Conscripts, p.20
Conscripts, page 20
The next day, ignoring their gloom, the planet gave them a spectacular sunrise—quickly spreading out from a single point on the horizon and burning off the wispy, low-hanging fog that had shrouded the land in a light grey mist.
As the morning awoke, Jacob sat out behind his tent looking over the endless miles of sand, punctuated here and there by small swaths of crooked thirsty trees, scrubby gray bushes, and dried clumps of tough-fibered grass. As the sun emerged, the morning dew still clinging to the air was quickly sucked up, as if the dwindling living things knew somehow that it would be their only nourishment for the day.
With a rustle of the flaps, Nicole emerged from the tent, wrapped in a light blanket. She sat down without a word and leaned against his shoulder, staring quietly out over the coming day. After a few moments and without taking her gaze from the sandy expansion she asked, “Do you think it will start today?”
Jacob glanced down at the back of her head frowning. He’d been thinking of home, Sarah … but their present situation snapped him back into focus. “Yes, I believe it will start today,” he said, as he looked back out at the gathering strength of the sun.
5
Breakfast was unusually quiet. When he finished, Jacob went out back to sit in the sun before it became too unbearably hot. Not long after, Kent emerged from his tent—never one to remain still for long—holding an object underneath his outer jacket. He stood before Jacob and the small group gathered outside; and in the dramatic fashion of a magician, he whipped his jacket away and smiled triumphantly as he held out a round object.
It frankly just looked like a ball.
From the side of the tent, someone asked, “What’s that, Kent?”
“This is a football, my friends … soccer for you American types.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Great question, ladies and gentlemen, great question. I’m glad you asked. I have made this most precious of specimens, mates, out of scraps of uniform cloth, some medical supplies and wiring that I found in a pile of rubbish over there past those Khonian tents,” he said. He took a bow. “And before it gets too hot, I suggest that we line out a pitch and have ourselves a match.”
“Jacob, you gather a team, and I will as well,” he said. “We don’t have much time before it will be hot enough to bake a bun out here so…, let’s go.”
The mood lightened a little. It was a relief to have something to distract them from their worries, even if temporarily. The teams struggled up and down the sandy field kicking a ball that was too heavy and awkward for good play, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was great to hear light banter and laughter in their camp.
They switched up teams constantly and kept the play going until lunchtime. By that time, the temperature had already gotten so hot that they were all caked in sand and sweat. Even the spectators were unable to escape the mess. And with one final goal, they quickly ducked out of the sun and into the mess tent for lunch.
6
As he finished his meal, he caught Nicole staring at him from across the dining room, a small frown on her normally-chipper face. When they locked eyes, she gave a small nod to the open door. Jacob followed her gaze and could just make out several handlers headed their way from the main encampment. When he looked back at her, she rolled her eyes and pursed her lips before returning to her half-empty plate. So it begins, Jacob said to himself. He slowly got up to put his plate away and met the handlers at the door.
7
When Jacob stepped into the command tent, he took his place off to the side of the Khonian officers—more than 30 of them—who were standing around the central map, waiting for the briefing to begin.
Many had been on the planet for months and were hopeful—now that the Rha’ket’gar forces on Khonia had been destroyed—that they may be able to finish this business on Tue and leave the hot, dried-out husk of a planet. Jacob, still dirty from playing soccer, now felt a little conspicuous as the numbers in the tent began to raise the already elevated heat level in the small space.
Commander Sauk leaned against the map table panting and wiping his face with a wet cloth. When he spotted Jacob, his eyes narrowed. “Are you mad, running around and playing silly games in this heat?” He nearly yelled and probably would have had it not been so hot. “We need you to save your strength.”
“The heat doesn’t appear to affect the Earthlings as much as it does some of us,” spat out one of the officers. This time the sarcasm seemed directed at Sauk, not him.
Before the Commander could respond, an inner door in the tent opened and the Prime Commander stepped through, taking his place at the table. He looked tired, whether from the heat or something else Jacob couldn’t tell. He leveled a grim look towards Commander Sauk and then glanced around the room, his eyes briefly meeting with Jacob’s, before turning back to the digital map in front of him.
“As many of you are aware, there have been some disturbing and incomplete pieces of news coming out of Command,” he said. “But until we receive confirmation from the Council, we will continue as we must, to bring this war to an end.”
