My Only Familiar Is Me[A Late-Blooming Evolution Story]

Leon and his team’s silhouettes finally disappeared into the thick, humid haze of the jungle. With every step the scouts took away from us, I could physically feel a suffocating weight settling onto my shoulders. The sudden responsibility for twenty-five human lives was a burden that neither years of balancing accounting reports nor my service in the Corps had prepared me to carry.

One of the military psychology books I had skimmed through back in the quiet of my room claimed that the ideal commander stood on two pillars. The first was charisma. The ability to inspire people to charge into machine-gun fire with nothing but words, make them believe in you completely, and crush any trace of doubt with a single look. On that front, I could admit without false modesty that I had about as much charisma as a tax return. I was not the life of the party like Danny, and I could not bend people to my will the way Leon could. Winning people over with cheap charm and playing everyone’s buddy had never been my thing. That was a weakness, and I accepted it as a simple fact.

The second pillar, however, was the ability to make fast, accurate decisions under pressure. That was where my inner auditor had no problem marking a bold plus in the analyst column. I was not a visionary or a jazz virtuoso capable of spinning brilliant improvisations on the fly. But thanks to my accelerated thought process and the neatly organized shelves of my memory palace, I could run a dozen combat scenarios five moves ahead in the few seconds it took the average person just to wrestle their panic under control.

That was obviously what Leon had been counting on. He was not springing an impromptu leadership test on me or playing military politics. The old war dog had simply sized up the resources at his disposal and put them where they would do the most good. Pure, cold calculation. I appreciated that more than I cared to admit.

The scouts were gone. Time for second-guessing was over.

I turned to face the platoon. Twenty-five pairs of eyes settled on me, carrying the perfectly understandable mix of uncertainty, anxiety, and silent expectation. My gaze landed first on Sandra, the sergeant I had just displaced. To my relief, there was none of the usual Hollywood nonsense: no clenched fists, no poisonous glare, no theatrical display of resentment. Whatever was going through her mind, Sandra was a professional. She was not about to cause a scene minutes before the killing started. That was already a promising sign.

The silence dragged on long enough to irritate me. I hated empty speeches, but people needed something solid to hold onto before a fight, so I gave them exactly that.

”My job’s as simple as yours,” I said evenly, raising my voice just enough for the cave to carry my words into every corner. ”We’re going to get this done, and we’re all going home alive. I’m counting on your personal ambitions, fears, and drama staying out of the way. We go back through that portal with the same people who came through it.”

The speech was dry and free of patriotic grandstanding. Nobody applauded or slapped me on the shoulder. Only Ted answered with his usual goofy but sincere grin. Motivational speeches had never been my strong suit, so I got straight to business.

”You’ve all studied the briefing and know your assigned sectors. I’m just going to remind you of the most important safety protocol. Control of the base’s outer dome is entirely in my hands. The instant I lower the shield for our return fire, you activate your personal barriers immediately. The moment I raise the dome again, you shut them down. Every unit of S-Power counts. Clear?”

”Yes, sir!” Ted barked so enthusiastically that his voice almost drowned out the steady rumble of the technicians’ active turrets.

”Everyone, move to your assigned positions according to the defensive layout,” I ordered, watching the platoon fall into place with practiced precision. ”Ted, form a plasma sphere. Burn about a quarter of your reserve and keep it ready.”

”You got it! I’ll have it ready!” Excitement lit up the young man’s face as a dense white sphere of unstable energy swelled between his palms with a sharp, crackling hiss.

”Mary, take position on his left. Wait for my signal.”

Mary did not answer out loud. Expecting a verbal acknowledgment from that ice queen would have been pointless. A brief, almost imperceptible nod told me everything I needed to know. She understood.

I walked over to the central distribution unit where every connected S-Power cylinder fed into a single network. It was the true heart of our improvised fortress. From the slight rise where it stood, I had a perfect view of every soldier covering the entrance, along with the energy consumption display.

I rested my thumb on the large, pressure-sensitive dome activation switch. Whether this platoon survived or was reduced to ash by Loz’an’s opening volley now depended on my reactions being accurate down to a fraction of a second.

The biggest drawback of the dome protecting the entire base, compared to the personal shields built into our armor, was that it worked both ways. The physics of S-Power were uncompromising. Every time my people needed to fire, I had to manually lower the dome so their attacks could pass through. Personal armor solved that problem through precise calibration to each awakened soldier’s unique energy frequency, but tuning the cave’s entire defensive grid to thirty different energy signatures in field conditions was technically impossible.

The only exception was our stationary turrets. They operated on the same principle as the S-Gun and could fire straight through the dome, but their batteries were draining at an alarming rate. In my mental ledger, they were reserved for one situation only: the absolute last resort.

”Danny, keep your homing arrows ready. I want you squeezing every bit of power out of them,” I ordered without turning around.

”Always ready, boss,” he replied quietly, settling into position just to the right of my control console. There was not a trace of fear in his voice, only the excitement of what was coming. ”I told you you’d move up fast. A couple of hours ago you were the rookie. Now you’re running an entire outpost.”

