"Run Through the Jungle"

by Lennox Ó'Súilleabháin

“Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Can hear plenty screams of the dying on the radio.”

- Interstellar Marine Corps proverb

“Rise and shine, lads! The twin suns ain’t gettin’ any lower! Syndies waiting.”

Private Nemel Grayson’s eyes blinked open from a dicey sleep. Stirred out of dream by the bellow of Sergeant Rainier Hachat as he beat two kettles together. The conjoined sounds echoed throughout the polymer walls of the prefab barracks, and Nemel’s eardrums.

“The suns only gettin’ higher and so are the Syndies, strutting about the jungle on the prowl, wake up! Captain needs y’all combat ready and outside, on the double!” Sergeant Hachat shouted as he went up and down the length of stacked cots, men and women jumping to attention in his wake. “Today,” He continued, a wicked smile splitting his scarred features, “We’re going hunting.”

Some soldiers swayed out of bed, their gaze drooped and languid. It was a difficult task sleeping at Camp Gladius with the roar of VTOL jet-engines shaking a man down to his bones morning and night, non-stop.  Many in Nemel’s platoon took to drugging themselves on local herbs, when they could procure them, to sleep. It had not appealed much to Nemel who found the sounds, in a strange way, comforting. The constant thunder and shudder  reminded him of his childhood in the shadow of one of the space elevators that dotted his homeworld. It was better in here than out there, but even that cesspit seemed better than here.

Although not the first ready and out the door, Nemel was confident he’d not be the last. Donning his combat vest he began to check over the various pouches, satchels, and slings that adorned his field uniform, reciting a litany of sorts to keep track of everything he’d need. Satisfied, Nemel unpacked his rifle, oiled and cleaned the night before, along with his helmet from the footlocker at the base of his cot. Making sure the weapon was still set on safe he loaded in a fresh magazine before he began to trot down the line of cots, falling in step with fellow soldiers, towards the barrack’s main exit.

The soft light of dawn washed over Nemel as he stepped from the harsh artificial light of the barracks, and into the bustle of Camp Gladius. All around soldiers from his company were gathering in rank outside the line of prefab structures, everyone dressed for battle. To Nemel it looked as though the whole company was gathered. Across from them a line of fourteen boxy Warlock VTOLs sat, their engines growling as their crews prepped for deployment.  Nemel scratched the growing stubble on his burnt cheek as he wondered what the hubbub was all about.

Falling into line Nemel stood to the right of his squad leader, Sergeant Tar Lang. Nemel’s head faced forward, but his eyes wandered about. His original observation was correct, the entire company was out in force. This struck Nemel as odd, when they went out for patrol it was only ever in platoons. This was a full scale operation.

“Attention!”

Nemel’s eyes swung back at Hachat’s order. The burly platoon sergeant stepped aside allowing Captain Claudia Karoft, commanding officer of C-Company, to enter view. A rifle hung by a harness on her shoulder.

“At ease.” The order was followed by a collective sigh of relief, of the visual rather than audible variety. “Orders have come down from division headquarters, our intel has confirmed the Republican Guard are massing a breaththrough attempt on and over the Ghindese Range.” Captain Karoft’s tight eyes surveyed her soldiers, Nemel along with the many other soldiers who feared and respected her glanced down as her gaze came over them. She continued her briefing, “All available personnel have been ordered to intercept. We, however,” The captain raised her finger, “Are not available.” She closed her hand and slapped it to her palm, the tight eyes almost gleaming. “We’ve been instructed to intercept several vital Syndicalist cells preparing to strike our force’s rear during the offensive. After, we regroup with our division in the main engagement. You’re lieutenants and sergeants have already been debriefed. Defer to them, we are to load up and deploy now.”

“Yes, sir!” The whole company saluted the captain, their arms flying out and back with the palm aimed outward. A sign of unity, a sign of valor.

