Off World- Ragnarok Read online

  Off World: Ragnarök

  By

  J.F. Holmes

  Dedicated to my fellow artillery Manchu’s.

  Twenty five miles through the hills on the backside of Fort Ord

  is no joke when you’re carrying a pig.

  The American colony on Rigelus IV was founded after the opening of a “Gate” to an earthlike planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Funding for the colony was provided by various petro-chemical corporations, and population rapidly grew. It was, in effect, the “New Frontier”, but humanity wasn’t the first ones there. ~ AlphaWiki, Year 72 GC

  Chapter 1

  Gate Crash minus three weeks, Earthside Gate Control

  The Humvee’s battered diesel engine rumbled as Brigadier General David Halstead shifted back into neutral. Traffic control had held up her hand to stop him while another vehicle shimmered through the Gate. Though he rated a driver, the general always drove himself—if he could, if his attention wasn’t too occupied. Today, he was free of the myriad things that plague good officers. The plan was in place, and running well. Ahead, the Gate to Alpha Centauri—to Seaside, his new command—sat, shimmering. His vehicle was next in line, with a freight train car being backed up to the Gate on his right and the seventy-inch-diameter oil pipeline on his left. Between the two were concrete guide walls, five feet high, designed to prevent clumsy drivers from damaging either.

  He thought back to the briefings he’d read about the wormhole to Alpha Centauri. It was twenty meters in diameter, and the technology needed to maintain it was far beyond his grasp on physics. A lot of quantum dynamics bullshit—and a huge amount of engineering—connected Earth, more specifically South Texas, to a peninsula on the main continent of Rigel IV. To him, though, it was just another post, albeit with some interesting challenges.

  The man in the passenger seat must have been thinking the same thoughts. “I heard the population’s up to seventy thousand now. That’s a lot of civilians for us to ride herd on.”

  “Yeah, well, our responsibility’s an organized external threat, thank God. No more running around the mountains chasing tribesmen.”

  “Amen to that,” said Command Sergeant Major Karl Olsen, his top NCO. They’d been together doing that exact thing for the fifth time in the Middle East when the orders had come down for then Colonel Halstead to assume command of the ACECOM forces, based around three battalions of the 9th Infantry Regiment.

  “It woulda been nice if they’d left us a battalion of armor instead of a company, and a squadron of A-10s. Slaughter the shit out of those medieval jack wagons. And I bet the equipment’s on the ass end of abused pieces of crap.”

  “We’ll make do like we always have. You know light infantry makes for tougher soldiers, and IF we get into a scrap, it’ll be from fixed defenses. Though I am going to keep a healthy screen of scouts out there.”

  “Yeah, and they’re going to be hamstrung by feel-good cocksuckers who complain about contaminating the local culture, and imperialism, and all that other bullshit. I can see the headlines now, ‘ARMY RE-ENACTS NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE ON NEW EARTH!’”

  Halstead laughed and said, “At least our diseases can’t wipe them out by the millions. We’ll do it in the regular old way if we have to. Massive technology overmatch. Unless you want to go hand-to-hand.”

  “Yeah, screw that. The Gvits are ten feet tall and muscular as shit, and running around in full fucking armor. Give me a Barrett .50 any day of the week.”

  Putting the truck back into drive, his commander carefully edged up to the ramp, a reflective-vest-wearing soldier guiding them, and came to a stop in front of the airlock. “Watch your language, Karl. You’re a model for the young now.”

  The words that exited the senior non-com’s mouth at that could have blistered the paint off the truck in front of them. He’d been an infantryman for more than twenty years, and had learned a new curse word every day of that time, apparently.

  “Besides,” answered his commander when he’d wound down, “our mission is defense only. We can’t conduct anything other than screening operations across the river that divides us from the Gvit. Protect and defend, protect and defend. That’s why they pulled out the armor.”

  “Protect and defend, my ass,” grumbled the SGM. He sent one more text to his wife, “See you in six months! Hawaii for us. Last tour, love you babe!”

