by Lucas Marcum
“Raider Three Five, this is Valkyrie One.”
There was a pause, then static, then a businesslike voice answered, “Valkyrie, Raider Six Romeo. Welcome to the party. The LZ is clear, but be advised, the only open area we could find is in a pool of about four feet of water. We recommend you come to a low hover to insert the crew.”
Winters responded, “Ah, copy that, Raider Six. We can do that. We’ll be down in about two minutes.” On the crew intercom, he spoke to Elizabeth and Brian, “You two hear that? You want a line insertion, or should we low hover and you step out?”
Brian spoke up immediately, “And trust that it’s only three feet deep? Yeah, right. No, thanks. We’ll go down on the hoist. I’ll go first; if the bottom is solid, we can bring Major Suarez down.”
Captain Winters nodded and spoke to the ground again, “Raider Six Romeo, Valkyrie One. The crew is going to line in from a low hover. Make sure your ground teams are clear, this bird pushes a lot of air. Starting insertion now.”
Through the hatch, Joanne could be seen unbuckling from her seat behind the pilots. She moved through the cabin to the rear of the aircraft and, strapping herself onto the ramp, leaned over the edge to see the ground. They could hear Elise speaking, “Ok, Mitch. Set up your landmarks, fix your points of reference, and trust your crew chief. Take your time. Your aircraft.”
Mitch spoke in a tight tone, “Wilco. My aircraft.” The big aircraft slowed, pivoted in space, and the tone of the massive engines changed. The sensation of movement stopped, then the tree line started to grow around them. Elizabeth and Brian unstrapped, grabbed their rifles, slung their aid bags onto the rear of their armor, and moved towards the rear ramp. Taking the hoist line clip, Elizabeth hooked the line to the rear of Brian’s power armor, setting it into the releasable hard point built into the suit. She tapped his shoulder, and he moved to the edge of the ramp, rifle in his hands.
Several seconds later, they could hear the crew chief speak into the intercom, “Ok, hold. We’re at two meters. Sergeant Agawa, you’re up.” Out the back ramp of the aircraft they could see the muddy surface of the small pond thrashing violently in the down blast from the powerful engines. The rain had temporarily died down, allowing them to see to the tree line. About ten meters away, in the weeds where the trees once again stretched skyward, were two soldiers in light armor watching them land. Three more were kneeling, pulling security about two more meters away, eyes and rifles searching the jungle. The leaves and underbrush danced wildly, making the shoreline and trees come to life.
Elizabeth slapped Brian on the back, and he moved forward, the hoist boom moving out over the tail ramp as he did. Joanna grabbed the line in one gloved hand and swung him out. He nodded once, and then was lowered out of sight.
After a moment, his voice came over the radio, “Down. It’s not too deep. The bottom seems firm enough.” The line came snaking back up. Elizabeth moved up next to Joanna, who swiftly attached the line. Holding her rifle next to her chest, Elizabeth swung herself out over the water. Brian was below in waist-deep water. He’d moved several feet towards the shore to make way for Elizabeth to descend. Elizabeth looked back up at Joanne and nodded. The stalwart crew chief nodded back, her face hidden by her helmet and face protector. The winch lowered, and Elizabeth rapidly descended. In a matter of seconds, she was up to her waist, then her chest. Her boots hit bottom, and once she’d gained her balance, she commanded her suit to release the grapple.
She leaned back and shot a thumbs up to Joanne, who was still leaning over the edge of the ramp looking down. Seeing the thumbs up, she shot one back and disappeared into the Valkyrie, the ramp closing behind her. The churning of the water and the roar of the engines intensified as Captain Winters added power, then faded into the trees as the Valkyrie lifted into the air. In moments, it was gone.
Through her headset, she could hear Elise’s calm voice speaking, “Valkyrie Mobile, Valkyrie One. We’re clear of the canopy. We’ll be nearby if you need us. Be safe, and we’ll see you soon.”
Elizabeth keyed her mic and responded, “Will do, Valkyrie One. Valkyrie Mobile out.”
She lifted her rifle higher above her head and waded towards the shoreline. The sudden absence of the roaring engines made the usually noisy jungle seem quiet by comparison.
