The Battle of Cairo by Tim C. Taylor

Author:Tim C. Taylor [Taylor, Tim C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Human Legion Publications
Published: 2018-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

— Chapter 4 —

I came to in a roadside ditch, shielded from aerial view and the scorching sun by a scrubby line of bushes.

The smoldering corpse of the truck was only a hundred yards away.

“It’s okay, son,” said Greyhart, who was sitting beside me.

“Son?” I laughed, noticing my lungs rattling as if stuffed with razor blades and splintered glass – and yet the pain felt as if it were happening to someone else. “You know, sir, I think I may be the oldest person on the planet.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that, and you won’t be getting older at all if you laugh. You’ve been shot up. Crushed. Burned. I’ve given you something for your wounds. Give it time to take effect.”

“Something to patch me up? Or ease my passing?” I asked, resentment building because I suspected the answer already.

“You did well,” he told me – the fact that he was changing the subject not lost on me. “The Hardits were hit hard today.”

I looked around. I could only see the two of us, though the smell of charred meat made me fear for the other soldiers in the truck. “Any other survivors?”

“Only you,” said Greyhart, his clinical expression as fixed as carved sandstone. “There were other vehicles headed out of Cairo, though. I ordered them to go to ground.”

“And me too, sir?” I asked with grim irony. “Is that what I should do? Go into the ground?”

His expression loosened a little, revealing a momentary hint of compassion. “Yes, Sergeant.” He rested a hand on my shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. “I regret, that is what you must now do.”

“I know I’m going to die, sir. Before I go, I want to know why. Is the IFDF rising around the world? Are we gonna kick the pelts back into space?”

Greyhart stared at me a long while before answering. This was only a few months ago but the strangest thing is that I can no longer picture him. He was… male. I can still hear his voice, but his looks…? I can’t say, but can remember the hairline crack in his voice when he answered.

“Cairo was a distraction,” he said. “While you occupied their attention, the main operation was carried out successfully about 3,000 miles west of here. And maybe… perhaps… something farther west that will be even more important.”

“We were decoys?”

“More than that, Sergeant. Far more. You gave the aliens a bloody nose that will sting for years. They think they have everything down according to plan, preparing for the Human Legion to arrive on schedule, in twenty years’ time. Right now, they’re on high alert and frantically trying to make sense of what you did in Cairo. The enemy commanders have no time to spend wondering why a small archaeological expedition on the other side of Africa disappeared the same day.”

“We were freaking decoys?”

“Damned right, soldier. I know that’s hard to take but what you did was vital. It mattered.”

“An archeological expedition…? They were going to find something they shouldn’t.

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