by Mark Tufo
His eyes were blazing as he looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed. I thought for sure he was going to take a swing and if he connected, I was pretty sure I’d miss the festivities to come in their entirety. Slowly the rage began to leak from his features. “You’re an asshole.” But it contained no animosity.
“I’ve been called worse.” While we waited, more and more gang bangers began to show up. I felt like I was in the Warriors movie remake. “Where’s Cyrus?” (The de facto leader of all of the gangs of New York, although it was a short lived reign.)
BT palmed his head with his hands. “I think there’s room if you would rather stand over there.”
The Genos were starting to gain definition. It was getting easier to see them as individuals as opposed to one massive giant green blob.
“Do you hear that?”
I cupped one ear, then both when I couldn’t make anything out. “What?”
“Small arms fire,” BT said. “Are they using firearms?”
“Doubtful, their fingers are too big.”
“We have help then. Is that your wife?”
“God I hope so.” I began to hear tiny pops way in the distance, it sounded like someone breaking bubble wrap from across a football field. I didn’t see any blue rays, which would have been easy enough to pick up as they refracted off of the dust storm. It seemed like whoever was attacking had caught the Genos unaware and they’d as of yet not had enough time to fight back. “Please let that be Tracy.”
BT’s hand clasped my shoulder. “It is, man.”
“I said that out loud?”
It was beginning to darken and the Genos did not appear to be coming any closer. In fact, they had set up camp. I don’t think I’d ever realized that the Genos didn’t like to fight at night. We could hear tank rounds and grenades going off in the distance. More than once, BT had to put a hand on my shoulder to tell me that going out there was tantamount to suicide. Even if it was Tracy (IT IS TRACY! I was holding on to that thought), she was on the other side of a hostile army. I had to believe she knew what she was doing. The Genos did not seem to be attacking her, although we had seen a few blue flashes. Was she somehow routing them? I couldn’t even begin to imagine any advantage she was finding in the open field against such overwhelming odds.
“If that’s your old lady, her balls are bigger than yours.” BT was looking through the binoculars.
“I don’t know about bigger. It’s actually pretty close.”
“Why aren’t they attacking en masse?”
“Really?”
“Sorry, just a question worthy of an answer.”
The fighting stopped after fifteen minutes, and then the silence was absolute. I watched as long as I could to see if they were going to approach. When I figured they were settling in for the night I decided to do the same.
“I’m going to get some shut eye.”
“You’re kidding, right? They’re not more than ten miles from here and you’re going to take a nap?”
“Oh, not a nap. I plan on getting a good six or seven hours of real sleep.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“The Genos don’t have a stealthy bone in their body, and apparently are scared of the dark, which leads me to believe they are hunkering down for the night. And do you want to know what I’ve learned since this shit began?”
“Enlighten me.”
“That once the bullets start flying, getting some rest will be impossible. Any soldier will tell you that if the opportunity presents itself, you take it because you may not get another chance anytime soon.”
“Your wife’s balls may or may not be bigger than yours, but I’m just hoping the screw loose in her head isn’t as wobbly as yours.”
“Good night…could you please have room service wake me at dawn?” And with that I rolled over onto my side.
Chapter Nineteen - Tracy
“What the hell are they doing?” Tracy asked aloud, although she was talking to herself. She handed the binoculars back to Rut.
He immediately looked through them. “Looks like they’re making camp.”
“Look over to the left…do you see that?”
Rut shifted. “You mean the Genos with the giant packs?”
“That’s their supply line.”
“Oh.”
“Tell the tanks to target that area as best they can. Let’s make them a hungry bunch.”
“You want me to get the machineguns up in there as well?”
“No, I don’t want any personnel too close. We know they don’t care about their flank when they’re on the move, but they’ve posted guards since they stopped. I think they’ll be more inclined to fight.”
It was a few minutes later when a small circle of hell was unleashed on the Genogerian “supply-train” as heavy blasts from the tanks ripped through the ranks of food bearers. That was immediately followed by multiple ‘whooshes’ as RPGs set the encampment ablaze. Then came the “whomps” as mortars rained down from above.
“That got the hive buzzing, didn’t it?” Tracy was watching through her field glasses. Death came in swaths—with them packed so tightly it was impossible to miss. Fire began to spread from being to being. There was confusion where the impacts were hitting, that was without a doubt. There was something else as well; they were mustering.
Tracy saw them gathering. “Get them out of there!” she yelled a little too loudly as she watched the Geno detachment rapidly form. “Now, Rut.”
“Withdraw, withdraw, withdraw!” Rut shouted over the radio. There were a few more rounds expended as the order was being relayed.
Tracy watched as her men headed back toward the trucks. She realized her mistake just a moment too late. The men shooting the mortars were fine at an effective range of almost three miles—they were in a field next to the trucks. They’d already broken down their equipment and placed it in the back of the deuces. The RPG crews had hitched a ride with the tanks. They were only good from about five hundred yards away.
