The Filter Trap (35 page)

“Is this how you brief all your soldiers before a mission, General?” Allan asked snidely.

“Full mission brief is at 08:00 tomorrow morning,” Pith said with a smile, “I just wanted the pleasure of telling you three first.”

“Wait, this is happening
tomorrow
?” asked Jill.

“No, you’re leaving for the forward base tonight.”

The next morning a plane flew the scientists to an undisclosed location in Nevada. After landing, the scientists deplaned onto the runway and a soldier escorted them to a hangar.

“B2,” noted Allan, as they walked into the cavernous space.

“What?” asked Jill.

“We must be in the B2 bomber hangar when it was being tested here, this
has
to be area 51.”

“Is that true, is this area 51?” Jill asked their escort. He ignored her.

“See?” Allan said and winked.

The escort led them to the back of the hangar, where a tremendous assembly began to form. Two large stubby hands landed on Kam and Allan’s shoulders, pushing the two men apart.

“Talking about what you see here used to be under penalty of death. For you three I hope you can squeal to whomever will listen when this is over.”

Pith pushed his way past and continued on down the long row of chairs filling the hangar. At the other end was a podium and a large film screen. Soldiers were coming in by the plane-full and quickly filling seats. The other generals from the war room sat up front. Pith sat closest to the podium and took a stack of notecards out of his pocket, studying his prepared remarks.

“Don’t suppose we have time to look for the Roswell bodies?” Kam whispered sarcastically to Allan.

“You haven’t talked to enough aliens already?”

“I guess the president doesn’t think so . . .” Jill reminded them.

The 100,000 square-foot hangar hosted at least 15,000 soldiers in green and gray camo waiting to hear the Pith’s words. He shuffled his cards, pursed his lips, and looked into the crowd. In an almost absentminded fashion he threw his cards aside to the floor as he took the podium.

“I’ve been asked by our president to address you today. You brave men and women will be asked very shortly to be braver than any who have come before. I’m going to ask you to bring the hurt to an enemy most of you have never seen, for if you had you’d be one of the many brothers and sisters we’ve said goodbye to since the Event.

“I ask you not to think of your family when you fight. Look at the soldier to your left, and the one to your right. Fight for their family, and their family’s family. We’ll be fighting for the world tomorrow. We’ll be fighting for everything and everyone.

“But what is it I ask of you? I’m asking you to defend that oath you took to protect this country and I am asking you to extend that to this world, so that it may live to see more generations of our kind live upon it.

“I won’t lie to you; many of you may not see those generations to come. But it shall be by your sacrifice that others do live and we as a species may carry on. I know many of you have seen action in Los Angeles. Many of you, in fact most of you I believe, are from what remains of the 1st Marine Division. Still more have come in from the Gunslingers, Nightmares and Timberwolves of Camp Lejeune. A few more of you snuck in from the Army, Navy and Air Force. We’ve even got some of our fine Coast Guard here today. All of you welcome your comrades. Tomorrow you’ll be fighting as one, the newly formed Mojave Division of United States Military Command.

“I know some of you outrank those around you. None of that matters now. The Mojave Division will be the first fighting force on the ground in this new battle, perhaps our generation’s
—
no, our planet’s
—
Operation Neptune.”

Pith held up his hand.

“No, we’re not going to Neptune, although some of you might do something like it. If you’ll recall, Neptune was the operational name for D-Day. In this landing you’ll not be borne of the water, but of the air, and onto harsh sand all the same. Instead of bunkers you’ll be storming an alien stronghold. Your company captains will show you your roles, but I’ll show you the basics.”

Pith clicked a button on the podium and projectors hanging from the high ceiling pushed light onto the boat-sized screens behind him. A mockup of the Mojave landscape was clearly animated with a black rectangle several miles long and a few wide served to illustrate the enemy’s position.

“I’ll level with you: we’re outgunned in this fight. Now since dubya-dubya-two we’ve used big guns to crush from the front, but this is a different war. This is a war of diversion and division. Our bombs and heavy artillery don’t seem to affect the structure out there, but from hand-to-hand combat in Los Angeles and other spots we know they’re soft inside their suits. We also know they’re hotshots.
They’re
used to crushing from the front.

