by J. A. Scorch
"So eager for death, T. What happened to that optimistic soldier I first ran into?"
Letting his anger take hold, Teve struggled in the seat. "Screw you. You're not real. You're nothing but a clone of a person whose life you stole."
X jumped forward and flared his blades out. "I am more than that insignificant human could ever have aspired to be. Now shut up and listen to me." X grabbed Teve by the chin with his razor-covered hand. The edges stabbed into his skin and cut him in multiple places. He had no idea if his actual skin was getting sliced, but the pain felt real either way.
X released his grip and stepped back, placing both arms behind his back as he recomposed himself. "We are at a crossroads, T. Humanity has proved itself a worthy opponent. For the last four human years, we had classified you as a lower species marked for extinction and nothing more. But recent times have shown us the error of our ways."
Teve studied X as he paced up and down the cabin. The half-alien, half-human creature seemed to be stuck between two worlds. "Who are you in all of this?"
"Who am I?" X asked. "I am merely a vessel to deliver a message. I am nothing but a disposable tool to be phased out when the time comes."
Shaking his head, Teve rocked to the left and right as he tried to wake from the delusion in front of him. "This isn't real," he whispered to himself. "You shouldn't be alive. We destroyed Los Angeles and every hybrid inside of it."
"You can't escape this, T. You are only here because they deem you worthy of this conversation."
"They? There's no one else here but you, me, and Mish."
X smiled as a chuckle came out from between the blades. "You have much to learn. In time, everything will become clear. You will see that this war is only the beginning of things bigger than small individuals such as the two of us. Your kind has a chance to ascend to greatness."
Without an answer for the crazy coming out of X's mouth, Teve breathed out a slow lungful of frustration as he scowled at the hybrid controlling his every thought.
X leaned down and grabbed him by the shoulders. "It's time for you to know the truth."
Chapter Nine
After ten minutes of frequent checks on the battlefield, Porter could see the Stiltz had the building surrounded.
"They don't give up, do they?" Clay asked as he stared down at the fifty plus aliens in the distance. The pair came down from the roof edge a moment later.
Porter sat on the lip of a toppled over, concrete wall. His rifle lay on the ground as he gazed at nothing in particular. "I don't understand why they want us so bad. There are a crapload of UEF soldiers about to overrun their base, yet they have us surrounded to perfection. They even have an alternative stairwell up here. Why haven’t they taken it? We should be dead by my assessment."
"Well that's good to know," Clay said.
Porter ran a hand through his head. He had no helmet on. Only the chest armor found in the Dragonette protected his body from the Zeal. Even that wouldn't hold up against the iron bolts their weapons spat out.
"We have to make a break for it," Porter said.
"Sir?"
"Hear me out. There's an adjacent building only a short leap away. If we can create a distraction, we should be able to jump across and snake our way out."
"Are you insane? Jumping across a building? There is an army headed this way. For whatever reason, the Zeal haven't moved on us yet. We should be utilizing that bit of luck and wait it out. When the troops arrive, we can make our move then."
Porter chuckled. "What makes you think the Zeal won't end our lives as soon as the UEF arrive?"
"I don't know," Clay said. "I couldn't possibly know what goes through the mind of an alien soldier. All I do know is that something is holding them back. You said so yourself that they never quit coming for you. Well, it would appear that they've been given very strict orders not to kill us."
Taking a moment to think, Porter realized that only one possible reason was keeping them alive: they had been marked for capture like so many UEF soldiers had been in the past. But what were the Stiltz waiting for? He stood and grabbed his rifle.
"Where are you going, sir?" Clay asked.
Porter ignored him and pushed past the lieutenant. He began to climb the wall again, only making it half way up the run before being interrupted.
"Captain? What are you doing?" Clay asked.
Porter half turned around and saw the lieutenant's hand slipping down toward the trigger guard of his rifle. "What are you doing?"
"Don't make me do this, Captain. We can't beat these things; you know that. We're just a couple of pilots down here."
"What? You'd rather wait for the Zeal to take us?"
"I'm not saying that. I just think we don't need to throw away our lives so readily. We barely survived your insane flying, and now you want to risk it all again. Where does it end?"
Porter scrunched up his brow at the lieutenant. "You know who I am, don't you?"
"Of course I do. Everyone knows who you are and what you've done for the fleet, but what they didn't tell us was how much of a death wish you have. I don't understand how you're even alive."
A smirk formed on Porter's lips. "I ask myself that question every damn day." He lowered his eyes to the gun to see Clay easing off. "I'll sit tight, for now. But I can tell you those things down there have been given a special mission. They're probably just waiting for—"
A sound from above cut off Porter's thoughts as he spotted a flying ball out of the corner of his eye. It was something he had seen on file marked as a Zeal drone.
"Get down," he shouted to Clay as the diving sphere bore down on them. Clay was too distracted to notice the buzzing above as the drone came swooping in. A second later, every shadow in the building lit up with an electric spark from the extending cattle prod the drone produced. Clay took the brunt of the attack directly to the head and fell to the dusty ground in an unconscious heap.
