MissionSRX: Confessions of the First War

by Matthew D. White

  I ducked down in a corner and looked for any other squad leaders. I didn’t see anyone else, so it was my show. Swallowing my fear and shutting out the noise, I pointed to one of my soldiers.

  “You, find out if any other squads got down here, see if they have access to any of these hallways. Maybe we can pinch them off.”

  At another, I ordered, “Go back to the surface and get anyone you find down here now. We will need all the reinforcements we can get.

  “Everyone else, keep up the suppressing fire. Don’t let anything get through, don’t advance anywhere yet.” I traced my steps down to the intersection and figured out where in the station we had landed, and more importantly, where we were currently fighting. I joined one of the groups guarding the center hallway which was taking heavy fire. I returned fire and held off the aliens at the far end. A hand landed on my shoulder, catching me off guard.

  I turned about, weapon at the ready, and was surprised to see a familiar face before me. One more squad leader had led his survivors down to join us. There were at least twenty-five more soldiers behind him, waiting for orders.

  “Which way are we going?” He asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Let’s keep one perimeter here, and we’ll each take one hallway all the way down and see where they go. If we find our objectives, we can seal the ones we don’t need.”

  “That’ll work,” he said as he glanced over at his men. “Prepare to move out – we’re taking the left hall.” Looking back at me, he asked, “How the hell are we going to finish our mission? Shouldn’t we be on the ground?”

  “I know, I know, but we’ll work on that later. We’ll have to find some way to get down to the surface.”

  He looked at me as if I had lost my mind, which wasn’t far from the truth. “We can’t. They’ll shoot us down.”

  “Just go! I’ll work up what I can. We’ll contact command, and we’ll get this thing finished.” I turned to the defenders in my squad. “Everyone, we’re moving out. Form up in the center hallway.”

  My men formed up in two columns along the walls of the hallway, four men at the front holding shields up. They parted to the side and I threw two grenades down as hard as I could in rapid succession. At the first explosion, we moved in. By the second explosion, we were already in the next room only a few dozen feet away. The frags had left the defenders in confusion, and when we ran in they were severely outnumbered. The doormen advanced ahead, providing cover while the rest shot above them.

  We cleared them out and I checked the remains. Beneath one of the bodies lay a set of schematics detailing all the levels of the station. I keyed up my radio. “I need a Commander down at my position. We’ve got a map of the place.” I spun it about to get my bearings. In a few seconds, I found our location and traced the path back to the airlock. I relayed the rough directions to command.

  4

  My squad had led the way into the top level. The station itself was arranged like a pentagram, with five stabilizing engines out on arms supporting the center core. The engines themselves had only a few accessible areas, but the core had eight to ten full floors. Between the arms were landing bays that spanned all the levels. I estimated we were about a third of the way across the station on the top floor.

  Our squadron commander, Captain Barnes, was the first to arrive from the surface. He had led his men in a similar assault at another hatch, but the aliens had sealed the doors before they could fight their way through. I briefed him on our progress, and he seemed more distraught than I had ever remembered before. He removed his helmet and stared down at the map, shaking his head.

  “Where are we going from here, sir?” I asked him.

  “We’ve got three objectives right now,” he stated. “One, we need to clear out the enemies who are already on the station. We are going to set up a perimeter on the upper level, fight from here, and get all the men, weapons, and equipment we can in here. Two, we need to keep more of them from showing up to reinforce from the surface. That means we will need to take the landing bays, probably destroy the airlocks. Third, we need to get down to the surface ourselves.”

  He looked up at me. “That, I don’t know exactly how we are going to do. We aren’t going to be able to fly their ships out of here, not without getting shot down. Plus, I doubt we have anyone who would be able to fly them. Any ideas?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Could we ride the station itself down?” The commander looked at me like I was crazy, so I explained further. “We’ll grab some of the nukes from our pods and blow the engines that keep the station up. It’ll de-orbit, and we’ll pack into whatever’s left here. We can launch once we get near the surface so they don’t have a chance to shoot us down. If we time it right, we could land somewhat near our objective. From there, we could go on foot.”

  “Are you trying to get us all killed? There’s no way that could work,” he stated, initially dismissing the idea. We stared each other down for a few more seconds. “Actually, I can’t think of a better plan, so we’ll go for it. Take your squad, clear the rest of the upper floor. I’ll assemble five more to take the landing bays. We need to do that quickly before things get any worse. I’ll take mine and clear out some more hatches. We’ll bring all the weapons down here. I’ll let you direct their use.”

  I nodded in compliance, and we split up. My squad kept up their furious pace, and we quickly fought through most of the rooms on the top floor. We found most of the hatches leading to the lower levels and kept them under guard, knowing that we would need to mount an assault on them soon enough.

  Once the floor was cleared, each squad took one hatch, blew the doors, and charged deeper into the station. We each took a separate level to clear, with one separate squad coming in behind, driving straight toward the landing bays.

