Charger the Soldier (15 page)

Falling away from the main fleet, the two
planes started their descent toward the ground. The pilots could
see that landing would be easy. The ground everywhere was black and
smooth and lifeless. The soldiers aboard the two planes were
apprised of the situation and everyone moved fast, stowing gear and
prepping weapons. Most of the soldiers spent a good portion of the
remaining flight time fussing with the new biomechanical gear they
wore, the backpack that contained all the ammunition and other
gear. From the side of the pack hung a swing arm that allowed a
soldier to quickly retrieve his weapon from the pack, and swing it
to the firing position. This allowed the hands to be free when in
travel. Nevertheless, the body armor received the most attention.
Soldiers checked and rechecked the fit of the armor on soldiers
next to them; no one wanted his armor to fail.

The landing was relatively smooth and the two
planes taxied to an area where they could park close together. Just
before stopping, the stricken plane retracted its landing gear,
dropping the craft directly to the ground and digging in. Soldiers
quickly evacuated the planes and started setting up a defendable
perimeter.

The attack came almost at once.

One of the root-like tentacles, partly buried
in the blackened soil and partly exposed, like those the German
pilots had seen from the air, was reported moving toward the small
party. As it approached, motion and radar detectors sounded alarms,
giving location and speed of the incoming alien attack. The root
tentacle was advancing at a tremendous speed, well over two hundred
miles per hour.

Within moments the first gun was fired. The
Germans started their defense with the new, light, long-range
cannons, made of composite materials. These weapons were easy to
set up and deploy, and were most effective in their ability to
launch small nuclear artillery rounds over vast distances.

Multiple mushroom clouds dotted the horizon,
and still the alarms rang out as the aliens continued attacking.
They seemed able to shift position at the last second, thus
avoiding missiles fired at them.

Now the second line of defense fired. Napalm
rockets streaked across the sky, lighting the ground afire before
the approaching chaos. A wall of intense flames rose skyward,
seemingly blocking the path of the aliens but again, they simply
shifted and kept on coming.

The third line of defense, large generators
aboard the two aircraft, surged to life. Blinding beams of intense
laser light, based on research done by the inventor Nikola Tesla,
shot from mobile ground units, mixed with smaller particle rail
guns. These had some effect. Portions of the root like tentacle
broke off. The advancing alien hesitated momentarily, but pressed
on.

When the splintering alien mass was within
yards of the dug-in German forces, the soldiers loosed a brutal
crossfire of steel-tipped armor-piercing gunfire. Now close to the
humans, the mass emitted its killing mist. Soldiers scrambled to
put on gas masks.

Swarms of alien bodies erupted from the
tunnels created by the tree-like root tentacles. Hideous solid
masses moving inside liquid body parts struck forward onto the
German troops, slicing the soldiers to pieces. An advancing
tentacle rose from the ground and struck the broken aircraft,
piercing easily through the armor and shattering the plane. Seeing
this, the second, still-intact aircraft began moving, and troops
not dead or dying scrambled for the hatches in an attempt to escape
the carnage.

The attempt was in vain. In front of the
aircraft accelerating away from combat, the ground rippled and the
blackened land gave way as a large chasm opened. Thousands of
whirling vortexes rose up, projecting long gray snake-like objects
with spinning saw blades that tore into and shredded the rolling
aircraft and its occupants, converting it into exploding fragments.
The fleeing aircraft disintegrated.

Unbelievably, in spite of all the carnage and
chaos, one soldier survived. Damaged but alive, a young woman with
pale, blonde hair, blue eyes, and the rank of sergeant lay
motionless for several hours. A deathlike unconsciousness had saved
Group Sergeant Hanna Massey's life.

>>>

Hanna Massey awoke to silence, blurred
vision, and the smell of blood. When her head cleared, she lifted
her body on one elbow and began looking around. The battlefield was
strewn with friends and comrades she had served with, all torn,
broken, and scattered about like a child's discarded toys.

