by M. D. Cooper
Major Ender and Tanis exchanged a few other pre-combat pleasantries before the major left to join his platoon. Tanis wasn’t sure why he came over in person—perhaps it was to ensure that the new CO was in good hands.
While Tanis had spoken with Williams and gotten into her armor the time had ticked away. It was now t-minus 15 until drop. She climbed into the 4th Bravo’s transport and racked in. The rest of the platoon was already in place, Sergeant Williams prowling through the lot, inspecting armor and gear, slapping and swearing his pleasure or dismay.
Once Tanis racked in he gave her a final check.
“Everything looks good, sir, you know your stuff,” it was high praise from a platoon sergeant.
“I wouldn’t still be alive if I didn’t,” Tanis replied.
“Fair enough,” came Williams’s response. “Still, not often you see a non-Marine officer who knows her asshole from her elbow. Sir.”
Tanis wasn’t certain how to respond, Marines were often more familiar with their officers than the regular TSF, probably because all officers in the Marines rose up through the ranks. She didn’t have to worry about a response as Williams had already moved on, checking the lieutenant’s gear before racking himself in.
The next several minutes were filled with the sounds of Marines mentally preparing for combat. For some it was catcalls and curses, others prayed, others said nothing and simply looked forward stoically. No one was asleep, which was almost unusual.
Right on its mark the transport ‘dropped’. In reality the transports boosted out of the hanger on acceleration rails, but these were Force Recon Orbital Drop Marines, and as far as they were concerned, they always dropped.
Once clear of the Arcturus, the transports fired their main engines—short run antimatter burners—and the ships went from 0g to over 6g in seconds. Tanis gritted her teeth and watched the clock. The burn would run for almost three minutes and then the transports would rotate and reverse the burn to break. Within five minutes they would be disembarking onto Toro.
“Love this shit,” one of the Marines called out as the transport rotated and Tanis fought the feeling of weightlessness in the pit of her stomach.
Then the burn hit again, this time eyeballs out, and Tanis squeezed hers shut. She knew they wouldn’t pop out, but she still hated the feeling of them pulling at her eye sockets.
Right on time there was a loud clang and the transport grappled onto an external pad on Toro’s South Transport Station.
In the blink of an eye, Williams was at the hatch, opening it and yelling for the Marines to get on the pad and make it secure.
There was about two-thirds regular gravity on the pad, but it was exposed to vacuum.
The Marines disembarked from the two exits by squad, covering corners and moving into position, the two-thirds gravity allowing them to race across the space in long bounds.
Tanis and Lieutenant Tippin were last off the transport; the moment they were out it boosted off—better able to provide cover and assistance from space than on the pad.
The platoon secured the landing platform while squad one’s first fireteam—one/one—worked on breaching the airlock. The immediate area clear, one/two set up shielding behind one/one and took up positions to provide covering fire when the lock was breached.
Tanis dispersed nano around the airlock and took cover to the side. Tippin joined her and they monitored the events over the combat net.
The airlock doors slid open and one/one moved in to disable the inner airlock. Behind them one/three set up an ES shield to seal the airlock against the vacuum once both doors were open. The electro static shield was calibrated to hold in atmosphere but allow humans to pass through.
Tanis sent her nano through the lock and into the corridor beyond, feeding the data stream to the platoon’s combat net. The Marines’ HUDs updated, providing a real-time clear visual of the inside of the corridor provided by the nano.
Three/one signaled that they detected no movement and held their position while one/one moved back into the airlock and began advancing down the corridor.
Tanis checked the battalion-wide combat net. All transports had successfully dropped off their platoons and all platoons had completed their breach procedures. Everything was running like clockwork.
The battalion AI, Bruno, reported that no communication attempt had been made while the transports were boosting in and even after the breaches were complete no signal had come out of Toro, though he had been making the required communication attempts.
Angela had directed several nano to find the nearest communications hub and she was working on breaching the station’s cryptography.
Tanis posted the update on the battalion-net. Bruno was also working on breaches in four other locations where company captains were positioned with nano capable of managing the hacks.
Her attention was brought back to her physical location as shots rang out from within the station.
