Jack Cabe

by Timothy Nguyen

  “It sounds glorious Val, absolutely glorious,” Jack stopped her in her tracks and wrapped his arms around her, “Thank you for saving me. I… I wouldn’t have made it out of that building alive if y’all hadn’t shown up, and… And you even kept coming for me even though you thought I was dead. Val, I…” Jack seemed to be on the verge of tears, the full impact of the situation finally coming to him.

  She took his grizzled and broken face in her hands and silenced him with a long-overdue kiss, “It’s fine. I love you, Jack, more than anything in the world, and I’m not going to leave you even if it means going to hell and back to save you, my Avenging Angel. Come on, let’s keep moving,” She pulled away from him, and they started walking to catch up with their men.

  Jack put his arm around her for support and he spoke one more time before they slinked off into the martian dusk, “I love you too Val, I love you too….”

  Chapter 35

  Stan woke to the sounds of gunfire and the moans of dying men, waking into an atmosphere of total desperation.

  Andrew, the medic, shouted when he saw that Stan was awake, “General Vulkov! You’re finally awake! I know this is going to be a lot to dump on you after just barely surviving but-”

  Stan cut him off mid-sentence, “Just give it to me straight Andrew, how bad of a spot are we in?” Stan sighed and groaned as he sat up fully.

  Andrew reloaded the pistol in his hand while he spoke, “Well sir, it’s pretty bad. We’re in a pretty bad spot," he spoke morosely.

  Stan groaned, “Specifics Robertson, specifics.”

  Andrew paused before speaking, gathering his thoughts together, “Right, so we’re stuck in a restaurant with multiple floors, we’re surrounded by Inquisitors in every direction except down, and we’re down to ten men, not one of which is Tommy Verin, the comms guy.”

  Stan sighed, “Very well, we are in a very, very, very bad spot. Help me up so I can speak with Commander Locke.” Stan reached out his hand, and Andrew helped him up before wrapping Stan’s arm around his shoulder. Stan grunted -it did feel like his entire side was one big bruise- and ordered, “Alright kid, let’s go.”

  They made their way into the main room, where the floor was caked with dried blood from numerous men whose bodies were piled in the corner. Stan and Andrew found Commander Locke looking over a map of the establishment.

  “Mr. Locke, General Vulkov’s awake, he wants a full rundown of what we’re facing.” Andrew piped off. Young as he was, he was in over his head here.

  Stan sighed, “We can’t stay here, we’ll all be slaughtered unless we can turn this place into a fortress, which we can’t do unless we have a lot of ammo and supplies.”

  Locke cleared his throat before he spoke with his characteristic southern drawl, a trait that had somehow carried over to Mars. He was among the first colonists here after all. “Mr. Vulkov, I know it don’t look good, and well, it certainly ain’t, but I think we can manage to hold out long enough for the rest of the resistance to catch up to us. There’s enough food in this place’s cellar to last us months, and we won’t be here that long. Not to mention, we have enough ammo from these Inquisitor sonsabitches to last us a mighty long time…”

  Stan sighed, but he found himself to be somewhat content with the situation. Eh, I've been in worse spots. At least it's not that time in... Actually, let's not think about that... He spoke, "Alright then, you’re in charge of fortifying this place. Make it a damned castle if you have to. I want the upper floors cleared out, and I want every possible entrance barricaded. And if someone can retrieve Mr. Verin’s gear, that would be perfect."

  “Already done sir. The damn radio unit’s so pocked full of holes that it shouldn’t be able to work, but our last engineer is workin’ on it,” Locke said as he wiped a hand across his greyed hair.

  “Good, you’ve done quite well Locke, I’m proud of you,” Stan patted the older man’s shoulder, “Thank you for keeping us all alive, even if you couldn’t save everyone.”

  Locke smiled with a warrior's pride, “I’ve been here since the beginning sir, I ain’t turning away now. Long live the resistance and all that.”

  ...

