Authors: Max Feinstein
“Recall the Wildcats immediately, have crews standing by to refit and rearm those fighters, we might need them again,” Jonathan order and cross his ar
ms behind his hand, “dispatch a SAR team to locate our downed pilot and bring her home.”
With the help of Bain the orders were rapidly transmitted to the proper personnel and a pair of
specialized Search and Rescue Jackal Armed Reconnaissance Vehicles launched from hidden tunnels carved in the mountainside. The two Jackals flew out fast and low towards Wildcat Four’s emergency beacon, their crews highly trained in the art of recovering their objectives quickly and efficiently even in the face of extreme danger. As these vehicles raced away from Bastion the remains of Rear Guard finally made their way to the command complex. They were badly bruised in both equipment and moral, but still hungry to engage the enemy once more and avenge their fallen comrades.
“All
personnel and vehicles inside sir, evacuation complete,” relayed Bain after three minutes had elapsed.
“Very well, lock us down Captain Gephart,” Jonathan ordered the base’s former commander, now second in command to the Colonel himself.
The strong female officer immediately began calling out orders and sealing up Bastion airtight. Every outer door and opening closed on command, especially the large main entrance, which slid shut from both sides of the cavern. Its massive blastdoors designed to look indistinguishable from the rock formations surrounding it. The moment these thick doors sealed the entire complex shuddered as another massive orbital strike slammed into area. In seconds most of the mountain summits in the nearby vicinity evaporated into fine dust, including the pinnacle directly above the TACCOM. In moments another volley touched down after the first, followed by a third in what seemed like the enemies attempt to cleanse the whole area.
A dozen terrible roars filled the night air as the large group of alien beasts rushed his entire platoon on all four of their powerful limbs. The majority were armed with back mounted energy cannons that seemed to have the ability to swing over their right shoulders when them stood up. Others, however, were fitted with grenade launchers of some sort and wore an entirely different form of armor over their fur covered bodies. It was quickly apparent that these orange and violet stripped soldiers were the enemy’s version of Special Operations. They charged with a completely elevated level of coordination and intelligence, letting the other ‘regulars’ act as a screening formation for their actions.
With his reflexes heightened by medication the aliens seemed to move at a more manageable speed. This allowed the crosshairs floating in front of him on his visor to focus on one of these charging soldiers at lightning speeding as the rifle butt pushed into his armored shoulder. He barely felt the weapon’s recoil as the first burst of two plasma bolts left the barrel and slammed into the enemy’s chest. There was a sudden flash of light as the magnetic field around the bolts collapsed on impact and the plasma splashed over the warrior’s chest plate. This piece of body armor blackened under the assault, but held the rounds from going through
. One of these rounds hit close to its right arm superheated the air around it just enough to cause some of the fur to catch fire. The massive creature paused in its tracks and bellowed out a scream as the entire arm went up in flames and quickly spread throughout its upper body.
There was a moment, only for a split second, in which sorrow for the creature’s pain surfaced within his mind, but was quickly suppressed by feelings of anger at how much death and destruction this enemy had caused. Perhaps it was still that last bit of lingering sadness and basic human dignity that caused him to almost subconsciously adjust his aim higher and send another double burst into the roaring soldier’s head. Both plasma shots struck dead center, destroying the face and stopping the large warrior in its tracks. All sound from it ceased as the alien toppled over
dead and still smoking as the fire continued to rage across its fur covered body until the last of the fur was burnt off.
As this soldier fell another three of its frontline brethren also collapsed mid-rush as dozens of plasma bolts impacted their torsos. A quick glance at his heads-up-display confirmed the presence of friendly troops from his platoon on either side of him, advancing slowly in
formation towards the enemy. The area around them lit up in flashes of blue as the alien return fire splashed against the still active shields surrounding the entire 2nd Platoon.
Suddenly f
or a second everything went blank. When his vision returned to normal he felt out of place, almost as if he had skipped through time. It was just in time to see a trio of the bear like creatures many meters away lounged into the air and came down through the protective field at its very edge. Their weapons took aim as soon as they settled and he felt a concussive wave lift him off the ground without warning, sending his body flying sideways through the air. He impacted the ground roughly, thankful for the uniforms internal padding, and rolled twice before coming back up on one knee. A scan of the immediate area where he had just been revealed a horror scene of multiple scattered body parts that had belonged to Private Nelikov, the soldier that had been stationed to his right. Before those three invaders were finally put down by the rest of the platoon two more of his soldiers were listed in yellow as casualties on his visor display.
