Sat, March 22th 1966

Westcott shook me awake this morning. Opening bleary eyes to see his terrified face did nothing to make my start to the day peaceful. Jolted suddenly awake, my first thought was that we were under attack. My second was that I was about to die.

Fortunately, however, it turned out that the poor kid was simply scared. Apparently I am the only person in the squad who he felt safe to talk to. In his words, ‘everyone else gives off a psychopathic vibe.’

I did my best to reassure him that everything is going to be alright.

I really wish I believed that it would be.

In an hour's time, we will head out to do battle with another group of aliens. Conscripted against our wills into a military we have no information about, we’ve become galactic gladiators. Each day we’re matched up against new opponents in a fight to the death..

Perhaps today will be the day our story ends.

--

When the door opened the land we saw in front of us was a tapestry of golden brown. We stepped out into a forest clearing that could have been anywhere in Tennessee, huge majestic oak trees surrounded us. Lazy sunbeams shone down on the large leaves of the ferns that were scattered between their trunks. It was mid-morning, on a beautiful summer day.

“Surely this is a day for picnics and wine with a beautiful lady, not for slaughter?”

The group looked at me dumbfounded and I realised I’d spoken out loud.

“We have our mission Peters, and we will complete it.” Sarge didn’t look impressed, “Focus yourself. We’re on the clock.”

Nodding I ignored my blazing cheeks and unfolded the map, validating the compass against what I could see of the surrounding countryside's features. “We’re about twenty klicks west of the Arachnia base.” I pointed off roughly to the east, indicating the direction we should head.

“You really are an ass, you know.” Robinson and I were on point, as we moved through the rolling countryside. I kept quiet, trying not to encourage him. “You’re bright. I’ll give you that. A regular smartass, but you need to learn when to shut up.”

I glared at him and kept my feet moving in time with the others, resisting the urge to comment that I was being pretty damned restrained at the moment. He didn’t relent, continuing his diatribe as the miles rolled by.

“Can you just shut up? I’ve never met someone with such a bad case of verbal diarrhea.” I finally retorted.

For a short while the only sound was our boots crunching over the grass stalks, then Robinson laughed a full throated, gurling laugh. “I’m guessing that was an insult? I didn’t understand a word of it.” He clapped me on the back in a friendly manner, “You need to throw in more cuss words if you’re trying to insult someone. Here’s a clue kid, a good curse word only has one syllable and most only contain four letters.”

I gave up. The man was impossible. It was likely this was how he coped with the stress of waiting to be shot, but it was enough to try a saint .. and I was definitely not anointed. He burbled away beside me for what seemed an eternity, then we finally reached the ridge I’d been waiting for.

Butting into the flow of Robinson’s rambling I was thankful that we’d reached the target without incident, “Sarge, the base should be just over that ridge.”

“Right. Peters, you and Robinson get up there and check it out. Recon only, I want you back here in under ten minutes.”

Robinson took the lead, for all his faults the man was a great hunter. He kept low as he moved rapidly towards the crest of the ridge. Despite his hulking military boots he moved lightly on his feet, keeping his movements quiet. My own feet seemed intent on embarrassing me, kicking stones and crunching heavily through bracken.

As we approached the cliff edge, Robinson dropped onto his front. Crawling on his hands and knees. I heard a gasp of breath escape him as he peered down.

“Fuck” I breathed quietly as I reached him and saw the impressive camp beneath us. Tucked in the shadow of the cliff face we stradded were the Arachnia. The camp was vast, far larger than had been present in the photos we’d been given. Military intelligence, apparently it's a misnomer even with aliens civilisations.

“See, now that’s a proper cuss.” Robinson responded with a smirk. “You’re learning bookboy.”

“Fuck off,” I hissed quietly, “have you spotted the communications array?”

“No, and I wouldn’t know what one looked like.”

“Look for a radar dish or an antenna, something taller than the rest of the camp.” I was making huge leaps of faith here, if their communications array was a small concrete block hidden under the webbing we were totally screwed at this point. Although I’m fairly certain Robinson would have been happy to have an excuse to burn down the entire camp.

The camp sprawled filling the bowl under the cliff face right up to the small forests on either side. A canopy of webs hung over the entire area at a near uniform height, only small details could be made out through gaps.

Here I could see a flicker of dark movement where strands of webbing had separated, there I could see an ebbing green light filtering up through the veil of webs. Nowhere, however, could I see anything which resembled a communications array.

These were aliens damn it. Cursing lightly under my breath, I berated myself for not learning the ‘Identify Technology I’ skill. How on earth would we locate the damn array?

“Far left near the trees, on the edge of the camp.” Robinson indicated. The man had been uncustomarily silent, his eyes methodically scanning the area. “It’s camouflaged, so it must be important.”

I looked but didn’t see anything straight away. Then, a lime green light became visible on one of the ‘tree’ trunks, drawing my eye as it strobed upwards. It was then that I realised that one of the trees was actually a tall pole. “Clever bastards.”

I didn’t have time to examine the pole in detail. Robinson ducked down and I followed suit trusting his instincts. “They’re patrolling the cliff face, about halfway up.”

Cautiously I bobbed my head forward quickly just poking enough of my head over the edge to see two dark shapes on the cliff face far below our position. They clung easily to the granite wall marching along it as a human might the floor

“What now?” Robinson asked, “That place is huge, there must be a hundred of the bloody spiders in that place.”

I shrugged, “Dunno, that’s above my paygrade. Let's get back and Sarge can make the call.”

Sarge screwed his face up while he listened to our report, a scowl building on his craggy features. “Anything else I need to know about,” he muttered as he considered our position.

“We’re going to have to be careful. They went to the trouble of camouflaging their comms array. If they know how to camouflage things then they’re likely hunters and might have set traps.” Robinson stated.

I raised a brow in surprise, when he wasn’t frothing at the mouth Robinson showed a surprising amount of intelligence and what he said made sense. Arachnia were basically giant spiders. It made sense that they’d be hunters. Common spiders on earth laid webs as traps and snared flies. Heaven knows what sort of snares might be lurking out there waiting for us.

Behind Sarge, Westcott’s face had gone white as he listened to the report. Still he hadn’t actually bolted, which showed he had some bottle.

“Time to move out, I want silence. Robinson leads and we follow in a single file.” Looking Robinson in the eye he continued, “You’re a hunter, keep us hidden and downwind of anything out there. No surprises, we get in, do the job and get out.”