ALF Warz: The Iron Sergeant

By Kevin Lumley

ALF Warz: The Iron Sergeant by Kevin 'Jaqhama' Lumley

The far future...there may finally be peace on Earth but not out amongst the Colonised Worlds...

Sgt. Iron Ryker is a trooper in the Colonial Armed Forces. The Federation of Colonised Worlds military muscle. From battles against the alien and savage Ru’a, in the deserts of Arkula, to police actions against the terrorists of the Independent League on Sharna, to skirmishes with the lizard-like Geckos and feline Zrene, Rye is always in the thick of the action. He’s a dedicated CAF trooper through and through, a comvet, admired by his officers and fellow soldiers alike. Until the day comes when an act of murder will set Rye, and his companion Quake, down a path of vengeance that eventually leads them to question everything they’ve fought for and believed in.
Laser blasting science fiction action and adventure at its best.

A well written and fast paced military space opera...a full length novel that keeps up the momentum from first page to last.
Reads like a pulse rifle on full auto.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Lumley
• Release date: Nov 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311054791

Kevin Lumley

I live with my beautiful wife and many animals in a small rural village at the base of the Blue Mountains in NSW, Australia.

Book preview

A.L.F. WARZ:

The Iron Sergeant

Kevin Lumley

SmashWords Edition

Published by Jaqhama Press 2013

Copyright © Kevin Lumley 2013

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher or author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorised electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

ALF Warz:

The Iron Sergeant

By

Kevin Lumley

A glossary of terms and descriptions is provided in the last pages of this novel to enhance the reader’s enjoyment

Acknowledgements

To my mother and sister, who always knew I could do it.

To my beautiful wife, Linda, whose faith in me is inspiring.

Disclaimer

This is the diary, or journal if you will, of Colonial Armed Forces Recon Scout Sergeant I. Ryker.

Currently on active service with the CAF 23rd Expeditionary Company.

All views and comments are those of Sgt. Ryker alone, and are not meant to reflect or interpret in any manner or suggestion those of the CAF.

Prologue

"We need pioneers, explorers, peacekeepers, protectors.

We need you!"

I really believed those satvid recruitment advertisements...you know the ones I mean.

"Join the CAF (Colonial Armed Forces). Help the Terran Federation find and pioneer new worlds, new planets. Help guard and protect the Federation colonised worlds we've already procured for human habitation. Go off-world. Experience the strange wonders, the new sights and mysteries of an alien planet."

Sounds great huh?

It certainly hooked me. I couldn’t wait to sign up.

A life of action and adventure. Exotic worlds, strange creatures.

Every young guy’s dream.

Be careful what you wish for…

Chapter 1

The present: Arkula

A blue skinned body leaps at me and I loose off a burst from the Gatlin .50.

The blue skins are everywhere.

The Ru’a.

Six limbed. Four limbs for legs, two limbs for arms. Every limb has a hand with six digits on it. The digits are long and at the end of each one is a mini suction cup. Amazingly dexterous those alien fingers are. A rear foot can be used in exactly the same way as a hand. The mini suction cups are cool too…if you’re a Ru’a…’cause you can climb walls and walk upside down on ceilings.

Which makes fighting them in these red rock canyons a very dangerous business indeed.

Standing upright an adult Ru’a is about eight foot tall. Smooth, slippery blue skin. Hairless, apparently sexless. They birth their young by laying eggs. Though how they procreate is anyone’s guess. The torso and limbs are all real skinny, as is the triangular shaped head. The head is big, looks way out of proportion to the rest of the alien creature.

The scary thing…what really creeps a lot of the troops out…is that the triangular shaped head has human aspects to it. Like a normal homo-sapien face elongated downwards and sharpened on a grinding wheel. The slitted eyes are bright yellow, with black centres. Under that are the two slits they breathe through. The jaw stretches open longer than you’d believe possible. Filled with big, sharp teeth. Big enough to bite a man’s head off.

Which is what happens to a soldier in front of me. I blast the Creepy as it munches on its hasty snack.

All around me troopers are going down left and right.

There’s been Terran cities on Arkula going back many years. But the Creepies, the Ru’a…are looking for new worlds to colonise themselves…and they don’t want to share anymore than the Gecko’s do.

But the Geck’s are almost human in their strategy and tactics and outlook on battle.

The Ru’a are something else.

