Charger the Soldier (18 page)

Charger shut off the radio. "Maybe the aliens
figure we're too much of a nuisance to live. Anyway, they were
going to attack sooner or later." Nobody seemed to understand that
broadcasting Earth's position to the universe through radio waves
would someday invite aliens to attack. Then when world leaders
finally clued in, they thought switching all Earth's transmissions
to digital would somehow cancel out the previous years of
broadcasting the planet's strengths and weaknesses.

The signal for boarding the plane sounded and
Charger lumbered to his feet and headed for the tarmac to join the
92nd flight brigade for a jump into hostile territory. His swords
felt comfortable and deadly in his hands. Many of the Hyborgs now
used only the technologically advanced swords, rather than the
weapons ordinary soldiers used. They were much better than bullets
for killing aliens. Also, their heavy body armor combined with the
leg and arm enhancements made moving and fighting the things a
snap.

Charger bared his fangs in a grimace of
satisfaction. He'd seen several weeks of intense fighting since his
conversion had been completed, and so far the humans were holding
their ground. The aliens tried to emulate the humans in both combat
and design, but they didn't seem to have any idea what they were
doing. He'd seen one of them try to form itself into a human as
camouflage and had concluded their vision must be way off. Its
interpretation was roughly the outline of a soldier, but the
texture was like that of a wet, wrinkled dishcloth. Maybe because
their outsides seemed to be made of goop.

Still, in spite of their mistakes, the aliens
had gained ground, pushing survivors into smaller and smaller
areas. That is, until the Hyborgs began fighting. Charger had been
glad to see converts from other countries joining the ranks. Now
they were all packed into aircraft flying high above the mass of
alien invaders below.

Charger drew back his lips again in what
passed for a smile. The aliens had no idea what kind of hell was
about to descend on their encampments. When the green light came
on, signaling it was time to jump, he was first to go. The rest
were pushing from behind and the speed with which they leapt from
the aircraft was such that it quickly gained altitude. Descending
through the darkness, he felt no fear. Being undead had eliminated
fear.

He landed hard and, with the other Hyborgs
behind him, swept forward through the alien camp. His blades swept
and sliced, while a weird screaming or sizzling came from the
butchered and dying enemy combatants.

Charger covered ground fast. He had killed
maybe fifty aliens when he found Dal lying on the ground in two
pieces. Dal was still moving and trying to somehow pull himself
together to continue the fight.

A large green and black alien was moving
through the ranks, hacking and slicing human soldiers in half. With
no hesitation, and his speed increasing with each stride, Charger
closed ground on the alien. Raising one sword high and leaping into
the air, he came crashing down on it. As he stabbed the sword deep
inside its surface, parts sheared off, but the alien kept
advancing, seemingly oblivious to the assault. Sometimes Charger
was slashing through liquid as hard parts gave way and the footing
became treacherous, but he didn't stop.

The alien turned to attack Charger directly
and, for a brief moment, their eyes met. It had more eyes than he
did. These multiple eyes were gold in color, but they were
definitely eyes and they showed fear. Charger smiled, revealing all
four of his fangs.

One of those fangs already had a chip in it.
Not from the war, though. He and Dal had gone on leave right after
their conversion. They had been trained electronically how to fight
and survive and their size had doubled, so they were impressive
soldiers. But they were never taught how to go home.

He'd been so eager to see Beth that he never
thought about how she'd react to his appearance. The strain of war
had affected the way she looked, too. Her hair was lank, she had
lost weight, and her face was almost gray. But it was the eyes –
those clear, beautiful ice blue eyes! – she was afraid of him now.
That hurt, after all they'd meant to each other.

The villagers donated blood and meat but he
could read the fear in their faces, too. He was glad he'd been
converted to a Hyborg so that he could kill aliens. And what made
it even better was that now he lived without fear. So when the guy
at the bar that night swung a baseball bat into his mouth, he
decided to show them what fear really meant. He'd wanted to kill.
But he couldn't. He'd beat the shit out of those guys, but he
couldn't take the final step. It was like the conversion had done
something to his brain.

