Off World- Ragnarok

by J. F. Holmes

  The flag ran up the signal tower, and the American soldiers, from north, west, and south, poured fire on the dispirited, broken hordes of the Gvit.

  Chapter 40

  They came walking out of the gloom and dust, Walters and Hemmings dragging Kimber on a makeshift litter. The suits they’d left behind, drained of power, but no one bothered them. The landscape was littered with dead bodies, and they walked slowly to the west, avoiding the blast area. Ahead of them they could see a Humvee carefully making its way down the road toward the firebase. Hemmings gently placed the litter down and ran for the truck, yelling at the top of her lungs.

  The truck swerved over to them, the gunner keeping the machine gun trained past the humans, watching for any movement. It came to a stop, and three armed soldiers leapt out, covering the area with rifles. One of them, a sergeant, jogged over and said, “Who the hell are you, and where did you come from? A farm?”

  In their ragged, dirty, ripped uniforms, they looked like refugees. Unarmed, bloody, with Walters’ arm in a makeshift sling, and Hemmings with a cut over her eye that had bled profusely, like all head wounds. It was easy enough to mistake them for stragglers from the ruined settlements.

  “We’re…soldiers,” she said, then just sat down on the ground, exhausted.

  Walters tried to say something, but he too was wrung out, barely moving. He gestured to Kimber and managed to say in a croaking voice, “She needs a medic, ASAP.”

  The ride back to Firebase Glory was short, but both were asleep on the benches before the driver put it in gear.

  ****

  Specialist Shin leaned on the barrel of the 105mm howitzer. Three of them pointed at the Gvit as they slowly walked southward. None looked at the humans, and there were no litters or stretchers with them. If they couldn’t walk, their wounded were slain by their clanmates.

  The other three guns were back on the field of battle, smashed, with half of their crews dead. It had been point blank carnage, the speed of the attacking aliens catching them unaware on the second ambush position. The gunners had fired until the barrels started to sag from the heat, and it grew dangerous to put a round in the hot tube. The assault had only stopped when the infantry had arrived on the run and poured fire into the massed ranks from the side. Then they’d broken, after nine out of ten lay dead.

  Beside Shin stood Lieutenant Colonel McClellan, leaning on a crutch. “Now there’s a beaten army, but not a defeated one.”

  Shin could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears. “What was that, Sir?” he asked.

  “We’ve beaten the beasts, but look at ’em, the magnificent bastards. They’ll be back, smarter next time. We’d do well to somehow learn to live in peace with them.”

  “Is that possible?” Shin questioned.

  “Maybe. But this is a big world, son. And there may be things out there that make the rhinos look like rabbits, for all we know.” Neither said anything else as the hundreds continued their slow march to an unknown location in the south.

  ****

  On a cleared spot just a hundred meters short of the firebase sat Thunderclam Five Niner, rotors stilled, smoke still wisping from one engine.

  “She’s not going to fly again, Bitchy. Frame’s bent. We’ll salvage what we can, but it looks like you’re grounded.”

  “Like hell I am,” the pilot shot back at her ground crew chief. “I don’t care if we have to strap an engine to a piece of plywood and put a folding chair on it. I’ll be up in the air.”

  “Well,” the woman said, “you’re going to have to get in line; it’s going to take weeks to get us new birds through the Gate.” Like most, they didn’t know the Gate was down permanently.

  “I’ll be in line, but everyone else will be behind me. Let’s get to work.” That was one thing the crew chief liked about her pilot. She wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

  ****

  “You know, she held it all together, Chris, right up until that nuke went off. Gave Colonel Thapa time to bring a relief force down from headquarters.” First Sergeant Camacho sat in a chair next to his commander’s hospital bed. The man he’d come to respect and love as a brother said nothing in response.

  “Listen, Chris. Soldiers die. It’s what we do. Anne died protecting her men, protecting me, and saved a lot of lives. Recognized what the alarm was, and ordered us to get down. She was duking it out with a Gvit, and the poor slow bastard never knew what hit him.”