Sergeant Lang bellowed at his line and Nemel fell in with his squadmates as they trotted on Lang’s heel. Before them a Warlock waited with its side doors wide open. The seven other men and four women piled into the back crew compartment, the compartment’s crew member checking over their harnesses as they strapped into the front and back facing seats. Last in was Lang, and the VTOL lifted off its wheeled legs. Ascending into the air the helmeted and visor-ed crew member closed the side doors with a flick of a switch, and took his seat in front of a console next to the pilot’s box on the right prow. Once the craft was hundreds of meters in the air the jets tilted their exhausts back and the craft propelled forward.

Through the growing light of the morning Nemel saw as they passed over the exterior wall of gabions, the area surrounding Camp Gladius giving way to nearly a kilometer of burnt up wasteland. At the edge of the clearing Nemel saw the line where they had burnt back the jungle with flamethrowers. There the trees and overgrowth already crept back to reclaim the burnt soil. The jungle was pernicious, always skulking back to the land it saw as its own.

#

Feeling the light drip over his lidded eyes Sci Karn awoke to the morning sun shafting through the canopy out beyond the grotto. Pushing himself up from the cold stone he witnessed the others in his cohort were already up and going about their preparations in silence. Using his rifle as a crutch Sci pushed himself to his feet, and limped from the rear of the grotto. As he passed the head statue that occupied the grotto’s center he ran his fingers over the smooth surface.

The strange stone heads were found all across the northern hemisphere in caves and grottoes similar to this one. Withdrawing a small leather-bound notebook and pen from one of the few intact pockets on his clothes Sci went about sketching the head he saw before him, taking in its surreal majesty. The head the stood sentinel over the cohort while they slept had an exaggerated hooked nose, pointed chin, adorned with a sort of pythagorean cap that flopped forward, and sporting a menacing grin. Its surface was covered in swirling patterns. All together it gave the statue the look of a sinister crescent.

Sci had been enamored by the statues since his childhood and had taken note of all the different kinds he’d seen since he left his village. As of the night before his notebook contain sixty-three different sketches. All he’d learned about them was they were centuries old, built by some of the first colonists to the world, and no two were alike.

A hoarse cough broke Sci’s concentration.

Removing himself from the strange effigy Sci joined a trio of his comrades crouched around a burning kerosene stove near the grotto’s entrance: Keelo, Avai, and T’entelle. Atop the stove a pot boiled with breakfast, the aroma thick with the reek of garlic. Taking a tin from Keelo he struggled onto his haunches. Memories of pain forced a grimace to his face, the others said nothing. They were not indifferent to Sci’s pain, they were all burdened in their own ways.

Breakfast was eaten in silence, interrupted by the occasional rasping cough from outside in the jungle’s thicket.

Sci and his comrades stayed like this for about ten minutes as the other members of the cohort went about their own business until their de facto leader stepped from the jungle into the grotto, his hoarse cough echoing around them. Den Haren was the only member of the cohort with any kind of military experience, a veteran of a war on a world light years away.

“We’re on the move.” Haren rasped as he dabbed a dirty rag to his mouth.

There was a shuffle of movement as weapons were lifted, packs shouldered, and the cohort moved out. The crescent statue watching their departure, ready to greet its next visitors with its sharp grin.

#

“What the hell does the moon got to do with this?” Private Neil Bedford shouted over the continuous growl of the Warlock’s quad-engines.

“Moon-base. I said moonbase.” Sergeant Lang shouted back, exaggerating his mouth movements to get the words across. “The listening station on the moonbase intercepted the Syndies encrypted radio chatter, and deciphered it. That’s how we found out about this rear action.”

“Two minutes to landing.” The cabin crew member shouted as he turned from his console.

“How’d they do that?” Private Kii Werner questioned from across the shuttering cabin. “Decipher their encryption that is.” She murmured the sentence as she cradled the machine gun that rested in her across lap. Turning her gaze down the cybernetic bar of optics where her eyes once were regarded the weapon in her hands, or perhaps just the floor.

