Battalion 1

Rhodes glanced around at his people—his battalion. Oakes, Lauer, Rhinehart, Fuentes, Henshaw, Dietz, Thackery, and Coulter.

They had become bonded through hardship and shared pain. They knew each other and each other’s SAMs as intimately as they’d ever known anyone.

Rhodes no longer doubted any of these people. Their recovery had been long and painful, but they got through it by supporting each other.

“Is everybody ready?” he asked. “It’s go time.”

“Ready,” Henshaw replied.

Her eyes sparkled and a slight smile threatened to break out on her lips.

Thackery didn’t bounce around anymore. She tightened her mouth in grim determination. All her exuberant enthusiasm had evaporated in the last few weeks.

She had become as hard and serious as everyone else in this battalion, but that somehow made her so much more trustworthy and reliable.

Rhodes checked each person and each SAM. This would be their first training session since their malfunctions.

If this worked, the battalion would go back into combat. If it didn’t……no one talked about what would happen if it didn’t.

“Let’s go,” Rhodes ordered and all nine dropped into The Grid.

The world went dark. Rhodes didn’t understand at first what he was seeing—or not seeing.

Then an explosion flashed in the darkness. It lit up the landscape for one instant and his blood ran cold when he realized where he was.

Mounds of torn metal and debris covered the area. Explosions burst on the horizon and then a bone-crushing boom rocked the night.

A torrential fireball of burning gas erupted directly overhead as a Legion Ravager burst into flame.

At the same instant, lasers spurted from somewhere across the shadowy terrain. The Ravager gave a deep thump, groaned on its side, and detonated with an almighty ka-boom.

That outward flare of fire cast a brilliant glow across the devastated landscape. In that moment, Rhodes saw hundreds of Emal swarming over mounds of trash and debris.

They fired lasers at a long flank of Legion soldiers hunkered behind the rubble piles. He was back on Luluna.

A Legion platoon captain Rhodes didn’t know reared up on his knees and yelled down the line, “Move out to the east! Move out! Get out of the line!”

He waved his men forward and they all started inching eastward. Rhodes couldn’t see where they were going. It didn’t matter.

“What’s the objective?” Coulter asked through their interface.

“There’s a Ravager on the ground four miles behind the Emal line,” Wild replied. “The crew is barely holding the enemy at bay. We have to rescue the crew, bring them back here, and get them on board another Ravager that will take them off the planet to safety.”

“Beautiful,” Lauer growled. “Coulter and I will pull the same laser lawnmower we used on Ohait.”

“We can’t do that,” Rhodes countered. “Emal lasers brought us down last time. You would make too obvious a target. We need to stay small and low to the ground—somewhere the Emal won’t see us.”

“How do we do that?” Henshaw asked. “They would always notice something.”

“Not if they don’t realize we’re trying to attack them. I say we use something like the whips we used in the plasma vein. We separate, snake along the ground between the alien’s feet, and work our way back through the ranks to the Ravager. The Emal won’t see us, or if they do, they won’t know we’re with the Legion.”

“We can cut them off at the ankles,” Dietz suggested.

Rhodes snapped alert with a jolt. This was the first hint of Dietz’s old self coming back to haunt the battalion.

“I just said this plan hinges on the Emal not noticing us,” Rhodes snapped. “If you do anything that draws attention to us…..”

“I was just joking, Sir,” Dietz murmured.

Rhodes glared at him, but they didn’t have time to discuss it further. The aliens crawled over another mountain of trash nearby and hammered the battalion’s position.

Everyone ducked. The enemy surrounded the hill with dozens of guns.

“We gotta go now!” Rhodes yelled. “Remember what I said! Stay low and stay out of sight. Keep on the ground and don’t draw attention to yourselves. Use The Grid to locate the downed ship. We’ll converge there and work out a way to lift off the crew.”

Oakes said, “Yes, Sir.”

