Reclaim: Books 1-3

by J. A. Scorch

  "I'll do what I can," he said.

  "That's what I like to hear," Mish said through a layer of sarcasm. "How about you cut, and I'll buy us some time?"

  "No," he blurted. "I can do this. Just keep cutting. I'll be back in a few minutes." He went to leave but felt Mish's hand grip his wrist.

  "Wait," she said as she stopped cutting. She pulled him in close and kissed him, instantly warming his body from top to bottom. He held her tight and didn't let go in the precious few seconds they had left.

  "Go," she said. "Come back in one piece."

  Teve nodded as he paced back and spun around to charge off up the steps to the approaching Zeal soldiers.

  Chapter Eleven

  Darkness set in as the Stiltz all flooded the level below Porter. There were plenty of other ways the aliens had yet to exploit to reach the second floor where he stood. Clay's unconscious body remained quiet as Porter readied himself to die at the hands of the approaching Zeal. His mind ran amok trying to solve the problem. It was a habit he developed as a pilot, always attempting to prevent the inevitable death he had managed to avoid throughout the war.

  A groan came from Clay on the floor. He was still out of it and couldn't be roused from the slumber the drone had put him under.

  The Stiltz began to vibrate the unstable structure below Porter's feet as they ascended the steps on the side of the building. He moved up to the open stairwell a few paces from Clay's body and stacked himself up against the limited cover. Death was only a single flight away.

  As the first Stilt rounded the corner, Porter twisted around and fired a burst down into its chest. Sparks exploded from the hardened armor as the alien fell backward a step into its comrade. Porter drained the rest of the magazine into both targets and swung back around behind cover as the two mechanized soldiers responded with a blast of superheated iron bolts.

  He wouldn't be able to keep up this defense for much longer as more Zeal approached from the opposite side. He reloaded the rifle and fired a blind attack around the corner before taking off back to Clay. There was no sense in trying to fight. He had to do something drastic to give the lieutenant a chance.

  Porter pulled Clay's dead weight over his shoulder as the man groaned some more. He took off a second later, heading for the ramp to the remains of the roof as a few Stiltz moved up the stairs and fired in their direction. The iron bolts stabbed at the ramp a single step behind him as he cleared the opening and ran out the last few steps to the roof.

  A long drop to Zeal infested territory stared up at him. The adjacent building was close enough to jump across to but would result in a few broken bones if he messed up the landing.

  "This is so stupid," Porter muttered to himself. He couldn't go down fighting like the UEF soldiers did daily. Instead, he wanted to survive the Zeal and fight them again on his own terms from the cockpit of an armored bird loaded out with enough missiles to level what was left of the city.

  He took a few steps back to the edge of the open roof and took a breath. The jump across would either kill them both or grant at least one of them a few more minutes of life.

  Just as Porter took his limited run up, a rifle boomed out below and was followed up by more bursts from a second and third weapon. The UEF had arrived in force. But Porter couldn't see any Dragonettes in the sky or armored ground transports flooding toward the Zeal base.

  He placed Clay down on the roof and made sure he wasn't going to slide off. He pulled his rifle from his chest and pointed it down the ramp as he carefully checked on the fight below.

  Porter spotted the three other Special Forces soldiers from Teve's team systematically taking out the Stiltz with nothing but speedy and deadly precision. The three fighters moved as one dangerous soldier, killing the Zeal from multiple angles as they charged up the stairs. Porter couldn't help but stare on in awe as they lobbed EMP grenades and destroyed the next target before the previous alien hit the floor. His eyes could hardly keep up with the harmony of death spewing out of their rifles.

  "You," the bulkiest soldier of the three shouted out to Porter. "Grab your friend. We have Dragonette inbound for pickup." The man had a thick, Russian accent.

