Chapter 11

Kazi Depot Hangers

At 04:00 Kazi time and with just a few hours of sleep, three full burn teams poured into the three puddlejumpers they had waiting outside of the hangers, headed to handle the growth nearest Kazi Depot. In total, they would have more than 50 men, each armed with a gauss rifle and flame thrower, a handgun, and several home-brewed grenades.

Additionally, they were going to receive flyover bomb support from two puddlejumpers that were leaving from the Research Facility. The research teams there had apparently been cooking up some kind of firebomb ever since they had discovered how the hatchlings had reacted to flame. Johns was glad they had. He finally felt like they had the ammunition that they needed to take care of the problem, Raymond Duke be damned.

Johns was tired. His eyes felt heavy. They had bags under them, no doubt, but he hadn’t bothered to look. His shoulders felt tight. The stress of the last few days was beginning to weigh on him but there wasn’t much that he could do about it. There would be a lot of sleepless nights until they got this taken care of.

The teams loaded into the seats on either side of the puddlejumper and strapped in. The flight was going to be about twenty-five minutes, with plenty of time for Johns to reflect on what had happened and what would be happening next.

The first order of business was to take down Site B. It was the site where they had first encountered the hatchlings and was sure to be farther along than Site A at the Communication Station. Once they had Site B burned, they could move onto Site C, where the puddlejumper had crashed. It was likely to be just as far along in its growth as Site B, but was farther away so they had a little time to spare. In the meantime, the Research Station had been instructed to batten down the hatches until they could get out there.

Once the engine of the puddlejumper had started up, the sound of the engine and whooshing of the air made it too difficult to hear much of anything, so Johns stayed in his head. You could feel the nervousness in the air — the idea that the unknown was once again on the other side of the door and they were about to go through it. Some part of him loved it.

Johns turned his head and watched Rick. He was sending hand signals to one of the members of the team, mimicking a sex act. How Rick managed to talk about sex during a time like this Johns would never know, but it was quintessential Rick. He chuckled with admiration. They were on a god-forsaken research planet with an alien invading force that we were about to go battle, and Rick still found a way to reference dicks. Having a guy like that around was essential.

As the pilot came over the intercom to tell them that they were approaching the drop site, you could feel the air suck out of the ship. They were going to be dropping in a new area, as the growth has easily covered the clearing that they had dropped in last time. On the horizon, you could see the blue reflection shimmering off the vegetation and glowing up into the air. Soon the forward motion stopped and the craft began descending toward the canopy of the trees. Johns kept waiting for Blue Goo to be pasted all over the windshield, just as it had at the Research Facility impact site, but it never came.

Johns had sat down with the pilots of each puddlejumper to show them the video of the Research Station crash, and those pilots had left uneasy but prepared. They were operating under the assumption that something could shoot from the canopy of the trees, so the puddlejumpers would spend as little time low as possible.

The light flashed green and one-by-one the security personnel started sliding down the rope toward the ground below. Johns was the first out of their ship. As he rode the rope down, he could see the other teams descending nearby. The valley that they were in was vaguely blue like a bright blue moon was hovering over the drop site. Kazi only had one tiny moon, and it didn’t really bounce enough light back to the surface to make a noticeable dent at night.

As each person descended from their respective puddlejumper, they ran to form a line that faced the Goo. They were each about three meters apart with their flamethrowers in hand. The decided strategy had been to use the flamethrowers to push back any of the hatchlings that came their way. If there were any yet undiscovered creatures making their way toward them, they still had the gauss rifles on their back. The handguns were for last-ditch efforts if these went south. The Security team would move up first, with the civilian volunteers following close behind.

Within seconds, everyone had taken their place in line. It stretched nearly across the clearing. Johns could see in the distant sky that the sun was just beginning to hit this side of the planet. There would be light soon. That made him feel a little bit better.

“March,” Johns commanded over the coms unit.

The line began moving forward, marching its way through the dense forest. Through their environment suits, you could still hear the boots crunching on the vegetation. They crept as quietly as they could, making their way toward the glowing blue light that shined through the trees, illuminating their line. Johns couldn’t help but think that it was beautiful.

Within a few minutes, they had made their way to the edge of the Goo. It had grown a considerable amount since the last time they had been at the site. They stood quietly for a moment, listening.

