by Ric Dawson
“Drone Commander Popol,” the general intoned.
“Sir.”
“Launch the N-X2 drones!”
“Sir. Are we certain, the … uhh … Novichok chemical agent … it’s …”
“Yes, Popol. And don’t question my orders again, is that clear?” the general growled.
“Yes, sir,” the commander replied.
“Use the perimeter patterns and leave the area around HQ clear,” the general continued.
“Yes, General. The operators will load the perimeter flight plan for Tokyo. How about the other cities?” Popol asked.
“Activate all cells. Use full immersion protocol, Commander,” the general calmly said.
“Yes, sir.” the commander replied, emotionless.
The general pressed the disconnect and turned to look squarely at Captain Povolovic.
“Juri. I believe Commander Popol has some doubts as to the direction the battle plan is taking. Please make sure he is relieved and gets adequate rest.”
Juri’s eyes gleamed for a moment as a feral smile caressed his lips. “I’ll see to it personally, General.”
“Thank you, Juri. We have no room for doubters on our greatest day. Dismissed.”
# # #
Lane
The wave of danger hit me like thunderous surf on rocky cliffs. Unknown. Fast approaching. Death. My mind shrieked. The feeling raced through my brain and ripped cognition from the fabric of my consciousness. I vomited on the sidewalk as waves of horror sped by, screeching like enraged harpies, into the astral winds.
“Lane, you okay?” Melissa was holding my shaking elbow as she peered into my half-closed eyes. The Seahawks had headed back to the carrier while the Apaches hovered overhead. They began to move forward to clear a path through the Wraith defense perimeter.
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t hide the tears that sprang into my eyes. “Something bad, Mel, something real bad is going to happen. We need to get inside,” I said.
Melissa’s eyes widened, then she turned. “Jim, we need to find cover now. Lane says something’s up,” she yelled.
Jim came running over with Kane and Sven. “Lane, what is it?” Jim said.
The Apaches had moved to an intersection when fire erupted from their rocket pods. Smoking red trails streaked behind a building. The ground trembled to the rapid concussion of explosions. Chain guns rattled a constant thunk-thunk as another hellfire missile streaked away towards its target. Both choppers lifted quickly as two green plasma rings shot through where they had just been.
“We need to find cover, Jim. I can’t tell you why. We just need to do it fast.” Then, with a shudder, I lifted my eyes into the firelit skyline as a black cloud of small, flying drones swelled off the roof of the Wraith tower. I knew they carried death. As the others followed my gaze and watched the giant cloud spread out over the twilight sky, I staggered up, pulling Melissa with me.
“Quick. There’s no time. We must hurry,” I croaked.
[Colonel Li]
After leaving the general’s office, Li took the elevator to the ground floor then hurried across the lobby to the heavily guarded sub-floors elevator. Li smiled as he remembered the negotiations for acquiring the property. Clucking to himself, he recalled the irascible owner, long gone. The price she wanted was reasonable, but Wraith rarely paid for anything. He had particularly enjoyed mentally forcing her to sign the required documents. Forcing someone to your will exhilarated the intellect. He let her linger a bit to enjoy the horror in her eyes before killing her.
The “crush” was always a satisfying technique. Her silent screams fulfilled him. Strange. He usually kept distance from his enemies and methodically did whatever was called for without emotional attachment. He prided himself on that. Yet. He had manipulated blood pressure in various parts of her brain. In his early years he had experimented to find the most excruciating torture. Efficient. By targeting migraine trauma, he caused total debilitation. Few people resisted for long. It had been very illuminating, he recalled.
The entire lobby of the building had been transformed into a barricaded, tactical defense kill zone. The first floor of the building had hardened steel desks and combat-designed architectural sculptures of steel that provided heavy barricades and fire platforms against advancing troops.
Fire teams filled concealed kill lines in the lobby along with heavy machine guns ports.
“Fools, they have no idea what they are up against,” Li muttered.
Nodding to the hunkered-down squad guarding the elevator doors, Li typed the access code into the wall data panel.
