Pathetic. “This is why you’re about to die,” Peter says. “Maybe you should have thought twice about invading my planet!”
Peter lowers the XM so he can view the face of the Herculean and witness its worthless expression before he wastes it. He winces at their skin, hideously calloused and a puke color mixed with gray. He focuses on its eyes—something he has never seen before due to their helmets—ready to see them complement the overall putrid image of the creature. Peter drops his rifle—what are you doing?
The Herculeans eyes stare back. Peter loses himself momentarily in the alien’s mystifying gaze. It has crystal blue eyes, and their pupils are a never ending cycle of black circles that come closer together till they collide into a small dark spot in the middle—in fact, they are beautiful.
Peter shakes his head. Snap out of it! Waste the evil fucker.
It extends an arm behind its back to reach for something.
“There it goes. I left it alive too long that now it’s reaching for a weapon.” Peter raises the XM, and fires the remaining rounds of his magazine into the torso of the Herculean. The alien fully collapses howling in such delightful pain.
Peter leaps off the bunker and reloads once more, looking around at his kills with satisfaction. Something catches in his peripheral, on the right of the street a collapsed store reveals a large strange alien machine farther down in a clearing. It has smooth cylinder shaped cannons aimed upwards at the sky.
That must be their AA turret. He looks at his AT rocket, there’s still one round left. Some Herculeans near the turret start moving towards his direction. Peter lifts the rocket to his shoulder, and takes cover against the rubble of a building before the clearing. He rest the AT tip on a collapsed support beam and pulls the trigger. The missile jumps out violently, speeding at the turret leaving behind a swirly exhaust trail. The rocket hits the turret exploding it into a scene of wonderful bright electrical flares and hisses.
He turns around to relocate back with the convoy. The Leader however, is already near the bunker with the two remaining paratroopers. “You’re a hero yank!” says the Leader. “I saw you crawl up and take out this whole bunker. A complete wildcat you are.”
“Thanks sir, but I think we have more after us.” Peter directs their vision to the destroyed turret and rallying Herculeans. “I just used the rocket to take out their AA.”
“That’s what that whole last bit was about?” The Leader looks over at the wreckage of the turret. “You bloody hell did take out their AA battery! Amazing lad!” Herculean plasma slams against the bunker. “Take cover!” says the Leader.
They move behind the bunker and fire back. “Call my Captain and tell him the enemy AA is down sir,” says Peter. “My earpiece isn’t picking up.”
“Are you sure that was the AA?”
“I’m positive. We need those Hogs to take out the remaining Herc’s. Who knows if the Rangers are even alive still.”
“Alright,” the Leader lifts his radio. “Captain! Your boy here has just saved the day, he neutralized the enemy AA, I repeat the AA is down, call back our wings!”
“Are you sure?” says Tarnus through the radio.
“That’s what I asked too. He says yes, he also cleared the Herc bunker!”
“Copy that, I hope you’re right.”
The A-10’s return and annihilate the remaining Herculeans without any resistance. The Herculeans firing at their position withdraw under missile fire from the aircraft.
“Well yank, great job today, you almost single handedly took them all out yourself,” says the Leader. “I think we can go now.”
They walk back down the lane to grab the injured paratrooper and meet up with the convoy. Blake confirms that they have also secured the surviving rangers.
Mission success. Then Peter remembers the last Herculean he killed.
Peter runs back towards its corpse. “Where are you going?” the Leader calls after him.
“I forgot something,” says Peter, “I’ll catch up.”
“Hurry up then, I want to get the fuck out of this ghost town.”
He comes to the Herculean that captivated him for a moment. Its arm is crushed underneath its back that it leaned for earlier. Peter pushes the alien over to its side, a dark pool of blood remains underneath from the multiple bullet hits. In its clasped hand is an object. He leans down to grab the chain dangling from the Herculean’s two pronged hand. The hand releases its grasp as its strange gloved appendages open for him. He pulls the chain and connected object away from it. The object looks like a piece of jewelry. Made out of fire smoothed stone with strange etchings on it. Under closer examination it actually looks like some sort of alien animal, maybe native to their planet.
“Why was it grabbing this? Did it want to show me it, thinking it would save its life?”
This is why it died. It was weak. War only respects the strong.
He wraps the necklace up and places it inside his pocket, excited to show the others.
His first loot of war.
The convoy picks them up on its way to leave the town. The Leader continuously talks of Peter’s exploits to Love. “Captain, your private here is a real wildcat. I am going to nominate him for a medal.”
Tarnus tabs his control pad.
I am mellow and relaxed.
Everyone turns towards the Leader and me in interest. “Did you really take out the whole alien bunker by yourself?” says Tommy.
Before I can talk the Leader replies, “He sure did, he’s one hell of a warrior you got here.”
“And the anti-aircraft guns?” says Tarnus.
I answer this time, “Yes, sir.”
One of the rangers from a nearby Patria yells over, “It must have been their jammer too! It explains why we couldn’t communicate with you till it was taken out.”
“As I said Captain,” the Leader folds his ruined beret and neatly places it into his backpack, “your boy here saved the day.” He begins to move with his men back towards the Kiowa’s. “We’re off anyhow yanks. Take good care of our man,” he nods to the injured paratrooper being placed inside a Patria. “It was an honor fighting with you all today.”
“You too, sir,” I say.
“Remember lad,” says the Leader looking back at me, “you’re the hero of today, a true wildcat.”
Proud of my accomplishments, I feel light as I lift myself up onto a carrier.
Isaac mimics the Brit in a poor English voice, “A true wildcat lad, I’ll tell the Queen of your bravery myself.”
I grab the netting by him and nudge him, “Shut up.”
“It’s true,” says Blake with a serious tone. “You did a good job today, Private. You saved one of our men and successfully freed the skies for air support to finish the mission.”
“Yeah man.” Alex pats me on the back.
Isaac hands me his tin box of ancients. “All aside, you really were the hero of today, thanks for saving our asses.”
I grab an ancient and hand the box back to Isaac. “Is this going to become a tradition?” I lift the ancient to my mouth as Isaac lights it, “Smoking ourselves to death after escaping it every time?”
“Yeah,” Isaac hands the box to Alex as well so he can pass it around, “it’s kinda poetic, huh?” He takes a drag. “Flirting a bit more with death after it failed to get us today.”
“Our dreams on fire.”
He looks at the lighter, rubbing his thumb over it. “Orphans.”
The Patria’s start up and we ride them out of town. I play with the Herculean necklace in my pocket.
Maybe I am some sorta hero of war.
I take a drag, the nicotine and cannabis combines with my DT high. I guess I did pretty well today. It feels damn good being praised. Oh yeah, I take it out the paper of the poem game Isaac and I were playing. Let’s see, the last word was Soul. Then I write.