SNAFU: Future Warfare

Scout Mission Jack Hillman

“All right, you apes. Lock and load.” Gunny's voice rasped in my right ear over the comm link. “LZ in thirty seconds. Let's hit the dirt running for a change.”

I checked the magazine on my weapon and flipped on the laser sight, not that I expected to be using it much. The comm was working, proved by mumbled comments from the rest of the squad coming through in a low rumble. I ran a quick check of the pouches on my belt and vest, checking extra ammo, explosives and backup weapons. I was as ready as the next guy. Unfortunately, I was at the end of the line and there was no next guy.

The sled hit atmosphere at an angle and quickly dropped to come in low over the hilltops, brushing the feathery vegetation and avoiding the anti-ack fire and scanners. By the time we down, a clearing had been scorched out of the valley by our antipersonnel lasers, and wisps of smoke whipped away as the sled grounded. The sides lifted in their gull-wing sequence and all ten of us rolled out at once and scattered to the edges of the clearing. Five seconds after grounding, the sled lifted up, headed for high atmosphere and its spot as our observation post and comm relay, watching our backs.

We were still scanning the brush for enemy warriors when the flash and concussion of the explosion made us look up. Pieces of sled rained down over several hundred square meters.

“Shit, we're in it now,” I heard over the comm in an echo of my own thoughts.

“All right, assholes, move out. James take the point. Harris, you got the back door.” Gunny swept the clearing with a hard look, knowing what we were all thinking. “First the mission, then we go home,” Gunny stated.

The squad moved out with our observer, Lt Randolph, tucked between two troopers, as if it would keep him any safer. Randolph was nominally in charge due to his rank, but we all looked to Gunny for our orders. I watched the squad move out and waited my turn at the end of the line.

“Richards, get moving,” Gunny called out over the link.

I looked at Richards, crouched to scan the brush. He didn't move. Gunny went over and carefully tapped him on the shoulder — you never knew what a new grunt would do his first time out in combat.

Richards just fell over and I could see the viper thorns stuck in his thigh. Gunny and I looked at each other for a moment. Then he pulled the tags from the body and set the timer on the disposal charges. He followed the line of troopers down the trail, me on his heels. We were out of sight of the clearing when the blast of heat bounced off the hillside, reducing Richards and his equipment to ash on the wind.

One down.

We traveled for better than an hour before Gunny called a break. Three times Cutter had to lop the heads off cane snakes as they reached down for James. Twice I dropped a minibomb down the dome holes of fire beetles, plugging the horde inside after the scouts entered to report our presence. If those one-inch bugs boiled out of their nest, they would devour anything that fought back. Digging in through the exposed face and hands, the creatures could strip a man to his armor in less than a minute, leaving not even bones to mark the death, as they consumed anything organic.

Once Billings slapped the observer's hand away from a lace orchid. He motioned Randolph to watch as he touched the end of a cigarette he pulled from his pocket to the lovely blossom. You could hear the hiss of acid as the tobacco dissolved, feeding its nutrients to the flower. Billings tossed the butt into the center of the blossom to feed the lovely bloom and they both watched the remains dissolve. It was just another reminder this wasn't Earth, and more than just the natives were unfriendly.

As we sat around in the brush, in sight of each other and watching behind our neighbors as we caught our breath, Gunny went through the specs again with the observer.

“Okay, here's how it goes,” Gunny said to us when he was done with Randolph. “We approach the Thorn site, get Lieutenant Randolph here close enough to use his fancy toys, get the intelligence, and then head for the backup LZ. OPs know we're out here with our asses in the wind but they want what Randolph will give them so they will have a pickup arranged.” He stared us all down, quashing any objections. “Once we make contact with the site, we button down. No unnecessary noise or movement. They may be Thorns, but they still have surveillance equipment as good as ours. With any luck, we get Randolph back and we don't have to do this shit anymore.” We all looked at each other and laughed quietly. “Okay, okay. I don't believe it either,” Gunny added. “But that's the line from the brass. Harris, you take point this time since you've seen one of these sites before. Let's get moving people.”

