Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  “Diffuse your team and spread out into adjacent passageways! Do not bunch up!” Senior Lieutenant Sharma commanded. “Pull the wounded back to the hanger bay.”

  My audio was now blinking “marginal” but it was working. I rushed forward, vaulting over the smoldering chassis of several automacubes. The corridor beyond was short and there I saw a splattering of oils, hydraulic fluids, and several scorch marks. My shots had missed.

  Lying face down, was half of one of the soldiers. I am not sure how he had gotten ahead of the automacubes, but there his remains were. Steam was coming from his savaged torso. The storage area had rows of stacked cargo crates, and my strobing lights flashed onto them causing a strange mixture of shadows. I adjusted the filters on my visual field, and the armor’s optics removed the strobing effect. The instrument icons on the display still showed the strobes were working, but my visual fields now were not so distracting. The suit was learning what I preferred. I could see some shades of purple glowing at the far side of the storage area. The display told me the far wall was three hundred meters away.

  The soldiers behind me spread out behind the cargo crates, and I holstered the enpol, and swung the bullpup up and pumped in a basic grenade. Firing that over the top of the cargo crates, I saw it make a perfect trajectory toward the purple glow at the far side. Several other trajectories joined it as my fellow soldiers followed my example. A moment later about ten grenades exploded almost all on the same targeted spot.

  “You two, take that far aisle, engage with enpols when you can!” I commanded. Those two soldiers sprinted off.

  I gestured and two more soldiers rushed ahead down the center aisle. “Keep your eyes open!” While I said that, I wondered if it was appropriate since we were watching everything through optical projections made on the inside of our helmets. It was strange to think that, at that precise moment, but I vividly recall asking myself if that figure of speech was proper.

  While part of my mind wandered down idiom avenue, physically I led the rest of the soldiers nearby around to the other side of the storage area. The aisles were large and wide, and we leapfrogged from one row of crates to the next, watching and waiting for a Jellie to appear in one of those spaces. We all had the enpols aimed and ready. Mine was set at medium, but from the potshots some of the other soldiers took while laying down covering fire, I knew theirs were set at maximum.

  “Sergeant Kalju! Enemy retreating out double doors,” someone reported. My helmet showed the soldier was named Jorgenson and was on top of the cargo crates, about twenty meters ahead of us. “I have some clear shots!”

  “Kill them for me, Jorgenson!” I barked.

  “Engaging!” Jorgenson called back.

  I sprinted forward, and came to where the grenades had detonated. The remains of about a half dozen cargo crates were there, along with their busted up and burned contents. Much of that area was on fire, and the flames were consuming whatever was combustible in those crates.

  Jorgenson leaped off the top of the crates, a height of about ten meters, and landed near the exit doors. She was still firing her enpol even while she dropped. She nearly fell to her knees with the impact of the landing, but wobbly kept her feet.

  Fire suppression foam came jetting out from nozzles in the ceiling, soaking down everything in that section of the storage area. The burning debris was extinguished but it still smoldered.

  “Shuttle departing with only some of the wounded. Hanger bay under concentrated attack!” Colonel Hayyon announced through a general-purpose call to all soldiers. “Fall back to protect the wounded who could not get to the shuttle. The blasted Jellies are inside the hanger bay, despite being depressurized and no gravity manipulation. I thought emergency decompression would crack their shells, the tough bastards! I am saving this shuttle, and the wounded while I can!”

  “Back to the hanger bay,” I commanded. “This was a ruse to lure us away! Hurry!”

  To Jorgenson and three others I said, “Stay here, set up an ambush. If those Jellies come back hit them with whatever you can, even set up an amvex if you can be safe from its effects.”

  “Right Sergeant!” Jorgenson stated. Her voice was eager.

  We rushed back the way we had come, passing the dead, the debris field of automacubes, and then some wounded soldiers. As we approached the hanger bay’s bulkhead doors, I saw the warning lights above them which indicated that the bay was depressurized. Several intact soldiers were guarding the door.

  “Where are the Jellies?” I demanded.

  “We did not see any on the way back but they might be inside the hanger bay. We cannot open this without risk of explosive decompression. No controls here are working.”

  I tried to access the hanger bay cameras through my displays, but nothing came on. It kept reading, “Link not found” which was troubling. So, I jacked a cable from my suit into an access port and ran a diagnostic on the hanger bay. It had zero gravity manipulation, was in vacuum, and was very cold. The exterior doors were open, one was canted at an angle which suggested there had been explosions of immense strength. All the docking clamps were open, indicating that the shuttle was probably gone. When I tried to raise Colonel Hayyon, I got no reply. The decks and bulkhead doors around the hanger bay were intact and pressurized. I assumed the Jellies were still inside the hanger bay, unless they had gone out into space after the shuttle.

  “Any officer! Any officer!” I called out on the command only circuit. “I am at the hanger bay, but its exterior doors are jammed open. I believe the enemy is inside, but that is unclear. No information on the shuttle, but it is not in the hanger bay. Please advise!”

  EEERRRRiiicccckkkkkEE!

