TerraCom Inception

“I’m bored,” Kray said and looked over the items on the tray; a slim pitcher and two glasses, a small plate of crackers, some cheese, and a pile of green olives. “Better than being dead, I suppose. Where am I?”

“In the basement of St. Benedict the Pious ministry,” The monk said and quickly added, “At least what’s left of it. Everything at surface level has been demolished. Your engineers bored an access in here from the mag-lev tunnel. We’re twenty feet underground so we’re safe enough.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Kray said and eased his legs over the side of the cot. He combed fingers through his greasy, unwashed hair. “Look around you… all these men thought they were safe up until they… whoever they are… proved us wrong.”

The monk laughed and reached down for the pitcher. He grasped it by the ornate handle and lifted it. He gestured overhead with it and said, “The worst blizzard since Founder’s Year has us blanketed in… your weathermen tell us that it’s supposed to last for another eight days. The temperature is well below zero out there… visibility is nothing,” He poured a deep red liquid into each glass, set down the pitcher, and offered one to Kray. “Go on… take it.”

“Who are you?”

“Brother Romulus Kal,” The monk replied. He waved a hand to each corner of the chamber. “The staff and I are helping out with the wounded. It’s the right thing to do. There’s nothing like tradition they say. Representatives of our order have been patching up people like you since Martian independence.”

“You seem to be in very good spirits considering what’s going on out there,” Kray said and accepted the glass. “We got our asses handed to us.”

“Yes, you’ve had some setbacks,” The monk said and took a sip from his glass. He closed his eyes and smiled. “Try the wine, sergeant… the grape has adapted remarkably well to interstellar travel.”

Kray lifted the glass to his lips and took a swallow. He nodded approvingly. The wine was slightly tannic but more than he’d had in too long. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

“We’ve had a hundred people like you come through here,” Brother Kal said. “Judging by what happened to them, I’d say that eventually you’ll be reassigned to a new, composite unit and sent back out there. That’s what you want… isn’t it?”

“They don’t take prisoners, brother,” Kray said as the monk lifted the bowl of olives. Kray took a handful and popped one into his mouth. His stomach immediately growled for more. “So what’s God’s take on all this… this madness?”

“It’s a test… nothing more,” Brother Kal said with a smile as he took an olive and returned the bowl to the tray. “He made us in his image… these things are not us, thus they are not of Him. Logically, that makes them of the other place. Our moral obligation is to overcome these minions of Hell and prove our worth before the almighty. There you are… if God’s take on all this has meaning for you.”

“You think we’re fighting demons?”

“What else would they be?” Brother Kal said as if amused that the army man might consider them as anything less. “They all take different forms, but they must be confronted nonetheless. Just keep that in mind when you’re finally judged to be recovered and sent back to the line.”

“Do you have any idea when that might be?”

The monk shrugged, looked over his shoulder and said, “Any time now.”

“Hey, Alvin… what’s the dilly, yo?” A familiar voice broke the relative silence in the chamber. Kray and Brother Kal turned simultaneously to see Harley and Elroy standing at the far end wearing thermo-parkas, rifles carried haphazardly over their shoulders. Harley smiled and stepped forward. “It’s time to break you out of this infirmity factory and get back to real life.”

Kray lifted himself off the cot and said, “This isn’t the real life I had in mind.”

***

The device laying on the tale before him was the size and shape of a large squash, wide at one end and tapering to a rounded tip at the other, with a hole in the wide base to accommodate a Zapper manipulator. For lack of a better word to describe the invaders, they were Zappers.

NorCom garrison forces on Avalon had become overly familiar with the devastating effects produced by the business end. Unofficial costs of the furious attempt to repulse the landing was 250,000 dead... a full third of the entire NorCom garrison had been converted to fertilizer. The ADF had suffered similarly proportional losses.

“So this is it, huh?” Kray said as he did a slow circle around the table the weapon rested on. Doc, Elroy, Harley, and Booster sat in a semi-circle around it. “How in the hell does it work?”

“For being so small, it generates incredible power beyond our best fusion devices… the only thing we have to compare it to are the micro-reactors we use to power our HISS guns,” The engineer Lieutenant who delivered the alien device for their review intoned. “They’re sealed… and everyone we tried to cut open exploded in our faces. We lost three good men before we stopped trying.”

“Can we use them if we need to?” Harley said, stopping Kray in his pacing, provoking shudders from several of the other soldiers around them.

The engineer shrugged and said, “Possibly… but we haven’t had any volunteers to stick their arms into the thing yet. Any takers?” He looked around the room. “I didn’t think so.”