The Prime Commander continued: “It appears we have caught a break that we must take advantage of immediately. A Close Support ship staffed by volunteers has been shot down while conducting a reconnaissance fly-by over the Rha’ket’gar defensive positions. But not before they were able to broadcast several images back to us.”
He touched the digital surface, and an image floated up above the table and hovered in the air. “It seems that the Rha’ket’gar, not having the commodity of time to create a separate power generator for each of their four defensive platforms, has instead built a single large generator that sits directly in the middle of their defenses. You can see it here.” He pointed.
“The generator must be connected to each platform’s batteries via underground cabling. It would seem that they were counting on the … until recently … unmatched abilities of their ground forces to be enough to protect the structure. You can see how they’ve put metal berms around the entire base for defense, and adorned them with heavy swivel laser cannon and compression rifle turrets. And I assume with cameras and motion detectors as well.”
The Prime Commander didn’t know how many Rha’ket’gar soldiers were positioned there to defend their base, but in the pictures both the Rha’ket’gar and their larger Djor’Gar beasts were clearly visible. As if that didn’t make attacking the base hard enough, their weather-sensing technologies predicted a dangerous temperature spike for the coming few days—reaching nearly 165 degrees mid-day. At that heat, no one could survive for more than a few minutes at a time, not without damaging their lungs, sinuses and any exposed skin.
The previous two times the heat reached those levels, the Khonians transported up to temperature-controlled ships or huddled under the protection of their tents, using water-misting machines until the late-evening cool down. There had been no recorded movement whatsoever by the Rha’ket’gar during those times either … whose homeworld reportedly never got hotter than 110 degrees. What little fighting had taken place had happened during the night and stopped when the next day’s sun and heat returned. Neither side expected any maneuvers to be done during the heat of the day.
“How hot is it supposed to be today?” Jacob asked the officers gathered around the table.
“It will be upwards of one hundred and fifty within several hours,” Commander Sauk spat out. He leaned even harder on the table, visibly panting now.
At that, the Prime Commander glanced at the sweat-soaked bodies standing around him. “Why don’t we table the discussion for now, and we will reconvene after dinner,” he said. “Dismissed.”
As Jacob walked back through the main encampment, he could see inside the Khonians’ tents at the groups of soldiers waiting out the day’s heat, their water-misting devices already going at full speed. It was hot, unbearably hot, lung-scorching hot, never-in-his-life-had-he-been-in such-a-heat hot … and yet, here he was walking back to his tent alone in it … surviving.
It gave him a wicked idea.
8
“Jacob, you must have been in the sun too long … either that or you have lost your mind,” Jenna said, after he had told the group his idea. She even reached out to feel his forehead. Jacob was starting to think she was taking this medic thing way too far, but at this point who cared.
“Common, I need volunteers … this is so we can go home.” And with that, more than enough hands shot up into the air.
9
Jacob, Kent, Nicole and 19 other volunteers stepped out into the blistering heat of the day, dressed in their full combat gear. The temperature on Jacob’s heads-up display said that, in the sun, it was pushing 153 degrees. The heat instantly made the back of his throat dry, his lungs burning with each breath he took and robbing him of precious oxygen. “Visors down,” he croaked.
With the visor down, the suit’s environmental computer cooled the temperature somewhat, but it still hovered at 102 degrees. “Okay,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “Who has the ball?”
The two teams battled at full speed on the field for a full two hours. To Jacob’s relief, the temperature in their suits never raised over the 110-degree mark. When he called a stop, they made a hasty retreat back to their tents to remove their gear, clean up, and then reconvene in the shade to rest as the temperature outside slowly lowered. Right before dinner, when the sun was sinking and the temperature had dropped to a cool 92 degrees, Jacob called everyone together and went over his plan.
“Who won?” Jenna asked, sarcastically.
“We all did,” Jacob replied. “I think we all did …”
10
“You Earthlings are all stark raving mad!” Commander Sauk yelled at him later that evening in the command tent. He’d just finished presenting his findings from their mid-day soccer match and laid out the preliminary details of his plan.