  The battle dragged on longer than we hoped it would. My squad cleared the floor quickly, but additional enemy forces were amassing on some of the lower levels. Also, more and more of the aliens we encountered were heavily armed, indicating they were no longer standard security, but had come from the surface to take us out.

  Once our area was secured, I met back up with Captain Barnes in our makeshift command center on the top floor. We had nearly all of the heavy weapons accounted for and their crates were stacked up all around us.

  “How are we doing?” I asked him.

  “Slow. They’re dug in good down on the bottom floor. I don’t know how long it will take to secure.” “How are things with the landing bays?”

  “They’re pretty much secure. We haven’t been able to destroy the airlocks yet. The squads down there have just been holding positions for the last few minutes.”

  “I’ll split up my squad and deliver charges to each landing bay. We can blow four out of five and still get out of here. Do any have flyable ships?”

  “One has a medium-sized freighter that damn near takes up the entire bay. That would be our best bet.”

  “We’ll have to go with that,” I answered. “I don’t see any other options. Get a squad to move all of the weapons over there, leave five nukes for us to use on the engines. We’ll get that done once we disable the bays.” I paused. “Is there anyone left you can use to reinforce the guys downstairs?”

  “I’ll take the command squad,” Barnes answered. “You’ve got things under control up here; we can do our job better from there anyway.”

  “Sounds good, let’s go.”

  Of the twenty-five-man team that we started with, eighteen now remained, including me. I split the group up into three- to four-man fire teams and passed out demo charges to everyone. We reloaded all of our weapons and headed out on our separate ways.

  The trip to our bay was less than eventful. We made our delivery, did a quick inspection of the ship before we loaded it up, and returned back to the command post. By the time we got there, the rest of my squad was already waiting.

  “Get everything delivered?” I asked the group.

  Without ev
en giving a response, we listened to several muffled explosions from the corners of the station as the charges went up, as well as a few reverberations through the metal flooring.

  “Well done, gents.” I gave my first bit of positive reinforcement for the day. “Let’s get started with the nukes.”

  The squad unpacked five warheads, each normally about 40 lbs. and the size of a rucksack. In the reduced gravity field, they were considerably less. I traced out the route we would take to the center of each of the station’s arms for the fire team leads, and we again split up and went our separate ways.

  This time, we did not run full out like we had before. Just the psychological effect of knowing the power of the bomb we had with us was enough to make us watch our steps. I counted my steps down the final corridor that lead out to the engine and motioned for my team to stop. We pulled up a section of the floor and hid the bomb underneath to minimize the possibility of anyone finding it. There was no local timer; we were planning to detonate them all via a remote transmitter once we were all on board the shuttle.

  I did a final check before we seated the panel back into place. “Let’s go,” I ordered. “We need to be ready to move out of here in a hurry.”

  I ran back at full speed, followed by my three remaining squad members. The guard at the door to our makeshift command post saw us approach and let us pass. He slammed the blast door and locked it as soon as we passed.

  “What’s the status?” I asked without missing a beat.

  “We have confirmed signals from four of the five,” the operator reported. “We have yet to hear from Fire Team Bravo.”

  “Any radio contact at all?”

  “None. We aren’t reading anything from that arm of the station.”

  I looked at the operator’s screen, which displayed a virtual blueprint of the station. “Where was the last transmission from?” I asked him.

  “Right along the main passageway.” The operator pointed toward a void on the map. “If they dropped the package anywhere along that hall, it would be too close to bring us to the surface. It would just make the station detonate in orbit.”

  “Ambush,” I stated bluntly. “Get everyone to the upper docking bay as quick as you can. Take everything you can carry. I’ll get the bomb delivered and meet you there.”

  I didn’t wait for a response; I checked the map one last time and headed to the door.

  “Give me two minutes once I engage the bomb. We can’t spare any more time.” The rest of the squad there stood in disbelief, speechless for a moment, but I was already on my way.

  I carefully made my way through the station, moving as quickly as I could until I reached the long hallway detailed on the map. I carefully peered around the corner and saw the remains of the missing team blasted about the floor in multiple bits, splatters, and smears, having been cut down by an enemy position. I took the chance and glanced all the way down, snapping my head back to keep it from getting shot off.

  In that moment, I nearly got hit myself as multiple rounds from an emplacement at the far end tore into the corner, blowing out chunks of metal and insulating matter. I ducked down and rolled backward, barely escaping the same fate as my initial fire team.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could make out the bomb lying less than 20 meters away. Rounds continued to impact the walls, and I took a few more cautious steps forward to evaluate the situation. I thought I could see a way out of it.

  When I was ready, I pulled out a tow line and attached it between my waist and an exposed pipe in a damaged section of the wall. I took a deep breath and stepped around the corner, throwing a flash bomb with all my might down the hall and immediately diving for cover. It detonated amidst sporadic gunfire from the enemy position, and I got back to my feet. I aimed my rifle at a reinforced window on the other side of the hall and shot a single grenade into its center. Before it landed, I was on the move. I dove for the bomb as the charge blew the window clear out of the station.

