"Think they scanned our suns before invading?" asked the Spec Ops soldier to Minlog's right, Herdel. "These crusties agreed pretty fast to our offered First Engagement."
"I suspect all traveling forces in our galaxy know that by now," answered General Minlog sagely. "Everyone should know that both of our newest tiny suns are really the burning remains of past enemy invaders, and their orbital nuclear weaponry."
Minlog was facing forward at a northwest angle, staring at the steaming, noxious sludge that had once been an ocean. The circumstances weren't optimal, with only two of the three chambered beam, plasma and projectile weapons at peak performance. But he'd won distant battles with less.
"What are they waiting for, you think?" murmured Tex, the First Officer. "I half expected to see them waiting and ready when we first arrived. Either they aren't as sophisticated militarily as their technology, or they're planning something fast and deadly they hope we can't counter. Or ... they're down there arguing over what to do first."
"Possibly all three," nodded the General above him, with a tense smile.
"Yeah, possibly," agreed the First Officer, staring at his own slice of the glugging ocean and sky. He nervously ran his thumb across the three raised icons on the side of his own Mod-Rif that corresponded to the three firing options. A fourth icon, a raised oval button, felt smooth and cool beneath his thumb. It adjusted the strength of each shot. Now facing an unknown enemy with the fate of the planet possibly at stake, his thumb gently tapped the forward end of the oval - maximum strength.
At the end of the Spec Ops' curved formation to the left of the officers, the soldier on the very end suddenly glanced at the soldier beside him. "These First Engagements with an enemy invader are stupid," half-whispered the short and stocky Edal, bald with tattooed cheeks and long, hanging ear lobes. "These crusties are homeworld invaders, after all. We shoulda blown them away when they first arrived!"
"Except the crusties hacked our moon-orbit sensors in passing, and set up a delayed notification," answered the other soldier, Zampic, with brown scarred hands and muscled ridges up his cheeks and across his forehead. "They were buried in the Pacific before the Gov-Heads knew they were here. So everyone knew this was a technologically-sophisticated enemy. And with them burrowed into the one large space on Earth we can't scan or send in robots, all the easy options were gone."
"I know all that," Edal twitched, still staring out at the heaving black ocean and distant horizon. "Including the fact they've got civies with them. Like you, I DO read the classified hourly news feed, per orders. But have you heard any rumors about whether these crusties are just a wandering-species, or an invasionary force from a destroyed homeworld or colony?" ET-hybrids tended to cluster together at meals by ET species, and each group always suspected that the other groups knew more than they did.
The solemn Zampic shook his head slowly, staring as well at his assigned slice of beach/ocean/horizon/sky. "Unknown," he answered softly. "But traveling with their families gives us an advantage. These First Engagements usually aren't offered or agreed to unless both sides have protectables, like families or civilians no one wants as collateral damage."
Everything was silent for a few minutes, the soldiers all buffeted by smelly wind gusts off the sluggish, polluted ocean. First Officer Tex glanced left. From what he could see of the four Spec Ops curving away from him, their headbands were occasionally popping a tiny indicator light for a too-fast pulse rate or adrenaline-churning insides. Then he glanced up at Minlog. The General was experienced and focused, his headband never blinking from a bad case of nerves or impatience. Totally in control.
Tex looked back over the ocean sludge. "I've only participated in three First Engagements in all my career," he said softly to the General. "I nearly got killed in one, and knocked senseless in another. This is my third."
The blue head nodded solemnly. "It's always dangerous to challenge an invader species to a First Engagement," he agreed in his clipped voice. "But by engaging a limited, elite military force with your own elite military force, it's a chance to prevent a war. The hope is always that the other side capitulates or leaves. And we do have home-field advantage. Plus ... we know a few secrets about that sludge they don't."
