Dropship One

by L. D. P. Samways

  “You got a weapon?” I asked the man, helping him up. The man brushed himself down and shook his head. “No, if I did have a weapon, you’d all be sorry for laughing!”

  “Charming,” somebody said from the back, making the rest of us break into another fit of hysterics. Maybe it was the lack of food and water that was causing us to split our sides so easily, but it didn’t matter what it was, because the man in front of me wasn’t finding it funny at all.

  “Welcome to the Marine Corps,” Spooks said, slapping an arm around the man and giving him his sidearm. “Just point and shoot at anything that moves, and you should be just fine. Besides – you seem like you’d benefit from taking some anger out, you seem a little wound up,” Spooks said, giving the man a few magazine clips to go along with his new weapon. The guy seemed a little out of place holding a gun, and I could tell that he was a little intimidated by the prospect of having to fire it.

  “Well… Thanks… I guess,” he said, sliding a magazine into the pistol and cocking the hammer back.

  “That’s the spirit! Now, how about we get off this rock?” Spooks said, also cocking his weapon. The Marines around him agreed with a few cheers and whistles. They were ready to get off this planet and so was I.

  But as they say, some things are easier said than done.

  Chapter Seven

  New opportunities, the forest, Tribeca Planet

  We were all about to move out. The mood was heavy and the weight of battle was starting to crush many of our spirits. But fortunately, the presence of a new helping hand was welcomed, even if most of us weren’t too sure on the validity of the guy’s story. It didn’t really matter though. If he was lying about his origins, then the worst that could happen is that he’d end up with a bullet in the head. That’s just how things worked around here. Especially now – especially with the shit-storm that this mission had turned into.

  Besides, it’s not like he’d gain anything from lying. As far as we knew, the Marine Core were the only operational human deployment team on the planet. As for stragglers, or civilians, this wasn’t exactly the best place to be an outer-space expat. Most people preferred to live in places where you weren’t in danger of turning into a tentacle-spewing-octopus-man if you drank from the local water reserves.

  “What’s the holdup? We moving out, or what?” the guy asked, standing next to me, holding his weapon weirdly.

  Yep – this guy wasn’t trained at all. You could tell that from a mile off. But hey-ho, off to slaughter we go and such. Times were hard, and we needed as many hands on deck as possible, so to speak. Another man, with another weapon, would help us defend ourselves against any enemies that we came across. And seeing that since I’d set foot on this forsaken rock all I’d seen is enemy after enemy, the likelihood that we’d need this guy in combat was high. We needed every man we could get.

  “I don’t know, but you know what they say – patience is a virtue,” I replied, checking my railgun for blockages. The air was dusty and I didn’t want my weapon jamming in the heat of battle.

  “Yeah, whatever you say pal,” he said, staring at me and the big gun in my grips. I could tell that he was a little jealous of my gigantic weapon, whilst he was stuck holding the equivalent of a pea shooter. But it would do damage, so that’s all that mattered.

  I turned to face the front and saw Spooks standing around doing nothing. Well, I say doing nothing, but I don’t really know if staring off into the distance counts as something… So I walked up to him, leaving Mr. Pea Shooter behind. I didn’t care to ask for the guy’s name, as far as I was concerned, the fewer people I knew by name, the less their inevitable deaths would affect me. Spooks didn’t spot me coming, or he just didn’t care. Either way, I decided to ask as to what was the hold-up. Most of the guys were ready to go, but it seemed as if he’d just zoned out. Seconds before, he was raring to go, but now he was just standing there, confused. He was starting to make a habit out of confusion. I’d have to keep an eye on him.

  “What’s up, Sir?” I asked, stopping a few meters from him.

  I didn’t want it to feel like I was overcrowding him. I knew how that felt. Out here on the frontline, you sometimes got over-encumbered with the presence of people. People that were as shell-shocked as you. It’s a hard thing to explain, but I can guarantee that anybody who’s ever fought in any battle will be able to vouch for me when it comes to feeling like the world is swarming around you.