But Hanna was a well-trained and disciplined
German light infantry soldier who had spent time in several
war-torn countries, trying to help those struggling for a better
life. Careful examination of her body showed that she was not hurt
badly. She found a few scrapes, bruises and a black eye, and the
pounding in her head meant she might have a concussion. Rubbing her
temples, she scanned the area for a radio operator. The radios the
soldiers carried in their biomechanical suits had a limited range
but she hoped to find some resistance fighters close by.

To her dismay, all the personnel were ripped
apart so badly that, when she did find a radio operator, the
equipment looked nearly as bad as the body. Sitting down and
pulling her knees up close to her chest, Hanna sat motionless,
trying to work out a course of action.

Hours passed and the sun set. Hanna's
headache had abated and she realized that she could not stay where
she was. She pulled herself up, strapped gear and ammunition to her
body, and started to walk toward the red base from which the alien
tentacle had attacked. She had not gone far when she stumbled over
something in the dark. Something odd.

Her flashlight revealed the remains of a
partially severed alien body lying in the black dirt. It seemed to
still be alive. Hanna immediately aimed her rifle at what she
thought was its head and was only a second from pulling the trigger
when she noticed a glimmering light coming from the side of the
creature's head-like structure.

Where she had focused her rifle seemed to be
a solid mass with multiple gold-colored eyes, or what might be
eyes. However, the point that glimmered was on the left side of its
skull, faintly blinking. "How about that," Hanna muttered to
herself in German, "They use electricity, or some kind of
light."

The squirming thing seemed to realize that
Hanna was speaking. This sent the creature into a convulsion as it
tried to defend what was left of its body by forming itself into a
weapon.

"Hell no!" Sergeant Massey snarled in the
only English expression she knew, and pulled the trigger. The skull
shattered, parts of it scattering across the blackened soil. There
in the dark, the small glimmering light still blinked. She knelt
down beside it and, retrieving a small towel from her pack, wrapped
it up and placed it in one of the pockets of her combat gear.

She traveled beside a wide river, keeping to
the trees on its banks but occasionally emerging to use her
binoculars. The river would take her to the sea, where she hoped to
get a closer look at the aliens. After a week of eating carefully
rationed packs of food and sleeping under the trees, daylight found
her again exposed on an open plain of blackened soil in what had
once been farmland outside the Canadian city of Vancouver.

Hanna knew she was close now. She took refuge
in a ruined building and peered through binoculars at the decimated
city, noting that red alien masses were slowly enveloping the tall
buildings. Now and then, one of the buildings disintegrated into
rubble under the heavy mass, and Hanna could just make out the
movement of aliens scurrying around.

The day was hot, made hotter by the lack of
any greenery around her hiding place, but as she traveled, Hanna
had been forming a plan to gather intelligence about these aliens.
She decided to wait until nightfall, then move in closer and try to
photograph and record what was going on in the alien
encampment.

Evening found her finishing a small tin of
food, then poking and turning the bit of glimmering light that she
carried in the towel, trying to decipher its purpose. It was
clearly neither mechanical nor biological in nature. All she could
determine was that it was alien. This conclusion made her smile,
not a common expression in her world. Stuffing away her gear and
prepping her weapons, Hanna rose from her hiding place and moved
out, aiming toward the city. She stopped a few yards from the
damaged building and froze. Slowly she turned her head, scanning
the area all around her. Her mind was racing, her heart pounding
wildly, her hands cold with fear.

How could she have missed this? She was a
fool, and a dead fool at that. Not even trying to raise her weapon,
Hanna's shoulders sagged as she realized she was standing in what
looked like an alien nesting site. Dug deep into the black dirt all
around her were heaps of alien bodies, occasionally moving, but
slowly. Her only thought was to get to the grenade in her pack; she
would take as many of them with her as she could. Unslinging the
pack from her back, she reached into the pocket for the grenade but
instead pulled out the towel with the glimmering light. She again
froze, her mind searching. She had been in that building all day.
Why hadn't they killed her sooner? The light blinked on.