Wading ashore, Brian and Elizabeth made their way towards the two men, one a hard-faced sergeant, the other a slightly-built, cheerful looking corporal with a radio comm pack. Both were clad in mottled green unpowered combat armor and helmets, carrying unfamiliar short-stocked rifles. Their faces were covered in mud and lined with exhaustion. The sergeant nodded in a greeting. “Sergeant. Ma’am. Sergeant Lopez, 17th Group. This is Corporal Deucy.”
The corporal grinned cheerfully and said, “Hope you two are up for a little nature walk. It’s a lovely day for a walk.”
The sergeant shot him a look and said, “Shut up, Deuce.”
The smaller man grinned unrepentantly at Elizabeth. “I just try to see the bright side of things. After all, it could be worse.”
Sergeant Lopez shook his head angrily. “How in the fuck could THIS get worse?” He gestured at the jungle. “We’re on the threshold of Hell. “
The corporal shrugged and looked up casually. “Oh, I don’t know. Could be raining.”
As if on cue, the rain started again. Sergeant Lopez shot a disgusted glare at the grinning corporal, then turned and whistled at the men pulling security. One of them nodded in acknowledgement and stood, the small group falling in on where the four stood.
One of the privates, a small woman with a dark complexion, whistled at Brian and Elizabeth’s armor. “Wow. That the new infantry suit? That’s some slick shit, Ma’am.”
Nodding, Elizabeth responded, “Yeah. It’s got some mods for search and rescue, extra lights and cable systems and whatnot, but it’s a derivative of the heavy infantry model, yeah. It’s come in handy a few times.”
The woman grimaced. “I bet. Our armor is up on the Shiva. We sure as shit could use it.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. The private just shrugged and shook her head. Corporal Deucy chimed in, “Don’t ask. And especially don’t ask Captain Tulp about it. He’s really not a happy camper.”
The private responded, “Is he EVER a happy camper? At least he’s justified this time. This is really fucked up. We need that shit.”
Firmly, the senior noncommissioned officer spoke, “Shut up, all of you. Mari, Formica. You’ll be on point. Loops, you’re with me in the rear. Deucy, you’re in the middle with our guests. Visual sight lines at all times. If you lose sight of the other team members, stop and call with the comms. Three- to five-meter spacing between teams.” He paused and looked at the jungle. “Stay quiet and stay alert. I don’t need to tell you guys, there’s a lot of nasty shit out here, and we probably haven’t seen the worst of it.” Seeing nods from everyone, he turned to Brian and Elizabeth. “Ma’am, Sergeant, stick with Deucy. He’s a dipshit, but he seems to have a knack for this place. You two have camo units in that armor?”
Nodding and switching on her active camouflage unit, Elizabeth’s armor suddenly took on a mottled deep green and black, perfectly matching the foliage. She grinned. “How’s this?”
The noncommissioned officer nodded. “It’ll work. Move slowly, and watch where you step. The ground is not as solid as it seems. Rogers, Formica, move out.”
The two unsmiling soldiers stood and, rifles at the low ready, moved into the jungle. Corporal Deucy motioned at Brian and Elizabeth. “Alright, here we go. Stick close to me, and don’t step on any roots. They ain’t all roots.” He started off, following the soldiers on point. Elizabeth nodded at Brian. He indicated that she go next with a toss of his head. Raising her rifle, she moved off after the corporal.
****
Moving into the jungle, Elizabeth marveled at the change from the muddy field the hospital was set up in. The small portion of slate grey sky was replaced with deep, leafy green overhead, with th
e steady streams of falling rain now broken up by the trees into random streams and spatters. The foliage ranged from knee high, leafy green plants with tiny leaves to towering trees hundreds of feet tall. Sometimes she could see as far as twenty meters, and sometimes only two or three meters, and had a hard time keeping the soldiers right in front of her in sight. The air was thick with the chirps and calls of various animals, and small, birdlike things swooped through the air above.
Fifteen minutes of picking her way through the forest later, Elizabeth felt a tap on her armored shoulder. She paused and turned to see Corporal Deucy. He pointed at something off the right side of the direction the patrol was moving.
Elizabeth stopped and stared for a moment, squinting, then she saw it. Nearly invisible in the leafy shrubs and the shadows was the glint of metal. There was something massive and not natural in the undergrowth.
