"Unto Persephone"
Step deeper into the dark past with "Unto Persephone," the prequel to A.C. Harrison's premier novel, "Jupiter Symphony." Taking place in a year before the events of the first novel, "Unto Persephone" is a tale of military action that chronicles the downfall of power armor pilot Syndergaard, following his service in the United States Marine Corps where he experiences tragic loss and gut-wrenching heartbreak as his humanity is peeled away layer by layer through conflicts across the world.
Amidst these brutal events experienced in the line of duty, Syndergaard finds himself becoming more and more involved with a shadowy coup that threatens not just to destabilize the military of the United States, but to instigate a potential third World War, paving the way for a new power base led by a rogue colonel.
Inspired by the brutal firefights of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, "Unto Persephone" exhibits devastating military technology as the Marines and their power armor become entire platoons unto themselves, laying down prescise destruction up close and personal with their hulking suits and high-caliber weapons.
As Synergaard becomes an instrument of destruction to be used by another man, and as the machine becomes more dominant to the troubled pilot and his embroiled conscience, what will be left of the soul inside?
Amidst these brutal events experienced in the line of duty, Syndergaard finds himself becoming more and more involved with a shadowy coup that threatens not just to destabilize the military of the United States, but to instigate a potential third World War, paving the way for a new power base led by a rogue colonel.
Inspired by the brutal firefights of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, "Unto Persephone" exhibits devastating military technology as the Marines and their power armor become entire platoons unto themselves, laying down prescise destruction up close and personal with their hulking suits and high-caliber weapons.
As Synergaard becomes an instrument of destruction to be used by another man, and as the machine becomes more dominant to the troubled pilot and his embroiled conscience, what will be left of the soul inside?
An Early Preview of "Unto Persephone"
Chapter Five
“Hey, Syndergaard,” Jameson was once again communicating directly with Syndergaard via laser, everyone already aboard Helios in full armor.
“What?” Syndergaard asked impatiently.
“What do you think downed Wu’s plane?”
“I would think the PLA,” Syndergaard said.
“Don’t you think we’re flying into the same triple A?” Jameson asked.
Syndergaard checked himself, refused to slap Jameson.
“Yes,” Syndergaard said, “we probably are. Just like we’ve flown into triple A in the past. Why are you so hung up on this?”
“Because I think this whole rogue PLA shit is shady. We’re being spoon fed intel and are swallowing it all like that kathoey I saw you with in Thailand,” Jameson said.
“Fuck off,” Syndergaard said, closing the channel. Then, speaking inside his helmet, “Why is he in the service? God, why is he in our squad?”
“This is Helios,” Lieutenant Connor broadcast to the team, “we’re lifting from Prometheus in two mikes. ETA to Taichung is one hour. Hold tight, we’re probably in for some evasive maneuvers.”
Exactly two minutes later, the powerful rotors of Helios spun up, lifting off the Prometheus’ gray deck as Connor raised collective. They drifted up, then forward, as more throttle was fed into the engines, which began to tilt downward, increasing the forward velocity of the aircraft, the giant rotors turned props whipping through the air in giant arcs as the craft banked and headed towards the southern tip of Taiwan as Prometheus went hard to port, breaking off from her original trajectory, the sharp maneuver sending cascading sheets of water violently up the sides of her hull, running down in rivulets to rejoin the night sea.
With the throttle to the stops, the tiltrotor craft made rapid progress, Lieutenant Connor’s cybernetics keeping the airframe steady as it advanced through the darkness. In the cargo hold, Hyperion squad was going through various pre-deployment rituals and meditations. Syndergaard found himself reviewing the mission map, pouring over the intel inside his helmet, his suit tracking the motion of his eyes as he toggled views and pulled up live satellite images over Taiwan, the military stealth units in LEO silently holding station in the celestial heavens of China. Syndergaard spent quite some time on this, occasionally glancing up at the mission clock to see how close they were to their destination. He was shaken from this activity when he felt a tapping on the faceplate of his helmet. Killing the strategic feed, he found himself face to face with Jameson’s armor. Jameson reached a mailed fist up and tapped the side of his helmet where an ear would be, if PA suits had ears.
Syndergaard sighed and opened up his optical receiver.
“What?” His question was brusque.
“Hey, I’m serious now,” Jameson said in a low voice. “I don’t like how any of this feels. When we get down there, I’ll be watching your back. I hope you’ll watch mine.”
Syndergaard heard his own surprise in his voice, “Yeah, I know. None of this seems to make any sense, but I will watch your back.”
“Thanks, battle buddy!” Jameson switched off.
“Helios to Hyperion,” Connor broadcast from the cockpit, “we go live in five. Opening the rear-”
Before Connor could finish speaking, a terrible shock wave slammed through the craft, an explosion blossoming against the fuselage midway down the vessel and directly under the starboard wing. The shrieking of rending metal filled the air as the tiltrotor began to break apart over the southern tip of Taiwan. Inside the rear, the armored men of Hyperion squad had been badly shaken, but their suits impact systems had kept them from being seriously injured, all except Captain Rodriguez. Syndergaard had watched in horror as the missile explosion had struck the hull precisely where Rodriguez had been sitting, the warhead blasting through and obliterating Rodriguez inside his armor, the disparate parts of his flesh and metal mixing with the fragments of Helios. Immediately thereafter, the nose of the craft ripped off, the surviving cargo section now falling, tumbling through the starlit sky.
