Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  “That purple light hurts the eyes,” the Red Guard stated. “They should just go away and leave us be. If not for the foreigners here, we would have been fine. Dirty and stinking people bringing their…” he stopped midsentence.

  “The Jellies would have come here no matter what,” I stated simply. “Our job is to keep the population here safe. If a Jellie gets within range of the grenade launcher, plant a few rounds on it. Discourage it from getting any closer, and keep the strobes going.”

  “Right.”

  I wondered how long that Red Guard would remain at his post if the Jellie approached, but we had no one else to replace him with. As I walked away, I knew I had to go see if the amvex grenades were going to be effective. We had not received anything more via the gravity conduit, and I checked that every day. I also sent in frequent requests to MC001, and all I got back were terse statements like, “Situation acknowledged.”

  I reached the barrier wall, and stated to climb over it.

  “Kalju? What? Why? Where are you going?” the Red Guard asked. His voice carried shock and surprise.

  “Do you want to go see what that Jellie is doing?” I answered, but did not look back.

  The moat had been completed for a few days, but I did not have it filled with flammable materials like the LT had desired. I was unsure what her plan for that was, and I had reassigned the engineering automacubes to building a new hospital to care for the wounded. I slipped down into and then back up out of the moat. My armored spacesuit had a full charge, and I had all five of the amvex grenades. Heading into the woods, I shut off my own helmet’s flashing strobe light. I wanted to use stealth and be covert in my approach. The large strobes from high on the poles still blinked their stabbing white light into the woods, but the shadows got deeper the further into that forest I pressed. I got as close to the wall at the end of the habitat as I could. That limited the direction from which a Jellie might attack, but also inhibited my own options for fleeing. I took that gamble. With my exterior microphones on maximum, and my faceplate’s filters set to mitigate the purple glow, I could perceive the woods. They were too quiet and far too still. No animals, or birds, or even insects were anywhere close by. I came upon an egress point which would lead out of the habitat and into the shell. It was showing a red negative-function indicator and when I checked closer, it showed vacuum beyond it. I knew I could probably enter there, being I was in the armored spacesuit, but the consequences for the biome would be devastating. If those corridors and hallways were open to space, depressurized and cold, the effect of forcing that door open would be catastrophic.

  I pressed onward, toward where the glowing purple showed the Jellie to be located. The woods were still bizarrely quiet. I found out why. Underneath a copse of blue spruce trees, I found a large pile of dead animals. Deer, groundhogs, racoons, along with several of the small kind of monkeys which lived in Queen but not in Kansas. There was even at least one human in that pile. He was an older man with gray hair, both his arms were missing. I nearly cried when I saw that man. I did not rummage through that pile, what use would that have been? The pile of bodies made me sick, but not surprised. They had been haphazardly tossed there, and on the top of the pile was a fluffy white dog. Well, it had once been white and fluffy. Now, its white fur was stained and its body was broken.

  “I hate it when they kill dogs.” I wanted to spit, but my armor was sealed and secure. Instead I swallowed down, and ground my teeth. The movement of my jaw resulted in some undesired menus being activating on my pop-up display, so I shunted them off.

  I patted the amvex grenades and moved onward. Sneaking along, I carefully made my way closer to where the purple light was glowing. Something, a Jellie most likely, had crushed down the foliage, making a trail through the woods. I looked for ways to slither and sidle around the trees, shrubs, and bushes. My brown armored spacesuit was not much for camouflage, but I used as much stealth as possible. I moved quietly, carefully, and slowly.

  I reached a point where there was a large oak tree. The local people called these oak trees, “Sully Trees” but I had no idea why. It had about a two-meter diameter trunk, so I could hide behind it. I extended out my armored hand, and connected in a camera aperture from my fingertip. The view was somewhat indistinct, due to the glow of the purple light, the filters on the camera, and the overall fuzziness which the Jellie projected. Nonetheless, I set my suit to record all that I was seeing through that lens.

  The Jellie was standing in an area where trees had been smashed and cleared out. This one was more round than oblong like some of the others had been. It had two tentacles which were manipulating some kind of dark blue device that had been anchored into the ground. The device consisted of rod-like things which were about half as tall as the Jellie and arranged in a cone with its wide end up. The tip was twisted like a screw and had been augered into the dirt. As the Jellie did something to that blue cone, a white globe sort-of plopped out from the side of the Jellie and slid underneath that dark blue device. That whiteness disappeared and the object was hidden.

  My vibration monitors started to alert in my helmet. Somehow, back under the town of Nuwa, the vibrations were happening again.

  “Bombardment,” I said to myself. Then I clicked the transceiver and sent a wide message. “Incoming bombs! Seek shelter!”

  The top of the blue cone lit with a deep red glow and there was a flash of white. The thing streaked away. I almost doubted I had seen anything. Then all that was left was the irritating purple light of the Jellie.

  “Kalju! There was an explosion at a food warehouse,” one of the Red Guard reported. “Two dead.”