“We lost Vietnam. We lost Iraq. It took us fifty years to realize size does not trump courage! The Vietcong knew the land and we did not. We took hills, lost thousands of good men and moved the front forward, only to have them circle back and retake the hill behind us. Well tomorrow there’s only one hill, and it’s on
our
turf. This is our country, our planet, and nobody is gonna drop out of the sky and plant their flag on us!

“So we learn from our own experience. We create smoke screens, diversions, and draw them into ground combat.”

Pith clicked more buttons as he spoke, bringing to life on the big screen’s crude animations the battle tactics as he described them.

“We’ve got Defenders, Apaches and Pave Hawks going in first. All you chopper pilots don’t worry, we’re not sending you for a kamikaze. Not yet. With some help from DARPA we’ve outfitted them with remote piloting. Our remote Special Forces groups aren’t here today because they’re out putting radio transmitters at a radius around the target right now.

“Our chopper drones will lay down the first volleys. We know the enemy's primary defenses for anti-aircraft have a minimum ceiling, and our choppers will be coming in well below that. They’ll draw out the enemy into the sand to put them down like they did our chopper pilots in LA. When that happens, we’ll rain down as many Patriot Missiles as the USS Reagan can between the enemy and their ship.

“That’s when the fun begins and you folks get to prove your valor. Behind the smoke we’ll be sending you in on the far side in Chinooks and Sikorskys. We’ve seen them coming and going. We know their body density and we know how many could be crammed into that little black hole out there, and I’m happy to tell you there aren’t as many of them as there are you.

“We also know their protection is energy-absorbing, not a physical barrier. A soldier can’t shoot a bullet into their ship, but he can walk right onto it. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to rescue a brave pilot. There are some folks in this room that owe their lives to that woman and we’re going to show these alien pieces of shit that we never leave a soldier behind. Your goal is to get to the south end, where there are several entry ports, and protect the rescue crew.

“While you are doing that we’ll be sending in the Warthogs, the lowest planes we can get, and the other half of our Apaches.

“It’s going to be quite a battle, but we will win. The aliens have landed, they didn’t come in peace, and we’re going to fight like hell!”

The soldiers clapped and offered a few rowdy hoots and hollers as the general left the podium. The president stood and walked forward, silencing the hangar until you could hear the mice walking the rafters high above.

“Come with me, you three,” a gruff sergeant said quietly, as he motioned for the three scientists to follow. Allan stumbled along, looking over his shoulder at the president, as they were led out of the hangar and into a hallway. The hallway quickly dipped underground and led to a network of clustered laboratories.

“Here we are,” the sergeant said as he opened a hermetically-sealed door. He waited for the three scientists to enter and then closed the airlock with a solid thump. The other side of the airlock opened with a hiss. A bright rectangular room hosted an aluminum table, six matching chairs, and Amanda Silversun, nervously caressing her lucky ring.

“Doctor Douglass, good to see you,” Amanda said with practiced confidence and motioned for them to all sit.

“Nice to see a familiar face, Private—excuse me—
Major
Silversun,” Kam replied, noticing Amanda’s promotion.

“Moving up the chain of command is easy when your bosses keep getting themselves killed.”

“They’ve selected me for your mission briefing because they thought I’d be a friendly face, but I’ve only met Kam before.”

Allan and Jill extended their arms across the table for a lukewarm handshake introduction.

Amanda took out a tablet and showed the group photos.

“I’ll be leading the final approach, when we get you inside.”

“I’d like to abstain from this mission, sir,” Allan said.

“Denied, Doctor Sands,” Amanda stated, all her goodwill evaporating.

“Call me Major or Major Silversun, if you prefer, from now on. This mission isn’t something you can watch from the sideline. You all need to understand what’s happening, and your role, voluntary or not.

“As you know, Lieutenant Green is somewhere inside that installation. We’re leading a battalion straight up and we’ll separate into three brigades inside. We don’t know where she is exactly and we may not have much time until the enemy outside wises up. However, we do not leave without Lieutenant Green. We do not fire unless fired upon, and
—
this is most important
—
we do not touch anything. You all got that?”

