America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 1: Feeling Lucky (7 page)

* * * * *

Private Lopez spotted the spider almost
immediately upon landing. The ‘spiders’ weren’t really spiders, but
overall reminded people of spiders. Up close they had crablike
features, especially on the face. The spiders walked on four legs,
with four appendages for manipulation. Of these four arms, one had
a large claw, deadly in appearance, but quite flexible with a sort
of opposing thumb. Something akin to ‘hands’ fill out the other
three arms. On the whole, they were ugly beyond belief.

Private Williams, the largest member of my
platoon, trained his machine gun on the spider. I sent Lopez and
Green to the flanks with instructions to get as close as possible.
I watched the spider through my rifle scope. The sun was rising at
our backs. I observed the spider sitting on a fallen log, rifle
leaning to his side, eating and smoking. Suddenly he began talking
on a radio. The spider took a drink from a large clear bottle, and
coughed. Then the spider resumed eating and smoking.

I pulled the trigger once. Two bullets struck
the spider’s chest. There was an explosion of body parts and red
mist. The platoon advanced quickly from the flanks. Cautiously
Private Lopez picked up the spider’s head, which had rolled away
from the rest of the body parts. “Czerinski!” he called out, waving
the head back and forth like a signal lantern. “I think you killed
this one.”

I walked up to Lopez, studying the spider’s
face. It was still twitching. Suddenly the spider’s eyes opened,
and it hissed and screamed. Private Lopez flung the head away. “No,
it’s still alive,” I said.

* * * * *

#100 felt disorientated being tossed about.
He knew something was terribly wrong when he saw the human
pestilence standing around him “I surrender!” #100 pleaded. “Please
don’t kill me! Please! I have a family! Don’t kill me!”

* * * * *

None of us understood spider talk. Private
Lopez picked the head up again, eyeballing it real close. He was
still shaking from the shock. “Dios nos guarda todo. I think you’re
right. It is still alive.”

Sergeant Wilson, who was remotely monitoring
our helmet video cameras, asked, “Can you patch the spider up?
Maybe military intelligence can interrogate it.”

Our pre-mission orders were to not take
prisoners because of the atrocities committed by the spiders. It
was rumored that the spiders took no prisoners, and that any human
captives were eaten or implanted with spider eggs or larva, to act
as a host.

I shrugged. “Medic! Over here!”

Private Ceausescu trotted over. “Someone
hurt?” she asked.

“
Sergeant Wilson wants to
know if you can patch the prisoner up.”

“
Got any duct tape?” asked
Ceausescu, after looking at all the body parts and gore.

Lopez was still eyeballing the spider head,
holding it at arms length. Suddenly the spider hissed, spitting out
blood as large fangs protruded out of its mouth. “It’s a
Chupacabra!” shouted Lopez, as he stuck his jagged combat knife
into the spider’s eye socket.

“
Sorry, Sergeant,” I said,
on the radio. “We can’t save it. It was probably already dead.
They’re a little bit twitchy when they die. You know, like ants
when you step on them.”

“
Good shooting,” Ceausescu
said to me. “I guess this means I won’t have to teach you how to
use your gun.”

“
Maybe later,” I
said.

“
There is a poem we all
learned in basic training,” said Ceausescu, smiling. She used some
crude hand gestures as she recited, “This is your rifle, this is
your gun. This is for fighting, and this is for fun.” She winked,
gave me a pat, and walked away. “Yeah, maybe later, big
boy.”

“
How hot is that!” snickered
Private Kool.

“
Hey private!” I called out
to Ceausescu. “Don’t you know Sergeant Wilson can see everything we
do on video camera?”

“
Good! Screw you, Wilson!”
Private Ceausescu yelled. She flipped the bird over her shoulder as
she walked away.

“
The captain says bag all
body parts and equipment for military intelligence,” radioed
Sergeant Wilson. “Bury it with a locator beacon, and a runner will
pick it up later. Start searching the area for whatever that spider
was guarding. Find his spider hole.”

Private Lopez and I picked
through the spider’s remains. Vodka and cigarettes?
Odd.
Lopez picked out the
baggie of marijuana and put it into his pocket. The spider wore a
gold chain with a large clear crystal attached to it. “Think this
is worth anything?” I asked Lopez.