They have no sense of self preservation, whatsoever. They rush towards us in waves. Ignoring the huge numbers of them that we gun down before they even reach us. They shoot on the run. They have these weird looking pistols and rifles. Oddly shaped, almost impossible for a human to use. Normally they carry small, round shields in their other hand. The shields are made of some kind of super-lightweight alloy. They’re tough enough to deflect a Gat .50 slug and even a Multi .75 bullet.

Frequently, in close quarters combat, the Ru’a warriors use one of their rear limbs to reach up and unsheathe a sword or an axe from their fighting harnesses. So then you’re faced with an adversary who’s shooting at you with one hand, deflecting your slugs with the shield on the other hand, and hacking and slashing at you with an edged weapon, wielded by a rear limb that is longer than the forelimbs.

They communicate by chirps, whistles and shrill cries. They also hiss and scream and spit a lot. A mouthful of spit from a Creepy is enough to momentarily blind you. It’s another weapon in their arsenal that they use to good effect. Even if you’ve got the visor down on your helmet, the saliva is thick and sticky and it’s hard to wipe off.

They landed a whole fleet of troopships on Arkula. By the time the CAF got its ass into gear, dozens of Terran cities had already been overrun and the rest were barley holding on.

The fighting was house to house, building to building in many places.

And of course, the Creepies, with their ability to walk up walls at will, made combat in a city twice as tough as it would normally be.

I was just lucky…if you can call it that…that I happened to be on a dropship that landed outside one of the cities that the Creepies had already overrun.

There was a flat plain outside the city. Beyond that a series of high, red rock canyons.

We’d fought them on the plain to no avail. A Creepy on the move runs, jumps, twists in mid-air. Seldom lands where you think it will and is amazingly accurate with those weird firearms while doing all of that.

We had a thousand troopers facing about five thousand Ru’a. We must have cut down a thousand of them before they even reached our lines. Then they just swarmed right over us.

Judd, Quake and myself are on board a small skimmer. Judd is steering and Quake is manning the Multi .75 and I’m repelling boarders on both the port and starboard sides.

We have the whole flat plain to skim over. Only problem is a Creepy is able to jump five meters high, no trouble at all. Our best tactic is a straight line run, straight over their heads at maximum throttle. Quake empties the mounted Multi of grenades and discs in less than two minutes. I’m tossing grenades over the sides of the skimmer as we blast over the top of the screaming, hissing, spitting horde below us. Ten minutes later, miraculously not yet shot down or boarded by leaping Creepies, we’ve run out of grenades. Quake has reloaded several times already. The Multi .75 fires various kinds of grenades. It also fires small discs. Razor sharp they’ll slice into solid steel. He's gone through all of them as well. Now he’s rapidly running down his supply of .75 slugs.

This isn’t looking good. I am almost out of ammo for my Gatlin .50. After that I’ll be down to my needlegun and pistol…I’m not placing much faith in my combat knife.

As Judd skims past the edge of the blue skinned horde I take a moment to see how the CAF are doing.

We are getting our ass kicked. Big time.

All over the plain human soldiers are lying dismembered, shot or hacked apart by the hundreds.

The Ru’a are flesh eaters. They prefer their homo-sapien cooked. But in a pinch, when they’re feeling a bit peckish on the run, raw homo-sapien will do.

I see still living troopers being eaten alive. Screaming.

The Ru’a like to torture their enemies too. (That means everyone and everything that isn’t a member of their species.) I notice that many of the Creepies have taken time out from the battle to toy with some of the wounded soldiers.

As Judd comes back for another run, a Creepy pulls a length of intestine from a living trooper's stomach and holds it up to show the horrified man before it takes a bite from it.

Judd drops the repulsors down a notch or two and levels with the alien killer. He depresses the button on the forward .75’s and the Ru’a and its victim turn to red mush before my eyes.

Judd has already run out of front and rear rockets. He is down to the mounted slug guns now.

On the port side a Ru’a leaps up and grabs hold of a guard rail. It points a gun at Judd’s back. Fuk off! I fire a burst from my Gat .50 and send it back over the side in a spray of blood.

The Ru’a weapons don’t fire bullets. They fire round pellets that explode on impact. There’s been plenty of those impacts and explosions on the armoured belly of our skimmer. I am surprised we haven’t been shot down yet.

Judd increases the repulsor strength and we skim back up to five or six metres. Using the burst effect to skim higher every so often. The jet-thrusters at the rear of the skim are on max throttle. We howl over the top of the fighting below us at close to two hundred kilometres an hour.

