Charger the Soldier (25 page)

"But sir," the captain replied, "that will
destroy the 7th and 13th."

General Harris exploded. "I don't give a
rat's ass about the undead. They are already dead. Open fire!"

Later, many people asked whether this order
was a crime against humanity. Killing one's own troops in a battle
was an act of treason. Did any soldier, whether human, half-dead or
hybrid, have any rights at all? General Harris's willingness to
sacrifice soldiers in battle happened all too often, and would
eventually result in making enemies of those soldiers he considered
disposable combatants. But Harris focused only on his obsession to
win, on the results. During that moment, as he looked on, hundreds
of soldiers perished.

Gathering in a room deep below ground, the
scientists, with Danny and Ben, were trying to understand the
physical nature of the captured alien. The alien fought wildly
against its restraints. A few brave medical scientists approached
the thing and cut a section of the skin to have it examined for
DNA. They hoped this might tell them what weaknesses it had in
biological warfare. The answers came back as inconclusive and for
some time the group was stumped as to how to proceed.

A young woman in the room noticed a small
seam line around the alien's body, and it was soon discovered that
the alien was housed in a synthetic body suit. The scientists went
to work dissecting the suit to get at the occupant. What they found
inside the suit made Danny's skin crawl. The stench it produced was
almost unbearable and a small figure with dark slanted eyes and
blackened skin, with a hideously deformed face, glared out at the
amazed group. The gold-colored multifaceted eyes, noticed by so
many, turned out not to be eyes but what the scientists assumed
were protective goggles.

It was measured as being a little under five
feet in height, and possibly a hundred pounds. The skin was rough
and oily, and lacked hair. It fought savagely, trying to attack the
scientists, causing many to jump back. As it broke free, an
intense, blinding light filled the room and a piercing screeching
ensued. The small humanoid leapt toward the young female scientist
just as General Harris entered the room. He quickly drew his weapon
and fired. The bullet tore off the woman's ear but killed the
alien.

"Nasty little pricks," Harris spat. After a
long pause, he said, "Well, gut it, and let's see how it
works!"

W
hen General Harris stopped to look out the window of
the command building, all he could see was utter destruction.
Soldiers lay scattered about like children's misplaced toys, broken
and dying. Medics scurried among them. "This ends tomorrow," Harris
said, and drew hard on a half-finished cigar. His plan had been
conceived over quite some time and, with the intelligence the
military had managed to gather from many battles with the invaders,
he was certain of its success.

"Even if this plan fails, it will still get
rid of that Nazi thorn in my side, General A'Ochay. Sometimes I'm
not sure who to cheer for here, the aliens or our guys, goddamn
Nazi bastard." The general went back to pacing around the room.

With the backing of what remained of the
American leadership, and the discoveries made from the four
captured alien specimens, coupled with the strange red blinking
light Hanna carried, Harris was certain he had a plan worth trying.
"Besides, what the hell do we have to lose? We've been handed our
asses in so many battles that, if nothing else, these damn aliens
will learn not to fuck with us. Can't wait till this is all over
and they honor me with a statue. Better damn well be bigger than
what Crazy Horse got."

A knock on the door halted General Harris's
conversation with himself. His secretary entered and said a car was
waiting to take him to the project site. Grabbing his hat and coat,
General Harris went downstairs and was whisked off for his two
o'clock meeting.

For four months, scientists had worked day
and night to understand the mechanics of the captured alien as well
as his synthetic encounter suit, looking for a weakness that could
be exploited in Earth's favor. What they discovered shocked and
appalled them, but General Harris was jubilant.

Many of the scientists thought the creature
was an aberration, or a freak of nature, until examination of the
three other aliens brought to them by Sergeant Hanna Massey proved
that the so-called alien invaders had originally come from Earth.
The knowledge that these invaders were human, though they had
obviously left Earth sometime in the distant past, caused some
optimists to think it might be possible to communicate with the
invaders and end the destruction.

