Phoenix Reborn

by Joseph Mackay

“Yeah, they’re a problem too; Black Army got a lot better troops than we did. It seems like all the other armies got better soldiers,” Johnny whined, slamming his fist into the ground.

  “Yeah, all my squad does is run in and get beat up. They aren’t even very good at fighting! We need some help; maybe we should go to the training rooms too!” Mikey “Rat” Jenner chipped in. Of all his squad commanders, Johnny liked Rat the least. He had a cooler call sign for one, but he also always came up with a lot ideas and Johnny found that obnoxious.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Rat! We shouldn’t have to do extra work to be as good as they start out! We have to think of a good plan to take Connor out, or else every time we charge in we are going to get beat.”

  “How about we beat him up,” Hammer said simply.

  The four leaders of Red Army smiled at each other.

  “I heard that, in the training room, you can get stunned. Maybe we can shoot him a few times to stun him, and then beat him up,” Rat cut in.

  “That’s an even better idea. Let’s see if we can get the Head Commander to schedule a training day for us and Connor.”

  Their plan set, the leaders of Red Army went back to lying on their bunks, waiting for class to begin.

  ~ ~ ~

  In a high orbit around Mars, the white hull of the Station Sigma absorbed the light of the sun, casting a tiny shadow on the red planet below. Inside the thick walls of the battle station’s war room, an older man with a deep scar over one eye was reading a report about station supplies. For years, Colonel Lemmon had served as the commanding officer of both the Station’s garrison, as well as four hundred OMBI-Enhanced students without any problem receiving supplies from Earth.

  He read the report with disbelief that medical supplies were to be rationed and servings of food were to be reduced by twenty percent per soldier until further notice. Colonel Lemmon never thought he would see the day when a critical military installation would have to undergo rationing for basic supplies. His mind wandered to the front lines of the war he still believed was being fought over the colonies, and the thought made the Colonel feel like he was helpless.

  When he finished the report, Colonel Lemmon read his next set of orders. The two still-active members of Black Squadron were to be issued new orders. He had gotten to know both boys over the year that they had been training on the station, along with the other thirty-eight members of the squadron, and was saddened to hear about the massacre of the Eagle Nebula.

  Philip “Vector” Wick was a heavyset, obnoxious kid who had always been concerned about the competitive aspects of OMBI training. He was more worried about getting points than working with his squad and, as a result, was not very popular among his teammates. He had injured himself during the removal of his second inhibitor chip, the device that kept OMBI manifestations virtual, when he manifested a sword that punctured his leg.

  The other boy was Austin “Vertigo” Hughes.

  “I am sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, Austin,” Colonel Lemmon began, addressing one of OMBIcademy’s best students. Austin was the kind of boy who followed orders to a fault, a true believer in the mission of the UEDF. “I know you and Alex were close and I know it must be hard on you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Austin replied impassively. A lean boy and extraordinary fighter, Vertigo would have commanded Black Army in the OMBIcademy if he would have had a stronger grasp of group tactics and been able to keep up a higher kill/death ratio than Alex had. At one point, he even had more kills than Alex, but he had earned an early second death and Alex’s otherwise perfect ratio kept him in charge.

  “Now that you both have recovered from your respective wounds, I have new orders for you,” Lemmon continued, unsure of what to make of Austin’s emotionless response.

  “Vector.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vector said proudly.

  “You are to return to the OMBIcademy to supervise training of the students until further notice.”

  “WHAT? Sir, I can fight Gortha now, why should I go back to train the little lizard babies?”

  “Stow that, Private. These are your orders and I expect you to follow them. Training our personnel is every bit as important as fighting on the front lines.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vector said, sounding uninspired.

  Colonel Lemmon stared at Vector for a long time, wondering why the new Head Commander of the OMBIcademy would have sent a request for the kid.

  “Dismissed, Vector,” Lemmon said, wanting him to be gone as soon as possible.

  When the room was clear, Lemmon continued.

  “Austin, the EMC has ordered me to release you to them to undergo specialized training as an operative.”

  Austin’s eyes widened as he spoke. “Operative, sir? I thought they were made up to scare citizens.”

  “Evidently not, Corporal; you are one of the best soldiers I have had the pleasure of training. There is a shuttle leaving at 1300 that you need to be on. Good luck.”

  With that, Austin saluted his former CO and shook his hand.

  Alone in the war room, Colonel Lemmon went back to the reports he had been reading about supply deficiencies, wondering how he was going to enforce a twenty percent reduction in food portions.

  Chapter 6

  Sparks on Wet Grass

  Clarion was a small town in the middle of a very large corn field. The people who lived in that part of Iowa were mostly farmers who lived unexciting, ordinary lives untouched by the UEDF except during the biannual tax evaluation. Farmland had been increasing in value with the food shortages occurring around the world, so when the UEDF built a political detention camp in the middle of fifty acres of corn, the citizens of Clarion were upset. They organized and each wrote a strongly-worded letter to their UEDF Representative, Councilman Stahl, but after two months of waiting, they heard nothing back.

