All we have to do now is listen to the General berate us for disobeying orders.
I sigh heavily, life is good.
Four
Day 7: Cycle 1: Period 2: Year 2397
Most of the time the low humming of the Dropships engines is a comforting sound, not always though. It could mean one of two things. You were being dropped off in a hot zone and would possibly die or get injured, or that you were getting taken away from battle from either being injured or that your mission had been a success.
This time it’s a comforting sound, plus the low rhythmic hum of the engines vibrates my seat, which is always nice.
“T.A.R. Base this is Dropship Nine requesting permission for bay doors to open," the pilot says.
A reply follows instantly.
“This is T.A.R. Base, permission granted, Bay doors are opening. Welcome home DS-Nine.”
“All personnel aboard, prepare to disembark,” the pilot says.
He pivots the ship so that we are able to land in the hanger. The view of the city also disappears when he turns, the nice view is replaced with a vast amount of concrete walls and windows.
“Alright folks. Thanks for riding the expressway from hell. Now, please wait before the vehicle has come to a complete and full stop before vacating your seats and exiting.” I glance around at the civilians around me, they all have a very odd look; they are probably wondering how I could be so calm after what had happened only minutes ago.
“When that’s all done, just outside the hanger entrance you’ll find a Corporal waiting to escort you to your specific debriefing room, and please, watch your step it’s a bit of a drop,” I say.
The civilians seem to be taking the news rather well; all of them are sitting at the edges of their seats, waiting to get off.
“Alright Captain, we’re next. Thanks for the lift boys, appreciate it,” I say, jumping out of the Dropship, almost biting my tongue in the process as my boots hit solid ground, jarring my teeth into the roof of my mouth.
“Colonel Woods and Captain Ravenson, please report to briefing room six immediately,” a voice says over the base intercom.
“What, we can't even shower first anymore?” T-Rave says.
“Guess not,” I sigh out.
We start to make our way to the lift when we get interrupted by a familiar face.
“Ah Colonel! How did the mission go?” Jayon Cofield asks.
“Adequate, we lost good men, but we completed the mission,” I say solemnly.
“Oh, sorry to hear that, but did we learn anything about our little problem by chance?” He says.
“Most of this information is classified Mr. Cofield. I hope you are aware of that,” I say.
“What, all the information about these alien life forms is classified? Including why they are here and what they are?” He says stubbornly, this guy sure doesn’t give up.
“I can tell you one thing, they are Hakorians, and I would assume that you could figure out on your own why they are here, you seem like a smart man.”
“Global domination is it then?” He asks.
“Gettin’ warmer.”
“Hmm, well I guess I will have to wait and see, and Colonel, I really am sorry about your men.”
“Well, it was my first mission with the team, so I didn’t know them very well, but I could tell that they were good people, and good soldiers. They’ll be missed,” T-Rave says.
“Yes they will be. Excuse us though Mr. Cofield; we need to get to that briefing,” I say, stopping him before he can say anything else.
“Ah yes, of course, be on your way then,” he says with a cheery smile.
T-Rave glances at him walking away before returning his attention back at me, “that guy gives me the creeps, it’s almost like he’s trying to hide something.”
“Maybe he’s always like that. Quite frankly I don’t care, he doesn’t concern us, what does concern us is getting debriefed. We need to let our superiors know what those Hakorians were up to down there.”
“Right, let’s get moving then shall we?”
****
The briefing room is in sight, it took longer than me and T-Rave thought. Getting stopped by that cargo transport Captain along the way really slowed things down.
I take my gloves off, enabling me to scan my thumbprint into the security pad to open the door.
“General, reporting for the debriefing as ordered,” I say, saluting.
“I ordered your full team here, what happened to Major Lorid and Sargent Terein?” He asks.
“We lost Major Lorid shortly after we got in, he took quite a hit when the Dropship blew up; he sacrificed himself so we could continue with our mission.”
“And Sargent Terein?”
“Sargent Terein was killed shortly after our last transmission; one of the aliens killed him.”
The General gestures to the seats on opposite sides of the table.
T-Rave and I sit down. We might as well make ourselves comfy.
“Did you get any Intel about this situation that we are in? What do these things want from us?”
“Well, first of all, they are called Hakorians. And they want to exterminate us so they can have the planet.”
“Sir? Permission to have a full debriefing after we have gotten ourselves cleaned up a bit. As much as I want to give you this information it will just be a lot easier if we do it in regular attire.”
“Permission granted Colonel. Be back here in one hour for a full mission debriefing. That will give me enough time to tell my superiors the vital information that you have just shared with me.”
I sigh in relief, the last thing I want to do is give a full debriefing in complete armour.
“Thank you Sir, believe me, we are all benefitting from it,” I say. We most likely smell like a sports team that just finished playing a game.