  In a moment, the pressure dropped as the air in the hall escaped into space. I was pulled along as well and barely grasped the carry strap on the bomb before being sucked out the hole. Security countermeasures kicked in and sprayed down the hole with a foam sealant just as I passed through and was caught by my tow line. The foam began to harden, stopping the torrent of air, and I was able to regain my bearings and climb down to the outer surface of the station.

  With the enemy force behind me, I took off as fast as I could run down the long arm of the station with the package under my arm. Before I reached the destination, I started the arming sequence to allow for the remote detonation.

  Just as I finished, more opposing forces appeared further down the arm and opened fire. With no time to lose, I darted about as I tried to dodge the incoming projectiles and lobbed the bomb underhanded the rest of the way down. More explosions echoed around me as I spun about and tore back to the hangar. The firing subsided as I got farther away, but I kept my speed up, knowing what was coming.

  Back in the hangar, the remaining soldiers were waiting for me to arrive. The nuke operator saw the last weapon come alive on his screen and announced the impending detonation to the rest of the group. They finished boarding an alien transport with all the supplies they could carry and prepared for a rough departure. The sergeant in charge called in all of the forces, save for a single man to wave me through the hatch from the surface of the station. I could barely see him through my adrenaline-fueled haze.

  I ran full force up the main body of the station to the airlock beside the hangar’s outer door. The nuclear charges ignited just as I threw myself through the opening. The final soldier threw himself against the door to close and lock it. He barely had it secure before I felt the tremendous roar of the explosion pound into the frame.

  With no stabilizing engines, the station began to tumble out of its low orbit. Every loose object in the hangar immediately went flying, and within moments, I found myself in the middle of a swirling hurricane of debris. I felt my weight shift and dove for a support beam a few meters away and held on for dear life. The other soldiers shouted to me from the entrance to the transport, and I struggled to maintain my bearing and direction.

  The station dove deeper into the atmosphere and began to pick up speed, turning the outside into a fireball and the interior into pure hell. I tried to crawl along the rail back to the ship, but was continually hit by flying objects. I got to my knees and inched along with my remaining squadmates shouting at me from the freighter’s open airlock. All at once, their tone changed. I looked up to see a burned-out fighter break off from its tie-downs and plummet straight down toward my head.

  Without a moment to lose, I planted my feet and leapt from the rail across the open space and into the cargo bay as the fighter smashed through the support rail only a few feet behind me. I tumbled through the hatch and was grabbed by a soldier who was already buckled in. I held on to whatever I could find as the pilot released the landing clamps and ejected the ship from the hangar through the flames and into the steadily thickening atmosphere beyond.

  At the current velocity, the escaping vessels were more or less flung clear of the fireball outside. Through a small window, I briefly saw the ground spin by and instantly knew we were only a few hundred meters from impact.

  “HOLD ON!” I shouted to the rest of the cabin, and not a moment too soon. Seconds later, the ship violently impacted into a thick forest which I saw covered a large section of the planet. The trees helped a small amount to control the erratic descent, but contributed to continuous jarring, as I could barely keep myself conscious.

  5

  The ship finally impacted the ground like a falling asteroid, burning or blowing down everything in its path. The remains of my team were thrown about the cabin. For a moment, everything died off to silence, but then we heard a deep rumble from the station crashing a few kilometers away.

  My ears rang from the explosions, but as the dust settled, I pulled myself back together and began
to check on the other passengers. I found relatively few injuries considering the severity of our ejection, descent, and landing. There were no fatalities, so I left the soldiers and medic to tend to each other as I made my way to the bridge.

  I was greeted by a flurry of activity from the pilot and navigators as I walked in. “All right, where are we?” I asked them bluntly.

  “From the map we were supplied with earlier, we should be right about here.” One of the navigators took the responsibility of briefing. “We are only about 40 klicks from the objective, but according to our recent intel, we have a large expanse of forest, an abandoned outpost, and a military depot ahead of us.”

  Outside of the windshield, I could see an endless expanse of thick underbrush and what appeared to be trees. Without looking too closely at their textures, it could have passed for Earth. In the distance, smoke and flames rolled up from the crater left by the station.

  I looked at the map, tracing his fingers along various routes to the base. “Where did you get these figures?” I asked him.

  “From command’s last transmission before we launched,” he replied. “Also, we were able to dig some intel out of the station’s computer.”

  “What is the estimated size of their force stationed there?” I asked, pointing to what looked like a midsize military post between us and our objective.

  The navigator looked through a few pages of notes. “Five to six thousand personnel – it’s mainly an arms depot.” He continued to study the notes and continued a few moments later, “We’ve got 2,254 on board with us right now.”

  I really didn’t like those odds. “Do we have any hope for reinforcements?”

  “Maybe, but the planet will be heavily defended until we can take out the uplink station. We might be able to get a few more units down one at a time and use them to-“