“If you see anything, report in,” Johns said over the coms to the entire group.

After a few seconds of silence, he gave the order to start burning. Immediately, the light from 50 flamethrowers lit the woods around them and starting burning the Goo back. You could hear it pop, cackle, and hiss as it was exposed to the flame. Several men stood back, gauss rifles in hand, focused on watching the horizon through the night vision HUD setting. They’d see a warm body moving to the horizon.

They burned for several minutes with no interruptions before Johns received a communication from the pilot of the old-model puddlejumpers.

“Payload incoming, ETA fifteen minutes, over,” the pilot said.

“Roger. Please notify me as you get close. Remember, we want to cut the Goo in half if possible. Don’t be afraid to burn down the forest around it, either. We don’t have the luxury of being picky.” Johns replied. “I’ll relay out exact coordinates. Don’t drop anything on us, please.”

They continued burning. The Goo had grown well into the thick vegetation of the forest and multiple trees continued burning long after they had passed them and moved on, illuminating the forest behind them. Johns had several members of the team peel off to watch their backs as things became more cramped. They still didn’t know how far these beasts could go once they were off of the Goo, and they seemed to be smart enough to sneak up behind them. Johns kept watching behind them, over the areas that they had burned as they pushed it back.

Ten minutes later, Johns received word from the pilot that the strikes were five minutes out. He relayed this to the group and they pushed off the goo a bit to stay well out of the blast zone. They had been burning for nearly twenty minutes at this point and hadn’t seen any sign of the hatchlings that had attacked them previously. “Maybe they died,” Rick said. “Poisoned by the atmosphere or something.”

“I’ll believe it when we find their dead bodies,” Johns replied.

The Goo smoldered as they backed away from the line and took a defensive position farther back in the forest. The goal of the explosive drops was to burn a giant hole at the epicenter of the growth. The more they could take out, the more fuel they denied them. Ahead of them, the Goo was thicker. It seemed to get thicker toward the epicenter of each growth.

Minutes later, they heard the low whirr of the ships as they made their way toward Site B. The sun was starting to come up and poke through the thick canopy above. They passed over their heads and quickly made their way toward the growth site. Minutes later, the floor began to shake as the bombs began to drop. The bombing went on for nearly a full minute as the pilots tried to spread the damage out as much as they could. They could hear the subtle differences in the sound of the bombs as they got further away then circled back around.

Once the explosions came to an end, they all cheered. They stood and watched the black smoke billowing into the red morning sky. The forest around them became eerily silent. In the distance, you could see a halo of blue from the Goo and surrounding burning forest.

They crept forward to continue their burn but were halted in their tracks by a faint rumbling sound. At first, Johns thought of the bombing. Was this another drop? But Johns’ concern grew as the rumbling began to build steam. He could see the puzzlement on those around him as well. He knew what was coming.

“Battle positions now!” he screamed into the coms. The fifty men dropped to their knees and pointed their flamethrowers in the direction of the Goo. Seconds later, the first wave of hatchlings broke through the treeline about one hundred yards in front of them, making a beeline toward their location.

“Light up early!” Johns screamed into the com unit.

The first wave of hatchlings was met with brutal force. They ran headlong into a wall of fire from 50 flamethrowers. In fact, several waves did. Hundreds of them shrieked and either ran off into the woods or shriveled and died in a burning heap on the ground in front of them, their skin popping and blistering. Johns could see more coming behind them in the forest.

The second wave was smarter than the first. They diverted their way around the flamethrowers, trying to find gaps near the edges of the line. Those in the middle of the line fanned toward the edges, shooting their flamethrowers as safely in that direction as they could. The hatchlings danced and evaded the flames, trying to find a hole in the defenses.

They found one.

A young cadet at the end of the line let a scream out into the coms. Johns looked down the line and could barely make out a body being toppled by a dozen or so hatchlings. As he went down, the man continued to pull the trigger on his flamethrower and caught the man next to him ablaze. He screamed, and others ran over to try to put out his environment suit. More quickly jumped on the first man, tearing away at the vinyl material that kept him away from the air of Kazi.

