Chapter 3: The War on Terror. Part 1

“Fuck!” Tank Zaffra screamed as he hurled a heavily weighted sticky tape dispenser at the wall. Despite travelling across the intervening space faster than mere human eyes could follow, he was unsurprised when it shattered against the unyielding bulkhead without damaging the wall. Starships were notoriously difficult to damage. Star warships like this one were even more so. They had to be.

His team’s latest attack on an Islamic terrorist camp in Western Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan had begun so promisingly. They’d seemingly infiltrated the wire-fenced compound unnoticed by the guards. His men had taken positions that overlooked the main barracks and gave plenty of cover to fire from. The explosive charges had been set without discovery and exploded at the pre-set time.

The lack of a massive fuel/air explosion from the fuel dump when the charges went off was his team’s first warning that things were not as they seemed. The next was the lack of answering explosions from the destruction of the ammunition dump. Tank and Anter had looked at each other, mouthing, “WTF?” when the night rose against them.

The camp was buried deep within a canyon in the Spīn Ghar Range. Their shielded, invisible hover craft had dropped Tank’s twelve-man cadre at the canyon’s entrance, and they’d slid into the camp under cover of darkness unspotted, or so they’d thought. However, as they were about to find out, the enclosure was a dummy camp placed there to lure in The Free World’s Only Liberation Force (WOLF), as General Zaha had named the forces under his command who were destroying fundamentalist militia camps worldwide.

During the day, the camp looked like a typical Islamic fundamentalist militia camp. But at nightfall, the men inside the enclosure used the many tunnels they’d dug to escape the camp and take up their positions on the tops of the canyon’s walls. They’d waited patiently for nearly three months.

Using night scopes and discipline that was rare amongst any militia group, they’d waited every night for WOLF to attack their camp. That night, WOLF had. The four men slated to watch the camp from midnight to 4:00 a.m., when WOLF’s attacks typically occurred, were the most reliable the mujahideen’s leader had. And although all four had missed the hover ship’s arrival, they all reported the soldiers entering the camp.

Word was silently spread through the men sleeping, and the discipline instilled in them through severe punishments for breaking it ensured they’d taken their positions without any sound to warn the men infiltrating their camp. Their numbers and position dominated the infidel below them, and Allah would ensure the infidel’s destruction that night. The men watched their squad leaders expectantly, waiting for the sign to fire. The leaders watched the camp commander for the same.

One thing, and only one thing only, saved Tank and most of Tank’s men. The invisible hover had dropped Lieutenant Jolie and Specialist Coltan on each end of the canyon on opposite sides, and their sniper overwatch positions were undiscovered by the Islamic militia. Neither sniper had noticed when the mujahideen fighters had boiled from their camouflaged tents and taken up their positions, but when they raised onto their knees to fire on men below, Specialist Coltan stood and screamed, “On the clifftops! Run! Run!”

Specialist Coltan died first that night.

Tank, to his later disgust, froze. Sergeant Anter, however, yelled, “Against the walls! Everyone against the walls. Get low, run toward the entrance we came in, and get the fuck out of this canyon!” He grabbed Tank to get him moving and obeyed his own order.

Three did not reach the walls: Privates Masser, Lunden, and Artur, all members of Tank’s original team.

Lieutenant Jolie froze when Coltan screamed, but then her training kicked in. She assessed she was vulnerable where she was and silently shifted to a safer spot where she was protected from fire from the mujahideen on either side of the canyon. She shot and killed the screaming camp commander first. He was frustrated he’d delayed the order to fire too long, and the infidel below had been warned in time to flee. Unfortunately, the remaining mujahideen’s discipline held, and she had to duck behind her sheltering rock to escape their returning fire.

The Islamic fighters had staged their ambush almost perfectly. Yes, getting up against a canyon’s wall protected you from the gunfire above, but it exposed you to the riflemen on the opposite canyon wall. Another original squad member, Private Rangan, fell before Tank’s team escaped the canyon.

Tank, Anter, and the remaining four WOLF soldiers burst from the canyon and quickly split into teams of three. Anter took one group to search for a way to the canyon’s left top. Tank took the other up the right side.

On his way up the canyon’s slope, Anter screamed into his communicator. “Landen! Landen! Copy?”

