RM2-ch8:The Present,4937-edited

Chapter 8: The Present, 4937

Roy wiped a meter-long worm with a round sucking mouth from the face shield of his Quasimodo – D Type.

His suit was covered with at least a dozen of them, along with a slimy dark green almost black algae as he sloshed through the hip-high brackish water.

About six meters to his left, Gunny Robert Dunn, did the same. The Platoon sergeant and self-assigned SAW man, carrying a heavy TKU-SII Fafnir in his augmented arms complained over the team channel.

“Didn’t they promise us some nice, easy and uneventful SBD and then an even longer uneventful longer trip aboard the Normandy?”

Dunn wiped several of the leech-like worms of his weapon. “This mud ball is an exceptional bad shit hole. How are we supposed to find Whakeys if we don’t know how they look like?”

“You sing the same song every time we go dirt side,” Roy replied on the same channel. “Now, quit complaining and keep your eyes in the game and your mind on track. We are bound to run into those Whakeys eventually.”

“Yes Lieutenant, Sir.”

“You are longer with this crazy club we call the Marine Corps than I am, Gunny. You should know by now that, the words nice and easy don’t exist in our world, but don’t worry we will catch up with the Normandy eventually.”

They did have three days of R&R, and two days of Standard Board Duty after the drop on the Noghler homeworld. The USS John Stryker was already within 120 light-years of the USS Normandy when they received different orders that diverted the Stryker and thus Roy’s platoon to a star system designated K-71210 in their initial briefing, they had never heard about it, not that that was something unusual. The designation was most likely NAVINT code and not a name found in civilian star catalogs, anyhow.

Now, ten days after they left the Noghler system, Roy was leading his platoon down on this wet world. He had taken a position in the first squad and had them walk in a loose diamond formation and as it was his habit in his short but so far quite eventful military career, he took point.

To his left was Corporal Kokovhr, a Pertharian who acted as the Squad’s Artillery Support (SAS) and with his Trajectory Attack Mortar, could engage enemy fortifications, columns and other targets beyond the horizon and with a variety of nasty payloads.

Shaggy Sergeant Eugbenzi, who was normally with Roy’s unit providing that Artillery support was not even on the Stryker. The gigantic Lordor recently promoted was hitching a ride aboard a Fleet destroyer and was on his way to the Normandy to take a required class on logistics and troop management.

The Pertharian added his comment into the open chit chat connection. “With a little luck, we find out that they are gone and we can go back to the Stryker. I could sure use a few extra hours of shut-eye.”

Corporal Ak Kurti, a spotted Attikan, bringing up the rear said. “Some rest would be nice indeed.”

Roy kept an eye on his threat sensors, nothing artificial or sentient within 20 clicks, but that meant little. They were on the hunt to find members of a new species, no one had heard or seen before, well no one on Union Side.

This was the reason Roy had taken his Platoon dirtside to this wet, swamp world because a few days ago Fleet ran into a new species.

Scuttlebutt had it, they were similar to the Y’All, but five times as big and tougher than the Noghlers, smarter than the Narth and relentless as the Klack. Creatures able to go toe to toe with a Marine wearing a Quasimodo. It took his Marines less than a day to hear all sorts of rumors and if you believed half of it, the new species was about to win the war for the Kermac, with abilities nothing short of magic.

Roy had learned not to pay attention to scuttlebutt as it almost always was completely wrong and way out of proportion.

Not even a real Y’All could have fought a Marine in a modern Quasimodo and while there was little known about the reclusive Narth, he doubted that the new enemy was as smart as them. If they were, they would not be controlled by the Kermac.

In the briefing before they dropped, he was told NAVINT believed six or seven space ships of this new species had entered this system and landed on this world and had not left so far.

So this morning Roy and a pretty much every Marine of the John Stryker dropped on this planet where Intel assumed Whakeys had a stronghold of some kind.

Eight fleet was now in full force in the system to make sure nothing left and no one uninvited joined the party.

It was the Marines' job to find out if this was true and capture a few of these beings alive, so Xeno could examine and perhaps dissect a few. The planet or at least the region they had jumped into was a steaming jungle swamp, but unlike on Green Hell, his home planet, the plants here were black and looked for the most part like intertwined bodies of naked, wet snakes with thorns. These twisted tree-like things fanned out at the top into a dense canopy about sixty meters off the ground and most of the local sun’s light did not reach the planet’s surface. The air technically was breathable but had a higher oxygen content than Standard type NiOx atmospheres. They kept their helmets closed anyway because Science told them, that the local air was thick with spores of an as yet unknown kind, and had no idea yet if that stuff was harmless or not. Wiping off these aggressive worms that almost constantly slimed over his face shield made him glad the helmet was sealed. The dense biosphere of the planet combined with strong electromagnetic storms made sensor scans unreliable. It was very difficult to differentiate between natural and artificial energy sources, especially if the enemy had turned its equipment off or can shield it.

