by Tony Teora
“They can’t bring in troops without my authorization,” added Tucker.
“What are you talking about?” asked Ace. “If we hit a clusterfuck, I’m bringing in reinforcements.”
“Can’t. Earth Command gave specific orders to keep the interaction on GEN-6 to minimal force, and the Military Council gave Captain Karr specific orders. I—and only I—give the go-ahead for more troops.”
Something was really strange about that order, thought Ace. But if things got bad, Tucker would have his own ass on the line, and he seemed like the guy who would cry mommy when things got rough.
“If we need troops—hope you still alive to give order,” said Ivan.
Tucker gave Ivan a snarly look.
Ace smiled as he checked his comm badge. “Ivan, Kiya, let’s roll. I’ve got Zippy on auto-recon and all looks good.” Ace started to pace up the sandy trail. As he reached the fifty-yard gap, he sent a page for the others to proceed.
The desert was hot and the slight incline made walking tough for Ivan and Kiya. The enhancements on Ace’s legs made the walk bearable, but no enhancement could stop the 110-degree heat. After twenty minutes of walking, everyone stopped for a drink. Kiya looked up at a shiny, moldy green mountain with sparkling, diamond-like objects. “That’s beautiful. It looks unique.”
“Looks like diamonds resting on mold,” said Ivan.
“No,” said Kiya, sipping water from her canteen. “It’s a copper quartz-laden mountain. The copper rusts green and the quartz reflects the sunlight almost like a diamond. It’s almost a girl’s best friend.”
Ace laughed. “Almost? So what’s really a girl’s best friend?”
“It’s not a diamond, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Kiya with twinkle in her eye.
“Behdah!” yelled Ivan in Russian. “I hear sound in ground.”
Everyone stopped and listened, and sure enough, there was a sound. It was faint, like the sound of a bamboo field swishing in the air. They must have missed it while walking. The desert wind and walking boots had to have covered it up.
Ace called back to Big Jimbo on Channel 6. “Hey Jimbo, you stopped at X2, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“You got any strange sounds coming from the ground back there?”
Jimbo was only about fifty yards away from Ace around a curvy mountain trail. He could hear nothing, so he had Janice run a sonar sweep. Janice pulled out a hand-held sensor and swept the nearby ground. “I’m getting some kind of movement … I think there’s some kind of underground tunnels with something moving. It’s heading up the mountain,” said Janice.
Jimbo clicked on his radio. “No sounds we can hear, but Janice did a sweep. Seems like there’s some kind of underground tunnels and movement. What you got going on?”
“Not sure. Hold on.” The sound started to get louder. “Jimbo, have your team pick up the pace. We’ll do the same. I think we need to get to that east gate a little quicker.”
“Will do.”
Ace and the team did double time and stopped at five-minute intervals for thirty seconds to listen to the sound. It got worse but then stopped. They’d made it up about two thirds of the way to the gate and everything seemed to be going well when, up ahead, red sand shot up like a Vegas casino fountain. Soon after that, black spider creatures the size of pit bulls started to exit and run downhill like an army of ants.
“Yogi, we got trouble,” said Ivan.
“Jimbo, we have company,” said Ace, looking at the oncoming spiders and triggering his ocular implants to send the threat data to the three DAVs. Ace sent a video feed to Jimbo.
“Spiders?” asked Jimbo, loading up mags into his sidearm Uzi-X66. “I’m coming up with Tucker—Janice, you hold here.”
“I’m not staying here,” said Janice, following pace with Jimbo and Tucker. “Suppose spiders pop out of the ground from down here?”
“Good point,” said Jimbo.
Uphill, Ace waved the team to the left side of the side of the mountain. It had a few rocks a meter or two in height that would give some protection. “It’ll take a couple minutes for them to get here. Let’s go uphill fifteen yards and create a killing field. Ivan, you and Yogi cover the flanks with some jell, but don’t light it yet. Create a ten-yard perimeter.”
“Got it, Ace.”
“Kiya, I want you to save your ammo, but we’ll both need to take out any spiders that get past the fire, and quick … got it?”