Stepping into the elevator, Li looked at the floor selection. Button one read Vehicles, two was Barracks, three was Psi Ops, four was Power Systems. He punched sub floor three. Wraith had acquired a large parking lot adjacent to the structure and extended all the sub floors out under the parking lot. The tank and rocker exits were hidden from the outside. An aircraft-carrier-sized elevator lifted the rockers to ground level as they had difficulty with the ramp angle. The tanks and other support vehicles used the ramp from sub floor one. The elevator dropped quickly, and moments later Li exited the roomy elevator into the football-field-sized sub floor three of Wraith HQ. Aligned in the center of the one-hundred-meter-long room were three rows of two large opaque hemispheres. Each hemisphere was a separate psi team launch pad complete with support equipment for a full squad of ten psionic troopers. Along the nearest wall, three specially designed quantum computers aided the teams with cyber psi analysis and custom astral data sensors. The other wall in the enormous room was almost completely occupied by massive power conversion systems to manage the power flow from the six embedded thorium nuclear reactors on the fourth sub floor.
Li clenched his teeth grimly, mumbling, “That imbecile general should be flayed to ever expose this equipment to potential harm.”
Walking into the nearby command offices, Li spied Shao Xiao (Major) Chin.
Approaching the major, Li spoke. “Major Chin, how many teams are prepped for psi entry?”
Seeing the colonel, Major Chin saluted. “Colonel, four chambers are ready. The other two have away teams already in the psi.”
“Excellent. Put the four remaining teams in the ‘near-psi’ on overwatch around the building. Tell them to engage anyone they see.”
“Yes, Shifu!” Speaking into a small tactical microphone with earpiece, he set the colonel’s orders into action. “All teams begin insertion protocol. Defend the building.” In four of the large hemisphere-shaped rooms, psi crews donned their tactical gear and immediately entered the astral in the ‘near-psi.’ As the major waited, chamber controllers messaged him. “Teams three through six have successfully entered the near-space-time astral zone.”
[Specialist Wang]
Shadow Walker Xu moved from his position floating in the chamber to his squad’s assembly point outside the building.
Four psi squads had split up and assembled in their sentry positions around the building.
“The cyber psi is murky today,” he remarked as he moved over to Specialist Wang.
“Yes, Xu, the near-psi has a lot of interference,” Wang replied as he smirked at Xu.
The man had a way of stating the obvious, Xu thought. Around him the sea-green and blue buildings shimmered in gray clouds. Their color was subdued as if in heavy rain and mist. Wang had the di-psi out and it belched waves of thick psi dissonance. The fog was barely discernible to the troopers but would present an impenetrable mask to enemy psi walkers.
“I am always amazed at these devices Xu,” Wang said as he dialed up the di-psi to maximum distortion. The cylindrical shaped di-psi hummed and its lights glowing a soft orange. He held the device by the centered pistol grip and turned the dial on top to its maximum setting. Lights around the cylinder’s side sped up as the field strengthened.
“It’s too bad we have to hold the damn thing the whole time. Something about it requires a human operator.”
Xu just snorted, bus
y scanning the nearby buildings for movement.
“That’s what I like about you, Xu, always talking. You never shut up.” Wang grinned.
Xu glanced at him, his fierce gaze showing his disapproval of the constant chatter. The squad fire teams spread out into their triangular pattern in front of the building.
The large rectangular bodies of two plasma tanks rumbled past. Their main plasma guns looked like giant springs that encircled the main gun barrel. They fired blobs of sticky green that resembled giant donuts. The ground around the tanks exploded. Debris blew upward in great chunks. Turning his head, Wang saw two attack helicopters hovering over a nearby intersection. The helicopters rose quickly, and the tank barrels were too slow to track them as they poured out their steady toroidal puffs of plasma. Several rockers rolled up and added their lightning discharges to the attack on the fast-retreating helicopters. The man-sized metal spheres sprouted six thick metal rods, three to a side. From each tip a thick jagged lightning bolt arced out The lightning caused the near-psi to shake while blasting huge chunks from buildings and anything else in their way. Wang was thankful he was in the near-psi as the thunderous racket from the rockers was painful in the ‘real’.