They nodded.

“We leave tomorrow morning, last Chinook from runway five. I’ll be escorting you the entire way. We come in under the smokescreen the general showed you in the hangar and then we go in this portal here.”

Amanda pointed to and enlarged an opening on the desert installation. It was only visible because one of the colorful aliens emerged from it when the photo was taken.

“There may be more ways in, but we won’t know until we get them to come out in droves to fight us,” she said.

“So the plan is to get the bees mad and then sneak into the beehive?” Kam asked.

The sergeant jammed the drill into the sand, keeping his flip-down binoculars on. The rigs were small, but loud. The desert wind carried the sound to the alien installation, or “infestation” as the captain called it. They hoped the aliens’ unfamiliarity with Earth would excuse a distant grinding. Not that human activity ever concerned the aliens, their egos assuring them that humanity was no bigger a threat to their operation than the desert snakes. Even after their skirmishes in Los Angeles nothing changed. The humans packed bodies into helicopters and abandoned their stand against the alien bucket brigade. Maybe the aliens noticed one of those bodies wasn’t human, or maybe they didn’t.

“You still got your eyes on ‘em, Billy?” another driller asked the captain over the radio.

“I see ‘em. Just doing their walkabouts, as usual.”

The Special Forces group tried to settle their nerves. They’d heard the radio chatter, rumors the bearantulas had rumbled through an abandoned Fort Irwin on their way to the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, where they melted the support beams of the big radio telescopes. The Deep Space scopes at Canberra and Madrid were hastily covered with stitched tarps to look like rocks.

The good news, if it were true, was that their enemies might be afraid. That might be bad news for any humans caught digging suspicious holes in the sand not far from the enemy base.

Sarge’s big rig started thumping and tearing into the earth, but he kept it stable while looking at the infestation; a big black hole sitting in the valley ten miles to the south. What he couldn’t see, even with binoculars, was the other Special Forces platoon on the far ridge, eighteen miles out. The Special Forces units were the first, and most delicate part of the operation.

“Eyes on the ground, Sergeant,” the captain whispered in his ear with grit. “These antennas have to be up by sunset.”

The captain wandered off to similarly remind the other sergeants in the platoon. They were sure the same motivation was being applied at all five of the installation sites surrounding the big black dot in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

When the digging was done, it took five men to lift the antenna into place. Once it settled it would take a hell of a lot more to remove it. As it fell in, they staggered back then fell flat on their backs, not from the antenna, but from a sonic boom. This time it came not from the sky, but reverberated up the air over the ridges from the bustling alien neighborhood below.

The captain must have been informed from another up the line. He buzzed on their close range radios, “They’re leaving, and so are we.”

“Apaches are all down!” the pilot yelled back, the cue for landing. Black smoke billowed: they’d follow it south to the drop point.

“Masks!” Amanda shouted, handing the scientists three bright orange ones. The other soldiers all had standard issue green. “Start your beacons!” she ordered.

The scientists pressed the large “active” button on the radio beacons strapped to their chests. The beacons started sending out red blips of light, strobing the fifty-some soldiers in the dark end of the Chinook.

The booms got louder as rockets and artillery from the forward advance hit hard somewhere on the other side of the smoke.

“Be thankful you can’t smell it!” Amanda shouted.

Nausea found them anyway. The chopper filled with charcoal-colored smoke, swimming through the heat cloud of downed helicopter fuel. The bad amusement park ride continued: up and down, side to side, bumpy all the way, and nearly pitch except for the strobing red blinks.

Allan tightened his mask and squeezed his eyes shut. Jill squeezed his hand. He made an effort to squeeze back and grabbed Kam’s hand too. This was no time for grudges as they only had each other now. And the fifteen thousand troops ahead on the ground.

Although they’d never be ready, the ground caught them unprepared.

“Fuck!” the pilot shouted. After a loud bang they were shoved to the ceiling with four dozen soldiers and hard rifle butts. Instead of smoke, the air filled with sand. Instead of pitch, the air lit up gold and swirled as the chopper rolled.