“Yes,” said Kiya with a frown. “But I have to be honest with you. I don’t like spiders.”
“Good, then make sure your shots don’t miss.”
All three ran as fast as they could up the mountain. Ivan stopped to jell up a protective ring around the three. He also dropped some charges on the ground. “They’re coming out of hole like ants, Ace. I wanna launch Russian red cherry into hole.”
“It’s too far. I’ll have a DAV or Jimbo take care of the hole. Stay focused on the spiders coming up. On my mark, flame the jell line. Kiya, get ready to start shooting.”
The swarm of hungry-looking black spiders crawled down the sandy path. As they got toward the team, they left the sandy trail and made their way up the mountain. Ace saw the red-eyed spiders as they reached the perimeter. They were getting close. He yelled, “Fire!”
Ivan clicked his igniter switch and said something in Russian while blasting away. The jelled perimeter shot up like an inferno. Heavy popcorn-popping sounds erupted as spiders in the line of fire exploded. Legs, tentacles, and red eyeballs went flying in the air like some killing orchestra from hell. Machine gun fire rippled through the mountain as part of the orchestra’s brass section.
Ivan swung his flamethrower like a conductor, following the biggest concentrations of bugs. He yelled out to the team: “Yogi says fire is getting too hot, time for some Kool-Aid.” Ivan shut off his over-heated tanks and took out his machine gun. He started to fire away.
Ace and Kiya were too busy shooting down approaching bugs to question Ivan. Ace was impressed by Kiya’s marksmanship. Although her shots were rapid fire, she focused on high bug concentrations. Then her gun jammed, and three spiders broke through the fire. Without thinking, Kiya pulled out three sharp, metal stars and threw them, one after another. The first sliced off a head. The second hit a belly, which spewed out yellow liquid. The third missed the belly but cut off a leg with the spider still approaching. Kiya pulled out a regular side arm and shot the spider a foot or so from her and Ace. Ace breathed a sigh of relief and threw her his sidearm Uzi. She caught it and started to fire away. Ace had his backpack of ammo on the ground and pulled out some mags. He threw them to both Ivan and Kiya in between shots.
Between her and Ivan, the bugs were getting wiped, but there seemed to be masses flooding out of the hole. Ace’s ocular comm sensor informed him that the DAVs were now finally overhead and ready to engage, but they’d be no good for close fire. It was too dangerous. They aligned in an equilateral formation and shot down the hundreds of spiders swarming in the valley.
“Ace,” said Jimbo, panting and doing double time. “I got a visual on your situation, but I’m not sure what we can do …”
Ace reloaded a magazine and shot at some half-burning spiders. Although the numbers had decreased from the DAV onslaught—and a mound almost five feet high of burning spider corpses was now surrounding Ivan, Kiya, and Ace—the remaining spiders now could climb on top of their dead brethren to avoid the fire. Some were successful. There was also the issue that the DAVs did not have an unlimited supply of bullets. The hole had to be shut. “Jimbo, can you use your drone to paint the bug hole with a marker and then shoot in a DEK-3 explosive?”
“Sure can do, already had my recon up. Give me a second.”
Jimbo pulled out his DEK-3 tube-like gun kit. It looked like a grenade launcher, but with three sections that screwed together. After mounting on a special laser viewer, he sat down on the ground and plugged in some wires. Now it was time to insert a silver miniatu
re missile into the chamber. The DEK-3 had an internal guidance system that locked onto the recon coordinates. Jimbo targeted, checked systems, and away went the DEK-3. “Fire in the hole!” he said over the radio as the missile blasted away, shooting out gray smoke.
“Get down and cover yourselves!” yelled Ace.
Everyone had barely dropped to the ground before an explosion shook the area. Rocks, fragments, and spider parts splattered all over the ground. The explosion closed the hole. The short reprieve allowed a few straggler spiders to get within several feet of the team. One was close to Kiya, and it jumped in the air from behind without her noticing, but Ivan did. Ivan gave a signal and Ace turned and jumped almost five feet in the air, swinging his machine gun, smashing the spider before it landed. Kiya turned, her heart almost stopping, knowing full well what had happened. She looked at the gooey yellow spider juice that now covered part of Ace and his gun and nodded her thanks.