  Not wanting to argue, Porter followed the order of the lower ranking corporal and charged back to pull Clay from the roof. He saw the lone Dragonette doing a combat drop from at least 10,000 feet directly above the building. The pilot would be the target of every Zeal defense system in the area the way Porter was a few moments ago. All he could do was watch the ship drop like a rock as it spewed out countermeasures to confuse the incoming missiles locked on to its heat signature.

  The three UESF soldiers came running up the ramp and out to the roof, firing down into the building as they went. The Dragonette had a lock on their location as the pilot pinpointed the rooftop to perfection. A second after Porter calculated it was safe to do so, the pilot shoved the throttle to full thrust for a vertical landing a few meters away from their position. He could feel the heat pouring out of the VTOL turbines as the craft approached. He noticed in an instant that no landing gear lowered.

  The Dragonette came to within a meter of the roof as its rear loading ramp dropped down with a hiss and hovered just above the building. The Russian grabbed Clay from Porter's shoulder and carted him onward like he weighed nothing. One of the other two girls took Porter by the arm and guided him over to the waiting bird, not asking him to come along quietly.

  The mix of soldiers and pilots all piled into the bird as it lifted off in a hurry. The ramp sealed up behind Porter as he was dragged to the nearest bench seat. Incoming warnings blared away as the pilot pushed the twin engines to their limit trying to reach for the stars above. After what felt like forever, they cleared the danger below and moved out of missile range of the Zeal defenses.

  Porter stared at Clay's still unconscious body strapped into the slot across from him as his head rolled around from side to side. A gloved hand gripped his shoulder.

  "Are you okay, Captain?" the huge soldier asked, towering above Porter.

  "I'm good. Thanks for the assist. We were as good as dead until you all showed up."

  The Russian dismissed Porter's thanks by waving him off as he strolled down the small cargo hold of the Dragonette. "Just doing our job, sir."

  A thought stabbed at Porter's mind. "Corporal," Porter called after the soldier. The massive man ignored him and continued toward the back of the bird. One of the two women addressed him on the corporal's behalf. "What do you need, sir?"

  Porter shifted his attention to the young girl, realizing she couldn't be more than twenty-five years old. She was also a corporal. "Where are the other two soldiers in your fire team?"

  The young girl squinted at the question and leaned in close. "You're Bradley, aren't you? Teve's brother."

  Leaning back, Porter couldn't hide his surprise. "How did you know?"

  "I didn't. Just something about you seemed familiar. Anyone can tell you are brothers."

  Porter smiled at her observation, but his question still hovered in the air unanswered. "So, do you know what happened to him and the sergeant he was with?"

  "Oh, right. Sorry, I forget where I am sometimes," she said with half a smile. "We have no idea. Last thing we heard was they managed to infiltrate the Zeal base when we set off the decoy explosives. Then, all hell broke loose. The main assault got called off. Command barely put a dent in the city. Next thing I know, we're hauling ass out of there while every Stilt in the area came after us. We saw your bird come down in a hurry and headed for your location figuring you'd need the help. We tracked your attempt to hide in that building and realized the Zeal had you surrounded, so we called for evac."

  Porter lowered his head as he pieced her story together. Teve was still out there in the middle of a war zone crammed with pissed-off aliens. If he had not gone tearing toward the base and lost the Dragonette, he might have had a chance to pull Teve out of the fight.

  "Hey, don't worry about your brother. He's good
at fighting his way out of there. Plus, he's got Mish with him. Those two could just about take on the entire city on their own, so don't sweat it."

  With no other response coming to mind, Porter thanked the corporal and turned away, knowing that she was trying to protect him from the painfully obvious truth: no soldier, Special Forces or not, could survive taking on that many Zeal.

  Chapter Twelve

  Teve tried to focus in on the stomping Stilt feet ahead of him. Any other day of the week, he could discern the number of alien soldiers in an area with his enhanced hearing alone, but at that moment, his senses were too scattered to concentrate in on any one pair of metal feet.