  Camacho thought of his last image of her. Instead of going back to try to rally the men who’d fled Alpha’s position, he’d stayed and fought. He wore a bandage across that covered an ugly cut, and talking was hard for him, but he had to do it.

  “So she actually goes UNDER the thing, between its legs, and hamstrings it, like some kind of matador, you know? Then jumps on its back and stabs it down low, in the side. She died well, Chris, with the bodies of her enemies surrounding her.”

  He didn’t say what Worthy had looked like after the other Gvit had cut her down. The sword that had pierced her heart was sticking through her chest, smashed SAPI plate and torn Kevlar, and she’d fallen up against the creature she’d killed, eyes closed like she was sleeping. No, that would come later, at a drunken time. Pushed down like all such memories.

  “Rest up,” said Camacho, “the old man needs his captains. I’ll keep the company in shape.” The arrow that had hit Chris Santos had nicked an artery in his leg, and he’d almost bled to death. Even now, he looked pale against the clean sheets, but Camacho didn’t know if that was blood loss or grief. The man just sat and scrolled through pictures on his phone, each an image of himself and Anne Worthy, stupid selfies they’d taken when they could steal some time alone together. His friend left him like that, and when he’d gone, Santos let the tears roll unchecked down his face.

  ****

  “See if I ever stand you up again!” said Joe Johnson. Gina Kelly said nothing, just held him tight despite the dust, blood, and dirt on his uniform.

  ****

  Greg Papadatos stood at the end of the bridge as the engineers bulldozed dead bodies into the river. They’d begun to stink quickly in the hot alphalight, and he was grateful for the disposal. He sat on one of the stones that lined the edge, on a bench made centuries ago for some other race of man. The twin suns were going down behind the ridge in the east, and the last of the Gvit horde were slowly making their way up the pass.

  He was, in a way, glad to be alive, but forever after he’d wonder why he had lived, and others had died. Was it by chance? Certainly not skill. He looked across the gap in the roadway to where the Chinese officer still lay, spear sticking out of his throat. “Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?” Then he stood up and started walking back to Rorke’s Drift, leaving behind a place that would live on through the ages for the deeds done there. Through thousands of years, an ancestor, a man who’d been king of a long-ago place named Sparta, smiled.

  Epilogue

  In the heady victory celebration after the Battle of the Plains, when the entire city had turned out to give the Regiment a parade, Gate Control was deserted. The techs who normally manned it had been pressed into carrying a gun, and half of them were dead or wounded. In the week after the battle and the terrible toll it had taken, no one thought of it. When the alarms blared and the sensor screens started spilling data, the only witness was a stray dog that had wandered by. The subsonic sounds generated by the quantum disturbance raised the hair on her back, and she barked a challenge before turning and running away with a whine.

  So there was no one there to see the silvery disk briefly open onto a hellish landscape, nor to catch the man who stumbled through. He staggered a few steps, hampered by the heavy radiation suit he wore, then fell on his face. The box he clutched in his hands hit the concrete with a dull thud, and the portal closed, cutting off his feet. His last view was of the red light of Proxima fading into the bright white of the primary, and the intact buildings of Seaside. With his fading strength, he pulled o
ff the hood, breathed deeply of the sea air, smiled a grim smile, and died.

  ****

  “Well, as best I can determine, acute radiation poisoning, possibly from traversing ground zero of an airburst,” said Doc Cottle, showing an autopsy slide. “However, more likely, he was already dying from it. His symptoms show an advanced case, massive doses about a week ago.” Ugly blotches and burns showed on the dead man’s skin, turning the coffee color grey and red in many places.

  There was silence in the ACECOM briefing room as the impact of what he’d said sank in. Doctor Fabius Cottle was an instructor at the university, but he was also a colonel in the NT Reserves, and their chief medical officer.