Ace shook off spider parts and goo from his gun and continued to find a few more dazed spiders while Ivan restarted his flamethrower and finished off a few more. A small group of four or five of the creatures were smart enough to run away, but the DAVs followed and took them out. Ace looked at the smoking, apocalyptic scene thinking things could have been worse. The air smelt like a mixture of burnt human skin and stinky wet dog hair. It reeked. Jimbo, Janice, and Tucker walked up to the team, covering their mouths.
“Where did all those spiders come from?” asked Tucker.
“A hole in the ground. Like our remote viewer Kiya told us earlier, she saw some spiders.” Ace kicked a flaming skeleton. “What concerns me now are the worms she saw.”
Tucker looked around the landscape. “We’d better get up to the east gate, and quick.”
“You’re starting to smarten up,” said Ace.
Ivan pulled off a nearby broken spider leg that was partially on fire and used it to light a cigar. “Dis place stinks like Gamma base.”
“Did you guys burn spiders on Gamma base?” asked Tucker.
Ivan puffed on his cigar and blew out some bluish smoke. “No, wasn’t spiders—bigger than spiders.”
“What kinda bug did ya burn there?”
“Wasn’t bug,” said Ivan scanning the valley. “People … we ordered to burn the sick people.”
Tucker looked over at Ivan and then Ace. “I think we should get going, don’t you, Major?”
Ace ordered two of the three DAVs to land while keeping one airborne. It’d burn up all its fuel by the time the team got to the gate, but with the spiders, Ace wanted the airborne insurance.
The team decided to keep together for the last kilometer. Everyone wanted to get away from the stench, but Ace was more concerned about another surprise encounter. He had Janice run deep ground sonar scans. More tunnels were found, but thank God, no movement. After another hour of hard, uphill walking, a large two-meter-by-two-meter green metal gate was spotted in the distance. It was still a hundred yards away, but just seeing the gate calmed everyone’s nerves. It was the east gate entrance into the GEN-6 mountain tunnels.
Ace told everyone to stop for a break under a bushy weeping willow tree. It did not fit into the desert landscape. It had some rocks underneath and looked like it’d been set up by the GEN-6 scientists, who must have used it for breaks on this side of the mountain.
“Thank God for trees,” said Tucker, sitting down on a chair-like rock, ecstatic about the shade. “My legs are killing me.”
It was the first tree they had seen that had leaves, and it looked like an oasis in the desert. Tucker opened up another plastic bottle of water and chugged away, guzzling the whole bottle in one try.
“Why are you so tired and thirsty? We’re the assholes with the heavy packs.” Jimbo dropped a huge pack by his side and took out his water canteen.
“It’s not the backpack, it’s the damn heat. I’m not used to this kind of heat.”
“Earth Command desk work, eh?” asked Ivan, chewing on a new cigar and scanning the countryside.
“Fuck you! I made it through basic just like you guys did.”
“Yogi did tougher training than you did in basic,” said Ivan.
Tucker looked at the teddy bear and wanted to say something, but he was too exhausted.
Ace walked over, looking at his comm’s sensor scan. “Cut it out, guys. Let’s stay focused. We’re almost at the objective, and although the terrain is now flat, we still got a hundred and two yards to go, and we still don’t know what’s past that gate. We need to conserve our energy. Let’s eat a power snack, cool down a bit, and move on into GEN-6.”
Tucker pulled out an energy pack, ripped it open, and chewed on the meat-like concoction. He looked over at Ace. “You were right back there, and so was Kiya. I’m sorry I didn’t take the remote viewing seriously.”
Ace looked over. “It’s no big deal … I didn’t either.”
Kiya rubbed sweat from her brow and put down her canteen. “What? I thought you said you believed me.”
Ace chewed while speaking. “I believed you believed you saw something in your head. And me and Ivan always prepare for bugs, worms, spiders, you got it. But as we were walking, I also sensed something, and when we stopped and I heard that something underground, then I knew you were right, that we had spiders and they were gonna be trouble. Now … well, I’m a little concerned about the worms, too. And that telepathic presence … I know something strange is goin’ on here.”
