Arena 5

by Logan Jacobs

  No sooner were we through the door than bullets flew all around. Clouds of dust stitched the walls and floor as we dove for whatever meager cover there was inside the cottage. There was a heavy oaken table in the middle of the one-room cottage, so I upended it and shoved it against the doorway. Splinters burst into the air like a cloud of wooden flies as bullets tore into it. I let go with a long burst from the Schmiesser before I ducked down behind the table. Thankfully it was very well made, the three inch thick wood planks managed to stop most of the bullets.

  “Blooey!” I yelled. “Lay down some cover fire.”

  The young alien had managed to get over most of his battle nerves and did as I asked with more confidence. He edged himself closer to the door frame as he took a knee and rested the barrel of his gun on the edge of the table and began to squeeze off spaced, well-aimed shots.

  I crouch-crawled over to a small rectangular window set in the stone and plaster wall of the cottage. I heard bullets ping and ricochet off the stones. Whatever farmer had made this little abode had done a damn good job. I risked a quick look out the window and saw several muzzle flashes from the hedges Blooey and I had run over from. The silhouette of two Nazi uniforms drug the bodies of their fallen buddies out of the road and toward the cover of the hedges. I couldn’t see much, but I counted six separate muzzle flashes spread out along the side of the road.

  That was not good.

  We were pinned down. While the cottage did seem to provide more than adequate cover, it was only a matter of time before they stormed our position, especially if they realized there was only two of us.

  “You don’t happen to have any grenades, do you Blooey?” I asked over the staccato din of gunfire.

  “No, sir,” he replied as he ducked down to reload his gun.

  “Didn’t think so,” I murmured to myself as I poked the distinctive barrel of the MP-40 out of the window and emptied the magazine at the muzzle flashes not twenty-five yards away.

  I slammed a fresh mag into the well of the sub-gun and continued to shoot through the window. At this rate we were going to be out of ammo very quickly and then it was good night nurse.

  I ducked down and crouch-walked over to the other side of the cottage. There was another door and window in the wall, and I peered through the glassless window. The moon had broken through the cloud cover and bathed the countryside in a blue, otherworldly glow. I saw a dark figure stand and throw something. A second later a potato masher looking tin-can on a stick flew through the window and landed on the floor a foot away from me.

  “Shit!” I yelled and without thinking reached down and side armed the German grenade out through the door. “Hit the deck, Blooey!”

  My reflexes had fired on all cylinders, and the grenade twirled out the door and exploded thirty feet outside the door in the faces of three enemy soldiers as they attempted to storm the cottage. Shrapnel whizzed past and pinged off the steel of my helmet.

  “Holy shit!” Blooey cried out. “That was close.”

  “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand--” I started to say, “oh, right. Come on, we gotta get out of here or it's gonna get really crowded.”

  I sent a long burst through the open door and then rushed to the opposite end of the cottage. I kicked the door open and ducked up next to the wall. Bullets zinged past. I reloaded and then emptied a full mag as I blindly poked the gun through the doorway. Blooey crashed into the wall on the other side of the doorway. I took a quick glance out the door and saw at least seven silhouettes crouching in the darkness. They were all headed toward the cottage.

  “Attacke! Schnell! Schnell!” I heard someone shouting in German from outside the other doorway. We were about to get caught in the pincers of a flanking move.

  “Kid, you keep shooting, make each shot count!” I yelled at Blooey and then rushed back to the opposite door. If I was going to go down, I was going to take as many of them as I could with me. Maybe I’d be able to buy Blooey enough time to get the hell out of the chaos. I slammed the last clip for the MP-40 home and pulled the German pistol out of my belt with my left hand.

  I thought I heard movement close to the doorway and I darted out from behind cover.

  “Come and get some you Nazi bastards!” I screamed as I fired the sub-gun from the end of its sling on my hip in a long arc from left to right as my left hand squeezed off round after round.