  Her response brought a grin to his normally severe face, and he showed the phone to his boss. “Tell Dave I said that neither of you are young studs anymore, and he’s not to let you do anything stupid.”

  Halstead laughed, shifted back into drive, and moved through the Gate, down the mirroring ramp, and into the huge airlock on the other end of the warehouse. “Last text message for a while, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” grumbled the NCO, “radio transmissions are screwy because of the output of the primary, and the local animal life comes rushing whenever you make a transmission. So no radios, no drones, gotta do shit the old-fashioned way. Thank God we have your experience fighting in World War One, Dave.”

  “Hush, you old bastard, you’ve got two years on me.” They both laughed, two old friends going on one last mission together. Both sat patiently while the gate cycled, and then drove forward into the bright white light of the double sun.

  Chapter 2

  Directly behind the Humvee sat what the Army called a “sixty-person transport trailer”, and most soldiers referred to as a “Cattle Car”. Although the trip was short, it was still uncomfortable to be crammed in there with thirty other guys and all their baggage.

  “What unit are you going to?” asked a tall teenager wearing the single stripe of a private. He was talking to a very short soldier standing next to him whose name tag said ‘Walters’. He leaned over to look at the other man’s rank and saw a single diamond on the square patch. Unsure who he was talking to, he added, a bit late, “Sir.”

  The girl across from them laughed and said, in a heavy West Virginia accent, “Baird, he’s just a cadet, you dumbass.”

  “Stop busting my balls, Orson. Isn’t it time for your testosterone shot? If you don’t get it on time, don’t you go back to being a woman?”

  Cadet Walters laughed, though he shouldn’t have. “I’m more woman than you’ll ever get, you Texas redneck liberal.”

  “I’m not even sure that’s an insult. At least I know how to read, hillbilly girl. Or did your sister-mother teach you to?” It was obvious that the two were friends who were picking on each other out of nervousness, and Billy ‘Shorty’ Walters felt a bit left out.

  “So, uh, whatever you are, what unit are you going to? Are you an officer?” Baird said, pointing at the diamond. “Or some really young kind of first sergeant?”

  “I’m a cadet major, meaning I’m the XO of my ROTC battalion.”

  “Oh, like high school stuff? We had an ROTC thing in the high school next district over. But they just did parades and stuff. Not real soldiers, like the infantry.”

  “No,” said Walters, who was used to people misunderstanding what ROTC actually was. Commissioning programs had grown fewer and smaller in the last two decades, after the so called ‘end of the war on terror’, “it means when I graduate next year I’ll become a lieutenant. I’m hoping to get infantry as my branch, but I got assigned to do an internship in logistics. Which sucks, because my major is Military History and Xenopology.”

  “Zee what?” asked Baird. They’d been sitting in the hot south Texas sun for more than an hour, and with nothing else to do, they fell back on what soldiers had been doing since Sargon first marched across the plains of Mesopotamia. Bullshitting.

  “Xenopology, the study of alien cultures. Like the Gvit.”

  “Only way I’m going to s
tudy those big mothereffers is through my rear sight post. ’Course, if’n I go hand-to-hand, I’ll do OK. I used to wrestle in high school.”

  “Now who’s gay, huh?” Orson teased, but he ignored her.

  “Well, they have a feudalist medieval culture, and their tech isn’t much past late iron age,” said Walters, getting into lecture mode.

  “I know what that means. Swords and armor, bows and arrows. Ain’t going to hurt modern infantry much.”

  “Know what the max accurate range of a Gvit bow is?”

  “I’ve hunted boar with a bow,” said Baird, mimicking pulling back and letting loose. “Hundred yards, maybe, with a good shot.”

  “Five hundred, and almost double that against a massed target.”

  “Damn,” said Baird, properly impressed. “That’s as much as an M-4.”

  Walters loved that they were actually paying attention to him. Because of his height, he often got overlooked and ignored. “Did you know that in the Battle of the Bridge, they actually managed to shoot down a UH-60 that was dropping off troops and disabled three M-1 tanks?”

  “No shit!” said Baird, sure he was getting fucked with.

