by Clark Graham
“You won’t be here long,” the boy next to him said. He was shorter than Zedra and had rust colored hair. He had a bandage around his head and wore tattered clothes.
“What?” Zedra asked.
“You won’t be here long. Soon that door will open and twenty guards will come in. They will lead out twenty to thirty of us at a time. I don’t know where they will take us, but it should be soon. When they opened the door and let you in, I thought it was them and they were going to take me this time.”
“How often do they come in?”
“About every hour. In between times they throw more of us in here. There were over three hundred at one point, but now there’s a lot less.”
“What happened to your head?” Zedra asked.
“They tackled me and I fought them. Didn’t do me much good; more came and shackled me. I’m Tedric by the way, from Lanston.”
“I’m Zedra. Lanston, that’s on the west coast. I thought that they were only attacking the east coast.”
“Hundreds of ships came down in the night. The army assembled as fast as they could but the enemy seemed to know their every move and sent those airships to bombard them. The army was in full retreat, the last I saw.”
“What about the reserves? Were they attacked?”
“The reserves are safe and sound in the mountains. They can last there for years; even those ships cannot blast their way through solid rock.”
Zedra breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good, my brother is in the reserves. Wanted a few extra dollars. He is lucky he joined, he’s still down there. My mother died, my father was captured and I have been kidnapped. He will find he has no family if he ever goes home.”
Tedric nodded his head. “I wasn’t home when I got captured. I don’t even know where my family is.”
The door opened and twenty of the dark uniformed soldiers came into the room. The lights were turned on brightly. The prisoners were squinting as their eyes adjusted. “You two come with me,” one of the guards said as he got to Zedra and Tedric. The boys stood up and were led away along with twenty others.
They were led through a door into an area that was twice as big as the dancehall at home. It had tables at one end with men sitting on the other side behind computers. The guards had the boys line up facing one of the tables as they were processed.
When Tedric got up to the table the man behind it said, “Name?”
“Tedric.”
The man typed in the name and out spit a name plate. He then undid Tedric’s handcuffs and leg irons. After handing him the name plate he said, “Keep this with you always. Failure to do so will get you punished. Put your hand on the pad.”
There was a dark square pad on the table. When Tedric put his hand on it the pad changed color to a light blue. When he took his hand back it went back to black. “Go sit down in the blue section. You will be assigned to Admiral Kezorn in the borderlands. He is always asking for more men.”
It was Zedra’s turn so he walked up to the table as best he could with the chains on his feet.
“Name,” the man demanded.
“What possible use would you have of my name?” Zedra decided not to cooperate.
The thin, balding man sitting at the computer just sighed. “Another one of you; defeated yet arrogant. “
The man motioned two of the guards over and they stood on either side of Zedra, suddenly he felt the same intense energy that he had felt in the ship. It shook his whole body and made it tense up. The two guards held his arms so he did not fall to the ground.
When it was over, Zedra could barely stand. The two guards were still keeping him upright.
“Name,” the man said as if nothing had just happened.
“Zedra.”
“Put your hand on the pad.” Again the pad turned blue and then went back to black.
After the name plate spit out of the machine the man gave it to one of the guards instead of Zedra. “Do not unchain this one until he is in the blue section. He is trouble, he is.”
“Yes, Sir ,” the guard replied and they led Zedra to a corner of the arena where a lot of chairs had been set up. There was a blue square painted on the wall. When they sat him down they undid his chains, handed him the name badge and left him there.
Tedric came and sat by him, “nothing like doing things the hard way, is there?”
Chapter Ten
West Coast of Santeria
General Dermal watched the approaching dark shaped ships with interest. He was near retirement and his hair was silver gray under his helmet. The general had worked his way up from enlisted man, something that was nearly impossible. He had made a lot of political connections along the way; that was why he had been promoted to head of the army.
He had hoped that the aliens would attack the mountains and be stopped there, but they had bypassed them and now they were flying low and starting to offload troops. It was his worst nightmare come true. He knew from the reports he had been given that the enemy wore body armor that his guns could not penetrate, except those units equipped with the old rifles. Those rifles could penetrate the armor, he was told.
Suddenly green flashes of light appeared out of the wingtips of the enemy ships. Corresponding explosions shook the ground. Dermal ducked down and took cover from the blasts. The enemy started running towards his newly shattered defense lines and gunfire erupted out of the bunkers. The gunfire was answered by more green flashes, both from the ships and the enemy on the ground. Bunkers were torn open by the blasts and his men started giving way to the invaders.
The general saw that further resistance was futile. He grabbed the nearest radio. “Pull back. All units retreat towards the mountains.” The bunker he was in exploded and he was hurled through the air for ten feet. When he hit the ground, he lost consciousness.