Jacob turned towards Commander Sauk and wanted to scream:
Mad? yes we’re all mad. Mad that you came to our planet and kidnapped us. Mad that you performed experiments on us. Mad that those experiments killed many of us. Mad that you use pain and fear to control us. Mad that you are forcing us to fight in a war that has nothing to do with us. Mad that we cannot be with our families, friends and loved ones. Mad … yes of course we are all stark raving mad!
Instead he calmly finished explaining his plan, the reasons why he believed it would work, and what they would need to get it done. His real audience—the Prime Commander and the other officers in the room—listened intently to what he had to say.
“Gentlemen, is the plan dangerous? Yes, it is,” Jacob said, “but we will accept that risk. We want to finish this just as soon as possible so that we can all return home to our families.” He looked around at the officers. Ignoring Sauk he then looked directly at Truvey and waited as the old commander looked at the map and pondered his plan.
“Captain Young, I will let you know in an hour if your plan is a go. You can return to your people now,” he said dismissing Jacob, a heavy emphasis on the word “people.”
11
Jacob sat outside his tent trying not to look anxious as he waited for the Prime Commander’s decision. He had begun to worry that he might have made the plan—and talked his fellow Earthlings into it—out of emotion and the longing for home, rather than because it was the best course of action.
But as Dourst made his way across the sand between the two encampments, he knew that it was too late to turn back now.
“The Prime Commander wants me to tell you that your plan is a go and that you should let him know if you need anything,” he said, an uncommon kindness edged in the words.
“Thank you, Dourst,” was all he could afford.
His mind had already started to whirl as he began to strategize each step they’d have to take to pull this off.
CHAPTER 18
1
Over the next few days, Jacob worked and reworked possible scenarios they might encounter, met with his officers, met with the Prime Commander and Sauk, and most importantly, discussed the logistics with the entire group. It all became a blur of planning … and then almost without warning, everything lurched back into focus as the time to implement his plan arrived.
In what now felt like a familiar routine, they loaded into a transport and were quickly lifted into the air. This time, the sky crane stayed low to the ground—flying so close that at times they would feel jolts as the container’s bottom scraped across the valley’s low-lying trees, lopping off their tops as they went. They kept below the ridge line until the shallow valley they were following began its rise to a flat plain of endless sand.
The voice in Jacob’s earpiece was a familiar one by now.
“Captain, we have pushed it as far as we can without letting them know you’re coming.”
“Thank you, we’ll take it from here!” Jacob mustered. His nervous stomach lurched.
“Good Hunting, Captain,” was the pilot’s last words as they came to a bump landing.
2
“Visors down!” Jacob yelled as the doors began to open. The moment they did he felt the unstoppable heat enter the container.
They were less than two miles from their destination when they stepped out into the glaring sun. With a thought, he darkened his helmet’s visor until he could comfortably look around. “Okay Saje, nice and easy,” he instructed. “Follow the leader and make sure you stay hydrated.”
With Kent in the lead, the long line of Saje wound its way slowly up the center of the valley like a humongous centipede. “Slower please,” he reminded Kent over the comms.
It was almost midafternoon and the temperature was 155 degrees. He didn’t want to arrive before the hottest part of the day, and he didn’t want their inside suit temperatures to rise any higher than needed. Worst case scenario, for the next four hours they would need to be sealed in those suits, so the slower they went the less taxing on their bodies and on their water supplies.
As they slowly walked up the slight grade, Jacob, starting at the back, walked by each and every one of his fellow humans—he made it a point to speak to each of them, ask them how they were doing. As he did, he made sure to burn each name and face into his mind, because this time if anyone died it was his fault, it was his timing, it was his plan and their lives were his responsibility.
When he finally reached Kent, they walked side by side for a long time, not saying a word, comfortable in the silence and friendship that had formed between them. Eventually, the grade started to lessen. The small hills that had lined the sides of the valley had slowly melted away, and in front of them lay the wide expansion of sand.
“Everyone gather up and stay down,” Kent said. On the horizon, right at eye level, they could just make out the tips of the cannons on the first two Rha’ket’gar planetary defense platforms.
Jacob looked around at the Saje sitting uncomfortably under the sun’s brutality. It’s extremely hot, but not quite hot enough, he thought. They had made better time coming up the small valley than he’d wanted to; so now they must wait.
“We’ll move out in twenty-seven minutes,” he told them. He felt horrible for everyone, but hoped they understood why it was so important.
