Storm. Chapter 1

[Pulp Hero]

Chapter 1. Part 1



'IS BETTER TO HAVE LOST'
Few knew that in the closing years of the war of Colonial Retention, mankind's greatest war, we were for a time watched by a powerful intelligence.

One which was greater than our own.

And yet as mortal.

****

Dan lazily waited in the driver's seat of the light wheeled tri-seater he had parked on the side of the street off the parking lot.

He watched the building in front of him.

He checked the timepiece. Fifteen fifty-nine.

He waited a while more.

The environmental cork on the main double doors visibly unsealed, opening them to the hot air of the outside.

Out of the double doors came a crowd. Most were ambling along in the general direction of parked vehicles, though a scattered few darted ahead or between the rest.

Dan scanned. He didn't see her, but she was usually late out.

So he waited a while longer.

The crowd diffused in all directions and vehicles disappeared from the parking lot.

It was sixteen ten.

He finally saw her, flanked by another girl on each side, exit the double doors.

Samantha was beautiful to him. Tall and lean, with short sand colored hair.

She saw the tri-seater, then said something to one of them and darted across to it.

The door on the passenger side opened with and audible hiss as she pulled it up and jumped in the tri-seater.

"Hi, daddy." she said, throwing her bag in the back seat.

"Hey, Sug. How was your day?" he asked.

"Good." she answered happily, but abruptly.

He started up the tri-seater's engine.

"Am I going to get details out of you?"

"No." she smiled.

Dan maneuvered the tri-seater down the central road of the town.

"Okay, then. As long as nothing is radioactive, I guess it doesn't matter.

Mom is working late tonight, so what do you say we pick up some to-go food on the way back?"

"Okay. Can we grab some 'Chan's Chikin'?"

"That's my girl."

The vehicle turned down familiar side streets of the small rural town.

Cainweed was the name of the place.

It was centered a few degrees above the equator of the planet of Baker, under bright duel suns.

Cainweed was what a little under seven thousand people called home; most residents were wheat or grape farmers primarily and homes were spread apart by nearly a kilometer on average, but the center of town was more built up. It catered to the teenagers with a single large pavilion containing a media complex and a huddle of to-go restaurants.

And that pavilion was where Dan pulled in and parked the tri-seater.

He followed Samantha towards 'Chan's Chikin', a restaurant that both father and daughter had agreed as the best of the pavilion's food sources.

By the time he was going through the door, Samantha was at the counter, ordering the meal. He walked up just as the price was rung up and paid with some of his petty cash.

"Thanks." said his daughter shaped blur as she joined a mixed group of teens at a table on the far side of the restaurant.

After a short time, the food appeared at the counter, bagged and ready to go.

Dan took it up and walked over to the group of teens.

"Uhm, Hello Mr. Doyle." said the first one, visibly shaken, to notice his approach.

"Afternoon, Cody." said Dan. He kept tabs on the boys his daughter talked to. As policy.

"Samantha, we'd better get these back." he said, indicating the bags.

Samantha broke the magnetic pull of other teenagers and started towards him.

There was a general mumbling from the teens to the effect that it was good to see Mr. Doyle. His scars usually freaked kids out a little.

Most of them knew he wasn't a native farmer, but was a combat engineer based at the the small Nasett base.

Samantha followed him to the tri-seater.

Dan powered it up the and started the drive home.

They didn't say anything for a while.

Then out of the silence, Samantha spoke up.

"I'm happier when you're home."

"Yeah, me too, Sug." he said.

***

It was dark out, one of the few short hours that both suns were down when Emilia drove home.

Dan was up watching the household screen and the chikin was long gone.

As she walked through the door he stood up and met her.

They closed together for a moment, and then walked to the couch.

"How long, now?" Emilia asked him in almost a whisper.

"Eight hours." he said.

"You're sure you'll be okay?" she said, closing in to him.

"Sure; we've been over this. I'm just going out to supervise colony construction, its not dangerous. I'll be back in two months, and with a promotion to Sergeant First Class."

She was quiet, but to him obviously not calmed.

"Hey, after this, I'm done. I move to be part of the instructor cadre on-post, and they don't send me out any more."

She felt asleep in his arms, on the couch. Never even kicked her shoes off.

Six hours later an alarm went off and Dan woke up, slipping out and into the bedroom. He took care of shaving and showering, and changed into his brown garrison uniform.

A breakfast of a canned smoothie drink sufficed.

He looked at Emilie, and then Samantha. He woke neither, letting them enjoy their rest.

***

Master Sergeant Doyle woke as a heavy hand shook his body armor.

That early morning where he had left his home in Cainweed had been the last time he had seen Emilie or Samantha. Over two years ago. Since then the war with the Earth based reform government of the C.S.A. had began. It had torn the Federation apart and pulled in almost every human and alien power.

Doyle was stuck on the planet Laurel, part of the element that had been cut off when the C.S.A. took orbital superiority. For a while the Forward Bases had held, but once they had been breached, it was a route.

Everyone had gone to ground in the dense cities. Master Sergeant Doyle had ended up with seventeen under his command. Sergeant Hernandez and Private Onisis were two combat engineers from Doyle's original element. Ten others were assorted soldiers, and three were Navy surface warfare specialists.

They had holed up in what had been a three level motel. It had been almost three weeks.

Three weeks of avoiding patrols, and sleeping an hour or two at a time, and checking the radio becon.

The radio becon was a high powered transmitter about a kilometer from the motel that had been put up before the Forward Bases were overrun. It was the only piece of local equipment that could punch a signal to orbit through the enemy's electronic counter measure systems.

