Inherited War 3: Retaliation (32 page)

He forced himself back to his feet and scanned the area. It looked like he got away, for now. The problem was he couldn’t go back. The Esii would be out in force and scanning everywhere for him, and he wasn’t sure what the effective range on their mind snooping was. Suddenly something came whistling out of the sky and thunked down next to him. Odd, Thalo thought, just as the rear of the long cylindrical device opened. Thalo did his best to get away, he really did. He was just too tired from his run and didn’t move quite fast enough. There was a loud pop and a billowing cloud suddenly materialized all around him. It clung to everything, turning the immediate area into a powdery white tableau, including Thalo.

“Shit,” he said one more time as the whine of vehicles roared across the plain. He turned to begin his run again but stopped short.

“Amazing ability you have there. We will study it at length one day.” The hissing evil voice said from in front of him. “You can see we are quite aware of it as well.” Thalo was so focused on figuring a way out of this bad—very bad—situation that he never heard nor felt the blow that rendered him unconscious.

“We will not make the same mistakes with this one that we made with the human. Bring him to the front. I will give the Pyndingum one day to wring answers from him, then he dies.” The Esii and his escort of Roche boarded the vehicles and headed back to the city.

West was using every ounce of his willpower to keep from having a panic attack. How had he let Cole talk him into this, riding a gad damn coffin from space to ground?
Shit
, he thought,
at least if I hit hard enough I wont need a proper burial.
He had all kinds of read outs in this tight ass box. Air, his vitals, a clock, but no view outside. He hadn’t been paying attention when the ship’s AI had been explaining all of the box’s features. It had gotten real boring real fast. All he cared was that the box would do everything, and he was just along for the ride. The first countdown clock reached zero. That would be Drew, Sgt. Waller. His drop should be starting now. Three minutes between each box for leaving the debris field and reentering atmo. Time dragged on. He hated close spaces. His greatest fear was actually, now that he thought about it, being buried alive.

Zero, there goes Jones. Six minutes left. He waited and watched the clock. Zero, Smitty was off, and West had three minutes left. The last three minutes went way too fast for him. Zero. He felt the slight thrust of power from the tiny thrust rockets and his orbital counter finally began rolling down as he got closer to the ground. All these numbers were estimates and educated guess as far as he could tell. The coffin he was in was basically covered in trillions of black holes, and since it was for stealth insertions, it had no active sensors, so everything was preprogrammed in and calculated to be almost perfect. Almost was the word that scared Eric. He felt himself begin to slowly slide down the box, as gravity took hold. His feet touched the bottom and he began to feel the weight of his body.

That only lasted momentarily however, as the box’s internal gravity fought against the pull of the planet and the G’s began to shove him back up the side of the box. His stomach clenched and tried to empty its contents. He held them in, if only just barely. Through it all, he never took his eyes off the altitude counter. The internal gravity finally won out and he settled back into a slightly less smashed position. At one hundred feet, the anti-gravity boosters were supposed to punch on and keep him from splattering all over the landscape.

At one hundred feet, the landing brakes engaged and he found himself, for a brief moment, being flattened to the floor of the box. Once again, internal gravity won the battle and he stood back up, his knees smarting from their sudden and painful contact with the boxes wall. He never even felt it when the box came to a complete stop on the ground. Now it was supposed to fire a small burst of air from the front so the box fell backwards and would allow Eric out. Unfortunately, it had landed slightly tilted forward and the small discharge of air wasn’t enough to halt its forward fall. Eric’s face smashed into the lid of the box as it slammed down onto the ground. He cursed and tried to open the door, but it was stuck. He began to panic and started to unpack his rifle. There is more than one way out of here, he thought to himself. Suddenly the box began to turn on its side and onto its back.

Eric had his rifle out and ready. He hit the door release again and swung his rifle out with the open door.

“Watch it dude, it’s just us.” Jones, Smitty and Drew were looking down at their fearless leader and holding out their hands to stop him from firing.

“Stop staring at me and get me out of this thing.” West held out his hand and Drew grabbed it, yanking him to his feet. “Activate your stealth, dumbasses,” West said to his men and turned his own on. All of his active sensors went dark and his broadcast com system went dark. He watched as the light bending suits did their predator imitation and in the near black of the moonless night, his crew disappeared. West reached out his hand and placed it on where he thought Waller’s shoulder had been.

Their coms were off but nothing stopped them from talking through sound wave amplification. When active, their suits picked up the sound waves from their voices and transmitted them through direct contact only. The waves were channeled through the suits and amplified to a level high enough for the human ear to pick up.

“Sound off,” West said.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Drew said.

“Jones here,”

“Linked in,” replied Smitty.

“Turn on your short range ID tag.” The ID tag would be necessary if they didn’t want to lose each other tonight. It was a very low powered broadcast of their name only. You had to be within five feet or so to even pick it up, and it was a very low risk way to keep everyone together. Glowing names popped up above three empty spaces.

“Alright, here is the plan.” West brought up a bird’s eye image of the surrounding couple of hundred miles. He shared it with his men. They all would see the same thing in their HUD that he was seeing in his. He put up four blue dots.