Porter fired off a short burst of HE rounds and hit the scattering bot as it redirected its attention to the next target marked for capture. A shower of bright flashes leaped out from the body of the drone as Porter's attack tore right through the Zeal tech at close range. The sphere dropped to the concrete with a thud and sparked away in defeat.
After a quick sweep of the sky, Porter shoved his rifle across his chest into a locked position on his armor and charged down to Clay. He picked up the unconscious pilot and pulled him over his shoulder before standing on two shaky legs. The lieutenant was heavier than he looked as Porter realized the man wasn't as fit as he should have been for an MAF pilot.
"Of all the assholes to get stuck with ..." Porter muttered to himself as he moved slowly away from the open space of the roof. More of the Zeal drones would be inbound looking for an easy target to pick off. He had no idea if this was part of the move to take the pair of them alive. If it was, the endless droves of Stiltz outside the building would be heading inside to finish what they started.
"Wake up," Porter half shouted to Clay as he shook the pilot a little. The lieutenant didn't respond. Porter knew he wasn't dead from the information the UEF had provided the MAF with on the Zeal drones. Their primary goal was to render soldiers unconscious in the field for the Stiltz to collect and deliver their bodies to a base such as the one in the center of Atlanta.
With nowhere to run to, Porter headed for a large hole in the side of the building on the opposite end to get a good look at the impending UEF attack. They had to be close given the level of missiles Porter heard being released by the Zeal systems. The whine of various UEF transport ships sang out a few hundred meters away while the soldiers on the ground exchanged fire with the Stiltz outside. Half of the aliens still held their focus on the building he was in as if the battle behind didn't exist.
"What is with these things?" Porter asked himself. Before his brain could conjure up a decent explanation, another drone dropped in from above and spotted him in an instant. Porter released Clay in a hurry to the ground and pulled th
e rifle from his chest to fire upon the approaching drone. After two quick bursts, the Zeal tech toppled down, once again reclaimed by gravity's bonds.
Porter did a swift reload of his weapon and scanned the open roof for more of the spheres. He couldn't keep this up for long, even if the Zeal kept on sending only one drone at a time. He took another peek outside and saw the Stiltz staring up at the location where he had just fired from. The alien soldiers tasked to stand guard did not fire up to Porter. Had they been given strict instructions not to hurt either one of the pilots?
"What the hell do you want with us?" Porter shouted down to the tall brutes. There was no point hiding from them any longer.
An explosion tore out in the distance as a UEF transporter slammed into the ground and turned into a fireball that reached for the sky. Porter had no idea if the soldiers on board had already disembarked or not. All he could do was shake his head and wait for the assault to reach him and clean out the Stiltz.
Clay began to stir at his feet, but he didn't wake up. "They're coming," Porter said as he ducked down low. He didn't fancy taking a stray bullet to the head from one of the charging UEF soldiers.
As the fight continued to roll toward him, Porter took out another three roaming drones as they came into the building. When the last one bounced off the concrete slab and rolled away in defeat, he caught sight of the UEF assault failing before his eyes.
In a desperate move, the Zeal had reinforced the front line with more soldiers than the brass could have anticipated as wave after wave of Stiltz moved forward. Some had missile launchers fixed to their backs that automatically fired at the Dragonettes as they attempted to fall back from the surprise defense mounted by the Zeal. He realized the aliens had lured the UEF into a false confidence only to cut the number of human soldiers and ships in half.
All Porter could do was stare out at the fleeing UEF soldiers as they limped back to base with their tails between their legs. The Zeal had prevented the loss of their territory and had Porter and Clay surrounded behind enemy lines.
Once the last UEF soldier had left the area, around thirty Stiltz entered the building and headed for Porter's location. There was nothing he could do to stop them.
Chapter Ten
Teve woke up gasping for breath. He clutched at his chest as he heaved in and out desperate for air.
"Calm down," Mish said as she held him in place, one arm on his shoulder to stabilize him.
"What happened?" Teve asked as he scanned the Zeal base looking for X. "Where is he?"
Mish stared into his eyes and tried to get his scattered attention. "Who?"
With a screwed-up brow, he scoffed. "X was here." Teve realized that there were no hybrids to be found in the open area. "Wait, what happened? Why are we still alive?"
She shook her head. "I was hoping you could tell me that. I just regained consciousness and saw you screaming over here. I've been trying to wake you for the last few minutes."
"Screaming?"
"Yeah. Anyone would think you were on fire or something. Anyway, the hybrids left. Maybe the fight outside pulled them away. Either way, we have to go."
"What about the prisoners?" Teve asked as he looked up at the walls. It didn't take him long to notice something very different about the area. There were no twitching arms or legs to be seen. Every single body had gone limp. "Why aren't they moving?"
Mish shook her head again. "They're all dead."
"What?" Teve asked as his eyes popped wide open. "How do you know? Have you checked them?"
"Don't need to. I can tell from here. Go take a closer look."
He scrambled to his feet and charged over to the nearest body up on the wall. He climbed the Zeal construction and too saw the recognizable signs of death in the first person. He tested for a pulse on a young woman. There was nothing there. Every other prisoner attached to the machines looked the same.
