Soldiers Two - Warriors of Courage Page 2
“Something is coming!” Salris, my scout, shouted and then pointed towards the horizon. I lowered my goggles. Whatever it was, it was coming fast. The creature looked like it was galloping.
“Holy Shit,” Mirsa cursed as she took out her laser proton rifle and was able to get one shot off before the thing was upon us. Everyone was firing at once at a huge scorpion machine which came to a halt right in front of us. It was all metal latticework with two large claws in front and one long pointed tail behind.
“I’m jamming its radio signal back to the fortress,” Walter informed me. “That’s all I can manage. It’s strictly mechanical. See the driver?”
He was right. A sneering driver was looking down at us from a cockpit at the top of the mechanical insect. I guess we looked like easy targets.
The tail came around, swiping Carlos off his feet sending him flying. One claw got Mayla around the waist. I heard her scream as the claw slowly closed around her body. The other claw went to grab Mirsa but she was too quick. “Distract the damn thing!” she screamed in my ear through her helmet radio.
I started lobbing proton grenades at it. It turned its attention on me. The tail swished close by but I ducked under it and threw another grenade. Caleb and Les had Walter to the side but they let fly several rockets that exploded near the mechanical insect’s head. To my horror, it turned its attention on them.
“Run, protect Walt,” I screamed as I got its attention again by placing a rocket under its chin.
I saw Mirsa. A Gloosa warrior has the agility of a gymnast. She ran up to the tail and grabbed onto it. Before the insect machine could react, she ran up the appendage, up the main part of the body, jumping from one steel mesh to the next. The Gloosian came up to the cockpit and opened the glass encasement. I saw the look on the driver’s face; he was no longer sneering as she tossed in a proton grenade and slammed the glass shut.
KABOOM. The whole top of the machine exploded, reigning down pieces of metal as Mirsa jumped clear, yelling “Remember Gloosa!” then rolling to land near me.
I quickly checked Mayla and found she was dead. “Come on, let’s head out.”
Salris pointed, “This way.” She was looking at the Map Guidance System on her wristband. Her MGS was pointing us in the right direction. We had learned from an earlier fatal incursion team that their scout had led an earlier Ops team in circles as the wizard had screwed with the MGS. They had all died but not before sending out as much information of why their mission had failed. Hopefully our computer guy, Walter, had fixed the problem.
We took off at a fast clip. The land was almost barren with just little outcrops of scrub brush. Although our special ops uniforms kept us cool, we could see on our helmet data screens that the temperature outside was over 100 degrees F.
“Look!” Salris pointed to our left. It was a ground-covered black cloud that seemed to be advancing toward us. Rolling towards us, really. I switched on my long-range goggles. Suddenly the cloud came into focus.
“My god,” Salris’ voice cracked with horror. “That’s thousands of small spiders.”
I’d already seen what they were. My throat constricted with fear. It was something out of a nightmare. “Walter!” I yelled.
“Yes, Sir. I see them. I’m working on it!” Even his voice came over almost panic stricken.
“Steady folks,” I got my fear under control. This horror was not one that had been reported; perhaps everyone had been killed before they could report on these monstrosities.
Everyone but our computer guru had their high-powered flamethrower guns out. I took the safety off, ready to spray the ground in front of us. If they were live creatures, we’d burn them, if they were mechanical, we’d melt them. Hopefully.
“Stop!” Walter’s voice came in loud and clear, “Don’t make a move. They are motion sensitive. Don’t make a move. I’ve started a program that will confuse them. It’ll take a few minutes to upload. Don’t move!”
“You heard him folks, don’t move a muscle, that’s an order!” I made it a firm command. I could hear their loud breaths. They were scared shitless. The creepy little things advanced so fast that they surrounded us swiftly. They were metallic as their spine-chilling little legs brushed up against our boots with slight hair-raising clicking noises. They jointly made a low humming buzz.
A few started climbing up our pant legs. “Steady…” I whispered.
I heard heavy, almost gasping breathing; my helmet screen indicated it was coming from Jeb, my rear flank gunner. “Steady Jeb...” I barely murmured it, trying hard not to move my lips. His breathing steadied.
