Grunt Life

by Weston Ochse

  Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.

  Anne Frank

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I DARED NOT breathe.

  Waiting for the sound to come again was interminable; when it finally did, it was from way down, somewhere in the darkness of the vast chamber below.

  I had two choices. I could return to Olivares and inform him of the situation, and both of us could return in force, creating interlocking fields of fire that could maximize our position and firepower. Or I could go it alone.

  I marked the edge of the opening with the IR paint and carefully began to descend. I wasn’t playing around. The descent was difficult. In the NVD, I lacked depth perception. I felt the way with my feet as I went, facing forward, ready to bring my MP5 to bear if needed.

  When I finally reached the ground, the floor of the vast chamber was relatively flat and smooth, covered in a thick layer of disturbed dust. I sprayed a mark on a rock near the ground that would be visible from the opening.

  I began to try and decipher the marks in the dust. A mess of human footprints were jumbled in a large area. They moved off in every direction, most likely trying to find a way forward. Villagers who’d found their way into the volcano? Or another team?

  My opinion of Mr. Pink had never changed. However competent he may be, there was always more to every mission than he let on. The tracks made me wonder if we hadn’t been the first group to try this mission. Of course, I reminded myself that there was no wind and there was no weather, so these footprints might have been here since the time of Jules Verne.

  My gut said otherwise.

  I followed the prints, until I found the first of hundreds of 5.56 and 9mm shell casings littering the floor. More recent than Jules Verne, then.

  We were not the first.

  So who or what had that noise been?

  The cavern was larger than I’d originally suspected. As I moved forward, the IR began to reveal more and more of the scene. The footprints had become smeared in several places. A smell intruded into my awareness.

  I saw a boot. Vibram soles, military issue, and attached to a dead soldier wearing the same fatigues I was wearing, right up to the CBT OMBRA patch on his shoulder.

  Huh?

  The scraping came again.

  I ran in small, controlled steps towards the sound, past several more bodies. A Cray, its leg trembling. I stabbed it with the laser targeting indicator from my weapon. Its body had been riddled with bullets. Its eyes were glazed, and green fluid trickled from the corner of its tiny, insectile mouth. This one lacked wings, just as the other two had. Its clawed hands had closed like the legs of a dying spider. Its back was arched. One knee was up, the other leg slung out.

  I let my MP5 hang by its sling and pulled my harmonic blade free. I removed the alien’s head and felt a little better.

  I scouted the rest of the chamber and found six more Cray; possibly more, if I were to piece together all of the parts. Several grenade pins littered the floor. They’d been lucky there hadn’t been a cave in.

  A thought struck me. Maybe there had been. Maybe there wasn’t any way out. I forced myself to remain calm. No use working myself up until I could see for myself. I decided to wait to check further until I had Olivares with me. If there had recently been grenade explosions in here, there was no telling how unstable the cavern might have become.

  In total, I found ten Cray and six dead soldiers.

  I knelt beside one soldier and checked the nametag: Robinson. I checked another: Fredricks. And another, Cozzens. This name I remembered. He’d had a conversation in the mess hall with MacKenzie once, something about Wales. Then it all snapped into place. Romeo Five. This was Romeo Five! I hadn’t seen them performing any actions on the mound. They’d been sent here instead.

  Why hadn’t Mr. Pink told us? He had to have known we’d come in contact with their remains. But then I answered my own question. Why would he state the obvious? Telling us in advance would have just created more questions and more doubt.

  Of course, he’d sent a full team before and only two soldiers this time. He could have at least sent Ohirra, but no. For some reason he was unwilling to risk more grunts, which meant that he probably didn’t expect us to succeed.

  I scowled.

  It was always daunting on some level to realize one’s own expendability. One moment you believe you’re a critical element to mission success, and the next you realize you hardly matter. Not for the first time, I wondered what else Mr. Pink had kept from us. I decided then and there that I’d find a way to prove to him that we could make a difference.

  I went to work separating the bodies. I laid all of the members of Romeo Five in a row and stacked their equipment in a separate pile, grabbing an MP5 to bring back for Olivares to use. I left the Cray where they lay, but checked to see if any of them had that strange device on the backs of their heads. Four of them did. I separated these from the rest, just in case Olivares could think of a good reason to remove the devices.

  Then I did one last sweep around the area and found the boundary walls. There were six ways out of the cavern, but it was obvious from marks on the floor which way the Cray had come. I didn’t immediately check it; for all I knew, there were a hundred Cray waiting for some poor fool to stick his head in. Instead, I made another final check of the chamber floor and returned to Olivares.

  Climbing back out of the chamber tired me more than I expected. By the time I made it back to where Olivares had everything laid out like a science project, I was exhausted. I briefly told him what I’d seen, then threw myself down, leaned against the wall and gave myself an hour of well-deserved shuteye.

  As it turned out, Olivares gave me four.

  And took two himself.

  I dreamed of Michelle. She was whispering to me. I kept laughing and trying to figure out what she was saying, but she never became clear.