“Get the fuck out now!” Rogers broadcast on an open channel.
Rogers and Cole, nearest the rear of the craft at the time, frantically fought their chaotic descent, trying to open the rear hatch of the craft. Meanwhile, Syndergaard and Jameson found themselves nearest the breached portion hull, the bulkhead leading up the cockpit having already been ripped away. Syndergaard grabbed Jameson’s arm and pulled him towards the front, bracing his minigun against the remaining structure to leverage himself forward. Jameson, for his part, saw where they were headed and started working forward himself, allowing Syndergaard to use his suit’s left arm more effectively, literally clawing into the alloy of the floor and walls to pull himself along, his suits powerful legs providing ample forward thrust.
“Major, we can get out the front!” Syndergaard gasped into his radio.
“You go that way, we’re almost through back here,” Rogers answered.
Syndergaard, unable to glance back in the chaos, had now reached the edge with Jameson. Their view kept changing, from sky, to sea, to land, all while the howling wind seemed to cut directly through their audio filters. Though everything went by in flashes, Syndergaard was already uncomfortable with their altitude, power armor suits requiring significant time to decelerate, or else risk turning the pilot into human flavored smoothie. Throwing caution to the wind, Syndergaard turned to Jameson.
“Jameson, jump now,” Syndergaard said.
“No, you go first!” Jameson argued.
“That’s a fucking order, Lieutenant. Hyperion Eight, I said deploy!”
Jameson straightened up, his left arm still latched onto the aircraft. He brought the barrels of his right arm cannon up to his forehead, saluting.
“See you on the ground, Captain.”
And then he was gone.
Syndergaard paused a second, gave one last look out, trying to gauge the orientation of the craft. Finding no logic in the way the geography below was being presented to him, he gave a mighty push with his legs, pulling simultaneously with his left arm. The movement catapulted his armor out into the night sky, debris falling alongside him. He activated his suits automatic parachute landing system, but got a warning tone and red icon in response Glancing at his readouts, he saw that his suit was far too out of control for the system to be engaged. Fighting against the panic of time, he fell back to his training and worked at manually orienting his suit, moving his limbs in ways that, for a naked human, would only result in more frustration. The unique distribution of mass in his armor, however, meant that standard paratrooper protocol was out the window. Slowing his spin and finally rolling into a face down position, Syndergaard again tried to engage his system, this time receiving a tone of confirmation, to him the sound of an angel. His happiness was somewhat tempered by the violent jolt that followed, the suit’s own brain also panicking with how close they were at the time of chute deployment and reacting by activating additional braking measures.
Syndergaard now found himself falling at a rate which was slower than that of the debris around him, and so he activated his parachute countermeasures, deploying a sphere of radar clouding junk around his suit as he continued his descent, his limited electronic jamming systems on full squeal. He now began looking for IFF markers, seeking out his teammates, but knew it would be a miracle if they weren’t scattered over the next twenty klicks. Not seeing any markers on his HUD, he focused on his landing, the ground now rushing up to meet him as he reached the final stages of his descent, picking out and aiming for a slightly less tree studded portion of wilderness along the mountain spine of Taiwan. As the operation was assumed to be against heavy opposition, Syndergaard’s suit was heavily laden with extra ammunition and supplies, meaning his normal glider facilitated landing no longer applied. Instead, his armor was fitted with a modular pack which carried a larger parachute and small retro rockets, which now activated automatically as he came crashing through the trees, the bulk of his suit noisily snapping and cracking branches as he hit the soft dirt, the legs of his armor compressing heavily under the load. With wisps of smoke, he ejected the pack on his back, the darkly camouflaged cube landing on the ground with a dull thud, kicking up a shower of dirt.
The American Captain of Swedish descent was alone in the middle of the forests of Taiwan, halfway up a mountain and 160 kilometers from his intended objective, with a limited amount of ammunition and power in his suit.
“Well,” Syndergaard said to the still forest air, “fuck.”
Seeing no better option, Syndergaard began heading down the mountain towards flatter terrain, hoping to cover ground more quickly. He still had an objective to achieve, and it was critical to the safety and stability of the world. Engrossed in his task, he pushed away the doubt that lingered like a dark mist at the edges of his vision, forcing himself forward. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. For all his multitude of sensors, probes, and satellite links, they gave him nothing. He was utterly alone in the wilderness, most of the wildlife already having been chased off the island by climate change long ago, the humans being too stubborn to hurry up and die. Calling up his memory and the maps he had available to him, he knew he was closing in on a river that was shadowed by an expressway, which he could storm down to civilization, only then he would likely have to fight the entire way up the coast to reach his objective.
The terrain was steep and difficult, even for a PA pilot. The ground, softened by the tropical weather and annual monsoons and typhoons, readily sucked in the oversized feet of his armor, despite their design that spread out the weight of his suit. He found himself grunting from exertion, slogging through the slop that someone dared call “land.” Finally, he came across a road, or at least a cheap, made in China knockoff. It was gravel, narrow, and devoid of lights, but Syndergaard didn’t care. He knew it would lead him to faster pathways, and potentially to any remaining survivors of his squad. As he started to make his way along the road, traveling west down the mountain, the road improved, signaling his approach to civilization. In the distance, he started to make out the noise of a diesel engine, a truck of some kind making its way down the mountain behind him, and gaining.