“Indeed,” he says. I can see the slight twitching of his noise. He clearly liked the decision he made.
I salute the General before spinning around and heading back out through the door. We make our way to the Armoury servicing room. The specialists would be pleased that the armour that we’re wearing wasn’t damaged too much, it makes their job a lot easier.
We take the lift to the armoury floor again, making our way through the complex to the service room.
“Ah, here it is Colonel,” T-Rave says, pointing at the door to his right.
We walk into the service room. It’s packed with old weapons and pieces of destroyed armour, along with flashy speeders that have weapon cannons mounted on the sides.
“Can I help you two with something?” A woman says from across the room. She’s crouching over beside a very large looking robot before standing up and walking towards us, a very simple mechanics outfit is her attire. Her short brown hair is pushed back into a bandana to expose her brown eyes, although it’s still hard to see her face seeing as it’s covered in filth
“Well, it depends, this is a servicing room, what services do you provide?” T-Rave says playfully before I can state our real reason.
“Hmm, think your being cute?” She says.
“Me? I’m always being cute.”
I try to bite back a laugh, trying to picture T-Rave as a cute and cuddly person just can't seem to enter my mind.
“Stuff it soldier, I know your type. Your little routine doesn’t work on girls like me, just save it for a low-lifer with half a braincell.”
T-Rave scowls at her, obviously it wasn’t his first time getting rejected in that matter.
“Sorry Gentlemen, I should’ve addressed myself first, Chief Engineer Krystil Aakia, head of the repair team here on base, I usually work on ships though, weapons and tech are secondary.”
“Please to meet you. How come you’re here if you prefer to work on ships?” I ask.
“Ah, well, I’m here because of money, the military is paying lots of money to those that have the skills that I have, I can fix almost anything.”
“Alright, well
can you have this gear ready for us in a few hours?”
“Just a few hours? Why, you leaving on another mission soon?” She asks, she almost sounded insulted by the words ‘can you’ and ‘in a few hours’.
“We’re not sure when we’re leaving, but it’ll be soon. Can you do that for us?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, turning around to stare at T-Rave, who’s looking at the woman wth pure hatred in his eyes, “Captain, we have one hour, do what you will in that hour, but be at the debriefing.”
“Yes Sir.” he says.
I find a workstation at the far end of the room. Taking the armour off was a lot harder than you would think. Putting it on was fast and easy, taking it off took time; each individual section had to come off by manually detaching them from the carbon fiber mesh vest underneath.
It took me ten minutes to get all of the pieces off, sorting them in a way that would be easiest for CE Aakia to fix them, largest sections to smallest.
I watch from the corner of my eye as she walks over, “wow, you boys really shredded some of these pieces, what were you doing?” She asks, looking at the back plates. They had been the plates that were peppered with tiny razor sharp flying shrapnel.
“Did you hear about the building that collapsed just minutes ago?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the armour, trying to stay focused on that task at hand.
“Yeah, were you two the ones that blew it up?”
“Not exactly. My team went in there to try to figure out what was in the building. It was the aliens that showed up this morning. My team tried to prevent the building from blowing up. We failed though; the building was destroyed regardless of our actions to prevent it.”
“Your team? I wouldn’t call two people an effective strike force,” she says, looking around the room and pointing at T-Rave, who’s at another work station, dismantling his weapons for cleaning.
“We lost two men after we touched down, me and the Captain over there, we were the only ones that made it out, well, that’s not true, we did manage to save five civilians that were captured for questioning.”
“Well it sounds to me that you didn’t fail in your mission, you saved lives today, and that counts for something.”
“Hmm, we lost over half of the civilians on the escape, I wouldn’t call that a success.”
“Well, you made it out alive, and that’s what counts.”
She looks at me once more in the eyes, in an odd way, kinda like the way that Syreena looked into my eyes when we first met. She opens her mouth slight as if to say something, her eyes dart from my eyes to my hand. She quickly closes her mouth.
Before I can ask her what she was about to say she walks away from me and quickly disappears from view. I glance down to what she was staring at. My ring. Maybe she was about to ask me out for drinks or something sometime but noticed that I’m married. Strange, no one ever did that to me, ever.
I shake my head and try to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing. “Captain, you done over there?”
“Yes Sir, just finishing up.”
“Ok, we got under forty minutes, don’t be late.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m gonna hit the showers, and then make a personal call.”
“Alright, see you at the debriefing.”
I walk out the door and down the hallway to the locker rooms. Just as I’m about to go through the door into the locker room my ear piece chirps.
“Woods here.”
“Honey, it’s me.” Syreenas voice speaks through the receiver.
“Hey, what's up? Did you burn down the house or something?” I say.
“Hah, you’re funny. I saw on the news about those two buildings, but I couldn’t finish it because the power went out.”
“Oh, um, yeah that was me, sorry ‘bout that.”