Our guys are retreating, off the plain. Quake yells. I hear him quite clearly through the comlink in my helmet. They’re making for those canyons over there.

I look to where he is pointing. See the remaining couple of hundred of our men fighting their way off the deadly plain and into the twisting, winding walls of the nearby canyon area.

We’re almost out of everything, Judd, I say, pretty calmly, all things considered. I think we should head for the canyons as well.

Doing it now, Rye. Hold on.

I have a stability harness attached to me, but I still take a good grip on a safety rail as Judd jerks the skimmer over sideways, rights it, and then howls over the top of advancing Ru’a warriors.

There are about a dozen other skimmers still in the air. A lot less than when the battle had started.

Judd skims over our own men, finds a canyon he likes the look off and blasts toward it.

What do we do when we’re in the canyons? he asks.

I was hoping you might have a suggestion?

My suggestion is we get the hell off this Rock!

That would be great, agrees Quake. Except they’re not going to bring the dropships back down in this chaos.

That is a cheery thought. It means we are trapped here, with no way to get off this planet.

I’ve got some more good news, Quake tells us. We’re putting out a lot of smoke. I mean a lot!

We are? asks Judd.

Just then the rear port side jet-thruster explodes and sends us careening into a canyon wall, completely out of control.

The impact throws the skimmer sideways and Judd wrestles with the controls to try and keep us steady.

The auto-stabilisers cut in as well and for a moment we are stable.

I’m putting us down! Judd yells. Brace yourselves.

Quake and I grab a good handful of support railing and hang on like a couple of limpets.

The thrusters cut back as Judd drops the repulsor rate. The red sand of the canyon floor rushes up towards us.

We hit and bounce. Were it not for our stability harnesses Quake and I would be thrown overboard.

We hit and bounce again, and again. Then we ground and slew sideways across the soft sand. It creates quite a cloud of fine red dust. It billows up around us, obscuring our vision completely.

Then we come to a standstill.

Passengers may now disembark, Judd says dryly. Please make sure to take all hand luggage and personal belongings with you.

*

Chapter 2

We fort up with a dozen or so other troopers who have escaped the massacre on the open plain.

Ammo is low and morale is lower.

Where's air support? asks Quake.

Tied up in another sector, answers Judd. Big aerial fight going on over there. Heard it on the skipchat channel.

We’re all gonna die here! a young soldier screams shrilly.

I see a fellow sergeant slap the man upside his helmet. I’ll tell you when it’s time to die, trooper. Until then you shut the fuk up and do what I tell you. Do you get me, mister?

I get you, Sarge.

A slap on the shoulder. Good lad. Make sure you’re reloaded and stand ready.

Hard to argue with the youngster’s observation. Judd points out.

Fuk you, and the skimmer you crashed in to get here. I reply. I’m just starting to get warmed up.

Slapping his last magazine of .75 slugs into the Multi, Quake chuckles softly. Seeing as how you’re all warmed up now, Rye, me and Judd will just rest here a spell, while you go sort the Creepies out. Call us if you need us, yeah?

I smile.

I look around.

A dozen soldiers plus the three of us.

In front of myself, down a natural opening between two high canyon walls, I can see more soldiers, just back from the edge of the plain. They are being overrun even as I watch. A skimmer flies over my head. It strafes toward the plain. A couple of seconds later it explodes. Bits of metal and human bodies fly in different directions.

We have, of course, picked a box canyon. One way in and one way out.

Freaking typical. Heaps of them to choose from and we picked to skim into the one that doesn’t go anywhere.

There isn’t much point in going forward to help the troopers on the edge of the plain. They are already finished. Blue skinned bodies leap and caper all over them. Some Gat’s and other weapons are still firing, but the reports are getting less frequent now.

I see two Ru’a grab hold of a living soldier while a third struts up and uses what looks like a black hatchet to hack off an outstretched arm. Then the creature cuts the other arm off the screaming man. The two restrainers leap up and down. Waving the severed limbs about, showing their buddies how clever they are.

They ignore the writhing of the tormented soldier at their feet. They simply walk off and leave him screaming in the red sand. Blood pumping from the stumps he is left with.

The axe wielder and his two helpers catch another victim. A female trooper. They grab her arms like the guy before. The axe swinger pretends to slash downwards at one of her arms. She screams. He stops the blow short. I assume the shrill whistles coming out of his mouth are what pass for laughter amongst the Creepies.

It looks like the three Ru’a are having a real ball.

Some of their comrades have stopped to watch. Comedy hour on Arkula.

