The Tetra War Read online

  The Tetra War

  Michael Ryan

  &

  Hunter Ross

  Copyright © 2018 by Michael Ryan & Hunter Ross. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Murder is forbidden; therefore Tedesconian murderers are punished unless they kill massive numbers to the sound of prayers.

  ~ Judge Telloc Hallibone

  November 17, 2299 Human Common Era

  Arctic DMZ, Earth

  I’ve always hated escort missions.

  Being attached to an eccentric team of researchers headed into the Arctic Demilitarized Zone seemed like easy duty when I first received my new assignment. Command often made decisions or gave orders that befuddled troopers and grunts, but I’d never heard of mixing regular infantry with Specialized Drop Infantry until I was notified I was headed north.

  In spite of my reservations, I was a soldier with a job, and of course, I did it. Admittedly, my pride had been wounded – I’m SDI, and SDI aren’t regular army. We’re an elite force that carries enough integrated hardware on our backs to overthrow a small country. Specialized training and nanogear isn’t cheap, so having the Blue Squad, Fourth Platoon, Delta Company of the Seventeenth Regiment babysit scientists in the DMZ seemed at the time a waste of resources.

  But seemingly insignificant international disagreements over trade routes, tariff rates, or the laws regarding the collection and sale of Amazonian aquarium fish could spark a war.

  So I imagined Command had their reasons.

  I liked my new platoon leader well enough. Lieutenant Williamsburg was an Earth-born Guritain with a surname that undoubtedly had resulted in many brawls as he grew up.

  As a mixed-blood earthling who was a quarter Guritain I’d faced a few of those myself, but I’ll say this about putting on a uniform: the distinctions between human and purvast, whether born on Earth or Purvas, turn to dust the moment you kill your first Tedesconian.

  No Teds were expected in the DZ when we began our trek, but the cold was a merciless enemy, and anyone who’s ever set foot in a recruiting station knows how much reliance to put on military intelligence. A significant number of human and purvast soldiers died as a result of the winter’s fury long before Tedesconian forces landed in the demilitarized zone, shattering the murmurings of peace talks.

  On day one of our mission, our strange platoon had a full complement of soldiers. With a mix of humans and purvasts, we had six TCI-Armored infantry, twenty non-armored soldiers, and eight scientists. By the end of day twelve, we’d been reduced to half that number, with most of our losses caused by a combination of falls and extreme cold.

  We’d also lost a scientist to a polar bear.

  Any soldier who’s spent time in the field knows that nature can be as much of a killer as any army.

  The All-Troops Sat-Comm News & Messages download didn’t arrive as usual on day thirteen. On day fourteen, our platoon leader announced we were deaf, dumb, and blind to the rest of the world. Our primary mission changed from research to survival.

  On day fifteen, our point walked into an ambush.

  ~~~

  “Who the hell’s attacking us?” someone shouted over the all-platoon comm line. Standard procedure in the frozen wasteland was to use a comm line for all tactical communication even if the other parties were standing next to you.

  “Keep the comm clear of chitchat, goddammit,” Lieutenant Williamsburg ordered. “Purple leader, I need a sit-rep.”

  “Sir, Purple is off-line,” one of the infantry troops announced.

  The lieutenant greeted the news with an incredulous pause. “The entire squad?”

  “This is Private Avery Ford, sir,” I said, breaking into the communication, my words distorted by my ragged breathing. “They’re buried under ice, sir.”

  “That doesn’t explain why they’re all dead,” the lieutenant snapped, clearly exasperated.

  “No, sir. HE-89s killed them.”

  “Say again?”

  I paused. “They’re using Tedesconian hardware, sir.”

  “Jesus Christ, Avery,” he blurted, his tone dejected.

  A sense of dread washed over me. “Sir?”

  Another long pause.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “Avery, do your best to keep the IQs alive.” After a moment of silence, he muttered something unintelligible. The lieutenant was one of those who believed decades of war between the Gurts and Teds was about to end.

  His optimism was misplaced.

  ~~~

  Two hours earlier, at first contact, we’d driven the transport into a small ravine and buried it, with the six surviving scientists aboard, under snow. A research transport wasn’t armored, so we’d gone with natural camouflage as a defense. The fifteen remaining soldiers were spread out over roughly a square kilometer.

  We were fighting an unknown enemy in the middle of the most treacherous terrain on Earth.

  Because we were escorting a scientific research team into neutral territory, we weren’t carrying the usual complement of missiles, rail-guns, mines, and centrifugal machine guns.

  A TCI-Armor suit is versatile and compact. On routine ops I’d normally carry my favorite combination of kinetic-round missiles, high-explosive mini-grenades, and a lightweight mini-rail capable of lobbing a plethora of ordnances.