No clear determination was made by NAVINT or Command what level of Tech the Whakeys possessed. As a matter of fact, there was even less information than usual.

Lighting and thunder were almost constant and so was a strong downpour of rain. He wondered if this was only seasonal or if conditions were always like this.

His team was augmented by 4 Cerberus XI robots, but since this was a potential First Contact situation they did operate under the Second Response Directive and would only fight if the Marines were attacked and an order to engage from Command was given.

Barlow, a Terran Human also carrying a TKU Fafnir Gatling snarled. “Almost fourteen hours now, and nothing but these damn slime suckers, ugly Lizard Snakes and friggin’ huge swim beetles. Maybe there aren’t any Whakeys down here.”

Rokers, the Team engineer, extended his suits Vibro claws and speared a sizeable scaled thing with many teeth, spines and finned feet out of the water. The seven-meter long beast thrashed and slashed while its fangs and claws slid across the nearly indestructible suit material. “Maybe this is a Whakey? Don’t we have a member species that almost look like these?”

Roy responded with a sharp tone in his voice. “If I see you again killing something without reason or purpose, I pull you out of your Quasi and make you swim with one of those, do we have an understanding?”

“Jeez, sorry Sir, Forgot you are from a place like this and have a soft spot for dangerous creatures.”

Barlow coughed and chimed in. “Rokers, you’re new to the Master Blaster so I give you a piece of free advice. Mess with Lt. Masters you mess with all of us, not that he needs help, just ask Corporal Kokovhr.”

The Pertharian growled. “The Lieutenant wiped the floor with me, so what do you think he could do with you?”

Roy held up his hand, made the slow down signal.

“I hate mindless killing. That Snake-Lizard posed absolutely no threat to you, and yes I am a Greenie and if you want I introduce you to my very own dangerous creature.”

Barlow laughed. “His Beast has you for breakfast, suit or no suit.”

“Sorry Sir, I won’t do it again.”

“Accepted, now scan that thing and make sure it does not have any higher brain functions or neural pathways associated with sentient beings.”

Roy could not see the surprised face of the engineer

But he said, looking around. “We have barely covered ten percent of the planet’s surface, there is still lots of ground to cover.”

Dunn, swatted a huge black beetle landing like a miniature helicopter on his helmet, chimed in. “Mr. Barlow if you feel bored you can join me for a recon flight ahead, if the Lieutenant agrees to it, of course.”

Roy shook his head, knowing they could of course not see his gesture. “You wouldn’t see much more from above the canopy and you make a nice target. We don’t even know their Tech Level, for all we know they could detect you. There is nothing on the Sat-View. Just stay put for now.”

Just then the Operations-Command icon flashed over com-panel mirrored directly onto his retina and Roy blinked it active.

“Lt. Masters here.”

“This is Operation Command, Major Omval, find a spot and make camp. We drop a MOTEL as soon as you give the signal.”

“Yes, Sir, any additional instructions?”

“There will be an official Mission Update brief at 1900 hrs and that is two hours and six minutes from now, but here is the situation in a Nutshell: The Army has arrived and is going to do a full Divisional Orbital assault on the southern Continent, making a lot of noise doing so. They plan to even land a Leviathan Planetary Siege Engine. The Army Division also brings in Aqua troops to scour the oceans. Our Tactical brains at Command feel that this will make whatever hides on that mud ball nervous enough to attack. Or do something we can detect. If they attack we’re ready and if they move we hope they move into a northern direction, in other words, right to where you and the other platoons are.”

Roy rolled his eyes as he heard the word Army and sighed. “They just had to join the party. A Leviathan are you serious? Why don’t they let us do the Division drop just once and they do the point scouting for a change?”

The Major on the other end snickered. “Because they aren’t Marines.”

“Semper Fi, Major.”

Roy pointed at Dunn. “Sarge, you got your wish, go up there and see if there is a spot where we can set up camp.”

“Aye.”

Robert Dunn shot into the air and punched through the canopy like a cannonball.

Roy blinked at a star-shaped symbol in his troop command screen and by doing so gave the so-called “Gather” order and his troops pulled close together in a star formation weapons pointing outwards.

The Sergeant reported from above. “Local Topo analysis complete. There is nothing better for fifty klicks, just trees and swamp. There is a shallow hill 21.6 klicks from where we are, sensors say its Terra Firma.”

A new voice buzzed in. “We spotted that hill first. Bravo Company 1st Platoon Dragon Riders call it, besides we’re only 4 klicks away from it.”