We started off through the brush, carefully avoiding anything that looked like a trail. I kept my eyes open, knowing we were fighting the jungle as well as the Thorns. It had been like this of late: Thorns flew over one of our planets and seeded the atmosphere with their life forms. We dropped in and tried to contain the infection before it got out of hand. Only on this planet, the Thorns had knocked out the communications first, giving them better than a year to get set up and build their ‘homestead’. The first we poor humans knew of the invasion was when a supply ship dropped into orbit and barely made it back out again after lasers took out their landing shuttle. Six months it had taken the supply ship to limp back to base on one rocket and a prayer.

Now our team was supposed to find a way to stop the Thorns. That was just our name for them. Their own name was more like Kruk't Kr'n T'Or' Urnz, which translated roughly as ‘Brothers To All Growing Things’, or some such crap. Which was, of course, why we called them Thorns. We were in a war for all the prime oxygen-based real estate at this end of the galaxy, and right now, the Thorns were winning this planet by the simple method of planting seeds. Considering they were more than part plant, it made sense. Trying to talk to them in diplomatic terms had about as much success as convincing your front lawn not to grow more than four inches high. You still had to mow them down every once in a while. But this lawn fought back.

A scream cut through the jungle sounds. I crouched and froze, scanning the brush in front for Thorns before I looked over my shoulder. Cutter and Jonesy were behind me scanning left and right. Nothing showed. It wasn't a diversion… this time.

Thirty meters back, Gunny was carefully lifting the edge of a mat of leaves and twigs. Two huge eyes showed briefly before James emptied a clip into the toad inside the hole. The toad was one of the Thorns favorite predators and had all the worst qualities of a snake's poisonous fangs and a toad's long tongue. The quiet rattle of the suppressed weapon barely ruffled the silence of the forest. The stench as the toad exploded, stung my eyes and wormed its way into my gut, making me gag, but the smell would keep other predators away for a while. We couldn't leave that creature behind us. They ran in loose packs and anyone that found enough food for more than itself would call others together to hunt their prey. Gunny reached in to snag a set of tags. I looked around to see who was missing and couldn't find Brock.

Two down.

Gunny motioned to me and I started off again, everyone paying extra attention to the jungle. It was quiet for the next hour… if you didn’t count snakes, venomous insects, carnivorous plants and an occasional animal predator that took one look at us and slipped quietly into the brush. When we came to the ridge near the Thorn center I halted the squad and moved up alone.

There was a small, blue-flowered plant growing near every Thorn sensor that released a cloud of acrid gas if disturbed. It was a dead giveaway for the location of the sensors but required a special touch to keep from setting them off. I disabled the sensors along that section of the ridge with inert caps and moved forward. Somewhere on a Thorn control board, sensors were repeating their last five minutes of readings in an infinite loop I hoped the Thorns wouldn't notice.

When we reached the edge of the compound, we circled around Randolph, just outside the edge of the clearing, and let him do his thing. Sensors built into his vest and pack gave in-depth readings of the Thorn control center and whatever it was it pumped out. We needed to know how they controlled the growth of their plants, their creatures in order to make our defenses more efficient. This whole setup was a Garden of Eden to homesteading Thorns. I guess they liked their flowers with a bite. But to the humans that had been here, it was death.

The earth-colored dome before us was almost hidden beneath the riotous growth of the forest. Something moved on its surface. It was as if the dome itself was alive, with skin that rippled in the afternoon breeze. The jungle itself seemed to be one movable segment of life after another. To the Thorns, even the buildings were alive, it seemed.

“Sergeant Gunderson,” Randolph said quietly. “I have what I need. Let's get out of here.”

Gunny tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out our direction. I moved out to disable the sensors along the route. We had moved about a hundred meters when James pushed aside a huge elephant-ear leaf and stepped directly on a sensor I hadn't seen. The cloud of gas wrapped around him like an attacking snake, filling his lungs with acid and spores. James had time for one gargle then collapsed. I didn't need to check to know his lungs and airways would be filled with tight rootlets, growing at fantastic speed, choking him as they ate into his body.

Gunny grabbed his tags and set the timer on the d-charge. “Let's move it.”

I gave up working on the sensors. The Thorns knew we were here now. I set a path to avoid the patches of blue, knowing the flowers could be discharged by remote control. Behind us the keening wail of a Thorn alarm sounded then the whine of a combat sled as scouts gave chase. Gunny must have had some built in time-lapse computer because the sled followed our path and stopped over James' body just as the charge let go. The blast of heat flipped the sled and ignited the fuel cell and ammo in one giant explosion. The jungle was silent for a moment before erupting in squeals and squalls as animals and insects prepared for battle. Now we had the whole jungle against us.

