10
May
The next installment in the Jenny serial, where we meet the rescuer.
Of course, things could be looking down. That thing at the cavern mouth was a Devastator. They were legend in the human army, a rumour that even the newest and dumbest recruits new. Devastators were never acknowledged by command, and JNY-35197 had heard enough to piece together why. Every Devastator was a genetically modified criminal, turned into a cyborg, and given enough firepower to level an army. And they were insane. They’d had every remorse stripped away, and killing wired right into the pleasure centres of the brain. This particular one had arms that ended in repeater nests, and a high explosive mortar poked over the right shoulder. Yeah, it might have saved Jenny, but he wasn’t going to hang around. Devastators were notorious for friendly fire.
Command had other ideas. Jenny and the other few survivors tagged along behind the Devastator as it wandered towards an alien juggernaut. The Devastator cocked the sensory nest that replaced its head, and a support leg whirred out from its back, settling into the ground. The mortar rose over the shoulder to point in a straight line at the juggernaut. Oh dear. Not a mortar, a rail cannon. The grunts dove behind rocks as the cannon fired. Electricity belched backwards, charring the ground. One organ replacement screamed. He had been too slow.
The shot smashed through the juggernaut, and was still moving when it punched out the back. The Devastator capered. Jenny felt sick.
He stayed behind the rock. Command ordered Jenny up. He stayed put. Then his suit sent pain into his arm, and command told Jenny to move. Jenny moved. Six humans followed the genetic wreck. Another juggernaut, another rail cannon, another electrical burst. The organ replacements dived for cover.
Jenny felt strange, an observer wandering through Hell. Another Devastator appeared, leading another group of refugee soldiers. He forgot his training, his stealth, his raiding, and wandered dazed behind the Devastator. It wiped out an alien patrol. Aliens were more common now, thicker on the ground. Some of them shot back. The Devastator chittered, and killed. It had been hit, and there was a tiny scratch in the armour. Jenny shuddered. He would have died.
The grunts looked at one another, and hung back. More Devastators appeared, leading organ replacements. Ahead, a mass bulked. Alien dropships. So this was an assault. Why bring the humans? The Devastators were having fun.
A dropship attempted to lift off. Rail cannon pierced it from all around. It fell from the sky, bleeding. Other vessels chose to fire. Devastators were hit, and these weapons hurt. One lost an arm, grinned stupidly, and put a rail cannon into the turret that shot him. Some went down, but not before unleashing torrents of fire. Jenny stood at Hell’s gate.
Jenny and the other survivors hid, looking at one another. What where they were for? Command crackled over the radio. Jenny shouted back. Command insisted, and Jenny crumpled in pain. The grunts stood, weapons out, and prepared to charge. Command is a bitch.
7
May
Here’s the fourth installment of Jenny, as well as my #FridayFlash for the week. For those of you who might be new to this (short) serial, there are links to the other four at the bottom of the post, starting with “The First Day”.
The humans were ready. The ball of ice had been set up as a trap for the aliens, and when their ships flew down, cannon and repeaters open fire, decimating them before they landed. And when the aliens did land, JNY-35197 and the grunts went to work.
Compared to the infiltrator gear of the humans, the aliens stuck out like glowing targets on infrared. Jenny would lead the grunts in, silence any guards, and watch as demo charges and repeater fire wiped out enemy patrols. This worked well. Twice.
The third time, tripwires and electronic screen fields were in place, and the forty were caught in the open, pinned down by fire and dying off. Only another raid’s intervention let Jenny and some soldiers escape. They’d lost ten.
Life turned for the worse from then on, as the aliens brought another wave of ships. These were met with counter-fire, but the batteries on the ice planet had been severely weakened by the fighting, and the aliens landed many.
Jenny and his team fought furiously, in battle for days at a time, sleeping in ice caves and igloos for a few minutes. The numbers from the original forty spun like a countdown. Twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-three. Twenty. Each death scarred Jenny a little more, and he carved the initials of the dead on the inside of his suit. He’d had to learn his letters to use the infiltrator gear. A small step. Maybe he’d learn to read one day.
Maybe he’d be dead first. Fifteen. Command was a mess, barking out orders that made no sense, had no connection to reality. Attack here, attack there. They were under attack, not attacking. Sure, the alien battlesuits were easy, but the juggernauts? Impossible. They rolled through any fire or explosives Jenny and the grunts could lay down, and broke the defence.
