2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
The concave walls of the dropship trembled with the friction of the howling atmosphere, sending tremors that rattled the exit pad. The men of the Eighty-Fifth Infantry were locked in their gear, their armor covering their entire bodies in large white and gray plates. They hung with grips from the rungs where the hangar walls curved into the roof. The shifting pink light filtered through the rectangular window in the middle of the roof, the beams of light gyrating with the movement of the atmosphere whipping past the dropship as it bulleted through the polluted heavens.
The shifting light illuminated the soldiers. Their helmets were black visors above a circular gas filtration unit—an advanced gas-filtration combat helmet. They had to be prepared for the radiation of the Atalantia Canyons. Their suits were studded with blocky gray plates over white joint pads. On their backs were laser rifles, locked into charging holsters attached to the backs of their suits.
They waited in silence for the intercom transmission from their mission commander.
“Air should be turning orange… any second now…” said a soldier in the middle of the right row, looking up through the window of shifting light—ebbing, flowing, ebbing, flowing. A few of his comrades leaned slightly to glance at him before peering up at the window. Instead, the light deepened into darkness as the dropship ruptured a thick cloud, the pinkish glow fading to a bloody red through the density of the new cloud impasse.
“Attention!” came the dull but crisply loud voice of the mission commander through the faint hum of the intercom, blasting his slightly muffled but distinct words through the circular loudspeakers embedded around the walls near the ceiling. While the commander’s voice was clear, it was softened by shock-proof casing. Like everything—and everyone—in this room, it was prepared and proofed for violence of the most extreme.
The soldiers raised their heads in reverence and attention, aiming to catch every word.
“You are about to enter the drop zone!” the commander announced. “The target has been identified, and you are to be unloaded within close proximity. Check the hangar display for a quick rundown of key diagnostics collected from transmission sonar.”
A bright blue flash of light washed over the hangar from the rear, shifting the soldiers’ gaze to a large flatscreen unveiled by a rising access panel that softly whirred as it slid into the curvature of the ceiling.
The screen stayed blue for a few seconds before a series of bullet points in white font flashed onto it in the span of a blink, as if the glaring white letters had been there the whole time.
The dropship continued descending, clanking against the air.
“The target area has a much higher population density and more sophisticated organization than previously estimated,” the commander intoned, his voice blaring over the ruckus of descent. “Life detection and radiologics from sonar indicate a Type B civilization with moderate to low technological capabilities. Stand by and prepare for a rank-and-file unilateral city invasion.”
“Damn,” came the soft, electronically muffled mutter of a soldier through his helmet as he and a couple of others exchanged surprised glances.
The bullet points on the screen disappeared, replaced by a new set under the heading:
Target Chain of Activity:
- Smuggling network
- Clustered in Merrix Depot
Human Targets:
- Mynar Sidvak – Leader of commercial operations
- Nixon Feel – Head of smuggling operations
- Kevin Ronk – Mediary of cartel groups
“You will be fed general demographic and physical information about each target based on satellite compromise. We are looking at an entire city of canyon squatters. Reconnaissance sonar has discovered that, over primitive communication channels, the city is called Merrix Depot. Merrix reportedly hosts at least two million people at any given moment.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered the same soldier as before, shaking his head at his comrades in disbelief.
“We’ve detected a near-constant stream of people and goods moving in and out,” the commander continued. “In the last week, there has been an anomaly—a continuous procession of people clustering in large plazas in Merrix and moving together through and out of the city toward Hedonim.”
“Are they trying to get caught?” the same soldier jeered.
“The uniformity of their clothing, chanting, and synchronized movements suggest that this is a religious group,” the commander went on. “Their movements have sharply increased smuggling activities, concentrated in Merrix’s main plaza. This religious procession is occurring out in the open, bringing key smuggling vectors well into sonar’s view.”
The screen changed again. Geographic markers appeared, highlighting hot spots in red circles.
“Thanks to this new religion, we’ve identified critical targets to Merrix commerce. These are your new targets for a unilateral assault.”
“Reconnaissance has already mapped out new coordinates for you. Turn on Heads-Up Displays to see them. I’m leaving it to Lieutenant Roger.”
The information on the screen disappeared, and the blue screen flashed out in the span of an eye-blink.
“Soldiers!” boomed the voice of the commander as the darkened screen’s access panel slid down from the ceiling with a long whine. “Today, history will be made on the side of the United Republic!” He seemed to spit out his last words in a frothing scream. “The security of the Ether, the United Republic, and the whole world depends on this mission.”
“Long live the United Republic and long live Realm Five!” roared the commander over the intercom.
“Hut!” drilled all of the soldiers, standing straight against the wall. They bent at the chest with a fist, holding their right arms diagonally against their torsos. “Hut! Hut! Hoo!” they intoned before a final smack of their fists against their chests and the screaming bout of Lieutenant Roger.
“File up! File up!” he screamed, breaking chest salute, removing his arm from the handhold, and marching toward the center of the room, violently whipping his hands through the air to move them forward. “Move your ASSES!”
A shrill buzzing siren ruptured the air, dulling Roger’s ordering voice. It was the buzzer announcing the opening of the drop hatch.
As the soldiers lined up in their drop-flank, a rumbling whine and creak of gears hissed through the floor as the large square platform of the drop pad formed a depression, sinking into the floor while the motors whirred against the inner walls. Roger continued screaming, pacing around the newly formed border of soldiers standing at attention around the drop hatch as its sunken platform slowly slid into the ship, unleashing a fury of howling wind—almost loud enough to overtake the intermittent sound of the buzzer.
The dropship had broken through the dark cloud impasse, and rays of clear light filtered through the domed window overhead, illuminating the torrents of churning fog below, its starkly inhuman, polluted color.
The lieutenant’s flight stabilizers switched on, causing his boots to weigh and cling more securely to the ship, gripping the surface via pressurized pumps spitting exhaust into the air, compressing the magnetic cleats he had stepped into. As he walked around, he tapped each soldier, ushering them to step over the rim of the opened drop hatch, lightly slipping over and down through the opening. Moving clockwise, each soldier received a firm pat on the shoulder and jumped off, vanishing into the fog of Atalantia—killer bunnies, militarized and armored to the teeth, dropping like fallen angels, demons summoned from hell, plummeting through the heavens.
Finally, the lieutenant stood at the rim of the hatch where the soldiers had stood, switched off his boots’ pressurizers, and kicked off his magnetic cleats, letting them tumble down the hatch, disappearing. Then, he hopped over, jumping higher than any of his comrades, betraying a bunny-like glee and frenetic locomotion in the bounding twist of his knees and lilting of his chest.
He disappeared through the hatch, his head cocked downward, leaving behind the empty skeleton of a dropship—its last organs expelled, the screaming wind pouring through the dead heart of a nightmare’s vessel, a harbinger of death.
G.R. Nanda 