“Move it, Harris,” Gunny yelled and we fled through the jungle as fast as we could travel.

There was a danger moving this fast through Thorn jungle, but the need to get Randolph and his info back to Intelligence made the risk acceptable, according to HQ standards. Without a trail to follow, the sleds couldn't reach us through the canopy of the forest. Any sled trying to slip down through the trees would face the same danger from the local lifeforms as we did on the ground. Only there were a lot of things living up in the trees that were small and deadly, as opposed to the large and deadly things living on the ground. You take your pick, I suppose.

Gunny had us set off the electronic scramblers in our gear so the Thorns couldn't track us by the magnetic fields of our bodies, which differed markedly from their own. The hunters would now be limited to sight and ground traces, giving us a fair chance of reaching the backup LZ.

“Split by twos,” Gunny whispered over the comm. “Disguise your trail and direction. Make it look like there's a battalion of us in here. Then meet up at the LZ in three hours.”

According to my heads-up display, that didn’t give us much time to travel that far, but we had to make it if we were going to get out before Thorn reinforcements arrived. A site like the one we had just found normally had an eight-personnel unit. Two of them went up with the sled, leaving six. There would be two more teams coming after us with the last pair staying behind to guard the center.

Those two teams following us would be on the ground. With any luck, they would follow the two teams that left trails while Gunny hid his footprints and got Randolph back with the intel. We got to play decoys. Fun. The Thorns couldn't just take sleds and sit over our probable LZ sites since we could take them out with rockets the same way they had nailed our transport.

“Harris, you take Billings and go left,” Gunny instructed. “Cutter, you and Jonesy go right. Make it good and I'm buying the first round when we hit base.” He nodded and we lit out, leaving Randolph and the other newbie, Johnson, with the Sarge.

Billings and I had worked together several times and knew the routine. We went side-by-side with enough room to move and fire, and avoided anything that looked like it was too open or too cluttered with brush. Too open usually meant a trap of some sort and too cluttered gave the little nasties too much room to hide. So we wove between trees and around rocks and tried our best not to make more noise than we had to. We moved for about an hour with nothing more than various animal nasties crossing our trail.

I spotted the hole of the fire beetles almost the same time we heard the Thorns behind us. Their stilted legs made a distinctive noise as they made their way through the forest, almost like they were letting the animals know they were coming and to warn them to get out of the way.

I set a minibomb next to the hole, where it would toss the nest into the air instead of closing it down, and motioned Billings to move ahead as I rigged the detonator. I waited behind a tree for the Thorns to show. They would be following our trail and would see the same signs we did.

The two Thorns moved into the open, too far away to shoot but close enough to see. In the dappled sunlight, they gleamed dark green with chlorophyll. They were soldier breeds, with the long stilted legs that could lift them fifteen feet into the air to see above short trees or heavy brush, and bodies covered with overlapping scales like armor. Their true-arms were pushed forward on a cylindrical body and had double opposable thumbs, one on each side of the hands. Their heads were inverted, truncated, five-sided pyramids sitting on a short flexible neck with four eyes, one on each side of the pyramid. To get binocular vision with depth perception, they looked past one corner of the pyramid to bring two eyes into focus. They literally had eyes in the backs of their heads. The overall effect was a six-legged spider with a short post on the front end and two grasping members in front. I hated spiders.

The Thorns were professionals, just like we were. They stayed too far apart for us to take them both out at once, moving carefully from tree to tree for cover, so I motioned to Billings and gave him the signal to take the one on the right after I popped the one on the left. He nodded and we waited.

As the Thorn on the left reached the spot where the fire beetles had their nest, it began to move past it just as I had. But I gave it a surprise as I triggered the minibomb and showered the Thorn with very angry fire beetles. While it was moving to brush the insects form its carapace before they found a way between the joints, it moved out of cover for just a moment too long and I fired a short burst of armor piercing rounds straight into its side. The shot hit home, destroying the neural junction as all six legs folded and it collapsed, leaving it unable to move but very much alive. I wasted no time pumping the rest of the clip into the pyramid to disrupt its neural center and make the rest of the body overload. Sort of like giving it a jolt of electricity in all the right places.

I ducked as a stray round from the second Thorn blew bark off the tree next to my head. Billings had done his job as well, and the second Thorn was flat and still. I keyed the comm for Gunny.

