February 26, 2033 AD, Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, United States of America, Earth

  The rhythmic thud of its rotor made him look up at the large, black helicopter passing low overhead. In the dead of night, he couldn’t be certain of its nationality, but coming from the south Lieutenant Moreno concluded it had to be part of the Yucatán Alliance Air Force.

  They had been waiting in a small ditch, barely more than a shallow depression in the dry dirt, for more than an hour now. To his left and right lay a mottled crew of Yucatán soldiers, drawn from all walks of life. The Alliance needed every able-bodied man and woman they could get their hands on.

  Suddenly, the sharp sound of gunfire pierced the cold desert night.

  Carefully, Carlos raised his head to peek above the edge of the ditch. Against the dark sky, it was difficult to make out the shape of the transport helicopter, but its taillights were swerving back and forth, telling him it was taking evasive measures.

  “Stay down, Lieutenant Moreno!”

  Captain Ramos’ whispered command made him wince. He was used to doing things his own way, the lone wolf patrolling the streets of Quito as he saw fit. The transition from his old life to just being another cog in a multimillion-man machine had been difficult. But he also understood that an army couldn’t function if every soldier played their own game, and despite outnumbering the Americans almost fifty to one, the ragged collection of armed refugees from the Yucatán Alliance was at a distinct disadvantage against the professional forces of the United States.

  “Wait for the signal,” the Venezuelan woman continued. “We’ll move once the Avispas Negras are in place.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Understood.”

  Carlos watched as his commanding officer slowly scanned the distant buildings with her binoculars, her long black hair draped over her back. Somehow, she reminded him of Teresa.

  For a moment, the familiar pain returned, as the old hand of sorrow squeezed his broken heart. But his silent reminiscence was disturbed when a blinding flash of light tore him from his melancholic daydream.

  To his right, Lieutenant Jaramillo, the Colombian security guard—former security guard— swore.

  “I think they took out the helicopter.”

  If they had, it was bad. The Yucatán Alliance Air Force had a very limited number of aircraft, and of those, only a few were attack or transport helicopters. Tonight, they had all been deployed along the border between Mexico and the United States in preparation for the incursion. The majority of the Yucatán soldiers had crossed the perimeter on foot, swimming or rafting across the Rio Grande, but certain special forces units were also being deployed by helicopter in an attempt to take the Americans by surprise.

  Though surprise was perhaps not the right word, Carlos reminded himself. The Americans had radar installations lining the border, and they would have seen the helicopters the moment they took off from the Mexican refugee camps to the south. The Yucatán Alliance would have only a very brief period during which they controlled the theater. But during those short hours, they would show the President of the United States that they were both willing and able to occupy land that belonged to the Americans.

  After tonight, their President would no longer be able to dismiss the resolve of the Alliance.

  “Go, now!”

  Captain Ramos stood up and pointed with her whole arm toward the distant buildings of the American Air Force base. All around her, men and women wearing ten or more different uniforms rose with her and began their desperate run toward the enemy.

  The distance they had to cover over open terrain made Carlos uncomfortable. Granted, Laughlin Air Force Base was a training facility for the United States Air Force and not a place where U.S. Special Forces were likely to be deployed, but the Americans were formidable opponents, and any Yucatán soldier who underestimated them would not live to see the sunrise.

  To his right, he heard the scream of a female soldier being hit by enemy fire. She fell to the ground in a gray heap of clothes and flesh as an American bullet ripped through her abdomen. One more of us they have killed, Carlos thought. One more. Silently, he wondered how many Latin American lives would have to be sacrificed before the Americans relented and let them in.

  For the first part of their sprint, the darkness of the desert night provided the Yucatán soldiers with some measure of cover, but their feeling of relative safety was shattered when the powerful searchlights of the American base were lit. Turning night into day, they swept across the dusty ground, making the wilted bushes growing there cast long, dark shadows, like teeth rising from the dry desert soil.

  The sound of gunfire was everywhere now. A meter to his left, he heard the buzzing thud of a bullet striking the ground as he ran toward the nearest building, hoping its stone wall would provide him with some small measure of cover.

  “Stay back!” Carlos shouted to a former Costa Rican park ranger who didn’t seem to fully comprehend the danger she was facing as she peered around the corner of the house.

  It was too late.

  In a shower of blood and bone, her head exploded from an American sniper’s bullet, splattering him with the still-warm brains of his fellow soldier. Carlos swore again, as the metallic stench of her blood filled his nostrils. Every death, every life they took, only strengthened his resolve to make them taste his anger. This was the night he would bring righteous vengeance upon the Americans for what they had done to Teresa and Thiago.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He tried to collect his thoughts as he wiped his face with the dirty sleeve of his uniform, its stained fabric reeking with sweat. In the distance, he could see the edge of a guard tower where he assumed the sniper was stationed.

  Carlos took a deep breath. One step too far, and the enemy soldier would come into view. And when he did, that step would be Carlos last.

  He pressed his back against the wall, trying to lessen his profile. If he could just—

  The bright light of a distant explosion interrupted his thoughts. As flames rose from the guard tower, he realized the Cuban special forces had advanced farther into the enemy base than he had thought. With the sniper now gone, Carlos and the soldiers with him could continue their assault on the American positions.

  As he stepped out from cover, the sound of a jet engine flying overhead momentarily distracted him. A few seconds later, the ground shook as a large explosion lit up a building in the middle of the base. The Colombian bomber veered off to the left, quickly gaining altitude as it turned to escape toward the relative safety of the nearby Mexican border.