Jenny got caught in another firefight, and the forty were now seventeen. They were able to break away and hole up in mountain caves, ones with a store cache. Replenished food, supplies, even slept a little. And then the assault came, up the front slope. No juggernauts, the hill was too steep. But a hundred or more, against seventeen.
With all of the cover, it was hard to pick off the aliens. The humans had buried a few mines, and they set those off, but still, too much cover, too thin a fighting line. Some of the aliens got within twenty feet of the cave entrance before dying. Then two groups came in a pincer, and the humans were forced into the cave itself. Fourteen against sixty.
Grenades and gas followed, and it was twelve. There wasn’t enough cover. Jenny flicked repeater bullets down the corridor, catching a few aliens, but more came, with more grenades. That meant the aliens were frightened. Jenny and his team had done damage. Ten on thirty-five. But those numbers were too much, too many. The humans started to die faster.
Smoke and debris and flashes filled the cave, and beyond that came an almighty whine. Command came over the radio for one word: “Duck”. Jenny hit the floor, and the cavern was scythed in half. Every alien fell dead. When he could see again, Jenny looked at the entrance. Standing there was a squat, wide thing festooned in weaponry. At the sight, Jenny grinned. Things were looking up.
6
May
The third in the JNY serial. I’ll have a fridayflash tomorrow, as well.
This was hell. At least, it was Jenny’s idea of hell. JNY-35197 had been pulled off the desert planet with the last of the remaining humans, shoved into cold storage, and shipped to an icy rock in the boondocks. From a desert to a god-damn ice cube. In a women’s suit. Jenny must have been assigned to a real joker at command.
At least he wasn’t being shot at here. When those bombs had covered the sky with ash, and nothing came to stop the juggernauts, he and the rest of the grunts had run. No last stand for him, no heroic death. Bugger that for a lark. Jenny had been locked in a building for most of his life, he wasn’t going to die just yet.
Of course, command wanted to make him suffer for being alive. No information, no idea of the time in cold storage, nothing. Just another bungalow at the ass end of the universe, another forty soldiers, and mindless patrolling.
To pass the boredom, Jenny had started talking to the survivors from the original forty grunts. He’d asked about their lives. All the grunts had been standard organ replacements, locked in some building, exercised, fed. Dull, dull, dull. Just like him. They all had names that were a play on their ID numbers too. ZCK-25468 was Zeke, LHA-98734 was Laura, and on it went.
Life was just like being back on the desert planet, before the aliens had come. Pointless missions, non-existent command, crap food. Only difference: the training sims had been upgraded. Now they had aliens to shoot at, instead of other humans. Whoopee.
The beep that signalled orders came out of the speakers, and Jenny perked up. Most interesting thing in weeks. Command started speaking, but it was meandering gruel, nothing important. At least command had a different voice. Then Jenny perked his ears. Raiding practice against other bungalows? That sounded fun.
The next day, suit technicians came, taking away the old ones and replacing them with infiltrator gear. Less armour than the battlesuit, more electronics. Jenny and the other grunts spent the next month studying, learning how to use the advanced technology. He wondered why these suits were being given to replacements, and not real humans. Maybe the reals were all dead. Or maybe the replacements are more expendable.
Either way, JNY-35197 didn’t care. He got to play with interesting gear. Made for the first time in a while he had fun. Training was tedious, constant orders from command, always barking, barking. Still, Jenny got good at being stealthy, and then he got very good. Jenny was point man for the whole pack of forty.
Another month, and command said the grunts were good enough to test. Then the raids began. Against themselves, against other teams, defending other teams. Jenny ‘died’ a lot, but he got better. Soon he lead the forty to victory in a raid, and then another. Life was looking up, looking fun. And then the aliens came again.
4
May
The second piece in the JNY serial. This isn’t standalone, so make sure to read the first short.
The desert was cold, and the sky was ash. A week had passed since JNY-35197 had stared at the meteors. Half the grunts were dead, not that Jenny had known them well. They’d all been organ replacements like him. Command was gone too, or at least it was a different voice coming from his speakers. This one was female, not that it made a difference how command acted.
That first day, the meteors had spit chunks of rock and asteroid at the bungalow, blowing it apart. Other pieces had impacted on Jenny’s position. That was why there were now twenty-one grunts, not forty. They’d been running since then, dodging through the desert, surviving on the emergency rations from the battlesuits. Command had come and gone, but at least this new woman had given Jenny coordinates to march towards.