They fell back down onto each other, pushed and pulled closer to that gold spray, growing hotter every inch, until they squeezed out of a tight opening abreast of a burning turbo shaft engine.

The scientists were ushered forward out of the gold breeze into a black one. In spots the smoke was dark enough to imitate night. The three grabbed at each other’s hands and arms and suits to keep in touch while buffeted and propped ahead between a rotating crew of anonymous gray and green camouflaged bodies.

The smoky night above lit up in glittering gold and swelled like a bubble underwater. It expanded from the ground and lifted up in a slow waddle before transforming back up into more smoke. ‘The worst of war carries a strange beauty,’ Allan thought. ‘At least I will die dining on sights never before seen, and impossible to enjoy otherwise.’

“Chopper’s gone, half my troops are gone,” Amanda told them over the radio.

They looked around wildly, but couldn’t discern her from the other troops navigating them forward.

“We’ve got no rear guard now,” she said. “But I don’t suppose the enemy will circle.”

They struggled forward until breaching the heat of the battle. The radiant pink of a California desert sunset replaced engine smoke. The sky streaked with darts of black and red, missiles and artillery searching for one of the rainbow-suited aliens ahead.

Allan heard Jill’s scream to his left. They turned to watch a soldier beside her slide apart in three pieces. The other soldiers barely took notice; the scientists jumped three paces to the right.

“In the heat of it now!” Amanda screamed. “Stay close!”

The vista of battle reached up and around the bustling alien city ahead to the north. The scream of low attacking warthogs was a welcome change from crackling helicopter engines on fire. More Apaches, Cobras, and Vipers joined the fight, zooming from behind and passing forward before circling around. Each circle brought less and less until it became clear that the pilots
had
been instructed to kamikaze when they exhausted their munitions.

Amanda’s squad ignored the battles beside, in front, and overhead. Instead, they navigated the increasing number of downed and burning aircraft on the path to the south portal of the alien installation. They passed more diced soldiers than the disjointed bodies of dead aliens, but each time they passed one of those multi-colored hairy things it awoke some kind of primal rage in Allan.

“Give me a gun!” he yelled.

“What?” Amanda yelled back from somewhere ahead.

“I want a fucking gun!” he screamed.

“You sound like you’d use it,” she said.

Soldiers next to them pulled their handguns from shin sheaths and deep waist pockets and offered them to the three. The other two scientists begrudgingly took them. Allan brandished his and aimed at the alien towers rising before them, one of which skewered the Sun. Struck suddenly by its beauty, his hands limped back to his side and he rested them on his knees for a moment, staring into oblivion.

Above the alien tower the Sun danced as its light shimmered through millions of minute strands of water. On the sand the sunbeams scattered into diffuse waves pulsing in time with Allan’s heartbeat. He thought for a moment he felt another heart there, too, standing at the bottom of the pool, diving mask on, waiting for his air to run out.

The ground burped and shook, knocking everyone to their feet.

“The fuck was that?” Amanda asked someone the scientists weren’t privileged to hear.

“That wasn’t another Apache going down,” Kam said.

An unknown voice echoed over the radios, “Booms are getting more frequent. Best guess is they’re leaving in two hours. Get in there!”

“How do they know?” Kam asked to anyone that would answer.

“They left China yesterday, same thing,” Amanda answered. “In two hours this place will be an ashtray twenty miles wide.”

The ranks of the soldiers ahead of the group were thinning out. Still a few hundred yards from the alien circus tent in front, it became doubtful they’d make it. Not that the scientists wanted to be trapped on an alien ship leaving the Earth anyway.

As the soldiers struggled to keep the perimeter around the scientists, a volley of Patriot Missiles launched minutes ago from the Pacific came down on target. Enemies in the bull’s-eye simply evaporated, those on the perimeter fused with the ground and shrunk like rapid-burning candles under the flames. The emboldened soldiers surged forward, and the scientists stumbled to keep up.

Their cover dried up; the Warthogs were going down, trying their best to slam into groups of the enemy after having neat lines cut through their fuselage from the alien lasers. With death on both sides, the scientists rushed headlong into its heart.

