Authors: Max Feinstein
Felix took another deep breath and reached out to grab the framing of the hatch as he began to stand up slowly. With more determination now that he had seen one of his legs move he watched his right leg slide along the deck as he pulled himself up by the hatchway.
The suit’s enhanced strength lifted him up with little effort and allowed him to stand in the entranceway. He was still not fully stable on his feet, swaying slight side to side, but knew it was better than nothing. Always one of caution Felix reached across his chest and detached the battle rifle clinging there. A diagnostic scan of the weapon quickly told him it was fully operational and he felt it unlock and expand in his hand. Holding the weapon in his right hand Felix used his other for support while slowly stepping forward through towards the rear of the vehicle, lifting one leg at a time under the assistance of the combat armor.
The support rungs that lined the
floor, now the ceiling, of the Centaur’s interior that had been designed to hold soldiers feet to the deck helped Felix maneuver through it as he held them with his free left hand. Instead of fully walking he was more pulling himself along and making his lower extremity armor move at the same time. Through his night vision he started to see the entire cabin compartment. Along the walls of the interior space half a dozen personnel from the General’s staff hung upside down from their seats. Some of them were motionless at the moment, while others were already starting to carefully retract their crash webbing and fall to the floor. General Stelle himself was already up and moving towards the armored vehicles side hatch with Nolan right beside him, trying to trigger the armored door’s emergency release.
“No
good sir,” he heard Nolan say as the soldier studied the door, “it must be propped up against something on the other side.”
“Very well, we’ll just have to use one of the emergency escape hatches,” General Stelle responded and moved towards the other side of the transport where another smaller exit was located.
As they worked on that exit Felix slowly made his way towards one of the upside down hanging soldiers and balanced himself before slamming his palm into the center of her crash-webbing, right over her chest. The webbing held for a second before fracturing in various places, causing her body to fall from the seat. Before she could impact the hard floor, though, Felix grabbed her with his free hand and lowered her body down slowly. He scanned her over quickly to make sure she was still breathing and moved on to help the next person. At the same time the soldiers that had already freed themselves were pulling down the last hanging soldier.
When he looked back up towards Nolan and General Stelle he saw his heads-up-display change slightly as the TacNet connection light along one of the top corners turned green. Felix was a l
ittle shocked at the revelation, but knew better than to question a gift. Forgetting about his disability for the second he began to access the newly opened datalink connection and was actually surprised again by the system’s speed. A map of the surrounding area appeared in front of his eyes in record time with a blinking symbol to represent his current location. At first it was just empty space around him, but that quickly changed as the map began to quickly update with new overlaid images of the forest trees and the Centaur IFV itself. The image quality was so great that he could actually make out the damage to the vehicle from the hard impact. He also saw that the reason the armor door would not open was that that entire side was covered in a berm made up of packed forest soil. Scanning over the area Felix located a number of the friendly units at various distances from the crash site. Knowing that they would need assistance he went ahead and triggered an emergency beacon to call for help.
“Sir, we have TacNet access for another forty minutes. Some sort of new MilSat, no other details,” he called
out to update his superior when one of the nearby friendly unit icons blinked green, “friendlies on the way for exfil, ETA five mikes.”
“Very well, we’ll just have to wait for them. Let’s first get out of here,” General Stelle said
as he kneeled down to examine one of the unconscious men now lying on the floor.
Just as Nolan was about to activate the emergency hatch, however, Felix’s
sensor feed lit up with red foe symbols converging on the Centaur from all sides, “We’ve got a problem! Enemy forces closing on our position from all sides. Check your map Nolan.”
“Copy that sir!” Nolan called out and unlocked his rifle
.
Nolan then reached over and slapped the hatch release button along the wall which activated the explosive bolts lining it and caused the hatch door to explode outward. Instantly a portal existed where there wasn’t one before and sunlight finally pierced the darkness. Felix’s
visor quickly adjusted to the new atmosphere as he watched Nolan pull himself up through the hatch rifle first. He watched as his partner turned in a complete circle to scan the perimeter before a sharp
hiss
sound rang out through the open hatch followed by the sound of Nolan’s MPC-92 carbine returning fire with multiple shots in rapid succession. Then all of the sudden his body twitched and came tumbling down from the open. It landed on the hard floor in an awkward position, motionless, with a thin waft of smoke rising from the abdominal region.
General Stelle quickly jumped up and turned around towards the loud crashing sound as Nolan’s heavy body impacted the metallic floor. The general ran towards the fallen soldier
, while Felix tried his best to move towards his partner. He was half way there when a horrible pain shot through his skull and radiated into his arms. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, like an electric surge coursing through his body and causing every muscle in his body to spasm. Having lost all concentration Felix’s legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground completely. Every thought in his mind told him to give up and quit the struggle, to accept his fate under enemy rule. His instincts, however, told him to keep fighting and so he reached forward with one hand to pull himself along the deck towards Nolan. It was then that he saw and heard General Stelle yell out in pain while grabbing his head and falling to the floor on top of Nolan’s body.
“What…is…happening…sir…” Felix called out slowly in deep pain as he tried his best to crawl towards Nolan.
Fighting through the intense pain he turned his head sideways to see if the other members of the team were alright. Remarkably neither of them was screaming or seemed to be in pain of any kind. All three appeared to be completely frozen in place in the same positions they had previously been in with their eyes wide open. It was almost as if something had possessed them and ceased all of their functioning. In total confusion as to what was happening Felix continued on his crawl with his head brain throbbing in endless pain, trying his best to combat the endless feelings of despair.