  When Olivares woke me, he had a grin on his face.

  “Want to hear something funny?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  He held out his hand, revealing the thing we’d removed from the Cray. He’d attached the wires coming from it to a battery.

  I grinned. “I still don’t get it.”

  Then he raised his other hand, holding the helmet from his EXO. Sounds were coming from it.

  I stood and bent my head towards it. We were far too deep to get any reception. It was impossible that there was anything coming from it, yet I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Then I realized that it wasn’t just sounds. There were what seemed like words coming from the earpieces in the helmet, unintelligible. And as impossible as it seemed, in the familiar tones of a human voice. And not just any human voice either.

  Michelle’s.

  Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.

  Thomas A. Edison

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I COULDN’T HELP the expression sliding onto my face. “What kind of sick trick is that?”

  He backed up a step. “Not sure myself. I had an idea that this might have been some sort of receiver. I saw two wires and decided to attach them to a battery.”

  “How’d you tune it in?”

  “I didn’t. The helmet did. Once I turned it on, it searched for the nearest active frequency and this is what I got.”

  I listened for a moment. “You know who this sounds like, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “It can’t really be her, though.”

  I gave him a curious look. “Why not? Do you know where she is? We never did find a body.”

  We listened for a few more minutes, and I knew with every ounce of my being that what I was listening to was Michelle’s voice. Even though it was coming from some sort of alien brain receiver, it gave me hope. She was still alive, captured by the Cray. Which meant that our mission had just gone from infiltration to rescue.

  “I can tell what you’re thinking.” Olivares watched me as he unhooked the power to the device. He pu
t it into the helmet, set it on the floor, wrapped the Faraday netting around it, then began strapping on his Kevlar and weapons.

  “So what? It’s not like we’re not going to rescue her if we get the chance.”

  He leveled a finger at me. “Listen. I’m still not sold on the idea what we’re hearing is her. That we’re getting reception down here at all is incredible. The only way I can figure it is that each of these transmitters acts as a relay, signal-boosting the others.”

  I remembered the other Cray I’d found with devices in their heads. How many more Cray were down below? More importantly, why didn’t he believe that the voice was Michelle’s? I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Occam’s razor. In the battle of competing hypothesis, the simplest answer is most often correct. Until otherwise proven, I’m going to go with coincidence.”

  “Yeah? Ever hear of Mason’s Razor?”

  Olivares couldn’t help but smile.

  “Mason’s Razor: If the alien brain receiver sounds like your fucking girlfriend then it probably is your fucking girlfriend.”

  “Does Mason’s Razor explain why an alien would need to use her voice?” Olivares looked up as he slapped in his pistol mag and shoved the weapon into his chest holster.

  “Ever hear an alien speak?” I countered. “Maybe they don’t. Maybe they have to use something else to communicate. Maybe it’s aliens like us who have the capacity to translate thought into something audible. Or in the case of the device, maybe something that speaks directly to the brain.”

  Olivares was staring at me with a curious look on his face.

  “What?”

  “For a second there you sounded intelligent. I could almost believe your idea.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. But I still go with Occam’s razor. You prove otherwise, then we’ll talk.”

  We finished packing up the gear and slid on our packs. I briefed him in more detail about what I’d found as we checked each other’s packs, ensuring the Faraday netting was secure. Within minutes, we were moving back the way I’d come.

  We used our NVDs and IR illuminators to guide our way and we made good time through the path and down the rock fall into the gallery. I showed him the exits, then the bodies.

  He spent several minutes studying the corpses. He checked their wounds, rolling each of them over. When he was done, he pulled out a pad of paper and recorded their names by red light.

  Then he checked the Cray. He was as thorough with them as he had been with the members of Romeo Five.

  When he was done, he stood. “You separated the weapons?”

  I showed him. One pile consisted of the same weapons and equipment we carried, with the addition of the M4s. The other held three small boxes, identical to the one I’d confiscated back on the surface.

  “Same things that got you.” I handed him the one I had taken from aboveground. “I got this from the one on the surface.”

  Olivares took it, all the while staring at the others with a gaze made glassy by the IR. “I saw them one minute, next thing I knew I was on the ground. I knew I was in Africa, but my brain was back in Minnesota. Memories I’d tried to block. Terrible things. It was that Siren that made me feel that way. And to think now they’ve weaponized it.” He looked down at the box in his hand. “Did you try it?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  He eyed the boxes warily. “I don’t know what to do with them.” He looked from the one in his hand to the ones in the pile.

  “We’re grunts, not scientists,” I said. “If I can use it to kill Cray, then give it to me. If not, give it to a scientist.”

  He pulled free a Gerber knife and worked at prying one open.

  I moved closer to get a good look.

  Inside was a bundle of wires running towards a small, pulsating oval. Correction; not wires. I looked more closely and could see these were biological, not mechanical, filaments. Oily green and orange liquid glistened in the red light, giving off a rank aroma as it dripped and clung to the strands. The threads ran to a gently pulsing organ held in place by a metal surround. This mix of the biological and the electronic conjured up a whole new slew of questions concerning the Cray.

