Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (7 page)

The hard woman paused to look across the room, her eyes focused a bit to the area where Rafian was standing, and he felt as if she was speaking to him.

“We aim to take that capital by any means necessary, marines, so this mission is a ride-or-die operation. Once we have the capital, it will be very difficult for the Geralos to come and go, so their reinforcements, supplies, and ultimately their morale will deteriorate. With our success, we will turn the tides of this war, and the United Worlds will recognize Vestalian marines with the proper respect that we deserve.”

Hellgate spoke more on the specifics of the mission and the divisions that would carry it out. Rafian thought he would be there to run flybys on the enemy in Hellgate’s Nighthawk bombing squad, but he was chosen for recon instead and was hustled aboard the
Shadow Raven
en route to the moon of Meruda to be dropped on foot with Val and the other marines. They were to march under deadly fire upon the gates of Arisani and take her. He felt a knot in his stomach that was very much like the one that came about when he thought he would not escape the cylindrical prison of the resource ship with Aurora.

Rafian was made to don full marine armor, a blast helmet, and trek boots, so without thinking, he kept the 3B suit on and placed the armor over it. The company he was in was nicknamed the Twelfth, since eleven had gone before them on similar missions. He counted thirty soldiers in his unit, and they all seemed to know one another in some way.

“Time to cash in that death sentence we all signed up for, eh, boys?” a freckled, red-headed marine with a permanent grin on his face shouted as the men and women strapped themselves into their cryogenic chambers in preparation for the jump to light speed. He was met with laughter and a few similar jokes, but the mood was still forlorn, and Rafian hated the way it all felt. The wait after being strapped into cryo seemed to last forever, but in actuality it was only half an hour when the glass doors shut around each one of them, encasing them within individual egg-shaped pods and a cold, thick, white mist coalesced about them, freezing their vitals and placing them into stasis, which would allow them to survive faster-than-light travel. The enormous
Shadow Raven
lifted up out of the mission central dock and blasted instantly into light speed, only to appear moments later above the war-torn moon of Meruda.

When the cryo chambers had thawed out, the doors opened up to allow the soldiers to mobilize. Rafian realized that one of his hands had not been thawed and panicked at the sight of his paralyzed fingers and the grim claw that they formed.

“One second, Lieutenant!” a pretty, young corporal announced as she rushed over. She shoved a six-inch needle into his arm to thaw it instantly. Rafian thanked her and got down on the deck to do his ritual of push-ups and sit-ups, which would allow his body to shake off the strange sensation he felt all over. All of the marines had their post-cryo rituals, and as the ship moved to break orbit and drop them off, they all eventually found the deployment bench located behind the pilot’s cockpit and strapped themselves into it.

The moon of Meruda had gravity close to what the soldiers would consider normal but it had an unfriendly, nonoxygen atmosphere, making it a mandatory helmet-and-suit affair for air breathers. Rafian thought it was pretty brazen of them to attempt a hostile takeover of a moon that circled the enemy’s planet, but he was excited for the mission and was convinced that there was no other place that he’d rather be.

The ship cruised near the surface, and the countdown for them to deploy started. By the time it had reached thirty-one and then thirty seconds, a ranged missile crashed into the side of the ship, and the
Night Raven
no longer had the desire to stay airborne. They were falling fast, and the pilot did his best to level her to the ground as Rafian and the others took emergency measures and waited for the collision. The front of the Teradac-11 hit a large rock, killing the pilot instantly as they slid into the surface of the moon on landing, and the momentum carried them forward a few hundred yards. There was gunfire everywhere as the sounds of the war became real to them, and as a unit, they exited the back hatch of the downed vessel and primed their weapons for the attack.

“STAY LOW AND HUG THE CLIFFS!” a man with a captain’s shield on his lapel was yelling back at them as laser fire and kinetic bullets rained down on them from all angles. Rafian saw four soldiers go down from gunshots, and the rest of the company huddled close to one another and ran along the face of a raised crater that provided some cover from the onslaught of bullets. Rafian thought the position they were in was simply stupid, but the brave marines pushed through it, returning fire as they could until there were only twenty left, hunkered down into a fissure that kept them safe from the fire and allowed them to regroup and catch their breath.