The timing could not have been worse, as Syndergaard had just entered a section of the road which was cut into the mountain on either side; to the left and to the right were sheer rock walls which his suit could not scale. Turning to face the approaching sound, he lowered himself into a crouch and raised the cannon on his right arm, knowing he probably about to ruin some civilian’s life, all because they wanted an early start to their God damn delivery. Syndergaard was surprised when around the corner came a freight truck, running without any headlights on. It slammed on the brakes, the front tires locking, as it skidded to a halt in front of Syndergaard’s raised weapon system, the glow of the brake lights illuminating everything behind the truck in ghostly shadows. Looking inside the cab, he saw a ridiculous sight, that of Jameson, out of his armor, but wearing the bulky helmet of his suit, which was disproportionately large on his pilot’s uniform. Syndergaard lowered his armor and walked over to the driver’s door, which had no window.
“What the hell are you doing?” Syndergaard found himself asking.
“I’m driving this truck!” Jameson replied.
“Naked?”
“You try to fit in here with your armor on,” he answered. “Just keeping my helmet and a power line so I can see in the dark.”
“You look like an idiot,” Syndergaard said.
“I look alive.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Syndergaard agreed. “Your armor in the back?”
“Yeah,” Jameson said.
“Just you?”
“So far,” his battle buddy replied.
“Alright, I’ll clamber in back and stay suited up. I don’t want us defenseless. Let’s keep rolling down this road and try to pick up the freeway towards Taichung.”
“Hah, that’s what it was called! I can never remember these Asian names,” Jameson laughed.
“How you are alive, I will never know,” Syndergaard said, climbing into the covered back of the army green truck, pulling the flaps shut behind him, leaving a small enough crevice to poke out a weapon cam, watching their six.
Toggling over from his external speakers to radio, he ran a check with Jameson.
“Six to Eight, do you have radio in that ghetto rigged helmet of yours?”
“I do, Captain,” Jameson replied.
“Good. Move out.”
The truck trundled down the road, exhaust echoing, an ambling pace that disguised the speed at which the blood was rushing inside the two men who were aboard.
Chapter Six
They managed to find their way out of the mountains and down to the rolling plains of western Taiwan, drifting past farming complexes and arcology domes, the light pollution from the coastal cities so strong that the night was transformed into a kind of eternal pre-dawn, color splashes dancing across the countryside, originating from skyscrapers and factories, nightclubs and emergency lights. Syndergaard, drawn to the light as a moth, kept peeking out the front of the truck, seeing that Taiwan didn’t have the superscrapers or vertically integrated factories of the mainland, preferring instead to keep the entrepreneurial spirit that had served her so well before reunification, most businesses being small and owned by a single individual.
They caught the onramp to the northbound Freeway Route 3 without difficulty, and began their midnight charge up towards Taichung, Syndergaard now having to constantly give driving instructions to Jameson.
“Three is three in Chinese,” Syndergaard found himself saying.
“Well, it’s not,” Jameson countered.
“They use the Arabic numbers. Read them like you would any other.”
“I thought they were Roman numbers?” Jameson asked.
“How did you ever become an officer?” Syndergaard asked.
“Hard to say no to my piloting skills,” Jameson’s smile somehow audible behind the faceplate of his helmet.
“One of these days,” Syndergaard said, “I’ll figure out just what percentage of you is bullshit. Just stay on 3 unless I say otherwise. I’m going to bring up our satellite feeds and see what’s up ahead. Oh, and turn on your lights. Now we look strange without them.”
Without waiting for an answer, Syndergaard rotated back around and resumed the crouch he kept his suit in so that it would fit inside the back of the truck, Jameson’s own armor lying face down and stretched out with the rear hatch removed, making movement in the rear extremely difficult. Worse, the truck struggled with the weight of the two heavily laden suits, huffing and puffing in the polluted air to crest the hills of the expressway. Ignoring the cramping his legs felt, Syndergaard tried again to send a coded signal to any survivors of Hyperion, only to come back empty handed yet again. Cursing to himself, he managed to get a clear connection with one of the recon satellites, which he now had tracking their movement north. From his celestial perspective, he calculated their timetable and determined it would be at least five hours before they reached Taichung. Too slow.
“Eight, this is Six,” Syndergaard radioed up to the cab, his eyes focused on the ghostly maps floating before his face.
“Eight here, go ahead,” Jameson said.
“We need to push hard to Chiayi. There’s an airport there that American forces used to fly out of. I want to see if we can hitch a ride” Syndergaard said.
“Copy, Six. You’re the boss,” Jameson replied. Then, “Traffic is starting to pick up. Don’t these people sleep?”
“No, they don’t,” Syndergaard said grimly. “Keep a low profile. I’ll keep eyes on from our satellite.”
“Wilco. Out.”
Syndergaard was glad they had seen blessedly little military presence, PLA or Loyalist, but as they proceeded along at highway speed, he saw trouble further ahead on the freeway.
“Six to Eight,” Syndergaard spoke up again.
“This is Eight.”
“Is there an exit we can take?” Syndergaard asked. “I’m seeing what looks like a roadblock ahead.”
“Shit,” Jameson replied, “we’re boxed in by traffic. I can’t pull over very quickly or risk smacking someone or tossing a suit out, and both of those will get us noticed, over.”
“Then get ready to punch it. I’m not going down without a fight. Out.”