Command had also explained the ash in the sky. The enemy had used bombs to fill the air with radioactive dust and debris, so taking off a battlesuit would result in death. JNY-35197 was glad that claustrophobia had been ironed out of his genetics as part of the standard clone procedure, otherwise he’d have lost it. A week in a cramped, ill-fitting suit. Of course, the suit had stopped a repeater shell, so Jenny figured he should be somewhat thankful.
The heads up display in Jenny’s suit told him he was looking at the coordinates. Another barren dune. No supplies, nothing. Still, the grunts fanned out like they had been trained, and advanced on the dune. Jenny reached the top, and saw more desert. Command then crackled into life, and ordered them all to the summit. Bemused, they gathered in a tight circle on the peak.
The sand moved, and Jenny fell through like so much quicksand, arriving in an underground room. Above, the tunnel they had fallen through seal shut, and command told them to unsuit, eat the food, and rest. The room was barren, emptier than the bungalow. Twenty-one mats lay on the floor, each with food beside it. Otherwise, there was one locked door, and the tunnel.
Jenny followed command’s advice, and woke to find his suit swapped out. Same model, same used stink, but no bullet dent. Fit him better too. More food came, but command did not, and so Jenny went back to sleep. This pattern followed for two days, and then command spoke. Jenny crawled into his battlesuit, grabbed his repeater, and climbed up the ladder in the tunnel.
A trench had been dug around the summit, and the twenty-one grunts dug in, a thin ring facing outwards. Soon the horizon filled with the sounds of battle, and massive treaded beasts trundled forward, and among them Jenny could see the tiny forms of battlesuits. This time, when command ordered him to fire, he fired. The repeaters worked against the battlesuits, and so Jenny picked them off, one by one. Then the bombs came again, and the sky rained ash.
3
May
This is the first piece in a flash fiction serial. I’ll be trying to do one a day, but I probably won’t quite manage it. As those of you who have read the older postings will notice is that the main character for this serial is borrowed from the short story Clone. I hope you enjoy his continued adventures.
It was the first day. Of what, JNY-35197 was unsure. But he had been told it was the first day, and so it was. He accepted not knowing, for not knowing was part of his role. He was a soldier, of sorts. Jenny, for that was his spoken name, had been given a few months of training, and then shipped off to some godforsaken planet out in the ass end of the known universe. Apparently, there was a war on, but for Jenny? He’d had more to do when he was locked inside an organ farm.
Out here, he was on patrol, wandering around in a desert full of sand, sand, some more sand, and sand. He was there to protect a, well, he didn’t know. It was the first day, and he was to patrol the sand. Jenny drew some designs in the sand. He’d been told they were words, but he couldn’t read or write. Organ replacements don’t need that, nor does cannon fodder. So Jenny dawdled on the sands, walking from patrol point to patrol point. There was another fresh trooper with him, but they didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak, even. The desert was so damn hot opening the battlesuits they were in was deadly, and the radio only went to command. That silent, oppressive, mystical command.
Command didn’t live at the base with JNY-35197 and his mates. That was just forty grunts in a prefab bungalow. Command was a voice on the intercom and the radio that ordered them about, and watched through microcameras and implants. Command wasn’t going to be in the same place as organ replacements. Hell, they were probably worried more about the battlesuits than the flesh inside. Flesh was cheap. Battlesuits, even old one likes this, weren’t.
Jenny could tell the suit was old, because it didn’t fit him right. Had a couple dents in the chest, and was tight in the crotch. A woman’s suit. Jenny had been told it was someone’s idea of a joke, but he didn’t get it. A few others had the same problem. Maybe a joke got funnier the more it was told, but Jenny didn’t think so.
Inside the bungalow after patrol, there wasn’t much to do. Eat, sleep, work out, do training. Two sims were installed at the back, and every grunt had to do a certain amount of sim training a week. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t. JNY-35197 thought it was a waste of time. He’d run himself to exhaustion, collapse onto a bunk in the dark room, and wake up. Like any other day, Jenny had come back from patrol, eaten, run, and slept. Then the alarms went off and all the lights turned red.
Command was on the speakers, ordering all forty into battlesuits and out to a designated point. It was an hour’s march away, but that was an easy stroll. Shrugging into the suits, JNY-35197 and the rest of his organ replacement grunts went out, command now talking into their ears from the suit speakers.
Command went silent after a few last orders, and the grunts marched to arrive in the middle of an empty desert. There was nothing here, nothing at all. Then command came on the speakers again, and told the grunts to look up. Meteors filled the sky. Command was jabbering away about the meteors being enemy landing craft, but Jenny was too busy watching the sky. It was beautiful. Of course, it was the first day of the war.