Reclaim: Books 1-3

by J. A. Scorch

  The second they landed, they regrouped and charged out toward the base, killing any of the Stiltz that stood in their way. The eight-foot, mechanical, armor-covered aliens were once a significant threat. But now Teve and Mish could kill them in their sleep. The real enemy was the hybrids.

  The hybrids were the result of captured UEF soldiers who had been converted into blade-covered freaks via means of the scarcely understood nanobiotic parasite. In a head-to-head fight, a hybrid might beat one of Teve's people. Their bodies were covered in purple razors that instantly twisted and moved to deflect incoming bullets on the body they occupied. Even when hit with high-explosive rounds, the hybrids could withstand a direct shot to the skull. Because of this, teamwork was the only way to bring the beasts down.

  "Teve?" Mish asked, interrupting his memories.

  "Sorry, what?" He forgot where he was, thinking back to that first SF mission.

  "What's the plan? Are we pushing forward or not?"

  Teve brought up the e-slate strapped to his wrist and rechecked the order issued by Command. "We keep going. Spread out and head into the city. Don't engage unless you have to."

  Mish sighed before acknowledging the order. She shuffled along down low as the other three soldiers followed behind, spacing themselves out. Corporal "Red" Mironov moved up beside Teve. The Russian grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed tight.

  "Why can't we just hit them? I don't like this sneaking around business."

  "Not my call," Teve said. "Don't know what Command is up to this time. I'm sure they have something great as always."

  Teve raised his weapon again, spying down the base of the tower until his eyes found the bottom. Pocket and Romeo moved passed him, making as little noise as possible in the debris and fractured concrete that once was Atlanta. Specialists Wen "Pocket" Lei and Juliette "Romeo" Brousse fanned out from each other and discovered new cover to utilize.

  Without wanting to, Teve faded back to the moment he entered the center of the Zeal base. He knew the station was full of captured humans, each one pinned down to the walls, kept alive to feed the aliens' experiments and create more hybrid soldiers for the UEF and SF to contest with. What he hadn’t been prepared for in the past was to find every single one of those taken soldiers to be slaughtered and piled up in the middle of the base. It was as if the aliens knew the surprise attack was happening.

  "Hey, are you coming?" Mish asked, growing impatient. Anyone would think that she was running the op.

  "I'm coming." Teve attempted to shake the thought of all the dead soldiers, but the images still haunted him. The events of that mission weren't just confined to Los Angeles. The Zeal decided on that day to kill every human prisoner they had inside a base if it was attacked. There were as many bases as they were capital cities spread around the world. The coordinated, global assault on as many targets as humanly possible resulted in the deaths of millions of enslaved soldiers and civilians who'd spent countless days suffering at the hands of the Zeal. To say the discovery was a blow to the gut was an understatement. Teve had half believed the assaults would liberate the captured soldiers, in particular, one of the victims that he failed to save: Private Adams.

  Teve moved along the remnants of the pathway around the fallen sections of wall left behind from a shelled-out building. Four years of war had rendered Atlanta unrecognizable, especially given how large the alien citadel had grown in that time.

  Each base acted as a range in which the Zeal could safely operate. As soon as they left the proximity of their bases, their systems would shut down. Only the hybrids could go further, somehow utilizing their human anatomy to function outside the safe zone.

  The team of five SF soldiers spanned out as they got closer and closer to the base. Mish successfully bypassed every Stilt patrol, allowing them to go around without prompting a fight. The Stiltz were robotic in their tactics, never straying from their orders unless directly attacked. They were either mindless drones or arrogant invaders. No one knew for certain.

  When the base was within 500 feet of Mish, Teve checked in with Command using his e-slate. "Miller Actual. This is Master Sergeant Porter. We are now 500 feet away from the base. What are your orders?"

  "Proceed with caution. Gather intel on the operation of the base. We need to know if the people inside are dead or not."

  "Why wasn't I told this earlier, sir? You could have saved me a lot of questions from my team."