Everything was tried, without success. The
invaders kept fighting and the destruction kept mounting, giving
General Harris all the power he needed to attempt to win the battle
for Earth on his own twisted terms. Seven billion people worldwide
had been reduced to a mere fraction of that number after three
years of fighting, which meant that General Harris was now firmly
in control of the remaining armies.

His plan was simple, straight out of
Hollywood. Remove the encounter suits from the captured aliens and
put soldiers in them. Send the soldiers to the mother ship, now
that they had learned the radio frequency the aliens used and
triangulated their position in space. Load their pockets with
nuclear bombs and presto, lots of dead aliens and the mother ship
destroyed. That meant no more supplies for the ones on the
ground.

As crazy as all that sounded, Earth was
desperate, and the remaining government impotent. So it was agreed
that Harris's plan had to be tried, and science, the strong, steady
backbone of humanity, was again employed in doing the army's dirty
work in order to end yet another pointless war. Some people thought
that science may have been to blame for the whole thing getting
started. Throughout the vast number of holy and political wars
started by humans, it was science, in an attempt to make life
better, that had invented television. And it was television which
had broadcast Earth's position in the universe, as useful to
potential enemies as painting a giant target on one of the
continents.

As science began to realize its role in the
possible destruction of all life, digital technology was developed
in hopes of quieting down Earth's position in space. But it seemed
the damage had already been done. So now it fell to science to find
a way to encase humans in the biological suits and to play a part
in the destruction of the masses of bloodthirsty life on the
doorstep. The hands of science would be forever stained with blood
but, resigned to their fate, they found a way.

From the day that Danny and Thad captured the
alien and brought it kicking and screaming to the military, they
found themselves drafted to alien research duty. No matter where
the alien was trucked for scientists to examine, Danny and Thad
were never far behind. So when the day came that General Harris got
his wish, Danny and Thad were the two obvious choices to go into
space to do Harris's dirty work. Sergeant Hanna was chosen because
the red blinking light that allowed them to gain access to the
aliens had bonded with her and would never operate for anyone else.
That only left the fourth alien suit, and as General Harris hated
General Dieter A'Ochay, the choice was an easy one.

There was only one real problem. "Well, do we
or do we not have a way to get this team into orbit and onto that
damn mother ship?" screamed a half-crazed General Harris at the
project leaders. His weekly visits to the project personnel always
ended as scream fests on his part, rather than resolutions to
problems. "I have a goddamn world that needs saving and you idiots
are dicking around and eating bonbons!"

"We think that the Russian and Chinese parts
we have can be adapted to work on our rockets, but we need more
time," pleaded one of the project leaders.

"Sure! How much more time do you think you
need? I'm willing to let a few more million humans die so you
assholes can have more time," yelled a red-faced Harris. "Don't try
to tell me you jerkwads don't have enough personnel to get the task
done! Take your goddamn dicks out of each other's assholes and stop
fucking around! You have two more days, and that's it. Then I will
start drafting you bastards to go fight at the front lines."
General Harris slammed his fist down hard on the table and everyone
jumped. He turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door
behind him, and everyone jumped again.

Two days later, three botched but functioning
rockets sat on the launch pads at Cape Lincoln, Nebraska. So many
of the states were now desolate and barren because of the alien
attacks that Lincoln was the only safe place left for rocket pads.
Each rocket was capable of carrying five geared soldiers into
orbit, which meant that fifteen good soldiers would attack the
mother ship, hoping to save Earth. But General Harris suspected
that the aliens in orbit could easily see the rockets and guess
what he had planned. So, off to the side of the launch pads was a
discreet, dull building that housed the real assault team.