  “What?” Spooks said, suddenly jolting out of his glassy-eyed stare.

  “I’m wondering if everything is okay? Shouldn’t we be making a move?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, we should…but the problem is, I don’t know where to go. The mission objective was to clear the quarry of any pirates. Now we’re out of the mines, and in the open, I’m not sure where to go. The mission schematics don’t detail much outside of the quarry, so we’d be going in blind into who-knows-what.”

  “What do you think the best course of action is here?” I asked, hoping not to come across like an idiot, I was essentially asking the same question twice.

  But if anything, I was trying to jolt his mind a little. The guy had managed to get me out of a few sticky situations since landing here, and if it wasn’t for him, none of the men around us would be alive. He was a problem solver. He just needed a push in the right direction, not that I knew what that direction was, though.

  “I don’t know. Command always tells you not to stray from the mission directive, but we don’t have one now. Technically, we’ve completed our mission. We’re just missing the rescue crafts to take us out of here.”

  I nodded once again, and pointed to Mr. Pea Shooter a few yards from me, who was looking down at the ground, kicking what looked like railgun shells. Boredom is probably the second highest cause of death on the frontline. If you succumb to it, you risk taking your attention off the proverbial ball… and once you do that, all the ball will do is come rolling down hill and flatten you out in the form of taking a bullet or stepping into a booby-trap. The mind always has to be ticking away on the frontline. Anything less than a fully operational battle-ready mind would result in death. But then again, Mr. Pea Shooter wasn’t trained, so he was probably going to die anyway. He just didn’t know it yet.

  “What about him?” Spooks finally said, seeming to still be under the spell of broken hope.

  “Maybe he knows something? He comes across as a bit of an ass, but he might know what Command are planning if that helps you make your decision.”

  Spooks nodded and whistled loudly. Everybody around us jumped a little at the high-pitched sound.

  “Hey, you, tree guy, come over here,” Spooks said to a few sniggers around us. Tree guy/ Pee Shooter did as he was told, but not without showcasing his undeniable charm once again.

  “I have a name, you know,” he said as he approached us.

  “Son, I couldn’t give a rat’s behind what your damn name is. All I want to know is what you know regarding what command are expecting of us here,” he said, staring directly at the guy. Spooks had the sort of stare that could make most men cry for their mothers. And seeing that most men he knew were hardened tough guy Marines, this guy didn’t stand a chance.

  “How am I supposed to know? They didn’t tell me squat. All they did was send me on my way to pick up the remaining Core troops. Beyond that, I have no idea. Well, I know that the pirates have penetrated the planet’s capital city walls and are currently reigning hell down on the Core, but besides from that, I don’t know if we’re going to be rescued or left here to die.”

  “We could walk to the capital, and join the others then,” he said.

  “Negative. The capital is four thousand miles from here. No way that’s happening in our lifetime. We’ll die trekking there. Around seven clicks south of here there’s an enemy encampment. I think that’s where the massive beast creature that swatted my craft was heading. We flew over it and saw huge numbers on the ground. And the worrying thi
ng is, they have plenty more heading this way. These pirates are swarming this planet. If the Core don’t get a hold on the city, then Tribeca gets a new dominant species.”

  “Well, I guess we make sure we get to the city then, and give our brothers a helping hand. The bombing runs should sort the encampments out,” Spooks said.

  “Command aren’t bombing until they get all the troops off the ground. They are only hitting areas in which there are either none or very few boots on the ground. From what I can tell, Command need as many of you guys as they can get, or this mission is definitely a fail.”

  Spooks smiled.

  “And there I thought that they needed us because they loved us!” he said.

  Spooks and I chuckled slightly whilst Mr. Pea Shooter frowned. I guess he hadn’t been around Jar Heads before. Humour was an acquired taste, and we acquired ours through devilish means.

  “So what’s next?” I asked after a second of silence.