“Two down, two to go,” I messaged.

I waited for Gunny's reply or even the clicks that said he was under observation but heard me. Nothing. I looked over at Billings, listening on his own com, and we headed for where Gunny, Johnson and Randolph should be — to hell with the Thorns.

We traveled fast, knowing time was more important than silence at this point. If the others had been in a fire-fight, we wouldn't have known as the Thorn's weapons were as quiet as our own. But I had a bad feeling and I had learned to listen to my gut.

I almost missed them as we headed for the LZ. Randolph was propped up against the scaly bark of a snake tree with a round from a Thorn rifle making a strange third eye in his forehead. He must have taken off his helmet to wipe away the sweat at just the wrong time.

Johnson was in the space between two trees, his arms wrapped around the spiny carapace of a Thorn — daggers of chitin had shredded his body but he’d bisected the head of the Thorn with a brush knife as he’d died. For a newbie he’d done a pretty good, finishing the one that got him. I pulled his tags but waited to find Gunny before I set the charge.

Gunny had crawled into a shallow depression that let him see what was coming before it could see him. The Thorn rounds had stitched up the left side of his body and ripped off most of his left arm. The pressure closures in the camosuit had closed off but he had lost a lot of blood through the body punctures. He had fired off the clip in his weapon and had collapsed unconscious trying to load the new clip one-handed. I carefully took the weapon out of his grip and slipped home the clip. Gunny's eyes snapped open and his hand clenched around the stock in reflex before he realized who we were.

“Randolph?” Gunny asked weakly.

I shook my head and Gunny closed his eyes in pain at more than just his wounds. “Is the equipment intact?”

When I nodded he smiled, a feral grin that would have looked good on a wolf.

“Pick him up and take him to the LZ. The techs back at HQ can get what they want from the corpse.” He looked up into my eyes. “Give me the remote on Johnson's charges and his weapon, and leave the extra radio. You have one Thorn ahead of you who didn't know he got what he came for. And a whole lot of Thorns behind you in less than an hour when the reinforcements show up from the next compound. I'll slow down the ones behind you.” He grabbed my arm. “Make it count, Corporal.”

“No problem, Sarge,” I said quietly. “You give 'em hell.” We both knew there would be no pick-up from this one for him. The stuff in Randolph's gear was worth more than just our platoon. Anyone not at the landing zone would be left behind. I moved away while Billings handed the Sarge the stuff he wanted. Gunny handed Billings his own tags and the others he had pulled from our first three casualties so we could keep the numbers straight for the ghouls at Records who kept track of such things. God forbid we should miss a casualty count at the command center. Then Gunny handed me a twenty-credit slip.

“Whoever gets back, the first round’s on me,” he said, looking me in the eye.

I nodded and took the slip.

Billings and I headed for the LZ, me carrying the dead weight of Randolph. I popped a bennie — something I seldom did — because I knew this was worth the reaction the drug would give me. I needed the extra strength at the moment and my camo gear wasn't augmented for strength like some of the newer units.

“Cutter. Jonesy. You read?” I called over the comm.

“Roger,” Jonesy came back. “Two away from the LZ.”

“Keep your eyes open for a Thorn on your tail. Gunny is down and covering our rear. We'll have company in less than twenty.”

There was dead air for a moment as the two troopers digested my message and what it implied.

“Roger that. How long till you get here?”

“Be there in fifteen,” I answered. “Wait ten and set the marker. We should get there just as our ride lands.”

“Don't be late,” was the only reply. “Out.”

I kept moving, trying to keep Billings in view and watch my half of the trail at the same time. Of course, that wasn't possible and I felt something hit the top of Randolph's body like a hammer, knocking me to the ground, just before Billings swore and flipped a cane snake away with his knife. The head of the snake came off neatly with Billings' movement, just like in the training films. I guess Randolph wouldn't feel the cold burn of the snake's venom, but I could see the skin around the neck start to loosen as the bones inside began to dissolve. In about an hour, I would be holding a skin bag filled with liquid meat that a snake could swallow very easily. I hoped the equipment in the vest was watertight.

The bennie gave me the strength I needed to reach the LZ. As Billings and I reached the edge of the clearing early, we got a wave from Cutter on the far side. He held up two fingers and I nodded. I motioned to Billings to move left as I set down the limp body of Randolph. We didn't want any surprises. The smell of the defoliants Cutter had used to clear the circle was sickeningly sweet in the hot air.

