Vaughn Heppner: Invasion: China

Take it easy. This isn’t any big deal .

Within his enclosed helmet, Paul grinned tightly. Whenever he said something wasn’t a big deal that meant it was huge. Several weeks ago, he’d told the slick loan officer and part-time Militia member the same thing. The man must have lifted plenty of weights and likely injected himself with steroids. Mr. Templeton had muscles, ones he enjoyed flexing, his biceps and pectorals particularly. The more Paul explained the facts of life to the guy, the twitchier he’d become. Maybe the loan officer had thought of himself as Mr. America and wanted to oil up. In the end, the no-big-deal talk had turned into a fight, as Paul had known it would.

I wonder if he’s out of the hospital yet. At least he can’t bother Cheri anymore.

Paul looked out of the Chinook again, forcing himself to focus on the distant target. This was crazy. Why had he volunteered for this again?

Even though he was a Recon Marine, he belonged to SOCOM, the special operations arm of the US military. Most of the war, he’d been behind enemy lines in a Long Range Surveillance Unit or LRSU. He was still going to go behind enemy lines, but this time as a shock commando to take out enemy headquarters.

He knew himself well enough to know that he didn’t belong in a line company. He had a special ops mentality, liking to do things his way. Unfortunately, at his age, the long-distance conditioning had finally begun to wear him down. LRSU teams did a lot of fast trekking from one place to the other. These days, he was ready to ride into battle. Besides, by joining an experimental unit, he figured to save himself from fighting all the time. He was tired of killing, of seeing blood and guts and listening to young men scream. His boy Mikey would be their age soon. He didn’t like to think of some Chinese killer stalking his boy and doing to him what Paul did to the invaders.

“Jump in two minutes,” the colonel said over the battle-net.

Paul’s throat tightened. They had jumped before, but not from this high up.

The Chinese had developed a rugged jetpack, with enough fuel for several minutes of flight time. Instead of building their own jetpacks, US engineers had scoured various battlefields and stripped the dead Chinese of theirs. Afterward, the techs fidgeted with the packs, improving the machines. The straight Chinese model demanded precision execution from its soldier. The upgraded pack used computer-assisted, stabilized flight. You could make more mistakes with the American-modified pack and still survive. That was the theory anyway. In practice, jetpack flying took intense concentration no matter which model you used.

One thing was clear. A flyer in the air made an easy target. After plenty of tests, US doctrine told the soldier to get down fast. Fight from the ground, not while hanging up there trying to do two things at once: flying and firing. The jetpack provided extra mobility, kind of like an armored personal carrier bringing soldiers to the battlefield, but without the armored protection of an APC.

The battlesuit Paul wore was the second partner in the marriage. It had several parameters. One, the suit had various computers, giving the commando greater situational awareness, linkage with headquarters and his fellow soldiers. The computers also helped the wearer target his weapons better. Body armor was vital to the suit. Like the medieval plate a knight used to wear, Paul had a complete outer shell of Kevlar and other fiber-ceramic protection. With the suit’s filters, he could supposedly live through chemical, biological and nuclear warzones—for a few hours anyway. The helmet’s inner visor gave him a HUD, but the suit lacked any integral weapons systems. He had to carry those, the latest assault rifle, grenade launcher, air-dart tube and a satchel charge to open any enemy bunker.

“Ten seconds,” the colonel said over the headphones.

A tap on Paul’s shoulder caused him to turn. A commando in a full battlesuit stared at him. With a whirr, the faceplate lifted. His best friend Romo stared out at him.

The man used to be an assassin for the Mexico Free Army, working for Colonel Valdez, the leader of the southern resistance. Romo was part Apache and part Spanish-Mexican. He happened to have the darkest eyes Paul had ever seen—those of a cold stone killer. During the California campaign, they had become friends. At first, Romo’s assignment had to been to kill Paul. It was a long story, but Colonel Valdez hated the Master Sergeant for personal reasons. Caught behind enemy lines, Paul and Romo had worked together to survive. After the ordeal, they had become inseparable. Later, Paul saved Romo’s life from another Valdez assassin, sent as a lesson to any who supposedly deserted the colonel.

Paul didn’t know a better soldier than Romo, but the man lacked something essential, a soul or heart maybe. Romo had lost any purpose in life other than killing Chinese. After two years of witnessing what unchecked bitterness could do to a man, Paul knew he didn’t want to fall into the same pit. If there was a way to save his friend, he wished he knew it. Maybe there was still time to save himself.

“Why isn’t the colonel jumping with us?” Romo asked.

Paul shrugged, making his body armor creak. Some men were too important to risk. You could tell who they were, because the important ones worked overtime staying out of danger.

“Jump,” the colonel said over the battle-net.

Paul chinned a control. His visor closed. He faced the open bay door, rested his right elbow on the adjustable control pad and clutched the upright throttle on the end. He twisted the rubber-coated grip and listened to the jetpack’s engine rev. It made the entire battlesuit shiver with power. Then he took two steps and launched himself out of the opening.

He plummeted. Because cameras and a computer let him see the Chinook on the HUD, he didn’t have to crane his neck to check his position. Three seconds of drop gave him plenty of distance from the big machine. Paul twisted the throttle and power roared out of his nozzles. It gave him lift, and he felt the thrust most around his shoulders. A computer and gyros helped him remain vertical during flight, with his head aimed at the clouds and his feet aimed at the Earth.

All right, I have the hang of this .

Even as he thought that, a battlesuited commando plunged past him, gaining speed as the man fell headfirst. Soon, he’d be at terminal velocity.

“Ned’s gyro quit working,” Romo radioed.

Paul cursed, and he cut power, letting himself drop after Corporal Ned Tarleton. In an instant, he realized he couldn’t fall fast enough to catch up to Ned.

What if I rotated around and flew down like Superman?

Paul didn’t remember the override codes to cut his own gyro program. None of them had practiced that type of flying yet. It was incredibly risky.

“Ned, you have to kick your legs,” Paul said. “You have to get your nozzles pointed at the ground.”

Paul heard hard breathing and bitter curses in his headphones. It sounded as if Ned struggled to regain control but couldn’t do it.

“Sergeant Kavanagh, engage your jetpack,” the colonel said. He was in the Chinook monitoring the situation.

“I’m going to try to catch Ned,” Paul said.

“Negative,” the colonel said. “You can’t.”

“If I dive after him—”

“Kavanagh, you son of a bitch,” the colonel said. “You will not attempt any heroics. I forbid you to dive.”

The order tasted bitter to Paul, but he knew the colonel was right. He’d lose control, crash, die and break his promise to Cheri.

“Ned,” he radioed. “Restart your flight computer. You might have time for it to reboot and kick start the gyro program.”