  Governor Conklin broke the silence first. “The implications of that are disturbing, to say the least. Thank you, Doctor.” The old man nodded and sat back down, glad that his part in this was over. The governor now turned his attention to General Halstead, who was sitting in a chair in the center of the room, operating the computer screen himself. The briefing was too highly classified to allow anyone but the senior leadership of the colony to participate.

  “Our database identified the dead man as Major John Freeman, last attached to the staff of the SECDEF.” The picture showed an official military headshot, a proud man with the crossed arrows of Special Forces and a chest full of combat ribbons staring directly into the camera. Then it flipped over to a small box, looking like a hardened military-style briefcase.

  “What he carried was this,” said Halstead, “a depleted-uranium-lined canister with several objects inside.” The next slide showed a CD, a data stick, and a thick sheaf of printed papers. “The CD recording survived, though the data stick was badly damaged by radiation. My S-2 thinks they’re all copies or transcripts of the same thing.”

  He paused, looked around the room at the half dozen men and women there, and said, “Myself, the S-2, and Governor Conklin are the only ones who’ve seen this. We’ve copied it and will place it within the university archives if the governor so directs.”

  Clicking on a folder, he opened up a video, and a woman’s face appeared on the screen. She was seated on a leather chair behind a battered field table, and on the wall behind was the Presidential Seal of the United States. “For those who don’t know,” said Halstead, pausing the video, “that’s Janice Rosalyn, who was the Secretary of Education.”

  “What do you mean ‘was’, General?” asked Doctor Ayodele, unfamiliar with most aspects of the American government.

  “The seal behind her, Doctor,” answered Governor Conklin, “means she’s now the acting president of the United States. God help her.”

  “But the Secretary of Education is…” said Sergeant Major Olsen, “like tenth in line or something.”

  “Fourteenth,” said Conklin, ignoring the muttered reply of “Holy Shit!” from Olsen. “General, please continue.” Without another word, Halstead let the video play.

  “Jack, I really hope things on Alpha Centauri are going well,” she said, looking directly into the camera. As the video played, they saw that she was exhausted; her hair had several bald patches, and her skin was a bit greyish. She, too, was suffering from radiation poisoning. After a drink of water, she continued, “because we’re in the shit here.” Richard Conklin closed his eyes and said a small, half-forgotten prayer. Janice Rosalyn had been, was, a good friend.

  “As you may already have surmised, war broke out between the United States and China. Your facility took a near miss from a ship-launched missile, but my advisors tell me that the Gate should have shut down before much got through to you. We’re going to try to restore power, however briefly, and try to get this message through. If you’re seeing this, or reading it, then thank God we did so.” She seemed about to break into tears for a moment, but a hand reached into the picture and touched her shoulder.

  Gathering her strength, she continued, “Jack, the United States is gone. So is most of the world; I don’t think there’s a functioning civilian government left anywhere. Some military commands still hold out, but between the radiation, nuclear winter, and cyberwar, they don’t really matter.” In a monotone, probably the only way she could carry on, she started to say some names, but then, “the list of nuked cities is in the paperwork. It’s over a hundred. Almost as damaging were the EMP attacks and the cyber takedown of our utilities. We can’t even get an accurate estimate of how many dead there are; the Chinese used ground-burst weapons, and the fallout is massive. So did the Russians. Best guess is we took approximately fifty percent casualties in the initial attack.”

  Two hundred million Americans, killed outright. “The last week has been a descent into barbarism, but at least the nuclear exchanges have stopped. Europe is gone, and so are Asia and Russia; India and Pakistan went at it; the Israelis made the Middle East a smoking hole in the ground, but they’re gone, too. Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela blew each other away. We hammered the shit out of Russia and China, North Korea, Iran, not that it matters.” She paused again, took a few pills, and downed them with another drink of water. The people at Alpha Centauri watched in silence as a dying woman did her duty.

