A Legacy left Behind - Initial encounters

Part 2

Inside the Stasis Pod

Terra Atlantus

Antarctica

The Dream

Noises...

These were familiar noises.They were generated by his beloved Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk: The slap of the rotors overhead, the faint crackle from his headphones, voice of Mr. J. Smith, who was acting as his crew for the record, requesting updates on something very important or other through his very classified comms channel, the faint whooshing sound that carried over as his own chopper caught the backlash of the other chopper, that appeared seemingly out of nowhere and on its way down fast to a painful crash.

Wait...

That shouldn't be there with the familiar noises, should it?

No. It shouldn't.

That was why he aborted his own forward momentum to follow the Black Hawk that was having a bad day. He drowned out Mr. Smith's indignant protests as he tried to raise the crashing bird on the comms to no avail. He remembered to flash off a quick update to his destination about the possible crash and an emergency rescue. Then he signed off without waiting for their acknowledgement or orders.

By some miracle or other, the other chopper made landfall in more or less one piece. But half of its tail broke off upon impacting the rough terrain below. It came to a stop listing on to its side and John could see the occupants were already piling out.

He was circling the site low, looking to put his Pave Hawk down when things went hazy.

..........

Oh God! No, no, no! Not again...Not that again!

He felt his mind going to pieces- a gibbering, quivering mess of protests and whimpers and he didn't know over what. It was disconcerting; he was deathly afraid of something-but what?

John felt the familiar warm glow wrapping around him again and he felt his mind slowly coming out of its hiding place. He felt he should be concerned about this too; but he strangely sort of wasn't.

..........

The motion picture reel of his mind started up again. He knew he'd landed his bird just beside the downed one. It was all quite different now. His vision had sharpened to a point he could read the tags off the uniform of one soldier who was already crawling away from their downed chopper about 20 yards away. He could hear him muttering and cursing about life-suckers.

He could also see the two tall, pale figures that were standing on the top of the small ridge about 100 yards away in a southerly direction from them. He could also see the black and red slimy thing with pale protrusions, busily crawling towards the two figures.

It was as if a switch had flipped inside of his brain. Everything around him had come to a standstill and was swiftly dismissed as unimportant distractions.

And his mission came to the forefront of his mind in utmost clarity.

Seek & Destroy.

There were only three targets and only their utter and complete destruction mattered. It was his life's imperative; his reason for being and nothing else mattered until those abominations were wiped from the face of earth.

He felt himself moving as if in a powerful trance. His body was going through the quick motions of arming himself; stuffing his tactical vest with grenades and extra ammo and his holsters with extra hand-guns. He was aware of barking quick orders to his charge- to stay put inside the chopper, just before grabbing his primary weapon, an M4 carbine and jumping out. Then he was taking off towards his targets.