literature

Like Clockwork

Deviation Actions

GrumpySmoke's avatar
By
Published:
339 Views

Literature Text

Even clockwork wasn't this precise.  The sun just peaked over the farthest horizon when the doors lined along the inner wall opened one at a time.  The members of Romeo team moved about the duties of the morning.  The latrine was used in shifts, soldiers not prepping were eating.  The night watch was just coming off their duties and saw the rest of the team preparing for the day.

Sergeant Lark waited for the fire teams to ready themselves.  They would all gather at the corner board for the day’s duties and directives, and after they had assembled he would post a sheet of paper with individual assignments.  Watching the men gather with their normal machine-like meticulousness always seemed to instill a sense of déjà vu.  They sat in the same seats, wore the same facial expressions, or lack thereof.  He hadn't been assigned as the communications chief for Romeo team for long, only two months, but already he knew their routines as they never seemed to change.

They all waited patiently for their directives, but Lark had something different.  “Romeo team, you will report to the briefing tent in two hours.  Have gear prepped, stocked, and towing the line prior.  You will report to your squad leaders for further information.  No chores today, boys.  Dismissed.”

“HOO-AH!”  The entire team roared in unison.  They were up and filing out in moments.  Lark just nodded once or twice as they passed him by.  He had wondered once or twice if he should have gone the same path as they did, forgoing any training but combat.  He quickly put it out of his mind and returned to his unit in the radio center.  He had his job, and they had theirs.

For Lark, it was simply a job.  For Romeo, and every man in it, this was their life.  Within the hour, they had their armor and weapons lined up as ordered.  One soldier was left on guard, all the rest lined in to the briefing and were seated ready fifteen minutes.  Holton and Big Dan took their normal places at the back.  The youngest with the most experienced, that was often the pairings in the strike team.  Twiddling his thumbs, Holt felt an elbow poke him in the side.  He was about to jab back when the door opened and in strolled the Major.

The entire room was on their feet at attention in unison.  “At ease… seats,” Major Layton muttered as he set a computer on the desk and let it sync with the briefing tent’s network.  “We've been down for over a week.  Con-Com just gave this district a mission that’s right in our ballpark and Romeo has been assigned.”  The screen behind Layton began to glow and he pointed to the center of three red spots as the map loaded up.  “Three targets of extreme interest as well as dozens of T-O-Os.  Those are targets of opportunity, in case you were wondering Sergeant Holton.”

“Yes sir!  Ignorance is bliss, Major!”  Big Dan elbowed Holt again, and a very muted snickering flitted through the room before silence came abruptly.

“We’re splitting into fire groups, one for each position.  What we know is the southernmost position is the most heavily fortified.  Satellite imagery has shown three guard towers and a helipad, so the enemy forces may have air support.  The western position is a village we know houses a majority of the opposing force’s ground support.  They hide among civilians, Romeo.  That means this is not a smoke and clear.  Urban combat, double-check your sights.

“The eastern point holds only T-O-O, but is another fortified position and houses a motor pool.  These guys have been a thorn in this operation’s side for a while.  Time to pull it out.  Consolidate groups, four go with one, five go with two.  1-4 will be taking Point East; 2-5 will be at Point South.  Group three, Point West is yours.  You’ll be taking the Marksman team for support.  All additional information has already been uploaded to your SAT-links.

“Gentlemen.  This is not a smoke and clear, but it is search and destroy.  We are not taking prisoners.  Gear up, and move out.”  The room stood, and filed out quickly. Holt and Big Dan made their way to their gear, silent as always as they prepped the armor and made final checks.  Stepping into the boots, he felt them seal around his feet as he reached down and grabbed a hold of the gloves and pulled them on.  Wrapping the vest around him, the entire exoskeleton connected automatically in the back and sealed tight around his body.  The armor connected at his shoulders, and thighs, and soon the entire suit was fully integrated.

It was a bit unnerving at first, but after countless hours of training, he’d come to be quite used to the feel of the system.  Picking up the helmet, he pulled it on and let the vest’s “spine” snap up and hook in, feeding a full satellite and closed-network into the onboard computers.  “Back in the day, they really only had radios,” Dan said as he lifted a hefty rifle up and checked the ammo in his vest.  “Makes me kind of pine for the good old days.”

