Please log in to recommend or discuss...
The ground underfoot was loose gravel, and despite the sound-deadening boots, the ability to move undetected was going to be tough. The CO motioned me to take Bayou and go right. Ramirez, call sign Robot, Danny ‘Halo’ Jenkins, and a late addition filling in for Priest was a British SAS officer named Walter Highsmith whom they’d been calling Bond for lack of a real call sign. They all took the opposite side. Banshee had one more asset, that would be the spooky-ass shooter named Smith, or more often, just Darko.
“Darko, you are overwatch,” Hinge said, looking back toward the shadow standing just inside the tree line. “Halo, check the tablet, make sure we didn’t set off any alarms.”
“Roger, LT,” the man said, getting into position before slipping his battle computer onto his left arm.
I should probably point out that I am not the most patient man, not even just a little. My palms were getting sweaty inside the tactical gloves, and I was getting those damn itchy, crawly feelings up the back of my neck again.
“Hey, Boss,” I whispered into my tactical comms.
“What is it, Prowler?”
“Just my spidey-sense, Hinge. Something doesn’t feel right,” I answered. All RDT jump squads were given various cocktails. Some to fight off infection and fatigue, others to make us hyper-aware, improve eyesight. And some guys, like me, well, we occasionally picked up on shit a few heartbeats before everyone else. Hinge and I had been together for five full rotations, and beyond that, he was my best friend, so yeah, he didn’t dismiss my feelings. Sure, it could be nerves or paranoia, but we were fucking space monkeys. We didn’t get nerves.
“Everyone, Prowler has an itch. You know what that means. Watch your flanks, people!” Hinge called out.
“Hey, Sarge, your old man ever get the bad JuJu out in the field?” Bayou asked from twenty yards away.
I saw her scanning with a precision that was nearly unmatched among operators at any level.
“Shit, Bones never felt nothing, he gave other people nightmares, didn’t he, Dog?”
“Cut the chatter, Ramirez!” the lieutenant called out. “Head in the game…”
The man’s words were drowned out by a massive explosion in the jungle off to my left. I knew Bond and Robot would have that, so I swept my weapon in the opposite direction, mirroring my partner as we looked for targets. My finger moved instinctively to the trigger, and my heart skipped when I saw the creatures hunting us.
Lieutenant Debra ‘Bayou’ Riggs is a shooter, one of the absolute best, trained by none other than the absolutely, freakishly perfect legend of a sniper named Pearson West. Still, she was the number two trigger-puller in our squad. Second to a man who is the personification of deadly from a distance. Darko was locked in and methodically put lead down range on target again and again. On my HUD, I saw both shooters lighting up separate targets coming out of the mouth of a cave we hadn’t even seen until then.
“What in the holy…” The only intelligible words that came to mind.
They were dark-skinned, vaguely humanoid, but had grotesquely misshapen heads. The body’s upper torso was massive with sharp ridges of bones that do not occur naturally in most humans I’ve met. Their arms were similarly oversized, ropey muscles cording along each forearm, ending in a fist carrying a double-headed ax. The metal weapon was covered with intricate engravings that looked less tribal than maybe Celtic. Stupid to be thinking about the warrior monster’s artwork, but I’m easily distracted. Just one of the many fine traits that make me special.
“Shit, Boss, this is a genomics lab,” Halo said as one of four snipers put two into the closest beast man on his right. Part of the skull exploded, but the thing simply sagged to one knee and never let go of the weapon. The other one came toward me with a speed that would have seemed impossible for anything that large. One of the thick arms lashed out as a fist caught the side of my helmet before I even got the Rattler raised to fire. An instant later, a massive arm was wrapped tightly around my chest.
“Shift left, Prowler!”
I heard Bayou’s voice, but my mind couldn’t have distinguished left from the color purple at that moment. I felt rather than saw a round hit the beast in the chest and—it bounced off. Yeah…it bounced off. Admittedly, she was using the rail gun, not the pulse rifle, but the sheer kinetic energy of one of those rounds is incomprehensibly high. It should have left a bloody trail of creature; instead, the damn thing had me in a one-handed death grip. My suit systems were beginning to fail. Warnings were going off all over, the million-dollar battle armor seconds away from being scrap parts. I could feel the thing’s chest was indeed rock-hard, but the abdomen moved in and out when it flexed or moved.
“Coming in!” Hinge said.
The creature still had me immobilized. I did everything I could to free just one of my arms. I felt an impact that was so close I first thought the round had hit me. Blood spattered across my visor. Another headshot on the beast from one of my team. It flared back, and with my newly freed hand I grabbed for my fixed blade knife. I was okay with a gun but brutally wicked with the German made vibrasonic blade. The only problem was my angle was bad. My own body was shielding me from hitting anything truly vital. Still, I stabbed, then slashed, trying to gut the creature. I felt a flinch, but the death grip didn’t loosen.
“Need help, Prowler?”
I heard Robot ask. “Nah…I’m goo…” Pretty sure I briefly passed out then.
