The Soldier Read online

  The air around the ship seemed to be ionizing like a Borealis of light as the beam landed over the pod, meticulously scanning each exojacket as if waiting for some type of reaction from the dormant objects.

  Suddenly, the ship moved about twenty meters away from the pod and landed. The second its pincer-like legs touched down, a small hatch opened on the side of the sleek craft. Three armed figures emerged, their heavy boots crunching sand and rock as they approached the empty drop-pod.

  Matt and the other greenies watched with wide eyes as the tall, rail-thin figures began to search the pod. Their long arms and legs were cladded in some type of black armor, and while they appeared humanoid, there was also a slight exaggeration to their limbs – almost as if they had evolved to become a human caricature. Their grey eyes glowed from behind the narrow slits of their strange, Medieval-looking helmets. The Reaper-rifles they also wielded looked more like large swords than guns. These were Wraith patrol scouts.

  This was the first time Matt, or any of the greenies next to him, had seen a Wraith this close since the invasion of Earth. Despite that, Matt had personally read countless USC documents about the enemy on the trip out here. It was a conscious effort on his behalf to better understand their biology and their psychology. But seeing one this close for the first time since the morning he lost his wife, it conjured a wave of familiar anger he had not felt in a long time. He could feel those deep wounds reopening as his finger curled tighter around the trigger of his rifle.

  After inspecting the remains of Akim, one of the Wraith scouts knelt beside his haversack and started rummaging through it, pulling out a cindered field rations pack. The Wraith cautiously peeled open a Ready-to-Eat meal of beef teriyaki and sniffed it, offering it to the scout next to him. It grunted in disgust and swatted the meal away. The other two scouts laughed by making a weird clicking noise.

  Keeping his head low, Matt slowly turned to his teammates. Everyone in the ditch was thinking the exact same thing: should they remain hidden in the hope the enemy would eventually leave, or should they launch a surprise assault and risk exposing their position? While the scouts were outnumbered, they knew reinforcements would surely descend on them in greater numbers before the night was through. They also had that sniper to deal with - and were yet to ascertain its exact location.

  If they had any chance of getting out of here, Matt would have to roll the dice and detonate the core.

  As he watched the Wraiths investigate the pod’s contents, it did not appear they were in any great rush to leave.

  He turned and nodded to the others; a silent indication that shit was about to get hectic.

  However, Beckett was not on board. He shot Matt a glare, that even in the dark, clearly signified he was to hold his fire. When Matt shook his head in silent rebuke, Beckett turned and braced himself for whatever came next. There was very little wiggle room to argue this point any further. One way or another, Matt was going to fire on that core.

  Matt returned his attention to the pod, and when he saw one of the scouts wandering towards the erected decoy, he slowly raised his optical scope back to his right eye. Even without any digital overlays or targeting data, the rifle still came with reticle illumination as an additional targeting backup. He allowed his crosshairs to gently drift over the core, stopping at the center of it.

  When the scout reached out to touch it, Matt squeezed the trigger.

  There was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a deafening boom as the core ignited a jetstream of magnesium ions. Although the explosion was deceptively small as it umbrellaed into the sky, its heat was hot enough to incinerate all three scouts. The result was instant and catastrophic.

  A tsunami of fire washed over the ditch as the greenies all kept their heads down. The heat flash was so intense, they could feel it through the protective layers of their helmets and body armor. As the thunder from the explosion rolled away into the night and faded, everyone in the ditch peered up to watch the small scout ship with bated breath.

  It responded by immediately rising off the ground and vectoring away from them at an astonishing speed. They lost sight of it within seconds.

  Still keeping their heads low, Wilson and Lopez started whooping as it vanished over the horizon.

  “Don’t celebrate just yet, guys,” Matt said grimly as he watched the roaring flames that had now engulfed the pod. The three scouts had been rendered into charred mounds of black ash and metallic gristle. “That ship wasn’t retreating from us.”

  “Looked to me like it was,” said Lopez, panning her eyes across the sky, trying to locate any USC assets positioned above them.