  "Command is keeping a tight lid on this. They fear the Zeal have infiltrated our networks and have been able to anticipate when we're attacking next. This op will determine if they only kill the prisoners when we attack or if they've killed everyone already."

  "Understood," Teve said. "Not sure what we can do, but we'll try not to freak them out. Over."

  Moving ahead, he rushed past Romeo, Pocket, and Red to reach Mish. "Just got off the horn with Command."

  "And?"

  He proceeded to explain their rationale to her. She didn't seem impressed with the idea, possibly convinced every prisoner was dead to begin with. Risking their lives on a hunch didn't appear to fly straight. If they had to face the hybrids inside now, they would be killed within minutes. Without the thousand plus soldiers of the UEF causing chaos in the city, Teve and his team were no match for the eager hybrids and masses of Stiltz waiting to defend the base from the humans.

  "Yeah, doesn't make much sense," Teve said. "And why now? We've seen the bodies in every single base. The time to do this was straight after Los Angeles."

  Mish nodded. That mission had hurt her just as much as anyone else. The city was her home, too. They had both bled to defend it from the Zeal from the beginning until now. Seeing their efforts wasted in the form of dead bodies stacked up like firewood broke each soldier down. Now the task of destroying Zeal bases had become a thing of nightmares. No one wanted to see the corpses inside. There had been enough death in the last four years to make up for it.

  "Let's just get this over," Mish said. She checked there was a round chambered in her X762A1 rifle and moved ahead, once again volunteering to take the lead.

  Teve glanced over his shoulder. Typically, at this point, over a thousand UEF soldiers backed up by air support from Mars would be streaming in, antagonizing the alien defenses. With the defeat of the Zeal fleet that had once dominated Earth's orbit, the Mars Armed Forces were now able to provide air support on the ground in the form of precision gunships. The thought made him think about his brother Bradley. The MAF pilot was instrumental in defeating the Zeal fleet that had ruled Earth's airspace for the longest time.

  Before the victory, the two brothers hadn't heard from one another in over three years due to the blockade of communications between Earth and Mars. In a few weeks, they were scheduled to meet in person for the first time in over four years.

  Taking his mind back to the task, Teve allowed a few seconds to pass as his team moved closer to the base. The number of Stilt patrols had thickened up, and the occasional hybrid scurried around keen as ever to kill. The sun was barely in the sky as if Command had wanted them to arrive at the base when the day's light had died out. Not that light mattered to the Zeal. The aliens were blind in a traditional sense, relying on their other senses to spot their enemies. Humans were easy for the Zeal to detect, so the UESF wore armor that covered up what gave away a person in the field. If Teve and his team stayed silent, the Stiltz would not discover them. The hybrids, on the other hand, could detect them regardless.

  Mish spoke to Teve over the comm, keeping her voice as quiet as possible. "We can't go much further. The hybrids will see us coming and raise the alarm."

  "I know. I don't understand what Command wants us to do. Almost every access point has been reinforced, including the sewers." The Zeal no longer left standard entries into their base unprotected like they had in the past. During an assault, the UESF had to blast their way into the base, utilizing the attack outside as a means to penetrate the alien defenses.

  "So, what's the play?
" Mish was getting antsy. Teve could see her finger itching to get on the trigger of her weapon. She had developed a blood lust for killing the Zeal. Seeing piles and piles of dead human bodies did that to a soldier.

  Without an answer for her, Teve glanced around the base. Usually, they would use the gravity dampeners to climb the outside of the structure. The tech could be reversed, allowing the wearer to scale anything with magnetic properties. For some reason, the devices worked on the alien material. Teve figured the Zeal needed to defy gravity with electromagnetism as much as humanity.

  A thought hit his mind as Mish began to stir. "I say we plant some charges and create a nice distraction. Then we can climb the base and find a soft spot to get inside."

  Mish twisted her brow at him. "Won't that set off the Zeal into some sort of killing frenzy? You said that the point of the mission was to silently observe them and find out if the prisoners are already dead or if an assault causes them to start the slaughter."