“Landen here.”

“We’re under attack! Lay down covering fire along both canyon tops. Blast those towel-headed fuckers straight to fucking hell! Genet? Are you watching this fucking shit show?”

“Affirmative,” Captain Genet barked.

“Get me some fucking soldiers on top of those fucking walls like fucking yesterday! We’re down five, repeat, we’re down five, and Jolie’s next if you don’t get your fucking bony ass here immediately!”

“On route,” Genet growled, unbothered by Sergeant Anter’s language or lack of military etiquette. Soldiers under fire had no time for military formalities. “Five minutes out!”

“We don’t have five fucking minutes,” Anter bellowed. A man rose from the ground in front of him, and Anter put three rounds in his head. “Take that, motherfucker!”

“Fuck the stealth,” Genet growled at Panton, her re-entry craft’s pilot. “Burn this fucking thing and get us there now!”

Panton kicked the re-entry craft’s motors into high gear. The ship accelerated to nearly seventeen thousand five hundred kilometres per hour as it blasted towards the canyon. Without the inertia dampeners, everyone inside the vehicle would be smeared along the craft’s walls. Travelling at seventeen thousand five hundred kilometres per hour, the metal in the ship’s nose started glowing, and radars worldwide lit up, warning of an unexpected aircraft moving through Earth’s atmosphere at unprecedented speeds. Satellite cameras turned to try and follow the speeding craft, but by the time they focused on the area, the thing they were trying to track had disappeared.

Panton brought the protesting craft down to the minimum speed to remain invisible a thousand metres above the canyon and punched the button to ignite the teleporter. The twelve men waiting disappeared, and twelve more stepped in. Twice more, Panton knuckled the button, sending thirty-six super Providian soldiers exploding out of thin air among the bewildered mujahideen.

Tank reached the canyon top with his men in time to see an Islamic fighter rise up behind where Angelina knelt, firing quickly, trying to kill the mujahideen before they killed her. “No!” He screamed, lifting his rifle right-handed to fire on the soldier but reaching out his left hand despairingly, knowing he was too late.

Somehow, unbelievably, the fighter’s rifle splintered and ripped from his grasp, flying across to smack into Tank’s outstretched palm. Tank stared at it disbelievingly before returning his eyes to the shocked man. He dropped the shattered rifle and willed as he had before. The man followed his rifle across the gap, and his throat was in Tank’s squeezing hand less than an eye blink later. Tank glared into his eyes and growled ferally before tossing him off the cliff.

Angelina eyed him wonderingly before a bullet whining past her ear reminded her that they weren’t safe yet. She dropped behind her cover and started firing again.

Sergeant Anter had run out of profanities by the time he and his men reached the canyon’s top. Knowing they were heavily outnumbered, he did the only thing possible: He screamed like a demon from Hell hunting a lost soul and attacked. His men took up Anter’s wordless howl and attacked, too. But before he could reach the first enemy, Landen’s hover appeared from thin air, spewing 50 mm kinetic rounds that shredded every standing fighter.

It disappeared again, reappearing on the other side and repeating. Then, to the mujahideen’s despair, soldiers poured out of that same thin air, firing explosive-tipped bullets that immediately killed all they hit. The fight was over only seconds later. The last mujahideen to fall had time to wonder why Allah had abandoned them before his head exploded.

Lieutenant Zaffra took his remaining men back into the canyon to gather their dead comrades, and they gently placed them in the hover before Genet had Zaffra and his men teleported on board their re-entry craft. For unexplained reasons, the teleporter didn’t transport dead flesh. Landen flew the hover and dead men into the re-entry craft’s bay, and they returned to the orbiting starship. They numbly reported to General Zaha and a screaming Colonel Tangran and then attended the debrief before dragging themselves to their quarters, where they showered and slept.

Tank got out of bed when the nightmare of seeing the fighter firing and Angelina’s head exploding woke him again. He’d wrenched awake four times when that dream played before giving up and getting up.

