So It Begins Read online

  “We’ve got your back, ma’am,” said Kline on the comm.

  “And to think you only gave me average on my marksman annual,” said Shaker.

  “I stick with that grade. If you were a superior shot, you could have lined up the deaders to take them both with one round,” teased Hastings.

  “That mean you want us to hold back and take multiple targets per round if another deader approaches you?” shot back Shaker.

  “Hell, no. Take as many as you need,” said Hastings. “One left.”

  “Too close to the girl for us to try,” said Shaker.

  “No worries. He’s mine,” said Hastings.

  The remaining deader had made a hole in the shed large enough for his head and torso to fit through. Gail’s scream caused Hastings to lunge forward, but the single shot to the deader’s head stopped her short.

  The sidearm Hastings had given to the girl had more traditional ammunition so the single shot was not enough to destroy its brain, but it caused the dead thing to fall twitching its arms and legs. Hastings grabbed him by the feet, pulled his convulsing corpse back and put a plasma round in his head for good measure.

  “Ma’am, our stemmers are converging on you. Don’t shoot them,” said Dorna.

  “Roger that,” said Hastings. “Gail, open the door. We have to go now.”

  The girl did as instructed and threw herself into Hastings arms. The woman found herself smiling. “You came back for me, even with all those deaders. I thought you’d leave me.”

  “I promised you I’d be back. I was . . . I am an officer of the Host, and our word means something,” said Hastings, scooping up the girl so Gail’s arms were wrapped around her neck with her legs squeezing her waist. “You did good with that gun. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” said Gail with a small smile, which was frightened off her face by ten zombies marching in formation in front of them.

  Hasting comm chirped with Dorna’s voice. “Ma’am, our stemmers are right behind you.”

  “Gail, these are the stemmers from your factory. They are going to walk us back to the building. I’m going to hook you to a line and my team will pull you up to the roof. Two drop ships will be here any minute to take you to the station. I’m going to ask you a favor.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to hold onto me with your arms and legs. Put you head into my shoulders and keep your eyes closed. Can you trust me to do that?”

  The girl nodded, but held the gun up. “But if I keep my eyes open, I can shoot any deaders that try to sneak up behind you.”

  Hastings gently took the weapon, put on the safety and returned it to her holster as the controlled zombies encompassed them in a circle. “Let’s compromise. You shout if you see any and I’ll blow them to hell. Deal?”

  “Okay.”

  “Dorna, we’re moving out. Have your wannabe stem soldiers double time it. Gentlemen, prove my station board assessment of your sniper skills to be a gross underestimate and keep any deaders from us,” said Hastings.

  “Will do, ma’am,” said Shaker. “Be aware, you have deaders approaching you from seven, five, and three o’clock.” The familiar sounds of plasma rounds rang out as Shaker and Kline tried to lessen the numbers of reanimated approaching, but all their shooting only made a dent.

  “Dorna, make these stemmers run,” yelled Hastings into her comm.

  “I can’t manage that and keep them in formation around you,” said Dorna.

  “Well, we saw that you haven’t figured our how to make them fight worth a damn yet. They’ll only slow the other deaders for a moment since they ain’t doing much by way of camouflage. Any chance of you coming up with anything more martial in the next thirty seconds?” said Hastings.

  “Nope,” said Dorna.

  “Okay, then I’m leaving the wagon circle and triple timing it to you. Scatter the stemmers to confuse the enemy,” ordered Hastings.

  “But . . .”

  “Here we come,” said Hastings, sprinting for all she was worth, but the longer the battle went on, the lower that value went. Command had made her lazy in regards to her personal workouts and that led to weak and slow. Even considering that the artificial gravity on Kyklopes was set at about five percent higher than the planet below it, Hastings was not physically fit for combat. The deaders, however were augmented by whatever hellish science had created the reanimation virus, making even the slowest of them faster than a former battlestation commander carrying a child. No matter how fast she pushed her burning legs, the only way she’d be guaranteed of beating the zombies was to lose the seventy pounds that was holding onto her for dear life.

