of the effort was quickly apparent. The best he could do was spray his bullets into the air and pray that something was hit!

  He hadn’t shot fifteen rounds into the air when his mind realized one of those little lightning strikes was coming his way.

  Then, Arra Meer, citizen of France and recently trained fighter, died when a slug of metal entered his chest. The shockwaves tore a fist sized chunk of flesh from his back, and his eyes were already glazed as he was tossed back five feet to land in the sand.

  He never finished the thought that he would never be able to raise his gun in this war.

  __

  Pete was in awe. The flight from the first camp to the second was a high-speed, high acceleration joy ride. The six Pods had quickly formed a circle aimed at the camp. He heard Todd come over the system and then the single word, “Engage.”

  That was when the night lit up and death was raining down on the camp from above. The sheer number of the shots the Pods had been putting into the camp was destroying buildings, vehicles and any heat source that Pete could see on his screen.

  Suddenly, his screen lit up with an icon of a heat source, a person that was at least fifty yards outside of the camp circle. He noticed the question on his screen. “Terminate?” Pete quickly reached out and hit the ‘YES’ option. A blink of an eye later and the body was flying backwards. A tracer round had impacted and gone completely through the center of mass. The Pod returned to the destruction of the camp.

  A few bodies were seen coming out of the tents firing into the air before they were quickly mowed down.

  In less than sixty seconds, Pete’s Pod screen came up, “No targets. Land?” Pete spoke to the microphone above him, “Todd, are we done here?”

  Pete heard Joel mumble an almost-silent, “Fuck me!”

  Todd came back on, “Affirmative, Let’s go down, but leave two Pods up as over-watch. Let’s find what we can take and then I have a gift from Team BMW to leave behind.”

  With the destruction complete, four Pods landed. The snipers had stayed up, but with the Pods actively targeting anyone but them, Pete doubted they would need to do anything. It took the team five minutes to find the main tent and get into the area with the equipment. Most of the equipment was trashed, but Todd found two cell phones that looked unlocked, so he grabbed them and tossed them into the second backpack he brought along for this very reason.

  Once the search was complete, the men returned to their Pods and Todd set the command that would pull them back a couple of miles. All six Pods lined up. Todd spoke to everyone there, “We came, we saw, we implemented our Queen’s command. Now, we leave a final gift, compliments of the baddest little R&D team this side of the Milky Way.”Todd reached down to press a button on his screen, “Bobcat said this package was a Marcus special and that we should tell them, ‘Eat this, mother fuckers!” Todd pressed the button and
he felt a tiny jolt as a package left his vehicle. A second later, his glass had to darken to protect his vision from the eye searing explosion that engulfed the camp. A tiny mushroom cloud could be seen to go up hundreds of yards above the camp

  Todd heard Pete’s voice come across the speaker when the screens returned their visibility and the team could see the massive destruction the bomb made in the camp. To their eyes even the sand was glowing red in places. There was nothing recognizable as human made for over fifty yards from the center of the blast zone. It was easily another hundred yards that was mostly destroyed. “What the hell was that?”

  “That,” Todd answered, “was Team BMW’s contribution to our retribution.” Todd paused then added, “Remind me never to piss off Marcus, ok?” He heard a few chuckles but thought he could hear every one of the guys watching return an affirmative.

  Rocket Scientists, Todd mused, could be bad fuckers to piss off.