Page 4 of Trigger Discipline
The skyline was hazy. Dawn was just beginning to creep over the horizon. For some reason, it seemed absurd to him. The world was still turning. Despite it all, the sun was still rising from the east, and later it would set in the west as normal. There had to be an allegory on the fleeting nature ofhumanity in there somewhere, but what would Gabriel know? He spent his life as a grunt with boots on the ground.
Exhaling, he sat up straighter in the uncomfortable seat and looked around at his squad.
As Squad Leader, he was in charge of these souls. Men he’d known for years. Men he trusted. Men he cared about.
Phin raised an eyebrow at him. His dark hair was buzzed close to his skull, and his large light machine gun with armor-piercing rounds rested across his knees. Phin’s eyes were eerily light, not quite brown or gray. It was unnerving under the helmet's visor.
“You going to tell us or are we guessing?” his deep voice crackled across the headset, so low the microphone struggled to pick it up.
The heavy weapon specialist had been the first to volunteer. The words hadn’t even left Irving’s mouth when he stepped up. Phin was always up for a fight. They’d met during his first deployment when they were still young men struggling to grow hair on their chests. At 6’6”, Phineas ‘Phin’ Johnson was like a planet, and Gabriel had gravitated to the man.
Theirs was a natural kind of friendship. It wasn’t intentional but it grew slowly over time, and it had stuck. Through bad and worse, and when countries and oceans kept them apart, somehow they always found their way back to each other.
After getting medically discharged, Gabriel had pulled Phin into working for Irving at Kinetic Solutions. He brought with him his heavy weapons knowledge and the worst case of PTSD Gabriel had ever seen.
There was no one else he’d rather have at his side.
“Yesterday at around 1000 EST, an unidentified aircraft entered US airspace. It launched an attack on Washington, DC. Within an hour, local power plants, cell towers, and overhead satellites were destroyed.”
Across the helo, Judd made a face. The reconnaissance specialist always appreciated a joke, but even he was having a hard time buying this.
“Commander—” he began, but Gabriel held his hand up.
“An evacuation was ordered, but the city was already under attack. Local and state law enforcement did what they could to protect civilians and assist with the evacuation. They held on as long as they could, but by the time the National Guard was able to roll in, their ranks were already decimated.”
Gabriel swallowed past his emotions. When Irving called him into his office in the middle of the night, he hadn’t known what to expect. He certainly couldn’t make sense of the blurry photos on his desk. They’d been able to get some images from satellites before they suddenly went offline.
For a long moment Gabriel thought he was looking at colorized photos from WWII. Blood ran down the streets. Bodies were strewn across parks and sidewalks. Chunks of buildings had been blown out, exposing rebar and insulation. Cars were overturned and smashed, the rubber on their tires burning into the night.
It was a massacre.
Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, DC police had fought until the end. They’d stayed behind when they could have run. Could have grabbed their families and evacuated with the rest. But they didn’t.
It was those images that made him volunteer for this mission.
Judd shared a look with Phin before looking back at Gabriel. “Was it…?”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s not just DC. Sydney has fallen. So has London. No one has heard from Seoul. Italy is a scorched hole in the ground. Last we heard, Shanghai was putting up a fight, but it wasn’t looking good.”
“Someone launched an attack on major cities throughoutthe world?”
“It appears so.”
“Who?” Judd asked again, his eyebrows crashing together. His jaw was working. Gabriel could relate to his frustration.
“It…” he couldn’t believe these words were leaving his mouth. “They’re saying it’s extraterrestrial.”
The two men stared at him.
“Fucking aliens?” Phin snapped incredulously.
“I didn’t say that,” he responded. “Truth is, they don’t know. Whoever they are, they were smart. They cut off our communications first, then took out the government. The White House and Pentagon were among the first hit. Then the military bases.”
Phin leaned back. “An invasion.”
“Smart aliens,” Judd muttered as he shook his head. “The hell are we supposed to do?”
“First objective, is to reestablish communications on the ground. If we can’t do that, then we gather intel and report back what we can. Second objective, is to assist in the evacuation and to protect civilians.”