  I’d often wondered why Tedesconian hardware and ammo was generally interchangeable with Gurt weaponry, but when I had lunch with a stock trader who was trying to convince me to put my military paycheck into a fund he managed, my worldview changed. We were on opposing sides of a war, but the arms manufacturers supplied both sides. Same as it ever was.

  My display flashed red in warning.

  <>

  A missile had locked on my heat signature, leaving me scant seconds to react.

  I was equipped with a standard-issue Gauss assault rifle, a few percussion grenades, and a dozen flares – nothing that would serve as a countermeasure against a missile. I also had a flamer, which I freed and used to torch a hole in the ice just above my right shoulder. When it was five feet deep, I set off a flare and tossed it into the opening.

  <>, my screen cautioned.

  I waited, standing by the opening, and counted, fighting to remain calm.

  Four seconds doesn’t sound long, but believe me, when your expected lifespan is measured at four point one, time slows to a crawl.

  TCI-Armor can’t withstand a direct hit fr
om a high-explosive device as large as the HE-89, but it can survive a near miss – or a near hit, depending on your perspective. I was down to an eighth of a second when I hit the deck. The missile’s internal tracking system noticed. However, physics are physics, and its momentum worked against it.

  I believe its internal sensors did everything they could to alter course, but its speed prevented it from doing so. Perhaps the missile mistook the glacier wall for the sky and adjusted its flight to attempt a second run; maybe it confused the flare for my heat signature, as I’d hoped when I’d taken a chance with a desperate gambit.

  To this day I can’t be sure.

  All I know is that at the last possible moment, the missile adjusted and slammed into the frozen wall above me. The resulting explosion caused an avalanche of glacier ice to rain down on me, knocking me flat on my back and burying me so thoroughly I was in near total darkness. I lay there trying to catch my breath, and after several incredulous seconds, I performed a damage assessment, which consisted of blinking away shock, flexing my fingers, and questioning my sanity for being in this frozen wasteland.

  ~~~

  “I thought you were a goner,” said PFC-5 Juliana Toleman, my partner, over our person-to-person comm line. She and I had been paired together at our first duty station straight out of TCI-Armor school. I was young and idealistic at the time and thought we’d be together forever.

  “Still here,” I replied with an uncomfortable grunt. I took several hesitant steps into a small ravine of ice and sent up a scout drone. “Sit-rep?” I asked her.

  “Nothing to report,” she answered.

  “Nobody knows who–”

  The lieutenant broke in over the all-platoon comm line. “Any of you boots still breathing?”

  The others checked in. There were only four of us left.

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Blue Squad Actual, do you have an enemy contact report that’ll make me happy?”

  “Sir, we got ’em,” my squad leader, Sergeant Daniels, answered.

  “Good.”

  “At great cost,” Daniels added.

  “That’s why we make the big bucks, Sergeant.”

  “Sir.”

  “Let’s pick up the IQs and unwind this disgraceful mess.”

  “The popsicles, sir?” Daniels asked.

  “Leave ’em for now,” the lieutenant answered. “Free cryogenics.”

  Sergeant Daniels remained silent. Each of us dealt differently with casualties; some used crass humor, others spoke in spiritual niceties, and many of us acted as if the dead didn’t exist.

  The lieutenant filled the uncomfortable silence with a gruff bark. “Move your asses. The talent might still be alive.”

  ~~~

  The science team was right where we’d left them.

  We dug them out.

  “What the hell happened out there?” asked Dr. Spencer, one of the scientists.

  “I wish I knew,” the lieutenant answered.

  Spencer’s tone barely disguised his surprise. “How can you not?”

  “No sat-comm, Doc. No comm up or down. I can’t even tell you for sure who attacked.”

  “Terrorists,” another scientist exclaimed. “Has to be.”

  “That would make them an extremely well-financed terrorist group,” Sergeant Daniels said. “We were ambushed by armored drop troops with Tedescon–”

  The lieutenant cut him off. “That’s enough, Sergeant.”

  “I find it hard to believe a terrorist group would be this well-equipped,” another scientist, a female purvast, said in a hushed tone. “Maybe the war’s escalated, and this is no longer a neutral zone?”

  “Maybe,” the lieutenant snapped. “But speculating won’t keep us alive. Troops, I want everything secured and ready to go in five minutes. Unless you’re dead, you will stay on mission. Is that understood?”

  We replied in unison, “Yes, sir.”

  The science team exchanged puzzled looks, but if any of the researchers had objections, they kept them to themselves.

  After what we referred to as the Tuesday Massacre, we were gifted with decent conditions and managed to travel for two days without incident.

  On the third day, the weather shifted. A cold front moved in with startling speed and caught us by surprise. Under cover of a pitch-black night, a powerful blizzard buffeted us in an open stretch. With no place to escape the storm’s fury, we lost one of our two transports, as well as a scientist who’d tried to stop it from falling into a crevice. Our loss – magnified by the fact that most of our food and water went missing with the transport – forced us to travel at a slower rate and hunt polar bears for food. After several botched attempts, we downed a gigantic male and dined on the fatty slabs of protein at every meal.

