Actions on the Terminal Objective (Part 2, conclusion) (424 hits)
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Submitted by X54 (View user info) at 2008-08-14 11:10:11 EDT
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/118101 In which Karl Baker and his platoon are assigned to exterminate a village full of natives on the planet, Paradise. The operation is delayed when the machinegunner freaks out and ruins the laser rifle.
#
Karl returned to the trench with the pistol. The security men led the aliens in as before, cuffed together with plastic flex-cuffs. This time they faced the trench, but their heads were covered with sandbags so they couldn't see the ones who had gone before. Another man stood to Karl's right with a pair of wire cutters. Starting with the alien on the left, the man snipped the flex-cuff from the alien's wrist and then whisked away the sandbag to be re-used. Karl pressed the pistol to the back of the alien's neck just below the skull, fired a shot, and pushed him into the trench. Sometimes, if the angle of the shot was too high, the top of the skull came apart and chunks of brain matter flew out. Karl became slimy with them, and with the blood that splattered back after every shot.
After a while the sergeant ordered Karl to take a break and another man to replace him. Karl trudged to his old position where the laser rifle had been and flopped on the ground.
#
"Karl, what are you doing here?" whispered Tina. "How did you find me?"
He pushed her back into the tiny, dark apartment and closed the door behind him. "I had to see you."
"My God! You went AWOL, didn't you? What if they find you here?"
"Don't worry," he said, quickly. "They won't find me."
Tina lit a candle. "The electricity hasn't worked for weeks."
He sat on the bed, the only piece of furniture besides a military footlocker which he didn't recall Tina having before. "They'll get it working again once the Fleet gets here."
She leaned against the wall, arms folded, biting her lip.
"I missed you," he said.
"I missed you too." She smiled quickly. Her voice sounded anxious and she looked toward the door. "Karl, what are you going to do? Where will you go?"
"Let me stay here. Please! Just let me stay until the Fleet comes."
She shook her head. "We would have heard from them by now."
"They'll get here," he insisted. "And my father will straighten everything out." He ran his hand over the stubble on his scalp. "We were supposed to be together. Don't you remember?"
She sat beside him, put her arm around his hunched shoulders. For a moment it was like they were back on the ship again.
#
Karl looked back toward the trench. The sergeant shouted at the man who had replaced him, but the man refused to comply. The MPs took him away. The sergeant barked orders at another man, but the man only fell to his knees shaking his head. "Cowards!" yelled the sergeant. He looked at Karl.
Karl sucked another mouthful of whiskey through his drinking tube and walked back to the trench. The MPs and the other men watched as he retrieved the pistol and took his position behind the aliens. The sergeant nodded at the man with the wire-cutters and they resumed their assignment.
The day wore on. Karl got drunker and slimier. His protective suit was sweltering inside. The eye-lenses of his mask steamed up, making things look hazy and surreal. Shiny objects reflected the sunshine in rainbow-colored halos. He urinated in his pants, having no way to decontaminate himself in order to do it normally.
He imagined he was shooting MPs. As each sandbag whisked off he saw not an alien, but another MP. When he tired of slaughtering MPs he replaced them with the sergeant and killed him a dozen times. The trench was full of MPs and the bodies of the sergeant. He laughed as he shot them, staggering from one to the next, until the man with the wire-cutters begged him to shut up.
"Coward," he replied. "You're all cowards and traitors!"
He turned to the sergeant and the MPs, who kept their rifles trained on him now. "Cowards!" he said, as he pushed another body into the trench with a bullet in its neck.
Next came the lieutenant, and after him the chaplain and then the commander of the Advance Fleet. He shot them in the backs of their necks and pushed them into the trench with drunken gusto. Every person that had ever done him wrong got their just deserts now. Each sandbag revealed another of his tormentors.
And then it was Tina's turn. He shot her in the neck and she fell in slow-motion, landing face up atop the corpses in the trench, still alive, reaching out for him. Furious, he screamed, "You're not my sister!" as he sent bullet after bullet smashing into her.
She smiled in the sad, sympathetic way she had back on the ship whenever homesickness and despair got the best of him. It was the smile that said she knew how badly he hurt because she hurt just as badly but as long as they stuck together everything would be okay.