  To Andie Hastings’s credit, the thought of dropping the girl never even occurred to her. The command decision to follow protocol and abandon Ozark was never one she took easily, but after the assumed destruction of Earth and most of the Host fleet, she let fear goad her into not making the tougher choice. Being back on a battlefield changed her. The woman who sat in Kyklopes’s command chair had been accepting of her duty to put others in harms way while she remained safe. The Hastings on the battlefield at Knob Lick wasn’t.

  So when Andie Hastings realized she wasn’t going to make it, she came up with a plan that would never have crossed the mind of Colonel Hastings.

  “Gail, I’m going to need to put you down. You are going to have to run to the school. Straight ahead of you there is a line with a hook. Put it on your belt and hold on. Kline will pull you up,” said Hastings.

  “What about you?” asked Gail.

  “I’m going to slow these deaders down a bit. Now git,” said Hastings.

  The girl obeyed and ran for the wall. Deaders saw her and realized she was the easier of their meal choices, altering their course accordingly. So did Hastings, firing plasma rounds as she did so.

  “Ma’am, what are you doing?” yelled Shaker, who was still frantically firing at the encroaching deaders.

  “Keeping my word. That girl is the first one on a Harpy, James, understood?” said Hastings, firing at the zombies closest to her. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”

  “I won’t, ma’am,” said Shaker. “I’m lowering my belt line for you. I expect you to use it as soon as the girl passes the second floor.”

  Hastings actually grinned as she replied. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m out of grenades,” commed Lao. “The deaders are coming around the south end and they are starting to attack the weakened wall again.” There was a loud crash and a cloud of dusts. “Correction, they’ve torn the wall down.” The sound of Lao’s plasma rifle firing thundered through the air. “My shots are only attracting more of them. The rubble buried a couple, but the rest are using it to climb up. They’re using the exposed floors and support beams for hand and foot holds. We’re up crap creek without a boat.”

  “I’ve got Gail,” yelled Kline.

  “Hastings, attach my line!” ordered Shaker.

  The former commander turned and leapt for the line, holding on with one hand while clipping it on with the other. Shaker braced himself and activated the belt winch, pulling his teammate up the side of the school.

  One deader took that time to recall that his body could once jump and leapt after the rising woman, managing to get his undead hands around her right boot.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Hastings, kicking out with both feet to dislodge her passenger. “I got a hitchhiker and he ain’t shaking.”

  Unable to use her rifle at close range without risking blowing off her own feet, Hastings grabbed for her sidearm and emptied it into the deader. She missed the head, but blew apart his shoulder, which weakened his grip enough for her to kick him loose.

  “Nice job, Hastings,” said Shaker, pulling her over the top of the roof.

  “Can’t argue with you and I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back safe and sound,” said Hastings.

  “Oh no,” said Dorna, her eyes on the former colonel’s knee. The uniform between the side of her shin guard and
knee body armor was torn and bloody.

  Hastings looked down. “Crap, I didn’t even feel that.” Shaker moved to help her, but she held her hand up and said what they were all thinking. “Stop, I might be inflicted.”

  “It could be a secondary wound,” said Dorna.

  “I pray you’re right.” Bending over, Hastings tore apart her pant leg to reveal the wound. “Damn, that’s where those two were going at me when I was on the ground.” Reaching inside a belt pouch, she took out a piece of what looked like old-fashioned litmus paper and thrust it in the wound. And like its scientific forbearer, it changed color when positive, only instead of acid or base, it tested for the reanimation virus.

  Hastings pulled it up for all to see. There was no nice blue or pink color. The Host was far too literal to have developed something falsely cheerful like that.

  “Oh shit. Black,” said Shaker.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Dorna.

  “Me too,” said Hastings.

  “Deader!” yelled Kline as a dead head cleared the rubble on the far side of the roof. The soldier emptied a plasma round between his eyes, causing him to tumble back down the five stories. The civilians who had been dutifully keeping their heads down during the entire battle screamed and scuttled further away.