The other security cadets surrounding him pointed their flamethrowers at him feebly. They ripped his environment suit open and began to dig into his flesh. He let out a wail into the coms before another member of the team had the heart to end it for him, grabbing his gauss rifle and launching a hail of bullets into the growing pile of hatchlings on top of him. With this affirmation that the situation was over, the rest of the team lit the pile up with their flamethrowers. You could hear the screams as dozens, if not hundreds, of the two-foot-tall lizards burned alive at the other end of the line.

The rest of the flock quickly turned tail and scattered back into the forest. They had dispatched them, and a burned pile of goo ashes lay in front of them on the forest floor.

About a hundred yards away, Johns could see something else moving. Something bigger. Through the shrubbery came around, rubbery looking creature. It looked like an overgrown toad. Fat, and round like a basketball. It looked wet and slimy. More green. They looked like they had been gorged for their entire lives. Rick made eye contact with Johns indicating that he saw it too. They were at about four feet tall, and nearly as wide as they were tall. Blue goo spewed out of their mouths as they waddled. Behind them was a wave of hatchlings that careened over their backs, jumping into the air as they threw themselves at the line of flamethrowers.

Johns burned a few of the hatchlings as they arrived but kept a close eye on the toad-like creatures that lumbered a few hundred yards away. He watched as their bulbous head inflated at the cheeks like a toad would before it croaked. Its cheeks ballooned and were quickly followed by a blue glow from within his mouth like the cheeks were filling with the Goo itself. The beast held the liquid in its mouth for a second, then heaved with its abdomen as if it were throwing up. The blue liquid came spraying out of its mouth like a firehose, covering hundreds of feet and landing on a team of six or seven cadets who had wandered a bit too far forward.

The Goo coated them, then just like it had done in the video, the corrosive material started to eat through their environment suits and Johns assumed, based on the screams that were coming through the coms, their faces.

Rick, standing a few feet away from Johns, pulled his gauss rifle from his back and started unleashing rounds into the toad creature that was now no more than 50 yards away. Each bullet that struck the toad-like creatures pierced a hole and sent the blue goo shooting out of its body. When a dumping of bullets had torn one to bits, the toadlike creature crouched. Quickly, his body started to fill with the bright blue liquid. He started shaking, more violently with each passing second. Then it exploded, sending droplets of the blue goo in all directions.

Johns pushed forward while Rick peppered the hatchlings with a hail of bullets, Johns laid a consistent flow of flame at all of the hatchlings that dared to come in their direction. Across the line, Johns could see that they were pushing. Occasionally, a man would get separated and engulfed by the Hatchlings.

They continued burning and a few minutes later they heard the hum of the puddlejumpers who had returned with the second load of explosives. At the sound of the turbines, the hatchlings perked up, looked toward the sky, and then took off through the jungle back toward the impact site. Johns and Rick stood in amazement as it seemed like the hatchlings retreated back into the forest.

“Pussies,” Rick said into the coms units, resulting in several belly-laughs coming in over the coms.

The bombs dropped and the pilots did a second pass, sending the visual data to Johns’ coms unit. Him and Rick watched closely, planning their next move.

“Damn, those bombs knocked that whole thing back,” Rick said as he pointed at the screen.

“Yeah, we really only have to knock down this area,” Johns said as he pointed at the Eastern side of the remaining growth. “We can burn that area back, burn it back to the impact site, throw some grenades in whatever hole is left, and then pack up and get out.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Johns relayed the plan to the rest of the squad and took a headcount. Thirteen people had perished in the fight, leaving 37 left. They were only able to find 9 of the bodies as some were sitting in heaps of ash, covered by burned Hatchlings. No one really felt the need to comb through them to find confirmation.

He was starting to get numb to it again.

The sun was up now, giving them enough light to complete the job with full visibility. They looped around the outside of the growth area, burning as they went. Where the bombs had dropped, the forest was still burning pretty intensely. They would have to avoid that area for a while. They settled on burning back the largest slab of Goo growth to the East.

By mid-morning, they were finished with the burn and had pushed it all the way back to the bomb zones, which had absolutely devastated the forest in the area. A wildfire had started and Johns figured it would be best if they got everyone out of there, rather than stick around. The forest fire would handle what was left of the growth site and they’d keep an eye on it with drones in the meantime. They talked their way back to the field, loaded into the puddle jumpers, and took off toward Kazi Depot.