"We were supposed to be together," he sobbed, dropping the empty pistol.
She nodded. Though he could barely hear her voice through his protective mask, he saw her mouth the words, "I know, Karl." Spreading her arms, she beckoned him to her. Somehow, her voice found its way inside his mask, as if she were whispering in his ear. "Don't you see? Now we can be together."
Karl's heart leapt at the words he longed to hear. He could hardly believe it. At last, they would be together, not as brother and sister, but as man and woman, just as he'd fantasized during the interminable voyage from Earth. Tina ran her hands behind her head, pulling her long, dark hair loose so that it spread out over the bloody corpses surrounding her. She sank back and closed her eyes.
"Tina!" screamed Karl, but she didn't respond. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the sergeant. Frantic, he shoved the sergeant away and dove into the trench after Tina.
The impact of landing brought him back to his senses. At first he didn't know what had happened, lying face down on the bodies. He struggled to stand, but lost his footing and fell back. It was then he realized where he was, staring up past the edge of the trench into the sun with its psychedelic halo from his steamed up eye-lenses.
The bodies grasped him with their dead hands, holding him down, pulling him under. He screamed and struggled, but they were too many for him. He began to choke and vomit. The whiskey-bile burned on its way up. Gasping for breath, he tried to clear his mask, but it was no use. In desperation he pulled it off and rolled onto his side, breathing at last, dry-heaving into a ruined, simian face.
Someone lowered a ladder into the trench. He crawled across the bodies to it, pulled himself out and collapsed on the ground. The MPs grabbed his arms and dragged him away to the quarantine area.
#
Smitty lay on the grass in the quarantine area. He looked comfortable without his mask or suit, his head propped up on his helmet, smoking a cigarette.
The medic had given Karl another mask, although it felt as if the filters were nearly clogged.
"It's actually pretty nice here," said Smitty. "You ought to take all that crap off."
Karl looked down at him. "Do you have it?" he asked.
"Yeah, I've got it. But I don't even give a damn any more." Smitty opened his hand and studied his cyanide tabs. "In a little while it'll be over." He suddenly grunted and drove his head straight back into the grass and arched his back high in the air. His legs thrashed and his fists pounded against his chest. He twisted onto his side, writhing and rolling so that Karl had to jump aside to avoid him. Finally he curled up into a fetal position, his face twisted and his mouth bleeding, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
"Jesus," he whispered as the seizure subsided. "I am so fucked."
Karl remembered what the chaplain had said. He sat down and looked at the smoke on the horizon.
Smitty rubbed his eyes. "I can't see any more," he said. "My cyanide tabs--Jesus, I lost my cyanide tabs!" He patted the grass around him with his hands. "Baker! I lost my cyanide!" He grabbed Karl's pant leg.
Karl panicked and kicked at the dying man, again and again, until his leg came free. He scrambled away with one hand held jealously over his first-aid kit with his own precious cyanide tabs. Smitty lay weeping on the grass.
"Smitty," he said. "Take it easy. I'll find them for you."
Karl searched the grass, careful to keep out of reach. When he found the tabs he said, "Put out your hand, Smitty. They're right here."
Smitty took them and struggled to sit up. He unscrewed the cap from his canteen, popped the cyanide in his mouth and took a long drink. "So long, buddy."
"Good-bye, Smitty," said Karl.
Smitty lay down on his side, facing away, and curled up. The MPs stood on the other side of the concertina wire, watching through their protective masks. Karl moved as far away from them as possible, lay down on the grass and listened to the shots and yells echoing from the ravine.
#
"Suppose you're right," he told Tina. "Maybe the Fleet's lost. Maybe it never left Earth. There won't be any spare parts or equipment and the electricity will never come back on and we'll eventually run out of everything we brought. Suppose it's all true. I could handle that. I could even handle that my parents and my sister... My real sister." His voice broke. "But I can't stand not being with you." They sat in silence on the bed.
"You're not my sister," he blurted. "We don't have to pretend any more."
She drew back. "What will they do when they find you gone? Wouldn't it be better to just finish your tour? Can't you wait until then?"
