We Never Even Spoke. (341 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by worm (View user info) at 2004-09-16 14:10:39 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
I hate the Army like a diabetic hates cake; the frosting is thick and ornate, but submitting to the temptation is as frightening as it is dangerous.
I hate the moon.
I hate the moon for harboring the Granes. I hate the Army for putting me here and repeatedly pitting me against them. I hate weapons, and liquid food, and complete silence. I hate watching my friends die. As much as I may regret it, I signed on the dotted line. I gave them my word and, come what may, I'll see it through.
Three months have gone by now. I mostly sit around the base until I get called for my weekly search and destroy mission, where I go fry some aliens and come back in time to resume my exercise in indolence. I have survived longer than any other private here so they promoted me directly to sergeant.
They gave me some recruits for this week's mission.
Patrols consist of three men: a scout, a striker, and artillery. They gave me a Russian and a Spaniard, both greener than a springtime sod farm. As the leader of the squad, it was up to me to make assignments.
I'm the only one who has ever used plasma, so that puts me at artillery.
Scout is usually taken by the rookie because it's the easiest.
And the most dangerous.
The Russian enlisted a day after the Spaniard, so he got the nod. The Spaniard was left with Striker.
Back at base, I gave them each a sidearm along with their role-gear. Antonio got an M-32. Pavel got a propulsion pack with an onboard Emergency Radio. I took two gallons of plasma and the cannon. The Suits back home stopped giving us specific missions a long time ago, but they require weekly patrols for each soldier. They keep us well fed and are generous with supplies, so we do as we're told.
I picked a direction at random and sent the route to HQ in Paris. After filling my cannon and making sure the rooks were strapped up, we stepped down into the silence of the lunar desert.
As implied in the name, the use of the Emergency Radio was for emergencies only. If a call was made, evacuation would have to be at a sprint. Radio waves on the surface beckon Granes by the dozen. I have witnessed one such orgy of chaos before, and I don´t care to recount it.
To prevent such catastrophes from happening, the Army has taught each soldier to use sign language. They have also made the ingenious move of giving us two handed weapons, so most communications had to be made before exiting the Safe Zone.
While our weapons were still packed away, I reminded my squad of their roles and of battle procedures. We would return with no less than three Granes heads and exactly three soldiers. Their nods came slowly, matching the sluggish pace of our feet.
I hated this stage of the mission more than anything. Without the security of the base or the adrenaline of the fight, one is left to dwell in the ever-thickening silence. Such a purgatory is as draining as it is oppressive.
The silence becomes deafening.
On top my own personal anxieties, I have the lives of two greenhorns resting squarely in my hands. Put all these together and you get the sweat on my brow, the trembling in my fingers, and a terrible urge to reach for my cannon.
The fear in my fellow soldiers exceeded my own. Their faces sank sharply when I motioned for Pavel to push ahead, pointing to where he should plant the bait. He swallowed hard and strode ahead the thirty yards required for a safe plasma shot.
Removing the pack from his back, he placed it on the ground and made three pulses. As soon as he finished, he leapt atop the pack and threw his fist into the eject button. The pack pushed him up a good hundred yards.
The Granes would come while he was suspended.
Antonio readied his rifle and dropped to one knee. I shouldered the cannon and waited for the trembling to produce our prey.
The ground beneath us shook violently as the beast broke through the surface. As we had hoped, he went too far, snapping at the emptiness where Pavel once stood. The Granes was now floating helplessly several yards above the surface. Before it could drift the ground, Antonio deftly shot out his eyes. While retching in pain, I put a ball of plasma through the middle of the worm. Lifeless and utterly defeated, the corpse fell slowly into the dust below.
Several seconds later, Pavel landed on top of the mess of fluids, scales, and cartilage. He laughed hysterically at the blood on his boots as he cut off the head and showed it to us, beaming with pride.
¨We did it! ¨
We sure did, Pav.
We walked another two hundred yards before sending Pavel out again.
The Russian juggled the propulsion pack gleefully as he skipped ahead of us. When he arrived, he gave us an exaggerated salute, planted the pack on the ground, and hit the button-
The Emergency Radio button.
Strings of red lights illuminated across the pack, and the operator's voice cackled through our headsets.
Pavel froze in terror as the tremors pushed his feet from the ground. He cut the signal before hurling the pack in our direction.
He was taken before he could run. One took his torso, another got his legs. His head and arms were tossed vertically before falling back to anxious mouths. After taking a few snaps at each other, the worms collected themselves and turned their attention to us.
They came like a horizontal waterfall, pouring one over the other in a mess of mouths, dust, and endless strings of scales.
Antonio and I chased our airborne lifeline with desperation. The Eject button functions in any direction; we could use it to try to outrun our pursuers.
The Granes were nearly upon us when our sprint-hopping brought us to our savior.
I arrived first and threw it across my back. Antonio missed a step and fell to the surface. The temptation to leave him was heavy, but I had already lost one.
I would not return alone.
I turned around, grabbed him by the arm and threw him across my body. Just as I turned my back to the Granes, he wrapped his free arm around my body and hit the eject button.
When we fell back to the surface, the adrenaline and vertigo had stripped me of my senses and we crashed into the dust in a mess of limbs and equipment. The tumble left me with two broken vertebrae in my neck. I was unable to take my chin off my chest.
Antonio recognized my injury quickly and began puppeteering my body. He moved me into a seated position where I was facing the Granes and gave me my cannon. I felt my head being gently brought back until it rested on his sternum so I could see what I was shooting. He was kneeling behind me with his weapon positioned just above mine.
We unloaded on the advancing horde, but rage and Rambo tactics were not enough. One dead, two wounded.
With no time to reload, our options were limited. One of us was badly wounded, unable to take another ejection. The other did not know the way back.
We would meet our fate together.
Antonio turned our radio beacons off and went for the propulsion pack, violently tearing it off my back. Then he took my cannon. My stomach turned and my facial muscles twitched uncontrollably. Rage swept over my body in an awesome wave. The phrase that caused my anger was the same one that kept me motionless as my hollow eyes panned the approaching Granes in utter disbelief.
¨He's leaving me here.¨
Just then, a string of red lights flew over my head with incredible velocity.
One of the Granes snatched the pack from the air and swallowed it.
It was still transmitting.
Their confusion, proximity, and lust for waves sent the group into a frenzy, feeding on whoever carried the transmitter, then swallowing it themselves. Even after the pack was destroyed, the violence continued. In the end, only one remained. He was the biggest of the group, but was badly wounded. All efforts to reburrow were fruitless. Death came to him slowly.
Antonio dropped the still-hot cannon and fell to his knees to comfort me.
Two grown men cried that day. Their embrace was soured only by the pins and needles in my neck.
After signing the directions to the base to my weeping comrade, my vision went black. The only witnesses to what followed were the shimmering stars that had been watching over us since we left the base earlier that evening.
I was carried to safety on the back of a hero.
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