  I caught the surprised look of an alien Nazi not ten feet from the doorway as the 9mm bullets nearly cut him in half. His buddies, who were a few feet away weren’t expecting my offensive, and they dove for cover. The Walther P38 in my left hand spat long licks of flame as I emptied the gun. Another enemy soldier grunted and slumped to the ground. The three that were left had lost their nerve and stayed behind whatever meager cover they could find.

  Both the pistol and sub-gun clicked empty, and I dropped them as I ducked back into the cottage while I drew my .45.

  “Blooey, I think I bought us some time, buddy,” I said and turned back toward the other doorway. Blooey didn’t answer. He was slumped against the cottage wall, as his rifle clattered to the floor out of his limp hands. Bubble gum pink blood poured out of four gaping holes in his chest and stomach.

  “Sorry, sir,” he whispered and then died.

  “Don’t be, kid,” I said mostly to myself as I dove and grabbed up his M1 just as a Nazi soldier filled the doorway. I shoved the barrel of the heavy rifle into his gut and pulled the trigger. He literally flew back as if kicked by a horse.

  I patted Blooey on the head. “You did good.”

  The sight of their buddy with a watermelon sized hole where his back had been as he flew backwards caused the rest of the remaining German aliens to pause. I shoved Blooey’s last eight round clip into the open breach and felt the satisfying thunk as the heavy steel bolt slammed home. I then ejected the empty from my .45, reloaded, and tucked it into my belt.

  I took a few deep breaths. I could feel the tension and hesitation form the enemy outside the door. Old Blooey and I had managed to be tougher than they had anticipated but there was only me left, and they knew their forces would overwhelm me. I was going to make it as costly for them as I possibly could.

  “Stürmen!” a heavily accented German voice commanded.

  I braced myself in the doorway and pulled the trigger on the M1 as fast as I could. They heavy .30-06 rounds kicked into my shoulder like a jilted lover. I had no idea if I hit anything because two alien Nazis burst through the other doorway behind me. Bullets stitched the wall where I had been just a second before but my reflexes, honed from months of fighting for my life, had saved my bacon. I dove to my left at the same time as I threw the heavy rifle like a baseball bat at the nearest Nazi. It hit him in the face with an audible crunch as his teeth shattered, and he choked on his own blood. My left hand pulled the pistol from my waistband as I flew sideways, and I emptied it into the other Nazi.

  I rolled and came up in a crouch. The gun in my left hand was empty, and I had no more reloads. I flipped the slide release to let it slam home and held it by the barrel like a club. The hot metal felt warm through my jump-glove. With my right hand I pulled the K-Bar and held it in a reverse grip. I looked like some kind of combat pirate madman with an empty gun in one hand a knife in the other as I readied myself for whatever was going to happen next.

  I expected a rush of Nazi soldiers to pour in through the door but instead I heard the heavy chug-chug-chug of a machine gun, the sharp stutter of a carbine, and then screaming in German. Then there was silence.

  I took a long breath as I waited.

  A moment later Nova, with a smoking BAR clutched in her orange hands filled one doorway, while Aurora walked through the other and leaned her hip against the doorframe. There was alien blood on her hands as she wiped her own knife on the leg of her trousers.

  I smiled and stood up.

  “What took you so long?”

  Chapter Two

  “You’re welcome is what I think you mea
nt to say,” Nova grinned as she changed the large, boxy magazine on her Browning Automatic Rifle.

  “What? I totally had that under control,” I said and resheathed my knife.

  “Totally, sugar,” Aurora drawled as she walked into the interior of the little cottage.

  “You guys looked like you faired the drop a little better than I did,” I commented. “I got wet.”

  “Sugar, now's not the time for sweet talkin’,” Aurora grinned. We all gathered over by the small, brick fireplace on the far wall.

  Even Though they were clad in men’s battle fatigues my alliance mates were still sexy as all get out. Aurora took off her steel helmet and wiped some blood and sweat from her face. The clothes could barely hide her nineteen sixties Playboy bunny figure. Under them I knew her geometric pale blue tribal tattoos pulsed with her heartbeat. They helped her keep the space vampire that lived within her at bay. She held her M1 carbine loosely in her hands. The bayonet on the end was slick with various colors of alien blood.