Tank walked to the office he shared with Lieutenants Angelina, Bennet, Alban, Roque, and Envet, where he sat and brooded about last night’s failure. ‘I’m a sixty-year-old fucking actor,’ he snarled at himself as the guilt from leading five men to their deaths threatened to drive him mad. ‘What the fuck am I doing leading men into battle? This is not fucking Hollywood, nor is it a movie, and I don’t know what I’m fucking doing! Those men are dead because of me! My overconfident, arrogant ass thought I was invincible, and because I fucked up, my squad mates are dead!”

Then he remembered his nightmare and looked speculatively at the shattered dispenser. Thinking about what had actually happened, Tank stretched his hand out and willed the pieces to fly to it. To his amazement, the broken pieces coalesced and flew to his hand. They returned to shattered pieces as soon as they hit his hand. Tank chuckled bitterly and said, “Well, okay. I’m not God and cannot remake a broken world. That’s a relief. Who would want that responsibility?”

Occasionally summoning things with his mind, Tank brooded, despairing more and more, about the last twelve months since he initiated the first attack against a fundamentalist militia group. ‘We’re losing,’ he admitted. Although they’d successfully raided over three hundred camps worldwide and totally destroyed each one with only minimal losses, they’d failed to bring popular opinion with them.

“It was a mistake targeting America first,” he growled aloud despite being the only one in the room. “That was my idea, and it was wrong. I underestimated how many common Americans supported these groups’ ideals and how much influence they held over their elected representatives.”

It was true. After their initial four raids, they’d been surprisingly named vigilantes and labelled a terrorist group themselves by Homeland Security. Talking heads on many television and radio stations decried their actions, accused them of murder, and demanded they identify themselves and surrender to local law enforcement.

General Zaha instructed his techs to hack into every television, radio, and cable network in the world. Then, using their superior technology to translate his speech into every known language simultaneously instantly, he announced his group was responsible for the raids. Revealed their name, The Free World’s Only Liberation Force (WOLF), and calmly instructed all terrorist groups to peacefully disband and surrender their weapons to their country’s military or police force or face WOLF.

Instead of complying with Zaha’s demand, the various militia and terrorist cells battened down. Their people worldwide demanded that their government find out who the fuck this ‘WOLF’ thought they were, how the fuck they’d effortlessly hacked every news, social media and mainstream media platform in the world, and that their government force WOLF to standdown, surrender, and face trial for their actions.

This was a free speech and freedom of religion issue, the decriers insisted. These upstarts couldn’t impose their version of ‘world peace’ on the populace, especially when they appeared unsupportive of the ‘right’ God. Of course, the ‘right’ God was whichever one the various decriers believed in.

Then, when General Zaha’s forces expanded their raids into the Middle East, the Shahs, Sheiks, Ayatollahs, Imams, and Mullahs blamed America anyway. “It’s an American plot to destroy the true believers!” the Middle Eastern governments, mosques, Imams, and Mullahs insisted loudly to their peoples. “All true believers must arise and destroy the Great White Satan that is America.”

Others asserted, “WOLF stands for Whites Only Live Free. They’re another white supremacy group trying to unite all the other white supremacy groups by killing those group’s leaders.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the non-white world agreed this was probably true.

Ignoring the turmoil, WOLF expanded its operations further, attacking camps in Africa and the East, which only confirmed the Whites Only label. Even destroying the few remaining IRA and Protestant splinter groups didn’t change the world’s perceptions of WOLF.

The non-white world ignored the raids across The United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, seeing them as more proof a white supremacy group was uniting all white supremacist groups under one umbrella before they would turn on black and coloured people worldwide.

Worse was that every time WOLF took down an Islamic extremist cell, two more sprung up in its place. Worse still was that the fundamentalist groups in the US also began uniting against General Zaha and his troops.

The Providians needed to change tactics but were divided about the direction in which they should change.

Tangran’s group wanted to eliminate every Government worldwide and insert their own leaders. Leaders that he had chosen personally and who, of course, were loyal to him. Then, they would kidnap all the humans whose DNA matched their requirements for a super soldier, kill them, and harvest their DNA to build super Providians.

Others insisted that it was time to acknowledge that Earth was irreparably divided and that their only option was to gather all those with the required combination of human, neanderthal, and Providian genes. Then, they should expose those people to the mutagen gases that had so effectively created the ten thousand-member super Providian army they already had. Then, they should add them to their ranks and travel to Aridia to free their enslaved people.

