Team Omega Snippet
I wrote this. No prizes for guessing where the idea came from...
I tried a few experiments with this one, the flashbacks mainly. How well do they work?
Chapter One
“At ease, Marine.”
Chester Harrison looked up at the young man in front of him and raised his eyebrows. “Is that as relaxed as you get, young man?”
“Yes, sir,” PFC Jackson McDonald said.
He was young and fit, with her hair shaved close to his scalp. Chester knew that the USMC had considered him one of their most promising enlisted men, with a promotion to Lance Corporal delayed only by his habit of picking fights and insubordination when not on active duty. Looking at him, Chester felt unfit, almost overweight. The life of an man flying a desk, even a desk in the Pentagon, wasn’t the same as a person on active service.
“I need to know what happened at Camp Pendleton,” Chester said. He’d read the reports, including the one McDonald had written himself, but he needed to hear it from the man’s own lips. “What happened on that day?”
“It’s in my report, sir,” McDonald said, stiffly. He hadn’t enjoyed writing the report, any more than his superiors had enjoyed reading it. Nineteen Marines dead and five more on the critical list…and no one even knew why. “You can read it all there.”
“I need to hear it from you,” Chester said, softly. “What happened that day?”
“What happened?” For the first time, McDonald showed a trace of emotion. Horror…and remembered fear. “What happened was a goddamned nightmare.”
***
Sergeant Bass considered himself to be the very model of a Marine Corps Sergeant – and that included disciplining the young men in his platoon. Jackson had been rowdy, as rowdy as he always was when not on active service, and Bass had taking it as a personal challenge. After an argument in the barracks that had become a fight, Bass had sent Jackson to run around the edge of Camp Pendleton twice in the hopes that it would teach him a lesson. Jackson had been fuming as he completed the run, wondering why he couldn’t just be sent out to a Marine unit on actual operations. Being in the field was what he lived for.
He heard the explosion just as he came off the track and headed back to the barracks. It looked as if someone had smuggled a bomb into the Camp, perhaps one of the Mexican terrorist groups that threatened the integrity of the United States. He ran towards the sound of the blast, forgetting his anger at the Sergeant in the fear that one of his comrades might be injured. Alarms were going off everywhere as he ran into one of the PT compounds used for raw recruits – and saw a man tearing through Marines as if they were made of paper.
Two Marines, armed with M16s, were trying to gun the intruder down, but the bullets were merely bouncing off his skin. Jackson realised, with a thrill of horror, that he was looking at his first superhuman. He’d heard about them, of course, yet he’d never seen one before now. Any fascination was washed away by the grim awareness that the intruder had already killed a dozen Marines and seemed intent on murdering dozens more.
The superhuman roared as bullets hit his eye – it was clear that he could feel pain, even if the bullets couldn’t penetrate his skin – and lunged at the two guards. He caught one of them, picked him up and threw him through the air towards a helicopter that was flying over the camp. The hapless Marine missed the helicopter and fell somewhere towards LA. His buddy backed off hastily, only to be caught and physically ripped apart. Jackson saw blood splashing on the ground and realised, in horror, that he would be the next victim…
***
“I put it all together without realising it,” he admitted. Chester listened carefully as he outlined the story. “Maybe he was strong enough to pick up a tank and maybe he was tough enough to survive a bullet striking his body, but he still needed to breathe.”
***
Jackson stuck out his tongue at the superhuman and ran, trusting that the superhuman wouldn’t hesitate to give chase. The man didn’t seem to have any form of super-speed, thankfully; he just lunged after Jackson with a loping stride that suggested that he knew that he was invincible. No one would be able to stop him even if they caught him. Jackson led him right into one of the lesser-used complexes and gambled that the superhuman wouldn’t try to bring it down around his ears.