Based on the nano-scan, one/one had entered a large cargo holding area that, while not filled, had enough crates to hide several dozen of the enemy. The squad reported that they had shielding up to protect the corridor and called for re-enforcements.
Lieutenant Tippin signaled for the rest of squad one to move into the corridor. Squad two and three took up positions near the entrance, ready for the signal to rush in.
Tanis rose from the position of cover she and Tippin shared and took up a position near the entrance alongside two/three. Tippin followed suit, taking up position with another fireteam.
Down the corridor and in the warehouse, squad one signaled that they were in position. They were keeping the enemy suppressed with pulse rifle fire, but the enemy was bringing in more heavy weapons to eliminate the Marines’ cover.
Williams led the next fireteam in and Tanis followed after with hers. Tippin instructed three/one to stay behind and cover the entrance while the rest of the fireteams moved down the corridor.
Tanis stepped out into the space and took a position behind several crates. Both sides were using pulse rifles—a sane precaution when neither really wanted to punch holes in the station.
Several of the other platoons had also run into resistance, though none had any details on the nature of the defenders yet. Tanis’s nano had made it across the warehouse and she directed it to get in close for a better look at who they were up against.
She let out a verbal cry as the image of the enemy appeared in her mind. At first she thought what she was looking at was a mask or exo-armor, but it wasn’t, it was what these men and women actually looked like.
The thing that stood out at first were the long, tapered spikes driven through their eyes and out the backs of their heads. Out of their mouths, more spikes jutted, some appearing to have been driven through the lower jaw. Below the head their bodies were cacophonies of plas and steel mixed with flesh. There seemed to be little consistency, other than the horror it induced.
In some places metal plates appeared to have been screwed into flesh, in others attached by having more of the spikes pounded through. Some limbs ended in weapons, others in claws of steel, bone or some mixture.
Tanis had seem her variety of mods, some more extreme than these, but the nature of these alterations were grotesque. No clean surgical cuts or mergers had been done. It was like a child with a sledge-hammer had m
angled these people.
It was evidenced in the blood and puss that oozed from all over their bodies, from horrible things like smashed remains of eyeballs stuck to faces to genitalia half cut off, hanging between legs.
The weapons fire had masked something even worse: the once-human creatures were all hissing and screaming. Not in pain or fear, but in anger and rage. They seemed oblivious to the fact that they were monstrous horrors and were entirely focused on their brutal anger.
Tanis had been in the TSF for most of her life and had seen a lot of horrible things in the field; when she was younger there were things that had caused her to freeze up with fear or horror, but it had been some time since that had happened—until now.
“What is it?” Williams was beside her, giving her shoulder a slight shake.
Tanis shook her head, making eye contact. “Tell the Marines to be ready for what they’re going to see. The enemy is not pretty,” she told him at the same time as the battalion AI.
Williams gave her a quizzical look, but nodded. “We’re working to flank them,” he said. “They’re really just focused on a frontal assault. Every now and then one of them runs out charging at us too. They’re not too bright.”
“You can say that again,” Tanis muttered.
Tippin and Williams were good at their jobs. Within several minutes the Marines were flanking the enemy and Tanis was at the forefront. She wanted to see for herself what these things were. Maybe there would be some clue explaining what had happened to them and how they were able to function, let alone fight on the side that had done…whatever had been done to them.
“Sweet fucking…fuck,” a PFC named Chang said. “What are these? Are they really humans or just some crazy bot used to scare off visitors?”
Tanis’s nano had performed a detailed scan and she knew the answer. “They’re fully human, many of them had this done to them in the past few weeks.”
One of the fallen creatures moved, twisting so its sightless spike eyes faced Tanis. “You’ll join us, join us or die!”
The words were almost unintelligible, the creature’s tongue working around the spikes in its mouth, getting sliced further as it worked out the words.
“Fuck no!” one of the Marines yelled and put a ballistic round from a sidearm into the thing.
“Perez, stow your shit!” Williams yelled. “We’re not assassins or executioners, no matter what these things are, we don’t execute the wounded.”
Williams didn’t appear rattled by what he saw, but his lack of actual discipline for Perez showed that even the gunnery sergeant was having trouble with the nature of the enemy.
Angela took a moment to respond.