  Again, that strange noise pierced through my audio system. I wanted to rip my helmet off to escape from it. When I looked at the soldiers around me, I understood they were not hearing that. So, I shut down the command channels, and switched over to the local general audio, as well as external microphone and speakers.

  “Soldiers, are you hearing me?” I asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant Kalju, but only through our trooper feed.”

  “Command links are down, disrupted. I cannot reach any officers. The Jellies are jamming us. The hanger bay is open to space, and I cannot get the exterior doors to close. None of the controls from out here are working. I assume the shuttle with the wounded got away. We need to retake this hanger bay. Bulkhead doors are all sealed. The enemy is probably still inside, protected by their carapaces. They need to die. I am open to suggestions,” I said.

  A soldier named Private Samuels spoke up, “The observation deck has a manual lever for an emergency containment curtain. Drop that ECC, and you can pressurize the hanger bay again. That lets us in, prevents the Jellies from escaping, but ruins the hanger bay for a while. More than a while, a major repair undertaking. With the whacking our engineering automacubes just took, that might be a very long time indeed.”

  I was trying to follow that information on how to get inside, when she continued.

  “Sergeant Kalju, the observation deck, which is just beyond this bulkhead door, has a pressure door from it to the bay itself. It automatically seals when the bay is depressurized. A safety precaution. It is not a bulkhead—so it cannot hold for long—but it should hold long enough if we pop the bulkhead door to the corridor here,” Samuels stated. “Evacuate everyone except me behind those pressure doors, then I override that bulkhead door. Two sets of pressure doors should hold against vacuum for a minute or two. Time enough to get in, shut that bulkhead door, and drop the ECC.”

  It made sense, but I added, “Good plan. But both of us go. If a Jellie is waiting inside that observation deck, or blasts one of us, the other can still get the job done. Everyone, back up past the pressure doors there. Make sure the wounded are in a safe location, with guards. Jellies are still around here somewhere. Samuels and I will get inside, and when the bay is re-pressurized, you all come and join the fun. Move people!”

  They obeyed my commands
.

  Samuels and I stood at that bulkhead door. She had a wall panel open, and had jury-rigged some energy circuits as well as connected in the manual override wheels. I again tried the command channels, but that horrible noise was still there. I snapped it off. Not only was that screeching causing my ears to hurt, it was genuinely making me enraged with fury. I knew being so angry would not let me make good and clear decisions, so I stuffed that anger down and calmed myself. It was hard to do. I again thought of that dairy farmer, and his request of me.

  “Ready to go Samuels?” I asked.

  “Yes!”

  “You go for the ECC controls, and I will shut the bulkhead door.

  “Yes!” Samuels sounded excited and enthusiastic.

  “Pop the bulkhead open!”

  She twisted one of the manual wheels, and then connected the spanner to flood the door with energy. The door moved about a third of the way open. I was rocked by a rush of air moving past me and into the observation deck. I knew the reactive armor was designed to serve as a spacesuit and was—theoretically anyway—more efficient than the old-style spacesuits, but I still had a moment of fear. Not much stood between me and the vast wasteland of space.

  Samuels quickly slipped past the bulkhead door, and I saw her floating beyond. There was a purple shade to the light in there, so I dove in, knowing I would encounter near zero gravity conditions. There was no Jellie on the observation deck, but the light was coming through the clear permalloy viewing window. Pulling myself around the doorframe, I pulled open the manual access panel and extracted the wheel. I spun it as fast as I could. The bulkhead door snapped shut.

  “ECC deployed!” Samuels yelped in triumph.

  A deep grinding noise rattled me. I drew out my enpol, flipped its settings to maximum and pushed off toward the pressure door which led to the hanger bay.

  “Pressurization happening! Seals look good!” Samuels reported as she floated by the manual controls on the workstation. “Gravity manipulation will come on shortly.”

  The pressure door snapped open as I reached for it, and the air flow buffeted me into the hanger bay. I kicked my feet against a side wall to avoid slamming into it and that took me upward quickly. There I saw four Jellies, floating in their carapaces. I aimed the enpol at the nearest one and fired.

  Zing.

  There was no recoil, thankfully. The beam of energy struck right in the middle of the Jellie. An orange glow spread out around where it hit. A mud-like brown hue appeared in a ring around that impact spot. I fired again.

  Zing!

  The burnt sienna colored ring grew larger as the second energy beam hit. Then a split happened, and brown globs began to bubble from inside the Jellie’s carapace. A white globe flashed past me and detonated against the wall to the side.

  Zing. Zing. Zing.

  Samuels was firing from near the doorway to the observation deck. Her impacts were on the same Jellie.

  Suddenly, I fell crashing down to the deck. That probably save my life, for just as I fell, several white icy detonations took place exactly where I had been floating. I have never been so thankful for a sudden initiation of gravity manipulation in my life. As I struck the deck of the hanger bay, I saw a different bulkhead door across the way burst open. Soldiers came pouring through, firing their enpols at the Jellies.