During his basic training, he’d been exposed to gas as part of the NBC course. Young Marines had discovered what happened when they left their gas masks behind through exposure to CS gas, which left many of them choking on the ground. The Drill Sergeants had wanted them to recite name, rank and serial number; many of the recruits hadn’t been able to complete it before the gas overwhelmed them. Jackson hadn’t done any better than most of his peers. He ran through the chamber, slamming the door closed behind him, as if he were trying to hide. The superhuman burst into the chamber and looked around, puzzled, until the gas began to flow. It had been tinted to make it easier to see. Jackson watched as the superhuman breathed in the gas and started to stagger around, throwing up inside the chamber. He’d been so convinced that he was invulnerable that he seemed to find it hard to comprehend that someone had found a weapon that actually worked.
Jackson donned a gas mask of his own, picked up a fire extinguisher and stepped into the chamber. Marine recruits had to go through a sequence of taking off their masks and then re-donning them, even though their eyes were streaming from contact with the gas. The superhuman had collapsed on the ground, twitching and coughing as if he were still trying to throw up everything in his stomach. His hands were tearing at the floor, ripping great shreds out of an airtight material. There was no way he could be secured safely, let alone be transported to the nation’s sole prison for superhuman offenders. Quite calmly, Jackson pressed the extinguisher against the superhuman’s mouth and activated it, spraying powder down his throat.
Two minutes later, it was all over.
***
“Your report stated that you made the decision to kill him without consulting anyone,” Chester said, when McDonald reached the end of his story. “Do you think that that was a wise decision?”
“I think that there was no way he could be secured and taken away before he recovered from the gas,” McDonald said, flatly. “And he had killed a number of Marines. The only thing I could do was kill him before he recovered and ripped my head off, sir.”
Chester could almost read the Marine’s mind. He had been the person on the spot, the sole person to figure out a way to end the crisis before it claimed more innocent lives…and yet he was being second-guessed by some Washington deskbound bureaucrat who wouldn’t know an M16 from a broomstick.
But there would be repercussions from this incident, even though no one had – as yet – figured out who the superhuman had been, or why he had a grudge against the United States Marine Corps. The CIA, FBI, SDI and Interpol had all drawn a blank. It was quite possible that the superhuman had been nothing more than an unregistered superhuman, but it was equally possible that the attack on Camp Pendleton could be the first shot in the long-feared superhuman war. Superhumans had upset the balance of power between the world’s nations ever since they had first appeared.
“You’re not in trouble, Marine,” he said, as reassuringly as he could. But he wasn’t really there to be reassuring. “You kept your head when others panicked and you took down a superhuman opponent. Not everyone can make the same claim.”
He smiled at McDonald’s reaction. Superhumans weren’t invincible, but they did tend to intimidate the hell out of people. The police preferred to back off and call for the military if there was even a hint that a superhuman was involved, while calls for mass registrations of superhumans had failed because there were fears that superhumans would turn on the government. Some of them could live normal lives, passing for mundane humans. Others were physical freaks, marked as superhuman whatever they did. Far too many of them had been driven into the underworld by suspicion and bigotry. Chester regretted that, as much as he regretted anything, but it didn’t keep him from having to deal with the consequences.
“Your platoon has been scattered by the attack,” he continued. “I would like to offer you a transfer to my unit…”
McDonald gaped at him. “Your unit, sir?”
“My unit,” Chester confirmed. He looked like a Washington paper-pusher; hell, in truth he was a Washington paper-pusher. But he served as the director of a unit that was probably more important than any other in the era of the superhuman. “Your superiors have consented to your immediate transfer, assuming you want to take up the position.”
“I see,” McDonald said. He was too young to hide his scepticism. “And what exactly does this unit do?”
Chester smiled. “We kill superhumans,” he said. “Interested?”
He explained, as best as he could. “Superhumans show an alarming series of personality traits – almost disorders – after they become superhuman. These tend to fall into several different categories; some believe that they are heroes and have a right to save people, some become instant assholes and decide that they have the right to take what they want, some just want to hide from their powers…and some want revenge on people who tormented them before they became superhuman. It is comparatively rare to find a superhuman who can be considered suitable for the military – and most of those who are tend to be among the lesser powers.
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Originally Posted by DJETHANOL