Just as quickly as they had come, they left. I felt the sharp little feet retreat down my pant leg and scuttle off with the rest of their brethren. The black cloud clung to the ground as they headed off to our left. We all let out a collective sigh of relief as they receded in the distance.
“Thank you, Wally,” I remarked, slapping him on the back. “Let’s move it folks!”
“Yes, Sir,” he sounded almost resigned to his nickname. “I confused them, those damn abominations think we are miles from here.” This was his first combat mission. I think he was starting to realize his textbooks weren’t going to help him here. He fell in between Les and Caleb, now welcoming their protection.
We fanned out, looking in every direction for a new attack. The land became even more barren; only small rocks and hardened sand crunched under our feet. It still was over a hundred degrees, good thing our outfits were keeping us hydrated as the lack of water showed. Every once in awhile we’d come across dried up carcasses of different animals. I was guessing that this used to be a fertile landscape before this wizard occupied it. I heard Mirsa murmur, “Evil bastard,” after we had passed a whole dead herd of bison. Their shiny bones glimmered in the hot sun. The ground was also dotted with small carcasses of birds - big birds, small birds - nothing flew in the sky.
Walt kept typing and checking his tabloid, giving me the thumbs up that he had everything under control. Looking at the dead wildlife, I sure hoped so.
It was the bodies, or the skeletons dressed in Federation suits that stopped us in our tracks. Jeb, my forward artilleryman, knelt down near one of the bodies. “It was Ops3,” he told me in my helmet ear. “Looks like they just shriveled up inside their protection armor.”
Walter stooped over one of the bodies. He took out a long probing instrument, sticking it into the dead soldier’s suit. He looked up to his right and pointed to a gray cloud. It was strange, the rest of the blue sky held white billowy clouds. “That’s a nitrous gaseous cloud, full of small poisonous particles. I’m guessing it will at one point come down on us. It hasn’t sensed us yet but as we get closer it will and it will descend.” He frowned looking at the sky.
“Well?” I turned him to me. “What can we do?”
“When it hits we need to close off our outside air filters, use only what our uniforms can provide. We have about thirty minutes of unfiltered air in our suits. The poisonous fumes are so small we can’t filter them. So when the cloud hits, keep together and run like hell and hope we can make it through the cloud in time.
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” I wanted to kill him.
“Upper command didn’t think prior knowledge would help you and only scare you,” he told me meekly, sensing my anger.
“Any more surprises?” I demanded.
“A few but you don’t have time to hear them.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We have to get to the fortress soon. I can’t confuse him forever!”
“He’s right,” Mirsa told me.
“Let’s move out, you heard what he said. Walt will tell us when we need to shut down our air filtering systems. Then run as fast as you can. Les and Caleb, keep our computer guy from falling behind.” Although Wally had some physical training, he wasn’t made of the same stuff my regular
troops were. He was going to hold us up but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The high tech guru was essential in another way.
“Why can’t he confuse the gas cloud - like he did the spiders?” Jeb asked.
Walter spoke up, like usual, sounding like some college professor talking to his dumb students, “As I have told you, Alberon keeps some of his defenses not connected to his system. The cloud is independently run. I can’t hack into it. I can only keep it from contacting him. It is the reason so many of our missions failed.”
We kept at a fast clip, covering the dry flat lands and keeping our eyes to the cloud. To our relief it did not seem to move.
“We are coming up on something,” my scout Salris told me. “I think it’s a small stream that runs between us and the beginning of his actual compound.”
Sure enough, the land went down to a creek that was perhaps ten feet wide. It bubbled sweetly over some rocks sticking out of its surface. “Holy shit,” Mirsa went down to it, “does this ever look out of place.”
“Don’t touch it, get away from it,” I ordered. “That’s the problem, it doesn’t look right.” She came back up quickly, pointing her rifle downward. “What have you got Walt?”
He walked down to the water taking his probe and extending it. He leaned over putting the tip into the stream. Within seconds he dropped the probe and rushed back up the embankment. “Don’t