“You mean the days when I had to use a handheld microphone instead of hearing you inside my helmet?”

“Less technology, more intuition.  Still, getting with the times.”

“We can’t all be from the dark ages,” Holt said with a hidden smirk as he checked his own weapon.  But, Big Dan did have a point.  Armor, communications, satellite feeds, targeting systems, all of that in a single advanced piece of form-fitting technology.  It was easy to become dependent.  Romeo Team made sure to train hard and long without to be doubly sure they were as proficient and deadly out of their technological upgrades as they were within.

The best for the best, and Romeo Team, better known by their unit callsign “Reaper” was no exception.  They were the men command called when an operation needed to remain off the books, off the radar, and as silent as possible.  No noise, no faces, no mercy.  They didn't even wear insignia.  Holt let the thought go in passing as he used the touch-pad on his left forearm to key up the extra information on his target site.  Group three was only five men, plus the marksman team of two.  Seven men for a village, and that was all they needed.

Climbing into the helicopter, Dan collapsed into the seat beside Holt and bumped his shoulder.  No words were needed, it was enough.  They were ready; another day another mission.  Going through all the info he could, Holt wasn’t even aware of the four hour trip passing so quickly.  The pilot made the signals with his hand and within moments of the chopper getting close enough to the ground the doors opened and Group Three leapt out.  They didn’t need zip-lines, the mechanical muscles of their armor absorbing the shock.

The group leader motioned for the partner squads to break off and move to their entry positions.  A few lines of text giving them their individual orders.  Now, it was just Dan and Holt.  Sergeants Holton and Daniels were a smoothly working pair, despite the younger being half as long in the armed forces as the latter had been in Romeo.  Experienced mixed with youth, surprisingly effective if properly managed.

The run towards their entry position wasn’t long, a simple three mile charge.  Normally it would take nearly twenty minutes, but with enhancements the pair cut that in half over sand.  The skin of their exoskeletons reflected light in obscure directions, allowing them to almost blending completely in with their surroundings, but only when at their top speeds.  When they approached, they would have to hide until the go command was issued.  “So we’re getting in position and then waiting for night?”

“It’s easier to see at night.  Stealth panels function better with more light.”

“I know that.  Still, fourteen hours is a long time to wait, especially buried.”

“You rather bust in guns blazing with kids on the street and women walking about?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“Then we bury up and wait for the signal.  Besides, we’ll see if your chess practice has owned up.”  The village was coming into view.  With a hefty leap the two men rose up high, clearing nearly thirty meters until they both slammed into the sand and vanished.  The only thing anyone saw if they had been watching was a heat glimmer and a puff of sand.

It only took a few minutes for both men to be fully and completely buried.  Their eyesight blocked out, all they had was a satellite feed to view from a bird’s eye view.  For a while, Holt kept a sharp watch.  He followed guard movements when he scoped them out, ammo and munitions caches.  He marked them, transferred the data to the rest of the group, and in turn received Intel from them.  Briefings were one thing; actually interacting in real time was so much more efficient.

After a few hours of watching, corroborating, and matching movement plans the separate squads switched off their voice links aside from occasional text lines to make more detailed plans internally.  Holt and Dan discussed and planned for nearly two more hours.  By the time they took a break and started up the promised chess game, they had a game plan and six contingencies.

By the time the sun was falling, Holt was rolling his eyes.  “Dan, you’re ridiculous.  Let’s play some Four-Maze and see how well you hold up.”

“I’m no good at those physics puzzle games of yours, Holt.  This is pure strategy, not tricks of the eyes.”

“Yeah, and it’s the one game you can’t beat me at.”  A retort was about to come across the speaker when a text line scrolled over both soldier’s HUDs.  It was the go command.  The games vanished, the partners went silent, and both of them voided any expression from their faces.  Like rising up from water, the two men pushed up from their sandy hiding place and raised their weapons.  “Ready?”

“Move to marker alpha.  Go.”  The two took off quickly.  Play time was over.  A guard moved onto a raised walkway, immediately getting highlighted by Holt’s peripheral detector.  He aimed, but the man was facing away and did not notice as the two men reached the wall and moved along it.  The village closed its gates at night to prevent sand from blowing in while everyone was asleep, which meant a different means of entrance.