Meruda was a desert moon, and the sand ranged from white to a graphite gray. Above them, a blazing star kept the surface bright like a spotlight shining down through the inky expanse of space. The sky appeared nightmarish, all red clouds with black splotches, broken only by the bright orange star, which gave the planet a strange crimson tinge.

“VCA get to a vantage point!” the captain commanded as an out-of-breath Rafian looked over the other marines. It was his cue to take action, and as commanded, he scurried back along the fissure on his elbows and knees until he could see a large dune behind the area where the ship had crashed. Triggering the cloaking device on his arm, Rafian climbed out of the fissure, and the other marines began lobbing bombs and gunfire in order to draw the Geralos’ attention off of the invisible sniper who was trying to flank them.

Rafian made it to the dune with a minute to spare on invisibility, but he could hear the sound of a gun above him at the apex of the dune and knew that a Geralos was already using it for cover. He pulled out the las-sword, happy to finally put it to good use, and began climbing the dune, angling in a way that his tracks would not clue in anyone watching of his presence. He reached the gunman as soon as the cloak wore off and ignited the las-sword to maximum power as he swung it with all of his strength into the shoulder of the Geralos.

The sound that resulted from his chop was not unlike some fruit being thrown against a wall. The creature’s torso split into a seared gash of spurting blood as it died silently and unaware, just as Rafian had planned. The soldiers below were still firing at one another, and Rafian dug himself into the sand beneath the bloody body and commandeered his rifle. His thought was to camouflage himself from the other Geralos soldiers who would look his way for retaliation. He spared no time in picking off the other snipers who were shooting down into the ravine carelessly, thinking themselves safe from one like him. He killed five, and the infantry troops who were pushing on the fissure to flush out his comrades were starting to drop as he began plugging away at them once their snipers were gone, leaving them no cover.

The marines rallied, and before long, the ravine was secured. The Geralos who survived were retreating to another point, but within two hours, the Vestalian military had set up an outpost at the crash zone and was able to check in with their command.

Rafian wondered how Val had dealt with situations such as this one for as long as he did without dying, and it made him respect the hardiness of his friend even more. He sighed in relief but stayed stationary in case any Geralos were dug in and waiting for him to slip. He slowly scanned the battlefield for signs, but nothing was moving. He wanted to get up and run to the rest of the troops but something in the back of his mind told him to stay put.

He thought of his training, the basics, where they had to learn how to use old Vestalian kinetic guns to snipe and how much he had hated it. Laser-guided sniping was the true art, he thought. The margin of error decreased, but now it became like a game of billiards, poker, or chess—you had to plan your moves way ahead, and that separated the first-rate snipers from the scrubs. He was no scrub, and he knew patience—the long hours and days in punishment hanging from the rafters of the ship as a younger teen had taught him how to silence the weakness of his mind during times of solitude. There was only room for strength and focus, and here he lay, waiting in earnest for whatever the Geralos had left behind to make its move.

“What’s your situation, Lieutenant?” the captain asked, speaking through the nano-com, which sent signals into Rafian’s mind. His brain translated the signals into speech, keeping it silent to anyone within their vicinity. “IHO,” Rafian replied.

“Roger that, VCA. Get home before 0800 hours if you can.”

IHO was the code for Instinctual Hold-Out. It was a soldier’s way of saying, “Trust me, I think something’s up.” Rafian did not want to say that he thought a sniper was playing possum because the captain would have answered by commanding his troops to level all of the dunes with artillery. A smart sniper would survive the noisy onslaught, and a few more marines would end up dead within the hour. The only answer to a sniper was another sniper, and Rafian hoped that he would see the enemy before the enemy spotted him. The dead Geralos who lay on top of him was heavy and beginning to stink, and the dusty dune sand was making an awful noise against his helmet as a steady wind blew from the east. Why was there wind?

He began to wonder if something had happened off in the distance, but his concentration snapped back into focus when he saw the dark shape come into view and then duck behind a rock instantly. The Geralos was waiting out his cloaking device very much as Rafian would but had made the mistake of being seen before he reached that rock. Rafian spotted him about 150 yards from the camp where the marines were now setting up and felt the sense of urgency come over him to stop the progress. He had to flush that Geralos out into the open to make his shot because the cloak would allow him to get close to their camp and deploy a bomb or carry out whatever assassination attempt he had been assigned.

