Chapter 10

Subject: Maddy

The second expedition, Maddy’s first as squad leader, got off to a rough start. They’d taken a small convoy of vehicles to the spaceport to meet a contracted light shuttle that was meant to drop them off at a remote research site, loiter, and then pick them up a few hours later after their little adventure had wrapped up. This time, they took the buggies and the pickup truck, leaving Mamba back at the station at the insistence of Chief. The problem came when they took a backroad that ran them through a shanty town. 

“Zombieland,” Felix keyed in over the comms, “this isn’t really on the way to the spaceport.”

“No it isn’t,” Maddy replied. She’d taken the time to study a map of the surrounding town. It was laid out like a big square and gridded up into districts. The spaceport district was in the center of town. There was an admin district just north, and a hospital district adjacent to the spaceport to the east, and the police and judicial district to the west. The old lab where the security team had originally been posted was next to the hospital district. Their current headquarters, the fire station, was about three kilometers south of the spaceport at the furthest edge of the square settlement. All of the void space was taken up by temporary structures being used as housing, rudimentary shops, hydroponic gardens, workshops, and whatever else the locals could improvise. Small settlements pocked the space between New Carthage and the barrier. 

They should be going due north. The path they were going was north generally, but it was via a detour to the east, through an area that was originally a lithium mine that had been abandoned. It was now apparently animal central, ‘zombieland’, as Felix had called it. Others called it The Exhibit. Maddy figured she knew why, Team One, Blitz’s team, was driving the first two vehicles. 

The convoy slowed as they drove through a few dozen skinny, emaciated people wearing brown rags. They were bent over, laying, or kneeling in the road blocking traffic. One, a young man by the looks of it, was slowly walking on all fours, his body moving in a jerking motion and taking one step backwards for after every other step forward. He was moving like one for those bizarre lizards Maddy had seen in nature documentaries of old Earth. There must’ve been a hundred more people in various states of wacked-out semi-consciousness on the sidewalks, between buildings, or amongst rubble. Garbage was everywhere and reflective foil emergency shelters were strung up haphazardly between collapsed, temporary buildings. 

The lead vehicle, the pickup truck, was being driven by a Team One guy that went by the name Smoker. Smoker had chosen this route, and Smoker decided that blasting the truck’s siren was the appropriate move in this situation. Maddy hadn’t even known the truck had a siren. 

“Fucking animals,” Peanut sighed on the comm.

“We’d have no problem with them if we didn’t actively go fuck with them like this,” Dad muttered. 

The siren drew more in, animals they were called. Maddy didn’t like how derogatory it sounded, but she had to admit, they certainly didn’t act human. A crowd of them emerged from the buildings behind them and wandered into the roadway. Some had their hands out, two of them were crawling, and a third had his arms tucked in and was rolling along the ground like a little kid rolling down a hill. Maddy could hear Smoker yelling and she looked up to see him waving his service pistol out the window. 

Maddy sighed, they were boxed in. She activated her comm, TAC1, “Team Two dismount and clear the road. Team One, get the vehicles turned around and lets head back towards the main road.” Someone scoffed over the comm, probably Smoker, Maddy guessed. Dad and Felix were in the buggy with Maddy at the rear of the convoy. Their driver was a mousy kid from Team One that Maddy hadn’t formally met yet. She pointed at him and said, “you’re going to be lead when we turn around, don’t pull any of this bullshit. Back to the main road and north. Got it?” He nodded.

“Okay get back! Clear the road!” Maddy shouted at the crowd of animals. Felix hoisted his rifle and charged at them, pointing it wildly and cursing. “Whoa, take it down a notch Felix!” Maddy ordered. She was seeing the gun pointing as a pretty severe escalation on the use of force continuum. They’d barely given the animals time to move out of the way on their own. She looked over at Dad, and he had one by the arm and was dragging him onto the sidewalk, his captive babbling madly. Maddy looked at the other group, they were all taking slightly different approaches to clearing the road. Peanut was squared up like a boxer, shoving them back hard. The animals didn’t seem to understand what was happening. 

