Hell Fighters from Earth

by William C. Seigler

  There were other people sleeping on the floor of the buses, so he found a patch of relatively flat ground and staked his claim.

  * * * *

  When he finally awoke, the sun was fully in his eyes. “Mmmm,” he buried his face in the bag. He had no desire to come out, but of course, now he could not get back to sleep, not to mention nature’s call.

  He sat up, still in the bag. All he could see was the rim of the volcano. He sat there for a long time and finally began searching for the zipper.

  There were several others in the mess tent. Some looked like they had just arrived. Man, did I look that rough last night? He did not want to think about it.

  After breakfast, he went looking for Fitz. He went inside one of the other buses. It looked like a command post. A couple of men looked up but did not ask him to leave. He wandered over to a screen.

  What? There were two images of the mountain: one plan and one profile. There were dots at various places on the mountain, with labels next to them bearing the names of the individuals. They had been tracking us all the time. How?

  He looked for his name. It had been moved to a column on the side. On the other side was a longer list of names. Were these the people who did not make it? He looked up.

  “Excuse me,” Smith asked one of the men on the bus. “I’m trying to find Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  “Commander Fitzpatrick,” the man corrected. “The last time I saw him, he was up on the rim.”

  “Thanks,” He turned and left.

  Denver looked around and quickly found a figure standing up on the rim. He headed off. Fitz heard him coming and turned around.

  “Morning,” greeted Fitz. You look better than you did last night.”

  “Thanks, I’ll feel better with a shower.”

  “Don’t have that up here.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Fitz turned back and looked through his binoculars. “A few more should make it by this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Yes. Some just kept coming, while others hunkered down for the night to get some rest, and should finish up today.”

  “Must have gotten cold.”

  “It did, but some think it’s better to ride it out. They take the slow and sure approach. With others, it’s a sprint.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a sprint.” Fitz did not answer. “You were monitoring us all the time. Was it in the belts you gave us?”

  “Yes. You found the command vehicle I take it?”

  “Yeah, nice setup. Why didn’t you let us know you were tracking us?”

  “This is a mental exercise. Unless you have some physical problem we cannot fix, we can train the body. However, a human being is more than the physical man, more than just the brain, more than work and computations. That mind, soul, mental toughness, or whatever you want to call it, has to be there already. That we can’t fix.”

  “What about the dead guy? Why didn’t all the testing find his problem?”

  “Well, it’s all done with computers, calculations, and algorithms. Even then, we have to make certain assumptions. In the end, you don’t really know where to draw the line. He might have lasted a long time in a desk job.”

  “Yeah, but you had a great picture of my heart. Couldn’t you spot his problem before he had a heart attack?”

  “It wasn’t a heart attack.”

  “No, what then?”

  “Aneurysm, you see, we can’t be absolutely sure when a vessel will burst. I mean we can make pretty good guesses, but no one can know to 100% accuracy how much someone can take.”

  “How good a guess can you make?”

  “Oh, I’d say 95 maybe 99%. However, the thing we cannot measure is what is inside you. That’s the thing we’re testing here.”

  Both men looked down the hill for a while without speaking. Finally, Smith spoke, “someone said you were a commander.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Commander.”

  “So, you are recruiting for some sort of military outfit.” It suddenly dawned on him that if someone did not want to join, he could just be left up here to die of exposure. He certainly did not want to walk back down that mountain.

  “Yes.”

  “I seem to remember something about getting all the answers once the test was completed.”

  Fitz exhaled slowly. “There are still people out.”

  “What do we have, a big formation and everyone gets all the answers at once?”

  “No, we tried that before. Group dynamics being what they are, the whole group quit, resulting in all that time and effort wasted. We don’t do that anymore. We bring everybody in, congratulate them, and pay them. Then each TAC officer will explain everything to each person or couple and make an offer, privately.”

  “So you are not planning on leaving us up here.”

  Fitz looked genuinely surprised. “No, we are not inhumane. We’ll take you back to your civilization and leave you there if things don’t work out.”

  “What if someone rats you out?”

  “Nobody will believe the stories they tell, and your governments already know some of the picture.”

  “Okay, I’ve completed your little hike, so how about you telling me what’s going on.”

  “We will just like I told you.”

  “Well?”

  “We want to control information until we can get everyone together at the same time.”

  “But you don’t want to tell us at the same time. I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t want you or anyone telling the rest before they are supposed to know.”

  “So, you are afraid I’ll go back into the mess tent and blab about everything.”

  “That’s pretty much it.”

  “Well, you are going to have to get used to trusting me at some point if we are going to be doing business together.”

