The Last Holidays

by Grover Young

  However, no matter how I tried, I just couldn't stay mad at the blond Zoomie Staff Sergeant. Restored to her youth after living a very full long life, she was bound and determined to live this second chance of hers to the fullest.

  A great-great-grandmother, I had the distinct feeling that she actually leaned the other way, maybe being bi-sexual. Sheila didn't seem to harbor any anger or spite at her previous life, so I didn't think she'd been a closeted lesbian. Instead, she appeared to be determined to try something different this time around.

  As for liking one me more than the other, she addressed that this way.

  “You like it when a woman dresses up all nice and sexy for you don't you?” she'd smiled, teasingly.

  “Well, yeah,” I'd admitted, blushing wildly at the thought of her in lingerie.

  “That goes for me, too,” she'd purred, “I care for you no matter what shape you're in, but when you're Halcyon, it's as if you're all dressed up and gift wrapped just for me.”

  A madly pinwheeling 'bot flying high through the chilly air reminded me that I was on a battlefield. Pantheon Team Epsilon's strongman and leader, Achilles, was anything but subtle. From our very first meeting, he treated me like expendable ordnance.

  I got the whole I was sent out here to die bit. Hell, I was expecting it, since I had so much trouble dealing with Prometheus's Gift. However, I knew something was very rotten when I wasn't sent to the Alpha or Beta, the training teams, after I'd survived not once but twice after being thrown into the deep end.

  With this third time cheating death, I didn't expect it to change anything. This wasn't the Army making the best use of its assets in a bad situation or even, do I dare say it, as a punishment for Halloween night. This was an attempt to kill me, because I'd pissed off the wrong person.

  Glancing down at my Q-Box's timer, I had just over an hour left before I would involuntarily change back to normal. I didn't doubt for a moment that, if anyone saw me 'resting' it would get back to General Benson, who would chew my ass out for goldbricking while brave soldiers put their lives on the line.

  It was a good thing that I recovered relatively quickly, but that didn't make the pain any easier to endure. Even now, my very nerves felt seared raw from all the plasma and rail-gun hits. My entire body felt as if I'd been skinned and burned alive.

  Disregard the fact I didn't have a mark on me, my uniform Skins looked like a sieve from all the holes and burns. It was a good thing that since Tash's Halloween 'treat' my uniform acted like generation zero Skins, being tougher and self-repairing far faster than they used to. Otherwise, I would be out here naked, stripped bare by all the gunfire and plasma burners.

  As mentally fried as I was, I wasn't about to let either asshole, Benson or Achilles, have the pleasure of seeing me down. Besides, with the tactical advantage or not, Third Herd could use the help. Achilles' Team could take care of their own damn selves, since they had three times now, thrown me into the lion's den.

  Launching myself skyward like a missile I tackled a drone that was lining up on an attack run on an Abrams. I couldn't keep the 'Yee-haw' from my lips, as I rode the alien machine into the ground. This Suicide Girl thing did have its moments.

  Staring at the blue goop on my plate, I poked it with my spoon. It was a good sign it didn't scamper off or fight back.

  The debriefing, as always, was a cast iron bitch. More like an interrogation, the asses-in-charge couldn't accept or believe that I took as much damage as I stated, nor that I smashed as many 'bots as I claimed.

  “Listen,” I encouraged the rear echelon idiot, “the enemy beachhead has been secured. That means that command tank was put out of commission. Since I was dropped right in the middle of their perimeter all by myself while everyone else stood back and watched, that means I'm the one who did the deed.

  “That being the case, just maybe what I've been telling you for the past two hours of what happened and how I did it just might be true,” Closing my eyes, I counted to five.

  I will not lose my temper.

  I will not lose my temper.

  I will not lose my temper.

  An hour later, the Asshole-In-Charge finally released me, and what do I have to look forward to? Soylent Blue. In the race to find something, anything to save all the people who were going to starve to death from the nuclear or more accurately, the Impact Winter from our Visitor's kinetic bombardments, the science boys and girls had come up this.

  I poked the blue goop again.

  Add a feed sized sack of this stuff to just about any water tight container and add water and as much bio-matter as you could. Keep it warm and don't let it freeze, and in a week or two you had this blue stuff you could skim off the top.

  I understood that priorities had changed, as some fusion plants meant for the tanks and aircraft of the military had instead been set aside for Blue Soylent kits to change just about any kind of containment tank to producing food. Water tanks, tanker trailers and even I hear, super-tankers, have been pressed into duty to make food.

  After all, if all of your people are dead, you have no one to protect. Additionally, with the intense cold that many areas were unaccustomed to, as well as the power grid being in tatters, the power from the fusion plants not only kept the makeshift food vats warm and productive, but also kept the people from freezing, too.

  It was great stuff, right?

  Quoting a certain Australian, “Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like shit.”

  Okay, maybe not that bad. There were lots of 'recipes' starting to float around with attempts to improve the flavor. A few like the beans and franks weren't too bad and neither were the chicken and dumplings. The tamales, chicken fried rice and a couple other tries at more worldly tastes were nothing but world class fails.

  Just plain yuk!