Wang looked up at the HQ building roof. Dark streams of dots expanded outward from the roof in a growing cloud. The dots moved away, dispersing in the distance.
“I hate sentry duty. Waiting, waiting, waiting.”
Xu just snorted as usual. The rest of the squad ignored him. They had heard it all before. The near-psi was dimmer now, more twilight, less bright. What color there was had faded into grays and shadows.
“It’s nighttime in the real,” Wang stated to no one in particular.
“Everyone knows, Wang, just keep alert … and quiet would be nice for a change.” Xu frowned.
Then Wang saw them, a small enemy team moving in the real behind a building in the direction of the retreating choppers.
“Xu?” he started to say more.
“I see them, Wang,” Xu injected. “Shao Xiao. Intruders, looks like an insertion team,” he said.
“Track them and disrupt their systems and weapons if they get closer. I will notify Shifu Li. Do not chase them. Stay on post,” Shao Xaio Chin replied. Chin faded from the near-psi.
HQ ASSAULT
Jim
“Okay everyone, let’s move, into that building!” Jim sprinted towards a tall gray building offset from the road. A sign flashed by: “Shiodome Shiba Riyku Building.”
“In here.” Jim held open a glass door. “Find some cover up that escalator! Lane, do your psi thing and see what we have going on here, bucko,” he said.
“Sure,” Lane said.
He didn’t look so good, Jim thought. Kinda green around the edges and his eyes kept darting all about. It was nerve-wracking. Of course, the guy always seemed a little “off,” like he was dodging bullets no one else saw.
“Let’s go!” Jim hurried the team up an escalator, two moving steps at a time. The escalator was centered in the large foyer of the building.
“Take cover behind this partition so we can get a good view of the floor below.” Taking out his Saint Christopher medallion, Jim pressed it to his lips.
“Faithfully protect.”
Looking up, Jim saw Sven had ducked in next to him. Sven looked in his eyes and nodded.
Jim noted with approval the team lay flat around the partition. All eyes watched the building’s entrance. It wasn’t long before something rolled by outside. Metallic sounds were followed by the clank and crunch of steel on cement. Several more could be heard rolling up. Then the front display window shattered and the rockers rolled into the main foyer. Broken glass crunched under their rolling surfaces. Four spheres squatted in the entryway, each with six electrolasers that crackled with residual discharge.
No one breathed. Five more rockers appeared outside.
“Crap, they know we are here,” Jim whispered. “These have more guns, folks.”
A hundred feet behind the rockers rumbled two plasma tanks. They crushed small cars as their metal treads ran up and over them. The tanks pulled into the pavilion.
“Tanks. Odin’s Balls. We cannot defeat them front on, Jim. We need to surprise them from the side,” Sven said.
“Lane, you find anything in the cyber psi?” Jim whispered, glancing over at Lane a few feet away.
Lane lay on his back, eyes closed. His neck muscles stood out as if under tremendous strain.
“Fall back, guys, we’ll try to flank the tanks. Sven, can you drag Lane?” Jim said.
“Sure thing, boss!” Sven whispered back.
Crouching below the railing so as not to be seen by the rockers, Sven’s meaty hands grabbed the scruff of Lane’s neck and slid him across the smooth floor. Everyone moved away from the balcony edge.
The sound of metal scraping on stone echoed from Lane’s sliding body.
“Jävlar! Damn buckle,” Sven said.
No one could hear the last part, as the air in the foyer thundered with lightning that arced into the ceiling and walls around the team. The balcony edge exploded, sending shards of broken cement streaking by. Bolts danced around the railing like cascades from giant tesla coils.
Everybody scrambled down a large central corridor. “Move. Move. Move!” Jim yelled above the crescendo.
Two green beams wavered above their heads. Then a compression wave and powerful wash of heat staggered Jim forward to his knees. Small bits of burning debris showered the team.
Jim grabbed Mel and pulled her to her feet. Her helmet was gone.
“No time for a powder break soldier, move your ass!” Jim said.