  All their comms chirped. “Attention rescue party Zed, this is Harpy Alexander. We and Harpy Gilgamesh are converging on your position. What is your status?”

  “Ready for the civies to board,” answered Hastings. “But the deaders have breached the roof. They will be held off until boarding is complete.”

  “Do you require our drop team’s assistance?”

  “Too little too late, Alexander,” said Hastings.

  “And your team?”

  “Four to board,” said Hastings.

  “I’m sorry, Zed, whom did you lose?”

  “Me. Hastings out.”

  “There’s got to be something…” started Dorna.

  “But there’s not. I’ll hold the roof,” said Hastings.

  Shaker nodded, then bowed his head. Carefully, he removed his remaining grenade and his last plasma round clip, then handed them to his former commanding officer. Dorna, then Kline followed suit, handing over their last grenades and clips. Lao, having used all his grenades, handed her his remaining rakes.

  “If you’re going to go out with a bang, might as well make it a big one,” said Lao.

  “Amen,” said Hastings.

  “Ma’am, it is an honor to be able to say that I have now truly served with you,” said Shaker.

  “Thank you,” said Hastings as she secured the incendiaries.

  “Colonel on deck,” shouted Lao, snapping to attention, his right hand held high in salute. Shaker, Kline, and Dorna followed suit.

  Hastings returned and held the salute for a moment before yelling, “The lot of you do me proud. Dismissed.”

  Hastings took out her knife and cut her exposed skin so she’d be as bloody as possible as she used her secondary belt line to descend the five floors to the enemy below, hoping for a good, strong breeze to carry her scent to as many deaders as possible. She shot off three climbers on her way down.

  Shaker made sure Gail was the first to board Alexander and, with the help of the drop crew, it didn’t take ten minutes to load all the civilians onto both drop ships. The quartet were the last to board Gilgamesh.

  As soon as the ship was airborne, a tremendous explosion rocked the far side of the school building, able to be heard even inside the drop ship. Shaker, Lao, and Kline stiffened and bowed their heads. Dorna put her head on Shaker’s shoulder and sobbed.

  JUNKED

  A Combat K Adventure

  Andy Remic

  The SLAM cruiser howled through the upper atmosphere of Ryzor, buffeted by an enraged storm. Lightning sparkling from armoured hull shells in crackles. Iron bruise clouds closed around the SLAM like a fist around a pebble, holding it tight for a frozen moment before flinging it down in a violent acceleration…

  “We’re gonna die,” moaned Franco, curled fetal in his CrashCouch, forehead touching his knees, beard rimed with droplets of sweat and vibrating vigorously. He clutched his Kekra quad-barrel machine pistol to his chest, as a mother would a weary child.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” snarled Pippa, glaring at Franco with cold eyes. The female member of this particular Combat K squad, Pippa was low on empathy and understanding, high on the twin goals of violence and destruction. “You knew we were breaching the storm, dickhead. What did you expect, sunshine?”

  “I would have preferred a scanty-clad welcome party of thong-strapped, lap-dancing beauties,” said Franco, without any hint of sarcasm. “Either that, or a good pub. Maybe a tastefully decorated brothel.” He glanced up, making eye contact with Pippa who was battling the SLAM cruiser’s controls. “Hey, actually, now we’re on the subject of sex, what about you and I . . .”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know what I was going to suggest.”

  “Yeah I do, Franco. You’re a sexual deviant, and I’ve suffered enough depraved suggestions to last any woman, whore, or gal-slacker a lifetime. Just stay in your couch, focus on the mission, and keep your paws off my arse.”

  Franco mumbled, and closed his eyes as the SLAM rattled violently, huge shudders juddering corrugated walls, buffeted by Nature. Nature was in a foul mood. She was good and ready for a spot of fisticuffs.

  “Coming in fast, Keenan. Bang goes our covert entry.”