  “Well, I‘ll try to hail them on the Sat Phone once again. I don’t have much battery left, so we need to conserve it the best we can. I’ve tried a few times earlier, but I had no reception. Hopefully now that we’re in this opening, it will… well… open up our chances of contacting Command.”

  I nodded and Mr. Pea Shooter did the same. We watched as Spooks took the Sat Phone out. A quiet hush fell over the men watching on. Nobody liked to rely on technology to save their skins. And that is exactly what was happening here. Our chances of survival hindered on a damn hunk of plastic with an antenna sticking out of it. Things couldn’t be bleaker.

  “I guess this is it. I don’t know how much juice is in this thing, but be prepared for disappointment, it’s the only way any of us are going to keep our sanity on this piece of shit rock,” Spooks said, turning the Sat Phone on and taking a deep breath.

  He pressed on a few digits, and before I knew it, he had the phone up to his ear.

  “Fingers crossed,” Mr. Pea Shooter said, his face a pale white.

  I don’t know if Pea Shooter was scared of dying on this planet or being stuck with us any longer. Either way, he was scared – terrified even. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Nobody wanted to be exposed as a coward, and Mr. Pea Shooter here was doing just that. Marines were hardened and didn’t tend to show their emotions much, unlike this gentleman. He was an array of emotional pent-up anger. I could tell that it wouldn’t take much for him to lose his shit and go POSTAL. So a keen eye on him was probably the best deterrent. If this all went to pot like I was certain it would, I’d definitely be keeping my eyes firmly locked on him.

  “Is it ringing?” the guy asked, his eyes bulging with curiosity.

  Spooks nodded, a look of cold relief on his face. His forehead was sweaty and his hair had gone a horrible matted texture from what I could see under his visor. I remembered thinking how he’d looked like a damn hero when he rescued me from my certain doom near the troop carrier earlier that day. But now he looked like a hero that once was. Like the men you see walking down the street on Veterans Day, dishevelled and broken. It was quite a tragic sight. Spooks needed some R&R before heading back out on the field, but I suppose we all did. Not that we’d get any. The only rest bite we’d get is the knowledge that somebody was heading our way to pick us up. And quite frankly, that’s all we needed.

  “Anybody answering?” Mr. Pea Shooter asked.

  Spooks shook his head. With every second that passed, his skin grew paler and his eyes grew more hollow. I didn’t know how much more incessant questioning from Pea Shooter he could take, so I glared at him in the hope that he’d get the message and shut the hell up, just like everybody else around Spooks. Fortunately, he did get the message, and packed it in for the time being.

  The eerie hush that had fallen over the forest opening we were all stood in was deafening. I could hear the constant dial tone emanating from the Sat Phone Spooks had held up to his ear. It was loud, yet quiet and distant, like a world of trouble separated us from them, which was true of course, but I was hoping that we’d get a lucky break and establish contact with Command. We needed this. We needed contact, we needed hope. I’d lost hope so many times in the space of such a little amount of time that the idea that hope itself could still exist was making me feel sick. My stomach was doing backflips as the dial tone continued to drone on and on for what seemed like forever. Spooks briefly took the phone away from his ear and glanced at the status LCD screen.

  “One bar of juice remaining,’ he said, his voice robotic and stoic.

  “Shit, fucking answer!” somebody jeered from the back, their voice muffled by the constant dial tone.

  We all felt the same way. Why on Earth was Command not answering the comms? It didn’t make sense. Unless, of course, there was no Command and everybody had shipped off the planet, leaving us behind to deal with death on our own.

  “Ten more seconds, and I’m hanging up. If I can find a better location to ring from, one with more than seven percent reception, then I’m doing it,” Spooks said, gripping tightly onto the Sat Phone in his hand.

  The next ten seconds were excruciating. My head felt like cotton as it absorbed what I thought was the last couple of seconds of dial tone I’d ever hear. The tone was loud and constant, and it seemed to be in sync with the ticking on my onboard body-clock. We all held our breath as the tone sounded off two more times. I could tell by the look in Spooks’ eyes that on the next tone, he’d hang up. My heart pounded as the realization that we were marooned on this planet started to sink in, millisecond by millisecond. And just as Spooks was about to call it a day, the tone went dead and a scratchy voice said those famous words.