They reached the first marker, and Dan simply nodded his head for Holt to pull his hand back and drive it straight through the wall.  Ripping it back out, he made a hole that easily.  Stepping through, he swept his weapon left and right, checking the area quickly.  “Clear.”

“Move towards target.  Weapons free.”  Both men clicked the action on their rifles and moved through the ground floor of what looked like a storage room.  A man strolled in, and before he even realized there were intruders received a blow to the head.  “Move to marker bravo, I’ll cover from Charlie.  Engage contacts.”  A text line from the marksman group informed that they were ready.  The group leader gave the go ahead and just like that everything began, just like a clock striking the hour.

Rifle reports sounded from far off just as Holt moved to the second floor.  Two men lifted rifles at him, but two quick trigger pulls put them down.  He moved quickly towards the raised walkway connecting buildings as a third man flung a door open, following the sound of gunshots.  A swift left jab cracked the man’s head at a terrible angle and he fell.  “Eyes on target location.  Switch to thermal,” Dan’s voice barked over the radio.

Holt changed his view from enhanced light to thermal as told, waiting for the changeover to complete.  Within moments walls and barriers became windows as he triangulated heat signatures and outlines to see through what would normally be an obstacle.  It was a godsend having satellites to give clear imagery when usually it would only be black or white blobs of heat.  The shouting and alarms were going up already, just as planned.  Raising his weapon and the wall, Holt began firing short bursts.  The guards scrambling on the target’s location began dropping from two different directions.  “Got them running in circles.  Move, move, move.”

“Engaging.  Move to objective’s second level.”  It was a strange feeling, emptiness.  As Holt launched himself over to the next landing, he slammed the butt of his weapon into an enemy soldier’s throat.  Again, he felt nothing, an emptiness in him that may have once disturbed but was now preferred.  Shaking his head, Holt banished the introspection.  It was not time for soul-seeking, no matter how much his mind wanted to.

He kicked in a door and opened fire at the wall, taking out the two guards waiting in ambush behind.  He switched off his thermal view and returned to normal.  The bird’s eye view was minimized to the top right of his HUD, and he watched as two more of his comrades were moving around nearby, keeping the enemy running around confused.  A text line passed from the marksman team, “secondary target eliminated.”

Another enemy soldier burst in, his rifle firing wildly as two rounds grazed Holt’s shoulder.  The armor did its job, but he was turned to the side slightly from the impact.  When he turned back, the man was already on him.  It was not a long fight, the enemy all too quickly learning how much stronger his opponent was.  Holt grabbed him and threw the man back, picking him all the way off the ground and into the wall.  He stumbled back to his feet, took one look up and the last sight his eyes allowed him was a fist.

Holt swung his weapon up, firing into the hallway the soldier had come from.  He dropped two more guards and charged towards the central room.  He was following the plan, detailed objectives, way-points, and markers to do exactly as the plan required.  What was almost frightening was just how much easier it went this way.  The enemy almost never deviated from the plan, they never changed their tactics.  Too easy to predict, to route, to engage, and to eliminate.

Bursting into the central room, Holt immediately trained his rifle on the target and pulled the trigger.  The man dropped, several guards all aiming to engage this new enemy.  With a sweeping motion and precise pulls of the trigger Holt put each and every combatant down without a problem.  It was too easy, the exoskeleton made him far more quick than normal.  Lifting his left armpad, he keyed up the text line with his eyes and sent to the rest of the group.  “Primary target eliminated, no civilian casualties.”

“Distract and extract,” group lead typed in and almost immediately two explosions rocked the world.  Messaging to Dan, Holt switched the action on his rifle and fired at the wall.  The grenade tore through the wall and back outside.  Practically flying through the opening he landed on the ground hard and took off towards his partner.  He turned and fired at the raised walkway, making two enemy soldiers dive for cover as he saw a quick flash from the far hill.  The marksman were opening up to clear as many as they could as the squads pulled out.

It was smooth, and that was fast.  Get in, complete the mission, and get out.  Running past Dan, Holt slapped his shoulder and moved back into the storage room as another explosion shook the whole village.  It must have been one of the munitions caches.  “That’s a lot of light and noise,” said Holt as he scanned behind them.

“Scared of a little attention?”