  “Understood,” I replied.

  I set the amvex grenade for a large explosion, and a timer of two minutes. I hoped I could sprint for four or five hundred meters in that time, but through the woods I was unsure. I knew the trees would absorb some of the blast. I wondered how much, and what effect the amvex would have. I just could not let the Jellie shoot off another of those bombardment things.

  I stepped out and heaved the amvex. The trajectory looked perfect. I turned and sprinted away, trying to keep the large oak tree between me and the Jellie. The timer was clicking down in my helmet’s display. It felt like the longest two minutes of my life up to that point. A myriad of questions raced through my mind. “Would the Jellie see my attack? Would it somehow disarm the amvex? Would I get out of the blast radius? Would the Jellie flee before the amvex exploded? Would that tough carapace of the Jellie withstand the amvex’s maximum power?”

  As the timer reached ten seconds left, I had covered three hundred meters of distance. I threw myself down to the ground behind a grove of evergreens. I then felt sorry for the huge oak tree which would absorb the blast.

  Three… two… one…

  Kablammmm!

  Debris drizzled down over me. It was mostly parts of trees, and dirt, but several chunks of still glowing carapace also fell nearby. I jumped up and rushed back toward where there was now no longer any glowing purple. The mighty oak tree was striped completely free of all but the thickest branches. The bark on that tree’s side which was toward the Jellie was also missing. In the cleared area, the Jellie carapace was split into several large chunks, the biggest of which was like a bowl which still held some of the vile brown sludge—I was thinking more and more of that brown gunk as the Jellie’s native environment—which was also scattered all across the clearing. I rushed over to the segments of carapace, and saw that the Jellie inside had also been ripped apart. Its long and ugly stem, with its sharp hook was shredded. Tentacles pieces were scattered about, and the dome-like top of the Jellie was split and ragged along its edges.

  “Die! Die, you murderous scum!” I yelled.

  The bombardment device was nowhere to be seen. It might have disintegrated in the amvex blast.

  “MC001. Essential update. Amvex grenades effective at maximum setting. Jellie kill confirmed!” I sent in via the command channel.

  “M
essage from MC001. Information received and catalogued.”

  “That is it?”

  There was no further reply.

  A white whir sped past me and an icy explosion struck the remains of the big oak tree. I looked over and saw several purple glows moving in the woods coming my way from the opposite direction of the town. My position was exposed. I flipped on my own strobe lights and took off. Concealment was no longer a concern, and I wondered if the strobes from my helmet might be as irritating to the Jellies as their own purple glowing light was to unprotected human eyes. I sprinted away, toward the town. As I ran I pondered leaving behind me another amvex grenade, on a timer, but I was not sure which route the pursing Jellies would take, and did not want to waste any of the only truly effective weapons I had.

  The small white icy blasts kept hitting near me, but none actually struck me. Trees were shattered, and furrows were dug into the ground, but I rushed through the woods. I considered that perhaps the bombardment explosions were just an enlarged and enhanced version of the icy blasts which the Jellies were using against me now.

  “I am coming in on the barrier wall. Do not shoot me!” I commanded on all channels.

  As I emerged from the woods, the more intense strobe lights set on the poles washed over me. I sprinted as fast as I could, dove into the dry moat, and with my bullpup in hand roll over and looked back.

  Nothing was following. I could see no more purple glowing.

  “Give me a report from the barrier wall. Is there any Jellie activity?” I asked.

  One of the Red Guard responded, “Not nearby. Off toward the center of Queen I saw some purple glow moving away. Nothing now.”

  “MC001? I am sending in a visual recording of the effectiveness of the amvex grenade,” I relayed.

  “Message from MC001. Information received.”

  “What is the status of the Marathon? When can we expect help? What should we do?”

  “Message from MC001. Maintain current status.”

  And so, it went on. Intermittently, the bombardment would happen. I watched for opportunities to take the battle to the Jellies, but they did not reveal their positions. The bombardments followed a similar pattern. We would get a brief warning from the vibration monitors, and then a few explosions would happen in the city. I knew the Jellies were somehow lobbing those explosives in, but they came so fast that they were not observable. The most explosives in a single bombardment barrage was eight, and the least was when a bombardment came as only a solitary explosion.

  Anxiety was always high, but the town sort-of settled into a routine. We still had water, pulled from our swimming pool reserves. The town people had built up some rain water collection systems which added to our fresh water supply, by channeling the rain into cisterns. We still had adequate food stores, and some of the houses in town had vegetable gardens which supplemented the stored food.

  After about six weeks, several Red Guard and about fifty people from the general population told me they were leaving the town and heading for Sheba. They were convinced that help was waiting there, or that they could escape into the habitat’s shell, or that there were better Marathon Defense Forces there, or something else. They believed various stories despite what I had seen, and the fact that there had been no contact with anyone there. They needed hope, and I guess false hope was better for them, than no hope at all.