  "I get that, but if we do this right and fast, we can still find out if the prisoners are dead or not. I don't see any other way around it without dying. I'm open to suggestions." He stared out at his team. No one had any other solutions for him, not even Mish. She opted to scowl at him instead of helping.

  "I didn't think so. Red, Pocket, Romeo: take some D -block and set charges down a few hundred feet apart from each other. We'll blow them one at a time to cause as much distraction as possible. Mish and I will prepare to climb. Once you guys have the explosives in place, sound off. Questions?"

  They all gave their understanding except Mish. She had something to say but kept it to herself. "Good. Let's do this. The quicker Command gets their answers, the sooner we can go back to killing Zeal."

  The three soldiers took off in different directions once Teve distributed the explosives.

  Chapter Three

  Captain Bradley Porter felt his stomach turn as the ship dropped through Earth's atmosphere. Despite being a fighter pilot for the Mars Armed Forces, Porter never did well in drops from space. It wasn't the external pressures forced upon his body that bothered him but a total lack of control. If he were to crash his X90 Stalker in space, it would be because of his actions and no one else's.

  Once the Martian drop ship entered the planet's atmosphere, the outer layer of the vessel began to vibrate and glow. A display on the side of the ship showed the letters EDL, meaning a controlled atmospheric entry, descent and landing was taking place. The status seemed redundant given the feeling he had in the pit of his stomach.

  "First time dropping, sir?" a voice beside him asked. It belonged to a lieutenant by the name of Lewis Clay. Clay was one of many MAF pilots sent down from his home planet to fly Martian gunships over the hundreds of battlefields that plagued the Earth. In particular, he would be flying an MAF Dragonette gunship.

  "No," Porter said. "I've done this a few dozen times on Mars. It just always gets to me."

  The lieutenant chuckled. "Maybe there's something about Earth that's putting you off."

  Porter's head tilted away as he thought about his brother Teve. The United Earth Forces soldier had no idea he was coming to visit him two weeks ahead of schedule. "Yeah, maybe," he said, trying to end the conversation. It was hard enough concentrating as it was without some chatty pilot attempting to distract him.

  "I'm just saying, sir," Clay said, "Earth's had the crap knocked out of it. Every major city on the planet is pretty much broken. Beats me why they're sending us down here to fight over the scraps."

  Porter rotated in his flight seat and leaned toward the lieutenant. "We are being sent down here to destroy the Zeal and rid the solar system of the species that has done so much harm to both of our planets."

  "Hey, I get that, sir. All I'm saying is that it's a waste of time, resources, and skilled pilots like you and me. Besides, what has Earth done for us lately?"

  If he weren't fixed in the chair, Porter would have gotten up and smacked some sense into the lieutenant. "If we don't help them, then who will? No one. Then the Zeal win and every past MAF death becomes meaningless."

  He turned away from Clay before he said something worse. The lieutenant didn't follow up.

  The drop ship reached its destination, a small operations base outside the city of Atlanta. The North American capital was about to be retaken by the UEF, listed as the next priority target to be reclaimed from the alien invaders. Despite losing their fleet above Earth, the Zeal didn't give up control of the hundreds and hundreds of cities they had captured over the last four years.

  The Martian drop ship settled on a small landing pad and opened its doors, allowing Porter, Clay, and a dozen other MAF personnel to disembark and plant their feet on solid ground.

  Porter hadn't set foot on Earth since before the Zeal first attacked. The thought hit him as he took in the sight of the forward operating base. In every direction he looked, UEF personnel and equipment covered the once underground operation. Only now that the Zeal fleet had been neutralized, the Earthers developed the courage to come out from their holes in the ground and face the alien invaders head on.

  "Captain," a voice shouted over the sound of the drop ship's engine winding down. Porter glanced to his right to see no less than a general heading out to meet him. He couldn't help but wonder why someone with such a high rank would bother to greet a captain.

