SNAFU: Future Warfare Read online

  “SNAFU – Every one of them delivers the goods.”

  —Tim Miller, director of Deadpool.

  “... a great taste of what military horror can achieve.”

  —Horrortalk.com (SNAFU: Heroes)

  “... every single story holds its own and it’s damn difficult to pick a standout as they all leave a mark.”

  —Horrortalk.com (SNAFU 1)

  “... Geoff Brown and Amanda J. Spedding deserve immense credit for both the consistent quality and extraordinary variety...”

  —This Is Horror (UK) (SNAFU 1)

  “... these are books to watch out for, to purchase, and to enjoy thoroughly.”

  —Hellnotes

  “... an entertaining collection of stories... SNAFU-An Anthology of Military Horror is one of the best picks available.”

  —Albedo 1

  Publisher’s Note:

  This book is a collection of stories from writers all over the world.

  For authenticity and voice, we have kept the style of English native to each author’s location, so some stories will be in UK English, and others in US English.

  We have, however, changed dashes and dialogue marks to our standard format for ease of understanding.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All people, places, events, aliens, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Also From Cohesion Press

  Horror:

  SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Heroes

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

  – eds Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding

  SNAFU: Hunters

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  SNAFU: Future Warfare

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

  – eds Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  Blurring the Line – Marty Young (ed)

  American Nocturne – Hank Schwaeble

  Jade Gods – Patrick Freivald

  The Angel of the Abyss – Hank Schwaeble

  Congregations of the Dead – James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge

  Sci-Fi/Thriller:

  Valkeryn 2 – Greig Beck

  Cry Havoc – Jack Hanson

  Forlorn Hope – Jack Hanson

  Creature Thrillers

  Into the Mist – Lee Murray

  Fathomless – Greig Beck

  Primordial – David Wood & Alan Baxter

  Coming Soon

  A Hell Within – James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge

  Snaked – Duncan McGeary

  SNAFU:

  Future Warfare

  Edited by Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown

  Cohesion Press

  Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum

  Beechworth , Australia

  2017

  SNAFU: Future Warfare

  Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown(eds)

  ePub: 978-1-925623-15-4

  Kindle: 978-1-925623-16-1

  Anthology © Cohesion Press 2017

  Stories © Individual Authors 2016

  Cover Art by Dean Samed/Neostock 2016

  Internal Layout by Geoff Brown

  Set in Palatino Linotype

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cohesion Press

  Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum

  Beechworth, Australia

  www.cohesionpress.com

  SPECIAL EDITORIAL COMMITTEE:

  Dawn Roach

  Anthea Matley

  Emma Burgess-Gilchrist

  Maree Collie

  Thomas Moore

  Noel Parrett

  Penny Reaby

  Tristan Waldron

  Jack Walsh

  Andrea Caffey

  Julien Ringuede

  Shannon Carter

  SUITS

  Steve Lewis

  Graves Farmstead, Tau Ceti IV

  It was dark, about midnight, when something woke Henry Graves. He sat upright in his bed and looked around, hearing nothing but the gentle breathing of his wife, Beth. He contemplated getting out of bed to check the security grid in the next room… A few seconds later he had no choice; an alarm screeched out and woke everything within a mile.

  He was out of bed and into the farmstead’s security room in a heartbeat, the monitors flicking to life in response to whatever threats the remote ground and satellite sensors had picked up. He was hoping it was just cattle from his neighbour’s property – Jenkins was renowned for being cheap with his fencing – but by the slowing spreading blooms of light on the screens it was clear this was something much worse.

  “Hank, what is it?” Beth asked as she entered the room. “Jenkin’s cows again?”

  “Afraid not, honey,” Graves replied. “Looks we have deebees coming in.”

  “Crap.”

  “Crap indeed, honey, crap indeed.”

  Tau Ceti IV had taken decades to colonise, and it was a few years after the planet had been successfully terraformed that the aliens had shown up. Coming through dimensional gateways on and just above the planet’s surface, the ‘Dimensionial Beings’ – or deebees for short – had initially wreaked havoc amongst the unsuspecting colonists. If it wasn’t for an armed cruiser passing through for R&R, with heavy screens, armoured hull and batteries of hot lasers, the planet would have been overrun.

  The invasion was finally broken, the gateways closing quickly and the deebees slaughtered with no line of retreat… now it was only a raid every few years, more a nuisance than anything else.

  “Looks like a wide pattern,” Beth said, looking over Graves’ shoulder at the various screens. “Gates opening up all along the ridge and across most of the farmsteads.”

  Graves nodded. “They should be easy to mop up, scattered out like that,” he said. “I’ll go suit up, you get on the horn to Jenkins and the others, make sure they’re up and armoured before the gates open completely.”

  He stood and kissed his wife on the forehead as she slid into the seat.

  “Looks like we have about 30 minutes before they open enough to let them through, everyone should be ready and mobile by then,” he said.