  Keenan reclined, one army boot on the console, drawing on a home-rolled smoke filled with harsh Widow Maker tobacco. He gave a single nod, rubbed weary eyes. “They’ll not scan shit in this storm,” he drawled on an exhalation of diesel smoke. “Drop us vertical under the Beacon Scanners, an’ we’ll cruise up the river and go in light. I doubt General Zenab is hard to find; the junks will be treating the bastard like a king.”

  Combat K were elite, murderous combat squads trained by the Quad-Gal Military specializing in interrogation, infiltration, assassination and detonation. Their original game-plan had been simple: to end The Helix War, which had raged for a thousand years. However, after QGM quelled one conflict, so another had taken its place—in the form of junks, a twisted, hazardous species of deviated aliens, a toxic race intent on polluting the Quad-Gal with their infestation—and wiping out all species in the process.

  Once believed extinct, the junks had reappeared on Galhari, a quiet fringe planet, with devastating suddenness…in a flood of millions. The planet had been taken in hours, and from that foothold the junks began a galaxy-wide conquest which had, in all honesty, gone bad for Quad-Gal Military. Recently, a series of freak coincidences led to military intelligence uncovering a source of the junk’s expertise: a psychic general, capable of reading minds across the Four Galaxies and uncovering QGM’s secret plans. Named Zenab, the general was also rumored to have invented a Nano-Bomb, a microscopic detonation device which could put QGM out of the game for good. Zenab was making it possible for the junks to extend their diseased and toxic empire, and had set up camp in his Nano-Bomb Factory. Now, it was Combat K’s mission to take him out . . . before millions more died.

  “Tipping in now,” said Pippa.

  The SLAM’s engines quietened and it fell vertical, accelerating through high-altitude rage toward the smash of jungle canopy below. Like a meteorite they plummeted, the ship’s computers masking their profile and using a radioactive Doppelganger Shift to pre-empt rogue AI SAMs.

  Without incident, the SLAM reached a half klick above the rain-lashed jungle, and engines suddenly roared, energy whumping against trees and blasting a crater fifty metres wide. Every tree in the radius was shredded, instantly. The SLAM levelled out, stabilizers grunting, and settled into the crater. Engines died. Rain played drumbeats on the hull, and Franco uncurled from his CrashCouch and glared at Pippa with a teenage pout. “Not exactly what I’d call smooth,” he said.

  “Get to shit, Franco. I’d like to see you do better.�
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  “Actually, they don’t call me Franco “Ace Pilot” Haggis for nothing, chipmunk.”

  Keenan placed a hand on Pippa’s shoulder, and smiled into her blossoming wrath. Relax, said that smile. Chill. There are more important things than Franco’s attitude.

  Keenan stood, stretched, and removing his cigarette, which he stubbed into a whirring mechanical ashtray with six metal fingers which took the weed and crushed it into recyclable pulp, said, “Let’s tool up.”

  The ramp hit the blasted jungle crater, and Combat K descended, guns primed, covering one another’s arcs of fire with a practiced finesse. Pippa held a PAD computer alongside her D5 shotgun. “All clear,” she said, expert eyes reading the scanner.

  They stepped into the rain and a cool wind, and were instantly drenched. In one fist Franco carried a small black ball, which appeared to be made from rubber. It gleamed in the rain.

  They crossed the crater, climbed slick mud sides, and moved efficiently into the jungle, a well-oiled military machine, with Keenan walking point, Pippa scanning central, and Franco, complaining as usual in a mumbling mutter, bringing up the rear. He had three D5 shotguns on his back, a military porcupine, a Kekra quad-barrel in one fist, and a Bausch & Harris sniper rifle strapped to his pack. As was usual, Franco was terribly over-tooled for the mission—but he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d been in a savage fire-fight once and run out of ammo; it hadn’t been a pleasant experience, and Franco spent many long hours, drunk, regaling people with an exaggeration of the tale.

  The trees were eerie, silent. The rain danced. A strong aroma of rotting vegetation flooded the jungle like toxic gas.

  It was too . . . still. Just too damn lifeless.