The battlefield was still smoldering when Acting Commodore Revlov’s ship landed in the middle of it. Captain Pavvlek came up to him as soon as the door of the ship opened up. “Sir, the area is not completely secured. You should not have come down here yet.”
“I just wanted to see the glorious victory for myself,” the commodore replied. “This is like the war we should have been fighting in the first place, a set battle against the enemy defenses.”
“It does help that we know every move the enemy makes. Soon he will figure out that we can intercept his transmissions and when he does, the radios will go silent.”
“I don’t think he will figure that out anytime soon. Let’s hope not, shall we?”
“Yes. Sir .”
Revlov had had enough of the smell of smoke and burning flesh. He saluted Pavvlek and got back on board his ship. He had Lemkin send the good news to his commander. The ship took back to the sky and overflew the battlefield one more time before heading back to headquarters. Revlov was in a rare good mood.
Pavvlek looked around. His casualties had been light in meeting and defeating the major part of the enemy army. He knew that going from town to town was going to be the hard part. The locals would be around every corner and they were not as predictable as the army had been.
“Load the ships up. Leave their dead for the inhabitants to bury. It will give them pause about fighting us in the future,” he ordered his men.
Soon the captured and wounded of the enemy had been rounded up and put in ships. The ships took off and left the scene of devastation.
It was early afternoon before Dermal awoke. He saw the last of the enemy craft leave and he dared not move until they were all gone. He tried to stand but could not because of the pain in his left side. He groaned as he lay back down. Soon he heard footsteps approaching him and he thought that he had given himself away.
“Look, Edwis, it’s the general!”
Dermal looked up to see two of his men approach. “Are you hurt, Sir ?” Edwis asked.
“Yes, help me up.”
“Yes, Sir .” The two of them pulled up but the general let out a groan when they did.
“Y
ou are hurt, let’s set you back down,” Edwis said.
“No, keep pulling me up,” the general said through gritted teeth.
When the two men got him up he was grabbing his left side and could hardly breathe.
“Dar, he’s got busted ribs, what are we supposed to do about busted ribs? Your Dad was the doctor.”
Dar scratched his head, “oh yeah, he bound them up good and tight. Well, as long as they were not badly broken, that is. If they’re badly broken he bound them up loose so he wouldn’t push the ribs into the lungs.”
“Get some shirts off the dead. We will bind him up good and tight and hope they are not badly broken.”
Dermal looked at the two newcomers. They were both medium height. Edwis had brown hair, but Dar had jet black hair. Those with jet black hair were usually from the southwest coast. He watched the men scramble around collecting shirts, but made no effort to stop them. When they were done they tore a few of them into strips and then they came back and wrapped the general’s ribs. Surprisingly he could breathe easier.
“Must not have been badly broken, Sir, or you would be screaming right now.” Dar was smiling and proud of his work.
“Very good job, men. We need to get out of here as soon as possible. We will head toward the mountains.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir, I just wanted to point out something before we left. Well, that is, Dar and I were looking over the damage, Sir. The bunkers that were not occupied were not blasted by the enemy. It was only the bunkers that had men in them that they destroyed. It was like they knew right where we were, Sir.”
General Dermal was in horror at the implications of what was just said. The first line troops and all of the reserves had been sent to the mountains to defend there. It was the second line troops that garrisoned the bunkers on the plains. These bunkers were only partly defended. They were there in case the troops were driven off of the mountains. It was a second line of defense. The original planners never expected an enemy to fly over and bypass the mountains all together. Only part of the bunkers had been occupied to make room for the retreating troops.
“Is there a working radio around here?” the general asked.
“The one in the command bunker is destroyed, but it still has lights on it, so maybe that one works,” Dar replied.
The general made it back to the bunker and tried the radio. The case was crushed, but is still worked. “This is General Dermal. The enemy has intercepted all of our radio communication. Do not use the radio any longer, repeat, do not use the radios any longer.” There were a few replies to his message. He hoped his message would be heard so the whole army would know.
The general grimaced as he climbed out of the shattered bunker. “Well, soldiers, looks like we have a long walk ahead of us.”
Chapter Eleven
Country of Santeria
Mountains of Andrenees
The dark airship looked like it didn’t have any place to be as it drifted along the mountainside. The men watched it fly. It didn’t seem to fear any of their weapons and they felt helpless against it with just their rifles. The artillery team had other plans however. They had unstrapped their 75 pound canon, loaded it and aimed it at a spot that the enemy ship had flown over twice before. They were waiting and hoping it would do it again.
Greten couldn’t stand it any longer so he took aim at the craft with his rifle.
“Don’t waste your ammunition,” the voice from behind him said.
Greten turned to see his platoon leader, Lieutenant Morret, standing behind him. “Yes, Sir,” Greten replied. “What are they doing, Sir ?”