“I hear they caught a cruiser trying to run orbit.” Corporal Ken Packen responded, “Specfors boarded, and took the whole crew out before they could scuttle the AI.” He aimed a finger gun across the aisle at Private Bedford, pretending to pop a shot at his head. “Got a friend in Intelligence who keeps me in the know, you know?”

Neil rolled his eyes, “It be the only Intelligence you did show, Ken.”

The cabin burst into laughter that was mostly drown out by the engines, even the Sergeant cracked a brief grin.

“Sixty seconds!”

“Enough bullshit. Lock and load, everyone!” Sergeant Lang shouted as he stood up. The cabin doors whirring as they slid open.

Nemel held his hand up to block the sunlight from his eyes. His breath was shallow as the jungle rushed up to meet them.

#

They heard the Warlocks before they could see them. Over a dozen Warlocks all making landfall unloading holds of troops. A motorcycle outrider had spotted their general landing approximately four klicks east around a still occupied homestead.

Den Haren took the news in silence, thumbing an old cartridge between his worn fingers. Sci knew they had not expected opposition for another day or two, especially not an enemy landing so near their position.

Leaning his lower back against a low hanging branch Sci hummed to himself, tapping his hands on the wood in time to the song.

“What do you think we’ll do?” Keelo asked as he rested on the branch next to him, causing it to sway.

“I don’t know.” Sci answered, ending his quiet hum.

“We were supposed to catch them exposed.”

“I know.”

Keelo was silent for a long minute.

“I’m ready.” He finally said.

“As am I.” Sci looked him in the eyes with the hint of a morbid smile to his lips.

“Gather up!” The shout was punctuated with a harsh cough. “We’re moving forward as planned, we’ll deal with the invaders as we reach them. Fan out in your teams, and stick low.”

With the last of Haren’s words Sci and Keelo nodded to each other, and made their way to their preassigned teams. Through the jungle they stalked, eyes forward and footfall careful to catch their prey unawares.

#

The homestead had been taken without a shot fired. The handful of residences had surrendered and allowed to leave by the Captain. This did not rub many in the company the right way as the only people there had been the young and elderly, meaning their men and women were away.

C-Company established its forward operating base within the homestead’s main house, a white plaster two storey building topped in a clay tiled roof. Captain Karoft then sent half the company to work fortifying the other buildings and walls of the homestead. In the meantime, the other half, including Sergeant Lang’s squad, set out to patrol the surrounding jungle for signs of Syndicalist activity.

They’d be out for an hour already as the suns rose up in the canopy, hours away still from their zenith. The world’s strange scale of time was something Nemel still hadn’t gotten use to as each day lasted thirty hours. There were planned schedules of sleep for every soldier to better help them adjust, but these fell apart quickly when out in the field for even a day.

Sweat trickled down Nemel’s forehead as the days humidity flared in concert with the twin suns’ blazing light. The micro-fibre of his uniform was designed to breathe comfortably in any environment, but as with most of their equipment the reality fell short of the sales pitch. Marching on the patrols outer left he stepped carefully over branches and bushes that made movement difficult. It was as he straddled the massive and gnarled root of some alien tree a flash of movement caught the corner of his left eye.

Turning in alarm Nemel leveled his rifle in the direction of the disturbance, his heart racing.

Corporal Packen came up behind him to ask, “What’s wrong?”

#

Prone and motionless Sci watched the squad of invaders advance east of his position. He waited . . .

Peering down the length of iron sights Sci pulled the trigger.

#

Packen’s head exploded in a horrific burst of blood and gristle, the shattered remains of his helmet flying out in pieces smeared with bits of brain. The shock overtook Nemel before he could process what he saw, his body throwing himself back into the dirt and then rolling into the cover of the massive root. He lied there panting as the shout echoed over his earpiece.

“Man down!”

Nemel’s world was enveloped by the loud pop and click of rifle fire as bullets zoomed past overhead. Then came the chug of a machine gun. The world was awash in these sounds, a terrible symphony of discordant noise filling his head buried in the tree’s roots.

“Grayson . . . Nemel!”