  “You’re right of course. That’s not the only problem.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He turned back toward Denver, “I’ve put great stock in you. We don’t get many college professors.”

  “So you don’t want to scare me off.”

  “In a nutshell,” Fitz confirmed.

  “The other danger is pissing me off, and I’ll take my money and run.”

  “I guess that is a consideration I hadn’t thought of.” Fitz paused a long time. “What have you figured out already?”

  “You are recruiting for some sort of French Foreign Legion, or something only it isn’t, or you would not have to go through all this. Something for our government? No, they would do that themselves. Maybe you are working for the international banking cartel, and you plan to conquer the world. Except they already own or control most of it. So that’s out.”

  “All very logical, given the information you have and reasonable conclusions. Only it isn’t. I already told you who we are.”

  “Are you trying to expand your numbers? Are you in danger from the world’s governments? I already told you; I will not do anything against our republic.”

  “No, that damage has already been done by the bankers, war profiteers, and corrupt elitist politicians.”

  “I figured as much. You don’t mind if we still fight for the concept of free human beings living their own lives for themselves and not serfs to some establishment. Now the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  Fitz put down his binoculars and looked at him. “Okay, the truth and nothing but. You’ve heard of Roswell, and all that sort of thing haven’t you? The Army Air Corps reported the crash of a spacecraft, then retracted the story.”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  “Well, it’s true, some of it at least.”

  “Uh…, beg your pardon.”

  “You remember about our technology being so advanced, right?”
<
br />   “Yes.”

  “You see, we made it to the Moon long before you did. In fact, one of your people even wrote a book about it. Something like, Somebody Else is on the Moon, or something to that effect.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Most people haven’t. Nobody really paid it any attention. You see, as I explained, we don’t bother the world’s governments, and they don’t bother us. Oh, every now and then they take a pot shot at us, but we manage to avoid them, at least, most of the time.”

  “Okay, but other than world conquest, which I don’t want any part of, what do you need an army for?” asked Smith.

  “While we were out there exploring and colonizing the solar system, we discovered another race of beings.”

  “What? You mean like little green men.”

  “They’re not green.”

  “Oh boy. I had really hoped you were building a private army to fight terrorists or something.”

  “No, we wouldn’t even worry about something like that.”

  “Do your spacecraft work like your flying buses?”

  “No, we used nuclear rockets at the time.”

  “Nuclear rockets, you mean spewing out radiation?”

  “Goodness no; have you ever heard of NERVA?”

  “Who?”

  “Not who, what. It stands for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications. Your government built such an engine, but fortunately for us, the project was canceled.

  They are much more effective than your modern chemical rockets.

  “The propulsion for what you call, ‘flying buses’ is theirs. We built them, though. We have adapted certain things from their technology to our needs.”

  “Certain things?” inquired Denver.

  “They’ve not given us everything?”

  “Would you give the human race really advanced technology that would make you vulnerable knowing what we tend to do with it?” Denver asked.

  “No, probably not.”

  “How did you meet them?”

  “They intercepted one of our deep space missions and made contact about twenty-five years ago. We’ve been slowly building a relationship with them.”

  “I would like to believe this, but it is pretty far-fetched. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s say all this is true. Great, you are part of some secret society, and you’ve been colonizing the solar system. Sounds like fun, I might even like to join you. I’ve become persona non grata around here. That still doesn’t explain why you would go through all this trouble to recruit an army.”

  “Ah yes, that’s where the story gets a little sticky.”

  “You mean it gets worse. You’ve already asked me to suspend quite a bit of disbelief.”

  “Like I said, we’ve been slowly getting to know each other for about a quarter of a century, and everything was going along quite well. We even went on some joint missions into deep space,” said Commander Fitzpatrick with visible pride.

  “Deep space?”

  “Well, they’ve only started exploring this spiral arm of the galaxy. They even found a couple of other star systems with life, one of which had intelligent beings, primitive but showing encouraging signs. So we threw in with them, and sent some of our people out to explore with them.”

  “You guys were the first intelligent technologically advanced beings they ran into?” enquired Denver.

  “Right. It was going quite well for a couple of years, till one of our joint missions didn’t come back.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They sent out a rescue mission, only to find that it had been destroyed. Some of our people and a couple of theirs managed to escape and hid out until rescue came.

  “When they told their story, nobody wanted to believe them. You see, they had been attacked by, I guess you would say some sort of warship.”

  “You mean like in the movies?” asked Denver incredulously.

  “Well yes. Obviously, this was a new problem for them.”

  “Obviously.”

  “These people, only they’re not people, are a very old race of beings. Most of the wildness, the thing that lets someone survive in harsh or changing conditions has been sort of lost to them.