Morret had deep sunken eyes and dark hair. He had been in the army so long that he didn’t have a place he called home any longer. It had been a peace time army with little or no chance of advancement so most of the junior officers were middle aged. “They are mapping out our defenses and planning their attack. They have overrun both coasts and we are the only ones still around that defy them. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Do you think they will succeed?” Greten asked, concerned.
“I didn’t until our first army was totally defeated in about three hours time. Now I don’t know. They have capabilities that we have never even heard of.”
Greten shouldered his rifle. “Still, it would be nice to be able to fight back.”
“You will get your chance. Our regiment is being sent over to the other side of the mountains to try and rescue as many of the stragglers from the first army as possible. We head out first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Oh and by the way, I almost forgot, you are being promoted to sergeant.”
That made Greten smile. “Yes, Sir , thank you, Sir . It must be because of how well I peel potatoes. I don’t see any other criteria they could use.”
The Lieutenant laughed and said, “Keep up the good work.” As he turned to walk away the pop of a canon rang out across the mountains, followed by an explosion.
Both Greten and Morret turned to see the enemy aircraft attempt to gain altitude, but it had some of its flight controls blown off. They saw it flip over and crash.
A cheer went up from the seventy five pounder crew. Their officer screamed, “We got it.”
Morret knew that the opportunity to capture the craft would pass if he didn’t get his men down their right away. “Get down there men, to that craft.”
Two dozen men spilled out of their pill boxes and ran towards the enemy craft. They arrived there just as the door opened. The first enemy soldier pointed a weapon out of the hatch, but he was met with a hail of bullets. The man went down. After that hands raised in surrender poked through the hatch.
“Come out slowly, and no funny business, or you will be shot.” Morret demanded.
Slowly three more of the enemy emerged from the hatch with their hands up. “Please,” the last one said. “We have a crew member who is badly wounded. Can you help him? He is in the front.”
Morret sent three men through the hatch to retrieve the crew member. The other man who had tried to exit first was already dead. They also brought out five of the enemy’s weapons with them.
The Major had heard the commotion and came running down the hillside. “We need to get into that craft and explore it.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that, Sir. The enemy probably already knows it has gone down and will be on the way to take it back or destroy it. You probably don’t want to be anywhere around when they get here,” the lieutenant replied. “What we need now is reinforcements. All we have managed to do is stir up a hornets’ nest and more hornets are on the way.”
The Major nodded and patted the lieutenant on the shoulder. “Good thinking.” He ran back up the hill and sent runners to get more troops.
Morret sent the prisoners deep into the tunnels of the mountain so the enemy could not find them when they attacked.
The reinforcements arrived in time to see a dozen of the enemy airships flying towards them. One of the men who had gone into the ship handed the Lieutenant one of the enemy’s weapons. “I guess you can see if this does anything to those ships of theirs.”
Morret eyed the thing up and down, “I wonder how this works?” He aimed it down hill and pulled what he thought was a trigger. Nothing happened. He then hit all the buttons on the thing, and a small red light came on, he then pointed it down hill again and pulled the trigger. A flash of green came out of the end of the gun.
The major made his way over to where the Lieutenant was when he saw the flash. “What have you got there?” he asked.
“We captured some weapons. There is another one. You push this button on the base of it and when the red light comes on it is ready to fire.”
There was no time to practice as the enemy ships were on them by then. “Down, men,” Morret commanded. The men took cover just in time.
The enemy ships started out by strafing the hillside. Green flashes of light blew holes in pillboxes and rocks, but caused very few casua
lties as the men had taken cover deeper into the mountain. When the strafing stopped, the soldiers came back out to see some of the ships had landed and they were trying to attach cables to the downed enemy craft.
The whole hillside opened up on the enemy and many of them went down. The airships went to take off, but the major and the lieutenant opened up on them with their new weapons. The engine in one of the ships blew up, but the other four managed to get airborne.
“Take cover, men,” Morret yelled, and the men scrambled to safety.
The mountainside was again strafed. The ships didn’t land again, except for one that landed briefly to pick up the wounded and the dead of their crews. Then it took off, shooting the two crashed ships to pieces and then left.
Then soldiers came back from the cover of the caves. Morret pointed down to where the destroyed ships still smoldered. He looked at Greten and said, “Sergeant, take ten men down there to see if there is anything salvageable and then report back here to me.”
“Yes, Sir .”
The major called the medics down to care for the wounded, then turned to Morret. “We learned one thing today; the enemy isn’t invincible and he can be defeated.”
“Despite the cost, today was a good day,” Morret replied.
There was still one body in one of the ships and he had a weapon on him. It looked intact so Greten took it. Nothing else even looked familiar or useful. There were panels that were all shot up. What he could see was all in a different language. He then looked at the wingtips and was able to get the weapons off the tips of the wing. He had no idea if they were useful or not. Greten and his men brought all of those things back up to their commander.