Emily signed looked east hoping to see the sunrise soon. She adjusted the strap on her rifle to be more comfortable. She was carrying her normal M9 again but it was empty. She did have a vest full magazines across her chest just in case. She was standing guard duty in a sandbag bunker by the front gate of Camp with No Name. She was alone on this side of the gate.

Across from her was Decan a Communication Specialist from Third Company. While Emily had been in the Army longer than Decan had but he had been on the teams six months longer than she had. Since he had finished his training before she had that meant he had been promoted to sergeant before she had. That meant that he had more time in rank than she did and was more senior than her. It did not matter that she had a tour in a combat zone or that she was a super and he was not. She thought about it as he threw his combat knife (K-BAR) up into the air above his head and then dodged it at the last second as it fell to the ground. He had been doing that for the past thirty minutes.

He wasn’t dumb by any means and he knew his job but he just did a lot of really dumb stuff. Before Special Forces, he worked in an office doing payroll. According to him, he had never left the country before being assigned to the First. Yet here he was standing guard next to a fifty cal. machine gun while everyone was asleep, throwing his K-BAR in the air trying to stab himself in the face. Shaking her head Emily smirked and looked east again hoping to see the sun peek over the horizon.

When the Korean Commandos left the US soldiers took over. Instead of everyone from two different Special Forces groups packing into the longhouses, there was one now and that left room for everyone to stretch out a bit in the houses. The lines for the latrine and showers had gotten smaller as well. The bad news was that they really didn’t spend all the much time in the camp anymore. They spent most of their time in the mountains training.

The camp was in a tiny valley between three mountains. It was a really dumb place to put a fort since an enemy could look down from three directions into the fort. They would have a nearly unrestrictive fire at anyone in said base. Emily was sure there was a reason they put the camp here and she knew that it was most likely that it was a training base but still it gave her chills looking up at the mountains.

‘Chill Em…” She told herself “... this is a friendly country. No one is here is an enemy. Well, North Korea is an enemy but that's far to the north. And North Korea is not really an enemy. Well, yes they are an enemy since we had never ended the war. We just signed a truce for about a gazillion years. On top of that King, the North Korean leader who started it all, died and his fat grandson is in-charge now. All the grandson is interested in is getting so fat that his heart stops beating and sleeping with as many women as he can. He’s only a danger when he runs out of money to pay for his overly expensive meals while his people starve. Then he gets his people to build a rocket and ‘test fires it’ to get the west to pay him so that he does not make new rockets. It’s become an almost yearly thing now.”

It had been almost a week since the Barbeque. They had spent the next three days climbing up and down the mountains and doing drills. While there had been some fun parts most of the training was boring. They had come in late this morning around three am to rest before they would head back up one of the mountains sometime after lunchtime for the last time. They were supposed to leave tomorrow and she hoped the Colonel had not changed his mind.

Emily looked east again and noticed that the sky was getting lighter. In the distance, she could see an airplane traveling high in the sky. She heard a sharp bird call that made her look around for the odd sounding bird. She had been hearing the odd sounding bird for the past two years but never spotted it. She narrowed the bird call to some kind of crane from what should could tell from the internet. At first, she thought it was a really odd sounding duck but after listening to the recordings online she decided that it was some kind of high pitch crane bird call. Giving up on spotting the odd bird she turned her gaze back to the coming sunrise.

She heard someone walking behind her and she turned to see Yawl and Jazz walking towards them. Jazz was a six foot three thick muscled African American man from New York. His full nickname was Jazz hands. He was honest to god Jazz dance instructor. He went to some upscale college for dance before he left and joined the Army. His wife was a professional ballet dancer in New York. He was currently in Third Company because he accidentally cut his hand. It was not enough to call a healer so the Medics gave him a couple of stitches and put him on light duty for a month.

Yrawl was the exact opposite of Jazz. He was five foot eight thin enough you could count his ribs. He was from Georgia was very soft spoken. He took his time when he spoke and walked with a slow gate. He always drew out the first word when he talked. He wore his hat close to his eyes and the bill of his baseball hat curved sharply. He was also the best shot in the teams. He had seen a few combat tours in the middle east and had been on the teams for nearly ten years. He had been on First Company but tore his tendon in his knee while jumping out of a turret on an APC. The healers fixed his tendon but wanted him to take it easy for a couple of months to make sure the healing stuck.