Rafian had been waiting on that dune for four hours before the shape appeared, and his squad did not realize how lucky they were that he had. The Geralos he spotted held a microwaved Lafarok detonator and intended on lobbing it into the camp, wiping out every marine who was stationed there. The detonator had been devastating against the Vestalians since the war had started, and due to the lack of sophisticated trackers to catch cloaked insurgents sneaking into camp, the chance of being blown to bits by an invisible enemy was very real. Rafian’s mind was racing for an answer. It normally took five minutes for a cloaking device to recharge, and then it would keep you invisible for another five. He would have to make his kill shot before that Geralos could move, but the large rock he was hiding behind was enough to keep Rafian blind from getting the shot.

He thought about jumping from the dune and running to the soldier to kill him with his sword, but the distance was too great, and while he was pretty fast on his feet, he was not going to make it off of a dune and cover 150 yards in an instant.

There were two minutes left until the cloak would be active, and Rafian desperately contacted his captain over nano to ask for some fire to be leveled at the rock. The request was met almost instantly, and Val Tracker was the one to do it. Val walked out to the center of the camp with a heavy star gun strapped to his waist and planted himself into the ground, and the loud rotary motor of the gun began to spin as he laid out kinetic gun fire in waves upon the area of the rock that Rafian had signaled. The Geralos ran out from the rear to seek cover, and Rafian planted a plasma round into his neck as soon as he popped out. Through the scope, Rafian could see the detonator on the ground where it fell, and he shot it so that it detonated, leaving a massive crater in the moon’s surface. He hoped that the other Geralos would assume the mission was successful and grant them some respite for a time.

Either way, the threat had been removed, and he could finally crawl from beneath the ripe body of the dead sniper and rejoin his fellow marines.

The fighting was intense on Meruda as the marines moved towards the capital as, commissioned by Lady Hellgate. After the rough landing and a few brilliant displays of command by Captain Relled ZEK and young Rafian VCA, the marines finally got a break. One of the brave men of the Eighteenth had taken out the communications tower at the main forward outpost of Arisani, and that allowed Hellgate’s squadron of Nighthawks to bring air-to-surface warfare on the Geralos.

Rafian had lost track of time, but it had been three weeks of fighting for him. Fifty-three confirmed kills and one nagging injury from a kinetic shot that grazed his helmet when an enemy sniper found his position. The shot rattled his head a bit, and he found himself getting on-and-off headaches. The soldiers were all brave, and while a few of them could use a bit of charm school, he could not ask for a better team to watch his back in a time of aggression.

The squad had come up to a small lake on the outskirts of Copl, a city a few miles outside of Arisani. The Nighthawks had done a number on the buildings, but there were still snipers and hardcore infantrymen dug in deep. The marines were asked to take the building and secure it for high command to use as a final stage for the takeover of the main city. The soldiers took to the water and began wading in on the city as the starry sky lent enough illumination to give the situation an eerie ambience. They had barely made it halfway across when gunfire started ripping into the water around them like raindrops. A few men took shots, and the medics rushed them into stasis suits to pull them out of the water onto the near shore.

Rafian swam behind a rock and ducked for cover along with some of the other men. It was impossible to see where the shots were coming from, as the ruined building walls remained tall and mysterious in the distance, obscuring whatever and whoever was there firing on them. Val Tracker took to an area behind what seemed like a downed vessel and began spraying the buildings with his kinetic star gun. His return fire slowed the enemy’s barrage enough for his fellow marines to keep pushing forward, and Rafian swam over to his friend and initiated his invisible cloak so that he could observe the enemy without any distractions.

His night vision revealed numerous shapes moving within the buildings, and he realized that there would be quite a fight if ever they made it to the shore and engaged the attackers. Relled ZEK kept his men moving forward, an energy shield protecting him as he huddled them close to him and advanced on the shore. Val’s gun barked like a large dog hitting anyone careless enough to be in its crosshairs, and Rafian stood at his hip picking off the clueless Geralos who were not under cover.

The soldiers stormed the beach, and the fight became extra violent. Two men were disintegrated by scrape bombs, and a Nighthawk was shot from midair as it lagged behind its commander on a flyby called in by ZEK.

When Val and Rafian made it up to where the others were, the wild gunfire from the Geralos had gone silent, and the only shots were some unfortunate marines being picked off by their snipers. The open gunfire barrage to keep them from crossing had now become guerilla warfare under the cover of ruined buildings, with the distant stars as their only light. The moon’s rotation was relatively fast and gave them eight hour days of scorching, hot light. But it was dusk when they were commanded to take the shore, and they all knew it was to give command the luxury of arriving during the day to take the reins and move on Arisani.