Everyone else ran ahead. Jim sprinted to catch up with Mel in tow. They took a right turn and saw a large window at the end of the corridor, stairwell on the right. Kane peeked out the window. “Clear.”
“Go, Go, Go!” Jim yelled. Lane was over Sven’s shoulder now in a fireman’s carry.
Kane banged the stairwell door open and rushed in. Sven followed, the big man turning sideways to get Lane’s inert form through. Mel and Jim arrived seconds later, bursting through the closing door and jumping three steps at a time down the stairs. They came up on the exit door Kane had his ear to.
“Rockers,” Kane hissed.
“Lasers. Shoot their concho-asses through the walls!” Jim whispered back.
They all got back against the far wall from the door and let loose. Mel’s laser vaporized particle board, cinder blocks, and sheet rock, spitting white dust and shards into the air. The heat was intense. The sizzling beam tore through the wall and sliced a rocker in half. They all followed suit, lasing through the smoldering gash she had created.
The temperature rose fast in the enclosed stairwell.
Choking on debris, Jim leaped out and fired to his left. Fast as he was, it wasn’t fast enough. Lightning shattered the air in the hallway. Thrown into the air, Jim slid, stunned, up against the exit door.
Jim felt himself lifted up to his feet.
“Move, no time to daydream, mate,” Kane said. More loud sizzling and the lightning stopped.
An explosion burst the doors open and Jim flew out. Smoke poured from the open exit. The lasers had ignited everything they hit.
Flames filled the corridor behind them. Even as the dizziness subsided, a rocker rolled out from around the side of the building twenty meters away. Mel caught it, mid-turn, as it brought its barrels to bear. Her hot beam sliced it like butter. The rocker’s top hemisphere slumped forward under its momentum as the smoldering bottom slid to a stop. The exploding wreck sent flame and shrapnel in all directions. They staggered back. Something struck Jim’s gun hand, and pain raced up his arm.
“Damn,” Jim swore. A large piece of shrapnel had impaled his insulated glove. It had cleaved right through the laser pistol’s cylinder and shattered the lasing crystal.
“Screw this!” Reaching behind him, Jim unlimbered the TP gun. “Let’s get some.”
“‘Bout tim
e you stopped pussy-footin’ around, Lieutenant.” Mel limped to the street. The hair on one side of her head had melted to her scalp. She slapped a small syringe into her neck.
“Wait.” Jim pointed to the pedestrian cross-walk stairs across the street. “Let’s hit them from above.”
Everyone nodded and hustled up the stairs. Sven huffed like a worn-out steam locomotive.
“You okay, Sergeant?” Jim asked.
“I’m okay, but we need to talk to Lane about a diet.” Blood ran from his chin as he coughed a chuckle. Shrapnel had gouged a deep cut across his jaw, exposing bone. Blood soaked his neck and dripped down his chest. A few inches lower and it would have been his carotid artery.
“Sven, are you just going to stand there and bleed? You big oaf,” Mel said as she pulled a large medi-kit from her pack.
“Look who’s talking, you sexy, half-bald wench.” Another bloody cough wracked Sven.
Mel checked the wound while Sven knelt in front of her.
“What. No superglue?” Sven coughed again.
“Dermabond, bonehead. It’s the latest in insta-sutures for retarded Swedes. Now shut up and let me work.” She turned his head slightly to get a good look at the rip.
The sound of two rockers echoed below as they rolled by on the roadway. Automatic rifle fire sounded closer. It came from the front of the blaze that used to be an office building.
“Mel. There’s a swad of bad below. We don’t have a lot of time.” Jim spit black chew-juice on the ground.
“I’m hurrying!” she snapped. Grabbing a sterile squirt bottle, she washed the wound. Popping the top on an anesthetic vial, she poured the numbing topical around the gash. Blood welled from sliced blood vessels so she pressed the wound closed, allowing the numbing agent to do its work. After a moment, she released the pressure and squirted a tube of white pasty surgical glue along the length of the cut. Again applying pressure, she slapped a clear rectangular adhesive bandage across Sven’s jawline. “There.” she kissed his cheek, then patted him on the head.