Roy snorted. “Lt. Arsugen, get off our channel and quit eavesdropping on 2nd platoon. The hill is yours, it is too far out for us.”

“This Hotoreth needs every edge to compete against a certain Greenie Lt, besides you left the Company Level channel open ever since we dropped.”

Of course, Roy had left the Company channel open so the two other Platoon leaders of Bravo Company could listen in or call for help if needed. Roy trusted his senses more than he trusted his sensors, but so far his uncanny sense of danger had not reacted to anything. Lt. Arsugen was a big truly alien being with a long neck and tail being from Andromeda and despite his quite unsettling appearance, he was a good marine and Roy liked him. “Well, keep your ladies nice and safe, looks like the Army is doing a big fancy show down south and perhaps scaring those elusive buggers our way.”

“I heard, dropping a Leviathan no less if that doesn’t scare whatever it is we are supposed to find, nothing will. I think Intel has it all wrong and there is no one but us on this beautiful world. They may fool our sensors but I am a Hotoreth and I can smell sentient brain activity over great distances and I haven’t felt anything.”

Roy snorted. “I take that as an insult, you walking Brain leech, or do you imply there isn’t any brain activity over here where we are?”

The Hotoreth laughed in his strange metal rattling, hissing way and snarled. “Well if I concentrate, I might be able to separate your mind activity from those disgusting sucker slime worms. Their t-waves are a whole lot cleaner than yours”

Roy grinned inside his helmet. “That was a good one and it would not surprise me if NAVINT sent us to the wrong planet, like that never happened before.”

The other Platoon leader tapped an acknowledgment and Roy deactivated the connection and switched to Platoon channel. “Well, looks like the subtle approach is out the window. The Army is on its way.”

He called up a local map and selected four hexagon-shaped areas centered around his position. “Snyder, Kronaki, T’Chnk and Ash, you take perimeter guard till 2100hrs. Go into Sniper stealth.” The four Marines acknowledged and Roy said to the rest. “We might as well camp right here. Mr. Dunn be so kind and make us a little room, Command is dropping us a MOTEL, so not even you can complain.”

Dunn opened up with his Gatling and moved it in an arc, vaporizing vegetation and trees in a neat circle.

While he did that he said. “Oh Sir, I certainly can! For one I prefer our dropship over a MOTEL any time, or even better some R&R on Para Para.”

The Non-Corp in the team said. “Well if anything is out there, they now know where to find us.”

Roy shrugged. “Who knows, with all that thunder and lightning?”

Then he sent the exact coordinates to the USS John Stryker somewhere in Orbit around this planet. On the Gun deck of the Stryker, Gunner Crews loaded a green Giga Load casing into a Translocator cannon and hit the discharge contact. The Translocator cannon was aimed straight at the coordinates Roy had sent them. There would not be much Jungle left or any marines if this would have been a Red Giga Load, but this wasn’t a bomb, it was a Mobile Operations Temporary Encampment Load, specifically developed for the Union Marines.

Only perhaps ten meters from where Roy stood and almost at the center of the spot Dunn had cleared, a dark green 10-ton capsule appeared in a white flash, enormous bang and a tidal wave of black swamp water. While the rest of the platoon was keeping guard, Roy sent the activation signal. The Capsule sensors analyzed the surroundings and reconfigured the payload with an army of Nanites to the environment and seconds later, almost like an inflatable bouncy castle, something expanded and inflated. A thirty meters in diameter, floating platform with a central cube-shaped building appeared. The thin plastic walls, filling with molecule expanding concrete foam, hardened in moments. The Platform was well protected with ParaDim Shields. It has room enough for the platoon to get out of their suits, take showers, eat in a small galley and sleep in low gee cots. It certainly beat the prospect of sleeping in the suit, something they all had done many times before of course.

--””--

The platoon had settled down, for some chow and rest. The M.O.T.E.L was, of course, a bit crowded but Roy had a tiny separate chamber for himself as that came with the lieutenant bar on his collar. He was out of his suit and had a shower. The environmental system of the MOTEL did not need to use and recycle the very limited water reserves it came with but could use local water. It was good clean drinking water once it had passed through the filtering and conditioning of the Nanite recyclers. He checked all positions but still, there was nothing out there but slime worms, snakes and big flying beetles. He sat down behind a small desk and dialed for Command.

“Lt. Masters, for Admiral T’Thakk.”

The Klack Admiral who was in charge of this operation came on almost immediately. Normally no Marine Lieutenant could simply call right up to the top brass, but Roy could have called the Eternal Warrior and would have been connected.

The Klack Admiral was one of the two Klack he had saved from being shot, back on Harper’s Junction almost seven years ago. It was that Admiral who wanted Roy to call if he had a moment. The Klack face was unreadable, but Roy started to learn the subtle ways Klack communicated emotions with their feelers and how they moved their heads. The feelers right now told him the insectoid officer was relaxed.