“So you’re starting to believe in telepathy and remote viewing?”
“I call it good instincts, and you have great instincts.”
“I know you can feel it too, and you said so … so why would you block out your own natural abilities?”
“I’m not blocking them,” said Ace, feeling frustrated. He didn’t want to delve into the situation with his mother that pushed him into not wanting to believe in anything psychic or telepathic. That situation would resolve itself someday, but for now, it burned in his heart and he could never forgive himself for his action, or inaction.
“Well, I still feel a strong telepathic presence, and I feel like it’s somehow approaching us. And it feels dark … strange,” said Kiya. “So I think we outta get movin’ soon, but I’m not sure what direction.”
“Yogi feels something too,” said Ivan, chewing on a piece of goldwing ducken he had acquired from Jimbo. He squeezed the meat out of a plastic container and some oil dripped onto his hands. He wiped them on his dirty pants and smiled. “Spiders got me hungry.”
Jimbo laughed. He watched Ivan struggle with a cap on a new type of plastic bottle. Ivan used his knife to crudely cut off the top of the bottle and guzzled down the military energy drink.
“It’s got a lock-button cap,” said Jimbo. “You just need to twist and pull up.”
“Who need cap when you drink whole thing?” asked Ivan, finishing off the liter bottle of energy. Ivan threw the bottle on the ground and went to his teddy bear, unstrapped it from the flamethrower, and re-strapped to his side, all the while talking in Russian to the stuffed animal.
Jimbo really thought something was wrong with Ivan and wanted to say something, but Jimbo also knew it was those crazy kinds of folks that you really didn’t want to get into a conversation with in the first place. Ivan noticed Jimbo staring at him and the teddy bear and smiled, showing his missing tooth.
Jimbo gave a weak smile back, finished his energy bar, and washed it down with the canteen. No snap locks on that device. He drank from his canteen, tipping his head back to finish what little water was left, and stopped. He saw a shiny object in the sky in between the tree branches. At first, he thought it was one of the Kabbalah moons—but then the object moved. It was a silver, flying, dish-like object. It had to be only a few miles away. He immediately put down his canteen and pointed and spoke quietly. “Hey Ace, we got a possible bogey up at two o’clock.”
Ace waved his hands for everyone to hush and stay put. He slowly stood up and looked around the tree. Sure enough,
something was flying slowly down toward the west side of the GEN-6 complex. “Shit, I wonder why the Aurora didn’t call it in.”
“What about the DAVs? Why didn’t they pick it up?” inquired Tucker.
“I don’t know. Give me a sec while I call Colonel Manpower.” Ace dialed the Aurora. A second later, all members received an encrypted text message that vibrated everyone’s comm set. The messages were all the same—the USS Aurora was under attack!
Back in 1954, under the Eisenhower administration, the federal government decided to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and form a treaty with alien entities (Greys) … Slowly, the aliens altered the bargain until they decided they wouldn't abide by it at all.
—Phil Schneider, Government Engineer (Dead by “suicide” four months after making above public statement)
6
_________
The Greys
“What the hell?” Ace looked at the message on his comm. It read:
USS Aurora under attack from powerful unknown alien force. Possible encounter with GR-AEE type beings … Shields down but holding … Captain has ordered evasive action … will temporarily HV transport out of sector … ETA unknown but will return to Kabbalah as soon as conditions permit … Alpha Team to hold out at GEN-6 until further notice … EOM Crypto 9ZC9UyF5 18:43:32
“Ah fuck,” said Jimbo. A few others mumbled curses, too. Ivan appeared to be talking to himself or to his stuffed bear.
Ace looked over at the startled team. “Murphy must have eaten a shit bar for breakfast, but let’s keep our cool.” As Ace said the word “cool” he was reminded of the tree. That could save the day. “Let’s stay close to the center of the tree and go radio silent. Let’s see if the scout ignores us.”
Ace ordered the two DAVs on the ground to go on a passive shutdown. Without Ace sending an ON code, they’d be dead to anyone doing a non-pulsed radio scan. The one that was flying was ordered to immediately land and do the same.