SNAFU: Future Warfare by Geoff Brown & Amanda J. Spedding

Author:Geoff Brown & Amanda J. Spedding [Brown, Geoff & Spedding, Amanda J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cohesion Press
Published: 2017-07-13T04:30:00+00:00

* * *

We were all locked in prison cells when the invasion came. The Cray came down on every major city, riding their hives – organic ships that became their homes once landed. When they swarmed free, they showed their true power. Already apex predators with their claws, fangs, and joint spikes, they had the bonus of having the biological capacity to produce localized EMPs. Planes fell from the sky as everything broke down. The power grid fried. Life as we knew it ceased to exist. The Cray did everything the masters organized them for, hurling us back into a modern Stone Age, leaving us wondering if we’d ever return to the land of reality television, blockbuster Hollywood X-Men movies, and fast food restaurants promising 2000 calorie cheese burgers.

Only OMBRA was prepared, finding us, hiding us, making us learn lessons from science fiction stories and movies until finally they let us free of our cells. Then they gave us the EXO – the Electromagnetic Faraday Xeno-combat Suit. It not only protected us from the EMP, but allowed us to fight the Cray, killing them first at Kilimanjaro, then Bruges, then Rio de Janeiro.

Soon we were fighting them on our own terms.

Soon we were winning.

Then the other intergalactic shoe dropped.

The Cray had been used to soften us up. Next came terraforming, giant vines reducing our cities to dust. Among this alien flora came a fungus similar but far worse than ophiocordyceps unilateralis that allowed the masters the ability to terraform our minds, turning us into zombies, listless, unmoving, except to infect others. That’s how the master controlled me, made me attack my own squad, dismembering one, and almost killing the others.

They excused my actions because I was under the influence of the masters. Plus, how could I be responsible? After all, I had PTSD. But of course, all of us had PTSD. All of OMBRA. It’s why they chose us. We were exactly what they wanted because as broken as we were on the inside from everything we’d seen and done in the name of war, the shattered pathways of our minds could possibly stand in the way of ultimate alien domination. If we couldn’t navigate our helter skelter brains, then how could it be possible for an alien species to do so?

“She can’t come with you.”

My mind snapped back to the present.

“What? Sorry.”

Mother sat in her green Lazy Boy recliner. She wore a blue and yellow housecoat and fluffy kitten slippers on her feet. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face was stern, yet matronly. “She can’t come with you. She’s still on suicide watch.”

Even after all this time, whenever I looked at her, I couldn’t help but think of that old Hollywood actor, Kathy Bates – the one best known for sawing off James Caan’s foot in that Stephen King film all the while shouting I am your biggest fan. They could have been twins… or for all I know, she could have been her, I just never had the balls to ask.

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