Eyes blinking Nemel turned in the direction his name was called. Sergeant Lang was prone five meters to Nemel’s right as he called to get his attention. Next to him Private Werner unleashed bursts of suppressing fire from her machine gun into the direction of contact, due west of their position. Her implants tracking the slightest motion.

“Nemel, stay with us, we need a visual, stat!”

Nodding to confirm Lang’s order Nemel reached behind him to unlatch the drone plugged up there into a spare battery circuited through his pack. The drone was centered around a single rotor blade, and under it was slung a camera. Pulling the control pad from his pack as well he keyed its ignition with one hand as the other tossed up the drone by the camera. The drone’s rotor immediately came to life with a buzz and hovered in place about a meter off the ground. With a flip of a thumb stick the drone began to gain height, ascending swiftly as Nemel watched it carefully, careful not to guide it into a tree branch. Once the drone was past the tallest tree Nemel’s gaze glued to the control pad’s video display.

“Visual up.” Nemel spoke into the radio in his earpiece.

“Mark targets and call-out positions, company’s got mortar teams ready and waiting.” Lang called back through the radio. “Keep low, don’t expose yourselves.”

#

After his first and only shot, Sci had began crawling to reposition himself. The rest of his team were snaking around the invader’s south and north flanks as Sci kept them distracted with selective fire.

As he crawled he heard the buzzing, a sound he flinched at each time, a drone. Looking up into the air he caught the small device’s ascent. In a flash his rifle was trailing its movement, aiming carefully he took one breath, then a second, and then . . .

#

A red symbol of a bullet wreathed in fire blinked in the corner of the control pad’s HUD in the split second before the camera display jumped around erratically. The drone’s sensors had caught a projectile in flight towards it, and the internal AI overrode Nemel’s control to perform emergency maneuvers, saving the device at the last second.

Letting out a sigh Nemel watched as the camera on the drone automatically repositioned itself to face the origin of the projectile. Flipping a switch with his right thumb the visual shifted to display infrared. Seeing the heat of a body Nemel frowned, and proceeded to report into his radio.

“Sergeant, there is only one contact I can see west . . .”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll keep looking.” Nemel was already flying the drone about searching for more Syndies waiting to ambush.

#

Cursing three generations of the drone operators lineage Sci realized he was found, but instead of the intensity of fire picking up the drone simply started to fly away. His eyes widened as he watched it hover in the direction his comrades south were gathering it.

There was no time for caution, Sci climbed awkwardly into a crouch and took aim once more through the foliage and peppered the squad with bursts of fire. Each pull of the trigger delivering another kick into Sci’s already sore shoulder.

#

Bullets whizzed overhead, zipping and thudding into tree bark. However, Nemel’s attention was elsewhere.

“Bastard!” Someone howled out in pain. Nemel wasn’t sure who it was, his entire attention fixated on the drone display.

In the display he made out some six contacts to their south, and with a little more searching another seven to their north.

“Sergeant, we’re being flanked in from the north and south. Maybe fourteen or fifteen attacking evenly from both directions.”

There was a pause, the rifle to the west had quieted down as Kii had continued to fire in that gunman’s direction.

“Mark those positions, I’ll signal the mortar teams. Everyone else, we’re falling back, captain’s orders.” Lang’s relay going unquestioned by the muttering squad as they licked their wounds and carried out an organized withdrawal.

Overhead mortar shells whistled and exploded in fiery displays across the jungle. Anxious to retreat he set the drone to auto-follow. Stowing the control pad he followed out the actions of tactical withdrawal they’d had drilled into their heads in training, far above, at a steady altitude, the drone followed directly overhead.

#

It was an effort to escape the area before the first shells hit. Although he’d saved his own life Sci knew the others would not have been so lucky. Limping through the jungle, his rifle swinging about on a loose strap, he gritted his teeth in an expression that was as much pain as it was rage. They’d clumsily stumbled into the opening engagement, and although they’d taken a blow the battle had only begun.

Adrenaline pumping Sci rushed for the rally point, in his eyes glinted the flames of hate and war.