  Wilson looked at Matt with concern. “Where was it going then?”

  “To make way for a bigger ship,” replied Davis, his tone crestfallen.

  Matt swallowed his dry throat and turned to Davis again with a knowing look: things were about to go from bad to worse.

  “And you thought it would be a good idea to blow that core up,” chided Beckett. “Now every grey-eyed asshole in this neighborhood knows we’re here, not forgetting our little sniper friend out there. You just fucked us, Reeves. Congrats.”

  Matt turned his attention to the sky, his ears now working as radar dishes. “We’re not out of the fight yet.”

  “Yeah, but we’re about to be,” he replied.

  Maynard looked at Beckett and shook her head. “Beckett, is it possible for you to shut the fuck up for one second and just deal with the situation?”

  “I am dealing with the situation.”

  Davis gave a cynical snort. “Way I see it; we were probably screwed the second we landed out here.”

  Matt panned his rifle over towards the area where he first spotted the silos.

  Without any digital enhancements to his optics, it was almost impossible to see anything that far away in this level of light. Night had plunged the alien landscape into a hellish twilight of murky red dust.

  “I need everyone to move back to their original positions. Keep watching our six and keep searching for any sign of that sniper.”

  Lopez heard Lee fidgeting with something and turned to him. He was fishing out his small handheld comms device from underneath his chest plate. “I wouldn’t turn that on if I were you,” she warned. “They could still track our local outputs.”

  “It’s already on, I never switched it off,” he replied while swiping the screen.

  “Are you serious? Did you not see that ship before?” Lopez reached over and tried to snatch it from Lee, but he avoided her swipe. “Turn it off, Lee, I’m not playing with you.”

  Lee ignored her and kept fidgeting with the device. “Our pod’s signal beacon had been transmitting the entire time, right up until the core blew. They were already tracking our signal.”

  “Yeah, and no one’s been listening except the enemy. Turn it off!”

  “Just wait,” Lee protested.

  That got Matt’s attention, he swung around to see what Lee was attempting to do. “Can you hear anything?”

  Matt’s question was immediately punctuated by a blast of military comms chatter. The voices were crackly and hard to make out, but they were clearly human.

  Lee looked up with a wide grin. Holy shit.

  Matt returned it.

  Wasting no time, Lee spoke into his comms tablet. “Warlord Omni, this is Pale Rider Four. Requesting extraction on my position. Signature should be transmitting to you now. Grid reference unknown, but we are located southwest of our primary DLZ. How copy?”

  Everyone’s hearts stopped beating as they waited for a response. The crackle of static sounded ominous and seemed to grow louder with each passing second.

  “Copy that, Pale Rider Four. Glad to hear you’re OK. We have your grid reference. Please be advised, your exfil is inbound. Ten mikes out, over.”

  Lopez, Wilson, and Maynard nearly yelped with joy as Beckett shook his head in amazement. Matt looked at Lee and Davis and cracked a victorious smile.

  “I ca
n’t believe that little stunt of yours worked, Reeves,” Davis chuckled. “You are one crazy SOB, you know that?”

  “We’re not in the air yet, Davis. Let’s turn our HUDs back on and make it a little easier for them to locate us,” Matt suggested.

  They all followed suit. Rifle readouts and helmet visor HUDs flickered back to life, casting faint neon glows across the shallow ditch.

  But the second they did that; new warnings began to flash across their HUDs in unison. Their short-lived celebration was muted as quickly as it began.

  And then they heard it.

  The faint, yet discordant rattlesnake chitter was the dead giveaway.

  With rising dread, Matt, along with everyone else in the ditch swung to the source of the ominous sound.

  “We’ve got more incoming!” barked Lopez, her rifle scope tracking the three large masses of black metal that were now hammering towards them. “Two mikes out. Uh… I count three… shit, there’s three incoming Wraith ships. They’re coming in fast.”

  “Confirmed,” said Maynard, also tracking the incoming enemies across her visor. “Three incoming, and they’re hot!”

  “Lee, call it in,” Matt said, eye still glued to his scope as he sighted the incoming blips.