"They're all dead," Teve said as he rubbed his head with one hand as a wave of confusion washed over him. Only moments ago, he was in another place speaking with X. But then something happened that he couldn't remember in detail. A cloud of fog filled his brain as he tried to think about their conversation. "What did you say to me?" he whispered as he dropped back to the metal plate.
"What?" Mish asked.
"Nothing," Teve said as he shook his head. "We better get out of here while we still can. What's our best option?"
Mish thought for a moment. "We probably should head underground, given the fight outside."
"And take the sewers? I thought they were blocked off?"
"They are, but we could cut our way through while the Zeal are distracted."
Teve let his mind run over the thought for a moment as a dozen other unfocused ideas hit his head at once.
"Teve?" Mish asked. "Are you with me?"
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Yeah, I just can't seem to focus. Why are we still alive?" He could hear X's voice in the back of his head whispering nonsense.
"We don't have time to figure that out. Now hurry up and follow me."
The noise in his mind ceased for a moment as Mish took control. Despite being a lower rank, she took charge of the situation as she usually did. She gave him his rifle and offered a hand to help guide him along. Teve's body felt weak as he shuffled beside her.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Teve rubbed his head again. "I'll live. We need to get out of here and away from this place."
"I hear that," she said looking at the bodies on the walls. "When that purple Orb came up from the middle of the room, my head split in two."
Teve shook his head as the two soldiers readied themselves to head for a doorway that would take them down to the old sewers of Atlanta. The access point would be blocked by a barricade and would normally have a few hundred Stiltz standing guard on either side to prevent a sneak attack by the UEF. Teve never understood why the aliens chose to build the base over the network in the first place, but most bases around the world had a similar setup where possible.
"This place is a ghost town," Mish said. "They must have every one of them out there fighting our people."
Teve barely heard her speak as the noise in his head slowly returned. He had to close his eyes tight to silence the mess.
"Hey," Mish said. "Are you listening to me?"
"Sorry," he replied. "I'm here, I think."
She slapped him on the bicep. "Snap out of it, will you. We need to keep our focus if we're going to make it out of here alive."
Teve nodded and let Mish take control as they worked their way down to the sewer exit. They each still had their weapons and kit that contained laser cutters to bust through the barricade. She recited a report about a UEF reconnaissance mission picking up the presence of the barrier in the sewers only a few days' prior. The soldiers sent would have been told to bypass the purple goo the Zeal flooded the network with to avoid getting infected with the alien nanites currently running through Teve and Mish's systems.
"No guards," Mish said as they arrived at the reinforced wall. "According to the mission brief, the plate is only an inch thick. Guess they were relying on numbers to defend the access point."
Teve ran a gloved hand over the surface of the alien material, feeling the tiny pieces of life within the core of the metal.
Mish interrupted his inspection. "One inch will still take some time to cut through, so we better get started."
"Ah, yeah," he said as he pulled away from the barricade. Mish already had her portable laser cutter out and ready to slice.
"Watch my six while I make us a hole. Not that there's anything to look out for."
Teve nodded to the back of Mish's head as he attempted to center himself and focus on the task at hand. He slapped his face with both hands in rapid succession and lifted his X762A1 rifle up to the only hallway the Zeal could come through to end their lives.
"Why did they kill them all and spare us?" he asked Mish.
She continued to cut a hole i
n the barricade as she answered him. "I don't know. All I can say is we're on borrowed time here. We should be dead by all accounts, but for some reason, the hybrids left us alone. We can't waste that."
"Yeah," he muttered as a thought popped into his head. "Maybe our helmet cams will shed some light on what happened." He activated the e-slate attached to his wrist, Teve attempted to check the footage his helmet cam had been beaming back to base. The recording came up with a message saying no data had been found. "You've got to be kidding me."
"What?" Mish asked as she completed one side of the hole.
"I've got no recording of this mission. Can I check your data?"
Keeping one hand free for her laser cutter, Mish quickly tapped into her e-slate and got the same result. "All gone. I've got nothing."
"Shit," Teve said. "How the hell are we going to explain this to Command?"
Mish let out a sigh. "We can't. My comms are all disconnected. I guess yours will be the same. We'll just have to hope they believe us and take it from there."
Teve checked the comms on his e-slate and found the same issue. He scoffed, knowing how frustrated Command would be and how hard they would come down on the failed op. "Well, that's great. If we make it back, get ready for a few dozen repeated questions."
"I know. I can already picture it now. They'll separate us and ask the same thing over and over until they get an answer that suits. I'm so sick of—"
Mish's complaint got cut off by the sound of clomping feet in the distance. Teve spoke first. "Stiltz. A lot of them, by the sounds of things."
Without turning back, Mish sped up her cutting as quick as the tool would allow. "You better head them off. Do you think you can do that?"
Teve knew exactly what he would need to do to have the slightest chance of surviving the next few minutes. Normally, it wouldn't be a problem for him to charge out and take on a half dozen Stiltz on his own with the nanites running through his body. But after waking from the nightmare with X, he felt out of control and unable to focus for more than a few seconds.