Grunt Life

by Weston Ochse

  Finally, they were told to hold their position while a decision was made. I could imagine them, squatting out in the open, waiting in the shadow of the mound for a decision to be made. Would they be allowed to return to the trenches or would they be asked to Charlie Mike?

  When the word came back, it didn’t surprise me.

  Charlie Mike.

  Continue Mission.

  There was going to be blood, and it wasn’t just going to be between One and Eleven and the Cray. We’d get ours, too.

  Aquinas turned and looked at me. I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her fear. I felt it within myself. We were about to be in the shit, but there was nothing we could do about it except Charlie Mike.

  “Romeo Three, stand by,” Olivares ordered. “Check status.”

  Systems check. Ninety percent power. All green.

  Romeos One and Eleven were about two hundred meters from the mound. They switched from traveling overwatch to bounding overwatch, moving carefully and covering each other, but also covering as much ground as they could. Problem was that if they were required to use their miniguns, they’d lose precious seconds dropping their sonar/radar packages in order to swing the weapons into place.

  I accessed one of the rear-facing cameras. Where were the Vulcan sleds? They were too far back for me to see. Unable to increase another EXO’s magnification, I could only guess they were still hundreds of meters to the rear.

  “Romeo Three, prepare to move out.”

  But it looked like I might have the chance to find out.

  I switched my view back to my own suit. I saved my dialed-in magnification of the mound feed in a small screen in the upper left of my HUD, and fixed the rest of my view on what was in front of me.

  “On my command, bounding overwatch to your marks.” Olivares’s voice was tight. We all knew what was coming. BCT command had decided it was allowable for Romeo elements to be attacked. That was just how it went.

  Thompson, Ohirra and Olivares moved forward as we remained in place, scanning the sky and ground.

  When it was our turn, they remained in place, and Aquinas, MacKenzie, and I passed them and moved forward another twenty meters.

  Bounding overwatch worked best when you had a place of cover and concealment from which to defend, but once we passed the village, there was nothing other than the remains of the 727. We’d planned on meeting Romeo Six there, but the plan had changed. Command didn’t want us clumped together. They wanted us to form as wide a line as possible. I wasn’t sure if I agreed. Together, we had a strength of fire we lacked individually. The alternative was to be alone, strung out along a picket line, which Six was doing.

  We made it to the 727 without event.

  Olivares ordered a systems check.

  Systems check. Eighty-six percent power. All green.

  We regained our breath and prepared to move forward when we heard the first of the screams.

  Romeo One was under attack.

  To the soldier, luck is merely another word for skill.

  Patrick MacGill

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I SWITCHED TO a view from Romeo One and watched the ground recede at an impossible rate. Then the image tumbled and I saw myself plummeting back to the earth. I pulled back to my own feed before I hit the ground, irrationally afraid of what would happen, like anyone who’d ever gone to sleep and dreamed of falling.

  My vitals showed my heart rate at 140 beats per minute. My breathing had risen to match it. I was sweating in my suit. I tried not to panic while listening to the screams and missile detonations from my sister recon squad.

  I missed a command from Olivares.

  I tore myself away from the HUD, and watched as the rest of my squad moved forward. I was a second behind them and soon caught up. No overwatch. We were making a dash towards the mound. It looked like we were going to implant our devices and retreat.

  A great clamor, like the sky being unzipped, erupted from the other side of the mound; I could hear the Vulcan cannons both from my feeds and through my suit. I wanted to switch back and watch them in action, maybe witness some of the Cray disemboweled by the blizzard of bullets, but I needed all my attention on my own space.

  We’d made it halfway to our mark when Hydra missiles began to fly from behind us in a barrage, striking the outside of the mound. I made out dead and dying Cray in the explosions. They’d been lying in wait, but Romeo Six had provided us covering fire.

  I ached to have my minigun in my hands instead of the two cases. Charging the mound like this made me feel so exposed.