He was almost within arm’s reach of the general when the entire Centaur rocked
, throwing his body almost a meter into the air, as the whole rear end exploded. Smoke and dust filled the interior from just behind Nolan and General Stelle. Gazing through the haze Felix saw that the whole rear of the armored vehicle had seemed to just vanish, sheared off completely from the surrounding structures. It was through his opening that a group of alien soldiers rushed through as he watched helplessly. Straining against the assault on his mind he reached to his side and pulled out the distruptor pistol attached there. The movement came slowly and by the time the weapon was out and pointed towards the enemy a group of them was already surrounding the general.
Felix took aim and was about to squeeze the trigger when a large foot came out of nowhere from his side and slammed into his hand. This impact caused his shot to fly wide and hit the armored interior, vaporizing part of an upside down bench
seat while almost boring out a deep pocket in the wall behind it. He tried his best to readjusted, but the heavy leg came down on his arm and pinned it to the floor. Felix looked up at the creature standing above him and was immediately taken aback by its massive bulk and bright orange armor. Through its helmet eye slits Felix could see the alien’s large black eyes looking down at him. What surprised him, however, was the fact that he could see no anger or hate in the enemy’s eyes. It was almost as if the creature was empty inside, without any feelings whatsoever.
Looking behind the large soldier again Felix saw one of the other creature’s pull out some sort of oval object and press it to General Stelle’s head. As soon as it came into contact with the man’s skin a pair of bands quickly extracted from both sides and surrounded his head. A green light ignited from them as soon as they fully encompassed his head
. Almost instantly the general’s body grew limp and another large warrior proceeded to lift him up in one arm. Tossing Felix’s superior office over his left shoulder the creature turned back towards the opened rear of the IFV and sprinted away. He watched the rest of the group disengage from Nolan’s body and follow him out.
The soldier standing on his arm did not move, though, and Felix looked back at him only to him the barrel of a large cannon pointed down directly at his head.
Having failed his mission to protect FRONCOM Felix had nothing else to loose. He had stared death in the face before and knew that this was no different. Every soldier knew that there came a time in his or her life where luck simply runs out. Today, however, was not that day for Felix Logwari as he saw the creature’s body spasm and shake before the sound of a single MPC-92 discharging reached his ears. With a loud cry the breast toppled over and crashed to the hard floor, the back of its neck torn and charred from the intense heat of the plasma rounds going through it. Gazing back towards the sound of the gunfire, a smile finally formed along his lips, as he saw Nolan laying there on his back with his rifle held in an outstretched hand.
A CONCUSSIVE
wave slammed into Dexter as the tree beside him exploded into splinters and lifted him into the air. The wave threw him sideways straight into the wall a prefabricated housing unit standing on the other side of him. He felt the combat armor reflexively tighten all around him to prevent serious injury while his body smashed through the build’s wall, sending debris in all directions. Hitting the floor Dexter rolled end over end until he hit some set up sleeping cots and finally slowed to a stop. At that moment the suit relaxed around him and allowed him to quickly stand up. Covered in syncrete dust he went over to the build’s door and kicked it open. To his relief two of his men were on the other side of the door waiting for him as another pair scanned the surrounding area for enemy soldiers.
“Welcome back sir! Everything is packed and ready to go,” said
Staff Sergeant Emerson while stepping forward.
“The prisoner is also loaded and secured, it gave us no trouble, LT,”
informed the other right after that.
Dexter nodded and brushed some of the gray dust from his armor, “were you able to locate any of the MultiSpec netting as I requested?”
“Yessir, we have all of the Centaur’s rigged.”
It was that moment that the TacNet net connection indicator turned red once more and Lieutenant Iorns saw the data transmissions cease. The suit quickly tried to connect a few more times, but it was of no use. Just as fast as the satellite had been detected previously it had gone dark. Having already experienced it before Dexter was no longer shocked by this occurrence and knew that he would have to adjust once more to the way things had been for the past few days.
“All good things must come to an end or something like that,” Dexter said with a frustrated laugh.
He made a motion with his hand in the air and took off running past the two men standing before him towards the rest of 2
nd
Platoon. Dexter was within sight of the four armored vehicles when an explosion burst in midair only three hundred meters away off to his side. The surrounding trees swayed violently and many splintered along their treetops as the force hit them. It wasn’t just the trees that suffered, however, some of the netting around the platoon’s station vaporized as well. Dex knew that the exposure would allow the enemy to further zero in on their position, but there were other worries at the moment as he noticed one of his fireteams in the same area.
Almost as soon as the netting above them disappeared the whole team of four men slowed in the middle of their walk to a completely standstill. They stood motionless
just like the engineers he had seen at the medical center. He had no idea what was happening to them, but he had to help them in any way that he could. Another explosion went off somewhere in the dense trees to Dexter’s right, causing him to glance over at the bright flash emanating from that area. He turned just in time to see some of the trees bend away as if something was pulling them towards the center of the blast.
“Knight Two proceed to Delta-One and
render assistance,” he ordered through his TacLink as he finally closed on the four Centaurs surrounded by his other men.
He slowed to a jog
while watching his executive officer motion to one of his squads. The men within it separated into two fireteams before one of the four man teams ran into Knight Two through its already open side hatch. Without pause the IFV lifted a meter into the air and accelerated towards Delta-One. Dexter saw the Centaur shimmer in the beaming sunlight as its MultiSpec covering shifted and adjusted to the constantly changing surroundings. At its high rate of speed, it took the vehicle almost no time at all to reach the effected Delta team and Dexter stood there in amazement as the four motionlessly soldiers suddenly collapsed on the ground just as the Centaur touched down beside them. The four members of the newly arrived fireteam hopped out of their IFV in rapid succession and raced to help their comrades where they lay. Those men and women seemed to progress unabated by any sort of mental injury, while gave Dexter hope that whatever had been causing that effect had been turned off.