Kray unconsciously rubbed the stiff scar tissue on his side through the water resistant fabric of his new battle-uniform as he eyed the device. He turned as Doc said, “Do you think they’re out there now… doing the same thing to our weapons… trying to figure out how to use them against us?”

“Doc, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kray said. “They don’t need our weapons to kill us with… especially not when they got us outnumbered ten to one. We’re just lucky that Gale set in when it did. It doesn’t seem like they react so well to the cold.”

“Small favors.” Booster said with a snort.

Harley gave him an incredulous look and said, “It was a feking stroke of providence is what it was.”

“At ease,” Kray said and nodded toward the medic. “Hey Doc, did you hear anything about what these things are made of?”

Doc shook his head. “No… nobody I know of has actually brought one back from a fight. The Zappers die sure enough, but they don’t leave anything for us to analyze… they don’t leave any corpses behind,” A shrug. “If I had to guess, I’d say that they were Carbon-based… maybe even Silicon. They can breathe our atmosphere, which means that they metabolize Nitrogen or Oxygen, Lord only knows what they eat... or how they reproduce. Depending on how long this lasts, that might be the most important factor.”

“Any chance we’re going to hit them again before Sede starts and the weather warms up?” Booster said and gave Kray a curious glance.

“The weather has grounded all of our attack skimmers and the ADF fast movers,” Kray said. “Our armored vehicles can go out in it but they wouldn’t get far. They’d be spotted and hit from orbit. We’ve all seen how effective their orbital bombardments are. Anyone want to guess how enthusiastic the tank crews would be about going out without having those orbital platforms taken out first?” He looked to each face around the room for answers but found none. “All we have left is the infantry. For you new people, this planet is goddamned miserable during Gale, it’s no joke… and the bad season here is eight Terran months long. When Task Force Romeo came through, they dropped off the supplies that Zebra Station was supposed to get in addition to what they had for us, which might keep us in pretty good shape until the end of Gale.”

Kray stopped and looked up as someone walked into the cave from the entry at the far side. It was a nodie, male, approximately 6 feet tall, with an Eye of Horus painted in yellow on the left side of his lowered Mk. 5 visor. The man, a Specialist-4 wearing the checkerboard patch of the NorCom 99th Infantry Division, stopped in place when Kray said, “Can we help you?”

“I’m looking for First Sergeant Kray,” The nodie said and stopped in place.

“That’s me,” Kray said. “Sergeant Kray.”

“Not anymore,” The nodie said and removed a small disc from a trouser pocket. He offered it forward. “Command thinks you’re a first sergeant. You and your men are being absorbed into Tenth ID. My name’s Amhatiens. I’ve been assigned as your nodie.”

“What the hell kind of name is that?” Kray said as he stepped around Harley and snatched the disc out of the nodie’s hand.

“My family is from Alsace Lorraine,” Amhatiens said and folded his hands over his chest. “It means ‘illumination.’”

Kray guffawed with sudden whimsy and said, “I hope so. So you’re gonna be my new shadow, huh? I never thought I’d see the day. How old are you soldier?”

“Twenty-eight,” Amhatiens said and tapped his visor. “I spent four years in the medical corps before getting transferred to Tactical Intelligence. As of today I’ve got a year in under the hood.”

“What can you see with those things?” Elroy piped up.

Amhatiens smiled and said, “Everything.”

***

Sol-8/Neptune

All the SolCorp shuttle crew knew about her was that she was with TIL and that she was traveling on company business. Leda pulled on the harness straps holding her down as the shuttle engines fired, bringing back gravity for only an instant before weightlessness returned again.

“Sorry about that folks,” The voice of the shuttle pilot came through the cabin speakers as Leda fought back nausea. “I know that was a little abrupt, but we’ll be landing in just a few minutes, we’ll have to make a few more course corrections before then, so please keep your restraint harnesses locked until after we’ve set down on Triton.”

The landing area was a flat spot on the surface a few dozen yards from the gilded domes of the SolCorp installation spread out over the gray surface of Triton. As the shuttle settled on its landing skids, Leda could see a small vehicle approaching from the direction of the domes. It waited until the dust had settled before moving closer and mating with the shuttle. The station commander, Merrill Weston was waiting for her inside the debarkation area.

“We didn’t find out you were coming until four hours ago,” Weston said as he carried Leda’s bags toward the habitation complex. “Forgive me if you accommodations seem somewhat Spartan.”