  Shaking his head for the tenth time, Teve did what he could to regain control as he tightened the grip he had on the X762A1 rifle in his hands. The Stiltz were around the next corner, heading toward the sewers to cut him and Mish off. He wondered why they had been ordered to hunt them down now when the hybrids had them as good as dead only moments ago.

  With one hand holding his rifle, Teve let the other slide down to the EMP grenade sitting inside one of his vest pockets. He charged it up and readied his arm to throw the grenade at the feet of the approaching group of Stiltz. As the first alien stomped its way around the corner, multiple voices filled Teve's head with confusion as his vision transformed into a mess of tangled input. He tossed the EMP without the ability to see, not knowing where it would land while the world through his eyes burst into flames.

  Teve fell to the floor with a thud as he tried to scamper away from the Stiltz that would no doubt know where he was. The skinny corridor he was in filled with fire as the hallucinations in his mind took over. One voice after the other came flooding to him as he saw the faces of the soldiers he had lost under his command over the last four years of the Zeal occupation. Each and every one of them condemned Teve for their deaths, questioning his leadership and ability to fight.

  "No, no, no," he yelled as the Stiltz responded to the yelling soldier before them. Teve could see their forms through the flames as they fired their weapons at him.

  A bolt stabbed into the wall behind him, missing by a few inches as a force pulled him to the side and behind the cover of the square corner that headed toward the sewers. Mish stood over him shouting words his ears couldn't decipher. He watched her swing her rifle around the edge and discharge several bursts at the approaching Zeal soldiers.

  After a short exchange, she grabbed Teve by the arm and lifted him up to guide him along to the sewer network. As they reached the barricade, he spotted the quick hole Mish had cut into the alien material a second before she shoved him through it into the entry to the sewers.

  Mish pushed him farther along and placed him down on the ground out of range of any trailing bolts before she moved back to the hole with her rifle ready to shoot. He watched on as she lit up the darkened space with bursts from her X762A1 to defend the tunnel from the Zeal.

  A few dozen bullets later, Mish seemed to be satisfied with her defense, so she turned back to Teve and picked him up.

  "What's wrong with you?" she asked him.

  The flames began to subside along with the voices and faces clouding his mind. The world drifted back to normal and was replaced by a searing headache.

  "Well?"

  "I don't know what just happened, but everything was a mess. I couldn't see them properly. The world ... " He couldn't finish his sentence without feeling crazy.

  "Whatever that was, you need to get it squared away sooner than later. There's no way you can keep fighting like this."

  "I know. I'm sorry, Mish."

  "Don't apologize to me. I just don't want to have to drag your ass all the way back home. I mean, how many times do I have to save you from these bases?"

  Mish chuckled as Teve thought about the first time she had dragged him away from a Zeal base through a similar sewer network. If it weren't for her, he'd have died a long time ago. They had saved one another enough times to be deemed good luck charms. Teve couldn't imagine going out into the field without her.

  "Do you know where you are going?" he asked.

  "No idea. Haven't had time to check the maps yet. I think we can stop for a minute. The Stiltz don't seem to be following us beyond the base."

  "Did we overstay our welcome?" Teve joked.

  "I don't know what the problem was. I mean, I brought plenty of bullets for everyone to enjoy."

  "So ungrateful, these alien invaders," Teve said as he slid his back down the old brickwork of the sewer. There was no water flowing through the network anymore, so he plonked down on the cold ground while Mish checked her e-slate for an offline map of the sewer Command might have pre-loaded for the mission. Going through the sewers was never the plan.

  As she turned away to concentrate, Teve took a moment to think about X and the hybrids in the base. Had X really been there? Or were his nanites screwing up with the dangerous proximity to the Orb? X was dead. At least he assumed so. There was a chance the hybrid was nothing but a networked clone. Maybe an X existed in every Zeal base across the globe. He'd never know.

  "This is not good," Mish said, breaking Teve's thoughts.

  "What?"