He only went home once after that. They
didn't understand what he'd sacrificed so that they all had a
chance to live. But so what?

They gave him some blood and meat, so
what?

He could die in battle, anyway. What did they
know? He missed Beth, but she was better off without him. She'd
find someone else.

Charger felt good, driving his sword through
the head plate of the alien monster, seeing the gold fade from its
multi-faceted eyes. The soldiers he fought with cheered his
audacity and the thought of Beth faded.

He yelled at the monster, "Look at me, you
bastard! Look at me! Keep your fucking eyes open. I want you to see
me as you die." When the last of the gold faded from its eyes,
Charger smiled again, revealing all four fangs, three whole, one
chipped.

He took Dal's body back home a few days
later. His mother didn't recognize her own son and rejected the
corpse. Charger knew then that the Hyborgs would be forever outside
of humanity, looking in. But he could live with that. He'd always
lived with that, in one way or another.

>>>

Life in Russia had been especially hard
during the invasion. While Germany rushed to the aid of America,
Russia stood mostly alone. Refugees poured in daily, seeking refuge
as the European countries quickly fell. India, China and other
Asian countries followed suit. The alien invasion was global. No
country was spared and many were overrun in a matter of days. By
the end of that first chaotic week, the aliens' red mass and their
poisonous mist covered a third of the world's landmass.

The Russians used traditional and
surprisingly effective tactics. They relied on the scorched-earth
approach, used in World Wars I and II. As they retreated, they
burned all the resources, leaving nothing for the enemy to consume.
This confused and delayed the invaders, since they seemed to
require the resources usually left behind, even though they
destroyed them in the end.

Russia had for years been working on their
own method for repulsing possible alien invaders and their
intelligent biological metals proved difficult to defeat. This
smart-metal, first developed in the 1970s, had long been merely
experimental, though the military was eager to use it. If they
could create perfect soldiers, bonded with this living metal skin,
no one would be able to defeat the Russians. America knew of the
experiments, but took a different approach. Where Russia had tried
to encase the soldier in ununseptium, element 117, considered a
member of the poor metals group on the elements chart, similar to
aluminum, America used it as only part of the living armor for the
Hyborgs.

Lieutenant General Mikhail Kalashnikov was
placed in charge of the Russian super-soldier program in 1947, and
became the driving force behind the smart-metals program. But it
was his successor, Colonel Vladimir Pushkin, who won the first
victory in 1972 by bonding element 117 to animals. Pushkin and his
scientific team came up with some revolutionary ideas. They
experimented with small rodents at first, bonding limited
smart-metals most often only to the backbone, but these did serve
as test cases for further study. The metals were 'smart' in that
they could self-repair quickly, sometimes in seconds, acting as
both a barrier to penetration and as a patch to prevent the body
from bleeding out.

The real problem the scientists faced was how
to encase a soldier's full body in this living armor and still
maintain his ability to breathe and move. This was not easy to do.
Lungs needed to expand the chest in order to function and a chest
wrapped in metal is restricted in its movement. Then they had to
overcome the increased weight of the soldier and the radioactivity
of the element. Initially they covered the first few human soldiers
in hundreds of small flexible steel plates that made them look like
human disco balls. However, the test subjects died of skin diseases
and radiation poisoning, and the project was shelved until the
alien invasion.

The Russian program had a simpler approach
than the American Hyborg program. The humans in the Russian program
were unaltered at the genetic level, and not enhanced to withstand
the deadly poisonous mist. It was soon learned that through
manipulating the smart-metals in their molecular state, a stable
and less radioactive compound could be quickly developed. It had
the added benefit of being lighter in weight, showing that its
connection to aluminum was not just an accident. The odd thing that
resulted from this new process was that the smart-metals took on a
deep reddish color and, as a result, the Russian super-soldiers
became known as the Russian Blood Brigade.

