Worlds collided. The Martians and the Draken and the G.U.A.R.D. The past and the present.
All of it was pissing her off today.
First Lieutenant Elaine Massinger had left out information on her enlistment papers, and no one had bothered to follow up with her. If asked, she’d say she had been born in Pueblo, Colorado, population over one hundred thousand; in truth, she had been born in Windham, Colorado, population just under nine thousand.
She didn’t want to talk about her upbringing because her idiot ex-husband used to sing falsetto that infuriating song to her—Just a small-town girl living in a lonely world—to mock her origins. She remembered the only time they’d come back to see Windham, he’d played it on the tiny jukebox at their table in the Dine-In Diner. And sang it.
Now, outfitted in her EXO-armor and closing in on her birthplace to protect the natural gas resources there, space dragons in the sky among their G.U.A.R.D. choppers and on the ground amidst her and all the G-tanks, the song came over her headset.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said under her breath before keying her headset. “All channels, cut civilian radio. Military communication only.”
“You didn’t complain when it was Dire Straits, Yardbird,” 2Lt Lopez said.
“Or Styx,” chimed in 2Lt Brown.
“Do me a solid here, team,” Massinger said. She hoped she sounded light, but she didn’t feel it, not at all. Gerry was remarried with three kids now. They were all ugly.
“We got Windham on radar,” Lopez said, suddenly professional. “Tally bandit Martians, 1:00 low.”
Massinger asked, “Visual on Zybanos?”
“Negative. Tally on the Martian turd, though, so Zybanos must be near.”
Massinger shook her head in her armor. She didn’t care much for it when they referred to enemies by slang, even if she agreed that Tharsis-5 looked like it had come out of some horror’s bowels. Like Gerry’s kids.
She grinned to herself.
The translation pin the Draken had gifted to the G.U.A.R.D. pinged where it had been installed in her helmet. The delay reminded her of how Gerry used to put instant coffee in the microwave and complain about how long it took. So, she’d learned greater patience when there were hiccups. She took a breath and waited.
“We will engage now.” The voice in her headset was gravelly and high-pitched, the way she would expect a small dog to sound, not a space dragon.
“Understood, Nessie,” she answered, knowing her squad would snicker. “We’re right behind you.”
She saw the two-headed Zybanos well before anyone called him out on visual. There were already Draken Armada forces moving in his direction to take on the saucers and vanguard buzzing him—one of his heads seemed to be giving the fusiliers and the coursers that ran ahead of them commands while the other breathed a stream of plasma at Tharsis-5.
She grimaced to realize what a rock show of lasers from the Martian forces slashed across the skies. She’d seen it just recently as they fought the enemy in New Mexico. So, it turned out that Colorado was going to be an encore of Santa Fe, and she half-expected a piano to begin in her ears. Just a small-town girl…
As her squad closed in on Windham, she spotted what they’d been calling Martian reapers scuttling across the downtown area. The Windham train station was on fire. The K of C Hall’s roof had collapsed under the weight of multiple reapers.
The G-tanks were having trouble blasting them from their perches. She could see the shells bouncing off of the force fields that protected the small tripods. A few MR-tanks had managed to skirt past them on Lark Street, headed to join the battle against Tharsis-5. Draken warders were already moving to form a perimeter around the natural gas power plant along the highway.
They’re on the bug,” she said as an explosion ripped the sky to the west. Tharsis-5 was under attack from a massed fusilier fire that complemented Zybanos well. The support Martians rallying to Tharsis-5 were going to be too little, too late, she noted.
“We caught them off-G.U.A.R.D.,” Lopez said, as he did every time they took out an enemy, and laughed, as he did every time as well.
“We still have bandits in town,” Massinger reminded her squad. “It would be nice if we could save the Motel 6. I stayed there once. It was clean.”
“Yeah, they always kept a light on for me, Yardbird,” said Lopez.
She watched as a Draken berserker hurled itself into the Martian reapers along downtown Train Street, watching them explode in sparkling messes, until her eye was drawn inevitably to the corner as they fled. Somewhere in the distance, Tharsis-5 made a horrifying sound that she imagined meant RTB, return to base. She managed to catch one of the Martians as it turned tail, body checking it into a small building.
The Dine-In Diner went up in a ball of flame and smoke.
Massinger keyed her headset. “Oops.”