  “Jack, we’re done. Estimates say we’ll be down to a million people or less in the lower 48 by the end of the winter. Every single government retreat was hit by cyber or nuclear attack; they had our networks and secrets thoroughly penetrated. There are three people in the line of succession above me who are sealed in underground bunkers, unable to get out due to computer viruses. Doesn’t matter, though, because there’s no government anymore. I’m the last one, flying in a C-17, going from runway to runway. We’re going to attempt to find a radiation-free zone and rebuild, but the scientists aren’t sure where.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Regardless, we’re done here. I’m dying, and there’s no one else below me. We’ll figure out something, but our hope lies with you. Good luck, John,” She squared her shoulders and, in a shaky voice, said “I am hereby appointing Richard Conklin, governor of the United States Incorporated Territory of Alpha Centauri, as my Vice President.”

  A man Halstead recognized as one of the supreme justices leaned over and handed her a piece of paper. She signed it, and then sealed it in an envelope. Another paper was handed to her, and she signed that, too.

  “That was my resignation. Good luck, President Conklin. Our hopes and prayers are with you, and may you do better than we did.”

  The man looked into the camera and said, “I, acting Chief Justice Brent Caver, do hereby recognize the appointment of Richard Conklin as vice president, the resignation of Janice Roslyn from the office of president, and the succession of Vice President Conklin to that office.”

  Halstead paused the video and looked over at Conklin. “Mister President?” he asked, nodding to the video.

  “Carry one, General. They need to see this.”

  The video started again, and this time there was a different person, a distinguished-looking man in the midnight-black uniform of the US Space Force, with colonel’s insignia on his collar. “President Conklin, my name is Colonel William Rafton, acting head of Space Command, or what’s left of it. I’ll sum up briefly. We have the facilities left to conduct one launch, and only suborbital at that. On board will be a mini-Gate such as the one used to place research packages into deep space. We’ll be sending a small unmanned ship, carrying various important materials, into orbit around Alpha, and hopefully, if our calculations are correct, it will be within radio control of your facilities in a few months and you can conduct a successful recovery. With some luck and a lot of damned hard work, as someone once said, this nation won’t perish.” The colonel saluted, said, “President Conklin,” and then the video turned off.

  There was dead silence in the room until General Halstead said, “Sir, what are your orders?”

  To Be Continued…

  Coming Summer of 2019

  Off World: Expedition

  Chapter 1

  To those who’d been there for a while, the s
uns of Alpha were comfortable. To those who hadn’t, and who’d grown up in the upper latitudes of North America, the lack of axial tilt meant they were in one long summer. The jungle, once you were away from the offshore breezes, seemed to breathe steam.

  “Why the fuck,” said Joe Johnson under his breath, “do even we need to do this?” He’d been on Alpha Centauri for two years, but even this heat took some getting used to.

  “Because,” whispered back his teammate, not taking his eyes off the ruined road off to their side, “the roughnecks are so pissed off at us for trashing their bar, they ordered an entire battalion to walk and drive two hundred clicks through the jungle as punishment.”

  “Very funny,” answered the scout, his attention not wavering. He was scanning the ground for signs of alien presence. They’d come across single trails, probably just local things gathering stuff from the forest, but their priority was any group large enough to cause an inconvenience. They were advancing into unknown territory, making for the crash site three hundred kilometers to the west.

  Beside the two scouts, moving low to the ground and sniffing the earth, their German Shepard partner, Rocket, moved silently. Every now and then he stopped, ears pricked up at some sound they couldn’t hear. Johnson and Crane depended on him without question. A month ago, probing through Gvit Confederation lines, they’d had their lives saved by a timely warning from Rocket, allowing them to close with and kill two sentries who’d been concealed in a dead tree. The Gvit, though, lay eastward, down the coast and across the North River. In the war, Johnson and the rest of the 1-9 scouts had actually been involved in the last stand at Rorke’s Drift and the destruction of the Great Bridge, cutting off the Confederacy forces from resupply and ending the war.