The explosion in the distance behind me was a jolt and I ducked by reflex until I realized Gunny had just put a hole in our follow up reception. I said a quick one for a good trooper and kept my eyes on the forest, waiting for the sound of the sleds. The second explosion from behind reminded me Gunny had two charges to work with. Smart man, that Sarge. The radio we left began to squawk with unintelligible gibberish as the automatic sender kicked in. The Thorns wouldn't know if it was code or whatever and had to lose time trying to find it. Gunny had bought us more time.

I heard the ping of the transponder in the landing sled over the comm as they began their run and also heard a distinctive answering tone from two different assault craft that came to give cover. HQ must have wanted the info in Randolph's gear real bad to scramble three units on a pickup. We started to move, ready to dash for the sled when it hit dirt. I didn't want that sled on the ground any longer than necessary. It was too big a target.

Just as we stepped to the edge of the clearing, Jonesy flopped out of the brush and slammed face-first onto the ground. The hole in the back of his neck was a clear sign of what got him. We dove for cover when the Thorn raised itself on six multi-jointed legs to spray the area with its weapon.

Billings popped up for one quick burst and took a hit in the torso. But the distraction gave Cutter time to fire on the sniper, to blow the nerve junction and collapse the Thorn to the ground. Cutter moved closer and snapped shots at the muscular arms on the front of the Thorn’s body, clipping its weapon away. Cutter carefully reloaded and literally cut the Thorn's head off with a burst of armor-piercing rounds at close range. Then he walked over to Jonesy, pulled off his tags and grabbed the remote on the d-charges.

“You okay?” I asked Billings.

“I ain't staying here,” he answered, and I knew he could get into the sled on his own.

The sled came in right on schedule and the gull-wing doors opened to take on nine troopers and a spook. The three of us slid in and I strapped the lieutenant's softening corpse into a seat next to me as the sled lifted. Billings was leaning back, using the straps to hold a compress on an oozing spot of blood, as the sled lifted, doors closing as we rose. I let him go for now, until we were clear of atmosphere and could unstrap in safety. I looked out the window across from Cutter, saw the same thing he did, and we both froze. Apparently the back-up teams had made better time than Gunny thought they could. Three Thorns stepped into the clearing and raised tubes for rocket launchers to take out our sled.

“Get 'em, Jonesy,” Cutter said and pushed the button on the remote.

Jonesy's d-charges went up with enough force to pump us another ten meters into the air and the three Thorns disappeared in a flash of fire.

“How many extra bombs did you leave with him?” I asked as I looked at the burning foliage.

“I only had ten left,” Cutter said. He looked over at me. “Too much, do you think?”

“Nope,” I answered. “Just right.” I sat back to enjoy the trip. The hammering of the assault craft as they took out any additional rockets that came after us was almost a lullaby as we left atmosphere for the jaunt to the next planet.

Billings never finished the trip. At least he got a burial rather than a burn to ash.

The Intelligence spooks at base came aboard and grabbed Randolph before we even had a chance to unstrap. Cutter and I took Billings to the morgue and collected his tags before we went to see Captain Roberts. He listened to our debriefing and took the tags from the eight we had lost without a word. When I finished the rundown, he looked up at the two of us.

“Good job, men,” the captain said. “I just hope losing Gunny was worth whatever we got from Randolph. Grab some sleep and head for the quartermaster in the morning to restock. The Thorns hit another colony of ours at Eriandi and the spook division has a new weapon they want to try out. We're putting together a squad of our best recon men and you two just got elected. You leave in two days and the trip will take a month, so you can rest up on the way. Dismissed.” He returned to his paperwork.

Cutter and I stepped out of the captain's office and into the dusty street. I looked up at the steel-grey sky and wondered if the sky over Kansas was still so blue it hurt to look at it. I wanted a chance to find out one of these days.

“You buyin'?” Cutter asked.

“First Gunny. Then me. Then it's your turn.”

We turned toward the bar to get something to clear the dust from our throats and drink to friends departed. It made more sense than thinking about being back in the jungle so soon after almost buying the farm. Just like the Army to send us right back in, since we were still functional. And expendable.

Some things never change, I thought as I hoisted my first drink in salute to Gunny.