  The night passed into day, and the Resistance now held a large amount of territory in the Inner City, besides having sparked numerous other rebellions in the other districts. Jack and Val were meeting with the rest of the Resistance’s lead generals and commanders, mainly through telecommunications, while the battle raged on.

  Val turned to the gritty, jerry-rigged hologram of Seamus. “Any word from Stan on your front Seamus? We haven’t heard a peep out of him or his crew, and we’re worried.”

  “No ma’am, the last we heard out of him, he was advancing into the Inner City’s third or fourth district. That was several hours ago, around midnight,” Seamus sighed, “But you know Vulkov better than I do Miss Ballew, and I think he’ll scrape his way out of there if he’s in bad enough trouble.” A mortar exploded behind him, and he quickly clicked the holoprojector off with a brisk apology.

  Val turned her attention to the large man from Scottstown, “Alright… Liam, how’s the battle for the south side going?”

  “Well, we’ve got the firepower advantage for now but that is definitely going to change as soon as Aerotec decides to- shit, we’re getting mortared too.” Liam was gone within moments as well.

  And so was the rest of high command, all having disconnected to deal with a wave of mortars.

  “Yeah, Jack I’m pretty sure that’s not a coincidence. It’s a miracle they haven’t found the- Get down!” Val dove to the ground and brought Jack down with her just as the warehouse's roof exploded with light. The massive explosion was followed by the shrill whine of bomber drone engines.

  Jack yelled an epithet then stood up, “Yeah, I think it’s safe to assume they found us, Val. Get the families out of here, take everyone you can to the mine, I’ll try and buy us some time,” He dashed off to the armory and grabbed a gun while Val ran to save the families left here.

  But it was too late.

  …

  Alex tried to phone for help from headquarters but received nothing except for static, “Crap." He ducked his head around the corner again, and sure enough, it was a large column of tanks and what must have been a few thousand Inquisitors. His team had been lucky to be in an alleyway when the first round of mortars went off. The rest of the resistance forces weren’t as lucky.

  “I guess we’re on our own for now, boys,” he ducked as another round of mortars screamed through the air, “Alright, we’re all on our own now. Home base isn’t answering, and we are facing a huge offensive. These are facts. But we can survive. We just need to buy time for the rest of the Resistance.”

  Alvis laughed from his spot against a wall, tied up and bound, "Pfft, you seriously think that you, an untrained idiot with a few pop guns and imbeciles to wield them, you seriously think you can take out that? Do you even know what all of that is? You’re mad Culloch, absolutely mad.”

  Alex grabbed a knife off his belt and plunged it into Alvis’ leg, “Yes. I am mad. But I’ll have my revenge one way or another, and I’m not a sniveling coward that rapes kids, now am I?" Alex suddenly smiled with an all too malicious grin, "In fact, you’re just dead weight anyway. You’re just an enforcer, and it’s not like you have any information that we actually need.” Alex pulled the knife out and wiped it on Alvis’ shirt.

  Alvis whimpered with the pain and went into survival mode as soon as he heard Alex’s words, “No no no, I’m-I’m valuable! I know things, I can, I can tell you where CEO Land is, I can-”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ll just try to manipulate us”, Alex pulled out his pistol and took aim at Alvis.

  "Alex, please!" Alvis sniveled while the thoughts of his crimes ran through his head, he came up with a final plea. "Alex, if you kill me now, you'll never have the satisfaction of making me suffer. Isn't that what you want? To make me suffer? What wou-"

  Alex shot him through
the skull without a second thought and spoke, “A dead asshole's a dead asshole, Alvis. I thought you knew that. Come on men, we have an army to distract. Poirier, see if you can contact any nearby squads…”

  …

  Land returned to Mars from orbit, and the sight he saw was enough to bring rage. He growled primally, “My city… My tower… Re-initiate contact with SI-75c.” Smoke rose in great plumes across the once pristinely white city, and Land brought the communicator to his ear.

  Nothing.

  He sent a communication to his military leaders, and the clock for the Resistance began ticking:

  If you don’t turn this situation around, every last one of you will die. Your families will suffer for this monumental failure.