Syndergaard felt the truck decelerating, dropping into a lower gear, the murmur of the diesel up ahead, worn suspension squeaking underneath as the drive shaft spun away underneath with a constant whir. A slight wobble as Jameson managed to work over one lane, but no further. Syndergaard was now zoomed in close on the checkpoint, and what he saw frustrated him--all eight lanes being funneled down to two, and Chinese police checking the papers of everyone passing through. So, the PLA suspected they were alive, though they probably didn’t know the magnitude of “they.”
“This is bad. This is real fucking bad,” Jameson shouted back from the cab, not bothering with the radio.
“Stay frosty. We’ve got surprise and firepower,” Syndergaard said.
“We can shoot our way out of this checkpoint, ain’t no way in hell we’ll shoot our way all the way up to Chongchang.”
“Taichung,” Syndergaard corrected. “And we don’t have a choice. We do this, or nukes fly.”
No way out now, road flares on either side of the road, police APCs behind them, LED headlights gleaming, finding every tear and hole in the canvas over the back of their liberated cargo truck.
“Take your helmet off,” Syndergaard said.
“Why? I don’t speak Chinese!” Jameson argued.
“Do it, Lieutenant!”
Grumbling to himself, the helmet came off, stowed in the passenger seat footwell. Syndergaard shifted his position, brought up the juice on his suits power system and charged his weapons, checking and rechecking his unit, his breathing shallow and his throat dry. They were now next in line, the car in front of them just now pulling up and rolling down the window to present documents and biometrics for scanning. The policeman checked over the documents, handed them to the driver, and waved him through. Jameson could only shake his head as he idled forward. Syndergaard took a deep breath, got ready to stand straight up through the roof of the truck, but something brought about a pause.
As they were moving forward, Syndergaard saw another policeman with an oddly familiar gaite walk up to the man checking papers, leaning in to speak directly into the other man’s ear and flashing a holographic badge. The first man nodded and looked up at Jameson, then waved his lighted baton to guide the truck over one more lane into an unoccupied area of the checkpoint.
“Captain?” Jameson hesitated.
“Do it.”
The truck trundled over one land and stopped as the same second policeman approached Jameson’s window. Stepping up on the running board, the face policeman leaned his face in as he simultaneously slid back his cap, revealing a familiar face.
“Takayama,” Jameson hissed under his breath.
Glancing in the back, Takayama saw Syndergaard in his armor, nodded in recognition as Syndergaard dropped his unit back down to idle.
“We don’t have much time,” Takayama said. “Please follow me.”
Jameson let out a huge sigh of relief as Takayama walked forward and got into a squad car before pulling away, Jameson following behind with the truck. Takayama led them off the freeway, merging onto a main boulevard that appeared to travel up towards a smaller town, in reality just another segment of the nearly ubiquitous city that composed the entire west side of the island. Heading into a more run down section of the town, they split off from the main road and onto a small neighborhood street, and then into a narrow alley that caused Jameson to bang up the truck against the converging walls. Finally, the alley widened into a loading bay, and Takayama parked and got out of the police car, motioning that Jameson should back the truck up to one of the doors leading into a storage facility. It took maneuvering, but Jameson managed to get it most of the way there, upon which the door to the building rolled up to reveal the rest of the Hyperion Squad.
“Glad you could join the party Six,” Major Rogers radioed. “Is Eight with you?”
“Yes sir,” Syndergaard said. “We’ve got his armor in here as well.”
“Four, Two, get that armor out of there. Six, get inside, quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Syndergaard was relieved at finding the rest of the team.
He quickly exited the back of the truck and stepped into the building they had taken over, Cole and McKinley passing the opposite way to lug Jameson’s armor into the structure. Once the armor was removed, they shut the bay door, then teamed up to get out of their armor and dump the squad car in the nearby river, flooding it silently under a bridge so as to avoid attention. As they walked back to the building in the warm, bug filled silence of morning, Syndergaard whispered to Rogers.
“Sir, how in the blue blazes did you guys find us?”
“We didn’t,” Rogers said. “We’ve been damn lucky so far, minus losing our ride and our pilot. Truth? The four of us managed to maintain visual contact as the plane went down, and then snuck our way forward. It was Takayama that found the municipal police officer asleep at his post. The rest was just a crazy gamble to find you guys. We were about to give up when the power output on your suite spiked, leading us to your truck.”
“Takayama speaks Mandarin?” Syndergaard asked.
“Only one phrase, the rest is the badge doing its magic.”
“One phrase?”
“Yeah, I think it translates to ‘I’m here to evaluate you,’” Rogers laughed. “We got the ID from one of our support contacts, a Major Matthews. Maybe you’ll meet him when we unfuck ourselves.”
Arriving back at the low block structure, they slipped inside and gathered in a huddle amidst their suits of power armor, standing like Greek statues of mythical beasts, silently watching over them. Rogers wasted no time getting started.
“PLA controls everything north of Tainan. Loyalists are either keeping their heads down or fleeing into the mountains on the east. We’ve got minimal support, no transportation, and armor that draws too much attention. Oh, and the PLA might have nuke codes in a few hours if we don’t hurry the hell up. Suggestions?”
“Yes,” Syndergaard said. “Jameson and I were on our way up to Chiayi Airport. We were going to steal a cargo plane and use it to get to Taichung.”
“Who was going to fly it?” McKinley asked.
“I can fly it,” Syndergaard said. “I can’t land it. I figured we would bail out of it in our armor.”
