Desperado (Murphy's Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 2) by Kevin Ikenberry

Author:Kevin Ikenberry [Ikenberry, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond Terra Press
Published: 2021-04-19T22:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Seven

Plateau Above Imsurmik

Moving through the dark didn’t sit well with Lieutenant Johnny Stewart. With a military occupational specialty of 11C, indirect fire infantryman, he’d only had to hump a few night patrols before moving to the battalion’s fire control center. Math came easy to the young soldier, and he was one of the few to really have his talents identified once in-country. Mortarmen still patrolled occasionally, though, and when he’d made sergeant, the cadre had tasked him to help train the replacements—especially in night patrolling.

Each walk through the lightless jungle had been more fearful than the last. During his earliest days as a new replacement to the unit—what the older and more experienced troops called an FNG, or fucking new guy—night patrols hadn’t really bothered him. He was more concerned about how his peers regarded him and not so much about the enemy hiding in the darkness.

But by the third or fourth time he went out on patrol, Stewart was scared to death. The dark and unfamiliar rainforest was full of noises far different from anything he’d heard on the family farm outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Stories and gossip ran rampant through the ranks as more and more units were engaged by the Viet Cong under the cover of night.

Mortars didn’t put him as far behind the line as he’d hoped, either. Patrols became necessary. Even as he progressed in rank and started leading his own fire team, Stewart had still disliked moving in the dark.

Light years from Earth and more than a hundred and some years in the future, he didn’t like it any better. When he’d learned mortars were part of the Lost Soldiers’ inventory, he’d volunteered for them. But Lieutenant Colonel Murphy and Major Moorefield decided he was better used with the cavalry. He never thought to ask them why. Being on the front line unsettled him. Having to move through potentially hostile alien plants didn’t do much to assuage his fears. Yet he could focus on the mission at hand by reminding himself that not only was he still alive, far away from Earth, but he was riding an alien creature…or “being,” or whatever the hell it was. No matter how good the stories of his peers had been in Vietnam, none of them would have believed what he was doing now. Moreover, he realized he was good at it.

Stewart kept the patrol to the south side of the plateau. Their goal was to drop off the communications post, Sergeant Fahey and Specialist Wright, at an abandoned observation post that the J’Stull—or maybe the roving militia of the week—had once occupied. It was obvious their enemy had moved the actual observation post closer to the city itself some time before. Major Moorefield believed the local militias were complacent regarding security. His observers had seen soldiers atop the plateau but never moving from the city to those posts. Finding how the enemy did so was a critical requirement, particularly without access to aerial reconnaissance.

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