Right now, the Khonian soldiers were sitting in their tents with their mist machines going full bore. Even fully armored, they couldn’t last more than a few minutes out in the sun. Nothing would move in their encampment until the sun began to set and the temperature dropped below 110 degrees. Jacob knew that, and he also knew that the Rha’ket’gar could not handle the heat any better than the Khonians.
The Saje on the other hand—with their toughened constitutions and superior combat suits—theoretically should be able to handle it. And so here they were, stewing in their own sweat waiting for the opportune time. They needed to quickly complete their objectives without interference from the enemy, but not so quick that the Khonian Close Air Support ships wouldn’t be on the way.
Underground, the cowering Rha’ket’gar would never believe that the Khonians could attack them as the temperature rose to a blistering 163 degrees.
And technically they were right … the Khonians couldn’t.
3
Little super-heated dust devils began to swirl among the Saje as they sat in the sun—their metal suits raised the air’s temp an extra few degrees around them, the hotter air drawing the dust towards where they sat. When the group split into squads and prepared to move, Jacob walked up until he could see the metal berms of the Rha’ket’gar defenses. And what he saw made him chuckle.
Much like the metal suits of the Saje, the metal from the Rha’ket’gar’s berms, weapons and platforms had super-heated the air around them, and the entire base was covered in large, swirly sand-filled dust devils that almost completely obscured the view.
He pointed out the phenomena to Kent, Nicole and the squad leaders when they joined him for a look at their target. “They will never see us coming.” He laughed. But then as the seriousness of their next steps sunk in, he steeled himself. “We move to the base of the berm in three,” he said sternly. “Get your squads ready.”
4
The plan had called for them to move in, one squad covering the other, leapfrogging towards the base. But with the sandstorms blotching out the Rha’ket’gar’s cameras and sensors, that plan was scrapped. With a wave of his arm, Jacob sent the whole unit in a full sprint towards the enemy’s defenses. He covered the last 500 yards in just moments and slid in the sand to stop, leaning up against the base of the metal berm. The rest of the Saje caught up quickly.
“Prepare your explosives,” he whispered into his mic. He laughed a little when he realized that, because of the wind, no one on the outside could have heard him anyway, not to mention he had his visor down. As he thought through the next steps, his stomach did a flop.
As the morning awoke, Jacob sat out behind his tent looking over the endless miles of sand, punctuated here and there by small swaths of crooked thirsty trees, scrubby gray bushes, and dried clumps of tough-fibered grass. As the sun emerged, the morning dew still clinging to the air was quickly sucked up, as if the dwindling living things knew somehow that it would be their only nourishment for the day.
With a rustle of the flaps, Nicole emerged from the tent, wrapped in a light blanket. She sat down without a word and leaned against his shoulder, staring quietly out over the coming day. After a few moments and without taking her gaze from the sandy expansion she asked, “Do you think it will start today?”
Jacob glanced down at the back of her head frowning. He’d been thinking of home, Sarah … but their present situation snapped him back into focus. “Yes, I believe it will start today,” he said, as he looked back out at the gathering strength of the sun.
5
Breakfast was unusually quiet. When he finished, Jacob went out back to sit in the sun before it became too unbearably hot. Not long after, Kent emerged from his tent—never one to remain still for long—holding an object underneath his outer jacket. He stood before Jacob and the small group gathered outside; and in the dramatic fashion of a magician, he whipped his jacket away and smiled triumphantly as he held out a round object.
It frankly just looked like a ball.
From the side of the tent, someone asked, “What’s that, Kent?”
“This is a football, my friends … soccer for you American types.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Great question, ladies and gentlemen, great question. I’m glad you asked. I have made this most precious of specimens, mates, out of scraps of uniform cloth, some medical supplies and wiring that I found in a pile of rubbish over there past those Khonian tents,” he said. He took a bow. “And before it gets too hot, I suggest that we line out a pitch and have ourselves a match.”
“Jacob, you gather a team, and I will as well,” he said. “We don’t have much time before it will be hot enough to bake a bun out here so…, let’s go.”
The mood lightened a little. It was a relief to have something to distract them from their worries, even if temporarily. The teams struggled up and down the sandy field kicking a ball that was too heavy and awkward for good play, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was great to hear light banter and laughter in their camp.