Rhodes didn’t wait any longer. He shrank his grid lines to a thin filament, dropped to the ground, and took off slithering straight for the Emal line,

The aliens bombarded the hill, but the battalion wasn’t there anymore. Legion soldiers fired from covered spots. Their Jackhammers flared and gave the aliens something to target in the darkness.

Fisher brought up The Grid of the area, but Rhodes already knew the place too well. “The downed crew has enough power to keep their fusion charges and Vipers working. That’s it,” Fisher reported.

“Just show me how far out we are.”

Rhodes concentrated on winding his way through countless Emal legs, feet, and ankles. Each alien had multiple legs. The creatures crowded the terrain for miles to the rear.

Thick swarms of aliens surrounded the downed Ravager. The aliens attacked the ship with laser rifles and carved into its hull.

The crew fired into the horde and slaughtered dozens of aliens with every shot, but the crew couldn’t defend the ship against so many. The Emal just moved in and replaced their fallen comrades with more laser-armed aliens.

Another explosion went off somewhere to Rhodes’s left. He checked all his people and interfaced with their SAMs. He could monitor their progress through The Grid.

They made it to the halfway mark. The Emal numbers thinned here, but they got thicker when the battalion closed on the Ravager.

Rhodes’s attention narrowed to the spot on The Grid where his own body snaked closer to the objective. Just one more mile.

“How do you want to lift off the crew?” Fisher asked.

“I guess we can always change into ships and fly the crew out of the…..”

Rhodes broke off when a flash of light caught his eye coming from the left again, but this was no explosion.

His fury started to rise when he saw a long, thin whip of laser light snapping in the darkness. It looped around the Emal’s ankles, brought them to the ground, and then went to work cutting the aliens to pieces.

More aliens tried to get away at the same time that they tried to rush to the spot to attack the thing. They couldn’t figure out what it was.

The whip cracked here and there bringing down one Emal after another. All the Emal spun around to face the whip, but they couldn’t get near it with so many bodies in their path.

Their fallen comrades created an impassable barrier to stop them from interfering. The whip cleared a space of dead Emal around itself, landed on the ground, and shot away toward the fallen Ravager.

“Son of a bitch!” Rhodes snapped. “Everyone converge on the Ravager now. Hurry! Leave it, Rhinehart!”

Rhinehart had veered toward the laser whip to help out. He broke off at Rhodes’s word and the rest of the battalion rocketed away to the ship.

“Coulter—Lauer!” Rhodes ordered. “Cut your lawnmower around the ship and clear some space. The rest of you converge and form a vessel big enough to evacuate the crew. Rhinehart—you stay with me to defend them!”

“Yes, Sir,” Rhinehart replied.

Rhodes blasted out of the mayhem, used his grid lines to change himself into Rio, and took off at high speed toward the Ravager.

All the aliens surrounding him jumped and then swung their laser rifles to bombard him, but the battalion got the jump on them.

Coulter and Lauer joined their lasers together, zoomed around the Ravager, and carved a path to flatten the aliens. Rhodes and Rhinehart soared around the ship plastering the enemy with scourge gunfire to drive the surviving Emal farther back.

Henshaw, Fuentes, Oakes, and Thackery bombed into the circle and slammed down on the ground in a pile. Their grid lines merged and they changed themselves into a modular transport vessel.

“Get the crew out, Fisher!” Rhodes ordered. “Get them on board now!”

Fisher’s interface activated and he contacted the Ravager’s bridge staff. The crew came pouring out of the ship and charged on board the transport.

Coulter and Lauer kept burning around and around the ship to hold the alien horde at bay. Rhodes and Rhinehart pivoted from side to side blasting any Emal to pieces the instant they showed their faces.

The last few stragglers left the Ravager and the combined battalion transport craft rocketed into the atmosphere. Emal lasers followed the ship and bombarded its underside every step of the way.

Another explosion went off somewhere on the transport. “Go, go, go!” Rhodes ordered. “Get off the planet!”

Lauer and Coulter pulled up. Rhodes only waited long enough for them to zoom upward into the night sky. Then he and Rhinehart launched right behind them.