  Lee turned and threw Matt a bewildered look. “I just did.”

  “No, tell them to light us up.”

  “Huh?” Lee was uncertain he heard Matt correctly.

  “Reeves, have you lost your fucking mind?” shouted Beckett.

  Matt lowered his rifle and pivoted to Davis. “Can you hear what’s coming our way?”

  “Of course, I can hear it. But you’re going to get us killed before the Wraith even get here.”

  Matt wasn’t debating this any longer. There was only one thing they could do. “Lee, call in our coordinates. Tell them we’ve got three incoming ships moving on our position, and we need an orbital strike.”

  Davis was now visibly angered. “OK, you need to stand down, Reeves.”

  “Ignore him. Call it in.”

  Lee was still hesitant. “But—”

  “Just do it!” Matt barked. “That’s an order!”

  Lee swallowed the dry lump in his throat and obeyed the order. “Warlord Omni, this is Pale Rider Four. We have three incoming enemy craft. Track-ident is 048233. Requesting Archangel ordinance strike on my grid position.”

  Static hissed as Lee waited for a response.

  “Ah, that’s a negative on ordinance drop, Pale Rider Four. Danger-close. Are you aware of your current position, over?”

  Matt huffed with frustration, reached over, and snatched the comms tablet from Lee. “Yes, we know our position! Enemy is closing fast! They’ll be on top of us any second. We need a confirmed strike, otherwise, we’re dead!”

  Static hissed for another few seconds until the response Matt needed to hear did not come. “Copy, Pale Rider Four. Negative on ordinance drop, QRF is thirty seconds out.”

  Matt threw the comms tablet back to Lee, growled with frustration, and got into position. “We’re about to take heavy fire, brace for contact!”

  Stunned and angered, Beckett got to his knees and leveled a hard glare at Matt as the others got into position in the ditch, lying flat on their stomachs. “You’re a madman, Reeves,” he sneered.

  “Beckett, keep your head down!” Matt hissed.

  “I don’t know what’s worse; them, or y—”

  Before Beckett could finish his words, a plasma round whistled through his helmet, severing his head from his body.

  By the time the hydrostatic shock buffeted everyone in the ditch, they were still trying to process what had just happened.

  Lee and Wilson were flecked with Beckett’s gore as he crumpled on top of Maynard in a heap of ash. The impact of the round had also shattered his chest armor, and the lower half of his body had been blown out of the ditch. Before Maynard even realized the remains of Beckett’s helmet were now resting on top of her, all hell had broken loose.

  Thunderous booms filled the air as the incoming Wraith ships started strafing their position in a blistering assault. Fire and smoke belched into the sky as the heavy plasma rounds created giant craters around them, filled with scorching-hot rocks and sand. Resigned to their fate, all they could do was keep their heads down and pray one of those incoming ships did not land a direct hit.

  Caked in sand, blood, and dust, Matt slithered around to his one o’clock and raised his rifle to search for the silos, peering through all the chaos.

  With his HUD and rifle diagnostics turned back on, he was able to easily locate the array of seemingly abandoned buildings in the far distance. Even at night, they appeared to shimmer from the heat of the day that had not fully dissipated yet in the cooler air.

  Suddenly, there was a massive explosion in front of them, causing everyone to snap their heads up. It sounded like a high-order detonation had gone off right next to them, and the ground had split open. The explosion was loud enough to nearly blow out their eardrums. Everyone immediately assumed it was an incoming plasma javelin that had hit close to them, but it wasn’t.

  One of the incoming Wraith ships had been struck by a powerful projectile. Ribbons of flame trailed from its ruptured hull as it corkscrewed recklessly over the greenies, so low they could make out some of the individual rivets in the hull design. It exploded violently about two hundred meters from the pod. The scene that unfolded was shocking and sudden.

  The two other Wraith ships banked sharply away from their ground position and decided to take on the large HH-60 Destroyer gunship, and the two UH-82A Wasps that were now firing on them from a higher altitude. The exchange lit up the night sky like a Christmas tree as the Wraith fighters traded fire, glowing tracers crisscrossing between them.