Emily’s mouth twitched when Jazz exploded upon seeing Decan trying to stab himself in the face out of boredom. Emily was impressed with Jazz’s use of the English language. Even for a New Yorker, he was impressive. Yrawl slowly wandered up to Emily’s bunker.

“Hey Never.” He said as he extending the word hey for a few seconds as he always did. He gave her an embarrassed smile as he pulled up his pants. “Belt broke. Knew I should’ve gotten a new one but too late now.”

“You got some rope?” Emily asked him.

“I was going to head up to the supply truck to see if I could find some twine but it was locked. Didn’t want to wake anyone up for the keys.” He told her as he walked into the small bunker to check the 50 cal. machine gun

“Someone stashed a bungee cable here. It’s the medium size one. You want to see if it fits?” Emily asked him.

“Yea, that would be great.” He said extending the word yea out for nearly two seconds. He put the bungee cable through a few belt loops and then clipped the two hooks together. He then raised his hand above his head and shook his waist a few times. “Works.” He told her smiling. Emily couldn’t help but laugh.

“Nothing to pass down but Decan trying to stab himself in the face with his knife,” Emily said making Yrawl smile. They both looked over to see Decan standing at attention while Jazz lit into him.

“Beautiful,” Yrawl said making Emily blink. Looking away from Decan getting his butt chewed to see what Yrawl was looking at. He was looking up so she turned her gaze upwards.

Emily looked up to see the sky had turned orange as the sun slowly rose for the day. At first, she didn’t understand what Yrawl was talking about but finally saw that what he was seeing. The orange sky had weird geometric shapes in it. She looked at it with wonder. He was right it was strangely beautiful.

“Never seen that before.” He told her frowning.

As he said that a stream of green floated across the sky slowly spreading until it covered the entire sky. It took less than two seconds for it to spread across the sky. There was a sudden flash of pale green light afterward and the sky was blue again but the weird geometric shape had not gone away.

Yrawl snatched the radio off Emily’s belt and keyed it up but there was no beep. He frowned and shook the radio. He tried to key up again but again there was no beep. “Jazz, check your radio. See if it’s out.” Yrawl said turning to the other bunker.

Emily watched Jazz key up then shake his head. “EMP?” Jazz yelled across to them.

“Yea, that's what I was thinking. We should take cover. If it’s an EMP then the blast wave will hit us soon.” Yrawl said ducking down.

“If it was an EMP then the blast wave would have already hit us. Never, go to the Command vehicle and see if they got coms. Their stuff is hardened against this stuff.” Jazz said arming the 50 cal.

Emily nodded and raced out of the bunker towards the command vehicle. She banged on the door hard enough to leave a dent. Frowning she looked back up to the sky. The sky was still blue and the geometric shapes had not left.

“Never! We are a little busy right now. What do you want.” First Sergeant Turner said from the door of the APC.

“First Sergeant, Yrawl, thinks we’ve been hit by an EMP,” Emily said pointing up at the odd geometric shapes. The First Sergeant looked upwards and frowned.

“That’s no EMP. That’s something else. Never, go wake the Colonel up. He’s is going to need to up for this. Tell him everything is down. All communications including the satellite are out. How about your portables? They still working?” He asked looking around.

“No, both ours and Jazz's’ are out,” Emily told him.

“Ok. Go wake the old man up. This is going to be bad.” The First Sergeant said stepping back into the APC to close the door. He had the door almost closed when there was a snap crack sound and Emily felt the sting of a bullet bouncing off the back of her head.

The First Sergeant paused then slammed the door closed. She could hear him yelling at her to wake everyone up. There was another snap crack and something hit her in the back harder than the first bullet did.

“We’re under attack,” Emily yelled and ran towards the front of the APC. Jerking open the door she hit the air horn several times. “At least that worked.” She thought to herself as doors to the longhouses started to open around her.

“Get under cover we are taking fire.” She yelled at the confused people. She took a step away from the APC to yell again when one of the longhouses sides exploded. People raced out of the other longhouses and rushing towards the vehicles to take cover.

Emily raced towards the longhouse that had been hit looking to see if she could pull anyone to safety. There was a loud boom and something pushed her forward into the burning building. She crashed through the burning wood and into the smoke-filled room beyond.