“
A fortune,” he replied, “if
it’s a diamond.”

“
Maybe we are fighting
Mamelukes,” I suggested.

“
Huh?”

“
Mamelukes,” I repeated.
“They fought Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids.”

“
Pyramids! Man, what century
you from?”

“
Anyway, they carried their
life’s savings on them, in gold and jewels. Like this spider. The
Mamelukes fought with long curved swords. Napoleon’s troops got
rich looting their bodies.”

“
They deserved to die if
they brought knives to a gun fight,” sniffed Private Lopez. “I
carry my life’s savings with me, too. Which is nothing. So screw
Napoleon. He’s just one more Euro-trash.”

I put the diamond and chain in my pouch.
“Alright! The break is over. Everyone spread out. Find that spider
hole,” I ordered. “Private Kool! Bury this mess!”

Private Green found the spider hole, hidden
by a tree. It was huge. Big enough to fly equipment into. It went
straight down and had ladders that disappeared into the darkness.
Captain McGee came on the radio, “We need to find out what the
spiders have down there, and if it’s inhabited. Scout it out.”

I nodded to Private Green. “Go down there and
check it out. But be careful.”

Private Green looked down the dark spider
hole, looked at me, looked down the hole again, looked at me again,
and said, “Be careful? You can get your mamma to go down that hole
and be careful. I ain’t going down there. No way, José. Screw you!
Send Lopez. He wants to be a hero.”

“
That’s an order from the
captain,” I said.

“
Screw the captain, too,”
said Green. “Let the captain go down there.”

I walked over to the hole and looked down.
Even with my enhanced vision, it was very dark. After shining my
flashlight down the hole, it still seemed bottomless. I thought I
could hear something moving down there, but maybe it was just my
imagination. “Nesbit!” I hollered. “Get over here.”

Private Nesbit emerged from his camouflaged
position on the perimeter. “I’m not going down there, either,” said
Nesbit defiantly.

“
You don’t have to,” I
replied. “I’m moving the platoon to the other side of that hill.” I
pointed. “When we get there, I want you to set the timer for five
minutes and throw one of your nukes down the hole. Got
it?”

“
It has a timer?” asked
Nesbit, pulling out one of the grenades and examining
it.

“
I think so,” I said. I had
just assumed it had a timer. “Didn’t you read the directions before
you took them out of the box?”

“
There was no box,” argued
Nesbit, who was starting to panic.

“
Oh my God, the blind is
leading the blind,” blurted out Private Lopez. “You’re the Hero of
East L.A.? My ass.”

“
Calm down and give me that
thing,” I said, snatching the nuke from Nesbit. I turned it over
looking for directions on the bottom. Nothing. “Didn’t the armor
say anything to you when he issued it?”

“
Yeah. Sergeant Mendoza said
run like hell when I set it off,” answered Private
Nesbit.

The nuke had timer buttons on it similar to
the grenade I used to blow up the ATM. I pressed the ‘start’
button. The digital display started counting ... 29, 28, 27, 26. I
pressed the ‘stop’ button. “Wrong button,” I mumbled, chuckling.
Privates Lopez and Kool moved away., motioning the others to do the
same. I then pressed ‘reset’ and then ‘set.’ I programmed in six
minutes. “When I get to the top of the hill, I’ll wave. Then you
press the ‘start’ button and throw the nuke down the hole. Then
join us. Simple enough? Good.” I gave the nuke back to Nesbit,
slapped him on the back, and ran like hell up the hill, following
the rest of the platoon.

I glanced back over my shoulder and could see
Nesbit trembling, with tears pouring down his face. Nesbit looked
down the hole, like something was moving down there in the
darkness. Nesbit looked at the rest of us running up the hill.
“Czerinski, don’t leave me here,” he called out. He pushed the
‘start’ button, threw the nuke down the spider hole, and ran after
the platoon. As we crested the hill, there was a rumble deep in the
ground, like a California earthquake, followed by a huge explosion.
The little valley below collapsed into a large sink hole. The blast
knocked me off my feet. Dust covered us. Private Kool showed me the
rad meter. The needle was jumping. “Not good,” he added.