  Nova looked like a freaking GI Jane combat angel. The statuesque knight errant from a feudal world known as Paladin Prime held the heavy BAR like it was as light as a hockey stick. Her auburn hair hung down under her helmet in her familiar warrior braid. Her brilliant, glow-stick green eyes scanned the horizon out of the door as the sun began to rise. She unslung a M1928A1 Thompson submachine gun from her shoulder and tossed it to me.

  “Can’t have you going into battle with nothing but your…” she said and then had to think for a second. “... pecker? That is the correct word, is it not?”

  “Yup,” I acknowledged somewhat chagrined as I loaded a thirty round box magazine from my ammo pouch into the gun.

  “Even though that is a formidable weapon,” she added with a sly smile.

  “Amen, sugar,” Aurora echoed.

  “Look, ladies, I could stand around and listen to you all brag about my manhood all day,” I laughed. “But we need to get to the rendezvous point.”

  I pulled out the map I’d stolen from the dead alien Nazi and spread it out on the remains of the oaken table. It was all in German but I was able to locate the coastline and after a bit of study and checking a nearby hill with the military compass from my pocket, I figured out our exact location. It was a skill I’d picked up in the one year I spent as a Boy Scout in sixth grade. That and a basket weaving merit badge. I was a weird child.

  As I was finding our position and locating the rendezvous point, which was only about a fifteen minute hump due west, I noticed that the map had exact locations of three different alien Nazi gun batteries marked.

  “Unto the breach once more,” I whispered to myself just as the morning erupted in the Earth shaking booms of howitzer fire. The very guns I had just located on the map began raining hell on Omaha beach and the forces attempting to land there.

  “Okay, ladies, we need to get a move on,” I said as I folded the map back up and shoved it inside my shirt. “Hey Nova, you have any spare mags for the .45?”

  She nodded and handed two over. I reloaded my pistol and put it back in the holster. I did not want to get caught without adequate firepower again.

  We all nodded to each other and then set out from the cottage.

  I saw the mangled bodies of the alien Nazi’s Nova had cut down with the BAR. They looked more like multi-colored hamburger than actual people. Ah well, war was hell. Better them than me.

  The three of us formed a small, loose line. I took point, with Aurora about twenty feet behind me, and Nova bringing up the rear.

  It was strange not being able to use any of our inherent tech or powers. We still had our combat modifications, for me that was my Krav Maga, Parkour, and regen mods. That plus the Ar’Gwyn, and I felt pretty unstoppable. Aurora couldn’t use her dark matter blasts. Apparently when we had been teleported in the Aetheron’s had been able to modify her molecules to suppress that ability. Nova’s power to collect ambient radiation and release it as a blast of concussive potential energy was also dampened. Thankfully they were amazing fighters even without their powers.

  We moved out and kept to the ditch on the side of a single lane dirt road that meandered its way through the farmland. After about five minutes we heard the sounds of a pitched small arm battle.

  I motioned for Nova and Aurora to move up to my position as the road wound around a bend. We approached the bend slowly, and I peered out from a small stand of trees.

  A very small French village, maybe six cottages in all, spread out before us. A platoon of Nazi soldiers were entrenched in several of the buildings. On the other side of the village I saw the olive drab of Allied soldiers holed up in a two story tavern. Two of them were on the ground taking cover behind an upturned hay cart. Another one tried to crawl inside the tavern and left a trail of blood smeared behind them like a gory snail. They’d clearly been shot in the gut and were desperately trying to make it to cover. The Nazi’s concentrated their fire, and the ground around the wounded soldier erupted in puffs of dirt that eventually danced across the soldier's back who then lay still.

  The Nazi who had darted from cover to pour fire on the wounded soldier began to advance. There was a sharp crack and then the Nazi’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground. I saw where the shot had come from. The barrel of a Springfield sniper rifle poked out of a second-story window.

  “Aurora, hand me your binoculars,” I whispered to her. A second later the cool, cylindrical field glasses filled my hand. I brought them to my eyes and focused on the window. To my surprise I recognized the sniper.