“Man, these ones are fucked up! Must be some good shit!” Felix said as he dragged one to the side of the road, mimicking Dad. One started walking back after he’d been put on the sidewalk and Felix shoved him to the ground. “They get pretty animated when they’ve gone a few days without the zoo. These ones’ve been dosing recently.” 

“Team Two on me,” Maddy announced on the comm, changing tactics. Her team gathered around the rear buggy. She keyed up the comm, “alright, Team One, lets reverse out of here and turn around. Team Two, do like Felix and Dad and lets make space for the vehicles.”

They worked together, grabbing the animals by the arms and walking them to the sidewalk, sitting them down with physical control tactics right out of the academy. The buggies rolled by and started turning around. Right as the truck got to the break in the crowd, Smoker pointed his pistol at one and fired. The boom caught Maddy by surprise and she drew her sidearm, unsure of where to aim before realizing that Smoker was trying to scare an animal that was staring at him by shooting a hole into the building behind him. 

“GOD FUCKING DAMMIT SMOKER!” Maddy roared, holstering her pistol and charging with a knife-hand instead. “YOUR DUMB ASS GOT US INTO THIS CLUSTER FUCK, AND NOW YOU’RE TRYING TO GET THE FUCKING COPS DOWN HERE TOO?”

“You’re soft, you needed to see what it is we’ve been dealing with,” Smoker responded, a half grin on his face. 

Soft, Maddy thought. She wanted to break his fucking nose. She could too. A dozen thoughts ran through her mind, all different ways to settle this right here and now. She wanted to spit in his face, pull him out of the truck, and kick him in the gut until he cried. But, that’s not how a commanding officer was supposed to act, and it wasn’t that bad yet. 

“Listen to me, you aren’t in my squad but that doesn’t mean I wont find a way to end your ass when I have the chance. We have a timetable to keep and I am not going to fuck it up by playing who-has-the-biggest-dick with you. Holster your gun, turn your truck around, and shut the fuck up or I will pull you out of that truck and restrain you for insubordination.” Maddy was fuming. Shy Maddy was gone now too, apparently she was feeling open enough with the group. That plus work Maddy had come out to play. Smoker, to his credit, could tell he was about to lose this. He gave a shitty salute and turned the truck around. 

“Mount up!” Maddy ordered, glaring at each member of the team in order. The science team in the middle buggy looked at them with a mix of shock, awe, and disgust. No wonder they hate us, look at this team, Maddy thought. 

The convoy roared up to the spaceport. At first, Maddy was concerned that her itinerary didn’t include a landing pad number for their ride, but there was only one shuttle out a the spaceport when they got there. It was industrial green with red and silver warning tape accenting anything that you could conceivably hurt yourself on. The doors opened on either side behind the cockpit. The science team was first to the shuttle, the four of them on this mission strapped their equipment down on to the deck in the shuttle while her team climbed into their seats. Dad slid a heavy impact case against the science equipment and strapped it down. Maddy climbed in as the pilot joined the comms channel. 

“All aboard?” The pilot asked. 

Maddy did a quick headcount. Herself, plus five security officers, four scientist. Ten total. “Affirmative, the teams all here.”

“Alrighty kids, put on your seatbelts, put your tray tables up, and keep hands, feet, and all other objects inside the aircraft while we are in motion.” The pilots jovial attitude relaxed Maddy a bit after the drama with Smoker, but she was still on edge. 

“Listen up team,” Maddy spoke over the comm. “I am not tolerating any more bullshit. I appreciate that you all have been here much longer than me, but I am not going to have my team act like a bunch of assholes. We are better than Team One, and we are gonna act like it. Practice radio discipline and stick with your buddy. And, we are not going to shoot everything as soon as we drop.” Everyone looked at her, wide eyed like she’d lost her mind, “the science team has developed countermeasures for the wildlife. ONLY shoot if I say so, or if something is an active threat. Yes, pre-attack indicators count as imminent threat. Something running away from you or hiding in a bush a hundred meters away does not count. Are we clear?”

Silence. 

“Felix check in that you understand these orders.” 

“Yes ma’am!” Felix replied, sounding, to Maddy’s surprise, enthused. 

“Dad?” 

“Good copy.”

“Peanut?”

“Sure, I get ya.”

“Gremlin?”