  All these years later, the thought of eating the gamey meat still triggers a gag reflex.

  On day twenty-two we entered a canyon of ice that stretched deep into the glacier. As we made our way into the gorge, sheer walls of crystalline white towered above us, blocking any warmth from the sun and ensuring that even during the few hours of daylight we remained cloaked in shadow.

  ~~~

  “Lieutenant, sir?” I relayed over a military-only channel.

  “Go ahead, Avery,” he replied. The young louie had discarded military protocol since the storm – a disconcerting sign to me, but one I’d chosen not to comment about. “But make it quick.”

  “We’re being hunted.”

  A pause. “Damn. A hungry bear?”

  “Looks that way, sir.” The comm hissed, and the lieutenant didn’t say anything.

  “Sir?” I pressed.

  “SAB, Avery. We might need the meat.”

  “Sir,” I said, acknowledging the command.

  SAB – same as before – meant falling back with Juliana. I held up a hand to indicate that we’d be hanging back from the rest of the column.

  “Another bear?” she asked over our personal comm line.

  “Think of it as a mobile buffet coming our way,” I answered.

  We scooped up fresh snow and created a mound we could use for cover, and hurriedly set up blinds, hers thirty meters behind mine and closer to the far canyon wall. Camouflage requirements were simple in the demilitarized zone, where everything was various shades of white. Using the TCI-Armor’s LBCS for camouflage effect wasn’t worth the energy suck; you never knew when an extra hour of battery life would make the difference between mission success and freezing to death, trapped inside an armored coffin.

  Steep glacier walls jutted into the sky on either side of us, leaving the hunting bear with only one approach. This made our field of fire relatively easy, which, combined with our speed and weaponry, tipped the odds in our favor. As fast as polar bears were – and they were fast – they were still slower than a trained soldier in a suit.

  “I got him lit up in my DS,” I said. I thumbed a heat-signature tracking program to life and watched the big animal lumber toward us on my display screen.

  “I’d kill for a hamburger and fries,” Juliana said.

  “I’ll take you out for a double cheese and bacon when we get back.”

  “If we get–”

  “Don’t be morbid,” I said.

  She sighed and clicked her tongue. “I don’t know if I can gag down any more bear meat.”

  “Beats the alternative,” I observed.

  “I’m definitely not eating purvast.”

  “You’d eat human if it meant surviving.”

  I heard a gagging sound over the comm. “Not a chance, Avery.”

  “You will if you have no–” I stopped short as the ice vibrated under my boots. Loud cracking echoed off the ravine face. Snow and shards of ice broke loose along the top as the glacier fractured, dropping an avalanche of sharp spikes and boulder-sized chunks. I instinctively ducked, my pulse thudding in my ears, even though we were far enough from the impact zone that we weren’t in danger of being crushed. The tremors increased in intensity and
peaked with five shocking jolts. Falling snow picked up by a swirling wind created a freezing twister that traced the course of the canyon, causing a mini-whiteout in my monitor.

  “Juliana?” I called.

  A moment later she answered. “I’m good.”

  “Hold one. I’m coming to you.” I moved deliberately toward her position, but I couldn’t make her out against the arctic white. I typed a Locate & Path command into my hip-mounted 12-Key All-Weather and waited for her icon to appear on my DS.

  Nothing.

  “Jules,” I said, “I’m twenty meters away. No visual. Could you light something up?”

  I waited. Still nothing. There was no sign of her on my display.

  I tried again. “Jules? Juliana? Can you hear me?”

  There was no response.

  ~~~

  The lieutenant’s icon blinked on my DS from farther down the canyon.

  “Avery, this is–” His voice abruptly cut off and was replaced by crackling, static, and then silence. A shriek from my earpieces squelched, and his voice faded back onto the comm.

  “–can you–”

  Static and silence again.

  “Goddam–”

  The comm line hummed like a taut cable in a high wind. My ears strained to make anything out, but all I got for my effort was a hiss.

  “Sir?” I replied.

  I tapped in a command to locate him.

  My display read <>. I cursed under my breath.

  I continued a visual search for Juliana and found her blind. After circling it, I spotted faint tracks in the fresh snow and followed them. Twelve meters away, I stopped at a perfectly round meter-and-a-half-diameter hole in the glacier floor. I braced my feet so I wouldn’t slip in, and peered into an abyss of indeterminate depth.

  Her voice crackled over our comm line. “Avery!”

  “I’m here, at the lip of the opening,” I answered.

  “My leg’s in…it’s…in bad shape,” she said, sounding uncharacteristically tentative and fragile. “I think it’s broken, Avery. Hurts like a bitch.”

  Under most circumstances, a suit can cushion a fall onto cement from fifteen meters, higher if the soldier’s athletic and limber.