  The camp was built out of low-end portable buildings mixed in with some large tenting in the middle of a graded-out, dirt field. The facility was surrounded by three rows of large razor-wire fences with two tall guard towers at the corners, which had one guard each.

  Corporal Stanley Weiss had been assigned to the facility the day before and still didn’t know the names of any of the men in his unit. As he left the barracks on that hot, July morning he only half-heartedly returned the salute from the guard at the gate as he entered the compound with the prisoner list.

  “How are they today, Private?” Weiss asked, reading down the list.

  “The prisoners, sir?” The guard seemed perplexed.

  Weiss nodded expectantly.

  “Fine? I guess, sir,” the guard stammered. It was obvious that he had never been inside the perimeter.

  Looking upon the camp, the prisoners didn’t seem fine. The conditions were terrible. Water for the camp came from a well with a hand pump, which was producing less water each day that the prisoners had used it. The temporary plumbing had been clogged for a couple of weeks, and sanitation was becoming a nightmare as raw sewage began running in ditches to the edge of the fence line where they abruptly stopped, leaving large muddy pools.

  Food was delivered in a crate by a helicopter, which dropped it twice per day until recently, when they began delivered one, half-full crate per day. Corporal Weiss had heard about food shortages, but the 350 troops stationed in the barracks just outside of camp didn’t seem to go without.

  Reading the list of names, Weiss was surprised that he recognized many of them. Twenty-four small-time politicians who had been vocal opposition to the UEDF, seven news anchors who had been reporting on news that had not been approved by the UEDF censor bureau, an author who had written a book that had a UEDF officer as an antagonist, the parents of a soldier who had been drafted at the age of ten, who had apparently been angry about it and thirty-two attorneys who had taken cases against UEDF employees. The remained seemed to be a mix of hundreds of other suspicious people who, at one time or another, expressed dissatisfaction with the current regime.

  We
iss had read some of the specific biographies prior to the assignment, but most of them were filled with vague, familiar accusations.

  The stink of sweat and sewage permeated the air as Weiss walked through the camp. A few prisoners were awake and sitting outside, watching the new officer as he passed by. Some kind of illness was reported to be spreading, and raspy coughing broke the silence often.

  Weiss hated it here already. He was beginning to understand why the soldiers never entered the perimeter. Shaking his head, he went back to the barracks to wait out the heat of the day.

  The day passed uneventfully, other than the disorganized rush to the food crate, as was the daily ritual inside the fence. The unbearable heat of summer was somewhat diminished by cool evening breezes that occasionally rolled across the plains. A full moon was rising on the night of July 11th when the prisoners were awakened by the sound of a low rumbling. With not a cloud in the sky that night, confusion spread among the camp.

  “Can’t be thunder, can it?” one man said to no one specifically.

  “Doesn’t look like rain to me,” another chimed in passively.

  The rumbling ceased after a couple of minutes, causing the minor stir in the camp to die down. The prisoners, lying outside on the ground in the cool night air, were settling back to sleep when a bright flash caused them all to awaken.

  The fireball lit up the night for miles around as the barracks that housed the 17th regiment of the UEDF International Guard exploded, sending debris and ash high into the night sky. The sound of the explosion roared through the camp soon after, the shock wave knocking many of the prisoners to the ground.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Dragoon walked slowly around the burning wreckage, knowing there would not be any survivors. His heavy boots left deep imprints upon the ground as the man adjusted his bandana and hat to fully conceal his face.

  “Might have overdone it a little,” he commented to himself as he observed the destruction around him. He had raided a small arms depot in Des Moines earlier that day and had been surprised to find a cache of C4 explosives in a box near the back of the depot. He used some of it to level the depot then and used the rest on the barracks.

  When he’d first approached the camp that evening, he had covertly planted the explosives around the barracks before walking up to the guard at the door and demanding to see the commander.

  The man who commanded the 17th IG regiment had been rude and unpleasant. When asked to surrender, the man had actually tried to shoot the Dragoon in the chest. He took the man down quickly, and while he regretted having to destroy the entire encampment, he knew it would be difficult to convince the troops to surrender with their commander dead.

  The soldiers that had been standing guard at the gates of the detention camp began running back in the direction of the smoldering barracks as debris began falling out of the sky. The area was lit by a bright fire as ash rained down like snow. A spotlight glared down from a nearby guard tower and stopped when it illuminated the outlaw’s position.

  “Attention, intruder, give up peacefully!” the guard in the tower said into the megaphone.

  The man laughed loudly, looking up at the guard tower then back to the barracks he had just destroyed.

  “Does it seem to you like there is any chance of this ending peacefully?” the Dragoon shouted up to the guard tower as he pulled the large, triple-barreled weapon off his back.

  The guard in the tower fired a shot from his rifle, which flew wide. The Dragoon didn’t waste any more time as he fired his modified, heavy shotgun at the tower. Tiny, explosive pellets detonated as they impacted the structure, sending it tumbling to the ground, scattering splinters and glass onto the area around it. A second barrage of explosive pellets sprayed into two guards that had been running toward him, causing them to detonate messily.

  The man winced slightly at that.