  “Six is coming up behind,” Olivares shouted breathlessly. “Watch your weapons.”

  I checked my telemetry and saw a vicious battle on the other side of the mound. The Vulcans were still screaming. Although there were no missiles from the EXOs, I heard the steady chatter of miniguns as they added their rounds to the fray. Either the other squads had given up the mission or they’d completed, which meant we were next.

  Suddenly the mound was upon us. We’d covered the distance faster than I’d believed possible. My entire horizon was covered with the shadow of the hive. I knelt and snapped open the gator boxes.

  I set the sonar in place, and watched it run to green, then begin to transmit data. Then I removed the radar. Just as I put it in position and flicked the switch, it went black. I checked the sonar; dark as well.

  EMP.

  Killed them already.

  I just hoped they’d been able to provide enough information during the short time they’d been functional. I’d hate to think that all this had been a waste, although it wouldn’t have been the first time I was part of a mission that had felt like that.

  I snapped my minigun in place, comforted by the weight and heft of it in my Kevlar-gloved hands, even though most of it was held by the support arm. I depressed the firing lever and let the barrels spin several cycles as I began to scan the mound and the sky above us.

  A shadow moved and I opened fire. The flash from the exploding rounds illuminated the limbs and wings of the drones in a jerky, stop-motion sequence. The barrels of the XM214 minigun spun madly as they hurled shells into my targets.

  I began to back away as I continued firing.

  “Olivares, orders,” I shouted.

  After unleashing a volley of bullets beside me, he said, “Back away slowly and cover Six as they lay their devices. Aquinas, Thompson and Mason, to the left. All others to me on the right.”

  For a moment there was no firing. No Vulcans. No miniguns. No missiles. Which meant that either we’d beaten back the Cray, or they were just waiting for us to turn our backs to descend upon us.

  My telemetry read that the sky above was empty, but it couldn’t tell me how many Cray were waiting in the launch tubes or clinging to the outside of the mound.

  I kept turning, aware that danger could come from anyplace.

  Three members of Romeo Six rushed past us and hurried to the base of the mound. Each of them dropped to a knee and went through the process of activating their devices.

  I saw movement high above as several Cray launched into the air. My telemetry tracked them. I sent seven missiles towards them. The slight recoil from their launch pushed my left shoulder down, turning me towards my left, where I saw a dozen drones walking towards us.

  My eyes shot wide and on the display my heartbeat skyrocketed to the danger zone. I opened fire and sent my last five missiles point blank into their midst.

  Still they came.

  I let my minigun fall and swing back out of the way, and grabbed my harmonic blade. We’d practiced with these. We’d cut through wood like it was butter. We’d pretended to be the Three Musketeers. We’d shadow-fenced a battalion of bad guys. But this was the twenty-first century and no one used swords. No one, that is, except Task Force OMBRA. Here I was, in the most technologically-advanced battle mechanism Earth had ever constructed, and I was relegated to defending myself with a length of sharpened metal.

  I screame
d as my blade sang, coming down on the nearest drone. The metal slid through the alien like it wasn’t even there. I had no form. I had no style. I was hacking and slashing with little thought. They were a forest of weeds and I was a bushwhacker. My blade carved a hundred Xs in front of me, until there was nothing left to attack.

  Then I heard the screaming.

  “Fall back! Fall back!” It was Olivares, one hand grabbing a wing while the other sliced it free from the alien’s body.

  I spun, looking for a target, and saw the ground around me littered with pieces of drone. My EXO glistened with an oily substance that could only be Cray blood.

  Then I noticed the readouts on my HUD. I had red flashing all over the place. I remembered the saying, Red Is Dead. I turned to fall back and fell to the ground, my blade impaling the earth. On my knees, I pulled the blade free and resheathed it.

  I’d fallen over an EXO. I checked my HUD and saw that it was Thompson. His systems and vitals were green.

  “Get up, kid.”