  The pale, blue-green skin and bright orange hair of Tempest Dirk was hunched over the stock of the bolt-action rifle. A smear of dried blood slashed across her profile like war paint as she worked the bolt on the rifle and sighted down the scope. I heard a crack, and another Nazi crumpled over dead.

  Tempest had been a member of a formidable alliance that Team Havak had come up against just a few weeks ago. We’d managed to eke out a win against them which had resulted in their alliance being split up. I’d gotten the vibe that Tempest hadn’t been too keen on her alliance, but it was pretty much the only way to survive in the Crucible. She’d also helped me rescue the President of the United States of America from a group of angry space terrorists.

  And it looked like she was pinned down.

  Two Nazi’s broke from one of the buildings and tossed potato masher grenades at the upturned hay cart. The Allied troops using it for cover realized too late what had just happened and were about to run for it when the grenades exploded and ripped them apart.

  That left just Tempest alone in her sniper position. As soon as she ran out of ammo the Nazi’s would storm the tavern and take her. Seeing as how she’d killed about six of them, I doubted it would be alive. The Nazi entrenched in the little village were getting ready to charge her position. The three of us could easily skirt the little town and continue on our way to the rendezvous point.

  “What’s going on, Marc,” Nova asked impatiently.

  “Well,” I started, “remember Tempest?”

  “Yeah,” they both answered.

  “She’s trapped in that tavern down there, and the bad guys are about to overrun her position,” I said matter-of-factly. “And, we’re going to stop them.”

  “We are, sugar?” Aurora asked hesitantly. “Wasn’t she our enemy not too long ago?”

  “Yeah, and now she’s on our side,” I shrugged. “Can’t leave her.”

  “If you say so,” Nova grumbled.

  “Hey, she’s taken out quite a few of them,” I said. “If I remember correctly she was supposed to be a damn good shot. We could certainly use her to get through this challenge.”

  “You make a fair point, Havak,” Nova acquiesced. “What’s the plan?”

  “Okay,” I said as I surveyed the landscape quickly. “You and Aurora duck across the road and take up a position in the treeline just past the tavern. They should be too busy with Tempest to notice. I’m going to come up behind
them and force them all out into the open courtyard there. When that happens it should be like shooting alien Nazi fish in a barrel.”

  They both thought about it for a second and then nodded.

  “Seems tactically sound, sugar,” Aurora said.

  “You guys give me your grenades,” I said and held out my hands. Both of them took their grenades, five in total, off their web-belts and handed them to me. I dumped them in my ammo bag. “Let’s do it, Team Havak go,” I whisper yelled and held up my hand for a high five. They just looked at me, shook their heads and jogged out across the road and disappeared into the trees.

  “Leave a guy hanging,” I said to myself. “And, I outrank you both. Court martials when we get back.”

  I checked the bolt on the Thompson and started my own way around the back of the small village. The alien Nazis were all grouped in two of the buildings.

  Hopefully, Aurora and Nova were in position and ready to go. I hunkered down next to a pile of bricks and debris and then took the grenades out of my ammo bag and placed them in a neat line on the ground in front of me. I took a deep breath, pulled the pin on one and lobbed it through the panes of a broken window then repeated the process in quick succession with the other four grenades. Just as the last one flew through the window the first one exploded.

  As soon as it did, I popped over the pile of bricks and let loose with three controlled bursts from the submachine gun. I hoped that the chaos of explosions and flying hot lead would convince the Nazi’s that there was a formidable force coming up on their rear.

  I emptied the Thompson, reloaded, and then sprinted around the side of the building to get a better view.

  My plan had worked, and the Nazis all burst from the two buildings and ran toward the tavern. Tempest took a few out before her gun ran dry. As the main bulk of the platoon hit the courtyard Nova and Aurora opened up from the tree line. I took a knee and sighted down the barrel of my gun and began pulling the trigger. The Nazi’s didn’t know what hit them as the hell storm of gunfire literally chewed them to pieces.