Gory! Gory! Hallelujah!

Now That's a Hellofa Way to Die

AEF FOL Aircraft Maintenance Hangar #2, Andersen Aerospace Force Base

Yigo Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Staff Sergeant Eryk-Hayden Febbleweathers, United States Army

HHC, 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Infantry Brigade (Jungle), 25th Infantry Division

2234 Local Time, APR 10, 2037

The raid sirens were screeched into the night joined by the monotone repeated warning of “Incoming! Incoming!” Every few minutes, there would be the woosh of a missile launch, while it seemed like every few seconds, there was the howl of a jet screaming down one of Andersen’s two runways.

Febbleweathers looked on as two JASSDF B-1J and three USAF B-21B screamed down runway 6-L. The Japanese Lancers—derivatives of the B-1C “SLEP” program—went to full afterburner—cones of blue-hot fire jutting out from their A104-GE-2 variable cycle engines. They were orphaned from their squadron but lucky for it. Misawa and the rest of the JASSDF’s main installations were getting hammered. The Raiders trundled after their erstwhile cousins-in-law. The world’s oddest MITO lifted into the air as the twin 50-millimeter point defense cannons that sprinkled the perimeter let loose like distant, giant popcorn.

“Will you close the fuckin door!” The shrill voice of the battalion S-3 screamed. The side door of the shelter was dutifully sealed. The space was now only lit by dimmed red lights. The ventilation system hummed alongside the soft trilling of the shelter’s hardened fuel cell. HHC and Bravo Company hunkered in the HAS along with a dozen or so Aero wrench-draggers. One of the old-timers griped that this was just like Al-Assad—Febbleweathers wasn’t sure if he meant 2020 or 2034. Hay-Hay, as his friends still called him (he hated that name), was shifted forward toward the main doors of the shelter. Most people were lying on their bellies, ready for a direct hit or sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce like the substitute teacher had rolled out the TV cart.

A few minutes later, the concrete and Nanoc Steel structure shook as a DF-26 impact rocked the airbase. A bit of dust came free from the ceiling, raining down on the huddling mass of jungle-multicam. Then, another impact shook the bunker. Then, a third impact. The sky was falling on Guam tonight—this precipitation came in the form of both ballistic and cruise missiles. How lucky were they?

The noise that followed was like someone had dragged a rusty knife across the belly of some kind of sky god, a constant roll of tiny explosions and a shrill howl that made his bones vibrate. It came closer and closer until it was on top of them. Everyone took a deep breath. There was a popping of flares. The murmurs stopped.

It was a direct hit. They were dead.

The awful symphony of scrapping, screaming metal came as quite a shock. It was like a dog dying and a plane crashing all at once. The maintainers rose and readied to rush to a crashed-out FB-18H Wasp or F-35D Panther II.

“Crack the doors. We’re going out,” the senior Aero barked. There was a silent look traded between the soldiers. Most of them were not interested in getting killed by an opened door.

“Do it,” Febbleweathers’s CO growled.

The electrical motor attached to the towering tan-metal blast door whined, and the metal started moving as the repair team filed out. The battalion’s sergeant major loomed beside the opening as firelight illuminated his face. Febbleweathers was abreast of the SM, expecting to see a pilot burning to death in a fifty or hundred-million-dollar coffin.

Instead, he made eye contact with a PLA-SOF commando, checking his gear beside a char-blackened scramjet-whale-shark monstrosity. There were at least a dozen soldiers, all dressed in PLA-SOF’s awful digital four-tone tiger stripe and clutching tacticool QBZs and QJSs. Three were readying a handful of Fire Swallow loitering munition.

“The Fuck Is That?!” One of the grunts behind them shouted.

A soft breeze caressed his face as the battalion sergeant major flung himself forward, hands reaching forward like claws. He fell upon the nearest soldier like a fell beast and, without hesitation or remorse, plunged his thumbs into the man’s eye sockets.

“CHI-COMS!” The bearded Sanei noncom thundered as he rose from the maimed special forces soldier and lunged at the next one. He took a bullet to the shoulder but still managed to grab the next guy by the throat and slam him into the side of the massive transport thingamajig.

Three hundred—mostly unarmed—Americans charged out of the HAS. Some guys had gone to rustle up ammo in the interlude between the Okura Bombing, but there wasn’t much, and he didn’t know who had what. The incoming ballistic missiles had taken their attention away from small arms.

“ONE-PUKA-PUKA! GO FOR BROKE!” A platoon lieutenant screamed as he hurled himself at another SOF trooper. He collapsed mid-stride as the trooper dumped five rounds into him. A squad leader, a former lineman, slammed the killer with a flying tackle before the trooper could bring his rifle to bear. The SL proceeded to beat the Chi-Com to death with his high-cut helmet.

Shouts of “Percs!” and “Chi-Coms!” rolled like battle cries as an undulating mass of multicam crashed into the attackers like a tsunami. Febbleweathers snatched a red-dotted sidearm from the man whose eyes the SM had gouged out. He started popping shots into the Percs where he could. He watched a five-foot-nothing aero A1C slam the biggest wrench he had ever seen into the side of the face of a SOF trooper. The Chi-Com stumbled forward and fell to his knees. The Aero took another shot with her chosen weapon and caved the side of the trooper’s head in before Febbleweathers could shoot him.

The Percs were being torn to pieces—in some cases literally. The sergeant was still in shock. How is this happening? The fuck is happening? He looked on in confusion as a six-seven Chi-Com pawed like he was trying to scratch an itch at a fun-sized soldier holding onto his back. The twink bit into the Chi-Com’s neck, ripping out a solid hunk of flesh before spitting it onto the ground in a mouthful of blood.

“Jesus fuckin Christ!” Someone shouted. The towering members of Pooh Bear’s Baby Killers staggered forward a few steps, blood spurting from his severed carotid as his heart slowed. He collapsed forward, and the soldier flashed a blood-stained toothy smile to those around him.

“Man, what the fuck,” another soldier complained. “What the fuck is this.”

The battalion’s lieutenant colonel looked on in a daze, unsure as to how they had ended up here. The battalion missed their flight back to Schofield Barracks with the rest of the 442nd because TRANSCOM had forgotten to reschedule their return flight after the REFORT Exercises had gotten extended. He shook off the confusion and started to bark orders, “Police those weapons! One-Puka-Puka, I don’t think this will be the last of this,” he approached the wrecked landing doohicky. “The fuck…” He shook his head, “Basil, I sure hope you aren’t dead.”

Sergeant Major Basil Inouye rose from amongst three corpses, bleeding from his shoulder. His face was streaked with blood, cuts, and welts. “Not yet, sir,” he looked around at the mix of American and Chinese corpses. “We need ammo.”

“Teller, battalion freak,” the colonel bid his Sifu—CSFO2—as he looked across the dark. Fires started to light the night, and explosions flashed along the horizon and in the sky. The Comms-Systems-Fires Observer/Operator handed him the receiver: “All Saber elements, this is Saber Actual. Hostile—uh—” he looked over that scorched contraption, “air-landing elements are dropping on Alley-Oop. We have Percs within the wire. Stand by for further orders. Prepare to defend yourselves.”

The soldiers looked up and saw gleaming stars shrieking down from the night sky, lit by decelerating thrusters burning away into the night. One broke up as the propulsive landing thrusters kicked into even higher gear. Flares and charges lit the sky and fell like snow. Febbleweathers checked his tactically acquired sidearm. He had nine rounds and one in the chamber.

Gonna need more than that—but it’ll work for now.