  “Get suited while I make some calls,” Beth replied. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  * * *

  Graves’s suit was built around the chassis of an old, four-armed agricultural exoskeleton. With an upgraded power plant, some welded armour and batteries of weapons added each year, Brutiful was a family heirloom passed down over the generations. Every farmstead had to have one, and the Graves’ family took much pride in the effort they’d taken to maintain their deadly, hulking suit.

  As Brutiful powered up, Graves got into his combat suit – a second-hand, naval-grade skin-suit, it provided a degree of life support, body armour and communications gear that made piloting the heavy exomech far less uncomfortable than it might otherwise have been. Plugged in and zipped up, he checked the ammunition drums and ran last minute diagnostics tests before strapping himself into the suit’s cockpit.

  “Beth, I’m in,” he said as the heavy armoured glass canopy closed around him. “Systems green across the board, heading out now.”r />
  “You’re showing green across the board here too, honey,” Beth replied, coming through clearly over the suit radio. “Jenkins and the others are all suiting up, should be out before the gates open.”

  “Roger that,” Graves said. “Anyone coordinating this?”

  “Afraid not. All of them are interested in defending their own property first, and we’ll coordinate a clean-up once the gates close and we can see what’s left.”

  “Fair enough… shouldn’t take us long, the gates being spread out like they are.”

  “And we don’t want Jenkins trampling down our fences like he did last time he came over to help.” They both laughed, though they hadn’t been laughing at the weeks they’d had to spend repairing the downed fence-line and retrieve their roaming livestock.

  “Where do you want me, honey?’ Graves asked as Brutiful got underway and stomped out of the barn and into the night.

  “It looks like a cluster of gates will open in the eastern quarter first, counting seven gates. After that, the next opening cluster is another five in the south.”

  “Eastern quarter it is, on my way.”

  * * *

  Graves made good time, the heavy exomech eating up the miles at a rapid pace. With no threat, he set the autopilot and then cycled through his weapon and targeting systems to make sure everything was running smoothly – the diagnostics had indicated everything was green, but he’d long learned the value in checking everything twice, just in case.

  By the time he got to the farmstead’s eastern fields, some 15 miles away, the gates were beginning to sparkle, the bright inner light of an alien dimension shining through. It was a rare sight, but not one that Graves was overly interested in admiring. Like a lot of things in nature, beautiful also meant dangerous.

  He halted his exomech where he could see all seven of the gates – they were closely bunched – and swung the heavy chainguns on his right shoulder down, ready for action. The 15mm multi-barrelled autocannons weren’t his heaviest weapons, but they were dependable, hard hitting, and could deal with most deebees.

  Besides, 15mm ammunition was cheap, and anything he fired came out of the farmstead’s operating budget.

  “Hank, honey,” Beth said,” I make the gates opening in three… two… one… now!”

  On her mark, a swarm of deebees poured out of each gate, scattering around as they cleared the gate for the aliens following behind, and searching for a target. Brutiful’s infra-red scanners picked them out in the darkness and automatically counted them. It had reached 80 by the time the gates’ sparkle began to fade, and Graves decided he should open fire before they dispersed too much.

  With a whir, the autocannon barrels began to spin, and as they reached their maximum rotation, he fired. Over 600 rounds per minute poured out of the 5-barrelled weapon, cutting into the creatures around the nearest gate.

  The 15mm rounds were mostly copper-tipped hollow points, with every 5th round a steel-tipped armour-penetrating round, and every 20th round a tracer round that marked its flight in a glowing red arc – at 1,500 metres per second, they streaked across the landscape, lighting the night sky and easily punching through alien hide, flesh and bone.

  His first burst cut down the group around the first gate, then he switched to the second. The deebees had reacted now and were spreading out as they charged towards him. He fired the autocannon in short bursts of 25-30 rounds, taking down the leading aliens as they closed, confident he could whittle them down enough before they got to him.

  “Hank?” Beth asked. “Got time for an update?”

  “Sure, honey,” he replied, “but keep it brief, I got incoming.”

  “Okay. Jenkins, Anderson and Wright have deployed and engaged, they’re all dealing with their own first clusters…Peters, Donaldson and the Singhs are en route, but their gates are all over the place and they might need a hand with clean-up once we’ve got the main clusters dealt with.”

  “Okay,” Graves said as he triggered off another burst that dropped a clump of half-dozen aliens as they cleared a fence-line 500 metres in front of him. “You sound like you’re coordinating with the other wives. “

  “I am,” Beth replied. “We’re trying to keep each other updated on the back channels, just in case there’s a breakthrough somewhere.”

  “Good.” Another burst, another clump falling apart under the autocannon fire. “I’m almost done with this group, moving south soon.”

  “Roger. Be careful, honey, the next group are bigger gates and they’ll likely be fully deployed before you get there.”