The First Officer looked up, a question poised on his face. But -
"Heads Up!" called out one soldier to the left, as all heads snapped around. "Enemy straight ahead a quarter mile and rising!" The furry biped Gron pointed at something that was indeed rising out of the ocean a quarter a mile ahead, dark and shaped like a half-disc, with a fluted bottom outline. Thud! Gron had shook it out the bottom half of his Mod-Rif into a full-length rifle. He quickly took aim at the rising form, which seemed to labor under the weight of the thick, dripping off sludge.
"Steadfast!" called out General Minlog. The soldiers could hear the order in stereo, in their ear receivers and as a voice command, so there'd be no mistaking the order. "Only flip-out your Mod-Rif if you see the enemy within your sector. And let them fire first!"
With that, Minlog kicked a small box half buried in the sand between him and Tex. Flum! A sparkling energy web flashed up, pre-set to encase the seven soldiers within a security cocoon, which let them fire out while dampening or stopping any incoming fire aimed at them.
"It's ... moving a flexible tail, so I'm guessing it's alive," squinted Tex thru mini-binocs from his belt. "And there's another one!"
A chorus of "Heads Up!" and Thuds! suddenly rang out, as more dark half-discs with tails rose out of the polluted ocean, and each soldier shook out his double-length Mod-Rif. But the flying ray-like creatures did nothing but continue hovering, thirty feet above the glugging blackness, sludge slowly dripping off of them.
Thud! General Minlog snapped out his own Mod-Rif, and Tex followed suit once his mini-binocs were back on his belt. The General stared thru his holo-sight for half a minute at the hovering ray-shape before him. Then he turned to Tex. "I can't verify if they're alive or not, covered with that pollution. We're allowed one, so fire a Check Point."
Tex focused his Mod-Rif as fingers on his left hand groped along the side of the barrel for a special raised button. He found it and fired. A tiny energy ball, trailing sparkles back to his barrel, zipped out and hit the hovering ray-shaped in the distance before him. The ray-shape barely moved. As Tex lowered his Mod-Rif, an energy blast from the ray-shape hit the energy screen before him. POP! Hissssss! as the shot was totally neutralized.
Edal, at the end, had seen the impact on the energy screen before the First Officer. "That looked more like a weapon-shot than a Check Point," he muttered to Zampic, re-aiming his Mod-Rif. "But at least our security screen held."
Tex had lifted up a tiny half-inch door on top of his barrel, and peered inside. Then he looked up at General Minlog. "It's alive. No robotic parts detected, and not even an energy-net for protection." He snapped the tiny window closed, and raised his Mod-Rif to re-aim. "They don't act like elite fighters. What do you think? Are these rays mainly scanners and observers? Or Front Line Expendables?"
"Unknown," answered the General. "Send your Check Point." Then the General dropped down his chin to activate his off-site Order button temporarily glued to his collarbone. "Incoming scan. Spot Analysis, Category One," he said quietly. Which meant he wanted the off-site tech team to analyze the scan Tex just did, focusing on any hidden weaponry, or body chemicals or interior parts that could combine into a surprise weapon. As well as a brain analysis to determine alertness and urgency - or a dullness to indicate a drugged state or control by outside forces.
"Heads up!" alerted a chorus of voices from several soldiers at the same time. "Round object ... Possibly a head ... There's another one! ... Shoulders visible."
All the soldiers and officers peered down their holo-sights to focus on what appeared to be biped heads rising out of the ocean under the hovering ray-creatures. There were several dozen of them steadily rising out of the polluted ocean, blobs of sludge sliding off them to reveal the bump
s and joints of crustacean exoskeletons.
"Incoming!" shouted Zampic, as one of rising crustacean bipeds had cleared his arms and fired a large tube-like cannon toward the beach. BOOM! Fizzzzzzzz! as the powerful beam blast hit the security energy screen around the soldiers. The energy screen wavered, losing about 15% of its force at the impact site.
BOOM! rang out another shot, then another. BAM! BAM! BAM! fired the Earth soldiers, with nervous eyes watching their battered and dissolving security net. The enemy crusties had stopped rising at about waist high, probably for protection, as they kept up a steady but random firing pattern that was dissolving the beached soldiers' protection screen.
