These Few Warriors...

These Few Warriors.

Narrator – “… we were helpless when they first attacked. When the skies opened up and they started crashing to the ground and spilling out all over the city, we had no idea what we were up against. Well, we do now. And ‘they’ don’t realize who they just pissed off.”

*Cut to the war camp. People running all over, shouting. Soldiers are wearing tactical gear but carrying both rifles and swords on their back. You are walking to the middle of the camp, trying to focus on one voice in a sea of sound. As you walk past you hear “… only a few get chosen to fly with the Raptors. If you want the chance, you gotta prove you have what it takes. I can tell you it’s about more than skill. Everyone here is as good as you are. Loyalty and fealty says more than words ever could. Remember that. Now get to your platoon and await orders.”

*Someone who looks to be in charge shouts at your platoon to form up. You have a hard time hearing what he’s saying due to all the activity.*

“… you will be given auto-parachutes! Once you hit the designated altitude, your chute will deploy automatically. Prepare yourself for immediate combat once you hit the ground. Do NOT hesitate because the enemy will NOT wait for you to be ready! If you make it to the first camp, hold the area until daybreak when backup arrives. Then you will be given further orders. Alright you apes, move it!”

As you are issued your parachute, you are told to suit up quickly and to keep moving forward, towards a plane.

“Do you have all your weapons?”

You nod.

“Side-arm, rifle, combat knife, sword?”

You realize you don’t have a sword at the same time the quartermaster does. She is visibly upset and frustrated.

“Dammit, get to the armory and grab a blade!” as she points to the tent to the side of you. “You have five minutes before load up!”

As you make your way over towards the armory tent, you try to figure out how you got here. A few days ago, you were just a regular soldier who studied JSA (Japanese Sword Arts) in your free time. You had won some cutting competitions using a katana, but never had to fight with one. And now you’re looking through piles of swords for something that will hold up to use. “I wish I had thought to grab my sword when I left home. Three thousand dollars down the drain, probably in the hands of some noob who died before he even had a chance to use it. Now I just hope there’s something useful in this scrapheap.”

There were too many crappy sword shaped objects in the world. And now, when your life depends on it, at least you know what to look for to hopefully find something that won’t break.

A few more soldiers come in the tent and grab the first sword they see. You feel bad because you know those swords will fall apart in the first few swings. You keep moving sword after sword out of the way, looking for the subtle characteristics of tempered, carbon steel.

A voice screams into the tent “Two minutes! Hurry up!”

Then you see it. It’s underneath a pile of shiny steel and fake gems. It looks old, maybe from World War 2. Faded green aluminum sheath with a genuine, not plastic, stingray skin. The fittings have a bit of corrosion on them, but they are obviously real. You raise the sword and slowly start to remove the blade from the scabbard. You breathe a sigh of relief as you see the pattern of folded steel and a genuine, not brushed on hamon. So, after whispering a ‘thank you’ to the gods, you place the sword onto your back, tie the cord and make your way into formation.

“If I’m going to die today, at least it will be with a proper weapon in my hand” you tell yourself.

You fall into formation as the sergeant begins to address the squad.

“We will be one of the first squads into the combat zone. Make no mistake about it, most of you will die tonight. So, your objective is to make the enemy pay for every goddamn inch of land they take from us! If by some miracle, you make it to the camp in one piece, we are to immediately begin to fortify our position and hold the line until daybreak. That’s when they are at their weakest. Remember who you are and what you are fighting for! This isn’t just about winning, it’s about survival of the species! Do you get me?!”

The squad yells in unison “We get you sergeant!”

“Squad leader, move ‘em out!”

The squad leader begins barking orders and the squad starts making their way to the plane, an old Douglas AC-47. It’s a twin prop carrier aircraft.

A month ago, the Douglas -47 was just a relic of an older time. It was basically an antique, only flying during air shows. But now, after the enemies EMP’s wiped out nearly all of the world’s computers and aircraft, we turned to the old machines that carried our grandfathers into war.

Luckily, the military was able to reacquire some aircraft like these from private collectors and salvage even more from that graveyard in the desert. So now we have a makeshift air force, albeit not nearly as grand as we had hoped.

“Intelligence says that the enemy is utilizing a kind of bio-organic technology for armor. This provides them with a sort of living protection against bullets and explosives, however, they can take damage. If hit repeatedly in the same area, they can be injured, but not necessarily killed. Their armor dissipates the kinetic energy of the bullet to provide limited protection, however, it can be damaged with an up close, precise strike by a blade. So, it’s recommended to shoot the enemy to disable and disorient them, then engage up close with your sword to deal the final blow. Unfortunately, swords went out of common use over a hundred years ago, so we are trying our best to get our old forges back up and running.”

We weren’t part of the first wave of defense. Those poor bastards didn’t have our intelligence or our new battle plan. They crashed like a wave against a mountain, nearly all of them being killed within seconds of contact. If it wasn’t for that big Hawaiian bastard who started swinging the shark tooth sword, we never would have known how effective cutting weapons are against their armor. We watched as all our high-tech advancements fell flat against an enemy that wasn’t even supposed to exist and now, here we are, trying to conscript any civilian blacksmith that even ‘kind of’ knows how to run a forge to make weapons that were supposed to be obsolete in the Middle Ages.