  The first was about their EMP pulses. Why had their bodies evolved such a capability? Were the EMPs used purely as a weapon, or were they essential to some other purpose?

  I shared my thought with Olivares.

  He had another point of view. “So let’s look at it the other way. Let’s say we can only think of ways to use EMPs defensively. How can we do that?”

  I stared at him blankly, waiting for him to continue.

  “Electromagnetic pulses are radiation. Radiation has many uses. We cook with it. We grow things with it. We use radiation for power.”

  Ever think how alike the Cray are to bees in a hive? Thompson had once asked. I’d agreed, but hadn’t really given the concept the attention it deserved, probably because I’d been too busy trying to keep my ass from getting handed to me. But now it seemed relevant. How would a bee use an EMP? What did the bee have that was missing in a Cray?

  “A stinger!”

  “That’s not a defensive use for EMP.”

  “No, listen. Thompson once said that Cray are like bees. We’ve all seen the similarities. Bees leave their hives, gather pollen and return. If you mess with them you get stung, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe the EMP pulses are their stingers,” I said, feeling like I’d hit on something.

  “I’m hearing you, but could be anything. Maybe they help gather pollen,” Olivares countered. I blinked with uncertainty.

  “You could be right, Mason, but you’re so focused on offensive capabilities that it’s the only thing you can think of. What if the EMPs are necessary wherever they come from, much like ultraviolet light or fluorescent light can be used to stimulate growth in plants?”

  I couldn’t believe it would be that complicated, and I said as much. “I think you’re reaching. What do you think happens? Does a Cray swoop down, beam its EMP on a plant, then watch as the plant opens up?”

  “Maybe. Could be.” Olivares shrugged. “Just don’t be so sure of your own ideas. We’re not going to know. What was it you said? We’re grunts, not scientists.”

  I nodded, then added, “I realize this all seems like worthless supposition, but have you ever wondered why we had to read all of those books and watch all of those movies and answer all of those questions? It had to be for moments like this. They wanted us to think about this, to talk about it and, probably in the end, figure it out. It was far easier to train a bunch of snake-eating soldiers to think critically than it was for them to create ground-pounding soldiers out of scientists. If you think about it, Western culture has been training for this for years. Every science fiction movie, miniseries, television show, comic book, novel, short story and cartoon became source material for our end of the world dissertation on planetary survival.”

  Olivares grinned. “The training sure made us smarter. I never would have understood a word you just said had it not been for those hellish months inside the cage.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?” I pressed.

  “If a grunt makes a scientific discovery in the bottom of a volcano and never gets out alive to tell anyone, did he really make the discovery?”

  “You’re right, of course.”

  “What was that?” Olivares leaned close and fingered his lapel. “Can you speak into the microphone?”

  “Fuck you very much,” I said. “Maybe we should get going.”

  “You think?”

  “Which way?”

  “Hold on and let me see.” He’d managed to download some data from the least damaged tablet. He set everything down, then found a clear space. He took the helmet, removed the Faraday netting, then put on the helmet and keyed on the internal mapping system. All we had to do was figure out where we were and plot our way to the mound. That I’d found
a large gallery with multiple exits was terrific. It didn’t take him long to figure out where on the map we were, and to project where we’d have to travel and when we’d have to turn.

  The mission had finally given us a break.

  In Lucius Shepard’s Life During Wartime, the fate of the world and the fate of the main character’s soul are intrinsically linked. Discuss how you felt about this before you knew about the possibility of an alien invasion, then juxtapose your response with how you would feel about it afterwards.

  TF OMBRA Study Question

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  EVEN WITH THE aid of IR, the going was grueling. We began trekking through the tunnels. We were aware of the rock walls, outcroppings, and precarious footing, but without depth perception the dangers were still very present. We were forced to move slowly as every bone-bashing, flesh-gashing, ankle-twisting meter passed behind us.

  I’d scraped and rubbed against the walls so many times that without the Kevlar to protect me, I would have bled out a long ways back. Likewise the ballistic mask had protected me from several outcroppings that had reached out to tap me, leaving gashes in the bonded Kevlar.

  Olivares had fared little better.

  The IR illuminators ate our batteries, as did the occasional map check on the HUD. Six hours had passed and we’d changed batteries three times. At least our packs became lighter with each change.

  After the third change of batteries, we stopped for food and water. We ate silently in the darkness, conserving what energy we could.

  As we moved through the subterranean maze, my mind replayed battles with the Cray: the way they fought, their tactics, their insectile savagery. I’d been through so many close calls it almost seemed impossible that I was still alive. Had the Cray shown any real skill at combat I’d have been dead a dozen times over. Their tactics were simple; once they had a target, they attacked until either they or their target was dead. It was a tactic you used when you had overwhelming odds, like the Chinese at the Battle of the Chosen Reservoir in the Korean War. Or when you didn’t care about the loss of life needed to attain a goal.