Charger the Soldier (14 page)

The television showed scenes of panic and
fear as people lashed out at everyone in their way, even neighbors,
as they all tried to escape the mists the invaders sprayed
everywhere. In the cities, gigantic objects moved rapidly about,
almost a blur to the eye. Charger couldn't tell whether they were
life forms or machines, but they were deadly. At first, so one
report said, the smaller aliens didn't seem to possess weapons;
instead they themselves were weapons. From their bodies, they
formed solid parts that cut, slashed, hacked, and at times flashed
out like bullets, cutting down human soldiers.

In spite of all that, the newscasters said
these first days of the invasion had gone well. Even the President
came on television saying that humans were advancing on all fronts
throughout the world.

The cameras had made it to the front lines
and the footage they got was amazing. The aliens looked squishy.
They were squishy, obviously, but they could form into hard objects
that crashed down on soldiers in the fray of battle. The reporter
said at first the military found that bullets passed right through
them until they formed hard parts. Then they could be shattered
like broken glass. The fighting was wild at first, advance and
dodge until the aliens went hard, then open up on their asses with
artillery, often having to fire at point blank range.

When that newscast was over, Dal said, "Let's
go hunt squishies."

It was dark and raining when they drove away
from the motel, but life looked pretty exciting. Seemed right to
both of them to bring a Rat Rod Dodge to the main gates of the
military base and step out like young heroes looking to join the
Army and go fight.

"You newbies here today got lucky; you get
choices!" the old sergeant yelled. He was a large, heavyset man
with a thin beard but no hair on his head. Looking at newbies
standing in street clothes seemed to make his face turn redder.
"Now, you can go off and fight like good little soldiers and die.
Or, for a limited time only, we can make you into super-soldiers."
There was a sneer in the sergeant's voice. "That's right – I said
super, like Superman or Captain America. You hicks can join up and
go fight super style."

Charger felt like the smile on his face was
large enough that his ears were disappearing. Man, he wanted to be
super! So he'd been an auto mechanic before, and he'd fixed cars,
trucks, and bikes. But he didn't have to stay a mechanic. Now was
his chance to be a hero. "Dal, let's do it!"

"Yeah, I know already," Dal said. "We're
fighting men super style now."

Charger could feel the excitement rippling
through the recruits. It seemed almost possible to smell the
youthful energy. Everyone there wanted to be super, just like
him.

The sergeant turned to his corporal and, with
regret in his voice, said, "Take these guys to Conversions, and may
God forgive me."

What the sergeant had said to the corporal
didn't sink in until around day three of the conversion, when
Charger found the stench of his flesh almost unbearable. He looked
at the recruits, lined up like cattle. They were going through a
conversion that seemed to have one goal: kill them very, very
slowly and they might survive being changed into Hyborgs.

He discovered the process was exacting in its
science and tremendously painful in its application. Over a period
of a few days, the volunteers found their bodies growing larger in
stature and thicker in muscle mass. It was hard to keep track of
the combination of different medications, physical surgery, and
nanotechnology being applied, but he was determined to understand
what was happening to him.

At one point, his leg muscles grew so thick
that the long bones in his legs had to be surgically cut in half
and metal spacers added to give him a longer stride. The bones were
reinforced internally with what he could only describe as concrete.
The large muscle mass that formed on his arms made them almost
uncontrollable. They tended to twitch and then go rock hard. The
solution to this turned out to be the surgical implantation of an
organic attachment that held a power source, and several micro
motors surgically linked to points on his arm bones and
tendons.

After a time, as flesh healed, the medics
applied a metallic, living, organic body-armor to him. This thick,
scaly skin, a copper color so dark it was almost black, was like
that found on crocodiles, they told him. It was strong and
flexible, but it made him smell like death. He was never sure which
process had made his canine teeth grow larger and longer, but the
image of the vampire was obvious. His heart rate was slowed and his
breathing became shallow. Some of the volunteers found their
cognitive abilities had dropped dramatically. Charger had always
thought Dal was a bit stupid, but after the medical processes, he
was often stuck for an answer to 'good morning.'

Charger's optic lobes had been enhanced to
see better in the dark. This meant that a skin or shield had to be
placed over the retina, giving it the appearance of a milky white
surface. That surface, though, reflected not just the light, but
also the faces they looked at, like a mirror. It made outsiders
very uncomfortable.

He finally decided they didn't look quite
like vampires, but more like really vicious undead with disfigured
bodies. But they needed to eat meat and also drink blood because
their bodies couldn't produce blood anymore.

Dal thought it was cool to call himself a
vampire, but Charger knew they weren't vampires, just deformed. If
he decided to bite someone, that person wouldn't become like him or
go batty; he would just bleed.

The recruits were told that military
intelligence had discovered the mist the aliens used was what
killed humans, and since it was dark inside the mist, what better
fighters for humanity then the undead night stalkers of myth who
could see in the dark? Though once, when he happened to look into a
mirror, Charger wondered if whoever designed the super-soldiers had
based them on the Wendigo. His facial features were striking,
though the armor covered everything else. His eyes were farther
apart then they used to be. His mouth was twisted. Four fangs
protruded from his mouth. He looked nothing like the young man with
thick brown hair and blue eyes who had gazed back at him from the
bathroom mirror the morning he left home.

"Are you still breathing?" Dal asked as
Charger lay strapped to the medical bed a day or two later.

"I don't think so, least not for the last
hour or so."

"How is that even possible?" Dal demanded.
"Don't we need air to talk? Like to push air past our voice box, I
mean?"

"Don't know," Charger replied, pulling at the
straps that bound him to the table. "I don't know how aliens can
exist either. Maybe we don't need air to live now." It seemed like
a clever answer.