“No, just what that can bring.”  As if on cue a light shot out from the sky and hit near the hill where the marksman team was set up.  “Chopper, probably from South.”

“Get its attention!”  Both men opened fire at the light in the night sky.  Their weapons lit where they were, bringing the attack helicopter’s spotlight onto them.  They took off over the sand, still firing as they drew it away.  “Group lead, they have air support, extract!  I repeat, extract!”  Dan typed in and broadcast to the entire fire group.

Two more rockets blasted through the sand at the pair as they both emptied their magazines and switched out.  “It’s not going down!  And how did it get here so fast?!”

“Doesn’t matter, keep it on us and move to the extraction point, go!”  Another rocket struck right in front of them, and the two soldiers were flung to the side.  Without a second to even get his bearings, Holt followed his targeting screen and kept firing at the helicopter.  Finally, a round struck the spotlight and it winked out.  Switching the action, he pulled the trigger and fired his second grenade.  The round struck true, and the helicopter exploded into flames and dove almost straight down.

Holt barely had time to close his eyes as the falling wreck landed directly on top of him.



The jolt of waking up shook Holton terribly as he smacked his head on the top bunk.  He slapped a hand over his forehead and moaned in pain.  “What the… uggh.”  Rubbing the sore spot, the sergeant rolled over and got up out of his bunk and walked to the dresser.  He began shaving, just as he did every morning after waking up.  He didn’t even need light, just enough alertness to keep from nicking his ear with the electric blades.

Going about his normal morning routine, Holt finished as always in the second latrine shift and dressed in his uniform.  He hoped for a mission, anything to end the week-long doldrums of nothingness that plagued Romeo team.  One of the tech-guys, Sergeant Lark, had said maybe something would be up today.  Maybe was a harsh word, but it inspired hope.

The heat and humidity of the jungle wasn’t kind, but he’d become used to it.  Just like each deployment before this one.  Fighting through the muggy air, he came to sit at the bulletin board.  Lark was late, but it could be any number of issues in the command and control.  As the rest of Romeo came to sit in their normal seats, a sudden and strange feeling washed over Holton.  He’d done this before.  He shrugged it off, he’d done this hundreds of times.  Déjà vu was to be expected.  Still, as they waited for Lark he couldn’t shake the sense in his gut.

Maybe it was the dream he couldn’t remember that had jolted him awake.  Maybe it was the sense of something being off.  He couldn’t put a finger on it, but he knew something was wrong.  Still, as Lark came up and told the unit they had a mission he dropped the line of thought and listened excitedly.  He didn’t show it, but he was certainly glad to be back out in the game.

Getting his gear set and making his way to the briefing room, Holt nodded to his partner as the big man walked up.  They knocked fists and moved into their prospective seats.  Major Layton came in, the room came to attention, and the intelligence review began.  Three noted enemy outposts close together, and a number of must-eliminate targets within.  Not only that, but enough targets of opportunity to ice the cake.  There was no turning this down.

The Major made a quip at Holt, being the youngest member of Romeo Team.  They group laughed it off, and soon they were on their way to gear up.  Right then and there, Holt stopped himself again.  He looked down at the meticulously prepared equipment and this time simply could not shake the feeling.  He tapped his partner on the shoulder as the big man prepped to put the suit on.  “Something isn’t right.  We’ve done this before.”  He knew he’d done it before, so many times.  His partner even said it.

That’s when it hit him.  What was his name?  Not his own, Kyle Nathaniel Holton came simply and easily.  What was his partner’s name?  He looked the big man right in the face, then blinked.  What was wrong with his face?  It was blurry, but it wasn’t.  Almost like Holt’s eyes refused to focus.  He backed up a few feet, cycling through names in his mind.  He could only think of three.  Holton, Layton, and Lark.

He tried to remember something, anything.  He brought up the faces of his mother and father, but they were blurred and out of focus, just like his partner.  He tried to recall how he had come to the jungle, but again there was barely anything there.  He was aware of his comrades saying something to him, but the words didn’t make sense.  They instilled ideas, but there wasn’t sound he could grasp.  Like the entire world was out of focus, and drifting farther and farther away.

Then, his ears caught something.  A very faint sound.  Two strikes, one after the other.  One, two.  One, two.  One, two.  He knew that sound, and his brain locked onto it.  A clock, the pendulum passing back and forth.  He knew that sound because he remembered the grandfather cloth his family owned when he was a child.  He used to love staring at it.