As Elizabeth stared, Corporal Deucy whispered, “It’s a crashed Elai suborbital fighter. We found it yesterday. Probably went down when the Navy was greasing the Elai air support.” As Elizabeth stared, she could make out the details. There was the broken stub of a wing, part of the crumpled fuselage, and a badly damaged vertical stabilizer, with faint Elai writing still visible on it. Tracing the lines of the wreckage forward, she could see the cockpit, the canopy missing and the seat gone.
Corporal Deucy nodded, seeing where she was looking, then whispered again, “Yep. The pilot punched. Who knows what the hell happened to him. If he came down in this…well. Poor bastard. He probably died out here.” He paused for a moment, then pointed at another area. “Look at the base of the vertical stabilizer. See that?”
Squinting her eyes, Elizabeth traced the piece of the aircraft he was pointing at, a deeply scarred and scratched portion of the tail perhaps twenty feet in the air. Mentally trying to reconstruct the damaged aircraft’s lines, she stared for a moment, then her jaw hung open. “No fire. Must have been close to out of fuel…but…that damage…”
Deucy nodded. “Yep. Not crash damage. Tooth marks.”
Elizabeth considered this for a moment, then responded, “Holy shit.”
The corporal nodded grimly. “Holy shit is right. It isn’t what brought it down, that was an air to air missile, but whatever chewed on the tail was BIG.” He paused again, then continued, “Come on, Ma’am. It’s still another fifteen minutes or so to the rally point, and we do NOT want to get caught out here in the dark.”
Elizabeth let her eyes wander up the aircraft one last time, noting the massive air intake for the engine. In front of the intake was a symbol that looked like three curved lines with a slash through them. She peered at this for a moment, then shook her head. She turned and followed the slender corporal as he moved after the rest of the team into the dripping jungle.
Thirty hard minutes later, Elizabeth was methodically following the young NCO across a small and rare clearing in the undergrowth, when she saw a clenched fist shoot up; the sign to freeze. Silently she knelt and waited.
Ahead of her she could hear a faint voice speaking in a challenging tone, “Coronado!”
She could hear the muted response from Private Mari, “Gino, it’s us, you dumb fuck.”
The first voice responded, “I don’t give a shit. Countersign, or you’re greased.” There was a metallic snap of a weapon safety being removed.
“Goddammit! Cross! CROSS! Gino, you paranoid piece of shit.” The metallic click came again, and the small patrol moved up at the gesture of the private in the lead. As Elizabeth approached, she could see a fighting position concealed under brush, with the barrel of a Mark 30 crew-served lascannon just peeking out. The soldiers in the position were nearly invisible, with only the glint of their eyes visible in the shadows underneath the shrubbery.
She could hear the shadowy soldier in the hole speaking again, “The command post is about thirty meters back. We consolidated the lines some, so they aren’t where they were when you left. Also, give the countersign next time, asshole.”
Sergeant Lopez’s voice came from behind them in a low growl. “Knock it off, fuckheads. Keep moving.”
The private leading their group shot a middle finger at the two soldiers in the fighting position and moved quietly past through the jungle. A dozen meters later, the trees began to thin out, and then she could make out signs of human activity in the thick undergrowth. The flat discoloration of a camouflaged tent here, a stack of ammunition boxes there. A few more steps, and the massive sweep of a slate grey cliff was visible through the trees.
At the base of the cliff, a tarp was stretched as a shelter between three massive trees. Crates were placed in rows, making low improvised walls and counters for several tactical stations. This improvised command post was manned by several soldiers. They all wore unpowered armor and had weapons slung. Two enlisted were at the tactical stations, and a slender female master sergeant, standing with her arms folded, watched them approach. One of them, a medium built man without a helmet on and his back to them, was on a comm unit, the hand piece pressed to his ear. As Brian, Elizabeth, and Sergeant Lopez entered the tiny command post, they could hear his conversations.
“Yes, Sir. Three missing, one dead…Yes, Sir. They’re on the way in now.” There was a pause, then he spoke again, “Yes, Sir. Any estimate on when that might be?” The man looked down for a moment then replied, “Yes, Sir. We don’t have a lot of choice, do we? Understood, Sir…Yes, Sir. Raider Six Actual, out.” The man hung the handset on the comm unit and turned to the first sergeant.