“We can’t all take the truck,” Takayama chimed in. “The weight and bulk of our armor is too great.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we should ditch the truck as well,” Cole said. “It’s going to get noticed, and there’s too much heat on the road to travel anyway.”
“We’re going to need a distraction,” Jameson said.
Silence reigned momentarily, then Syndergaard finally spoke up.
“He’s right. We need a distraction. A big one. We need PLA to rain down on us.”
The men sat quietly as Rogers mulled it over. Finally he spoke, his voice quiet and firm.
“Cole, take Syndergaard and Jameson. Load the truck and make your way north, but stay off the highway. McKinley, Takayama, you’re with me. We’re going to fight our way into Tainan proper and raise hell, keep them busy for as long as we can. I see you all opening your traps already. Stow it. Those are my orders. Carry them out. Immediately.”
The rest of the men stood, saluted, suited up.
“Hey, Syndergaard,” Jameson was once again communicating directly with Syndergaard via laser, everyone already aboard Helios in full armor.
“What?” Syndergaard asked impatiently.
“What do you think downed Wu’s plane?”
“I would think the PLA,” Syndergaard said.
“Don’t you think we’re flying into the same triple A?” Jameson asked.
Syndergaard checked himself, refused to slap Jameson.
“Yes,” Syndergaard said, “we probably are. Just like we’ve flown into triple A in the past. Why are you so hung up on this?”
“Because I think this whole rogue PLA shit is shady. We’re being spoon fed intel and are swallowing it all like that kathoey I saw you with in Thailand,” Jameson said.
“Fuck off,” Syndergaard said, closing the channel. Then, speaking inside his helmet, “Why is he in the service? God, why is he in our squad?”
“This is Helios,” Lieutenant Connor broadcast to the team, “we’re lifting from Prometheus in two mikes. ETA to Taichung is one hour. Hold tight, we’re probably in for some evasive maneuvers.”
Exactly two minutes later, the powerful rotors of Helios spun up, lifting off the Prometheus’ gray deck as Connor raised collective. They drifted up, then forward, as more throttle was fed into the engines, which began to tilt downward, increasing the forward velocity of the aircraft, the giant rotors turned props whipping through the air in giant arcs as the craft banked and headed towards the southern tip of Taiwan as Prometheus went hard to port, breaking off from her original trajectory, the sharp maneuver sending cascading sheets of water violently up the sides of her hull, running down in rivulets to rejoin the night sea.
With the throttle to the stops, the tiltrotor craft made rapid progress, Lieutenant Connor’s cybernetics keeping the airframe steady as it advanced through the darkness. In the cargo hold, Hyperion squad was going through various pre-deployment rituals and meditations. Syndergaard found himself reviewing the mission map, pouring over the intel inside his helmet, his suit tracking the motion of his eyes as he toggled views and pulled up live satellite images over Taiwan, the military stealth units in LEO silently holding station in the celestial heavens of China. Syndergaard spent quite some time on this, occasionally glancing up at the mission clock to see how close they were to their destination. He was shaken from this activity when he felt a tapping on the faceplate of his helmet. Killing the strategic feed, he found himself face to face with Jameson’s armor. Jameson reached a mailed fist up and tapped the side of his helmet where an ear would be, if PA suits had ears.
Syndergaard sighed and opened up his optical receiver.
“What?” His question was brusque.
“Hey, I’m serious now,” Jameson said in a low voice. “I don’t like how any of this feels. When we get down there, I’ll be watching your back. I hope you’ll watch mine.”
Syndergaard heard his own surprise in his voice, “Yeah, I know. None of this seems to make any sense, but I will watch your back.”
“Thanks, battle buddy!” Jameson switched off.
“Helios to Hyperion,” Connor broadcast from the cockpit, “we go live in five. Opening the rear-”
Before Connor could finish speaking, a terrible shock wave slammed through the craft, an explosion blossoming against the fuselage midway down the vessel and directly under the starboard wing. The shrieking of rending metal filled the air as the tiltrotor began to break apart over the southern tip of Taiwan. Inside the rear, the armored men of Hyperion squad had been badly shaken, but their suits impact systems had kept them from being seriously injured, all except Captain Rodriguez. Syndergaard had watched in horror as the missile explosion had struck the hull precisely where Rodriguez had been sitting, the warhead blasting through and obliterating Rodriguez inside his armor, the disparate parts of his flesh and metal mixing with the fragments of Helios. Immediately thereafter, the nose of the craft ripped off, the surviving cargo section now falling, tumbling through the starlit sky.
“Get the fuck out now!” Rogers broadcast on an open channel.
Rogers and Cole, nearest the rear of the craft at the time, frantically fought their chaotic descent, trying to open the rear hatch of the craft. Meanwhile, Syndergaard and Jameson found themselves nearest the breached portion hull, the bulkhead leading up the cockpit having already been ripped away. Syndergaard grabbed Jameson’s arm and pulled him towards the front, bracing his minigun against the remaining structure to leverage himself forward. Jameson, for his part, saw where they were headed and started working forward himself, allowing Syndergaard to use his suit’s left arm more effectively, literally clawing into the alloy of the floor and walls to pull himself along, his suits powerful legs providing ample forward thrust.
“Major, we can get out the front!” Syndergaard gasped into his radio.
“You go that way, we’re almost through back here,” Rogers answered.
