Grunt Traitor

by Weston Ochse

  Dewhurst must’ve noticed the private conversation as well. “Ohirra, stop whatever you’re doing.”

  “You’re not in my chain of command,” she said.

  “The hell I’m not. This land you’re standing on belongs to the New United States of North America.”

  “Actually it belongs to God’s New Army,” Sebring said with a smile. “But we’ll discuss that later. So am I getting my suit or not?”

  Dewhurst put an EXO hand on Stranz’s arm, the gesture covering the sergeant’s chevron painted there. “Come on, son. Don’t listen to her. Your country needs you. It’s depending on you. She’s only in it for a profit. We’re in it for a future.”

  If my eyes had rolled any harder, everyone would have heard them. Still, I wanted to see how Stranz would respond.

  “First let’s get the HMID out here,” he said. “Moving it with the EXOs will be much easier.”

  Sebring nodded. “Indeed, it will.”

  Dewhurst and Stranz entered the store front, got behind the HMID, then pushed it through the broken window. The glass piled in front of the composite metal box as it was pushed into the parking lot. What would have taken a dozen men and rollers took the two EXOs hardly a minute.

  Stranz walked up to Sebring, who was beaming at the feat. “What do you think?”

  “I can’t wait to try it on. A suit like that—”

  His last words were choked off as Stranz put a hand around his neck.

  Ohirra shouted, her voice magnified through the speakers on her suit. “No-one move or he’ll crack Sebring’s neck.”

  My HUD was flashing as laser indicators bloomed from more than a dozen weapons, but no one opened fire.

  Stranz adjusted his grip so the man was facing forward, his back to the EXO, Stranz’s arm around his throat.

  Dewhurst took a few steps back. “What’s going on?”

  “Your plan worked, Major. Mr. Pink will be pleased,” Ohirra said.

  Sebring fought to speak. Finally, “Your plan?”

  Dewhurst shook his head. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. This isn’t any plan of mine.”

  Somehow Ohirra had orchestrated something right under my nose. While I admired her, I wished she would have brought me in on it. I reminded myself to have a conversation with her later.

  My HUD began tracking an inbound aircraft and identified it as a Chinook helicopter. A few seconds later, we could hear it.

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” Sebring managed to say.

  “No, he’s not,” I said. I directed Sula to perform her task.

  She removed the nuke from my back, then took off, running first out of the kill zone, then down the street. One of the men on the roof took a pot shot at her. Whatever. Even if it had hit, it wouldn’t have done any damage.

  “What are you going to do?” Dewhurst said. “Stop me?”

  That was exactly what I was going to do. I went from standing still to full run in two seconds, barreling into him and bowling him over. He tried to bring his minigun up, but I grabbed it with both hands and wrenched it back and forth. He hit me with his free hand, trying to dislodge me where I was straddling him. With a final yank, the minigun came free, in a shower of sparks and pops. With my left arm, I managed to grab the wrist of the hand that was hitting me. My right arm came down, using the minigun like a hammer, striking him over and over. I saw his faceplate crack, and his helmet start to collapse.

  Then a white burning sound surged through my brain, evaporating everything else. I fell back, losing track of my hands, my weapon, the universe. My world was white noise, layers of static on static on static. I barely felt myself being struck by something.

  Images began to flash through my mind—Mother, the aged Hollywood actress turned cultish survivor group leader. Was it her doing this? Was she psychic, somehow, and assaulting my senses? The images sped up—men, women, children, animals, Mother, men, women, children, animals, Mother, men, women—before crystallizing into a single image: a high school photo of Sandi. Last I’d seen of her, she’d been helping me out of the black alien vine. Could it be her?

  Sandi?

  The noise somehow got louder. More pain. I could barely think the words, Turn down the noise. Sandi, is that you?

  The blow that hit me felt like a Volkswagen had been dropped on me. I opened my eyes and saw that Dewhurst was now on top of me, bringing his minigun around for another hit. I managed to catch it with both hands. We strained against each other.