Mofuk sons of bitches, growls Judd.

The girl is still screaming when, instead of cutting an arm or two off, like he had with his first victim…the Creepy slashes the black hatchet sideways across her stomach.

She stops screaming.

The two holding her chirp away to themselves.

She looks down at her belly.

I can see blood running down her legs.

The axeman reaches out with a delicate hand and slips his six digits into the slit he’s made in her stomach. Then he retracts his hand. Pulling something back out with him.

The girl watches in horror. Not making a sound.

Like a fisherman reeling in a line, the Ru’a slowly pulls the girl’s guts out of her.

Next to me there is the crack of a .75 slug. The girl’s head explodes like a piece of crushed fruit. Go easy, says Quake.

He takes another shot at the axe swinger, but one of the other pair gets in the way and takes the heavy calibre round instead. Crying out it falls to the sand, next to the body of its recent victim.

Well, I say. I’ve had about enough of this. I stand up from my kneeling position, tossing my almost empty Gat .50 aside and unlimbering my needlegun.

Got a plan, Rye? asks Judd.

Going to go down there and kill the mofuk with the axe.

Judd purses his lips. Not a great plan, as plans go.

I shrug. Best I can come up with at the moment. You guys stay here. Case my plan turns to shit and I need a head-capping myself.

No problem, Quake confirms.

I leave our little group and walk down toward the axe wielder and his buddies. I’m not hurrying, nor going too slowly. Just a nice steady stride.

Behind me I hear cries of consternation from some of the others.

Where’s he going?

Hey, you, trooper. Get your ass back here. Now, that’s an order!

I figure that must be from the sergeant who’d had words with the younger soldier earlier.

I ignore all this and focus my attention on the blue skinned, axe carrying Ru’a in front of me.

*

As I get closer I can clearly see all the carnage that has, and still is, going on.

Bits of homo-sapien soldiers are scattered all over. Blood is soaking into the red sand, making it even darker.

The axe carrier is a bit out in front of his fellows. He’d looked in our direction after Quake had shot his buddy.

Now he stands still, watching me walk toward him.

His fighting harness of some alien leather-like material is covered in strands of coloured silk and what look like exotic jewels.

Most of the Ru’a I’ve seen so far all wear pretty plain harnesses. I guess by the deference shown to this one, that he is something special. Maybe a chief or a leader or something. Hell, he could be a general for all I know.

His other buddy stands beside him. I see it say something to Axe. Much shrill chirping ensures. Laugh it up, mofuks.

Only a short distance behind Axe and his companion are about three hundred or more Ru’a. They too have noticed my imminent arrival and start to hoot and hiss.

I’ll get around to them after I deal with Axe.

Lots of jeering and chirping as I walk up to the two blue skins.

But none of them move toward me. I guess they are curious to see what I intend.

I closed the distance until I am only about six or seven meters away.

I stare into the axe wielders’ eyes. Hard.

His buddy chirps something and takes a step forward.

Without taking my eyes from the other, I raise the needlegun one handed and send a burst into the chatty one’s chest. He lets out a shrill cry and staggers backward. I loose off another burst. Then another.

The green stuff they use for blood sprays over the axe wielder as his companion drops next to him. He growls at me, starts forward. His shield ready to try and deflect my needles.

I raise the weapon above my head and then toss it off to the right.

The one coming toward me stops. Puzzled.

I take out my pistol and throw that away as well.

I doff my helmet and armoured battle jacket. They join my firearms in the sand. Then I reach behind my back and unsheathe my combat knife. I hold it up so that the alien creature in front of me can see it clearly.

Thick steel blade, twenty centimetres long. I use my left hand to twist the base of the handle, then slap the butt with my palm. The remainder of the blade stored inside the handle shoots out and locks into place. Another ten centimetres.

I point my weapon at the Ru’a in front of me. With my left hand I motion him to come toward me.

He snorts in surprise.

Behind him I hear noises and see movements that suggest to me that many of his fellows are equally startled by my actions.

The one in front appraises me carefully.

He chirps something. Maybe a question. I don’t know.

I just keep looking at him.

Suddenly he hoots and jumps up and down.

He flicks his left forelimb and the shield spins away.

Then, axe raised, he leaps at me.

*

Those forelimbs are long. That, and the added length of the axe handle, almost catch me out right there.

I jump backwards, just avoiding a disembowelling stroke.

I leap forward, slashing down at his axe arm. Anticipating this the creature has sprung away to the side.