"That's what you said before," he said angrily.
"Karl, not so loud," she whispered. "Please!"
Grabbing her arm, he shouted, "'Wait until we get to Paradise,' you said. Now it's, 'Wait until you finish your tour.' At least let me stay tonight!"
"You're hurting me!" she said, struggling to twist away.
A key clicked in the door. They both froze. The door swung open and a dark figure stepped inside. A man's lowered voice said, "Tina? Sweetie? Is everything okay? Is there someone here?" A tall man wearing an officer's uniform stepped into the candlelight.
Karl leapt to his feet. "Who is this?" he shouted.
The man drew a pistol, pointed it at Karl.
"No," cried Tina. "Jason, don't. Please!"
Karl looked at her, then at the footlocker he'd noticed earlier.
"I'm sorry, Karl," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry."
#
The sound of a medicraft drowned out Karl's last memory of Tina. The MPs led him from the quarantine area and turned him over to the medics, who hustled him through a decontamination station and strapped him into a gurney. "Where did you guys come from?" he asked. "I didn't think there were any aircraft still flying."
The medics, dressed in white with white masks over their faces, didn't answer. He remembered Smitty and tried to tell them, but they couldn't hear. Anyway, it was too late for Smitty.
The take-off pressed him down and he watched the ground shrink away through a window. In the ravine, just visible beneath the trees, was the trench, filled to overflowing. Off to the west a column of smoke rose from the ruined village. Beyond that, in the distance, shining like copper in the setting sun, was the ocean. Somewhere along the coast was the settlement and the hospital.
But instead of heading west they flew inland. There were rivers and forests and meadows, all green and unspoiled, just like he and Tina had imagined during the long journey from Earth. They flew high above dazzling snow-capped peaks, then descended into a wide valley. He recognized it from the stories Tina told during the first months of the trip, when homesickness and the ship's sustained acceleration had threatened to crush his will to live. A herd of wild, horse-like animals, just like the ones he'd tamed for riding in his own stories, ran fleet-footed across a golden field. The craft banked, following a wide, clear-running river to a waterfall at the head of the valley. There, just up from the foaming pool at the base of the fall, nestled in the tree-line, was the log cabin he'd planned to build for Tina and himself, where they would live together like they did in the parts of his stories she didn't want to hear.
The cabin grew larger as the medicraft slowed and began its descent. The craft dropped faster, lifting him up against the straps; faster still, in free-fall now, the ground rushing up. His breath caught in his throat. His muscles strained with the anticipation of impact. He squeezed his eyes shut and screamed as they smashed into the ground.
Pain exploded in every muscle of his body. His arms and legs thrashed involuntarily and he doubled up, gasping for air behind the clogged filters of his mask. The convulsion gradually subsided and everything became calm again. He lay still, wondering if he was alive. When he opened his eyes he found himself lying on the grass in the quarantine area.
The ravine was quiet now, the mission complete. He stretched out on his back and gazed up into the darkening sky. When the ascending shadows had chased the last flecks of sunshine from the treetops he threw away his protective mask and unwrapped his cyanide tabs.
User Reviews
Submitted by Poots (user info) at 2008-08-17 11:24:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
FUCK ME IN THE BUTT WITH A GINSU KNIFE
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Submitted by Poots (user info) at 2008-08-17 11:21:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Poots (user info) at 2008-08-13 13:44:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fucking Smitty!
Submitted by sweetcheebs (user info) at 2008-08-16 21:39:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2008-08-15 19:07:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
People look at your format and decide that they don't want to read actual writing.
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2008-08-15 00:39:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by X54 (user info) at 2008-08-15 00:26:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Remodeling at work, are they?
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-08-14 20:04:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I didn't read the whole thing; the parts I took in were good.
I think I'm getting a lung infection from the industrial debris in the office. Let's hope it's just irritation.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-08-14 13:44:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Superb.
B@W
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2008-08-14 12:54:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by BobSandwich (user info) at 2008-08-14 12:08:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-08-14 12:04:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by The_Drake (user info) at 2008-08-14 11:11:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Because I like you!
.....sexually, I mean.