  “Yep,” answered Walters, unaware of the sarcasm in Baird’s voice. “The first unit across the bridge set up a defensive perimeter and got slaughtered. Here,” he said, bringing up his tablet, “it’s all right here in the AAR.”

  Baird laughed and said, “That shit’s way above my paygrade. All I know is, we put the smackdown on them. I saw it Funker360.”

  Just then the truck started to move, and conversation stopped. Only the driver and the truck commander had made the trip through the Gate before, and the fear most of them felt was almost hanging in the air like a smell.

  “I heard,” said Private Baird in a low voice, “that sometimes things get lost between the Gates.”

  “It’s a statistical impossibility. Like getting killed by a meteor,” said Walters. “The odds are like a billion to one.”

  “Yeah, well, how many times have they used it over twenty years? That shit adds up,” said Baird.

  “That’s not how statistical probability wor—” and Walters’ words were cut short as they crossed through.

  To an observer using a time piece, the transit of a Gate took no measurable time. At one moment, each atom of a person was in two places at once, and at the next, on the other side. To the person going through it, though, eternity was a better word.

  Baird was never able to describe exactly what it felt like. Strange, utterly strange, terrible and horrible and beautiful all at the same time. It lasted forever, then was over in a second, like a giant rubber band snapping, and they were on the other side. The light was different, brighter, the color slightly off. What first came to his attention, though, was someone in the back of the cattle car. It was a big guy, one who’d talked a lot of shit all through basic and infantry school. Thing was, he could back it up with his fists, and everyone had been a little afraid of him, even the drill sergeants.

  Now, though, he lay collapsed on the floor, screaming over and over, “HELL! HELL! HELL! OH JESUS SAVE ME, I’M IN HELL!” Before anyone could say “move”, the doors of the cattle car banged open and a staff sergeant stood there, a look of disgust on her face.

  “Sergeant Johnson!” she called to an unseen soldier, “get the medics, we’ve got another one.” She leaned in and yelled, “EVERYONE OUT!”

  As he passed the staff sergeant, whose name tag read “Giamatti”, she winked at Walters and said, “Welcome to Seaside, Cadet!” Then she grabbed Baird and Orson and said, “Come with me, knuckleheads.”

  Behind them the screaming continued.

  Chapter 3

  Fort McHenry motor pool, Gate Crash minus three weeks

  The Stryker was hard up against the wall, so the rising suns were still hidden in the west, the vehicle in shadow. Staff Sergeant Jimenez ran the crank on his flashlight and shone it into the Stryker’s engine compartment. He cursed when he saw the chewed-through wires, quickly slamming the hatch shut and stepping back.

  “Puta!” the NCO exclaimed, meaning the creatures running around inside the vehicle. “Gimme that bug bomb, Johnson. Suckers got into the engines, chewed through the main wiring harness.”

  PFC Johnson reached into the canvas tool bag slung around his shoulder and pulled out a glass bottle with a fuse hanging out of it. Jimenez held it in one hand and put the other hand on the hatch handle, ready to twist it open. Johnson took his cigarette and lit the fuse, then stepped back. Jimenez counted to three, then quickly lifted the hatch and tossed it inside. There was a muffled WHOOMP and smoke started to seep out of the hatch edges, the seals rotten with age. An angry buzzing sound and loud thumps from inside persisted for half a minute, and then stopped.

  “How long do we wait? Learning moment, young padawan,” said Jimenez in his best Jedi master voice.

  “Two full minutes, Sarge.” Johnson looked at his watch, and when the two minutes were up, he motioned to his boss.

  “Watch and learn, watch and learn. Shine the light directly in when I open it.” The NCO opened the hatch, sticking a small .22 revolver inside in almost the same motion. He fired a few quick shots into the two still forms at the bottom of the engine well, placing them carefully so the rounds wouldn’t ricochet and damage the engine any more than it already was. Then he put on a heavy leather glove and lifted out each of the still bleeding forms. Green fluid dripped out onto the packed dirt, and he threw them onto the ground in disgust. The creatures resembled the grasshoppers he remembered from his childhood back in Mexico, on Old Earth. The differences were, they were the size of small cats and had gleaming teeth that would easily chew through hard plastic. Sticking his head back into the hatch, he saw the wiring harness was as bad as he’d feared. Great chunks of it had been ripped out, the plastic sheathing destroyed, and the copper wire chewed to pieces. Johnson leaned his head in to inspect the damage.