  “The street rats will learn, one way or another, even if I have to raze the entire slum to the ground, they will burn in fire.”

  Chapter 36

  The Resistance was alone. It had been a month since the battle of New Columbia, and a disastrous month at that. Hundreds of families had been displaced after Aerotec’s blitzkrieg counteroffensive, an offensive that was stopped only by the Resistance and Alexander Culloch’s work on the last day of fighting. But they hadn’t stopped it in time. Now there was a new dividing line, now a field of dirt stood for a hundred meters between the Inner and Outer City, and now what was left of the bulldozers and tanks that created it stood as a wall of steel, behind which sat a field of destroyed slums.

  The Resistance itself was a shadow of what it had been. The flash of support from the other provinces vanished as soon as the Aerotec offensive began, and they had been forced to relocated their base of operations to the mine.

  “The only upside to any of this,” Jack reasoned in the dim and dusty light of the new planning room, “Is that every single person in the American district is just as pissed as we are with Aerotec now. So that means we have an army of what, 50,000 people?”

  “That and a very pissed off Russian,” Val replied despondently, “Stan the Man continues to survive, and I’m pretty sure the only reason we can even talk to him is that Aerotec thinks they’ll crush him any day now. I guess they want us to hear him die.”

  Miles away, in the heart of the Inner City, Stan and his men were still fighting for their lives. The Resistance called the restaurant “Castle Vulkov”, but Stan called it home. Aerotec unofficially called it Public Relations Hell.

  “We’ll have to get some supplies to him somehow Val, he can’t last forever," Jack bemoaned his friend's fate, hoping that they wouldn't have to hear Stan's inevitable demise.

  “Well, we can’t do much as long as there’s a stalemate in the trenches, and we’re already running low on basic supplies, Jack. I mean TC has that new plasma doohickey figured out, so ammo won’t be too much of a problem if we can get some power generators going,” Val wiped her hand across her forehead and pulled her overshirt off, tying it around her hips, “But you’re right, we need to find a way to relieve Stan, even if it’s just with more men, weapons, and food.”

  “I’m gonna head out to the front and see if I can get hold of Seamus and Liam. The First Irish Volunteers Regiment and The Scottstown Regiment. I’ll see what I can do to cobble together a strike force, but it’s gonna be hell either way,” Jack grabbed his revolver and kissed Val on the cheek, “But I’ll find a way.”

  Her sad eyes looked on his face, “Just don’t die Jack, please.”

  “I’ll try not to,” He made his way out to the frontline.

  …

  “Robertson, Locke, we’re stretched pretty thin. It’s just us and seven other men against what may as well be the entire population of Earth. I’m not even sure if Aerotec has a limited number of Inquisitors that they can send after us, but we’ve survived this long haven’t we?” Stan started pacing back and forth in the dark room, “I suppose that if we want to continue to survive, we’ll have to keep doing what we’ve been doing, I suppose. We can’t lose hope. Not when hope is all we have left.”

  The ceiling shook as a round of explosions hit the building. They’d already lost the top two floors to the small explosive shells that Aerotec was using to effectively crumble the establishment onto Stan's head.

  “Stan, they haven’t attacked us in three weeks. They’re just sitting us out at this point. It’s a siege,” Andrew morosely commented, “But on the plus side, we just need to not starve to death until someone comes to rescue us.”

  The communicator buzzed with an incoming call., but it was just another threat from Aerotec.

  …

  Jack dashed through the dusty trenches with his head low. The ground rumbled with the distant yet constant barrage of artillery, and the explosions sent showers of red dust and black smoke into the air. Between the constant thunder of exploding shells and the sporadic clusters of popping gunfire, it was chaos. He made his way to the frontline headquarters where Liam and Seamus were waiting for him. He found his way into a makeshift room situated in the long line of rubble from the Aerotec demolition and pulled the dust-clogged bandana off his face.

  He nodded to the men as he took a seat, and spoke calmly. “Seamus, Liam, we’re going back to the Inner City.”

