The city burned, fire lighting up the night sky. Two pinpricks of blinding light, the heart of a star recreated on earth, destroyed the night. The electronic filters crashed down on my scope, cutting the glare and saving my vision from the actinic blasts. It wasn't long until the compensators kicked in, allowing me to see the twin mushroom clouds drifting slowly upwards.
“How big?” my spotter asked in a quiet voice. I counted the seconds until the thunder reached us. We were several klicks from the ruins of what was downtown Saint Louis, well out of the blast zone.
“Couple of firecrackers – maybe ten kay-tees each. All they’re doing is making the rubble bounce.” I adjusted the sight, zooming in to the fires the air-blasts had started. “It’s doubtful that the SSU or the ACPS leadership still exists. After fifteen years of this, they’re probably radioactive dust just like every other government. Automated systems on one of the orbital platforms decided to have some fun and let loose, I’d guess. They built those things to last. You don’t remember that, do ya, Punk? Moon shots, rockets, space stations?”
I pulled the rifle back, and sat down with my back to the concrete wall. Punk broke out a couple of small plastic cylinders and tossed me one. I popped the top, and stuck my right thigh with the end of the tube, feeling the needle piercing my pants and injecting the icy nanites into my bloodstream.
“Sarge, you know I wasn’t born but a few years before the wars started. Never had a chance to learn about all that NASA crap.” Punk punched his own thigh with his injector and placed the empty back in his pack.
Nanites – that’s what we had named it. One of the greenies called it that years ago and the name stuck. No one really knew what the aliens put into the injectors, but it worked. Kept us alive as we humped through the radzones. No one knew how. No one really cared how.
No one knew anything about the aliens. They told us nothing more than they thought we needed to know, and all we knew was that they offered us survival. Life, of a type.
“Kids, nowdays. Don’t know nothing.”
My left temple started buzzing. The way Punk stiffened showed he was getting the same message. A summons – from our Alien Overlords, or whoever the hell they are. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and waited for the download.
The data package popped into my brain, unfolding, dumping info, maps, orders. All of a sudden, I *knew* all this. Five normals, two male, three female, ages 12 to 56 had been located in the rubble of what used to be Clayton. Punk and I were to find them, retrieve them, and bring them back to base. There, they would be processed, detoxed, healed, and shipped out in those silent, metallic disks to wherever the Overlords took them. If any were suitable, and the Overlords approved, we’d ask them to become Rangers, like us.
We’d never leave this planet. The Overlords said that the changes they made to us to become Rangers meant that we were unsuitable to live anywhere else. But they said that the ones they took off planet would be given a chance at life. Having seen their green goo bring someone who was melting from the radiation inside him back to health in just under a day convinced me they knew what they were doing. Wherever they were taking these people, it had to be a better place than we’d made this planet.
Punk stood up, checked his rifle, and smiled at me. “Get up, old man!” He smiled. “Time to earn our pay.”
We headed into the ruins of Saint Louis.
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