We sent teams out to collect any kind of bladed weapon we could find until war production could fully kick in. We took from houses, stores, businesses… a buddy of mine, Specialist Montoya, told the brass about this place in Elgin, Illinois, that ran a huge website selling medieval weapons and we quickly emptied their warehouse. They had enough for the first retaliatory attack.

We piled those chunks of steel in a tent in the center of the yard and the strike team was given first choice. A lot of them just grabbed whatever they thought was the biggest, baddest hunk of steel they could find and set off, not knowing that the decorative market was huge and a lot of these were just for show. They could deliver maybe one or two swings before falling apart.

I felt bad for those guys. They were in too much of a hurry to follow orders that they never asked what was real and what wasn’t. They wouldn’t last long. And I think the brass was counting on it. Using those guys as fodder, keeping the enemies’ eyes distracted while the rest of us set up for the attack on their HQ.

The plane was crowded. So many scared faces cramped together just waiting to die. I tell myself that I want to take down at least one. That’s all, just one. Lost in thought I almost don’t snap out of it when the sergeant screams that the drop zone is 5 minutes away. Final prep time.

As the door opens and the rush of pressurized air hits, I watch as soldier after soldier jumps out into the darkening sky. When it’s finally my turn to jump, I finally get a good look at what we’re diving into.

Mile after mile of suburban sprawl, fires and thick plumes of smoke bellow up as I hit the silk. The smoke burns my lungs as I swing my ’14 up and get ready to fire. As I pass through this final cloud of smoke, the ground appears with seconds left and I was able to brace myself for the impact. They taught us to tuck and roll, get to your feet and don’t bother putting away your chute. Just disconnect and run for cover.

I was able to duck behind some smoldering cars to try and get my bearings. I could hear fighting nearby. Whoever was close formed into a squad led by Sgt. Castro. We didn’t run into any enemies until a couple blocks down and then it was only 3 of them. They hid behind a crashed bus, firing at us as we tried to flank them.

At the Sgt’s orders, we threw flashbangs and then laid down suppressing fire, distracting them while the rest of the squad cut them down from behind. One of the guys, a huge corn-fed hillbilly from Kentucky nearly cleaved one in two with a huge claymore he found in a museum. The thing just lay there quivering as it bled out from a cut that ran from shoulder to hip. We all felt a huge relief then. If we could cut these down this easy, then maybe we stood a chance at retaking the planet.

But of course, nothing is ever that easy. Although we had time to reevaluate our strategy, it also gave them enough time to start bringing in even more heavy machinery. If you can call them machines.

These ‘tanks’ looked like a weird cross between an Abrams, a hovercraft, and an insect’s carapace. It was freaky, but we quickly learned that even though these things were big and powerful, they were slow and could only fire a shot every 8 seconds. Their armor was strong against our projectiles but could be cracked with a close up, concentrated explosion on a single point where two pieces of armor met.

One of the guys from another squad, I didn’t know his name, found it out when he jumped on a tank and was able to place a C4 charge as the tank rolled right past him on a broken-down section of the freeway. When the charge was blown, it set off a chain reaction that didn’t just down the tank but took out the crew inside and next to it.

Sgt. Castro made sure to send word to HQ about that one. In the end it took us 3 hours to reach the rendezvous zone and set up a perimeter. They just kept coming! It seemed that every time we took one of those bastards down, two more popped up to take its place. We were getting tired, and we were running dangerously low on ammunition.

Finally, the sky began to lighten, and the enemy started to show up less often. When day fully broke the last of them was dropped and a silence fell over the area. Sgt. Castro radioed HQ appraising them of our situation.

We were ordered back behind the line to rest and reload. I was so fried from battle that I didn’t even realize I had dropped all my gear next to my cot and just fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I was dead to the world until I was woken up later in the afternoon by a soldier yelling at us to gear up again and get into the yard for a briefing.

As I tried to get up, I felt the ache in my muscles as they tried to fight against moving. I was sore in places I didn’t even know I had places. Raising my arms took all my willpower and getting fully dressed was torture.

By the time I fell into formation the CO had already started his briefing. “… losing around 2/3rds of our forces in the process. But thanks to Sgt Castro and his team, we now know how to combat the tanks as well as some new info on their bio-armor. That brings me to my next point. We lost a lot of good soldiers due to bad gear when their bladed weapons either broke or fell apart during combat. Because of this, our engineers have begun production on a Standardized Melee Weapon that will be deployed shortly, replacing the replicas and antiques that we were forced to use in recent operations. These are already being produced by our ZT team in Missoula, Montana as well as other locations around the country. The first batch will be issued upon arrival, however, if you choose to continue using your personal blade, you will be allowed to for now, although I strongly advise against it. If your blade fails, not only will you be risking your life, but your teammates lives as well if, for some reason, they choose to try and save you. However, command doesn’t want to force anyone until such time as we have enough of the SM Dubs for general issue. So please take that into consideration before turning down a free upgrade. We have driven the enemy out of the city for now, but they could come back. So don’t get too comfortable. Reinforcements have already landed, so take this short reprieve to rest if you can. We have a long road ahead and a whole planet to save. Hooah?”

Then as one we all shout “Hooah!”