“No dice. The storm is stronger than the Navy expected. We’re not getting them, and he says no-go on scrubbing the mission.”
The woman considered this, then said a single word, “Fuck.”
The soldier nodded grimly, then turned to Brian and Elizabeth, put his hands on his hips, and regarded them with a flat expression.
After a moment he spoke, with a bitter note in his voice, “Glad you could make it.” He then sighed and ran a hand over his shaved scalp. “Shit, I’m sorry. Ma’am, Sergeant First Class Agawa, I really appreciate you coming in here. We’re chin deep in shit. Grab a crate and I’ll get you up to speed.” He indicated several empty upended crates nearby. Brian and Elizabeth sat, and he sat in front of them, the command post so small their knees were almost touching.
He spoke, the exhaustion evident in his voice, “So, I’m Captain Shawn Tulp. This is my detachment sergeant, Master Sergeant Matthews.” The stone faced woman standing nearby them nodded once, silently. Tulp continued. “I’m the Alpha Company commander of the 343rd Special Forces. We’re a Technology Acquisition Team. We’re part of 17th Group, off the Shiva. We were tasked for a fast in and out reclamation mission. Get in, snatch whatever we find out of the complex, get the hell out.” His voice took on a resentful tone, “My battalion executive officer, in a fit of military genius, decided that since this is a ‘secure area’, we didn’t need our power armor. Wanted us to get some real ‘old school’ operational experience, never mind that me and my guys spent five months in the thick of it on Desolation. Anyway.”
The young officer motioned around them at the jungle. “Turns out that this shit is more dangerous than whatever the Elai might have in this area. As soon as we drop in, we got guys getting hurt all over the place. Guys getting bit by bugs and animals. Guys falling in holes, out of trees, and into hidden pools. Guys touching plants and getting burned. Quicksand, choking vines, and these things that shoot a powder that acts like tear gas. All sorts of weird shit. Then we get here,” he said, gesturing at the bivouac area, “and shit goes really sour. Now I’m missing three guys who are probably dead, and a fourth who died right after we pulled him out.”
Elizabeth looked around at the jungle and frowned. “I don’t know how much help we’re going to be looking for your men out here…”
The captain smiled grimly. “Oh, I don’t need your help out here. I need it in there.” He turned and looked significantly at the grey cliff face stretching up into the trees, and sudd
enly Elizabeth realized they were at the foot of a massive, ancient building. The Special Forces captain spoke forcefully and stabbed a finger at the massive building, “My guys are in there, and you’re going to go in and get them out.”
-17-
“Pitch Black”
UNIDENTIFIED STRUCTURE, APPROXIMATELY FORTY KILOMETERS WEST OF FORWARD SUPPORT BASE OLYMPIC
1645 hours, November 21, 2247
Elizabeth and Brian crouched over the long black bag on the ground. Captain Tulp stood at the foot of the bag, his arms folded, his face impassive. Brian nodded at the medic, who unzipped it. The face of the soldier came into view, pale and still. The hiss of the zipper continued, and the flap was folded back. The soldier’s body was stripped bare and covered with hundreds of purple black bruises. The medic was speaking in a flat, dispassionate voice.
“He stumbled out of the entryway, screaming that he was on fire, tearing at his clothes, then collapsed. One of the NCOs stopped the soldiers on watch from giving him aid, which was good. We found him covered with these little fuckers,” The medic indicated a clear container, inside which was a small, mottled-red-and-black insect, about an inch long. He continued, “We finally got him stripped and his uniform off, and swept them off, but by then he was going into shock. The medscanner called it some form of distributive shock, but couldn’t narrow it down. Anaphylactic, I’d guess. I tried fluid resuscitation, vasoactive agents, and a double dose of that worthless shit they call a ‘universal antivenom’, but he died about fifteen minutes later.” The medic stared at the man’s face and said in a distant voice, “I didn’t even have time to call for you guys, he went so fast.”
Captain Tulp spoke in a hard voice, “If we’d had our hard-shell armor, this wouldn’t have happened. But since we don’t, and the Shiva and the Thor have pulled out of orbit due to the solar storm, you two are the only assets we could find with sealed armor who weren’t fully engaged in the north of the island.” He nodded at the medic, who gently zipped the body bag closed. Elizabeth and Brian stood and traded a look.