They switched up teams constantly and kept the play going until lunchtime. By that time, the temperature had already gotten so hot that they were all caked in sand and sweat. Even the spectators were unable to escape the mess. And with one final goal, they quickly ducked out of the sun and into the mess tent for lunch.
6
As he finished his meal, he caught Nicole staring at him from across the dining room, a small frown on her normally-chipper face. When they locked eyes, she gave a small nod to the open door. Jacob followed her gaze and could just make out several handlers headed their way from the main encampment. When he looked back at her, she rolled her eyes and pursed her lips before returning to her half-empty plate. So it begins, Jacob said to himself. He slowly got up to put his plate away and met the handlers at the door.
7
When Jacob stepped into the command tent, he took his place off to the side of the Khonian officers—more than 30 of them—who were standing around the central map, waiting for the briefing to begin.
Many had been on the planet for months and were hopeful—now that the Rha’ket’gar forces on Khonia had been destroyed—that they may be able to finish this business on Tue and leave the hot, dried-out husk of a planet. Jacob, still dirty from playing soccer, now felt a little conspicuous as the numbers in the tent began to raise the already elevated heat level in the small space.
Commander Sauk leaned against the map table panting and wiping his face with a wet cloth. When he spotted Jacob, his eyes narrowed. “Are you mad, running around and playing silly games in this heat?” He nearly yelled and probably would have had it not been so hot. “We need you to save your strength.”
“The heat doesn’t appear to affect the Earthlings as much as it does some of us,” spat out one of the officers. This time the sarcasm seemed directed at Sauk, not him.
Before the Commander could respond, an inner door in the tent opened and the Prime Commander stepped through, taking his place at the table. He looked tired, whether from the heat or something else Jacob couldn’t tell. He leveled a grim look towards Commander Sauk and then glanced around the room, his eyes briefly meeting with Jacob’s, before turning back to the digital map in front of him.
“As many of you are aware, there have been some disturbing and incomplete pieces of news coming out of Command,” he said. “But until we receive confirmation from the Council, we will continue as we must, to bring this war to an end.”
The Prime Commander continued: “It appears we have caught a break that we must take advantage of immediately. A Close Support ship staffed by volunteers has been shot down while conducting a reconnaissance fly-by over the Rha’ket’gar defensive positions. But not before they were able to broadcast several images back to us.”
He touched the digital surface, and an image floated up above the table and hovered in the air. “It seems that the Rha’ket’gar, not having the commodity of time to create a separate power generator for each of their four defensive platforms, has instead built a single large generator that sits directly in the middle of their defenses. You can see it here.” He pointed.
“The generator must be connected to each platform’s batteries via underground cabling. It would seem that they were counting on the … until recently … unmatched abilities of their ground forces to be enough to protect the structure. You can see how they’ve put metal berms around the entire base for defense, and adorned them with heavy swivel laser cannon and compression rifle turrets. And I assume with cameras and motion detectors as well.”
The Prime Commander didn’t know how many Rha’ket’gar soldiers were positioned there to defend their base, but in the pictures both the Rha’ket’gar and their larger Djor’Gar beasts were clearly visible. As if that didn’t make attacking the base hard enough, their weather-sensing technologies predicted a dangerous temperature spike for the coming few days—reaching nearly 165 degrees mid-day. At that heat, no one could survive for more than a few minutes at a time, not without damaging their lungs, sinuses and any exposed skin.
The previous two times the heat reached those levels, the Khonians transported up to temperature-controlled ships or huddled under the protection of their tents, using water-misting machines until the late-evening cool down. There had been no recorded movement whatsoever by the Rha’ket’gar during those times either … whose homeworld reportedly never got hotter than 110 degrees. What little fighting had taken place had happened during the night and stopped when the next day’s sun and heat returned. Neither side expected any maneuvers to be done during the heat of the day.
“How hot is it supposed to be today?” Jacob asked the officers gathered around the table.
“It will be upwards of one hundred and fifty within several hours,” Commander Sauk spat out. He leaned even harder on the table, visibly panting now.
At that, the Prime Commander glanced at the sweat-soaked bodies standing around him. “Why don’t we table the discussion for now, and we will reconvene after dinner,” he said. “Dismissed.”