  I pulled myself to my feet and jerked him up. Through his mask I could see the fear in his eyes. I pointed back towards Boma Ng’ombe.

  “That way! Move!”

  He stumbled a moment, then took off running.

  After looking around to see if there were any more members of my team on the ground, I took off after him. I’d gone about a dozen meters when I passed an EXO that had been ripped in half. The stencil on the breastplate read SGT Neeld, Sean. I knew him. He was from Florida and had been assigned to Romeo Six. His entrails lay on the ground amidst body fluids, soaking into the harsh African dirt. There was nothing I could do, so I continued moving as fast as I could.

  Somehow I made it to the rendezvous point by the wing of the 727. All members of Romeo Three were present. Four members of Romeo Six were also there. An infantry platoon waited for us, carrying M32 grenade launchers with six revolving barrels. I watched as they fired into the air; my HUD told me they were using HEDP rounds, which exploded against the surface of the mound behind us. The others carried HK416 assault rifles, and fired carefully at their own targets. Although I was happy to see them, I was worried for their safety out in the open without an EXO.

  “Everyone gather around,” shouted a sergeant, the HUD identifying him as Donnelly, Russell, USMC (Ret), Gunnery Sergeant. He was about sixty and had owned a fast food franchise in Sweetwater, Tennessee when the shit had hit the fan. Now he was an infantry platoon sergeant and the leader of our security forces for this mission.

  MacKenzie turned to me. “Brother, what happened to you? Looks like you fought a food processor and lost.”

  I glanced down at my arms and saw the scrapes and scratches from the Cray. Thankfully, I’d never let them get a good hold on me. All they could do was claw desperately at my armor.

  I checked my battery level. I was sixty percent shot. Still enough to reach base, but time wasn’t on our side. We had less than an hour to return to safety and try to protect the base in case the Cray attacked.

  “Okay, you grunts,” Gunny shouted through our comms. He wore only an MBITR intersquad commo set beneath his Kevlar helmet. “Double file, bounding overwatch, return to the rear. I don’t want no lollygagging and I don’t want no bullshit. The sun’s against us, so scoot and move. Clear?”

  The men and women of the squad responded with Aye Ayes and Yes, sirs. I was assigned to bring up the rear of Team Two as the squad separated into two teams. Olivares was in Team One, but Aquinas was in my team and my job, other than to kill Cray, was to keep her ass safe, just as hers was to keep mine safe.

  As we peeled away from the dead airplane, I set my HUD to split screen, one side displaying my goal ahead, counting down the meters, and the other the mound behind, counting up the distance.

  I was still flashing red, but I was hoping that ignoring it would make it go away. I was more than halfway to my objective when my servos screeched and seized. I didn’t even have enough time to scream. I tumbled, tearing through the cracked, broken surface of the Serengeti plain. I blacked out. When I came to, I was upside down, my HUD sizzling from short circuits and my breathing labored.

  A single thought owned me in that moment. Why had they left me behind?

  Then, as if anything could possibly be worse, I watched as the HUD snapped to black. That could only mean one thing—the Faraday cage had been breached by the fall. My servos weren’t responding. And worst of all, neither was my air supply. Like so many millions before me, the aliens’ EMP burst had finally got me.

  I tried to bring my arms up to remove my helmet, but without the servos, the suit was impossibly heavy. I kept trying anyway, my arms moving inches as I screamed inside my helmet, using every last breath of air that had been held inside. By the time my hands reached the catch for my helmet, I was seeing stars. I felt my fingers play past the clasp, but I didn’t have the strength to do anything with it.

  For a brief moment I pictured an old science fiction movie; a man tugging at his neck as he strangled to death in the poisonous atmosphere of a dead planet. I’d seen it back when no one had known about the Cray. Back when politics was a blood sport and people actually took the words of world leaders seriously. Back when there was a Hollywood. Back when someone could fly from New York to Paris and sip White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Lattes, delivered from the manicured hands of a well-endowed flight attendant. Back when humans still ruled the planet.