“Too close, dammit.” The majority of her tanks had withdrawn. Two were racing to pick up the men shooting rockets. Genos were in pursuit. She could not afford to lose those tanks. Each round took out anywhere from twenty to thirty of the enemy. Blue rounds were streaking outwards looking for targets. The “loaders”, men who placed the rocket in the tube for the “launchers” had set up a line of covering fire with their M-16s.
The tanks were firing with precision as they made their way to the line of men. The hundred or so Genos that had peeled off from the main group had halved the distance and were firing with effectiveness. The M-16 line was being torn to shreds from the ferocious blue flames. Tracy wanted to stop watching but forced herself to look on. She owed them at least that, to watch as they died following her commands. The turret of the tank closest to the men exploded in a shower of blue and red as it took a direct hit. Slag from molten metal dripped down the sides and even into the tank itself. This became evident as screaming, burning men exited the cavernous hole the Geno rifles had made.
“Oh, God.” Tracy placed her hand over her mouth. She’d just sent so many sons and daughters to their deaths.
The second tank used the first as a shield and what was left of the RPG crews scrambled on board. The tank hit its full speed somewhere in the fifty mile per hour range.
“Come on, come on,” Tracy urged. The tank hit something and bounced. The men clinging to her frame rose up with it. One soldier was not lucky enough to keep his grasp. It was with horrifying slow motion that Tracy watched his ascent and subsequent descent. He hit the ground and rolled to a stop, unmoving.
“Engage! Engage! Let’s go, Rut!”
“Yes ma’am.” Rut stepped heavily on the gas.
Even as they sped out Tracy knew they were going to be too late. The Genos were nearly on top of the fallen soldier, who had just begun to stir. He sat up slowly and was attempting to dust away the cobwebs. Something must have clicked in his mind because he spun quickly
to see the advancing enemy, but he was out of time. He had no sooner raised his weapon than the first Geno got to him. A heavy fist smacked into the side of the helmeted soldier, the impact planting his head firmly into the ground. The Genogerian then picked up the man. He had one hand wrapped around the soldier’s upper torso, the other around his knees, and began to bend the soldier backwards.
The soldier, unconscious after receiving the strike, was now fully awake and screaming in agony. The Genogerian roared as he snapped the soldier’s spine, tossing the broken, useless body to the ground. Tracy leaned out her window and fired; her shots made hastily and in a bouncing truck did not find their mark. Other Genogerians came to the site of the dead body and began to take out their frustrations. The soldier was tossed high up into the air and batted around much like a balloon. Arms and legs were torn from sockets.
“Captain,” Rut said with some urgency. The trucks were coming dangerously close to enemy range and the original Genogerian had his rifle up, ready to shoot.
“Captain!” Rut was tapping Tracy’s leg. Blue bolts were now heading their way.
Tracy screamed a war cry as the Genos ripped the head off the torso. One of them held it high, his deep throated cry of triumph cut short as a sweeping burst of Tracy’s rounds hit him in the belly. The soldier’s head rolled away like a discarded soccer ball. An explosion of dirt in front of the truck pulled Tracy from her partial loss of control.
“Pull back.” She sighed as she came back into the cab of the truck.
Rut cut the wheel so hard he was in danger of overturning the vehicle. Tracy was nearly in his lap from the force of the turn. Covering machinegun fire erupted from their left as the Genos were now in pursuit of their retreat. When Rut was fairly certain his passenger side wheels were once again firmly on the ground he pushed the gas pedal down as far as was allowable by the floorboards. The rear of the truck rocked as shots came dangerously close. He watched the chase in his side view mirror. The cutting machinegun fire kept the Genos from following for too long.
“I think I might need to change my pants,” Rut said as they pulled away. His Captain was lost in sour thought. “Captain, you alright?”
Tracy looked over at him. Fuck the blue bolts, that look could melt a man, he thought. And not in a good way. It was an icy cold gaze his Captain gave him.
“I’m going to kill them all.”
“I have no doubt of that, ma’am.”
***
It was a few hours later when Tracy emerged from her tent. “What’s the sitrep?”
“They look pissed,” Rut told her.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Sorry ma’am. We’ve been watching them with the NVGs (night vision goggles) —there’s been a lot of fighting amongst them. We did some serious damage to their chow line and I think the natives are angry about not getting fed properly. It’s hard to tell but it doesn’t seem like there’s much in the way of leadership over there. It’s possible we killed their leader and now they’re trying to decide who is next in line.”
“Well, we’ve figured out, albeit at some cost that they don’t adapt well to change on the battlefield. They’ve been told what to do most of their lives. Leadership, and what to do with it, are cultivated over time. Maybe we killed him, but more likely they were given a specific set of orders from the Progerians and that’s all they really know. They can’t deviate from that plan because they don’t have another one. Their inflexibility is their weakness and I plan on exploiting it until the end.”
Rut didn’t know if she meant the end of the Genogerians or their own. Right now he wasn’t sure if his Captain knew the answer to that either.
“How long until dawn?”
“About four hours.”
“Get some sleep, Rut. In the morning they’re going to wish they’d never set foot on this planet.”
“Ma’am, I’m pretty sure they’re thinking that now.”