He began to stand from the kneeling position when an alarm sounded through his helmet speakers and an ‘Incoming’ message flashed on his visor. His mind shouted to everyone listening to take cover just as a series of heavy blasts blossomed above the men and women around him, shaking the ground and throwing him off balance once more. As he looked up at what appeared to be a fading bright sky he witnessed the shield barrier shimmer
ing quickly before disappearing all around them. The informational display in front of him informed him of the shield failure and as he gazed over towards one of the armed robotic transports he saw it eject a smoldering hexagonal object from the rear. This quickly revealed that the shield generators had been damaged by the last missile strike.
Not a second later, as the last bit of light from the explosive flash faded, a renewed assault by the charging enemy soldiers began. Still under the influence of Accelerin everything seemed to occur in slow motion for him. Turning his head towards the front he could see the rest of
2
nd
Platoon engaging the alien force at no more than a few dozen meters now, the creatures’ bulks all that much more imposing at such a short distance. One of them was actually running towards him on all fours with the end of a large back mounted cannon pointed directly at him.
On instinct alone he rolled over onto his stomach and brought up the rifle to acquire the rushing enemy.
He didn’t even see the energy bolt that flashed by him, but felt the hot debris shower his armor as the bolt slammed into the ground he had just occupied less than a second before. Thanks to the combat armor’s target assistance module the suit automatically engaged the synthetic muscles that lined both arms and forced them to align the rifle held within them with the wearer’s eyesight. At the moment he was looking directly at the alien’s snarling face and squeezed the trigger as the crosshairs in his HUD lined up. As before two plasma shots left the weapon without much recoil. One struck the metallic looking helmet on the forehead and ricocheted away, but the second hit the creatures left eye, causing greenish blood to spray out as it stumbled mid-run.
At the same time the ground under him vibrated slightly as something heavy came up beside him
before a soft sound, like something metallic ripping, filled the night air. Just then the ground in front of the alien erupted with small impacts that stitched towards the soldier. Right before his eyes, the alien soldier’s body ripped apart in an explosion of green as the string of hypervelocity slugs found their mark. With that he watched the remains finally crash into the ground. He let out a deep breath and rose up off the debris covered street. Turning his head he saw one of the platoon’s Bison autonomous armed transports standing there with its cannon pointed in the dead enemy’s direction. It was also at this moment that he realized that there was shouting, most likely from his squad leaders, through the helmet’s communication system.
Overhead a handful of missiles streaked by in the direction of the base’s center
, followed instantly by several more salvos, while at the same time all around him soldiers continued to engage the aliens. True to their training they all advanced in a slightly concave line, funneling the enemy into a crossfire. Shouldering his weapon he rushed towards the frontline to rejoin his men. As he ran forward he could see energy beams and bolts of multiple colors crisscrossing through the night. Most exploded again the bodies of enemy soldiers, but a few hit his own men, sending them flying. To his horror over half of the aliens hit picked themselves off the ground and continued to slowly advance, their sever wounds healing right before his eyes.
Once again the world around him vanished and came back moments later with him hearing his own voice
yelling something into the platoon’s TacNet just as one of these rising creatures fell back to the street as its head disintegrated from another hypervelocity round. This one had come from one of the platoon’s rooftop snipers that had been prepositioned at the start of the battle. Acting mostly on instinct and muscle memory he moved his rifle into his left hand in mid-run and reached behind to the small of his back with his palm up. His hand hovered there for less than a second before he felt something smooth and oval fall into it. The high explosive grenade activated almost as soon as the soldier’s hand wrapped around it. A contact signal triggered by the operator’s thoughts went through a transduction plate within the glove and into the grenade. Without a second thought he targeted a small group of enemy soldiers and hefted the eight centimeter long weapon into the distance.