Syndergaard, unable to glance back in the chaos, had now reached the edge with Jameson. Their view kept changing, from sky, to sea, to land, all while the howling wind seemed to cut directly through their audio filters. Though everything went by in flashes, Syndergaard was already uncomfortable with their altitude, power armor suits requiring significant time to decelerate, or else risk turning the pilot into human flavored smoothie. Throwing caution to the wind, Syndergaard turned to Jameson.
“Jameson, jump now,” Syndergaard said.
“No, you go first!” Jameson argued.
“That’s a fucking order, Lieutenant. Hyperion Eight, I said deploy!”
Jameson straightened up, his left arm still latched onto the aircraft. He brought the barrels of his right arm cannon up to his forehead, saluting.
“See you on the ground, Captain.”
And then he was gone.
Syndergaard paused a second, gave one last look out, trying to gauge the orientation of the craft. Finding no logic in the way the geography below was being presented to him, he gave a mighty push with his legs, pulling simultaneously with his left arm. The movement catapulted his armor out into the night sky, debris falling alongside him. He activated his suits automatic parachute landing system, but got a warning tone and red icon in response Glancing at his readouts, he saw that his suit was far too out of control for the system to be engaged. Fighting against the panic of time, he fell back to his training and worked at manually orienting his suit, moving his limbs in ways that, for a naked human, would only result in more frustration. The unique distribution of mass in his armor, however, meant that standard paratrooper protocol was out the window. Slowing his spin and finally rolling into a face down position, Syndergaard again tried to engage his system, this time receiving a tone of confirmation, to him the sound of an angel. His happiness was somewhat tempered by the violent jolt that followed, the suit’s own brain also panicking with how close they were at the time of chute deployment and reacting by activating additional braking measures.
Syndergaard now found himself falling at a rate which was slower than that of the debris around him, and so he activated his parachute countermeasures, deploying a sphere of radar clouding junk around his suit as he continued his descent, his limited electronic jamming systems on full squeal. He now began looking for IFF markers, seeking out his teammates, but knew it would be a miracle if they weren’t scattered over the next twenty klicks. Not seeing any markers on his HUD, he focused on his landing, the ground now rushing up to meet him as he reached the final stages of his descent, picking out and aiming for a slightly less tree studded portion of wilderness along the mountain spine of Taiwan. As the operation was assumed to be against heavy opposition, Syndergaard’s suit was heavily laden with extra ammunition and supplies, meaning his normal glider facilitated landing no longer applied. Instead, his armor was fitted with a modular pack which carried a larger parachute and small retro rockets, which now activated automatically as he came crashing through the trees, the bulk of his suit noisily snapping and cracking branches as he hit the soft dirt, the legs of his armor compressing heavily under the load. With wisps of smoke, he ejected the pack on his back, the darkly camouflaged cube landing on the ground with a dull thud, kicking up a shower of dirt.
The American Captain of Swedish descent was alone in the middle of the forests of Taiwan, halfway up a mountain and 160 kilometers from his intended objective, with a limited amount of ammunition and power in his suit.
“Well,” Syndergaard said to the still forest air, “fuck.”
Seeing no better option, Syndergaard began heading down the mountain towards flatter terrain, hoping to cover ground more quickly. He still had an objective to achieve, and it was critical to the safety and stability of the world. Engrossed in his task, he pushed away the doubt that lingered like a dark mist at the edges of his vision, forcing himself forward. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. For all his multitude of sensors, probes, and satellite links, they gave him nothing. He was utterly alone in the wilderness, most of the wildlife already having been chased off the island by climate change long ago, the humans being too stubborn to hurry up and die. Calling up his memory and the maps he had available to him, he knew he was closing in on a river that was shadowed by an expressway, which he could storm down to civilization, only then he would likely have to fight the entire way up the coast to reach his objective.
The terrain was steep and difficult, even for a PA pilot. The ground, softened by the tropical weather and annual monsoons and typhoons, readily sucked in the oversized feet of his armor, despite their design that spread out the weight of his suit. He found himself grunting from exertion, slogging through the slop that someone dared call “land.” Finally, he came across a road, or at least a cheap, made in China knockoff. It was gravel, narrow, and devoid of lights, but Syndergaard didn’t care. He knew it would lead him to faster pathways, and potentially to any remaining survivors of his squad. As he started to make his way along the road, traveling west down the mountain, the road improved, signaling his approach to civilization. In the distance, he started to make out the noise of a diesel engine, a truck of some kind making its way down the mountain behind him, and gaining.
The timing could not have been worse, as Syndergaard had just entered a section of the road which was cut into the mountain on either side; to the left and to the right were sheer rock walls which his suit could not scale. Turning to face the approaching sound, he lowered himself into a crouch and raised the cannon on his right arm, knowing he probably about to ruin some civilian’s life, all because they wanted an early start to their God damn delivery. Syndergaard was surprised when around the corner came a freight truck, running without any headlights on. It slammed on the brakes, the front tires locking, as it skidded to a halt in front of Syndergaard’s raised weapon system, the glow of the brake lights illuminating everything behind the truck in ghostly shadows. Looking inside the cab, he saw a ridiculous sight, that of Jameson, out of his armor, but wearing the bulky helmet of his suit, which was disproportionately large on his pilot’s uniform. Syndergaard lowered his armor and walked over to the driver’s door, which had no window.
“What the hell are you doing?” Syndergaard found himself asking.