How had she gotten this close to the alien
base? Her thoughts calmed and her mind began working. "The aliens
sensed the aircraft that crashed. They knew our positions."

The light must mean something.

Retrieving it from the towel, Hanna held it
in her hands and began looking at the aliens. They didn't have
glimmering lights on their heads, and not one was attacking her. It
was obvious that they could see her. Some even stopped what
appeared to be feeding to stare at her, but none moved toward her.
Hanna stared directly at an alien that had its arms plunged deep
into the ground. A slurping, crunching noise made her turn away.
Slowly, air refilled her lungs as her heart slowed its rapid pace.
Her mind was clear now.

Gathering her gear and using all her
faculties to attempt logical thought, Hanna clutched the glimmering
light object tightly in her hand and began walking forward through
the darkness, passing pit after pit of aliens slithering in their
holes, until she reached the outskirts of the city. None of the
aliens paid any attention to her.

"What if the glimmering light fails? What if
its power source stops? What then?" Increasing her pace, she made
her way to the most densely packed area of the red mass. What she
found there stunned her.

From a highway overpass facing the center of
the city, several gigantic gaping maws seemed to be ingesting
everything brought to them. Like huge, hungry mouths, they gulped
down everything from stones to trees and animals, even dead humans
and cars. Debris of all kinds was being fed to them through a
conveyor of liquid slime. The sounds were horrendous: grinding and
crunching mixed with screeching of metal and the occasional scream
of a still living thing.

Clenching her teeth, Hanna resisted the urge
to be sick. She imagined killing these aliens and that thought
settled her stomach. It made no sense for these aliens to consume
everything on the planet, but apparently produce nothing from it.
So what were they doing?

Far out at sea, submarines were firing
nuclear weapons at the mass buildup that formed along the beaches.
The results shocked Hanna. The missiles impacted relatively close
to her, but she suffered no ill effects. The red mass seemed to
liquefy and accept the impact, like a gigantic sponge absorbing a
bullet. Then the force of the explosion seemed to be directed
downward, into the earth, leaving the red mass unaffected.

Hanna spent all night and most of the
following day wandering through the city, observing everything that
was happening. She found her way to the ocean and stood on the
shore, looking back at the devastation and felt a powerful sorrow
fill her mind. She began walking south along the beach, heading
toward the United States.

After several days, Hanna's face was dirty
from the burnt soil blowing loosely in the breeze and sticking to
the tears sometimes sliding down her cheeks. She could hardly
believe it when she chanced upon a stretch of land not yet consumed
by the alien horde. Along the west coast of Washington state, she
found herself walking among tall green trees and thick ferns,
hardly even realizing that she had made it across the border.

It was odd that nothing was damaged here, she
thought, her mind clearing again. There had to be a reason. Sitting
on a park bench, Hanna pulled some food from her pack and allowed
herself to admire the beauty of the place. Hours later, it dawned
on her that she had heard no sounds except the waves rolling
pebbles on the beach. No birds singing, no dogs barking, no small
rodents scurrying through the leaves, nothing.

Another thought struck her. It couldn't be
possible. But what if it was? During World War II, in Germany, the
Nazis had safe places high in the Austrian Alps to hide and rest
from the rigors of war. Was this such a place? Quickly she reached
into her pack for the glimmering light.

It was still blinking. Satisfied, Hanna set
out, very carefully, to explore what was possibly a safe haven for
the aliens.

P
am A'Ochay found that driving to work today was more
stressful than usual. Her mornings had always begun with a crowded
traffic commute but now, after the invasion, abandoned cars jammed
the roads. She needed to get to the office urgently. Late last
night, she'd learned of the German chancellor's television
appearance in Europe from the few working internet providers still
operating for the media. That something so important to the
American people wasn't being televised here seemed simply
impossible. When she reached the office, she didn't try to park in
her usual spot; cars littered parking lots as much as they did the
roads.