  Help me, like a lance through my brain.

  I brought my left knee up and simultaneously threw my might into my right arm, jerking him forward. He flew past me and I struggled to my feet, noting that Sebring was still in Stranz’s clutches beside the box. Mal standing off to my left, Sebring’s men in front of the car with their weapons trained on us, and the automatic weapons and claymore mines arrayed against us. The sound of the helicopter was closer: here to take away the box.

  Help me!

  Sandi, softer. For the love of God, softer.

  Help me! A shotgun firing against my nerves.

  I turned too late and felt Dewhurst crash into my back, sending me skidding across the parking lot until my chin rested against one of the mines. The words FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY were my entire universe until I managed to stand.

  “Sandi,” I said aloud, my focus not on Dewhurst but on Sebring. “You took her. You made her into one of them.”

  “Soldiers are easier. It takes less time. Makes less mess. Will you just let me go? I’m sure we can sort this out.”

  Help me, Mason, like I helped you. Gone was the pain, replaced instead by a deep fear... her fear.

  Sandi, what can I do?

  Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme...

  And there it was again. Just like Michelle.

  Dewhurst came after me. I waited until he was almost on me and kicked out, catching him on his hip. He spun and fell, his torso resting inside a storefront.

  I backed out into the center of the parking lot.

  “Sandi, where’s Thompson?” I said aloud.

  He’s here. He can’t talk to you. They wrote code to block you.

  I nodded. Just as they had with Michelle. Of course. For the plan to work, Thompson couldn’t be able to talk to me. Sandi either, for that matter. Did he erase your code? I blasted.

  Yes, but he can’t do his own.

  Sandi, can you?

  I don’t know how yet.

  How did you get here? I asked.

  GNA captured me after we dropped you off. They were waiting for me; they wanted to turn me into...

  I tuned her out as Dewhurst picked himself up off the ground. I was tired of this. It was time to end it. I already had yellow status warnings on my hydraulics. I probably had a leak somewhere.

  To Mal and Ohirra I said, “Get ready.”

  I stalked over to Dewhurst, still shaking the butterflies from his head. I reared back and punched his face as hard as I could, shattering the glass. I reared back and punched again, sending my fist through the soft tissue of his face. His nose collapsed, his cheekbones and jaw shattered. He could barely breathe. I stepped back, to let him suffer for a while.

  “You want an EXO, you can have this one,” I said to Sebring. Then to Stranz I said, “Kill him.”

  Stranz hesitated a moment.

  Sebring’s eyes shot wide just before a dozen rounds hit Stranz’s faceplate. Although they hardly did any damage, Stranz brought up his hands in reflex, releasing Sebring, who immediately ran towards his men.

  Son of a bitch.

  As much as I wanted to chase him down, we needed to get out of the kill zone. I dove into a storefront and ran around behind the tank. The hatch was open so the tank commander could watch our battle. Stupid. He dropped down when he saw what I was about to do, and managed to snap the hatch in place just before I leaped atop the tank from the rear. So instead of firing into the tank, I began looking for something to rip or break. But
other than an antenna, the only thing available was the 105mm barrel.

  Meanwhile Mal, Stranz and Ohirra dove into the storefronts nearest them, taking out surprised machine gun crews and destroying their guns. As I watched this unfold on their HUD feeds, I decided to try it with the tank. I climbed onto the front of the tank and grabbed the barrel with both hands. I don’t think anyone had taken the EXOs to their limits, but I was about to try. I put my feet on the turret, wrapped both hands around the barrel, and heaved backwards.

  Thompson told me to tell you something, Sandi said, like a machine gun rattling across the inside of my head.

  I grunted with exertion. Do you want to go ahead or am I supposed to guess? My arm servo indicators were flashing red. I dove into the diagnostics and saw that I’d breached and was losing fluid. Still, I kept hauling upward, using my legs to push away, even as I kept pulling.