“I’m driving this truck!” Jameson replied.
“Naked?”
“You try to fit in here with your armor on,” he answered. “Just keeping my helmet and a power line so I can see in the dark.”
“You look like an idiot,” Syndergaard said.
“I look alive.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Syndergaard agreed. “Your armor in the back?”
“Yeah,” Jameson said.
“Just you?”
“So far,” his battle buddy replied.
“Alright, I’ll clamber in back and stay suited up. I don’t want us defenseless. Let’s keep rolling down this road and try to pick up the freeway towards Taichung.”
“Hah, that’s what it was called! I can never remember these Asian names,” Jameson laughed.
“How you are alive, I will never know,” Syndergaard said, climbing into the covered back of the army green truck, pulling the flaps shut behind him, leaving a small enough crevice to poke out a weapon cam, watching their six.
Toggling over from his external speakers to radio, he ran a check with Jameson.
“Six to Eight, do you have radio in that ghetto rigged helmet of yours?”
“I do, Captain,” Jameson replied.
“Good. Move out.”
The truck trundled down the road, exhaust echoing, an ambling pace that disguised the speed at which the blood was rushing inside the two men who were aboard.
Chapter Six
They managed to find their way out of the mountains and down to the rolling plains of western Taiwan, drifting past farming complexes and arcology domes, the light pollution from the coastal cities so strong that the night was transformed into a kind of eternal pre-dawn, color splashes dancing across the countryside, originating from skyscrapers and factories, nightclubs and emergency lights. Syndergaard, drawn to the light as a moth, kept peeking out the front of the truck, seeing that Taiwan didn’t have the superscrapers or vertically integrated factories of the mainland, preferring instead to keep the entrepreneurial spirit that had served her so well before reunification, most businesses being small and owned by a single individual.
They caught the onramp to the northbound Freeway Route 3 without difficulty, and began their midnight charge up towards Taichung, Syndergaard now having to constantly give driving instructions to Jameson.
“Three is three in Chinese,” Syndergaard found himself saying.
“Well, it’s not,” Jameson countered.
“They use the Arabic numbers. Read them like you would any other.”
“I thought they were Roman numbers?” Jameson asked.
“How did you ever become an officer?” Syndergaard asked.
“Hard to say no to my piloting skills,” Jameson’s smile somehow audible behind the faceplate of his helmet.
“One of these days,” Syndergaard said, “I’ll figure out just what percentage of you is bullshit. Just stay on 3 unless I say otherwise. I’m going to bring up our satellite feeds and see what’s up ahead. Oh, and turn on your lights. Now we look strange without them.”
Without waiting for an answer, Syndergaard rotated back around and resumed the crouch he kept his suit in so that it would fit inside the back of the truck, Jameson’s own armor lying face down and stretched out with the rear hatch removed, making movement in the rear extremely difficult. Worse, the truck struggled with the weight of the two heavily laden suits, huffing and puffing in the polluted air to crest the hills of the expressway. Ignoring the cramping his legs felt, Syndergaard tried again to send a coded signal to any survivors of Hyperion, only to come back empty handed yet again. Cursing to himself, he managed to get a clear connection with one of the recon satellites, which he now had tracking their movement north. From his celestial perspective, he calculated their timetable and determined it would be at least five hours before they reached Taichung. Too slow.
“Eight, this is Six,” Syndergaard radioed up to the cab, his eyes focused on the ghostly maps floating before his face.
“Eight here, go ahead,” Jameson said.
“We need to push hard to Chiayi. There’s an airport there that American forces used to fly out of. I want to see if we can hitch a ride” Syndergaard said.
“Copy, Six. You’re the boss,” Jameson replied. Then, “Traffic is starting to pick up. Don’t these people sleep?”
“No, they don’t,” Syndergaard said grimly. “Keep a low profile. I’ll keep eyes on from our satellite.”
“Wilco. Out.”
Syndergaard was glad they had seen blessedly little military presence, PLA or Loyalist, but as they proceeded along at highway speed, he saw trouble further ahead on the freeway.
“Six to Eight,” Syndergaard spoke up again.
“This is Eight.”
“Is there an exit we can take?” Syndergaard asked. “I’m seeing what looks like a roadblock ahead.”
“Shit,” Jameson replied, “we’re boxed in by traffic. I can’t pull over very quickly or risk smacking someone or tossing a suit out, and both of those will get us noticed, over.”
“Then get ready to punch it. I’m not going down without a fight. Out.”
Syndergaard felt the truck decelerating, dropping into a lower gear, the murmur of the diesel up ahead, worn suspension squeaking underneath as the drive shaft spun away underneath with a constant whir. A slight wobble as Jameson managed to work over one lane, but no further. Syndergaard was now zoomed in close on the checkpoint, and what he saw frustrated him--all eight lanes being funneled down to two, and Chinese police checking the papers of everyone passing through. So, the PLA suspected they were alive, though they probably didn’t know the magnitude of “they.”
“This is bad. This is real fucking bad,” Jameson shouted back from the cab, not bothering with the radio.
“Stay frosty. We’ve got surprise and firepower,” Syndergaard said.
“We can shoot our way out of this checkpoint, ain’t no way in hell we’ll shoot our way all the way up to Chongchang.”
“Taichung,” Syndergaard corrected. “And we don’t have a choice. We do this, or nukes fly.”