  “Damn, Sarge. That’s going to be hard to fix.”

  Jimenez lifted his patrol cap and scratched his close-cropped head. “You know, last year I told them NOT to put the motor pool on the landward side of the island. Gotta keep the wildlife away from our stuff. This is the third vehicle we’ve lost this year to those stupid frigging hoppers.” He sighed. “Go down to Delta Six Two and start stripping the wires out of it; I’ll let the chief know, and pull the dash 30 out of records, see if we can rig it back in.”

  “Right on it, boss.” Johnson walked down the side of the massive eight-wheeled vehicle and came out to what looked like a massive junkyard, except the wrecks were all lined up in precise formation. As he moved down the line, each one showed more and more parts stripped off. Strykers, a couple of M1-a4 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, HUMVEEs, and a scattered row of helicopters, both attack and scout. All of it too much trouble to ship back to Earth, they’d become the Regiment’s spare parts. He passed two other mechanics working to pull an engine out of a wrecked cargo truck. They had a wooden frame erected and were slowly winching it out, along with the transmission. The rest of the metals would be separated and melted down for recycling. One of them stopped and wiped her hands on her coveralls.

  “Hey, Johnson, what’s the deal with Echo Five Seven?”

  “Hey, Corporal Kelly. Hoppers got into the engine compartment. Tore the wiring harness up. It’s shit the bed. I’m going to pull the harness out of Delta Six Two and try to fix it.”

  “Good luck with that. Let me know if you need help.”

  The figure next to her grunted and smacked his large three-fingered hands together, the firelight glinting on his chrome and black scales. “Yeah, Sligo, I got you. If I need some muscle, I know where to go,” said Johnson.

  Corporal Gina Kelly jumped down off the truck, followed by the native. She wiped some of the dirt off on her coveralls, but her pale face and blonde hair was already streaked with grease. “You know we’re both detailed pull maintenance at Firebase Glory, right?”

  “Is Sligo
going with us?” The native grunted something Johnson took as a yes. Kelly answered for him.

  “Hell, yeah, we need the muscle. Plus, you know how good he is in a fight. By the way, is your brother going?”

  “What’s it to you? Huh?” Johnson could almost see her blushing in the dawn light.

  “Piss off, jerk,” she answered, obviously irritated.

  “Nope, 1-9 is on garrison duty, and he got some new guys in to train. Sligo has a better chance to get action from him than you.”

  The alien hooted in laughter, and Kelly smacked him. “Well, tell him to stop by the barracks tonight.”

  “Can do. If he’s allowed out. Got into another bar fight with the oil rig guys again last night. He’s walking steps with a rifle and full pack in the plaza; got twenty kilometers this time. Maybe you can rub his, uh, sore feet for him. Bow Chica Bow Wow!” He made a grinding motion with his hips, and Sligo grunted in amusement. Chak mated, well, differently than humans, but he understood the meaning well enough. Johnson ran as Kelly threw a 14mm wrench, the nearest thing handy, at his back.

  ****

  In the office at the front of the motor pool, Sergeant Jimenez stood at Chief Grozen’s desk and helped himself to a cup of coffee, glancing at the clock. 06:00. The suns would clear the wall in another ten minutes. Regular as a clock, no axial tilt. He reached over to the metal status board and moved the magnet representing Echo Five Seven over to the deadline column to join the growing number of wrecked and unserviceable vehicles. The door behind him was open, letting in the sound of a group of runners calling cadence as they did their morning physical training. After updating the board, he turned to face the chief warrant officer.

  “Good news or bad news?” he asked.

  The grey-haired man scowled. “Do you HAVE any good news?”