“Quite all right,” Leda said, sensing the station commander’s discomfort. His station never had such an important visitor. “To be honest, the company didn’t exactly want to make my travel plans known. There’s something amazing happening that might change life as we know it. People might not be ready for what’s to come.”

“Can you tell me what that might be?” Weston said tersely. She detected that his orders from SolCorp HQ had been less than explicit.

“We’re going to be having visitors soon,” Leda said with a wry smile of expectation. “We must make them feel welcome.”

Weston nodded and said, “Guests of our friends at TIL are always welcome. My facility is at your disposal.”

“I’ll need an area set up to receive our visitors,” Leda said and mentally visualized what accoutrements she would require to ensure that their… guests, she decided after a moment’s thought, might be impressed… or barring that, least offended by. “Someplace out of the way… we can’t have a crowd of gawkers around. If you’ve got an unused shuttle bay someplace, that’ll probably do.”

“We do,” Weston acknowledged and indicated the relative location with a wave of his arm. “Our staff only uses about half of the facility as it is. I’m sure that we can find a wing collecting dust. Are these going be… strange visitors?”

Leda answered with a nod and said, “How did you know?”

“I’ve been having the weirdest dreams.”

***

The pain had returned. Jena sat alone, strapped into her acceleration couch, quietly moaning in the darkness of her cabin, lungs burning with the effort required to breathe. Her arms, pinned to her sides by forces making them six times heavier, could not be lifted to wipe away the tears streaking her cheeks. The destroyer HMS Devonshire had been waiting to escort USS Challenger back to Mars. On word from Kinkaid, the ship had broken out formation and begun a full power burn to Jupiter with Jena onboard, her orders sending her to the Free Callisto shipyards.

Kinkaid, with a furious cold intensity that she’d not seen before news of the true nature of the Omega field, had demanded an on-hand inspection of all of the NorCom warships under construction there to establish readiness. All military contractors were put on notice that all projects behind schedule would immediately be brought up to speed under pain of severe fines for companies and imprisonment for the project directors. His words to the captain of the Devonshire were to “go as if pursued by demons.” The man, a good Protestant, had taken Kinkaid at his word and was pushing the destroyer hard, running the engines at maximum performance, red-lined for temperature and pressure, safety interlocks overridden, mouthing silent prayers to God that they wouldn’t explode and make his mission a failure.

Extra crew provisions had been replaced by fuel so the trip was non-stop, a 6-G express that had controllers from Earth to Mars scrambling to clear merchant traffic out of the Devonshire’s path, the consequences of a collision were too dire to contemplate, especially at velocity. The rest of the destroyer crew were undoing the same stresses. Jena’s only consolation was that everyone else on board was just as miserable as she was.

She gave out a small laugh of relief as gravity cut out and her arms, unbidden, lifted off the acceleration couch. Jena let them float free as she took several deep breaths, finally able to fill her lungs to capacity, dropping her hands to the padded helmet, scratching the itches she’d been unable to reach. The starfield outside her viewport spun as Devonshire rotated, orienting the main engines for the final stage of the flight, another five hours in the gravity press that had already exhausted her.

An alert signal echoed throughout the ship, not the tone indicating that the engines would be fired again, rather a two-pulse signal indicating that a message was to follow. “This is the captain… we’re on course and ahead of schedule. I think we all need a break before starting our deceleration burn… we have five hours to spare. Use them well. That is all.”

Jena unbuckled her harness and floated free, using the back of the couch as a handhold to pull herself toward the hatch. Her mouth was dry, she’d had no water for nearly 6 hours, yet her bladder was urging a trip to the vacuum toilet, an effect of zero gravity that she’d not yet become reaccustomed to. She’d use the hour of reprieve for bodily functions, food, some water.

The machinists and engineers back in the engine compartment would get no such reprieve, Jena realized as she opened the hatch and floated into the passage outside, already filling with haggard, bleary-eyed men and women in khaki pressure suits.

“Scuse me, ma’am,” A technician nearly rammed into her as she came out of her cabin. He braked himself with his hands. “Capt’n gave the pushers a good wringing, eh.”

“My fault.” Jena said and flattened herself against the bulkhead to allow the man to pass. She continued forward, hoping that there wasn’t a line for the woman’s toilet.

An hour later, strapped into her couch again, another signal came through the PA system… the gravity alarm. The captain of the Devonshire had given his crew as much time to recover as possible but now they had a burn schedule to adhere to. There would be no gentle build up to maximum thrust. When the engines lit again, they were already set to full power. An invisible fist slammed the air from her chest, briefly giving her the sensation she was drowning.