I follow, stabbing at his exposed torso.

The axe comes back toward me in a reverse swing. It is double bladed.

I spring forward two paces, inside the arc of the swing and block his forelimb with my own left arm. I twist my arm and slide it over and down, locking his axe limb under my armpit.

His head snaps down on that long neck. Mouth open. Wicked looking fangs exposed.

I stab my long knife into his face.

The Ru’a shrills and jerks his face off the end of my blade.

Green blood runs down over his pointed chin.

We spring apart.

Circle.

Each gauging the speed of the other.

My opponent cocks his head at me and blinks, as though acknowledging my skill.

Some of the Ru’a assembled nearby bang their weapons on their shields and hoot.

We come together again. I avoid a downward swing. Spin past it and slash out at his hip. Miss.

He spins to face me, finds me up close and personal again. Butts me in the head with the shaft of the axe.

I drop my knife and grab the handle of the axe with both hands. Wrench it towards myself. The Ru’a resists, tugging backward.

I go with the tug, barrelling into the creature. Throwing myself off the ground at him. I twist so that my elbow strikes him in the spot that a human would have a soft throat. The Ru’a coughs. I hit him with my elbow again. He tries to jerk his axe free. Again I follow the movement, letting go of his weapon at the last moment and grabbing his left forelimb. I take hold of the wrist, twist it around, and snap the limb at the elbow, by jerking it down against my own shoulder.

The Ru’a howls.

We separate.

More shield banging from the assembled Creepies. I hear cheering and clapping also. A quick glance shows me that the troopers I had left in the canyon mouth have emerged, and are watching the show. From not very far away.

I pick up my knife.

Left forelimb useless, my opponent circles me again.

I feint with my blade. Thinking it was a real stab the axe comes sideways to block the movement. I jerk my blade back and swipe at the hand holding the axe haft as the weapon sails past me.

A blue skinned digit drops to the sand.

Lots of hissing.

Then suddenly the Ru’a seems to go berserk. He runs at me, leaps high up into the air and comes down with limbs flashing everywhere at once. I roll underneath his flailing appendages and manage to cut into a rear leg as I do so.

Not stopping, the creature capers about, running at me, springing past me with wild slashes. Jumping over my head and twisting and slashing with his axe, in one almost continuous movement.

The axe comes down in an overhead stroke so strong that the blade of the weapon buries itself into the soft sand. As the creature pulls the blade back out I slash down at the wrist. Hooting it lets go of the haft, jerking its injured hand back.

I reach out and pick up the axe.

Amazing.

It seems to weigh almost nothing.

No heavier than my own, much smaller knife.

The Ru’a is breathing heavily. It snorts through its nostril slits and spreads its unbroken arm toward me.

Is it expecting me to return the axe to it?

I spare another glance at the rest of the alien creatures. They are much closer than they had been. They form a semi-circle on one side of us. I then notice that the human troopers have formed the same pattern on the other side. The Ru’a and I are effectively inside a circle of onlookers.

He still has his unbroken arm out. He chirps at me.

He is asking me to give him his axe back. I am positive of it.

Instead I walk over to him and offer him my knife.

He blinks at me. Then hoots and accepts it. For some reason he slips a black bracelet off his right wrist and drops it on the sand in front of himself.

His fellows hoot and bang on their shields again.

I am starting to work this out.

They have a fighting code.

*

We engage again.

I hold the axe in both hands. It looks like a double headed hatchet in the hands of the long limbed Ru’a, but it is more like a short battleaxe in the hands of a human.

We hack and slash at each other.

I take a stab in my left shoulder, that slides along the collarbone and nicks the side of my neck.

I hack off one of the Ru’a’s rear limbs at the knee joint.

It spits at me; and before I can wipe my face clean of the sticky saliva, half blinded, it throws itself on top of me. Stabbing in a frenzy.

Ignoring the lancing pain that suddenly springs to life along my ribs, I smash the side of the axe into the creature’s face. Then again.

I force it off me and get to my feet first. As the Ru’a gets its own three good legs underneath itself I hack its knife arm off just above the elbow joint.

The severed forelimb falls to the sand. My knife still clutched in the blue skinned hand.

Hooting and chirping in pain the badly wounded creature looks at me. I’m amazed it can still function at all, having been dealt a wound that would instantly incapacitate most humans.

Again it cocks its head to one side and blinks at me.

I take a step forward and bury the axe in its skull.

It splits almost down to the bottom of the elongated chin.