“Raf, come with me,” Val whispered, and he retracted and shouldered his heavy weapon before pulling out a CD-Pistol.

“Just us?”

“Just us. Captain wants us to play recon.”

Rafian took out his combat knife and a pair of acid knuckles, and then he moved the las-sword from his back to position it on his hip. They stayed low and moved silently around to the side of the city in hopes of gaining entrance to the west. Captain ZEK had a few mechanical cannons assembled and fitted near the entrance to give the illusion of troops providing covering fire as the pair of soldiers moved as fast as they could to get around the wall. Val was not as fast as Rafian, but he stayed at his back with his eyes aware.

When they arrived at a busted-out hole in the wall at the west of the city, a Geralos soldier noticed some movement and popped out with his gun drawn, only to have his hands cut off and then his head by the rhythmic humming of Rafian’s blade moving like lightning in the night.

“Nice weapon you got there!” Val whispered with a smile.

Rafian replied, “This is their technology. If we come across another one, it’s yours.”

Val nodded in approval.

They took out three more men before making the ascent to the mayoral building, which was their mission. Rafian radioed Captain ZEK to begin the approach. Val and Rafian reached the balcony of the large mayoral building, which was a mixture of Vestalian and Geralese architecture stuck within an assortment of lower buildings, giving it the appearance of power that the architects desired.

Val sat with his back to the south-facing wall, pistol drawn and eyes and ears ready. Rafian was cloaked and had his rifle on a tripod as he lay prone on the thin wall of the balcony, looking south towards his incoming squad. Every Geralos who tried to engage ZEK and company had a shot coming from the rear.

“These guys must really be in a panic!” he whispered to Val. “This is basic-level stuff, bro. You
gotta
watch your flank.”

He was wondering at the general ease with which they had taken the city, but he was right about the panic, as the lizards mostly retreated to the main city to make their last stand against the invaders who were intent on taking their moon. Along with Rafian’s crew and the pilots of the Nighthawk, Colonel Rend had coordinated eight drops around the city at various positions. His thought was to move the eight squadrons into the center simultaneously and disallow the Geralos any chance of reinforcements or escape.

Their retreat to the capital was exactly as planned, and by the time the eight made it there, they would surround the capital and have Hellgate airborne, dropping enough biological payload onto the city that nothing would survive long enough to hold out in a fight. Now with their mission looking like a success, they would be primed and ready for the final stage, and maybe, just maybe, they could be done with this trip.

Rellos ZEK took to the stairs and walked up with two other marines, Connor YEM and Vestalia LAU—a beautiful female soldier who stuck out more so for her name reflecting that of their home world than her pretty face and sultry voice. The soldiers greeted Rafian and Val and then focused on the door to what would be the mayor’s room. ZEK used hand gestures to let them know that the other soldiers were scraping the city and that he intended to take the room cautiously, in case there were Geralos waiting inside. The five marines pulled out their handguns and then stood to either side of the door as Connor rigged a short to its mechanical faceplate and waited for ZEK’s signal. The captain nodded once, and the door flew open with a jolt; Val then threw in a flash grenade to temporarily blind anyone inside, and Rafian and Vestalia rushed in with pistols cocked and ready.

There were four occupants in the room reeling back from the grenade’s light, and Rafian shot one in the face and slid to the ground as another began firing recklessly in their direction. Vestalia caught the worst of it as three bullets hit her in the torso, and she screamed in pain, trying desperately to cover the holes in her suit. ZEK was inside as soon as Vestalia went down, and his shotgun plastered the remaining three Geralos against the wall in an instant. Connor mounted Vestalia to tape her suit where she had been shot; the atmosphere of the moon was full of things that didn’t do well with human flesh, and while the bullets were doing enough damage to the beauty, the parasites and toxins would kill her if they were permitted too much time with exposure.

Connor and Val hoisted the girl up on the table and brought out a stasis suit to freeze her vitals until they were able to bring her home and patch her up properly. Rafian held her hand as they did their work, and through her mask he could see the strength in her eyes as she squeezed his hand tight until the stasis had frozen her solid.

“Tough bird, that one,” Connor said to no one in particular.