The space plane developed by NASA for
reconnaissance in high orbit had been retrofitted to hold four
soldiers. Hanna, Danny, Thad, and Dieter were stitched into the
alien encounter suits, which, fortunately for Harris's plans, had
enough elasticity that they could be stretched to cover the larger
humans. Then they were fitted with small oxygen recycling packs,
and loaded into the craft at night. The other fifteen soldiers were
to fight their way as far as possible onto the mother craft, buying
time for, and eventually dying for, the four principal fighters.
Those four, flying in the space plane, were to sneak aboard and
plant high-yield nuclear explosives at key locations. Each of the
four encounter suits was fitted with thruster packs and one weapon
of mass destruction.

When the four principal fighters reached high
orbit, escaping Earth's gravitational pull, they would leave the
space plane and, with the thruster packs, board the mother craft
through openings discovered by Earth-based observers. At least,
that was the plan.

Once everybody was in place, General Harris
gave the command to launch and, simultaneously, three Titan rockets
bolted into orbit straight for a rendezvous with the alien mother
ship. The blasts gave cover for the space plane to slip into the
air and to plot its own course with destiny.

The thunderous onslaught of the three rockets
hurtling toward the mother ship caught the attention of the aliens,
who swiftly prepared to repel these soldiers with deadly ferocity.
A blistering cross fire of plasma projectiles hurtled through space
as Earth ships, guided by ground-based crews, fought to distract
the aliens, avoid destruction, and give the soldiers a fighting
chance.

Meanwhile, the four humans in the alien
encounter suits got within range of the mother ship, avoiding the
attention of the aliens, and quietly slipped out into dark space.
Linked together with tethers, the four silently worked their way
toward the mother ship. Once the space plane had been vacated,
cunning old General Harris played the last card up his sleeve.

He sat at a control console the project team
had designed to his specifications and, with a drink in the holder
at the side of his large leather chair, he donned leather gloves
and took control of the space plane with a joystick. The front nose
cone of the space plane split apart and was ejected into space,
revealing four front-facing Gatling guns. Large shark-like teeth
were painted on the sides of the plane.

Realigning the space plane to face the alien
ship head on, a filthy flood of invective exploded from General
Harris's mouth as he squeezed the trigger and blasted the sides of
the ship with bullets. Like a flea attacking a bull elephant,
General Harris took great joy in behaving like a small kid with a
new toy. But when the bullets had been exhausted, the half-mad
general had one more ploy. He set a course straight at the mother
ship and, as the space plane hit, he detonated an onboard nuclear
weapon of awesome power. For a moment, this did catch the attention
of the aliens. But, like a fly hitting the window of a speeding
car, it was soon dismissed.

Sadly, only one of the three rockets managed
to penetrate the hull of the mother ship. Those five soldiers
fought valiantly but briefly.

Meanwhile, Dieter discovered a problem. From
Earth, what looked like holes in the mother ship were not actually
holes. With time growing short, the four humans were desperate to
gain access. They crawled or drifted down the gigantic hull of the
craft, searching in vain for an entrance. They had managed to get
this far and they were determined not to fail now.

"Here!" Thad snapped. "I got it! Here's a way
in!" The four regrouped and entered the craft, finding their way,
after much time, to the inner workings of the beast. They slinked
along the corridors as passing aliens appeared not to notice them.
Hanna's blinking red light was working. At least for now.

They found their way to where the scientists
had told them to place their ordinance for maximum results. "You
know this is all just guesswork," Danny whispered. "Those eggheads
back on Earth have no idea where we should be placing these
things." He pointed to the bomb strapped to his side.

"You may be right, but let's give them the
benefit of the doubt," replied Dieter.

Hanna piped up over the intercom in German.
Danny looked at Thad, then they both looked at Dieter. "What did
she say?" asked Thad.

"She said, less talk, more killing," replied
Dieter, with a smile.

Their tasks done, they made their way back
toward the opening where they had gained access. However, just
short of escape, one of the passing aliens bumped into Thad. He was
some distance behind the group, and it appeared that the red
blinking light lost its effect in keeping humans safe unless they
were close to it. The alien grew hostile and poked at him with an
out-stretched arm.