  It was a test of my leadership, and I just let them go. I made sure the two Red Guard soldiers were fully equipped with ammunition and basic grenades. I did not give them any of the remaining amvex grenades. None of the vehicles that had been in Nuwa were functional, as they had all been used in building the barrier wall, but I did let that group take several transport automacubes. That limited our vibration monitoring network, but it allowed that group to have something to carry all the food and water supplies they might need. The two Red Guard both promised to find a way to get word back to us, and I hoped they would.

  The morning they left was the last time I ever saw them.

  The bombardments continued, and some people died. Never again did we get a chance at attacking bombardment launchers, as the few times we saw the purple glow from the Jellies they were too far away to safely approach on foot. Yet, the Jellie bombardments were still able to explode in our midst. No matter how we plotted out where the explosions took place, the impact sites seemed random. We did build some reinforced underground bunkers, and most people began to sleep in those sublevels. We tried to go deeper and find a way to escape there, but we could not get access below the second sublevel down. The elevators refused to descend, and the stairway doors were sealed. As I personally checked on those, each one showed that beyond the sealed bulkhead and pressure doors, there was only vacuum and depressurized corridors. It was disheartening.

  After three months, we were losing more people to suicides than to the bombardments. There were also people who just disappeared. I guess they thought going over the barrier and trying to find somewhere else in Queen was better than staying trapped in the ruins of Nuwa. One of those people did come back. His name was Patmal.

  “Kalju! We have a man coming toward the barrier wall,” one of the remaining Red Guard announced.

  I raced to that location, which was near the gate.

  “May I please come back in?” Patmal asked. His clothing was in tatters, and he was limping.

  “Oh course! Open the gate!” I commanded.

  The gate rolled back, and Patmal stumbled through the dry moat and walked back into town. I sat him down, gave him water and food, and listened to his story. I was unaware he had even left, as his family and friends did not report it.

  “I left a week ago. I slipped over the wall during the day, and thought I would just go back to our family farm. It is by Lake Four, and I just had to get out of here.”

  “What did you find?” I encouraged him to go on.

  “Nothing. There is nothing living out there. Lake Four is dead. Just brown sludge. I saw no animals anywhere. Nothing. No people, no birds, no life. Even the trees around the lake were all withered and dead. Vast stretches of what had been grassland, where our dairy cattle grazed, is now just dried up desert. It is a wasteland. We are all that is left in Queen. We are doomed.” He cried for a long time.

  His family came and led him away, but I did not know how to give him any hope or reassurances. I think word spread about what Patmal had seen. The disappearances dropped off, but the suicides increased. Many of the bodies were incinerated, but we also started out doing weekly burial services at a ranch not far outside of the barrier wall. That had been a dairy farm with some acres of crops. The crops were long dead. The engineering automacubes served us well to make graves out of that former cropland. I insisted that the families say their goodbyes and do their memorial and religious services at the barrier wall gate. Then two Red Guard and I supervised the burial of the bodies. We were never attacked on any of those burial details, but the threat was always present. After a few months, we had to increase it to two burial trips per week.

  I gave up hope for more advanced weapons coming through the gravity conduit, as no more amvex grenades arrived, and only sporadically did we get other equipment. My requests for help from higher levels in the MDF were always answered by MC001 with dismissive comments.

  Months passed by. We filled an acre of that ranch with bodies. We shifted the slit trench latrines several times, but that solution could not go on indefinitely. We were living in what was becoming and increasing unsanitary town. Above ground were the ruins of Nuwa. Virtually every house and structure had some level of damages. Below ground we had moved as much of the food supplies, the sleeping quarters, the medical clinic, and the nursery. Fortunately, the power was still connected, so our armor was working. Additionally, we did have as some basic services for the general population. Had the power not been working, the strobes on poles would have not worked, and I am convinced that the Jellies would have just stormed into Nuwa.

  About nine months
after the LT died, the first brown rain came. I knew then we had reached a breaking point.

  Oh, I guess I never told you about living for months in an armored spacesuit. Obviously, I did not spend each and every moment in the armor, but it sure felt like I did. I would take it off every day for a short period. I used that time for cleaning, maintenance, inspection, and recharging. I also used that time to clean and groom myself, which involved keeping my hair short, and using sanitizers. At that time, I had not pressed the armored spacesuit to its design limits, but I sort-of thought I had. A person can stay in one of the armored suits almost indefinitely, as long as energy can be resupplied to the suit. Recycling of wastes into water and a food source is roughly ninety-four percent efficient, if not particularly tasty. So, some external food and water eventually becomes necessary, but that take a long time. Well, anyway, when the brown rain came, I knew something had to change.

  Both our major water supplies were exposed to the rain. One swimming pool was already uncovered, and the one in the exercise complex was vulnerable since the roof of that complex had been severely damaged. Also, all our cistern collectors were funneling water into storage. When that brown toxic rain came, our water supply was ruined. Our filters could not handle the removal of those toxins.