  "Yes, sir?" Porter responded as he fired off a salute to the general as he read his name tape. He saw the faded name of "Miller" sewn into the man's UEF uniform.

  The general threw out his right hand. Porter received it and felt the firm grip of a man twice his age.

  "I know what you're thinking, Captain: Why the hell am I giving you the time of day?"

  Porter went to speak but couldn't think of what to say. Miller continued.

  "I'll save you the hassle. I command your brother Teve. At least I oversee his actions. He is part of the United Earth Special Forces now, but I know all about you and the crazy shit you've pulled off taking out the Zeal fleet. I just had to shake the hand of a fine pilot such as yourself."

  Not expecting the praise, Porter almost didn't know how to respond, but he gave the general a simple, "thank you, sir. Just doing my job."

  "Modest, too. Hell, we could use more of your type around here. As you can see, the place is a goddamn mess."

  "No kidding," Porter said as he gazed out toward Atlanta, seeing all the tall buildings razed to the ground, replaced by alien structures that stabbed out from the terrain.

  "We need all the help we can get to retake the cities. Of course, a lot of people don't see it that way, especially the soldiers on the ground fighting the Zeal."

  Porter looked around and saw all the faces staring at him and the other MAF pilots. They weren't exactly as welcoming as the general.

  "I get it," Porter said. "You guys have been bleeding away all this time, and now some MAF pilots are going to come down and claim victory."

  "Don't mind them, Captain. If they only half knew what you have managed to achieve against the Zeal, they'd be over here kissing your ass as much as I am."

  Porter chuckled. It was a rare occasion for anyone of a higher rank than him to not treat him like an inferior. "Well, I appreciate your welcome, sir. It's a shame there aren't more people like you in charge around here. The MAF and the UEF need to work together if we are going to defeat the Zeal."

  Miller nodded, a slight smile formed on his lips. "Wait till they see you in the air. When all hell is raining down on them, they'll appreciate you taking out the Zeal in front of their eyes."

  "That reminds me," Porter said. "I'm actually here to surprise Teve. He is not expecting me. I was hoping to catch up with him and see how he's doing before I fly any sorties."

  The mention of Teve made Miller's brows raise. "That won't be possible, I'm afraid. He's out on a recon mission, at the moment. In fact, the base is on standby waiting for the results to determine if we attack Atlanta." Miller held up a tablet and allowed him a quick
glimpse at a live mission.

  Teve was out in the field. Porter didn't know why that bothered him. He was aware that his brother had been fighting the Zeal for years, surviving one mission after the next. It was one thing having an impression in your head, but seeing the devastated city before him reinforced the capability of the Zeal.

  "Don't worry. Teve can handle himself, especially these days given his newfound gifts."

  Porter had been filled in on the Zeal nanites that had flooded Teve's system. The idea freaked him out, forcing him to think of the long-term consequences of an alien virus corrupting his brother's body.

  "Come with me, Captain," Miller said as he slapped Porter on the arm. "You can have a front row seat to the action."

  Without much else to do, Porter followed the general along, bypassing a sea of angry faces and flared muscles as the soldiers of the UEF eyeballed the Martian pilot. Miller took him through an embedded, underground control room. Dozens of UEF personnel scurried about the various tactical stations, poring over data as it streamed in from the front line.

  "Take a seat over here. You can watch your brother in action and see how capable he is now."

  Porter settled in and sat down on a squeaky chair at the back of the control room. At the head of the chamber, large displays showed different helmet cams of the United Earth Special Forces soldiers as they proceeded to infiltrate the Zeal base undetected. He saw his brother's viewpoint and couldn't help the sick sensation he had in the pit of his belly as he watched him bypass a group of Stiltz.

  Porter had faced the tall aliens before, seeing firsthand how much firepower it took to put one of the 8-foot-tall beasts down. He even managed to discover a weakness the creatures had when it came to sodium bicarbonate—the main chemical compound found in fire extinguishers. The UEF had tried to capitalize the flaw, but weaponizing the idea was taking Command longer than expected.