Chapter Twenty - Paul
Three shuttles loaded with troops cautiously approached the Guardian. It was twelve minutes until the life support systems in the space suits expired. The Guardian stood as a silent sentinel seemingly long forgotten in a world gone cold.
“Sir?” the pilot asked.
Paul was looking for any sign that this was a ruse and that the Progerians had somehow figured out a way to reestablish power to the ship. He knew it was possible; the engineers’ computer models showed that it was. During fully seven percent of the simulations they had got the ship back up and running. Paul could only hope this was one of the other ninety-three percent. Replacing the human personnel on the ship was going to be extremely difficult given that anyone with serious knowledge of how the thing ticked were dead or dying onboard.
“Everyone suit up, we’re boarding,” Paul announced.
Paul pushed the transmitter button, giving the ship the signal to come back up. However, this was another concern. During the thousand or so simulations they’d run the ship had simply failed to come back online sixty times, the cold having damaged something in the extensive network of electronics and equipment. The delay in the ship’s exterior lighting turning on had Paul convinced he hadn’t even depressed the button—obviously that was much better than thinking he’d lost the men and women of his command and Earth’s only hope as well, for nothing. If the ship became nothing more than a new cold celestial body, all he’d done would have been for naught and he was not sure if his psyche could take that. The shuttle was about two miles out looking at the closed hangar bay.
“Come on,” Paul mumbled.
Blinding light pierced the cockpit. The Guardian’s ‘running lights’ had illuminated.
The hangar doors began to open too agonizingly slow for the pilot’s liking. By his reckoning they were down to mere minutes if they wanted to try and save anyone. As the ships pulled in, an eerie heavy silence awaited them, the sound of the skids making contact with the deck the only noise. A bevy of guards stepped out first followed immediately by the General, who did not wait for an adequate perimeter to be set up.
“Sir.” One of the guards pointed up to the deck above them that overlooked the hangar. A row of armed Genogerians stared down at them, forever frozen in their stances, their weapons pointed down at them.
Paul’s heart skipped a beat until he realized they were dead. “Eject them out into space.”
“All of them, sir?”
“Every goddamned single Genogerian and Progerian, I want the stain of them removed from my ship.”
“Yes sir.”
“Corporal Tennons, what’s our temperature?” Paul was walking around, taking in the surroundings. He’d been warned not to touch anything because there was a real possibility it would shatter.
“Negative one hundred and twelve, sir.” said the Corporal holding different monitoring equipment.
“Alright, before we head up to the bridge I want those extra suits taken to the quarantine area next to sick bay. If anyone survived that’s the most likely spot.” Fifty men surrounded Paul as they made their way to the helm. The contorted visages of Genogerians, Progerians and humans awaited them at every turn. It was the third hallway they entered where the caravan stopped, blocked by a large group. Apparently the Genos had rounded up all the humans they could and had been herding them off to the brig. Chief among them was Paul’s Science Officer, two of his most experienced engineers and Corporal Jackson, one of his first recruits in the mountains above Aspen. The man couldn’t shoot an elephant with a torpedo but he had been getting pretty good at steering the Guardian.
“Dammit. Make sure these men get proper burials.” He angrily shoved through the Genos, pushing more than a few over with a grunt. “I should have never trusted Mike,” he mumbled.
Paul looked around the deck—blood was everywhere. Looked like the Progerians had been in the midst of conducting ad hoc tortures to the human crew in the hopes to extract information that none of them possessed. He figured the Progs would get desperate. It
wasn’t like they contained much love for the human race anyway. Someone behind him vomited in his suit.
A small warning alarm went off; the man was in serious danger of asphyxiation. The man’s hands went to his throat. A couple of the guards raced to get his helmet off.
“Hold off on that.”
“General, he’s choking.”
“I understand that, but if you take his helmet off now his lungs will freeze. Corporal, what’s the temperature?”
“Negative eighty, sir.”
Paul shook his head. The guard’s face was reddening, pronounced purple blotches rapidly spreading.
“Negative seventy five.”
The guards were looking from the Corporal’s countdown to their failing friend and back to Paul, repeating the cycle every few seconds.
“Get him down to sick bay. At negative fifty or when he stops breathing you can take off his helmet.” Three guards grabbed the downed man and raced off. “Go with them, Corporal. When it gets above freezing call me on the comm.”
“Yes sir.” The Corporal departed.
“Anyone else feeling a little sick just step outside. I don’t think at this point there’s much need for an escort.” No one moved. “Sergeant, assign your men to each deck and look for survivors.”
“Yes sir.” His Sergeant saluted and grabbed his men, giving them their assigned areas.
There were scorch marks on the hull. Paul couldn’t tell if in a last ditch effort the Progerians were trying to sabotage the entire ship or more likely there had been a brief firefight. Paul paced, waiting impatiently for his intercom system to be restored. A crackle over his head caught his attention.
At first the Corporal sounded like he was under a thick layer of ice and then he was able to break through. “Thirty four degrees, sir.”
Paul pulled his helmet off, a plume of breath rising around his head. “How’s the guard?”
“Dead, sir.”
“What about the quarantine room?”
“Four survivors, sir.”