Tanis let out an audible sigh.
The platoon moved further into the station. On several more occasions they engaged the strange horrors in combat, each time defeating them with no losses other than small slices of sanity.
By now all of the other platoons had also encountered the enemy. There were a few variations, different types of materials, weapons and—in some cases—blades instead of spikes had been used.
One platoon encountered a creature that appeared to be three or four of the horrors assembled into one. It ultimately required incendiary grenades to bring the creature down.
Angela replied.
Tanis updated the company commanders with the data she had and advised additional caution as it appeared they were not facing forces that would fear pain or death.
The battalion combat net showed many of the platoons engaged with the enemy. One appeared to be vastly outnumbered and Tanis worked with Bruno and Ender to re-enforce it.
Once the warehouse was secured the platoon moved further into the station, working their way toward one of the elevators that ran down into the core of the asteroid. They encountered only light and sporadic resistance. Other platoons hit harder opposition, but the 242 was amongst the best and pushed through with only light casualties.
The 4th Bravo reached the entrance to the facility serving the elevator. This area of the station had been mainly used for cargo transfer and so there were only two small lifts that dropped down into the asteroid.
As the two/one moved into the small foyer, the lift on the right opened up and a grotesque figure shambled out. It was over nine feet tall and appeared to be made up of multiple humans. Heads and limbs protruded from a variety of locations. There were also robotic limbs and things that appeared to have come from either the animal kingdom, or pure imagination.
Most of the limbs ended in weapons that started firing immediately. A plasma bolt burned through one of the Marines in the lead fireteam before they could get behind cover. Williams was hollering for CFT and ES shields and the platoon shifted into offering as much support for the beleaguered two/one fireteam as they could through the narrow entrance to the lift foyer.
Tanis sent in a swarm of nano to attack the thing. It had good countermeasures, but Tanis and Angela collectively began to breach them.
Tanis felt a twinge of phantom pain in her mind at the thought of it. The humans that made up that monster were organically linked at the neurological level, something that was banned by the Phobos Accords because of the complete and utter insanity that always ensued.
Humans were not wired to organically share their mind with other beings. AI and synthetic interfaces erected careful boundaries that allowed humans to participate in direct data assimilation and virtual worlds while maintaining their sense of self.
As Tanis recovered from her shock, another plasma bolt melted off a Marine’s right arm and brought her back to the physical world.
Pulse rifles were having no effect on the mass the dozen humans that constituted the horror presented. Several Marines fired electron rails which the creature’s ES shield shrugged off. Most of the platoon fell back to small ballistic weapons; while those could penetrate the ES shield, once they did they were slowed and caused little damage.
The Marines were not panicking, but if they couldn’t make a dent against this thing they would have to retreat. Something she doubted that they would do with wounded in the field.
Williams said over the combat net.
She unslung her S901 and loaded in a magazine of armor piercing 20mm rounds. Moving down the corridor she fired several rounds into the wall, opening up holes into the elevator foyer on the far side of the room from two/one.
She quickly flipped out the magazine and swapped in incendiary rounds.
The AI didn’t respond but Tanis could tell that she was following the order. At least just one of them would face court martial for the action. The Phobos Accords, which were created at the end of the century long Ascendance War, governed not only human and AI interactions, but also the things you could do to a sentient being’s mind.
Burning a mind was tantamount to a war crime.
Angela directed the nano that had entered into the horror’s body into its brains and set them about their task, burning out all dendrites that facilitated higher functions. The act would turn each of the horrors’ brains into something that could do no more than power the organs under its control.
Normally the process could be done in a dozen seconds, but with the number of brains in the creature it would take a few minutes.
Tippin directed several fireteams to follow Tanis’s example and moments later they were rotating incendiary fire to keep the thing guessing where the next assault would come from.
The work became easier as the number of functioning limbs on the creature decreased. After what only turned out to be four minutes from the time the elevator door opened to when the thing dropped, the platoon stood down, every one of them knowing they could have easily died in this encounter, a thought made all the more sobering by the realization that two Marines had died and three others were in no shape to continue on.
Tippin and Williams triaged and adjusted the affected squads, sending a total of eight Marines back to the position three/one held at the entrance.