  There’s a new kind of alien in the hive. Thompson’s calling it a Master, because it gives orders. He says you need to capture it.

  Was that a little give I just felt in the massive barrel, or had it been my imagination? My HUD was now screaming at me. I felt the turret begin to rotate and yanked with every ounce of power I had remaining. I was rewarded with the metal beneath my fingers bending four inches. If they fired, the round would never make it through. I tried to dive off the tank, but I never made it. The barrel exploded just as I launched myself. The force of the explosion hurled me through the air and through the drywall separating two stores. My arms dangled uselessly. Destroying the tank’s barrel had only succeeded in decimating my arm servos. It was pretty hopeless.

  “Did you blow the tank?” came Ohirra’s voice.

  “That I did.”

  I tracked the others through their feeds as I climbed to my feet. I needed to find the central control for the claymore mines. I wasn’t sure if one or two could hurt an EXO, but all of them going off at once sure could. My guess was on the roof, where the operator would be safe. I could either order one of them onto the roof, or we could un-ass this AO.

  Ohirra found me. According to my feeds, any members of GNA at ground level were either dead or dying.

  “Why are you standing that way?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

  “Arm servos busted.”

  “We’re a long way from tech support,” she said.

  “I’d shrug if I could.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Mal and Stranz, to me,” I said across the net. To Ohirra I said, “Let’s punch through the back and get out of here.”

  “What about GNA?”

  “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

  She tilted her head. “They’ll be pissed.”

  Stranz arrived, his EXO scarred with bullet trails.

  “That was a neat little trick,” I said to him.

  He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry about that, sir. The LT here thought it would be best if we kept it quiet until later.”

  “Yeah, about that.” I frowned as I glared at Ohirra.

  “You can dress me down later. Right now, let’s get out of here. Stranz, help Mal, will you?”

  I turned and saw that Mal had grabbed the EXO containing Dewhurst’s body.

  “What’s that good for?” I asked Ohirra.

  “Servos. Maybe we can fix your EXO.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Ohirra deployed her minigun and opened a hole through the back wall into the alley behind it.

  “Do me a favor and destroy the HMID,” I said. It was really mine to do, but without the ability to move my arms, I couldn’t do what Sandi wanted.

  “You’re right, we don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Yeah.” That would do for a reason. Sandi should have been out here with us instead of inside, butchered around a hundred cables. I wasn’t about to make the mistake of not killing one of them when they begged me to. I always paid.

  One more reason to hate Sebring and his GNA.

  One more reason to hate any organization.

  One more reason to love the idea of having these grunts by my side.

  I stepped through the hole and broke into an odd, loping run, my arms dangling uselessly. I heard the Hydra fire and watched in the feed as the HMID box blew. The explosion set off the claymores, creating a cacophony of fire and flying metal.

  Ohirra ran beside me.

  Mal and Stranz were behind her, carrying Dewhurst’s EXO between them.

  Everything was just fine. We made three blocks before my HUD tracked an incoming RPG round. Mal dropped his side of the EXO and ran to intercept it. The round struck his head at 295 meters per second and exploded, sending shrapnel flying in all directions. Mal’s chest and head were completely gone.

  Stranz found the source and sent Hydra missiles to the location.

  Then Ohirra picked up the other side of Dewhurst’s EXO and we ran on.

  Charlie Mike.

  Fucking Charlie Mike.

  Award Mal another fucking Soldier’s Medal.

  What you leave behind is not what is engraved on stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

  Pericles

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  WE CAUGHT UP with Sula and found a tire warehouse three miles east of the conflagration, where we went to ground. Someone had made a fort of tires inside. Against what, we couldn’t tell, but by the musty smell, it was evident that no one had been there for some time.