  The Dragoon’s left hand went to an internal pocket of the leather duster he wore, grabbing two more explosive pellet shells, and loaded them quickly.

  Another soldier came around from the far side of the camp, discharging his automatic rifle wildly as he ran. The Dragoon held the shotgun in his left hand and removed a large revolver from his belt with his right, taking aim at the incoming soldier.

  The heavy shot from the large pistol sent the soldier flying into the nearby cornfield. The Dragoon continued toward the series of gates, using his heavy boots to kick them down at the hinges on both sides before moving to the next one. His strength, enhanced by the mechanized battle armor he wore beneath his duster, destroyed the metal hinges, causing the gates to collapse to the ground, spraying dust into the air.

  When the last gate came down, he yelled out.

  “They call you dissenters … antagonists … nuisances to be removed! They round us up, hold us captive, leave us to die while the people watch, waiting for their next free meal. The time has come to say, ‘no more’! The time has come to be free!” the Dragoon yelled into the night.

  “Where should we go?” one man yelled back.

  “Wherever the UEDF can’t find you again. Listen to the seeds of dissent being sowed in these lands and lend them your voice. The UEDF has failed you and it is time to take back the world.”

  “But we are fugitives! Where will we find food? How far can we get?”

  Apathy. The Dragoon had known that the people in America were apathetic, but he was shocked to find out how far they had fallen. So dependent upon the UEDF’s handouts, even the political prisoners were unwilling to function by themselves, unwilling to fight to be free.

  “And you wonder why resources are scarce on this planet … Can you do nothing?”

  “We cannot fight a global government!”

  “Whether you think that you can or cannot, you’re right,” the Dragoon quoted whimsically, “The people of Germany fought back, and they have already thrown the UEDF out of Berlin!”

  “And look where it got them! They have no food or supplies anymore!” a man in a torn jacket retorted.

  “If you give up, you will die here. This is not going to get better on its own!” the dragoon fired back.

  “Says a terrorist! If we follow you, we are dead for sure!” the man said, followed by murmurs of agreement.

  The Dragoon grimaced under the red bandana tied around his face. Accepting that his time had been wasted here, he turned to walk back out of the prison. He had gone there to make a daring rescue and lead the people to freedom, but what he’d found was the best hope American had for a revolution made apathetic by the promise of a half-full food crate.

  He turned around to watch the prisoners, fearing their freedom, huddle back into their tents and portable trailers.

  “Fine,” he whispered quietly, walking away. “I’ll do it the hard way.”

  He got upon the large motorcycle that he’d ridden out into the middle of the cornfield and pulled a pair of high-resolution night vision goggles out of a bag on the side. He placed them over his eyes and rode away to the south with his lights off.

  ~ ~ ~

  Corporal Weiss had listened to the man’s speech from the guard tower at the far end of the compound where he had gone earlier to clear his head. He’d hid when the barracks exploded, scared of the dangerous outlaw who attacked his regiment. He hadn’t agreed with the treatment of the prisoners, thinking such conditions were no way for men to live. He wasn’t even sure he disagreed with a lot of the opinions that had caused some of them to be arrested in the first place.

  The lone remaining officer of the 17th IG regiment put his head down in shame; disappointed in his own cowardice and angry at himself for not feeling mad at the Dragoon. He’d heard the man’s speech and watched as the political prisoners denied themselves their freedom. As he climbed out of his perch, he wasn’t sure what had surprised him more, the fact that one man had annihilated his entire regiment or that of several hundred prisoners who were supposedly revolutionaries, not one was willing to stand up and follow the man who had given t
hem freedom.

  Corporal Weiss was similarly confused by his own feelings. The idea that he sympathized more with a supposed enemy more than his own commanders shocked his sense of self. Disheartened, the man dropped his weapon on the ground and walked out into the night, abandoning his post.

  ~ ~ ~

  Two days after the incident, the media issued a statement regarding a minor event involving an accidental explosion that cost the lives of three hundred and fifty soldiers who had been monitoring a temporary processing facility.

  When the camp was investigated after two days of no contact with the 17th IG regiment, the gates were down but all of the prisoners were still there, waiting for their food crate.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Councilman Stahl, you have a problem in your region. A terrorist is attempting to undermine our rule,” Councilwoman Morgan said matter-of-factly over the video screen.

  “Well, it’s not working. Despite his efforts, we are still in control of the Clarion Detention Facility and all prisoners have been accounted for,” Stahl replied, angry that he was absorbing the brunt of an argument he could not control.

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t any of the prisoners try to escape?” Councilman Moreau asked, sounding genuinely confused.

  It was General Harruhama who explained with an uncharacteristic parable, “A farmer who wanted meat, one day left some food out, which drew many animals in. A patient man, he built a long fence and put the food out for a second day, the animals came back again and ate near the fence. On the third day he built a second fence, vertical to the first, and the animals walked around it and came to eat. The next day he built a third fence and still the animals came. Finally, on the fifth day, the man put out the food, and waited for the animals to come; when they arrived he closed a large gate behind them, caging them in. But the animals didn’t mind, so long as the food kept coming.”