Helped by the suit’s targeting system
the grenade sailed true, going off in the middle of the group just before hitting the ground. There was a quick flash of light and the night vision showed all four of the enemy warriors thrown in multiple directions. Somehow the rifle was already back on his shoulder and targeting other soldiers before he could see definitively what happened to those aliens. There were more troops out there so he picked his targets and squeezed the trigger as fast as he could acquire them during his short run.
The enemy would not give up, however. Injured and now greatly outnumbered
they continued to fight. Out of his peripheral vision he could see a handful of 2nd platoon soldiers take hits from the enemy heavy weapons, dropping them to the ground with smoking gaps burned into their armor plating. At the same time what seemed to be the enemy’s spec ops warriors finally jumped into the fray. One of these heavily armored soldiers grabbed two nearby friendly and tossed them across the street as if they were ragdolls. Another creature slammed into a human soldier, driving her into a group of her fellow brethren, causing these men to stumble as well before they could return fire. Without pause the alien jumped on top of the fallen trooper and started to pound its fists against her armored uniform repeatedly, trying to get through. It was finally brought down by a micro-grenade and a burst from another Bison.
All of the sudden he heard another shout through his TacNet to the extent of ‘watch out’, which
caused him to notice the large bulk falling out of the sky towards him through his night vision. He began to rotate his body, weapon at the ready, as a camouflaged covered arm struck his shoulder and knocked him off balance. At the same he felt the shock of pure pain rush over his body for a moment and a loud scream pierce his helmet speakers. It wasn’t clear at first whose scream that was. All he knew was that he was falling once again, but the pain he had felt was no longer there thanks to his suit’s medical unit, which had automatically active the pain suppression protocol. He landed on his shoulder hard before rolling over to try getting back on his feet. It was here that he noticed his entire right side not responding to his commands and a system failure alarm go off within his suit.
It was then that he also noticed a body lying beside him, that of Specialist Cerroto. Trying to get back up, he forced himself on all fours when something powerful slammed into his abdomen and sent him flying and rolling across the street. He came to
skipping stop on his back and finally saw what had attacked him. One of the alien soldier’s was almost upon him, closing the distance with surprising speed. Again he tried to move his right hand to bring the weapon held within it to bear, but nothing happened. He couldn’t even feel his hand anymore, let alone move it. The creature now towered over him and a large shoulder mounted cannon depressed to aim right at him.
Lieutenant Dexter Iorns threw his eyes open and shot up from his bed, breathing hard and fast with sweat dripping down his forehead. It took him a second to orient himself before running a hand through his hair and over his sweat drenched face. As he calmed himself and got his breathing under control Dexter looked down at his right hand and balled it into a fist. Repeating the action a number of times he reassured himself that the extremity still worked
, having recovered fully from the traumatic injury it had sustained during the last battle at Hamilton Army Base.
While his body had healed quickly, Dexter’s mind would take longer to recover fully. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot with the memory of what happened on that night almost two days prior still at the forefront of his mind. Each night he had the same dream, but it wasn’t just a dream. In reality it was a full reenactment of th
e battle he had participated in, one that continued to replay each time he closed his eyes. It had been his first real battle and the first time he had lost men under fire. All the training in the universe could not prepare one for witnessing such things for the first time, especially when those lost were under that person’s command. As such Dexter felt personally responsible for each life lost.
He knew inside himself the flaw within that sort of though
t, however, it was something that only time could heal. There were of course medications and other treatments that could cure him sooner, but he refused these outright. He would have to deal with the situation of his own accord and in so doing learn from the experience. Dexter realized that before this war was over there would be many more deaths to come and the only way he could help those under his command was to learn all the lessons he could from each engagement. One of these lessons, slow in coming as it may, was how to deal with death.
Deciding not to dwell further Dexter swung his legs off the cot
, ran his hand through his matted hair, and stood up inside the dimly lit prefabricated shelter. The prefab structure housed five other beds, each one set aside for only junior officers such as himself, of which only two were being used at the moment by other resting soldiers. As these others slept he quietly stretched to get some of the stiffness out and walked over to his armor uniform, now completely repaired and hanging inside a special rack built into the wall. He stepped into the uniform through the already opened rear and slid his arms into the attached armored sleeves. Flexing his gloved hands he felt the suit power up immediately and both sides at the rear came together to form an air tight atmospheric seal.