“We’re still gonna kill shit, right?” Gremlin asked. 

“We will kill anything that fucks with us Gremlin, use your judgement.” 

“Okay, I copy,” Gremlin replied, disappointed. 

“Two-Feet?” She’d almost forgotten about him entirely, he’d been so quiet.

“Yep, of course.”

The team flew in relative silence for the rest of the journey. Maddy had to consciously stop herself from looking at Liselle. It was creepy, she knew. She was also concerned that the last two times Liselle had seen her, she’d been in fights with people. Sure, Maddy’s job was in part to fight people, but she’d been fighting her coworkers. Maddy decided to look at her smartlink instead. 

There were about a dozen notifications she hadn’t seen earlier. She wasn’t used to having to check the damn thing, but now that she was doing Chief’s job, she’d have to be better about it. She opened the notifications and saw they were all from ‘ISD General Alerts’ talking about ground-to-space travel restrictions and imminent fleet action. What the fuck? 

“We’re here, first stop. Sergeant Turner give me a holler when you’re ready to bugger out and I’ll meet ya right back here. We got fuel for hours and I like flyin’ so no rush,” the pilot announced in his smooth, musical voice. Maddy pushed the alerts out of her mind, that was space, she was on the ground. Maybe the fleet it having it out with pirates or some damn thing. None of the alerts gave any detail beyond ‘stuff happening, be aware’. 

Maddy and her team hit the ground and fanned out in a circle around the light shuttle. The science team unstrapped their boxes and Dad’s big case and pulled them onto the ground, ducking low. The shuttle rose and split away, banking into the clouds and disappearing from view. Maddy scanned the brush, saw nothing and lowered her rifle. “Clear,” she said over comm. The rest of the team reported in clear. 

They had set down on a small, flat, bald hill surrounded by forests on all sides. The forest was extremely thick, with brush filling the space from the ground up to the canopy of the bizarre, red-to-black trees. Hundreds of birds squirted between brush in every direction. Dad and Peanut had donned the last pieces of their heavy powered armor pulled out of the big impact case, and the science team was busily strapping cases of air filters onto their backs. 

Maddy scanned the brush again, this time activating the thermal overlay on her visor. The forest came to life in her vision, and she could see dozens of tiny creatures darting about amongst the bushes, climbing trees, and dancing between branches. The smell was horrible, the heat was oppressive, but the planet was beautiful in it’s alien way. And filled with so much life. 

“On me,” Dad said, peanut taking position behind him. “I know the way.”

“Copy, Gremlin, Felix, take the flanks, Two-Feet, you’re with me at the rear,” Maddy ordered. Liselle walked by and smiled at her. She was wearing hiking clothes with a stab vest over the top. 

The team marched about 500 meters along the base of a ridge where the brush was thin. They emerged into a clearing where the first monitoring station was. 

“Skullfucker twelve o’clock,” Dad said.

“Right on the monitoring station,” Peanut added.

“Finally something to fucking shoot,” Gremlin had to share her weird line straight out of the sociopathic thought factory she called a brain. 

“Hold fire, let the science group take this one,” Maddy ordered, and signaled to a scientist who’s face was covered by a giant, full faced respirator. He pulled a device off his back and slid a mechanism on it down. Three legs popped out, turning it into a tripod with a square box on the top. The box had a green indicator light on each side. The scientist pushed a button and the lights turned red. Suddenly, the skullfucker and about twenty-five hundred birds screeched and ran or flew in every direction AWAY from the device. A squirrel like thing at her feet that she hadn’t even noticed until it started moving let out a whooping cry and rocketed into the bushes. She was amazing no one started shooting just as a response to the momentary chaos the thing had inflicted. 

“What the fuck is that?” Felix asked. 

The scientist looked as if he was going to explain, but Maddy raised her hand and cut him off. “Technological progress, killer. They’re scientists and they figured out a science way to scare shit off.” 

“Huh,” Felix mumbled. Gremlin looked at it disapprovingly. 

The scientist couldn’t contain himself, “its the same as the barrier device, but much smaller. It makes noise that we can’t hear, but drives the local creatures crazy.”

“I can hear it,” Two-Feet said. 