As Jacob walked back through the main encampment, he could see inside the Khonians’ tents at the groups of soldiers waiting out the day’s heat, their water-misting devices already going at full speed. It was hot, unbearably hot, lung-scorching hot, never-in-his-life-had-he-been-in such-a-heat hot … and yet, here he was walking back to his tent alone in it … surviving.
It gave him a wicked idea.
8
“Jacob, you must have been in the sun too long … either that or you have lost your mind,” Jenna said, after he had told the group his idea. She even reached out to feel his forehead. Jacob was starting to think she was taking this medic thing way too far, but at this point who cared.
“Common, I need volunteers … this is so we can go home.” And with that, more than enough hands shot up into the air.
9
Jacob, Kent, Nicole and 19 other volunteers stepped out into the blistering heat of the day, dressed in their full combat gear. The temperature on Jacob’s heads-up display said that, in the sun, it was pushing 153 degrees. The heat instantly made the back of his throat dry, his lungs burning with each breath he took and robbing him of precious oxygen. “Visors down,” he croaked.
With the visor down, the suit’s environmental computer cooled the temperature somewhat, but it still hovered at 102 degrees. “Okay,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “Who has the ball?”
The two teams battled at full speed on the field for a full two hours. To Jacob’s relief, the temperature in their suits never raised over the 110-degree mark. When he called a stop, they made a hasty retreat back to their tents to remove their gear, clean up, and then reconvene in the shade to rest as the temperature outside slowly lowered. Right before dinner, when the sun was sinking and the temperature had dropped to a cool 92 degrees, Jacob called everyone together and went over his plan.
“Who won?” Jenna asked, sarcastically.
“We all did,” Jacob replied. “I think we all did …”
10
“You Earthlings are all stark raving mad!” Commander Sauk yelled at him later that evening in the command tent. He’d just finished presenting his findings from their mid-day soccer match and laid out the preliminary details of his plan.
Jacob turned towards Commander Sauk and wanted to scream:
Mad? yes we’re all mad. Mad that you came to our planet and kidnapped us. Mad that you performed experiments on us. Mad that those experiments killed many of us. Mad that you use pain and fear to control us. Mad that you are forcing us to fight in a war that has nothing to do with us. Mad that we cannot be with our families, friends and loved ones. Mad … yes of course we are all stark raving mad!
Instead he calmly finished explaining his plan, the reasons why he believed it would work, and what they would need to get it done. His real audience—the Prime Commander and the other officers in the room—listened intently to what he had to say.
“Gentlemen, is the plan dangerous? Yes, it is,” Jacob said, “but we will accept that risk. We want to finish this just as soon as possible so that we can all return home to our families.” He looked around at the officers. Ignoring Sauk he then looked directly at Truvey and waited as the old commander looked at the map and pondered his plan.
“Captain Young, I will let you know in an hour if your plan is a go. You can return to your people now,” he said dismissing Jacob, a heavy emphasis on the word “people.”
11
Jacob sat outside his tent trying not to look anxious as he waited for the Prime Commander’s decision. He had begun to worry that he might have made the plan—and talked his fellow Earthlings into it—out of emotion and the longing for home, rather than because it was the best course of action.
But as Dourst made his way across the sand between the two encampments, he knew that it was too late to turn back now.
“The Prime Commander wants me to tell you that your plan is a go and that you should let him know if you need anything,” he said, an uncommon kindness edged in the words.
“Thank you, Dourst,” was all he could afford.
His mind had already started to whirl as he began to strategize each step they’d have to take to pull this off.
CHAPTER 18
1
Over the next few days, Jacob worked and reworked possible scenarios they might encounter, met with his officers, met with the Prime Commander and Sauk, and most importantly, discussed the logistics with the entire group. It all became a blur of planning … and then almost without warning, everything lurched back into focus as the time to implement his plan arrived.
In what now felt like a familiar routine, they loaded into a transport and were quickly lifted into the air. This time, the sky crane stayed low to the ground—flying so close that at times they would feel jolts as the container’s bottom scraped across the valley’s low-lying trees, lopping off their tops as they went. They kept below the ridge line until the shallow valley they were following began its rise to a flat plain of endless sand.
The voice in Jacob’s earpiece was a familiar one by now.
“Captain, we have pushed it as far as we can without letting them know you’re coming.”