Doyle's people sent a patrol to it every two days to flip it on and check for a response from orbit.

It was Doyle's turn to lead the patrol out today.

"You're on, Sergeant." said Private Fredricks.

Doyle rose up from the wall he had been sleeping against, and spoke, "Got it Fredricks. Thanks for the wake up."

"Yes, Sergeant" said Fredricks, taking a step back a running off to another part of the motel, probably to get relieved and have some food.

Doyle checked that his rifle was still feeding correctly and picked up his helmet. It was a combat arms type, with a metal face shield that slide down over the front. Inside it has an electronic visual display with the standard multiple view type features. The whole thing was wired up with voice communications, heads-up display for medical and location information. Very fancy stuff. He checked that the batteries were still working and put it on.

Room 12 was the assembly area for the beacon patrol, and Doyle found that the rest of the six man element was there.

Sergeant Hernandez and Private Onisis were fellow combat engineers.

Sergeant Sevoces was infantry.

Crewman Dean was a Navy ground warfare specialist, communications type.

Kowalski was an Army transport driver.

Their uniforms had all looked different once, but now they all wore gray as the dust of the city covered them.

Doyle spoke, "Same mission as always. We're taking route 'A' today. Any problems?"

Quiet.

"Alright, lets do this thing."

The element moved out, past the motel's pool gate.

"Happy travels." said a Navy crewman from the second story to Crewman Dean, who turned a gave a thumb's up.

The six men traveled down the familiar deserted streets and alleys. They stopped at corners and blind walls, checking for enemy patrols.

They hadn't seen one is almost a week, and one hadn't seen them in almost two. They knew the C.S.A. knew that there were still Federation people in the city because they had all the bridges out locked down.

Doyle figured the reason they hadn't blanketed the area with artillery was that either they wanted the place intact, or just didn't have enough shells.

Maybe it had to do with this place being on loan from the Chorak, the major alien race humans dealt with.

They element sprinted across streets and open plaza's by twos and threes, and eventually they were moving along the edge of the city, able to see the ten kilometer length of water that separated the island city from the mainland.

For a long while they followed the water before ducking back towards the interior of the city.

As they walked down a two lane street in a commercial area a sound became audible in the distance. It sounded like a series of drums being struck.

"Arty!" screamed Sergeant Sevoces even as the sound of the shells falling became a roar. They were all around in the air. A blanketing of the city.

Doyle ran across the street, and through the open doorway of a thick walled building and ducked a down once he was a around the corner.

Hernandez and Onisis followed him; the rest of the element disappeared from him as they scrambled into the the rubble and buildings which lined the street. The last Doyle saw of them was Private Kowalski running toward an overturned commercial truck.

A long second passed, and the street did not erupt with fire.

Instead a series of dull "thumps" were heard from above in the sky.

To Doyle it sounded like the base plates of ejection rounds be popped off.

But there was no sound of high explosives.

Why would they fire shells that popped their base plates off. And had no explosives. Ejection rounds.

It could be...

"GAS GAS GAS!" shouted Doyle as loud as he could, while pulling out the breathable air valve that ran to small oxygen canisters loaded into the back of his combat vest. He found the connection port on his face shield and clawed the rubber protection seal off, and screwed the valve in as quickly as he could. As soon as the soft material neck protection on his helmet and face shield was rolled down and sealed, he switched the valve on and cleared his mask system.

His face was completely completely sealed and getting internal air from the canisters.

He looked to his side. Hernandez was sealed and Onisis was clearing his mask. Doyle gave a thumbs up and they both returned it.

Two of his guys were good to go, but there were three more out there he needed to check on.

He signaled to Hernandez to cover him from a large window that was on away from him along the wall and pointed Onisis over to the door frame.

Onsis leaned against the wall on the door and scanned what he could while Doyle knelt low and turkey bobbed his head out, checking the street each way.

It was all as it had been.

He got up and sprinted to the over turned truck across the street.

It was silence and the 'patpatpat' sound of his boots hitting the ground seemed to carry down the whole street.

He reached the truck and Sergeant Sevoces, who was waiting for him and signaled him over past the truck to a small crater where Kowalski and Dean had taken cover from the attack.

Kowalski was on his back, convulsing wildly, as Dean knelt over him, unable to help.

Unlike the rest of them, Kowalski didn't have a closed- air system. He hadn't been combat arms, and because of that had instead been issued a basic air filtration style mask. It was effective against most chemical weapons, but not nearly as much as a closed-air integrated system.

Doyle saw three used anti-chemical T.O.P. syringes lying close by on the ground.

He walked up to Dean and gave him a slap on the shoulder and pointed towards Sergeant Sevoces, who stood near the end of the truck.

The kid didn't need to see this.

Doyle knelt over Kowalski and grabbed his arm to let him know someone was there.

Kowalski looked up through his mask lenses. The whites of his eyes were slowly going red as the veins in them burst.

The convulsions got worse.

Doyle knelt there for what felt like a lifetime, looking into Kowalski's eyes so he wouldn't be alone.

Finally the movement stopped.

Doyle pulled the rifle magazines off Kowalski, stripped the information tag off of his shoulder and pocketed it, and pulled open a vest pocket that had been marked with a some length of yellow ribbon. Inside was a water proof packet with "If Killed" scrawled on it.

He pocketed the tab and packet and walked back to Dean and Sevoces, handing them the magazines.

"Let's go." he said.

[Stuart Mackey]

Quite good, I look forward to more.