  Two buildings and five minutes later, the small group of Yucatán soldiers found themselves pinned down once more by enemy fire, as a group of U.S. Air Force personnel mounted a fierce resistance from a machine-gun emplacement behind a wall of sandbags.

  “Lieutenant Moreno, Lieutenant Ortiz,” Captain Ramos commanded, “circle back and flank them. The rest of you, stay with me. Hold your fire until Moreno and Ortiz are in position.”

  Hunkering down, Carlos and the Mexican lieutenant doubled back and quietly moved around the large wooden building to the left of the American position. During the rare moments when there was a lull in the gunfire, and when the sound of distant explosions didn’t drown out all other noise, the scrape of his boots against the gravel made him feel exposed. In his ears, every step he took sounded like an earthquake, calling the enemy soldiers’ attention to their position.

  But no American troops emerged from the darkness to stop them, and eventually the two of them reached the rear of the enemy gun position.

  Holding his breath, Carlos raised his rifle. Aiming down the barrel, he swung it toward the nearest airman and pulled the trigger. The thud of the shot rang in his ears as the recoil slammed the stock into his shoulder.

  Before the American soldier had even hit the ground, a hail of bullets from the other side told him Captain Ramos and her men had joined the fight. Outflanked and pinned down, the Americans panicked as they scrambled to bring their fixed gun to bear, but time was not on their side. Within seconds, all of them lay on the ground, dead or wounded.

  The Yucatán soldiers rushed forward to make sure their injured enemies did not resume fighting once the shock of the attack wore off. Carlos stepped over the body of a young airman, her blonde hair stained red from a wound in her throat. Nudging her with his boot, he confirmed she was dead.

  To his right, a wounded U.S. soldier tried to raise his hands in surrender. Carlos struck him across the head with the stock of his rifle. In the heat of battle, the only thing he had cared about was the survival of himself and his comrades, but with the muffled sound of wood hitting bone, the rage he had felt earlier came flooding back.

  “You killed them!” he shouted at the wounded soldier as he cursed the Americans. “You killed my wife and son!”

  The surrendering enemy airman looked up at Carlos, fear filling his eyes as he once again tried to raise his hands.

  “No sé… ?qué dice?” the American wheezed in broken Spanish, bloodied lips trembling, his voice shattered by terror and exhaustion.

  Without even thinking, Carlos switched to English. His experience as a police officer had not been the only reason he had been offered the job as a security guard for the U.S. delegation in Mérida.

  “You polluted the air,” he shouted at the broken soldier on the ground. “You turned it into poison, and you didn’t care. And now my wife and son are dead!”

  Carlos had been sitting in his small, sparse apartment in Mérida, watching the international news in silent terror as dengue fever crept closer and closer to Quito. When Thiago had fallen ill, Carlos had been unable to travel back to Ecuador to be with him. All the money he had earned from his job with the OIY he had sent back to his family, so they would have food on their table and a roof over their heads. Now he realized that small measure of comfort had been for nothing, as the fever took the life of his only son without him even being there to hold the hand of his little boy.

  All because the Americans had ruined the climate. All because the U.S. had refused reparations.

  Then, when the Yucatán Alliance had gathered the people of the southern nations for the Great March North to escape the heat and the chaotic weather consuming their homelands, violence had erupted, and Teresa had been killed when waiting in line for her daily ration of dirty, parasite infested water.

  Because of the Americans, he had been unable to be there to protect his family. And now both his wife and his son were dead.

  “I’m sorry,” the airman said, his words no more than a whimper. Then his voice grew stronger. “I’m sorry! Please! Don’t kill me!”

  From the shadows, Lieutenant Ortiz suddenly stepped forward, holding a machete in his right hand. The polished metal glinted faintly in the pale light of the moon as the former cartel enforcer raised the blade to slice the throat of the wounded American.

  Years of training, experience and conviction took over. Acting solely on instinct, Carlos quickly stepped forward, placing himself between the enemy airman and Lieutenant Ortiz. With an iron grip, he clamped his large hand over the Mexican’s face and slammed the back of his head against the stone wall of the building behind them. The wet sound of the Yucatán soldier’s skull striking the rough mortar made Carlos feel slightly queasy as he came to realize what he had done.

  Looking up, he saw Captain Ramos staring at him, her intelligent eyes watching and assessing his every move. Chances were a court-martial would be waiting for him when they returned to San Vicente.

  But his commander only nodded at him, the gesture a sign of respect passed from one professional to another. Carlos knew she had served as a lieutenant in the Venezuelan army before being promoted to captain after the formation of the Yucatán Alliance. She was an honorable woman, one who took both her duties and her responsibilities as a soldier very seriously. If Carlos had stopped a Yucatán soldier from executing an enemy who had already surrendered, she would have his back.

  The exchange was cut short by the sound of thunder in the sky.

  From the north, a wing of jet fighters approached, screaming like banshees through the night as they opened fire on the Yucatán positions.

  The American reinforcements had arrived, and Carlos and the men and women with him were now out of time. With the arrival of the U.S. fighter wing, he knew enemy ground forces would not be far behind. The Yucatán Alliance’s invasion of the United States of America had lasted only moments, as the Americans would never allow them to hold the ground they had occupied. He fervently hoped the attention they had now bought with blood would be enough to force the American President’s hand.

  But for a few short hours, a foreign army had—for the first time in more than two centuries—occupied the soil of the continental United States.

  It was time to sound the retreat.

  Lords of the Stars stories!

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