  “Hello?”

  Everybody roared around us. I jumped up and down, hoisting my gun in the air and screaming at the top of my lungs. The monstrous cheering, whooping and applauding was in stark contrast to the deafly quietness that had been suffocating each and everyone of us previously. There was not one Marine in that opening that didn’t have tears of joy in their eyes, and as for Mr. Pea Shooter, his tears were streaming down his face.

  “This is Squad Leader Spooks here reporting from the Tribeca planet. Can you get a lock-on on our position? We’re in need of a pick-up and I’m afraid it’s urgent,” Spooks said, by now drowning out the commotion around him. I signalled for everybody to quieten down so Spooks could hear the guy on the phone.

  “A pick-up? I thought everybody had been extracted,” the man on the Sat Phone said.

  “No sir, you got a few stragglers here. If it’s no problem, I’d appreciate a helping hand. My boys are tired and hungry. Plus, we’re carrying some extra weight. Two rescue crafts were taken down by the enemy. Unfortunately, both crafts are out of commission. The majority of the crew were killed. We’ve only found one alive, Sir. He’s with us, safe and sound,” Spooks said.

  “Okay, copy. We’ve locked onto your position and should have a HELOE craft picking you up in ten minutes. How many men are with you?”

  Spooks looked at the men around him and smiled.

  “Fifty or so. No more than a hundred. I’m not too sure. I haven’t counted,” he said.

  “Copy. A HELOE should be fine then. As you probably know, it can hold a good few thousand,” the man said.

  Spooks nodded.

  “Thanks for the help, Sir, we really appreciate it. Some of us want to see our families again,” Spooks said.

  “Well hold tight and you just might.”

  The phone went dead.

  “Out of juice,” Spooks said, relieved that he’d managed to get in contact with anybody at all.

  “Well gentleman, looks like our luck has turned around!” he said, seconds before the sound of gunfire engulfed us. Hundreds of sword-wielding pirates came running out of the trees, followed by some gun-toting back-up.

  We had ten minutes until rescue, but countless numbers of pirates to deal with first. This day had been nothing but a pain in the neck. I just hoped that that’s all it would end up being, beca
use I wasn’t ready to die. But a rickety neck was just fine with me.

  Chapter Eight

  The final countdown

  The melee pirates were the first to reach us, brandishing their swords high in the air while trilling at the top of their lungs like something out of a historical novel. But this wasn’t no old war-time battle, this was a new age firefight. The melee pirates had energy swords. Those things could cut through steel chains like a knife through butter.

  “Here they come!” I shouted, aiming my weapon at the oncoming tsunami of reptiles making their way toward us.

  By now, we’d formed a crude semi-circle, pointed in the middle like an arrow. It was the perfect defence stance in dealing with a potential close-quarters encounter. But it did nothing for the suppression fire coming from the pirates who’d hung back and were using the forest as cover for their ambush.

  I returned fire almost immediately, taking down three or four of the front runners. The moment the bullets from my railgun hit the oncoming horde in front of me, it made them fall like dominos. They were easy targets, and so were we. The melee pirates only served one purpose and that was to distract us long enough until the real attack could begin. They were simply cannon-fodder. Their lives were expendable, and in the long run, their deaths wouldn’t be in vein if we all died. At least that’s what I thought the reptilian pirates thought process was.

  But I was underestimating them. This wasn’t some all-out assault. This wasn’t a fight to the death. This was a show of strength, and by God they showed it.

  “Holy heck, anyone seeing this?” I spat into my radio.

  At that very moment, towering over the trees, crushing some of the reptiles next to it, another hulking beast made its presence known. But this one was a little different from the other giant. This one was larger and slower. It looked like it had eaten the other beast and grew twice its size.