  I lost track of which Jellie I had fired upon first, as they were rolling about on the deck. Tentacles were whipping out and smacking the soldiers closest to them. Those soldiers were knocked around, but they were bouncing back into the fight quickly. Energy weapons’ fire zinged across the hanger bay, not always impacting the Jellies. A thruster fuel tank exploded in a brilliant yellow ball of flames, ignited as an energy bolt pierced a fuel hose at its top. Flaming shards rained down from above for a moment, and then fire suppression foam was squirted out from various places, making the whole scene look like a winter storm in Kansas. Well, except for the large purple glowing aliens, that is.

  I saw one of the Jellies had grabbed a soldier in its muscular carapace tentacles, and with another tentacle it had wrapped a coil about that soldier’s head and neck. The thrashing about was so rapid I dared not fire a shot, so I leapt over and straddled that specific tentacle. The vibration saws in both my gloves activated, and as I squeezed down on that tentacle, they cut through the glowing carapace. Brown ooze slipped between my fingers, as the coil came loose and the trapped soldier fell to the deck. The body was motionless after it struck. The truncated part of the tentacle writhed about and its purple glow faded, while the stump retracted back into the main body of the Jellie’s carapace. I put my enpol right against the side of the Jellie and fired.

  Kerbaaang!

  The enpol exploded in my hand, rocketing me up and away from the Jellie. Pain racked up my arm as if I had been cleaved with a huge, sharp blade. My reactive armor was shimmering all over with the powerful force it was trying to deflect. The visual displays flickered before my eyes as they were nearly overloaded. All color on the display was lost, and it reverted to a tertiary black-and-white system which kept my situational awareness and views intact, but lost all supplementary feedback and information. I crashed into the sidewall of the hanger bay, near some cranes which were folded against the wall. I then slumped down the wall as my armor dissipated the explosion. The pain in my hand and arm were horrific.

  Looking back toward the Jellie, which in my displays now looked a shade of light gray, I saw other soldiers backing away as the alien’s carapace split and the thing inside slithered out of that crack. A bullpup’s bark sounded as rounds hammered into the long organic stem with its curved spike. The organic tentacles flailed about in pain as the bullets ripped it to shreds. A soldier grabbed one of the bigger tentacles and yanked hard, and the Jellie itself flopped out of the broken carapace, surrounded by gushes of fluids. Again, with my damaged visual equipment it all showed up in shades of gray, black, or white. The dome at the top of the Jellie was riddled with bullets as others shot their bullpups into it.

  One Jellie was dead, but three more were fighting viciously. At that point, I thought the battle was ours to win! I tried to stand, and get back into the fight, but my legs did not respond. Warnings flickered all over my displays and then went off, and I was left with just basic visual and audio. White globes detonated against soldiers, and tentacles struck down hard sending soldiers recoiling away. I tried to bring my own bullpup into play, but my armor was still trembling and shaking with the remnants of the explosion.

  Someone appeared next to me, “Kalju? Can you answer me?”

  “Kill it for me!” I cried out. “Kill it for me!”

  “I am taking you out of here!” that soldier said with force. I looked at the helmeted head right before me, but it was only in shades of gray and black, and no name or information showed on my display. I could not tell who it was, just a soldier in reactive armor. “Put your arm around me.”

  “Go join the battle!” I commanded.

  The solder laughed a bit, “I am in battle. Saving my sergeant!”

  I tried to lift my arms up, but only one responded. Throwing that arm around the soldier, I was lifted up. I was thrown over a shoulder, and that was when I realized my own reactive armor was sealed off at the elbow of my right arm. The twisted, burnt, and steaming stump looked surreal, and I wondered how it had happened. My mind was whirling, as I looked down at my own armor. It just did not look right. I could feel my hand, but I could not see it. Errors were happening somewhere.

  “I have to kill the Jellies!” I cried out. “For Bartlet and Kulm and Brett. Wait? I have to kill them! I promised that milkman I would.”

  “Kalju, I have you. Shut up now,” the soldier replied. “Please, just shut up.”

  “Sorry Mister Fisher, sorry. Lazlo?” I was bouncing along but saw a Jellie carapace shatter under the combined strikes of several energy weapons and a basic grenade going off. This time the Jellie inside did not slide out, but instead several other grenades were launched r
ight into the cracks in its carapace shell. I think I heard it go boom, but I am not sure. My visual circuits were fading out, or was it my eyesight? Something was wrong. I thought I saw “Multiple system failures” flash across before my eyes, but maybe I imagined that?

  “Be out soon, sergeant!”

  “Bartlet, we need to get away from this island. The orcas,” I stammered, “they can talk to the Jellies. Those ocean guys…”

  I somehow saw the top of a bulkhead door pass by me, or I passed by it, I am not sure which.

  “Bartlet? I hate it when they kill dogs! I just hate that!” I was blubbering as I arrived in the corridor.

  “Right Kalju, so do I.”

  Then I heard a sound I never heard before. Ripping permalloy combined with a feral cat hissing sort-of describes that sound, but not really. With that sound came a brilliant pink light. My first thought was that my reactive armor was restored and the visual displays were working again. But why was it so luminously pink colored? I remember saying something like, “Mom? Dad? What is that pink light?”