“
Listen up,” I called out,
brushing dust off my uniform. “We are moving out! On the double!
And everyone take another anti-rad pill! Move it, move it,
move it!
”

CHAPTER 9

In three days we nuked three more spider
holes. The platoon was taking a break, sitting by a fourth spider
hole and enjoying a cool radioactive breeze, when Sergeant Wilson’s
voice came over the radio. “You and your platoon have been awarded
a Presidential Citation for being the first ground forces to jump,
the first to engage the enemy, and the first to nuke the spiders in
their own holes. I’ve got the news media here wanting to talk to
you about it.”

“
This is Phil Coen of
Channel Five World News Tonight, broadcasting almost live from New
Colorado, talking with Corporal Joey Czerinski of the United States
Galactic Foreign Legion’s First Division. Corporal Czerinski, how
does it make you feel to have received a Presidential
Citation?”

“
Phil Coen?” I asked. “I
thought you got thrown out an air lock.”

“
I thought you were dead,
too,” countered Coen. “We have all your helmet camera video of the
action down there on New Colorado. Now we need some sound bites.
How about it, Czerinski? Say a few words about the liberation of
New Colorado.”

“
I’d trade that Presidential
Citation for the President paying off my ATM enlistment loan,” I
said. “Otherwise, he can kiss my butt.”

“
We can edit that out,” said
Coen. “The public wants to see what the Hero of East L.A. is doing
at the front. Give us something good. And don’t screw this sound
bite up or it will be your ass, Czerinski.”

“
Okay, fine,” I said,
shrugging. “We swept in at dawn. The spiders, blinded by the sun in
their many eyes, didn’t have a chance. We cut them down
unmercifully. Private Nesbit, with total disregard for his own
safety, nuked an entire company of spider commandos. Private Lopez
engaged the enemy in hand to claw combat, stabbing a spider
commando through the eye. Medic Ceausescu tried to patch up a
wounded spider, but the bug just kind of fell apart. Also, we found
looted personal effects from missing colonists. We are still
investigating what happened to them. I expect the
worst.”

“
Great! Good work,” said
Coen. “Can you put Ceausescu on the video camera? It will make a
good human interest story to get a female legionnaire’s perspective
from the front.”

As I turned to look at Private Ceausescu, the
camera panned to the right and zoomed in on her. “Screw you,
Sergeant Wilson!” said Ceausescu, still upset as she flipped the
bird at the camera. “Come join us, and I’ll shoot your other foot
off – and more!”

“
And that was medic
Ceausescu gesturing about what she thinks of the spiders,” said
Coen. “Cut! We will do some editing on that, too. No problem. We
have enough. By the way, Sergeant Wilson won’t be joining you. He
is staying back at base camp in his new capacity as liaison for the
press and all things video-related.”

“
Good place for him,” I
responded.

* * * * *

We searched in a grid pattern. Rooting out
the spiders began in earnest as the rest of the First Division
landed. Captain McGee was so happy about all the good press his
company got that he promoted me to staff sergeant and made Lopez a
corporal. Even Sergeant Wilson got another stripe. We had no more
contact with the enemy. When the platoon made camp at the fourth
spider hole, we enjoyed the downtime.

This spider hole had iron
doors on it. Nesbit was about to nuke it when Captain McGee ordered
us to wait for the engineers to blow it. The locals were
complaining about all the nukes being set off. Something about the
damage to the environment. Okay, so ...
a
tree is a tree. How many more do we need to look at? Don’t they
know there’s a war going on?

Another problem was that every time we set
off a nuke, the spiders would pop out of a hole and shoot a nuke
back at us. I guess that made the headquarters geeks nervous.

It was pleasant just lying there in the
evening shade doing nothing but watching the starships in orbit go
by. My feet hurt. We couldn’t go anywhere anyway because supply
hadn’t caught up with us. We still had plenty of ammo, but we were
short on food. I got bored, so when the engineers didn’t show up on
time, I blew a small hole in the iron doors with my rifle
mini-grenades.