No way out now, road flares on either side of the road, police APCs behind them, LED headlights gleaming, finding every tear and hole in the canvas over the back of their liberated cargo truck.
“Take your helmet off,” Syndergaard said.
“Why? I don’t speak Chinese!” Jameson argued.
“Do it, Lieutenant!”
Grumbling to himself, the helmet came off, stowed in the passenger seat footwell. Syndergaard shifted his position, brought up the juice on his suits power system and charged his weapons, checking and rechecking his unit, his breathing shallow and his throat dry. They were now next in line, the car in front of them just now pulling up and rolling down the window to present documents and biometrics for scanning. The policeman checked over the documents, handed them to the driver, and waved him through. Jameson could only shake his head as he idled forward. Syndergaard took a deep breath, got ready to stand straight up through the roof of the truck, but something brought about a pause.
As they were moving forward, Syndergaard saw another policeman with an oddly familiar gaite walk up to the man checking papers, leaning in to speak directly into the other man’s ear and flashing a holographic badge. The first man nodded and looked up at Jameson, then waved his lighted baton to guide the truck over one more lane into an unoccupied area of the checkpoint.
“Captain?” Jameson hesitated.
“Do it.”
The truck trundled over one land and stopped as the same second policeman approached Jameson’s window. Stepping up on the running board, the face policeman leaned his face in as he simultaneously slid back his cap, revealing a familiar face.
“Takayama,” Jameson hissed under his breath.
Glancing in the back, Takayama saw Syndergaard in his armor, nodded in recognition as Syndergaard dropped his unit back down to idle.
“We don’t have much time,” Takayama said. “Please follow me.”
Jameson let out a huge sigh of relief as Takayama walked forward and got into a squad car before pulling away, Jameson following behind with the truck. Takayama led them off the freeway, merging onto a main boulevard that appeared to travel up towards a smaller town, in reality just another segment of the nearly ubiquitous city that composed the entire west side of the island. Heading into a more run down section of the town, they split off from the main road and onto a small neighborhood street, and then into a narrow alley that caused Jameson to bang up the truck against the converging walls. Finally, the alley widened into a loading bay, and Takayama parked and got out of the police car, motioning that Jameson should back the truck up to one of the doors leading into a storage facility. It took maneuvering, but Jameson managed to get it most of the way there, upon which the door to the building rolled up to reveal the rest of the Hyperion Squad.
“Glad you could join the party Six,” Major Rogers radioed. “Is Eight with you?”
“Yes sir,” Syndergaard said. “We’ve got his armor in here as well.”
“Four, Two, get that armor out of there. Six, get inside, quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Syndergaard was relieved at finding the rest of the team.
He quickly exited the back of the truck and stepped into the building they had taken over, Cole and McKinley passing the opposite way to lug Jameson’s armor into the structure. Once the armor was removed, they shut the bay door, then teamed up to get out of their armor and dump the squad car in the nearby river, flooding it silently under a bridge so as to avoid attention. As they walked back to the building in the warm, bug filled silence of morning, Syndergaard whispered to Rogers.
“Sir, how in the blue blazes did you guys find us?”
“We didn’t,” Rogers said. “We’ve been damn lucky so far, minus losing our ride and our pilot. Truth? The four of us managed to maintain visual contact as the plane went down, and then snuck our way forward. It was Takayama that found the municipal police officer asleep at his post. The rest was just a crazy gamble to find you guys. We were about to give up when the power output on your suite spiked, leading us to your truck.”
“Takayama speaks Mandarin?” Syndergaard asked.
“Only one phrase, the rest is the badge doing its magic.”
“One phrase?”
“Yeah, I think it translates to ‘I’m here to evaluate you,’” Rogers laughed. “We got the ID from one of our support contacts, a Major Matthews. Maybe you’ll meet him when we unfuck ourselves.”
Arriving back at the low block structure, they slipped inside and gathered in a huddle amidst their suits of power armor, standing like Greek statues of mythical beasts, silently watching over them. Rogers wasted no time getting started.
“PLA controls everything north of Tainan. Loyalists are either keeping their heads down or fleeing into the mountains on the east. We’ve got minimal support, no transportation, and armor that draws too much attention. Oh, and the PLA might have nuke codes in a few hours if we don’t hurry the hell up. Suggestions?”
“Yes,” Syndergaard said. “Jameson and I were on our way up to Chiayi Airport. We were going to steal a cargo plane and use it to get to Taichung.”
“Who was going to fly it?” McKinley asked.
“I can fly it,” Syndergaard said. “I can’t land it. I figured we would bail out of it in our armor.”
“We can’t all take the truck,” Takayama chimed in. “The weight and bulk of our armor is too great.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we should ditch the truck as well,” Cole said. “It’s going to get noticed, and there’s too much heat on the road to travel anyway.”
“We’re going to need a distraction,” Jameson said.
Silence reigned momentarily, then Syndergaard finally spoke up.
“He’s right. We need a distraction. A big one. We need PLA to rain down on us.”
The men sat quietly as Rogers mulled it over. Finally he spoke, his voice quiet and firm.
“Cole, take Syndergaard and Jameson. Load the truck and make your way north, but stay off the highway. McKinley, Takayama, you’re with me. We’re going to fight our way into Tainan proper and raise hell, keep them busy for as long as we can. I see you all opening your traps already. Stow it. Those are my orders. Carry them out. Immediately.”
The rest of the men stood, saluted, suited up.