“I already expected your call Lieutenant, how is the situation down there?”

“We are currently making camp, Sir. We covered about 150 miles in difficult terrain but have not made any contact or even noticed any traces of sentient occupation. I would like to volunteer for a scout mission, Sir.”

“You are on a scout mission, are you not?”

“Sir, it is the same back home on Green Hell. We are stomping through the swamp in high tech suits and use high tech sensors and scare anything away, or make what we are looking for hiding somewhere.”

“So what are you proposing, exactly?”

“Going out there, sans Quasimodo and see if I can’t find those elusive buggers.”

“Can’t say it would be a bad idea, but I just got word, the Army localized the aliens and has them surrounded. I guess this one goes to the boys in green and spoiled your chance to get close and personal with that planet.”

“So we got all mudded up for nothing?” Roy had a strange feeling something was missing in the picture. Not that he had any doubt that the Army could handle whatever they found, it was just an unexplainable notion.

--””--

Sure enough, five hours later the official word came down to return to the dropship.

Dunn was the last to leave the MOTEL and triggered the self destruct sequence. “What a waste, we just came here.”

“Weren’t you complaining to be here in the first place?” Roy asked as he watched their shelter crumble and melt away like a sandcastle washed over by water.

“I just hate to get dressed up for nothing.”

The APC sprinter to pick them up was already on its way and the marines on their way to a more open area where the LC was designated.

Roy wanted to say something when his strange ability to sense danger hit him.

Green floating things with arms appeared flashing reddish light beams at the marines. At the same time, tremendous explosions rocked the landscape.

The red light was the source of the danger! Roy instantly and instinctively knew not to look into it.

Dunn next to him had dropped to his knees and ripped his helmet off, not taking it off, but actually tearing it.

Corporal Kokovhr, was hit by a weapon beam engulfing the marine in a ball of lighting white fire.

Another explosion threw a big black tree right onto Roy and rained mud water and debris onto the platoon.

While he tried to get out from under the tree that pinned him into the hip-high water, he blinked at several icons of his command interface, instructing it to put Dunn in stasis.

He pushed at the tree and barked in the comm pick up. “Don’t look into that red light, and start shooting!” Roy threw the tree off and got up. His threat monitor showed sixty huge machines stomping towards their position.

Several of the green floating things had been killed, his platoon casualty list showed twenty-six marines out and one name on the KIA list.

He had no idea what those towering robotic machines were, but they were Army and displayed the Union flag.

“This is Lt. Masters, Command we are under fire by unidentified Army hardware. Alien sentients encountered.”

A voice responded. “Lieutenant, these are Army Gorgons, they are rogue and under full shields. We are unable to establish control.”

One of the machines opened up with a deuterium slug Gatling and made the shields of two Marines glow brightly.

“Lieutenant, Nine-Nine-Two here. The Whakeys use some form of visual psionics. I think they control the Army hardware too. If we shoot them we kill whoever is inside.”

“I know, lay a load under the feet of those things. We need time to figure something out.”

He and his remaining men used the “humpback “ TL to transmit micro loads into the ground underneath the Army battle machines and created instant sinkholes, hoping the machine’s sensors would be overloaded with the shower of debris and fall into these instant trap pits.

Roy fired at the last green floating balls he could see. Killing two more, but it seemed killing the aliens didn’t stop whatever control they had over the machines.

Four of the Gorgons fell into the pits, the other two managed to stop.

The Army machines compensated and started to float. All it got them was a few moments.

The Army hardware came closer and poured constant fire into the remaining marines.

The jungle around them was long gone, water had turned into billowing clouds of white steam.

The worst part was that these machines were occupied by men and if they shoot back, they would kill Union soldiers.

Just then through the clouds of smoke and steam a huge shape appeared on their side. It was a Quasimodo in PASS configuration. Roy could hear a deep roar even inside his suit, the dual TKU cannons on the shoulder of the giant sent mountain shattering pulses of superheated matter into the Army walkers shields.

“Eugbenzi don’t kill the Soldiers!”

“Lieutenant they are not occupied, these are autonomous machines!”

Roy had too many questions, “Where did Eugbenzi come from? Why did Union robots attack? Why was he told the machines were occupied? But at the moment he did not clutter his mind, he now was free to fight. Putting his Sitku in sniper mode he took carefully aim, waited for the exact moment when the machines fired and needed to create shield gaps.

He took one out, Eugbenzi and Nine-Nine-Two destroyed three more, when the rest suddenly stopped and lowered their weapon arms.

Behind them an even bigger thing appeared, it also was Army Green.