“How are you getting any work done if you have no power?” She asks.
“Well, the base is powered by secondary independent generators. This is a military compound, it’s important that we have power in times like this.” I say.
“Alright, I was just worried about you. That’s all. When are you able to come home?”
“I’m not sure, it may be days or hours, I’ll know soon enough.”
“Ok, just let me know when you are coming home ok?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon, I promise. Bye Hun.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too,” I finish. There were couples like me and Syreena, who said our goodbyes and then ended the conversation. Then those who were always like ‘no you hang up first.’ Those are the people that really irritated me. I had seen a couple like that before in one of the Cafes in the downtown region when I had gone shopping with Syreena. A man had been sitting there in the corner constantly telling his girlfriend to hang up. It had gone on for several minutes before I had just walked over to him and took his intercom and just switched it to off. The look that had erupted on the man’s face was priceless.
I walked through the locker room while I was talking to Syreena. It almost felt like I hadn’t walked there myself though, one second I was on the intercom, the next second I was already staring at my locker that was marked Lt. Col Woods.
I begin to strip down to nothing, ready to jump into a nice relaxing shower. I walk into one of the water cubicles. They have very little privacy, but I’m in the army, there was never any real privacy when it came to showering. The cascading water feels good on my battered and bruised body, I hadn’t felt any of these injuries happen at the time. But after examining my body I’m astounded that I’m not in any real pain. My adrenaline buzz that I had while in combat had made me impervious to pain.
It was almost hard to not fall asleep while I was standing here, just to drift away forever, and the scary part was that I could care less if it happen. The one thought that I would stay awake for is Syreena, she is my connection to reality.
****
I sit here in the briefing room, T-Rave is late; he’s probably just caught up somewhere.
An awkward silence has been in the room for several minutes, I’ve been here for ten minutes just staring at the wall in front of me.
The door whirs open. T-Rave strides in, obviously not concerned or aware that he’s late. It doesn’t matter though, the silence that had perceived between me and the General is broken now that we could get on with the debriefing.
“Sorry Sir got held up,” he says, taking a seat opposite me.
“Don’t let it happen again.”
“Yes Sir, it won’t happen again.”
“Alright Colonel, take ‘er away.”
“Thank you Sir,” I say, walking up to the front of the desk, making it easier for people to see me -even though it is just the three of us.
“Alright, we started the mission as usual. Right at the start though it went downhill fast. We rappelled off the Dropship, after only seconds though one of those scout ships took it out. Major Lorid took a beating when it exploded; shrapnel in the leg, broken ribs. I knew he was gone the second I took off his helmet. He knew it as well. He told us to leave him behind to complete the mission; it must have been only a minute after we left when an explosion shook the building around us. I’m assuming that he took out several hostiles in the process.”
“You left a man behind?” The General interjects.
“We had no choice; he wanted us to leave him behind. Major Lorid wouldn’t have lived another five minutes, and if we tried to take him along we wouldn’t have made it out alive.”
“Don’t bother defending yourself son, you made the right choice, we needed that Intel.”
I look at him for a second; I’m stunned that the General preferred Intel over a man’s life. It’s that he didn’t care at all that really bugged me.
“Right, moving on. We went through the rest of the building, encountering little resistance as we did so. We got to the security room and one of Hakorians jumped us, kinda. Sargent Terein took him out before
he could flinch. We found out that the Hakorians were in the Power Room. So we went to try and take’em out. We then discovered that there were civilians, we calculated the odds of how many we could save.”
“You were ordered to get the Intel and get out Colonel,” he gives me a smoldering look, “why did you disobey that order?” The General asks.
“I went into the building hoping to come out with as many people as possible, if I obeyed your orders we would have lost all the civilians.”
“You lost half of them.”
“I tried. I did everything in my power to save as many people as possible, and yes, we lost two good men in the process but they knew what they were signing up for.”
“Don’t you ever disobey my orders again Colonel, understand?”
“If it’s a judgment call and there are civilian lives at stake I will always try and rescue them. Unless I know for a fact that it would be impossible then I won’t.” I stare the General down. I usually never acted like this to superiors. But this man is completely out of line. It’s like he didn’t even care about casualties. Every military General had to care about civilian lives to some degree, this man though just ignored it completely. You could bend orders on rare occasions, being in the field was a lot different than making decisions far in advance. It was a split second reaction. If you didn’t react in a moment’s notice it could cost you and others their lives.
“Continue,” he says. He obviously doesn’t like me, the way he looks and speaks to me says it all.
“We listened for hard Intel on their plans, and eventually we found out that they have mining operations going on around the planet. They want the Thopium that is within our soil, that’s why they are here. Now, I’m not exactly sure what they want Thopium for, but they said it would help them reintegrate themselves into proper society.”
Siege of Terra (The Mavrik Woods Series, Book 1) Page 6