  “That’s where we come in. Humans are good at evaluating threats and doing something about them. We’ve sort of become important to them, not that all has been without problems.

  “They have a constituency that has been opposed to interaction with us from the beginning. However, now they need us, and we need them. If this other race of beings had found us first, we would have been destroyed and enslaved if anyone had survived.

  “You see we have a nice world here, and most of the galaxy, or at least of what we know of it, isn’t so nice. You with me so far?” Fitz paused to ask.

  “Well, I’d feel better about this if we were having this conversation in a bar on the Moon. That way I’d know you were not blowing smoke at me. You know, making me out to be chief among idiots. Maybe you are working for the government. I’m supposed to go back, tell everyone this story, and make myself look like an idiot in order to discredit the work I’ve been doing, you know trying to save my country and all that.”

  “A reasonable supposition, I suppose. I’ll have to see what we can do about that. In fact, I wonder if that would help our recruitment. We still get a pretty good dropout rate at this point, just as we have identified the best candidates.”

  “Well, that would do it for me, as long as it met my baseline criterion. Why don’t you go on? What happened to your men?”

  “Of course, they mounted a major investigation, sent probes and tiny spy ships. What they found was terrifying. You see they had run right into a young and terribly violent race. After destroying our exploration vessel, they had access to advanced technology.

  “You see, this new species had been so bold as to launch out across the stars in nuclear-powered vessels. Of course, these were colonization voyages. They would take hundreds of years to complete such voyages.

  “They had only colonized three or four star systems until they ran into our guys. But now, they are moving into our friends’ territory, destroying anything and everything in their path,” concluded Fitz.

  “So, you and your friends had delivered to them the technology to destroy us, and now you are going to tell me that we are in danger too.”

  “It’s probably only a matter of time till they reach Earth.”

  “So, why don’t your super advanced friends just use their superior technology to whip ‘em good?”

  “Why indeed? I guess you could say that they have gotten too sophisticated for their own good.”

  “Huh?”

  “They’ve developed a real problem with killing.”

  “I’m not that fond of it myself,” responded Denver.

  “Yes, and that’s good, but you probably could if you had to. Most of them cannot. So far, they have been able to bring themselves to destroy the Reptilians’ technology, but make every effort to let the enemy live, something the Reptilians see as weakness. You don’t need me to tell you what happens when a predator senses weakness in prey.”

  “So, that’s what this is all about. You need a human army of killers.”

  “Human defenders, if you please. Only some of our friends, those who know us best, are supporting this plan. The whole thing could blow up in our faces. They are also worried about what we will do with this technology. Will we conquer our own world, or threaten them. So, as you can see, they’ve got a real problem and not much time in which to solve it.”

  “If you are not nuts or playing me for a fool, then we need to get down on this, like now. Can’t you make them see this? What about the Earth’s governments?” questioned Denver. He could feel a tingle of excitement in his chest as he realized that he almo
st hoped the story was true.

  “They are even worse. No, if we contacted the world’s governments, the whole deal would be off. Believe me, we’ve had a full-time job convincing our friends that we are not like Earth’s nations, and we’ve been working on it for 25 years.”

  “Wow, I can see your problem. So, you’ve got some support for a human army. How do they know you will not just turn it on them?”

  “That is precisely the argument that some of them are making. You see how your own government argues over the slightest thing and cannot ever seem to get anything important done. If they do, they change administrations or your congress changes hands, and the whole thing is screwed up.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that.”

  “Well, these people are even worse.”

  “Oh boy. By the way, what do they call themselves?”

  “You can’t pronounce it. Don’t worry I can’t either. The closest translation would be something like ‘The People’ or ‘The Sentient Ones’ something like that.”

  “What do you call them?”

  “Greys.”

  “Greys?”

  “Yeah, because of the way they look. You know big heads and eyes, not much chin, tiny little bodies,” added Fitz.

  “You mean like some sort of UFO thing?”

  “You heard of them.”

  “Well, I mean, I’ve seen that sort of thing on TV, makes great entertainment, but not much else.”

  “Yes, and the world’s governments have done a great job of making anyone who believes in such things look like an idiot. While privately, they’re desperate to find out what‘s going on.”

  “If they made contact, it wouldn’t help your ‘Captain Nemo’ Clan either.”

  “Captain Nemo?”

  “It’s from an old novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. You guys sort of remind me of the people in the novel.”

  “I’ll have to look into it. Anyway, that’s true, but there isn’t much we can do about it either way. Now back to our problem. We got permission from our leadership, and begrudged acceptance from the Greys, to put together a surface fighting force. We are working on technology which we believe will make a formidable fighting man.”