“Thank you, we’ll take it from here!” Jacob mustered. His nervous stomach lurched.
“Good Hunting, Captain,” was the pilot’s last words as they came to a bump landing.
2
“Visors down!” Jacob yelled as the doors began to open. The moment they did he felt the unstoppable heat enter the container.
They were less than two miles from their destination when they stepped out into the glaring sun. With a thought, he darkened his helmet’s visor until he could comfortably look around. “Okay Saje, nice and easy,” he instructed. “Follow the leader and make sure you stay hydrated.”
With Kent in the lead, the long line of Saje wound its way slowly up the center of the valley like a humongous centipede. “Slower please,” he reminded Kent over the comms.
It was almost midafternoon and the temperature was 155 degrees. He didn’t want to arrive before the hottest part of the day, and he didn’t want their inside suit temperatures to rise any higher than needed. Worst case scenario, for the next four hours they would need to be sealed in those suits, so the slower they went the less taxing on their bodies and on their water supplies.
As they slowly walked up the slight grade, Jacob, starting at the back, walked by each and every one of his fellow humans—he made it a point to speak to each of them, ask them how they were doing. As he did, he made sure to burn each name and face into his mind, because this time if anyone died it was his fault, it was his timing, it was his plan and their lives were his responsibility.
When he finally reached Kent, they walked side by side for a long time, not saying a word, comfortable in the silence and friendship that had formed between them. Eventually, the grade started to lessen. The small hills that had lined the sides of the valley had slowly melted away, and in front of them lay the wide expansion of sand.
“Everyone gather up and stay down,” Kent said. On the horizon, right at eye level, they could just make out the tips of the cannons on the first two Rha’ket’gar planetary defense platforms.
Jacob looked around at the Saje sitting uncomfortably under the sun’s brutality. It’s extremely hot, but not quite hot enough, he thought. They had made better time coming up the small valley than he’d wanted to; so now they must wait.
“We’ll move out in twenty-seven minutes,” he told them. He felt horrible for everyone, but hoped they understood why it was so important.
Right now, the Khonian soldiers were sitting in their tents with their mist machines going full bore. Even fully armored, they couldn’t last more than a few minutes out in the sun. Nothing would move in their encampment until the sun began to set and the temperature dropped below 110 degrees. Jacob knew that, and he also knew that the Rha’ket’gar could not handle the heat any better than the Khonians.
The Saje on the other hand—with their toughened constitutions and superior combat suits—theoretically should be able to handle it. And so here they were, stewing in their own sweat waiting for the opportune time. They needed to quickly complete their objectives without interference from the enemy, but not so quick that the Khonian Close Air Support ships wouldn’t be on the way.
Underground, the cowering Rha’ket’gar would never believe that the Khonians could attack them as the temperature rose to a blistering 163 degrees.
And technically they were right … the Khonians couldn’t.
3
Little super-heated dust devils began to swirl among the Saje as they sat in the sun—their metal suits raised the air’s temp an extra few degrees around them, the hotter air drawing the dust towards where they sat. When the group split into squads and prepared to move, Jacob walked up until he could see the metal berms of the Rha’ket’gar defenses. And what he saw made him chuckle.
Much like the metal suits of the Saje, the metal from the Rha’ket’gar’s berms, weapons and platforms had super-heated the air around them, and the entire base was covered in large, swirly sand-filled dust devils that almost completely obscured the view.
He pointed out the phenomena to Kent, Nicole and the squad leaders when they joined him for a look at their target. “They will never see us coming.” He laughed. But then as the seriousness of their next steps sunk in, he steeled himself. “We move to the base of the berm in three,” he said sternly. “Get your squads ready.”
4
The plan had called for them to move in, one squad covering the other, leapfrogging towards the base. But with the sandstorms blotching out the Rha’ket’gar’s cameras and sensors, that plan was scrapped. With a wave of his arm, Jacob sent the whole unit in a full sprint towards the enemy’s defenses. He covered the last 500 yards in just moments and slid in the sand to stop, leaning up against the base of the metal berm. The rest of the Saje caught up quickly.
“Prepare your explosives,” he whispered into his mic. He laughed a little when he realized that, because of the wind, no one on the outside could have heard him anyway, not to mention he had his visor down. As he thought through the next steps, his stomach did a flop.