They insisted that it didn’t matter what happened to the humans left behind. Unless they could be converted to the Providian cause, what did their deaths matter? After all, they were only a species that had devolved from their pure Providian roots, not true Providians.

A fourth ‘peaceful’ group naively wanted to approach and ‘make peace’ with the Aridians and end the aeons-old conflict between the two species by promising to love and honour all Aridians. Or they desired to escape into the ‘unknown’ sectors of space. Surely, if those sectors were unknown to them, it stood to reason they were unknown to the Aridians, too. Luckily, this minuscule group was mostly ignored.

The morning after Tank’s team had been decimated, the airwaves filled with Islamic fundamentalist groups claiming the total annihilation of WOLF. Spontaneous celebrations exploded throughout the Muslim world, and even Christian splinter groups celebrated.

The Providian Military leader, five-star General Tibolt, summoned General Zaha and the other senior officers to an emergency meeting where he launched an inquiry into which future direction their efforts should go.

General Zaha maintained that human beings’ warlike obstinance made them ideal allies in the upcoming war with the Aridian Armada, and they should see his plan through. He pointed out that, yes, Earth’s technology was aeons behind theirs and the Aridians, but they (the Providians) had the capacity to leapfrog that gap and bring Earth’s technology into line with theirs. “The factories and skilled people are already there,” Zaha argued. “We don’t need to build them. We only need to retool them to make our weapons.”

“The humans will turn those weapons against us,” Colonel Tangran’s faction contended.

“Either they’re devolved and can never be worthy to fight for us, let alone against us. Or they’re evolved and capable of turning on and defeating us,” General Zaha replied. “Which one is it?”

“They don’t need to be evolved to turn our weapons against us,” Colonel Tangran argued.

“Yes, they do,” the General countered. “Each weapon is genetically coded to fire for a Providian user only so that our own weapons cannot be used against us. If these humans have devolved so much that they’re no longer of our species, as you contend, then our weapons will be nothing but useless pieces of metal, plastic, or wood to them.”

“It will be easier to wipe out all of Earth’s governments and establish our own than getting them to unite and join us,” Tangran insisted. “Then we can put pure Providians loyal to Providia in their place and unite this divided world.”

“One thousandth or more removed Providian clones like you, you mean,” Zaha sneered. “Let’s compare your genes’ mutations against, say, Lieutenant Zaffra’s and see whose are purer.”

“At least my genes are unsullied by these Neanderthal and human animals, General,” Colonel Tangran snarled. “Or have you joined those who have mated with these disgusting animals like most of your staff?”

“Careful who you accuse of what, Colonel Tangran,” General Zaha stated menacingly. “You’re not above being court-martialled for insubordination towards your superiors.”

“I withdraw my accusation and apologise unreservedly,” Colonel Tangran quickly stated. General Zaha’s reputation for severely disciplining anyone of lower rank who insulted him was well known.

“This solves nothing,” General Tibolt growled. “Colonel Tangran, if you cannot speak civilly to your superior officers, then excuse yourself from this meeting.” He turned to General Zaha. “However, Tangran makes a compelling point. Although your attacks on the various fundamentalist strongholds have been universally successful, it appears they’ve done more to separate this backward world than unite it. Short of doing what Colonel Tangran suggests, how do we unite this world so they will ally with us against the Aridian Armada?”

“We need to bring their leaders to our ship and show them what’s coming,” General Zaha stated. “These Earthlings have a saying, ‘United we stand. Divided, we fall.’ They will see that saying cannot be truer than when the Aridian Armada arrives.”

“Sure,” Colonel Tangran sneered, already forgetting he was skating on thin ice with the generals. “Show these human animals our superior technology, and they will immediately bow and join us. No! They will start plotting how to betray us and steal our weapons!”

Slapping his hand on his desk, Tibolt snapped, “Colonel Tangran, you are out of line! Leave this meeting immediately, and you will visit with your line general tomorrow to see if he has any disciplinary actions for you to receive.”

“Everyone here knows that I am right!” Colonel Tangran snarled as he stood and obeyed the general’s order. “We either take over this world and install our people and make these humans join our war with the Aridians, seize those with the gene combination we need and use our chambers and gases to convert them and attack the Aridian home planet, or flee into unknown space, hoping we’re not fleeing toward the Aridian Armada.”