  Plus, no matter the taste, there was nothing to do about the texture. About the best I'd tried came out more like jello than, well, slime. However, it would keep you alive indefinitely if not happy with the diet.

  That wasn't the reason for my … unhappiness.

  It was the smell of the steaks that the official members of Pantheon Team Epsilon were enjoying. Not all of them were having steaks, but it was at their option. Meanwhile, I was stuck with Soylent Blue.

  Let's just say it was all adding to the general unfairness I was feeling. Yeah, I know life isn't fair, but considering how topsy-turvy my life had been recently, I think I deserved a little slack.

  With a real force of will, I lifted the spoon of pretend chicken ala king to my lips and managed to choke it down. There was only one possible response to this. Using another quote from one of my favorite childhood cartoons, “Of course, you know this means war.”

  Chapter Two

  “Sergeant Elder reporting as ordered, Sir.” I held my salute while standing at attention.

  The man at the desk made me wait even though he'd granted me permission to enter his small office here on the airborne command center. Okay, it was really just a converted Airbus A380, but the military always had to make the most mundane things sound overly important.

  That was much like the man at the desk, who finally acknowledged my existence as much as he might desire otherwise. All he lacked from being the stereotypical die hard Army General was the chomping on a cigar.

  Tall, well muscled and with rugged features, I knew that 90% of it all was faked. He'd been Captain America'ed with the Army's super-soldier formula, and because I'd seen the before and after pictures, he'd chosen a few cosmetic features not available to the normal rank and file. Rank has its privileges, and apparently, looking like a Hollywood leading man was one of them.

  Technically, he was the commander of the Eastern United States Quick Reaction Task Force. In reality, he was the man who got the blame every time an Alien incursion did more than leave burn marks from their landings anywhere east of the Mississippi. It was, at the best of times, a thankless job, and I did not envy him in the slightest.

  On the other h
and, it had become clear that he was not the right man for the job. His response was like a man with a hammer. You see a problem; hammer it until it goes away. You know, the only good Alien was a dead Alien regardless of the cost.

  Our General could fight, but he lacked the wily craziness to really make a difference in this kind of War. We needed a Scipio Africanus, a Napoleon, who could improvise their tactics on the run, but instead we had a Ulysses S. Grant, a Patton, whose aggressive instincts demanded they attack and keep on attacking until the enemy was dead, dead, dead.

  He was also the man who was trying to kill me.

  Rumors control had it that, although Sheila, Dean Miller and I hadn't divulged the full details of what happened Halloween evening, General Benson was furious that one of the Invaders had been so close but had escaped. Forget the risk to a major US city and the nearby very important military base. One of the hated enemy had been within reach and had gotten away.

  If he'd known everything that really occurred that night, I'm sure he would've had a coronary on the spot, but just the edited version was enough for him to send me on that suicide mission I'd been expecting. Then, he did it again and yet again.

  Dean Miller, who had dressed as a Mentat from Dune that night, was protected from his wrath as was Sheila. The other guys in our office were too, since they weren't under our dear General's command. However, I'd offered myself up as sacrifice, and he was only too glad to snap at the bait.

  While I was temporarily attached to the US Alien Warfare Command, USAWC, I was still part of the Joint Special Operations Command. There, he did have the influence to get me assigned to Pantheon Team Epsilon which was under his direct control.

  The look he gave me was cold enough to freeze the sun itself. Unfortunately for him, his murder attempts had me burning just a mite hotter than even that.

  “At ease,” he reluctantly ordered, clearly desiring to keep me locked up at attention, “I have a request from the Prometheus Project for you to report for testing and evaluation.

  “You never completed testing?” He tossed the folder onto desk, not hiding his disgust.

  “No sir,” I answered. Maybe it'd been ages since my active service days, but I did remember two of the military's golden rules. Never volunteer for nothing and keep it simple, stupid.

  Besides, I'd been the one to poke ole Doc Schneider. Successful recipients of Prometheus's 'gifts' had a communications priority back to the Project to keep them appraised of our progress and or problems, if any. Hell, it was an outright requirement which I'd admittedly been lax about. However, it was a way of going not over the heads of my commanding officers, but legally around them.

  In the stratospheric rareness that a 'problem child' like me survived their 'test' under fire, it was accepted that they had beaten whatever difficulties that kept them from training or joining a Pantheon Team. They were recalled to finish the program, and not sent in untrained again and again until they were killed.

  I would have to admit that I also had a reason to live now. Sheila had made me make another of her impossible to keep promises to come back to her. So far, I'd walked away from three forlorn hopes, but our Guests from faraway weren't dummies. Sooner or later they would find something that worked, and that would be very bad for me.

  That was why I'd stacked the deck in my favor. Prometheus gave you access to another you in another universe and dimension. What it did not do was change your base form or shape – the ‘you’ that was born here in this reality.

  So why did my bald spot start sprouting hair again after twenty years? That wasn't the only change either. I couldn't help but notice I was much fitter and had lost much of that spare tire I'd carried around with me for so long.

  Honestly, I could pass for being decades younger, and that scared the crap out of me. What if I was changing into THAT other me, permanently? While I had made inroads about not freaking out about being HER, being stuck as HER all the time put me in a panic that scared the hell out of me. It took a long call on a secure line I wasn't supposed to have access to with Sheila to calm me down.