”I never asked for that promotion,” I said dryly, never taking my eyes off the status indicators. ”What’s the platoon saying about me taking command? Anybody unhappy?”

”Oh, give me a break. Everyone’s fine with it,” Danny said with a shrug, giving the shield strapped to his forearm one last check. ”You’re the oldest guy here, and you’re officially a second lieutenant. Makes perfect sense to everyone. Relax. Nobody’s about to mutiny.”

I gave a short nod. The tension in my shoulders eased a little, and the knot in my chest loosened. With an alien horde closing in, the last thing I wanted was to waste precious seconds dealing with bruised egos.

”Commander, I’m in position!” Ted’s voice crackled through my helmet radio. He stood at the very edge of the rocky ledge, breathing hard. Between his hands, a massive sphere of white plasma pulsed violently, sending waves of shimmering heat rippling through the air.

”Mary, you’re up,” I said evenly over the comms. ”Time to stir up the hornet’s nest.”

Mary did not hesitate. She caught the churning sphere of plasma in a gentle telekinetic grip, rose smoothly above the cave ledge, and sent it soaring in a high arc with surgical precision. The motion was clean and polished, almost like a perfectly executed volleyball serve.

I raised the monocular to my eye. The glowing white sphere streaked across the jungle sky before splattering squarely against the top of Loz’an’s energy dome with a heavy, wet smack. Dead center. From where I stood, it looked as if some enormous prehistoric bird had taken a dump on their prized fortress. The impact made the barrier flicker wildly as it burned through its energy reserves trying to neutralize the plasma. Tiny figures immediately burst into motion along the fortress walls. Package delivered. Message received.

”That got their attention,” I said calmly over the platoon’s shared channel. ”Steve, hold your fire until I give the order. Danny, get your arrows into position.”

Through the monocular, I watched the enemy scrambling to hose down the plasma with some kind of freezing compound from inside the perimeter. It was a complete waste of time. That was pure plasma, not an ordinary fire. Nothing they sprayed at it was going to put it out.

My eyes stayed on the sky. Loz’an had to answer a provocation like that quickly and forcefully. They did not disappoint. Two sleek attack fighters burst from the fortress hangars with a sharp metallic shriek, skimming low over the jungle while scattering heavy acid canisters across the clearing. Ancient trees dissolved into smoking sludge beneath them as the enemy systematically stripped away the jungle cover to expose our firing position.

I waited a split second, calculated the trajectory of the incoming payload, and slammed my thumb onto the dome activation switch.

Boom.

Heavy drops of alien acid splashed across the pale shimmer of our shield with violent hisses, running down its surface before eating into the rock at the foot of the cave. The air instantly filled with choking, acrid fumes.

The Loz’an fighters locked onto the heat signature of our generator, banked hard, and swung around for a second attack run, falling into formation.

”Mary, clear the acid spray and the debris off the cave roof!” I snapped, lifting my thumb off the control switch at the same instant. ”Steve, you’re up! Fire!”

Everything happened in one perfectly synchronized moment. Our dome vanished. Mary blasted the acid coating and shattered rock off the cave overhang with a powerful telekinetic surge, sending it all hurtling back into the jungle. At that exact instant, the enemy fighters screamed overhead, and Steve fired the homing launcher.

Two massive metal discs, each the size of an oversized hockey puck, spun into the sky with a piercing whistle. Selina’s battery burners performed exactly as intended. Like powerful magnets, they locked onto the Loz’an fighters’ energy planes and instantly heated to a blinding white, reaching temperatures of several thousand degrees. The fighters’ generators had never been built to withstand that kind of heat. Their internal energy reserves burned out almost instantly.

”Danny, finish them!” I shouted.

The crippled fighters rolled helplessly onto one wing, gliding toward their own lines. They never got there. Two blazing arrows slammed into their tails. A blinding flash. A deafening double explosion. Burning wreckage crashed straight into the outer wall of the Loz’an outpost. About as good an outcome as we could have hoped for.

I swept my gaze across the cave, assessing the damage. Mary had missed a few tiny droplets of acid. A couple landed on the stone floor, hissing as they ate small craters into the rock, but none of our people had been hit. The infantry’s personal shields absorbed the stray splashes, and the technicians’ turrets came through untouched.

Outside, however, the landscape had been transformed beyond recognition. Every strip of jungle between our cave and the Loz’an fortress had been obliterated by acid. Ancient trees had blackened and slumped like melting candles, the grass had turned into a bubbling chemical swamp, and even our respirators struggled to keep the suffocating, toxic fumes at bay.

Our camouflage was gone. The natural cover that had hidden us had been erased, leaving us fully exposed on the hillside. Even without the monocular, my enhanced eyesight let me clearly see the soldiers lining the fortress walls, pointing and swinging their heavy weapons toward our cave.

They knew exactly where we were. In another moment, the full force of their garrison would come crashing down on this tiny patch of ground.

I flicked my eyes to the tactical timer on my wrist. The countdown had already begun. Five minutes. Three hundred seconds of pure hell. We had to hold this position no matter what while Leon struck from behind the enemy lines. There was no other way home.