The General lowered his chin, looking up to keep his gaze on the enemy thru his holo-sight. "Instant analysis of what the enemy is firing to destroy our security screen! Out."
"Man Down!" screamed several soldiers at once, as the furry Gron was thrown back and flattened behind the fluttering remnants of the energy screen. He moaned as his mesh uniform blazed at the impact-circle to neutralize the beam shot. When blood started seeping out from a stomach wound, the mesh uniform turned into a bandage, solidifying and releasing medicines into the wound.
"Aim for their breathers! Combo shot!" shouted the General. No one had seen facial breathers on the biped crusties, but the remaining soldiers reacted quickly to the order, fingers tapping buttons on their Mod-Rifs to combine a sharp shot creating a plasma projectile, and took quick aim at the lower half of the enemy face/head.
Tex and the General did the same to their own Mod-Rifs, Tex taking a moment to glance up at Minlog. "How'd you know they're wearing breathers?"
ZING! ZING! ZING! fired the soldiers over the sluggish ocean at the half-risen forms. "Contact!" shouted one soldier, as heads all glanced out at one crustie biped in the distance, a large round hole in the armor over its mouth and nose pierced and melting, sizzling away at the edges. The biped quickly doubled over and sank back into the black goo.
"I was guessing," the General answered Tex between shots. ZING! "I could tell they're wearing some kind of a facial covering. And if their top half is upright biped, that means that they most likely have a standard facial structure. Which means a nose and mouth in the lower half of their face covered with complex breathing devices that are light enough to be worn. And more vulnerable than their usually better protected eyes." ZING!
"Man Down!" shouted Tex, as he saw Herdel, to the General's right, blown backward by another crustie cannon-shot, the energy screen before him reduced to mere blue sparkles.
"All range!" the General called out, meaning the remaining soldiers were no longer confined to their slice of the ocean and sky. They could now fire at whatever enemy soldier they thought they could disable or kill.
ZING! "We're gonna be naked in another minute!" Edal murmured to Zampic, meaning that the security screen was failing up and down their line. ZING! "We should have at least tried an air attack to drop a deep-bomb in that pollution," Edal complained.
ZING! fired Zampic. "We did. We ran an experiment with a deep-bomb into that sludge a year ago. It wouldn't explode. Remember?" ZING!
Minlog ducked his chin yet again. "Report!" His ear receiver clicked. "Enemy is alive and individually alert, no hidden body weapons," reported his tech team. "Security screen is being attacked with the exact nano-components to dissolve it. We don't, uh, have any idea how they figured that out."
ZING! "I do," answered the General grimly. "If they hacked our moon alert-system when incoming, they probably also sucked out and decoded all our back-up military data stored in the Moonbase's computers. Another security flaw I've been complaining about that fell on deaf ears."
"Do you want us to send in air cover, General?" an older voice broke in, probably the tech team's Officer In Charge.
"No!" answered Minlog angrily. ZING! "If we escalate now, it'll be a full-out war. And we've already been compromised by the data leak from the Moonbase. If they can counter all our weaponry and security options, we'll all end up dead. No, we've got to make this work, here and now on this beach. Out."
"Contact!" came another shout, as another - and then another - distant crusty bipeds jerked from melting breathers and ducked down to sink back into the polluted ocean. Suddenly Tex saw something, a brief flash from a large lump on the front of one of the hovering rays.
POP! POP! POP! the hovering rays started fired, their shots now connecting to the soldiers with the security screen now just filmy, curling tendrils. Sounds of Blop!, Ouch! and exhaled air were heard from the Spec Ops soldiers, as the rays' milder shots connected with them.
POP! A ray's energy shot hit the General in the torso. He doubled over and stepped back with the impact, then quickly straightened and stepped forward again. His mesh uniform showed concentric gray circles closing inward, repairing itself after protecting him.
POP! BOOM! A ray and biped suddenly combined shots and aimed at Zampic, who flew backwards and lay still. "Man Down!" called out Edal.