Hinge stuck the Rattler under the chin of the boney beast and unleashed a plasma burst that seared off the front half of the face. I was released instantly. My CO looked at me as I struggled to breathe for the first time in what seemed like weeks.
“Clear!” one of the others yelled.
The lieutenant offered me a hand up, then abruptly let me go as soon as he had my weight in his grip. He laughed and walked off.
“Asshole!” I yelled at his retreating form.
“Saved your life… again.”
“Did not,” I replied, knowing full well he had.
“Boss, why did Command not bother to tell us this was another one of those damn bio labs?”
Seemed like every other mission was getting to be something like this. Gene editing had been around for half a century, but these bootleg labs were now beginning to make designer monsters. Some had no human DNA in them. They were supposedly based on a synthetic DNA; the lab geeks were calling it XNA.
“Command tells you only what you need to know, which is where to fight, where to shit, and where to sleep,” Hinge added, staring at the open mouth of an enormous cavern.
“That’s just wrong, man,” Bayou said, using the toe of her boot to roll the remains of the creature’s head back and forth.
“See anything else hiding in the dark, Boss?” I asked, moving up in a covering position while I tried to catch my breath and regain a fraction of my combat effectiveness.
He shook his head but was uncharacteristically quiet.
Pulling back out of the cave, he held a hand to his temple, a reflexive but totally unnecessary sign he was talking to someone on a private channel. More shit from RDT Command, I was sure. The polarizing tint on his visor hid his mouth. Otherwise, I could have seen the level of shit he was probably giving them. This was supposed to have been a ‘cake-walk’ – right?
“Some days, I wish you were still the one in charge, Prowler,” he said, looking at me with a grin.
We both knew that wasn’t true. Hinge was a natural leader and a brilliant soldier. I had jumped rank on him, more than once actually, but my extracurricular activities kept me dropping those same ranks faster than picking them back up. I had a habit of being reckless and not following orders I disagreed with. A fact that I cared little about but infuriated my father to no end, I might add.
“Careful, you know who is watching.”
“You’re up, Bayou.”
Riggs hit me on the shoulder as she passed. I fell in, rifle up, sweeping the opposite side of the corridor. Hinge moved up on our six.
This part of the mission we were ready for. Hell, we were the best at. Banshee was always tops in the RDT mission reports. Tops on kills, tops on intel recovered, and tops on fewest casualties. Space Force doesn’t give out medals for just showing up… well, that’s not true. Some of the fleet officers get the shiny bits for doing nothing, but the Drop Team is the toughest job in the service and the one with the shortest life span.
At one point back in World War Two, tail gunners in bombers supposedly had less than a one in four chance of getting home. RDT teams weren’t all that far behind that, mainly because in the early days we tended to have 100% losses. These days it was better, but we still took our licks. Condo was our last guy to buy it, his pod augured in a hundred miles from the target LZ back in December. Before that… let me see. Oh yeah, the Danger Twins both got caught in the same explosion when they unknowingly tripped a proximity mine while rescuing some civilian hostages in Mexico City.
Banshee had been basically the same guys for almost a full three-month rotation. This was the last drop for this cycle, and some guys always thought that was bad luck. I put little stock in luck. I trusted my blade, my armor, and my Glisson Mark IV Rattler.
Suddenly, without warning, another of those fucking beasts came charging at us. Bayou lit him up with a steady stream of impactor rounds, but I’d already seen how ineffective those were up close. I switched to something that would raise the gore level appreciably.
The twin plasma flechette rounds punched out and through the angry creature. The next two cleaved part of the head from the neck. It still ran for a half dozen more steps before wobbling then crashing down to the dirt.
“Carnage rounds, really?” Hinge asked as he bent to examine the thing.
I caught motion as two more of the things entered from the far side. Bayou was already engaging. I turned back briefly to check on the others and saw the animal I’d just downed twitch.
Then one of the incoming monsters’ arms flailed wildly, hitting Hinge full force on the chest plate. He flew backward, impacting a rock wall with a thud that reverberated through me. His broken body sagged to the ground. Rollo ‘Hinge’ Hanson’s health symbol on my visor went from green to red, then black.
Something hit me from behind at nearly the same instant. I knew it was one of the other beasts.
“Bond!” I weakly yelled for Highsmith. “Check him!” I was down on my knees, my vision tunneling toward darkness, but I could see my friend’s face. He was gone. I knew it. Couldn’t accept it, but I knew it. Fuck this, I thought. Nothing is worth all this crap. I brought my knife out and into the chest of the thing that had just attacked me. Arterial blood sprayed everywhere. The thing fell on top of me. My armor registered 583 pounds of dead weight. Shit, Hinge… Rollo was gone. The thought jarred me from what I should have been doing. “Fuck this!”
“Up, Prowler,” Bayou said. “You’re in command now.”
She was cold and professional. Two things I loved about her until that moment. She was right, though, our CO being KIA was not our mission. “Fuck! Okay, on me.”
“He’s gone, Prowler,” I heard Highsmith say.