“In a way, her name fits her perfectly—a tough girl who refuses to die. That’s our planet, isn’t it? And just like Vee here, we have to make these lizard crutas pay for what they’ve done to her.”

Connor was always poetic, and Rafian nodded at ZEK, who looked as if he was shouldering the guilt for what had just happened to Vestalia. Rafian placed his hand on his captain’s shoulders to reassure him and spoke freely, disregarding protocol.

“First-class shooting there, Cap,” he said to the man whom he had grown to respect over the course of their stay on Meruda.

“Right back at you, son. Hell of a head shot on that entrance.”

“Best place to put it, sir,” Rafian replied, and they both nodded in unison, allowing the credit to settle in to calm the adrenaline that had reached a boiling point during the firefight.

The sun was beginning to come up over the city of Copl, and the soldiers secured its perimeter and set up camp. The lucky ones who were allowed to sleep bunked themselves into old Geralese homes and slept.

Rafian thought of Vestalia’s pretty face looking up at him with so much courage after she had been wounded, and his mind drifted to Vani and what emotions would come about if that were to ever happen to her. It bothered him that he felt nothing, but when he thought of how her family would miss her if ever she died, it brought a weary sort of sadness to him that made him blink away any fearful thoughts. He loved Vani and planned to marry her as soon as they were given the go-ahead by command, but he wondered if he loved her out of duty and obligation, or if he was in love with her. The fact that he felt nothing at the thought of her being hurt like Vestalia bothered him, since he did feel anger at his fellow soldier being wounded.

Was it too abstract a thought to replace her with the woman in his life? Was this the reason for the numb feelings now? He couldn’t understand it, but he missed his girl despite it all, and he wanted to taste her plump lips in a kiss more than anything else in the universe.

“Just another stupid city and a couple of smart moves before I can go home to those lips,” he thought, and then he smiled at the thought despite himself. He allowed his mind to wander off into the pleasures of actually bathing and eating solid foods. He had been living like a dirty worm since they dropped on Meruda, and there had been no pause to allow them to set up a proper camp that would let them remove their suits and clean their unmentionables.

“Just one more mission,” he thought. “One more mission, and I can go home to her.”

Val came over to where Rafian sat in deep thought and plopped down across from him to begin talking. “Let me guess, marine. You’re probably thinking of that pretty girlfriend of yours.”

Rafian had to smile at the accusation.

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, but Val didn’t return the smile as Rafian assumed he would.

“Well, I know you weren’t thinking of her while fighting these things, but check your thoughts when you do. The lizards have consumed enough pureblood Vestalian women that some have been gifted with the ability to read us and put thoughts into our heads. It happened to me once when I sat on my gun thinking of Chelle, and some recon
spucha
bastard gave me visions of her being tortured and killed. I wondered where the hell that level of thought came from. I thought it was the war, y’know
,
screwing with me.”

Rafian was intrigued and horrified at the same time.

“So these guys have us outmanned and outgunned, and they can put thoughts into our heads now?” he asked Val, but not in a way that Val could answer. “How exactly are we even winning on this moon with those odds?” Rafian mused.

Val gave a mocking laugh, injected a ration bar into his mask, and then sat back chewing for a while, as if the question was worth considering.

“Who knows, Raf. Maybe they’re letting us win for some greater strategy. But remember what I told you, in case you’re ever alone with one of them. You should keep Vani and her Memory off of the battlefield, where she’s safe.”

Rafian nodded and thanked his friend. Val then went on to make fun of him for having a thing for bad girls, a joke that apparently had made its rounds to
Missio-tral
from all the friends who knew him.

“Vani’s not a bad girl, Val. What has she done to anyone besides be annoying?”

Val looked genuinely surprised. “What? Do you not know why they made her a button-pushing navigator instead of leaving her on the admiral path that she was pursuing?”

Rafian shook his head, sadly awaiting what he assumed would be disappointing news.

“Well, your woman punched out the cadet commander after they had words one night, and the woman was carted out to receive multiple zaps to her face to keep her pretty. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about this. Look at you, thinking that you had a gentle wildflower all this time. It got bad, man. You must’ve been on a mission or something, but princess had to call mommy and daddy to bail her out, as the commander was a step away from shooting her out of an airlock for assaulting an officer. Her parents are powerful people so she got away with it, but you need to watch your back with Vani Narcila. That girl has a temper on her!”