Lasers fountained from the surface and one of them hit Rhinehart’s wing. He roared in pain, toppled sideways, and one of his engines exploded. He started to drift downward toward the planet’s surface.

Rhodes altered his grid lines instantly, turned back into his normal shape, and fired his boosters. He snatched Rhinehart by the wrist and launched into the atmosphere taking Rhinehart with him.

Rhodes had half a second to see the laser whip still snaking and snapping among countless aliens down there….and then Dietz shot away, turned back into his normal shape, and blasted skyward to catch up with the battalion.

The group left the battle behind and slowed when they made it into orbit. Rhodes slowed enough, let go of Rhinehart’s wrist, and turned to face him. The two men hovered in space with their boosters holding them up.

“Are you okay?” Rhodes panted. “Did you get hurt?”

“I’m all right,” Rhinehart gasped. “I guess gunshots don’t do any damage in the training session.”

Rhodes looked around just as the transport pulled up next to them. Henshaw, Thackery, Oakes, and Fuentes broke apart, reformed into their own normal appearances, and turned their gaze down toward the battle on the ground.

“The crew is gone,” Henshaw murmured. “I guess we achieved the objective.”

“You did great—all of you,” Rhodes told them.

He fell silent when Dietz whizzed into orbit and slowed to rejoin the group. Rhodes clamped his mouth shut and glared at Dietz, but Rhodes didn’t say anything here.

He left The Grid and returned to the training room with the rest of the battalion.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped at Dietz. “I told you not to do anything to attract attention. You went and did exactly what I told you not to.”

“I was trying to create a diversion so you could get the crew out,” Dietz countered.

“Did you hear me tell you to create a diversion?” Rhodes spat.

“Well, you couldn’t get the crew out any other way.”

“That isn’t for you to decide. The last time I checked, I was the one in command of this battalion, not you. You made that suggestion before we started and I shut it down. We could have gotten all the way to the ship without the aliens seeing us, but you had to go and blow our cover. You could have gotten Rhinehart killed. Do you realize that?”

Dietz’s eyes darted around the circle. Everyone glared at him.

“I was just trying to help, Sir,” he mumbled.

“The only way you’re gonna help us is by doing what you’re told,” Rhodes snapped.

“Or by taking a bullet to the head,” Lauer growled.

Rhodes didn’t correct him this time. “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I swear to Almighty God I’ll leave you behind. Is that clear? If you ever put any of us in danger in a real battle, I’ll leave you behind and you can take your chances with the enemy. Don’t you ever pull that shit again. You’re alive right now because of me. Don’t make me regret that.”

“What does that mean?” Dietz asked. “Why am I alive right now because of you? You never did anything for me.”

Rhodes stopped himself from telling Dietz that Rhinehart, Lauer, and Oakes wanted to put him down for trying to kill Oakes—and nearly killing Thackery.

Rhinehart made the decision on Rhodes’s behalf. “If you pull something like that again, I won’t leave you behind. I’ll make sure you never make it off the planet alive. Just remember that.”

He turned on his heel and marched out of the training room. The others glared at Dietz and then followed Rhinehart one after the other.

Rhodes waited until last. He left Dietz standing there and everyone pretended not to see him follow them back to the barracks.

The tension started to dissolve when they walked in. Rhodes went back to the table to sit down with the others. Thackery didn’t glare at everyone as much now. She was starting to relax….a little.

The group barely walked in the door before General Brewster and Colonel Kraft showed up. “That was another outstanding training session,” General Brewster began. “I can see you’ve all worked out your malfunctions. You’re back to optimal functioning…..”

“I wouldn’t call it optimal,” Rhodes interrupted.

“It will have to be good enough,” Kraft replied. “We just got word. The Emal are attacking another planet in the Zavil system. They’re bombarding cities and slaughtering the population. We need to deploy you right away. You’ll transport there on the Ero first thing tomorrow morning.”

End of Chapter 38.