  "The map," she said, turning back to him. "It's almost useless. Most of the data is missing. All I've got is a bunch of hand-drawn reference points to go by."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means we don't know where the hell we are or where this tunnel will take us."

  Teve lowered his head and laughed for a moment. "Well, that's just great, isn't it? Another successful UESF mission to add to my list."

  Mish muttered something similar as she paced around trying to find a solution. She bumped into a rectangle box fixed to the wall and traced it up toward the ceiling. Without wasting a second, Mish grabbed hold of what sounded like sheet metal and pulled the cover off a ladder to the surface. The ancient structure ran up through a hole in the ceiling and beyond into the darkness above.

  "What do you think?" she asked, gesturing toward the ladder. "A pleasant stroll through town might be better than getting lost down here."

  "Better the devil you know, I guess."

  Mish walked over to him and offered a hand. "If we keep quiet and out of the way, we should be able to sneak our way home."

  Teve thought about continuing through the sewer without a decent map. At least down here, there wouldn't be an unknown number of aliens to deal with. But the chances of running into a dead end in the half-destroyed sewer network would be through the roof, given the pounding the city had taken over the last four years.

  "Let's climb," he said as he took her hand. Mish pulled him up and into her arms. She rested her head on his shoulder as he held on tight.

  "We can do this," she said. "We haven't made it this far just to die running from the Zeal."

  Teve smiled. All this time he thought Mish had no fear, that she was some sort of superhuman beyond the nanites running through her body. It turned out she was just as scared of death as he was.

  "Time to go home," he said as he lifted his head up and released her from his grip. Teve walked over to the ladder and began climbing it without a second guess. The rickety metal groaned and moved from side to side more than he cared to know about.

  Mish waited a few moments and followed him. The flashlight on her rifle bounced light off the brickwork of the tunnel. The two soldiers climbed toward the surface as a rumbling from above shook the city to its core. Teve stopped for a moment and collected his thoughts with both eyes closed.

  "Better the devil you know," he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Dragonette touched down for a textbook landing around the same time Clay woke up from his unconscious state. The electric shock he had suffered at the hands of the Zeal left him disorientated and confused as he tried to work out where he was.

  "Welcome back," Porter said, sitting opposite the pilot.

  Clay responded by throwing up on the floor between his own feet.

&n
bsp; "Good to see you, too, Clay."

  The vomiting continued for a few more minutes. The lieutenant finally spoke with a raspy voice. "What happened, sir?"

  Porter stood from the middle row of fixed seats in the Dragonette's hold after unbuckling a six-point safety harness. "You got lit up by a drone. Assholes tried to take us alive."

  "That explains my headache," Clay said with both hands firmly wrapped around his eyes as he buried his head in his lap. He sat up straight and looked Porter in the eye. "How did we get on board the Dragonette?"

  "You can thank these guys," Porter said as he motioned toward the three SF fighters. "They saw us landing in a hurry and figured we needed the help."

  "No kidding," Clay said as he shook his head. He turned his attention toward the three Special Forces soldiers and said his thanks. None of them responded beyond a simple nod.

  Porter couldn't help but feel responsible for his reckless flying. By all rights, they should have died, or at the very least become prisoners of the Zeal. Death seemed like the better option of the two.

  The ramp on the Dragonette began to lower. The three SF soldiers Porter came to know as Red, Romeo, and Pocket stomped off in a hurry, not wanting to waste another moment with the two pilots they had no choice but to rescue from the Zeal. Porter felt like a useless cadet fresh out of flight school. They always thought they knew better and made stupid mistakes that typically ended up costing lives. There was something about finding Teve that made him take the wrong path.

  "So, now what?" Clay asked with one hand holding his head up.

  "Don't know," Porter said as he stared out into the night. A few flood lights lit up the base outside of the bird as personnel scampered around. "I was coming here to visit my brother and fly a few quick sorties, but he's still out there fighting these aliens that won't give up until they're all dead." Porter moved toward the exit in a hurry.