Another Apache roared a few feet overhead, but this time the chopper didn’t lay down its fire and circle back. The nose of the helicopter sheared clean and the pilots died instantly. Without a pilot to guide the damage onto enemy shores, the Apache went down in front of the shrinking group of soldiers escorting the scientists.

They used the chopper smoke as a defilade, but soon found their enemy had guessed their tactics and enabled a way to see through. They strategized while hiding behind the bunk of the Apache with the engine on fire opposite and facing the enemy.

“We’re twenty yards from the start of the black ground,” Amanda said. “There’s a Huey downed about ten yards out, and a Patriot crater after that. If we can sneak ‘round the Huey and into the crater they may not see us.” She paused for a moment to contact another platoon leader.

“Platoon twenty-three is just north and they’re falling back to cover us.”

“What happened to platoons three to twenty-two?” another soldier asked.

She didn’t answer, instead shouting, “On my mark!” and then counted down with her hands.

They rushed around the backside of the chopper and passed by the fanning flames of the burning rotor engine. Jill stumbled over a rotor blade, but Allan lifted her up and over. Then he felt something hot on the other side. A glance at his right shoulder told him what he already knew: an alien laser had burned a half inch into the flesh of his arm. The soldier next to him wasn’t so lucky, missing the left side of his body and bleeding out quickly.

Allan bent down to comfort the soldier. By the time he touched the flesh the man had perished. From the corner of his eye he saw something low to the ground approaching, twitching to one side, then the other, hiding behind rocks and bodies.

Allan took a stance on the ground, firing his gun straight at the oncoming beast. Less than twenty yards away and able to see what Allan was firing, the alien decided to jitter full-force ahead. It came fast through the billowing smoke in a creepy low-to-the-ground gallop like an octopus, swimming through its own ink. Allan had nothing to defend himself with on that ill-fated scuba expedition. The pistol the soldier had given him felt like it was firing blanks, but the bullets were simply dropping to the ground after hitting the approaching marauder. He could see the strange beak hidden between thrashing arms.

Allan wondered why the others weren’t helping; could they not swim? He glanced the other way and saw two more sea creatures approaching from farther out around the dirty pock-marked coral.

The twenty-third platoon was coming in from the north to catch the bears on the left, but on the right they could not fire towards the group without hitting friendlies. Soldiers near Allan rushed to his side to help as these three scientists were the golden geese and they’d all promised to give their lives to protect them.

Two soldiers with much larger rifles took a stance just in front of Allan, shoving him to the sand. “Stay down!” one diver shouted as they fired a speargun toward the octopus. The rounds only slowed it, nearly upon them. A swimmer in front of Allan used his weight to bash the monster sideways, losing his arm in the process as the creature fell backwards with laser snapping all soft flesh around.

It landed in front of Allan, looking up with beady cold eyes. This was no starfish, no octopus; Allan came back to the surface, jumping upright and instinctively firing as many rounds as he could at the center of the alien, turning the furry face into a wet mess.

“No armor in the kisser, eh, you ugly fuck!” yelled a soldier next to him, nursing a deep laser-cut to the thigh. Scuba masks didn’t allow speaking, and gravity was pulling the man’s blood straight to the sand instead of the red cloud Allan half expected. Sharks or not, he knew predators were still coming for them. Where had he been the last few minutes? Pith had offered him a powerful cocktail of military grade chemical enhancements when Allan asked for a sleeping pill.

Did all soldiers see the battlefield like this? Hallucinating their fear away, displacing responsibility for casualties. Perhaps it was like the tabs Allan used to take in the good old days at Berkeley, everybody’s trip was different. Allan felt like he was going to die when that octopus attacked him on the dive. He hadn’t drowned in his fear like that again until crawling through explosions between dead bodies today merged the experiences into one frame of reference.

The voices of the soldiers wavered again, like grunts from fellow divers echoing through the water. Allan stared at the slowly heaving alien body under him, little different than an oversized starfish in the same sand. Who was the intruder here? They both struggled to stay in the present.