Maddy looked at him like he was crazy, but then realized she could hear something too. An alarm. She looked around and then realized, her smartlink was going off. She had the damn thing on mute, did the barrier device break it? She pulled it out of her pocket and realized the rest of her team was doing the same with their own smartlinks. An emergency alert displayed on the screen.

EMERGENCY: SEVERE ORBITAL HAZARD(s). SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. 

Everyone looked at each other, dumbstruck. A moment later, a beam of hellish light speared through the sky, appearing across the entire horizon at once. A burning, swirling green-then-red-then-blue-then-green aurora spread across the sky like a shockwave. Lighting arced from the beam and spread in all directions like the roots of a tree the size of the planet. Another flash of impossibly bright light and a second spear burned its path of ionizing destruction through the atmosphere, destroying the very air it touched. A sonic boom detonated, then a second one. The sound cascading from an incredible, earth shattering explosion to an electrical sizzling. Her team dropped to the ground, her active hearing protection glitched out trying to counteract the impossible sound. She could feel it in her chest like her heart had exploded. She wanted to yell ‘get down’ to her team. Hell, she might’ve, but it was pointless. Pure animal instinct glued them to the ground where they once stood. 

The impacts kept coming, two, then four. Maddy lost count. Each one was like hearing the voice of a wrathful god. She was crying and didn’t quite understand why. The tears were those you shed at the end of the world, not out of fear, but out of awe. Someone was screaming, but she couldn’t tell who. 

After a time, probably about minutes but it felt like an hour; like the orbital strikes had somehow opened a time dimension into a Department of Orbital Vehicles waiting room’s timestream, where each second felt like an eternity, the strikes stopped. Maddy rolled onto her back and looked at the sky. The aurora spread from horizon to horizon and she could still make out the zig-zag pattern of the beams of light across the sky, although they’d faded from their initial surface-of-a-star level of brightness down to the much more reasonable vaguely visible. A dozen or more smaller streaks were visible in the distance, ringing the sky in all directions. Each one terminating into a spray of fire and ember high in the atmosphere, raining down a hailstorm of broken, burning debris. 

Maddy was left feeling shellshocked; she was terrified, overwhelmed, and strangely, excited. Maddy left to her feet, “UP! UP! UP!” She yelled at her team, everyone still taking cover on the ground with the scientists “Dad, get comms with our air support and get evac on the way! Felix, Gremlin, get on that rock and get me a sit report!” Maddy aimed a knife-hand at a large rock, the highest point in eyesight. “Peanut, Two-Feet, get the science team ready to move.” The usual grumbling and shit-talking was gone. Everyone responded with a prompt ‘yes ma’am’ and got to work. 

Maddy picked her smartlink up off the ground where she’d apparently dropped it. Whoops. She scrolled through the contacts to Chief, thought briefly, and then called Blitz. He answered immediately.

“Sergeant Turner you need to get the science team back to base,” Blitz stated without preamble. Maddy could hear Chief yelling profanity in the background. 

“My thoughts exactly; I’m getting the team together now. Is everything okay back at the station?” Maddy asked. Clearly they hadn’t taken a hit from whatever the fuck just blew holes in the atmosphere, but Blitz sounded worried.

“The station is fine, everyone is okay. NC wasn’t hit by anything, but its pandemonium out there. We are going into lockdown. Have the shuttle drop you on the station’s roof.” 

“Copy that,” Maddy responded before turning to the team on the rock. “You two, what’s the status of our exfil?”

Gremlin chimed in over the comms, “looks like the lasers or whatever hit something to the east, there’s a big fire starting over there. NC and the west looks clear. The way out looks the same as it did coming in. Lots of xeno’s running around though! Weapons free on the way out?”

Maddy sighed and switched comms to the whole team, “Listen up! This op is cancelled and we are going home. Two by two road column, Dad and Peanut take the front, Gremlin, Felix take center, Two-Feet and I will take rear. Science team fall in between us and try to stay tight. The way back is clear but kill anything that isn’t human and looks at us funny. Dad, what’s the status of exfil?”

“Shuttle is 10 minutes out, ma’am,” Dad replied. 

“The stars have aligned then. Move it!”