“That’s us.” He drew a line north and east until it got to a large round circle about two hundred miles away. “That’s the capitol. Our target.” He circled an area just a mile or two west of the city. “This is a lowland swamp that’s near the city. We are going there first. The city is currently shielded, and we don’t know how long it will stay up. We hunker down in the swamp, get eyes on the city, and wait for the shield to drop. Once it’s down, it won’t be down for long. Cole thinks that the defenders are fighting a blocking action. Use the shield to eat up time and when it fails, defend the outer blocks until they are overrun. Drop the buildings using any means necessary and fall back to the next block. Raise the next shield and wait. Rinse and repeat as necessary. We may be in the swamp for an hour or a few days, but we have to maintain a constant watch on the city.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Drew said. “What’s the end point of the mission?”

“We use the jumpboots to gain entry to the city while the shield is down, and link up with the local command. Cole thinks it will be Thalo. I’m sending each of you a copy of Cole’s message. One of us has to get it to whoever is holding the city. Everyone understand?”

A chorus of “Rogers” sounded in his ears. “Good. Everyone get a few feet apart and let’s get this show on the road. We should have enough time to make the swamp before sunrise. Turn on the boots.” The boots, as he called them, were not really boots at all, but pads that attached to the bottom of their suits. They were small anti gravity pads that would literally allow them to fly through the air.

West turned his on and slowly powered it up. He set the altitude and heading for everyone’s and goosed the power. He leaned into the direction of travel and soon found himself soaring through the air. “God damn, I’m Iron Man,” he said out loud and laughed at the feeling. He glanced to his rear and saw his three men close on his six. He upped the power more and flew even faster.

The flight was exhilarating, at first. After about twenty minutes, it got boring. He really couldn’t see much of anything and his legs started to get sore from being locked straight. An hour and a half later, and just before the sun was breaking the horizon, West saw both of his goals. The city was off to his front right and still covered by its shield dome. The swamp was dead ahead. He saw a clearing close to the edge of the swamp and adjusted his course to put him and his men down in it. He didn’t want to try negotiating a landing in those massive trees. The four of them touched down safely and spread out. They spent the next twenty minutes securing the immediate area before finding each other and placing their hands on one another’s shoulders.

“All clear, this seems like a good spot,” Jones said as they all made the physical connection.

“Not likely,” West snorted. “We have to move closer to the edge of the swamp to get eyes on the city.”

“Actually,” Drew started. “I went up a tree and can see the city fine, plus it gives us a semi concealed spot to take off from. We can hunker down in the tree roots over there.” He pointed down the gentle slope where the giants were growing. “We can set up an OP (observation post) in that big ass tree there. The boots should make getting up and down a breeze.”

West wasn’t the kind of leader who had to always be right, and wasn’t offended if someone had a better idea.

“You convinced me. Four hour shifts in the tree. Me, Drew, Jones, and then Smitty. Don’t unpack. Be ready to move within seconds of the shield dropping. One man awake in the camp at all times and stay in your suits with the helmets up. All we brought was nutrient packs for our water system, so there should be no reason to take your helmet off. Move.” His men disappeared down into the swamp. West rode his jumpboots to the top most branch that could support him and settled down with a fairly good view of the city. It wasn’t more than a few miles at the most that separated them, and he was fairly confident that they could make it in time.

Twelve hours had passed since they had arrived in the swamp. West had done his watch and had been replaced and taken a nap. He was currently up and on guard at the camp when his suit detected a rhythmic sound in the swamp. West turned up his volume on his internal speakers and listened. Footfalls, it had to be. Someone trying to be quiet, but weren’t very effective at it. His suit’s computer concurred and also thought it to be a bipedal creature heading in their direction.

West woke his men and had them hunker down under a giant root while he went and had a look. His suit was showing him the intruder’s likely line of approach based on the origin and direction of the sound being made. It was heading for the clearing, and West could be there well before whoever was coming. The sun was high in the sky. His suit wouldn’t be perfectly invisible, but you would almost have to look directly at it to see it. He decided to hang back in the shadows until he could identify who it was.

He leaned up against the crook of the tree that held their current lookout and waited. The footfalls came closer until a figure emerged from off to West’s left. It was a woman. A man never looked that good in skintight space suits, that much he could tell. He didn’t think the aliens they were fighting looked like that, but he couldn’t tell with her helmet up. He watched her walk to the center of the clearing and turn her face up to the sun. West admired the view. Suddenly her helmet retracted and her face and hair became visible. West just about choked on his surprise. He knew this alien. It was Cole’s girl’s sister. He got a hold of himself then smiled. He figured he would mess with her a bit. He crept slowly forward as she was distracted for the moment, pulled out his IR laser pointer, and put it to the back of her head at the same time saying, “Don’t move,” through his external speaker.

An hour later, West, Drew, and Jones were sitting with their helmets down, listening to Snow’s incredible story. She had been, to say the least, startled by West and his prank, but had quickly forgiven him when they loaded her up with nutrients for her water supply and had the small amount of repair nanites fixing her suit. Hers was not nearly as sophisticated as theirs, so they couldn’t talk through physical contact. West deemed it safe enough to remove their helmets to hear her story.

“Lucky, humph, lucky doesn’t describe what you went through. I’m glad it was us that found you and not anyone else,” West said.

“Why are you even here?” Snow asked. “I thought you humans were done with us aliens. Cole made a point of that while he was beating me nearly to death.” West cringed at that, but he also got a little angry.

“Don’t be too hasty,” Snow opened her mouth but West waved her to silence.

“Not only did Cole go through unimaginable physical torture when he rescued us, but he was mentally tortured as well,” West started.

“It doesn’t excuse him for what he did. He killed friends, he nearly killed me, and he was putting Sky through hell.” She shot back at him, a little too loud.

Drew shushed her and reminded her to keep it down.