  However, there were no signs of femininity or anything like HER in what was happening to me. It was just me becoming younger which, while not unwanted, was still 'not' what Prometheus was supposed to do.

  Doc Schneider had been very excited by the news, but more telling was the news that he and Project Prometheus had known nothing about my case being transferred to the do-or-die category. Not that it'd been a not so subtle play on my part to put a little urgency on their end to get me out of the cross-hairs, but if the General wanted to play hard ball, so could I.

  Time passed as he stared at me, waiting for me to say something else.

  “There has also been another request from the USAWC for you to consult with their Intel Center,” he didn't try to hide his disgust. “You've been in contact with them?”

  “Yes Sir,” I answered, but this time I felt I couldn't get away with yes or no answers, besides those communications were fully documented. “My departure from that temporary assignment was sudden, and they needed my input on a perhaps vital piece of information.”

  “And that was?” He demanded.

  As much as I wanted to security clearance his ass and tell him he didn't have a need to know, I decided against it.

  “Sir, during the events in Tampa during Halloween, things came to light that suggested that some of the Aliens' actions, while normally indecipherable to us, might be due to cultural differences because of their higher technology level.

  “And that is important, why?” Clearly, he was not impressed with the intelligence coming out of the Center.

  Personally, I couldn't blame him. We were operating in the dark, trying to make sense of actions that were, well, alien to the way we thought.

  “It's not much, Sir,” I admitted, “but it is a clue to their behavior, which is more than we had before. It's also an insight into how their technology has molded their culture and possible dangers from it. We've been forced to adopt, adapt and use stuff we don't understand in simple self-defense. Knowing there are pitfalls ahead can at least warn us to be careful.”

  “Such as?” He asked, almost sounding interested.

  “Nanotechnology,” I answered. There’s no way in hell I was going to mention Project Prometheus and how I was referred to as being Quantum Cursed, a monster.

  “They obviously have mastered its use, and yet, they use it very sparingly. That suggests that the Aliens may have experienced significant problems in its development. Think of our own problematic history with nuclear energy. Despite the useful qualities, the image those words conjure is a mushroom cloud,” I added, “Sir.”

  “When I see useful intelligence, then I'll believe it,” he replied coldly.

  “Orders have been cut for you to travel to McDill and then on to Camp MacKall,” he stared at me for a minute more before giving me my cue to leave, “Dismissed.”

  Somehow, I kept from tap dancing on the way out, but I did know how the game was played. Salute, about face and I was outta there!

  Chapter Three

  As excited as a kid at Christmas, I had to grin at the irony. While fighting for my life, I'd completely forgotten about Thanksgiving. Not that I had any proof, but knowing Sheila and how good she was at getting what she wanted, I had a feeling she'd been behind my return to McDill just in time for the holiday.

  The trip from Eglin AFB, that's near Ft. Walton Beach, to McDill wasn't too bad, all things considered. The majority of the Pantheon Teams were based out of Eglin, as well as General Benson's command group.

  It being impossible to predict where our Visitors would strike, the Army had adopted the tactic of having it's less mobile heavy units positioned at key locations where the nearest would race to the sounds of the guns. Meanwhile, the General and his staff, along with Special Forces and Pantheon teams, would provide the command and control as well as the heavy hitting power.

  It was thought the regular Army units would b
e the support for the unconventional warfare elements. So far, this tactic had worked. Straight out assaults without first taking out those command tanks were expensive, as the French had learned the hard way.

  The Aliens had put down in the mountains where it was hard to reach them. The French, feeling the stress of knowing the autofacs were digging in preparing to setup a very short supply line of reinforcements for the invaders, charged in. You couldn't fault their bravery, but the casualties were nearly on a WWI scale. It was bad.

  I'd been worrying that our uninvited Guests would come up with an answer to our tactic. Already, the latest command tank had nearly double the weapons, concentrating on the short range stuff and had better coverage, as well as fields of fire compared to the first one I fought. They even had specialized escort 'bots with more long range firepower to make up for their lack.

  Grabbing my kit bag, I headed to my flight. McDill AFB, being fairly nearby and a major command center, had frequent flights going that way. It was easy to grab a 'space-available' seat on a military plane, a C-130J, the latest model of the old and very reliable Hercules transport.

  The trip didn't take that long, but it sure seemed like it did. I'd amused myself by adding my latest kills to my uniform, unofficially of course. The Army's official uniform was the outmoded ACU Army Combat Uniform. With the active camouflage from my Skins, the printed design was only an affectation and of no practical value. However, the Teams had learned to modify their Skins uniform to hide images in the patterns. In my case, I was using pixilated images from the ancient Space Invaders game to stand for the number of tanks, 'bots and drones I'd wrecked.

  It was on my left inside sleeve so almost no one noticed; it being mostly for bragging rights. The reason I'd begun following the fad was because of a certain blowhard named Achilles. He'd given me so much grief after I survived that first, let's-throw-the-newbie-into-the-deep-end, that I wanted to rub his nose in a nice big slice of humble pie.