He marched out.

Zaha impassively watched Tangran leave. But beneath his stoicism, Zaha’s mind whirled. Tangran’s anger had made him unwittingly reveal that there weren’t three separate factions arguing that their direction was correct, but instead, there were two factions united against his. Tangran’s declared faction wanted to enslave Planet Earth. The other wanted to remove those who matched Jolie’s and Zaffra’s DNA profile, forcibly convert them to super-soldiers, and attack the Aridian home world.

If the opposing factions had joined forces, then his faction was doomed, and his, and the lives of those aligned with him, were forfeit. Providian history showed little forgiveness for those who had gone against the majority. Zaha needed a plan and no longer knew who he could trust. ‘Yes, I do,’ Zaha realised. ‘I can trust Tank, Angelina, and their mutated human comrades.’ He inwardly grinned ironically. ‘How is it possible that I trust these mutated humans more than my own people?’

Fortunately, no agreement on Providia’s future direction was reached during this discussion. But General Tibolt instructed Zaha to devise a plan to unite these divided peoples swiftly, or he’d choose between the other two factions and try their way. He pointed out they had no idea where the Aridian Armada was and feared they might already have deduced from the attacks on the camps and General Zaha’s worldwide broadcast that the Providians were responsible and on Earth. If they had that information, the Armada would already be on the way.

Zaha marched to the training grounds and stepped into the observation booth where Captain Genet was overseeing the training of the latest group of mutated troops. He returned hers and the other officer’s salute and dropped heavily into the hastily vacated chair beside Genet.

“What’s on your mind, General?” Genet asked. She knew Zaha didn’t micro-manage his officers. He explained what he wanted and trusted them to know the best way to achieve his goals. Therefore, he rarely came to the training grounds unless it was to review a graduating class, reward bravery or exemplary service, or promote a soldier. If he was here now and so clearly perturbed, things were dire indeed.

Zaha watched the mutated soldiers moving through their drills at what would have been an unbelievable speed if he hadn’t already known they weren’t half as fast as those who had completed their treatments and training. These troops alone would easily defeat any of his un-mutated fighters and even more easily destroy any army on Earth. However, he also knew from bitter experience that they were no match yet for an Aridian slaver. Somehow, even this much improvement wasn’t enough.

Making his decision, the General stood, bringing those around him to their feet, too. “Gather Tank, Jolie, and the others and meet me in the cafeteria you all like to eat in,” he growled as he left.

Captain Genet checked the time before deciding Lieutenants Zaffra, Jolie, Alban, Roque, Envet, and Bennett were probably already there. She walked to their usual cafeteria and used the internal ship communicators to summon those who weren’t gathered.

Genet found everyone except Tank. She asked where he was, and Roque replied. “He’s in our shared office. I entered, looked around at the destruction he’d wrought in there, and piss-bolted before I became part of the destruction.”

“What happened during last night’s raids?” Brian Bennett, the enormous black ex-US marine who Tank and Jolie had saved from a life of paraplegia, asked.

“We lost five men, all from Tank’s original team. Specialist Coltan died warning us of the trap,” Angelina Jolie replied, looking downcast. “There was a fighter behind me I’d missed during my recon. Without Tank somehow ripping the rifle from his hands from more than a hundred metres away, I’d be the sixth dead.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” Brian said knowingly. “Been there, done that. Still carry the emotional scars. I’ll go talk with him.”

“He’ll kill you if you walk in there,” Roque warned.”

“No, he won’t,” Bennett grinned. “He’ll just toss me around like a football and scream at me a lot.” He left for their combined office. He saluted General Zaha as he passed him in the doorway.

Zaha returned his salute without comment and joined the others. He looked at Captain Genet. “Gone to settle Tank down?” Genet nodded, and Zaha added, “Let’s get started. I’m sure they’ll join us later.”

The others agreed and grouped around their General in a half circle to see what he had to say. Zaha gazed at them levelly before saying. “We’ve fucked this up, and if we don’t find a way to fix it, we’re all dead. Suggestions?”