Collapsing to the ground, Holt held two fingers to his temple as he focused on the sound.  It was like a beacon, calling to him through the murk of his melting existence.  That’s when he saw it, standing there in the middle of the murky soup of his conscious awareness.  The old grandfather clock, pendulum swinging back and forth.

He walked up to it, placed his hand on it.  He felt the gears and springs and mechanisms all finely tuned moving with precision within.  He felt the tick, the tock, and watched the elaborate hand count off the seconds.  He couldn’t fathom where it had come from, but it was the only thing he could hold on to that was real.  “Soldier, what the hell is going on?”  That voice, Major Layton.

Holt spun around, and saw the man there.  He was crystal clear, just like the clock.  “I don’t know sir, but look… look at this clock.  Just like the one in my old house… when I was a kid.”

“What house?”

“Huh?”

“What did it look like?  Where was it?”

“I…” The questions took him off guard.  He didn’t know how to respond.  Turning back to the clock, Holt backed up surprised as it wasn’t there anymore.  Sergeant Lark stared back, a glaring expression written over his face.  “I don’t understand.”
“What color was the house?  How many stories?  Where was the clock?”

“I don’t… I can’t remember… where is the clock?  Where is the grandfather clock?”
“There’s no clock, soldier.”  Sergeant Lark’s voice was bland, monotone.  “There’s no house.  There’s no childhood.”

“When did you join the military?  When did you complete your training?”  The Major stepped right into the soldier’s face and glared right down into his eyes.  “What is your name?”

“I… I… I…” the soldier’s face went from surprise, to fear, and then as if it simply transformed went to placid.  He bore no expression, and took a step back as the two figures in front of him followed.  Their faces were hard to look at, out of focus.  They had names, right on the tip of his tongue… but they escaped him.

Turning to the murk and out of focus world surrounding him, the soldier stood rigid and waiting.  His mind held broken and fuzzy images, no names, only abstract thought.  And, for the first time, he didn’t feel that same déjà vu that had plagued him.  Then, he simply forgot ever having it.



“That’s it… we’re done here.”  Lark closed his laptop and let his head sink into his hands.  “I hope you understand what we just did, Layton.  What we just sacrificed.”  The man standing over Lark’s shoulder sighed with a nod.  He corrected the glasses on his face, turned away, and walked out of the white room.  There in the center sat Lark, his laptop connected to a giant four-sided tower.  It reached from the floor to the ceiling, with lights all up and down the corners and center.  But, all but one of those lights was red.  Only a single blue light remained.

“We had to,” Lark said to himself.  “We bloody had to.”

“There was nothing else we could do.  It was stuck in a loop.  The same game over and over.”

“Daniels… we should never have introduced that paradox!  We shouldn’t have let him know!”

“If not us, then the soldiers it was meant for.”  Daniels patted Lark on the shoulder and followed after Layton.  His lab coat barely coming to knee-level on the towering man.  Reaching the door, he turned and watched Dr. Lark mourn his work power down for the last time.  “Robert… it wasn’t a ‘he.’  It was just that, an it.”

“To you, maybe… you didn’t program him.  You didn’t help him grow.  You didn’t build him up from barely clockwork into a fully functioning mind.  I put each one and zero in his matrix that made him as alive as you and me.  So don’t stand there and tell me this was just an ‘it.’  I refuse.”

“What do you want us to tell the General?”  Lark just kept his hand covering his eyes and shook his head.

“Tell him the HOLT project failed.  We wiped the program.  We’ll have to start over… again.”

“And the AI’s base code?”

“Let me worry about that.”  Daniels nodded and walked away.  There, alone with his creation, Lark kept shaking his head slowly as he kept his eyes buried in his hand.  “I’ll worry about it.”
Have you ever had that feeling in the back of your mind? That itch you can't scratch? That knowing that something in your life is wrong, something is off, but you can't quite figure it out? Sergeant Holton has been feeling that way, that horrible deja vu that he cannot shake. The worst of it comes when his life seems to simply be fading away into his work. With the passing of time, the fading becomes worse... and why does he hear the sound of a clock?
© 2013 - 2024 GrumpySmoke
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In