Whatever the axe is made of, it slices through bone as though it was nothing.

The body slowly collapses at my feet.

I jerk the axe back out of the shattered skull and turn to face the others.

*

The rest of the Ru’a standing in a semi-circle around me are hooting and chirping and banging on their shields like crazy.

Some of them leap and prance about, twisting and twirling in the air.

I wait.

Behind me I can hear my homo-sap mates cheering and yelling as well.

After about a minute the Ru’a all quiet down.

One of them walks over to me.

Like the one I’ve just killed, this one is wearing an ornate fighting harness. Festooned with bits of coloured silk and jewellery.

He chirps at me.

I shrug.

I hold out the axe. Offering it to him.

He puts his head on one side and blinks at me.

Then he comes and stands right in front of me and reaches out a hand. He takes hold of the handle of the axe and pushes it back toward me. He bends and picks up the black bracelet my opponent had dropped to the sand. Taking hold of my own right arm, he slips the bracelet around my wrist.

Then he tilts his head to one side and blinks at me again.

I incline my head to him.

Right about then a big dropship comes down out of the sky and, landing repulsors blasting up a small sand storm, settles on the edge of the plain.

It isn’t one of ours.

It is a Ru’a dropship.

Oh shit! I hear a human say.

I see the side and rear bay doors open and wait for another thousand or so Ru’a to come charging out.

But nothing happens.

With some more hooting and shrill chirps, the Ru’a that had pushed the axe back at me and given me the bracelet, turns away and takes himself and the rest of his fellows over to the dropship. I notice they don’t take any of the human corpses with them. Which is unusual, as they normally take them away and have a victory roast with the bodies later.

They all board the dropship. None of them so much as glance back at us.

Except one.

The last one to board is my new buddy.

Just before he scuttles up one of the entry ramps he turns and looks back at me.

I raise the black axe above my head.

He raises a sword above his.

Then he turns and, with a single bound, disappears inside the ship.

A few seconds later the repulsors come back on and it hovers above the red sand. Then the craft tilts its nose up at the sky and the AM engines blast it spaceward. In moments it has disappeared from sight.

His Multi .75 resting across his shoulder, Quake comes up and stands beside me.

Well, he says. That was all very interesting.

It’s a good job they left when they did, I say. Otherwise I was going to ask them all to surrender…or else.

He nods. Peers at my upper left arm and lower torso. You want me to break out a medkit? Or you just going to stand there and bleed all day?

*

Chapter 3

While Quake is patching me up with a medkit, more Ru’a dropships come down.

The rest of the blue skinned Creepy horde, from all across the plain, and those that had remained inside the fallen city, all scuttle aboard them.

In less than thirty minutes the only Ru’a that are left in our sector are those that had died in the battle.

Many wounded had been slain by their own companions. They didn’t seem to have any medics with them. If one was so badly wounded that it couldn’t walk under its own steam, they killed it.

They never took any of their dead with them either.

They frequently take wounded human captives away with them. And human corpses. I shudder to imagine the tortures they inflict on the live ones, before they kill and cook and eat them.

A few minutes after the Ru’a dropships blast off, our own reinforcements land. Thousands of fresh troopers run down the landing ramps, all keyed up for a big fight.

Day late and a dollar short, Judd shakes his head.

*

The CAF took heavy casualties on Arkula. The battle to take back the planet from the Ru’a went on for a good month or more.

The massacre on the plain wasn’t the worst hit the CAF took. In a couple of other places the Ru’a wiped out whole battalions completely.

The powers that be had underestimated the strength of the enemy forces. No great surprise there.

What was a great surprise was that I became one of the heroes of the Battle for Arkula. (As the satnet media called it.)

We all had vidcams on our helmets. The feed from the cams was transmitted to command HQ. They could pick and choose which cams they wanted to watch.

One of the cams mounted on the helmets of those human soldiers who’d watched my fight with the Ru’a axe swinger, must have been picked up by someone at command HQ. Unbeknownst to me, even before I boarded a dropship to get off-planet, the recorded vid feed had ‘somehow’ made its way into the hands of the satnet news media.

Apparently the fight on the plains was a huge victory for our side. Thanks to the heroic actions of guys like myself.

If I wasn’t feeling bad because of the wounds I received, I sure felt ill after seeing that drek reported on the satnet.

*

I wasn’t a part in the rest of the fighting that took place on Arkula. Turned out I’d been wounded worse than I had thought. The cut in my