  Seamus gave him an odd look, and Liam simply said one word: “Bullshit.”

  A shell exploded against the outside of the junk bunker, shaking the dust from the ceiling.

  Jack leaned forward in his chair, “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but we can’t just leave General Vulkov and his men to the wolves. We’ve already been doing that for a month, and there isn’t exactly any way around it than to lead a strike team into the heart of the city,” Jack looked them each dead in the eye, “No man left behind, especially if there’s still hope.”

  “Why did ya come to us, Jack? Of the hundreds of units that you could have chosen from, why us?” Seamus spoke as he pulled his beret off, “We’re practically nothing at this point. We’re spread across a four-mile front here, and we can’t spare more than 20 men from each of us.”

  “Seamus, 20 men from each of you is more than enough, but ten will do fine. As for why, your units are the oldest in the Resistance with the exception of Stan’s. You two have been here pretty much since the start, and you’re both fully capable leaders. I wouldn’t ask you two if I thought it was a total suicide mission.”

  Liam stood up from his seat, “Mr. Cabe, we’re floundering here. If Aerotec makes a move while we’re gone...”

  Jack sighed, “Liam, you don’t have to go personally, just give me a few of your men, I don’t even need the full ten, just five or so. We can’t leave Stan to die.”

  “Fine, you have my support, but if Aerotec breaks through our line, I’m blaming this suicide mission,” Liam spoke gruffly, “I’ll go gather my best five, but after that, I have to get back to leading.”

  Jack shook the larger man’s hand and turned to Seamus, who simply smiled, “Count my best in, but as the de facto leader of an entire regiment, I have to stay here.”

  …

  The raid began when a grenade launcher popped and the bottom floor exploded with shrapnel, killing one man and maiming another. Stan, Locke, and Andrews all jumped up from their niche in the basement.

  “Alright, men, that means another attack! Grab your guns, let’s fight, and let's show them that they won’t have us!” Stan grabbed his rifle and rushed with his men to the holes they had drilled for the barrels of their weapons, like the ancient crenellations of a castle that allowed them enough firing angles to guard against any attack, and enough protection to nearly ensure that they would survive. A few men rushed upstairs to the ruins of what had been the upper stories and took refuge behind the jagged and sturdy walls, or what was left of them, at least.

  They were only ten men, and they were alone and surrounded by people out for their blood. The air filled with the sounds of gunfire and explosions, all set to the monotonous clank of Inquisitors' feet. But then they heard the most dreadful sound they thought they’d ever hear.

  “L
ocke, is it just me or does that sound like a tank?” Andrew piped out as soon as he heard the rolling clang of treads, “Yeah nevermind, that is definitely a tank.” He was oddly calm, as if it was just another fact of life at this point.

  “Everyone, get down!” Stan shouted out, and everyone had barely made ut to cover before the tank pressed its barrel through one of the boarded-up windows and fired, filling the first floor with fire.

  …

  The young men from the First Irish Volunteers Regiment (the FIVR) lay on the edge of the bloody trenches with their guns outstretched, firing off at every head they saw on the other side while mortars screamed into the land around them and sent great plumes of black smoke and red sand into the air. In the few short weeks that the battle had been raging, the FIVR had gained a reputation for themselves, even beyond the brutish berserkers of Scottstown. As one man had put it, “Those boys have got to be the craziest sonsabitches I’ve ever seen.”

  They would grab makeshift shields of scrap and surge forward over the trenches into no man’s land before pushing forward and slamming their shields into the ground, digging foxholes for themselves, or daring to push further across hundreds of meters of ground to raid the opposing trenches for supplies. But most daring of them all was Seamus’ “Bulldog” squad. This elite unit consisted of young men, no older than 25, who were crazy enough to rush into battle without the shields and jump atop the few tanks that Aerotec dared send their way. Those tanks were now bunkers with nothing but their guns poking out of the scrap heap.

  And those young men would be going with Jack.

  Chapter 37