Ruff turned to look back over his shoulder. “Oh, he did something, alright. He opened a hole in time and space … unfortunately, it’s a hole we can’t control. We can’t close. And what’s worse … we can’t control what comes through.”
In front of it, dozens of Space Guard troopers stood, gathered around what appeared to be a large, bulky mass. All were armed to the teeth, their pulse rifles, laser cannons and rocket guns charged and aimed at whatever they were surrounding.
Tiger eyed them peculiarly, as he asked Ruff, “And what comes through? And from where?”
Ruff shrugged, “You don’t know until it comes through. I’ve seen some crazy things in the last few weeks. From where I don’t know. Other worlds … other dimensions … that thing just starts pulsating and throbbing, and soon afterward, it burps out whatever it’s sending through.”
“What just came through this time?” Dee asked, trying to see past the soldiers. Whatever it was, it was huge. It looked like a large mound of grayish-blue matter.
“Let’s find out,” Ruff said matter-of-factly. “No doubt, it’ll be interesting.”
***
Robbie Rivers worked for Redstone Tactical, a private security firm that specialized in neighborhood patrols. Most of the employees were ex-military or former law enforcement officers. Most worked as security guards to supplement inadequate pensions. Some missed police work, and these jobs were just a substitute for the life they left behind. A few assholes just liked having a little bit of authority, especially if it was backed up with a gun. Most of the time, it was good work, patrolling middle and upper-class areas, making sure the dregs of society like the denizens of Rocket Town didn’t come pilfering, looking for something to steal to support a ‘beam habit. Occasionally, you had to deal with some hardcore gangbangers trying to expand their turf. Some of them packed some pretty heavy firepower, and things could get pretty dicey, but you got paid to do a job. Whether it was slapping around a drunk driver or putting down a mad dog Demon Posse thug, you did what you had to do.
On this particular morning, Rivers and his partner for the day, Gwinette Dailey, had been assigned guard duty at the main entrance to Lulah’s neighborhood. Whitesburg Estates was an older, upper-middle-class area. Most of its residents were white-collar professionals who worked for the Space Authority or one of their contractors. Many worked the Space Trades, rotating every two to three weeks into space to work the shipyards or the Grand Orbital. Others did months-long jaunts doing deep space duty to Luna, Mars or the ‘Roids. As such, many of the houses in the neighborhood stood vacant for extended periods. Others left their spouses and children alone and vulnerable. That made neighborhoods like this especially tasty for opportunistic criminals looking for easy scores. With the Zone Patrol seemingly always short-handed and stretched thin, security contractors like Redstone Tactical were now the first line of defense when it came to home security.
Rivers had served in the Space Guard and was a veteran of the Lunar Rebellion, having signed on as an incentive enlistee. Like most, he had visions of collecting easy bounties by taking down poorly-trained and lightly armed colonists. Like so many, he was in for a horrifically rude awakening. Once the battle became a meat grinder, he quickly discovered there weren’t enough bounties in the solar system to endure the horror of house-to-house, room-to-room and hand-to-hand fighting. Like so many other grunts, he wondered why their generals didn’t just pull the troops back outside the city and then level it with a tactical nuke … spare the lives of a lot of good men and women. Then it dawned on him like a revelation from the gods of Dixie: Johnny, Hank, Willie and Waylon. They didn’t care anything about the lives of soldiers like Ensign 1st Class Robert Rivers. He was just cannon fodder. When he fell, ten other suckers had signed on for the same greedy lie, all ready to jump in there and take his place.
And then one day, they did order a withdrawal. The order called for all units to break off contact and fall back to the nearest secure airlock. What was going on? Had there been a cease-fire? Had the loonies surrendered? Were negotiations taking place?
Unfortunately, it was none of the above. Rumors began to circulate, bits and pieces of sketchy information coming from Earth’s news networks. A city in the U.S. had been attacked. It had suffered catastrophic damage. Some were saying it had been nuked. But how? By whom? These rock eaters? These people who’d been reduced to fighting with butcher knives and homemade spears as their ammo packs ran out of energy? Yet they somehow possessed the capability to launch a nuke at Earth? Great Gates and Jobs!
Hovercraft and low-altitude shuttles ferried the troops away. From a safe distance, those who wanted to could watch with protective goggles as a once-proud city disappeared in a flash of blinding light.
It was real biblical shit. Eye for a fuckin’ eye.
Afterward, River collected his points and returned to Earth, swearing never again to leave terra firma. It was months before he could even bring himself to look up at night, to even glance at the moon without shaking or feeling violently ill. He was sure he suffered from PTSD but refused to see a doctor about it. Hell, real men just deal with shit, that’s the way you did it in the South. Suck it up and be a man. Instead, he’d parlayed his experience there into a job at Redstone Tactical, but he cared nothing about ever drawing his weapon in anger again.
Dailey, on the other hand, was a whole different story. She’d tried to enlist with the Guard during the Lunar Rebellion, but she’d failed the physical. A knee injury