  “Will do!” He triggered his last burst, splashing the last of the deebees across his eastern paddock and then turned the exomech south to deal with the next group.

  The eastern paddocks were fallow this season, and if nothing else the alien corpses would make good fertiliser when he got around to ploughing them into the soil.

  * * *

  Wright Farmstead, Tau Ceti IV

  Jake Wright hated his exomech and was pretty sure it hated him. Carnigore sounded ferocious, but the ‘carni’ wasn’t named after a predator’s eating habits – the suit was a built on a mobile amusement park ride, and the old red and white paint job made it look far more ‘carnival’ than he would have liked.

  If maintaining the suit in its original condition hadn’t been part of his old man’s will, he’d have had it redone and renamed a decade ago.

  “Jake,” his wife said as he fired his own autocannon into the creatures moving towards him, “you need to get the lead out, that second cluster of gates is opening.”

  “Helen, I’m doing this as fast as I can,” he said, gritting his teeth as he fired another burst. Carnigore wasn’t a well-padded suit and he swore he felt every jolt of recoil through his bones. “Last group coming up now, I’ll head to that second cluster in a moment.”

  “I hate to nag” she replied, though Jake didn’t believe that for an instant, “but Graves and Jenkins have cleared their first gates and are already on route to their second.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Helen, it’s not a contest!”

  “It never is with you Jake, it never is…”

  Wright flicked the mute button on his communication piece and cursed, long and loud, as the last of the deebees died in front of him. He swung Carnigore south and headed towards the river, where the second cluster of gates was already opening. He threw in a few curses towards his exomech for good measure, bracing himself for every bump and jolt the insanely grinning suit was going to pass on to him.

  * * *

  Anderson Farmstead, Tau Ceti IV

  ‘Crazy Bill’ Anderson was the old man of the colony, a silver-haired widower in his 70s. He’d built his suit himself, turning an obsolete agricultural exomech into a formidable fighting machine. It was a blocky, hulking brute that lacked the sleek lines of newer suits, but he and his Grampage had weathered decade after decade of deebee raids without showing any signs of slowing down.

  He’d dealt with the first cluster of gates easily enough and was perched on a low hill overlooking the slowing blooming forms of his second cluster. The three gates were very tightly bunched, much tighter than he’d ever seen before, and he waited patiently as they grew. Close-packed like that, the deebees would run out into a withering hail of fire, and he certainly had no problem with that.

  Still, the sight bugged him. Gates were always spaced apart, likely to stop them interfering with each other. The energy required to cross the dimensional barrier was stupendous, even if the colonists didn’t have a clue as to how it all worked. Anything might happen if the gates actually overlapped.

  * * *

  Graves Farmstead, Tau Ceti IV

  “Hank, we have a problem.”

  “Talk to me Beth.”

  “The wormholes on the ridges, they’re getting stronger.”

  “How strong?”

  “Off-the-chart strong. The satellite view shows them growing every minute.”

  Brutiful was ne
aring the second cluster of gates, and in the distance Graves could see them spiralling closed. Whatever deebees had been using the gates had already been dropped off and were spreading out across his property.

  “Keep an eye on them, honey, while I deal with this second group, and then I’ll go take a look,” he said. “And keep the others in the loop; I don’t want any surprises coming our way when we get around to mopping up.”

  “Roger that,” Beth replied. “I’ve got one of the crop-duster drones headed that way, should give us some eyes on the ridge in about ten minutes.”

  There was a sharp ‘ping’ as Brutiful’s sensors picked up something moving his way – fast – and Graves zoomed his suit’s cameras towards the motion.

  A dozen deebees were headed right for him, and they were close.

  “Okay Beth, I have some unwanted guests heading my way, need to focus a little,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I’m done here, but let me know if anything super-important happens.”

  “Will do, honey,” Beth said. “Be careful.”

  The deebees swarming towards Brutiful were closing from a wide arc, too far spread for his autocannon to sweep them all. He fired a few bursts at those on his right side anyway though, dropping three of them while he got himself ready.

  His left-shoulder weapon was a heavy-barrelled, semi-automatic shotgun, if you could call a weapon with a 4” bore a shotgun. Twin ammunition belts fed the beast, allowing Graves to fire either fin-stabilised slugs or heavy loads of 8-ounce buckshot. He thumbed the selector for buckshot and put away the autocannon as the aliens closed.

  It always disturbed Graves that the deebees looked nothing alike. They were mostly four legged, or six, or occasionally eight; their heads were usually long-snouted, like dogs, though many were round-faced like great cats or sharp-beaked like birds; and their skin was typically thick hide, though many had feathers like soft down, or slabs of chitin that provided some slight armour protection. Some of them had combinations of all of these things, and Graves had long given up wondering how and why the deebees had evolved the way they had.

  One thing they all did have in common though was a serious hatred of humans, and every deebee they’d ever seen wanted to do nothing but kill anything human within its reach.