  Sula and Stranz took post while I clambered out of my suit. I was happy to do so. Running like an ostrich was surprisingly hard; I kept overbalancing. I wore nothing but a pair of toe shoes and Kevlar skivvies.

  Ohirra removed her EXO as well, revealing her hard physique. She pulled out a breathing mask from the compartment on the side of the EXO to keep her from breathing spore.

  We immediately went to task, reaching inside Dewhurst’s helmet to pull it free. I’d unlocked his system from my command module before I’d removed my suit, or it would have been impossible to get into it without gear we didn’t have.

  I sat back and gazed at the features I’d ruined with my fist while I queried my conscience. We’d broken bread together. We’d had drinks together. We’d been officers together, albeit he was a major and I a mere lieutenant. We’d survived an alien invasion. We’d both lost things and people we’d loved. We arguably had more in common than we hadn’t.

  So why didn’t I feel any emotion about his death at my hands?

  Because he’d been trying to force me to make a choice I would never make. He wanted me to ally myself with him over his fellow grunts. As much as I despised OMBRA and all it stood for, people like Mr. Pink understood about grunts and about what we do and how we do it. Dewhurst never really got that. He thought that some high ideal and far away government was more important than the people around him. Someone had sold him a load of faulty goods and he’d fallen for it.

  If there was one thing I knew—and I’d said it over and over—we might start out fighting for a cause, but in the end I’m fighting for the men and women to my right and left. I fight for them because they will fight for me. Dewhurst had made a decision not to fight for us, and in this new world of ours, that made him our enemy.

  I stood and helped Ohirra remove his body from the suit. We took it to the back of the warehouse and laid it out. No sense being disrespectful.

  “Do you think you can fix my servos?” I asked as we walked back. Both of us were feeling the cold and had goosebumps on our skin. We were aching to get back into the warmth and protection of the suits.

  “Not sure. Going to go scrounge some tools, then I’ll let you know.” With that, she left and began rifling through boxes and containers.

  I went to where Sula and Stranz were standing guard. Standing next to them in my skivvies made me feel extraordinarily small.

  Stranz was glowering at the world, while Sula was staring at the ground.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked Sula.

&nb
sp; She’d almost lost it over Mal’s death. Evidently, they’d been as close as brother and sister.

  “I’m holding.”

  I could see through her faceplate she’d been crying. “It happened so fast,” Stranz said.

  “It always does,” I said.

  “Why do you think he did it?” Stranz asked. “Giving his life like that?”

  Sula sighed. “It’s who he was. He never put himself first.”

  “Any one of us would have done the same thing,” I said.

  Stranz looked at me sharply.

  “Yes, Stranz, even you. I know beneath that knucklehead of yours that you’d do it. It’s in our DNA. We just can’t help it.”

  “What about Dewhurst?”

  “He wasn’t like us. He wasn’t a grunt. He was too much a dreamer.”

  Stranz lowered his head. “So you’re saying that it’s not okay to dream?”

  “Not at all. Dreaming is fine as long as it doesn’t interfere with the wellbeing of your fellow grunts. We can all dream of a better world, but then we’ll work together to achieve it. He dreamed of something in spite of us.” I clapped Stranz on the back. “You’ll be fine. And by the way, that was an Oscar-worthy performance back there.”

  Sula brightened momentarily. “It even fooled me.”

  Stranz’s wan smile fell as he shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t kill Sebring.”

  I shrugged.

  “He’s still out there. He’s going to want to kill us for what we did.”

  “He’s going to have to take a number, then.”

  I left them and went back to where mine and Dewhurst’s EXOs lay. Staring at them, I wondered what the next hours would entail. I had a nuke to deliver and an alien to capture, if Thompson were to be believed. Oh, to be able to talk to that little troublemaker. To think that he volunteered, as well. Did he regret it, like Michelle? Would he ask me to kill him, too?

  Ohirra returned with a rusty hammer, three screwdrivers, and a pair of pliers. She held them up and gave me a sad look.