  While Davis, Lee, Maynard, Wilson, and Lopez all watched the aerial dogfight with terrified awe, Matt kept his scope calmly locked on the greasy columns of smoke that billowed from the crashed Wraith fighter ship, then panned his attention over to the silos again. He was hoping the sniper’s patience would evaporate, and he would cave into the temptation of firing on them again now that he knew their exact location.

  He did not have to wait long.

  There was a tiny puff of light from the base of the third silo. The sniper was nestled in the left-hand corner, positioned between some metal lattices.

  Within a second, the round struck the earth in front of Matt, showering him with hard-packed grit and sand. He allowed it to rain down on him while he waited for his reticle to calculate the distance and coordinates. It was nearly impossible to hear the crack-bang over the aerial skirmish taking place above, but when the sound reached Matt’s ears, there was another puff of light. This round wailed through the air and ripped past Matt, striking just behind the ditch.

  Poor marksmanship.

  There was no real crosswind to blow any of these shots off course, and the air still contained the same humidity, temperature, and altitude as the previous shots that had taken out Matt’s teammates. Unlike earth, nighttime on Epsilon did not necessarily bring cooler air with it. There was really nothing new that could affect their trajectory, so Matt figured the sniper was getting fatigued and was now trying to hit something before they managed to exfil the area. By doing so, the sniper’s impatience had also revealed its position.

  More explosions shattered the sky as the two remaining Wraith ships were raked by the Destroyer’s powerful ventral cannons. As one of the Wraith ships tried to recover and evade the Destroyer, a volley of high incendiary tracers from one of the Wasps stitched the hull, blistering off chunks of metal from it. They peppered the ground below like mortar fire as both ships came spiraling down north of the pod wreckage.

  As the greenies all cheered triumphantly, Matt watched his rifle’s smart-tac diagnostic system crunch the calculations in real-time, his reticle bouncing slightly from his thundering heartbeat “Come on, you son of a…” When he heard the soft chime in his helmet, he couldn’t help but grin. His
scope had found the sniper’s exact location and relayed it to his HUD. “Lee!”

  “What?” he screamed in return.

  “Toss me your comms tablet!”

  Lee fished around between his chest plates and slid it out, tossing it over to Matt.

  Matt edged back from the lip of the ditch and swiped the tablet screen, connecting it to the internal comms unit inside his helmet to authenticate the request he was about to make.

  They could all hear rounds tearing over their heads, followed by the distinctive crack-bangs. The sniper was getting antsy now. Perhaps he somehow instinctively knew what was coming.

  “Warlord Omni, this is Pale Rider Four,” Matt barked into the comms tablet. “QRF is in the animal pen, but I have eyes on an additional target; one confirmed sniper element engaging our position, will delay exfil. Feeding range coordinates to you now. Requesting Archangel relay with a confirmed orbital strike, over.”

  Seconds passed. Static hissed.

  “Copy, Pale Rider Four. Stand by for confirmation,” said the voice on comms.

  Matt dropped his head in disbelief and waited for the response, straining to hear the blast of static that now filled his helmet. “Come on, come on, say yes… all you gotta do is say yes.”

  “Pale Rider Four, Archangel ordinance strike confirmed. Positioning now to grid 048233. Tango is Bravo deep at 62387.”

  Matt had to stop himself from giddily whooping with excitement. He peered through his scope to see the silos were now out of focus, but it only took a second for the optics in his scope to dial the corrections and refocus once it recognized his iris. “Y’all might want to watch this,” he yelled to the others. “That sniper’s about to get his ass lit up.”

  “Yo, what the fuck? Our QRF is bailing on us,” Lopez yelled.

  Matt spun to see Lopez was indeed right. The Destroyer gunship had already disappeared, and the two Wasps were now rapidly ascending altitude until they disappeared over a distant mountain range. Matt was not concerned, though. He knew exactly why they were bugging out. He swung back to his scope and eyed the silos. Any second now.