“We need to get the press onside first,” Genet stated. “Tank and I discussed this. Our error, his and mine, was that we believed the media would support us in removing fundamentalist Christian militia groups from US soil. We were wrong. Plus, we underestimated these groups’ support, especially in the deep south. But that milk’s been spilt, and now we must mop up and repair the damage our naivety has caused.”

“Agreed,” Zaha stated. “What else?”

Meanwhile...

Brian opened the door to his shared office and immediately ducked as a stapler sizzled through the space where his head had been. Tank stood in the middle of the room with many objects moving in a multitude of directions around him at unbelievable speeds. His eyes blazed as the objects’ speed increased until some of the objects began smouldering.

Brian knelt away from the room’s middle and below the objects’ spinning paths. He was impressed and curious but unafraid. When he saw Tank faltering from the effort to keep this many objects suspended and moving, he growled, “Impressive. But what the fuck are you doing?”

Tank turned to face him and staggered. The objects fell to the ground, and he collapsed. Brian spotted two empty scotch bottles amongst the rubble. Tank had tried to drink himself into oblivion, Brian surmised. But his accelerated metabolism had converted the alcohol into usable calories as fast as Tank drank it.

Brian waited passively for Tank to sit up and look at him. Eventually, his friend lifted his haunted eyes to meet Brian’s. Brian growled, “Want to talk about it, or would you prefer to carry on throwing a tantrum like a spoilt two-year-old?”

“Fuck you, Bennett,” Tank snarled. “You can’t even whup that two-year-old!”

“Next, you’ll say something really insightful like, ‘Meh. You hit like a girl’,” Brian goaded. “Why don’t you tell me what’s up your fat arse and stop whinging like a bitch?”

“I got five men killed, Bennett!” Tank yelled despairingly. “Five of my crew, five friends, five guys who were with me from the start of this bullshit are dead because I fucked up!”

“Seven of your crew, including you, Anter, and Jolie, survived because of you.”

“Anter had to drag my useless ass out of there,” Tank growled. “Coltan died warning of the ambush, and all I could do was freeze and watch his body get riddled with bullets and fall into the canyon.”

“So, you’re giving up and abandoning the survivors? You fucking pussy! I’ve talked to Angelina. You think she doesn’t know she should be dead? You think she doesn’t think she should have spotted the concealed tents and the hundreds of hidden mujahideen in them? Have you even considered how guilty she must feel? Haven’t you considered that Coltan sacrificed himself because he knew he’d fucked up?”

“It’s not Jolie’s fault,” Tank growled, starting to think like a leader again. “Coltan and Artur cased that canyon for a week without once discovering it was a trap. How the fuck was she to know? We were so certain the camp was in the canyon that none of us considered it could be a decoy and that the real camp was on the walls above it.”

“So, Coltan and Artur missed the real camp, missed the five hundred men skulking in tents above the decoy camp, and returned with bad information that you and your team acted on. Then, Lieutenant Jolie examined the same reconnaissance information you did and came to the same conclusions you did, but she’s blameless whilst you’re to blame?”

“Yes!” Tank exploded. “I’m in fucking charge! Therefore, the fuck up is mine!”

“Therefore, you pack up your bat and ball and sulk off home and leave the rest of our asses hanging in the wind? Pussy!” Brian sneered. “You fucked up. Admit it, own it, learn from it, and make yourself a better damned leader. Or did the first time you faltered in a quiz contest make you quit them, too?”

“Fuck you, Bennett,” Tank snarled half-heartedly, realising his friend was right.

“Yeah, you can,” Brian needled. “Thanks to you, I’ve got a cunt that’s wetter and tighter than any woman’s I’ve ever been in, and I’m so fucking horny all the time I’d probably let you!”

“Fucking six-foot-seven-inch, three-hundred-and-fifty-pound ex-marines is not my thing,” Tank grinned as he came out of his funk. “But if you haven’t tried your fat cunt out before today, I know Genet will stretch it for you!”

“Fraternisation between senior and junior officers is frowned upon,” Brian pointed out.

“And is ignored in our unit, Bennett. I’ve already explained that. I know first-hand how horny the mutations make you. Genet prefers to receive from feminine-looking lovers, but she’s so into you that she’d probably let you fuck her, too.”