Ivan was an unremarkable kid from a school in
the small town of Tura. Tura was located in the middle of Russia
and, during the first few days of the invasion, certainly the
safest place to be. Colonel Pushkin's original team of scientists
was quickly reassembled and sent to Tura to restart the
super-soldier program. By now, the Russian micro-engineering and
biological enhancements program for strength and endurance had made
impressive advancements, and many of the problems the team faced
back in the seventies were easily overcome. One of these problems
had been the lack of test subjects but now volunteers for the
adaptation program were storming the gates. These brave young
people were willing to sacrifice everything to save Russia and its
people.

Ivan was one of the first kids to volunteer,
against his parents' wishes.

"I understand most of our forces are
retreating from the coasts," one of the new recruits said to Ivan
as he and several other candidates sat in an office on the new
military base, waiting to see if they could join the Blood
Brigade.

"I heard we are advancing on the enemy in a
new direction, which just happens not to be the direction the enemy
expects us to fight in," Ivan replied, with a gentle laugh.

"That could be true," the other recruit
replied, joining in on the laughter. "What better strategy for our
forces than to lure them into Poland or Europe, then let those
countries deal with the invaders?"

A tall doctor entered the office and picked a
few volunteers to follow him into the examination rooms. There they
sat naked, as nurses and doctors poked and prodded them. Many
questions were asked of Ivan. He responded willingly and quickly,
hoping that he would be picked, and he was.

The process to become a super-soldier carried
many risks. It had been made clear to the young volunteers that
some might not survive it, but this didn't deter their enthusiasm.
Posters had been placed everywhere, advertising the super-soldier,
showing a blood-red metal cyborg Russian crushing the head of an
imaginary alien. The poster soldiers were not even close to how the
volunteers would eventually look. Being encased in a smart-metal
suit didn't do much for the design of the human body. The original
flexibility was lost, creating a more rigid body. Fingers lost some
dexterity, arms and legs flexed very little, and the candidates
would never sit down again, as the back was locked rigid to carry
the weight. It was difficult to kill a Blood soldier, but not
impossible, and death meant entombment in a casing of red
metal.

The process of conversion itself was
relatively painless. Skin was replaced with smart-metals in a way
that made volunteers look like Egyptian mummies. Many bodily
functions were affected, yet after a few days, a super-soldier
ready for battle emerged excited and full of spirit, willing to
fight invaders. The program expanded to all of Russia, as thousands
of volunteers swelled into millions. No volunteer was ever refused,
and those who did not survive were reprocessed into usable
materials for other candidates.

Ivan, like the other new recruits, required
no training. They were pointed at the enemy, then let loose like
dogs. They tended to mob an invader, defeating it by mass assault.
The poisonous mist was made harmless through simple rebreathers
bolted to the soldiers, but this was only a temporary stopgap, for
the poison did eventually find its way into their lungs.

During a fight close to the Chinese border,
the Russian Blood Brigade encountered the Hyborgs of Asia. They
were a small group led by a commander named Chang, who carried
three swords but no guns. This group preferred close quarters
combat with the invaders. Though the Russians were pleased to add
these odd-looking human combatants to their ranks, they were less
than impressed that the Chinese no longer had a home to defend.

The soldiers fought bravely, but after
several months, Russia was losing the war. The Chinese Hyborgs
spoke of the alliance between the Germans and the Americans. No one
could keep a secret from China. Its spies had long penetrated
several levels of world governments, so when the war started, they
too began experimenting with Hyborgs of similar design and
construction to those the Americans had developed.

Ivan had survived long enough to get a small
command of his own, seven men and five women, and they were joined
with the remainder of the Chinese Hyborgs. The group numbered
twenty in total and had perfected its fighting skills. It was the
most lethal Russian combat group in their area; Ivan had received
many medals for valor.