  Fuck it.

  I’d had a good run.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t been ready to die before.

  Here’s a news flash: No soldier gives his life. That’s not the way it works. Most soldiers who make a conscious decision to place themselves in harm’s way do it to protect their buddies. They do it because of the bonds of friendship—and it goes so much deeper than friendship.

  Eric Massa

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SOMEONE RIPPED MY my helmet off and smacked me on the face, and I felt my suit coming free. I reached out for a weapon and grabbed the first thing I could. As I was pulled upright, the harmonic blade slid free.

  “Whoa there, Nelly,” came a voice, followed by ten tons of weight coming down on my wrist.

  I felt the blade being removed. I gasped and blinked, trying to see through the shower of stars that had filled my vision as my brain went snap, crackle and pop. How long had I been without oxygen? As I thought about it, I passed out again...

  ...and came to as I was being passed down the trench and into the arms of half a dozen grunts. They grabbed me, then ran down the gangway and past our squad bay. I struggled and wanted to tell them they were going the wrong way. But as I opened my mouth to speak, I embraced the darkness...

  ...and awoke lying on an examination table with an oxygen mask on my face. The world was a blur. My eyes weren’t ready for reality. I blinked until I could see. Olivares and Aquinas stood at the foot of my table, still in their suits but with their helmets off, holding them in the crooks of their arms. They both appeared concerned.

  Aquinas especially.

  I grinned and pulled the mask aside. “Come back for that ride in the back of the car?”

  Her eyes widened and she made an exasperated sound. She frowned, turned on her heel and left.

  “Smooth move, ExLax.” Olivares stepped to the side of the bed.

  “What happened?” I rubbed my head. My brain felt like it had been slugged.

  “Oxygen deprivation. You were dead for a bit, there.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Not something I’d kid about.” Noticing my frown he asked, “Why?”

  “It’s just that if I was dead, I thought I’d know it.” Seeing the look on Olivares’s face, I added, “I thought there’d be a big ball of light or at least a million scrawny hands pulling my ass to hell.”

  “What a grunt you are. Complaining of the quality of the afterlife instead of appreciating being alive.”

  I smiled weakly. “Grunts aren’t happy unless they have something to shoot or complai
n about.”

  “I suppose I might have exaggerated that you were really dead. Probably more deadish,” he said. He turned at the approach of a nurse wearing a combat uniform with Colonel birds on her collar.

  She strode in and was immediately in charge. “You disturbing my patient, Staff Sergeant?”

  “No, ma’am. Is he going to be ready for duty soon?”

  “I can’t be sure. We need to run some more tests. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” She moved to my side so she could take my pulse.

  Olivares paused for a moment, then brought his left hand to his forehead in a mock salute.

  I did the same, except with my right.

  When he was out the door, I asked, “What kind of tests do you need to run?”

  She smiled, warming to me. She had laugh lines I could get lost in. “No tests. We saw your battle on the screens. You were amazing.”

  She saw me on the screens? Was our battle televised? I hadn’t even thought about it, but with all the video feeds available, why wouldn’t they be?

  “I was just trying to survive,” I said. I wasn’t comfortable with the way she was looking at me. I could take a little appreciation, but the glow in her eyes was akin to hero worship, and I was just a damn grunt. “Do I really not need any tests?”

  She shook her head. “Can I get you something? This is a good time to relax. You need to rest.”

  “So there’s nothing wrong with me?”

  “Nothing at all.” She shook her head. Never once had she looked away.

  I slid off the bed and stood, a little wobbly, on the other side of the examination table. My boys were flying free, so I slipped the sheet off the table and wrapped it around me several times.

  She seemed to realize what I was about to do and made a move towards the door, but I was one step in front of her.

  “Thanks so much for all the help, but I’ll see you later.” Then I was out the door and jogging back to the squad bay.