General Minlog swore sharply. "They're communicating with each other, to combine shots!" he yelled to Tex beside him. He lowered his Mod-Rif to yell orders at the remaining soldiers. "Set your Mod-Rif's for triple shots! Direct aim at any crustie with a ray directly over him, then take out the ray!"
The remaining soldiers quickly reset their shots. Most of the crustie bipeds had raised their cannons to cheek level, so their clawed hands could protect their breathers. The beached soldiers aimed for biped head and neck anyway. ZING-ZOOM-ZING!
"Man Down!" as a fourth soldier fell, his mesh uniform flaring then solidifying to address his wound. General Minlog glanced over. The four downed Spec Ops Soldiers all had flickering headbands, with labored breathing and heart rates. Minlog swore sharply. Half his force was down - and so was their security screen.
Suddenly he reached around to a kidney-pocket and pulled out a small oblong canister, three inches long and an inch wide. It had an orange "X" on it, identifying it as a new weapon that hadn't been fully tested or approved. POP! He half spun from a laser shot from a hovering ray, which had probably seen him attempting to deploy something new. With his shoulder stinging, the General's mesh uniform flared then darkened into an inward closing grey circle. Shaking blue/white fingers slammed the tiny canister into empty hold-clips on the underside of his Mod-Rif.
POP! BOOM! Tex flew backwards from another enemy combo-shot, then gasped "Man ... down...", as his mesh uniform flared. Only the General and Edal, on the far end to his right, were still standing. Minlog, his headband now lit up just like Edal's, re-aimed his Mod-Rif downward - at the sludge between him and the enemy soldiers.
LOP-SSSS! The small canister was shot into the sludge, just as more heads were rising from the glugging ocean a quarter of a mile out. Reinforcements weren't permitted in a First Engagement, but Invaders never played by the rules anyway. If the canister didn't do what it was supposed to do, after hasty tests in a secret underground laboratory, Minlog was ready to order Edal to flatten himself on the sand. Then he'd order the rear tanks, which should already be aimed at the enemy line a quarter of a mile out over the polluted ocean, to start firing.
ZING-ZOOM-ZING! Minlog and Edal, who'd glanced over when the small canister was fired, continued firing on the rising bipeds. And waited.
Suddenly the air a few feet over the polluted ocean started to sparkle with rising black dust, spreading out from the canister's impact site. Then shimmers of silver were seen in the sludge, that rapidly flashed outward in all directions. Suddenly the polluted ocean around the rising crusty-bipeds flashed and burned, the bipeds throwing up their clawed arms with squealing sounds of surprise, before falling over sideways into the sludge.
The rays also stopped firing, unsteady now as the black dust rose to encompass them. Plop! Plop! Plop! They started falling from the sky onto the thick black surface. The remaining enemy bipeds, some yanking off their breathers, sank back out of sight amid the sluggish ocean heaving this way then that.
Th
e General and Edal watched silently, cradling their still-long Mod-Rifs, focusing on their enemy in the polluted black ocean. Stocky Edal nodded and called out approvingly, "LYR..." Panting, his headband flashing for breathing and heart rate, he nodded approvingly. "L and Y and R," he continued, savoring the scene and related strategy. "Leverage Your Resources ..."
Suddenly bobbing forms were seen coming to the surface, far out where the rays and bipeds had been. General Minlog still cradled his Mod-Rif, watching - hoping. There was no more incoming fire from the downed crusties, as more and more black lumps now surfaced all over the polluted Pacific.
"What's happening out there, General?" panted Edal, his mesh-uniform discolored from multiple limb and torso hits, so later Med Teams would know where to focus first.
"Looks to me like they're all dying," answered Minlog succinctly. "We basically choked them with their own waste products," he added, looking over his shoulder at the hovering helos a mile back. He again dropped his chin to address his off-site tech team. "Send the helos in! I want Med-los for five downed soldiers first. And a full battlefield scan of the surface of the ocean. I'm not expecting any survivors."
9 Tales From Elsewhere 13 Page 7