"That's just stupid," Dal protested. "I'm
still breathing. And I don't understand what they're doing to us. I
never heard of anything like this before and I should of because my
old man was in the military once."

Charger tried to grin through the pain and
concentrated on the delightful fact that volunteers for the Hyborg
program received little of the basic training mandatory in most
armies. "I never heard of anybody else getting stuff like this done
to them either, but I'll bet it's been a military secret for years.
You know, like the army always has knowledge they don't let on to
ordinary civilians."

As the last boost to their prowess, they'd
had their skulls enlarged surgically, to allow for the input of
biomechanical enhancements to sight, hearing and thinking
processes. These alterations included built-in instructions on how
to fight and survive. It was great to have all that power but why
couldn't they have had it before? Didn't seem fair for governments
to hide stuff from the people.

As the days went by, Charger began to get
used to the alterations. They felt weird but he wasn't going to
worry about that. He had other things to think about, like killing
the aliens who were attacking his people and his home.

T
he atmosphere was somber as the German chancellor
approached the microphone at the podium. The technician behind the
camera focused in tight as the well-dressed older woman with a
stern expression began to speak. Though her composure denoted
strength and resilience, her faltering voice betrayed fear and
anguish, mixed with great sadness. Firmly clutching the top corners
of the podium, she faced the camera squarely.

"Today, Germany gives to the world her most
sacred possession, our sons and daughters in combat," she said. "We
hope that this day will erase the mark of shame carried by many of
our generations and lift that burden from our shoulders." Her
fingers clenched, and her bottom lip began to tremble. A single
tear slid down one cheek. "God have mercy on us all!"

She turned from the camera, and walked
quickly from the main hall to the combat ready-room filled with
generals and their staff. No media followed, clamoring for further
answers. This topic was not open to debate. The lone camera
technician packed his camera and left the building.

In the confusion of those early days, it was
a bright young German general who first realized that the aliens
were landing their forces along shorelines around the world, that
they were attacking with the sea at their backs and driving the
world's populations, like cattle, steadily inward to the center of
each continent. It was this saving moment of clarity that allowed
one landlocked country to form an opposition to the invaders. The
question was: would the world accept help from the German people,
who had for years been stained by the paintbrush of propaganda
wielded by the victors? Nevertheless, a decision had to be made.
Where could they mobilize a resistance that would do the most
good?

"America has the most advanced fighting force
in the world today. They can win if we give them the time they need
to organize," General Dieter A'Ochay said to the diplomats,
politicians and military personnel huddled in a bunker far below
ground level. Alternately pounding his fist on the desk and
pointing to various locations on the map, he said forcefully, "We
cannot spread our forces to help all, but we can stall and possibly
turn the tide of war, if only briefly, so these Americans can
deploy their military to defeat this catastrophe. If nothing else,
we can draw the main alien forces to America so the rest of the
world can regroup."

"No, no! If we fortify Germany now, we will
best serve the fatherland," a balding, fat man said. He rocked back
and forth in his chair, agitated by the general's demanding
posture. "There are many nations around the world who could find
refuge in our arms. We could save the world if we simply fortify
ourselves." Sweat formed on the fat man's forehead as he realized
the general's gaze was now fixed squarely on him.

The German chancellor spoke softly but her
voice silenced the room. "We will go to America. We will start
there, and we will also die there, as we would here. Even a
well-defended landlocked country is nothing more than a coffin."
The atmosphere in the room became calm. There seemed nothing
further to say; the decision had been made.

Germany steeled herself for the task ahead.
Soldiers immediately began boarding planes. Weapons were checked
and rechecked and, in the darkness, hundreds of heavy aircraft
lifted into the air on course to America.

It was almost dawn as the first of the German
aircraft flew over America's Atlantic seaboard. There had been no
response to their communications, which greatly concerned the
German pilots. Entering America's air space might be seen as a
provocation if they could not inform her of their intentions. As
they flew over the eastern states, the soldiers looked down on
burning, tormented lands below, a scene straight out of hell. Large
twisting red masses rose up from the shores everywhere. Here and
there, American jet fighters descended on those red masses,
dropping bombs that seemed to have little effect on the alien
foothold.

One of the German pilots reported that
contact had been made to those in command of the American
offensive, and the fleet was now being directed to strategic
locations throughout the States.

As the German formation began splitting up
and flying to assigned locations, escorted by American jet
fighters, a look back at the masses of alien fortifications growing
along the shorelines occasionally revealed small swirling vortices
emanating from the red mass. Shooting skyward, they seemed to be
aimed at low-flying jet fighters. Projections that looked like
spinning saw blades attached to a gray snake-like arm occasionally
sliced into a jet fighter, sending it spiraling to the ground in
flames. One pilot ejected from his plane within view of the German
soldiers and, as the pilot descended to the ground, an alien swarm
massed beneath him, reached up and pulled the hapless pilot to the
ground, tearing his body to shreds.

There was no taking of prisoners in this
fight, only utter annihilation.

One squadron of German aircraft that had left
from Asia and crossed the Pacific Ocean made its way south from
Alaska, flying over what remained of Canada. The cities along the
shores of this vast country lay smashed and broken. A peaceful
country, Canada had been ill-prepared for the destruction that
overwhelmed it. Huge tracts of land blackened and devoid of all
life, bleak as a desert, stretched into the distance. Here and
there, large alien red masses dotted the shorelines and seemed
joined together, even at long distances, by moving tentacles or
tree-like roots in the ground.

As they flew over Canada, one of the heavy
lift aircraft began having mechanical issues. These soon became
serious, and the word was passed to commanders that this failing
craft would soon plummet to the ground. They decided that another
German plane would land with the disabled aircraft and that the two
groups would dig in and hold their positions until an offloaded
rescue group could return.