Just as Samuel was beginning to daydream about the pristine cabin on the edge of a great forest where he and Sura and Orion lived in peace and health the real nightmare of UK1326 began to unfold.
NO EASY DAY
Suddenly one of the shoulder cameras of a legionnaire began to move strangely, and his vitals spiked into the red. His voice was muffled as if something was covering his mouth, but Samuel could tell through the legionnaire channel that the man was screaming.
A second legionnaire’s camera swept up to reveal something with a humanoid torso and too many legs descending from the fog just as their camera went dark, vitals spiked red, then to black.
“Shoto, you’re under attack! Both flanks!” Samuel yelled into his com-bead as the Line Warden swept her gaze from left to right, her camera revealing nothing but empty city and confused convict soldiers, Samuel shouted, “Back-shadows! Back-shadows!”
“I see them! What the hell-,” Shoto’s voice cut off as her camera revealed a bizarre hostile carrying one of her legionnaires up the sheer side of a building and into the thick fog above.
Samuel sat back in his seat as his mind struggled to comprehend what he’d just seen. The Reaper had, in his time, faced everything from mutants to marauders and it seemed like every stripe of scavenger the universe had to offer, not to mention Helion elites and security troopers. Nothing up to now had prepared him for the barrage of images he was seeing through the cameras as Shoto bellowed for her troops to form a defensive circle with her in the center.
Another legionnaire’s vitals spiked then blacked out. Gunfire erupted as convicts began shooting at the hostiles. Another legionnaire’s vitals went black as bullets riddled his body. Through the camera feeds Samuel could see sparks and scraps of metal flying off the arachnid body of a hostile that was attempting to drag away the man’s bloody corpse. The Reaper didn’t get the best look at the hostile, though he could tell from the fleeting images of it before the hostile dropped its prey and fled into the darkness that it was at least part machine.
He guesstimated that it was roughly two meters in size, so in order to scale the sheer walls of the buildings while carrying the full weight of the legionnaire it had to have tremendous strength. The humanoid torso had a head with a sunken metal face, more like a mask, and the arms of the hostile looked as if they had several small gun barrels mounted on them in addition to sharp hooked edges that enabled them to kill and haul away the bodies of their prey.
More gunfire from the circle took Samuel’s attention to the camera feeds of those legionnaires and he could see that their bullets seemed to have little effect on the strange walls of the buildings themselves. He made a mental note that for better or worse, it looked like at least small arms fire would cause little in the way of collateral damage.
Unsurprisingly, it looked like the discipline of the legionnaires, still green from their training, and experiencing a truly terrifying first taste of battle, was breaking down swiftly. Most of the soldiers were firing blinding into the fog, blasting away at shadows with no effect before fumbling to swap out magazines.
It was during those shocked moments of vulnerability that the gun spider creatures seemed to strike; leaping out of the fog and shadow to wrap metal arms around their victims and pull them away in a spray of blood or to rush the legionnaires and rapid fire their projectile weapons with deadly effect.
Samuel watched from Shoto’s camera as her vision tracked one of the gun spiders climbing up the wall with a convict in its grip and could see as he zoomed in on the feed that there were tiny green pulses of energy that rippled through the blocks of the buildings as the machine spider’s legs ran across it. It seemed to Samuel that the building itself was somehow aiding in the gun spider’s apparent defiance of gravity and the opposing mass of their prey.
Shoto shouted for her platoon to maintain firing discipline but her cries fell on deaf ears as the platoon fell apart. They’d already lost eight of their number in the last few seconds, while those that weren’t attempting to flee were being divided into smaller groups by the swift attackers.
In another handful of seconds, most of the lone soldiers who had been separated from the larger groups of legionnaires were picked off by the creatures, falling to the scything limbs or hails of bullets from the hostile machines.
From Samuel’s vantage point he was only able to see through the live feeds from the cameras of the legionnaires still in the fight, as the feeds from those who had been killed were limited at best.
The repeated bark of Shoto’s shotgun brought Samuel’s attention to the Line Warden and he watched in horror as she gunned down two convicts who were attempting to flee. That fatal show of force galvanized the remaining convicts to stand their ground as Shoto approached them with grim authority.
“Line Warden Shoto, this is happening across the whole damn city, pull your people back to the landing zone!” ordered Samuel while the observatory exploded with activity as hostiles were being engaged by the full legion. “We can rally there and wait for further orders; at least you won’t have it coming at you from all sides. How copy?”
“Form a square and fall back on my command!” she shouted as she brandished her shotgun at another soldier who looked as if he was about to run. “We retreat properly or die right here! Form up!”
Shoto snapped orders as the legionnaires rushed to form a tight square, standing shoulder to shoulder so that each soldier’s line of fire overlapped the other. The shattered and smoking bodies of several gun spiders were strewn across the streets, though far too few in comparison to the heavy casualties sustained by the legion so far. Shoto stood in the center and shouted for them to move out, insisting that they maintain tight fire discipline.
“We’ve only got the ammo we came with and your ammo is your life! Keep it tight, only shoot when you know you can hit something,” she growled as the remaining soldiers moved briskly back down the street.
The hostile attacks became sporadic as the legionnaires rushed towards the landing zone. The convicts did their best to fire only when a hit was assured. However, the legion had pushed deep into the city and it was a long way back to the landers.
Once they’d cleared the main skyscraper section of the city, Shoto’s platoon of twenty-nine had been reduced to a mere eleven soldiers in addition to the Line Warden.
Though Samuel had a hard time following the camera feeds through the fog he was positive that they’d eliminated at least four more hostiles. It was likely that others lay destroyed in the fog and shadow beyond the camera’s view.
These creatures seemed to have been built for stealth and lightning assault rather than a stand up fight and he was confident that had it been a platoon of Reaper veterans down there the tide of battle would be flowing in the other direction.
The legionnaires weren’t equipped with the kind of battle armor and multi-functional helmets that the Reapers used, much less the security forces and elite troopers of the greater Grotto military. Had the legionaries been better equipped, with infra-red and low light vision settings on their faceplates, proper rifles and more than just a few weeks training then perhaps the fighting would have gone differently. By the time they reached the lander Shoto’s platoon had been steadily whittled down to only the Line Warden and three convicts with empty rifles.
Throughout the city the scenario had been similar, with the legionnaires being relentlessly assaulted by the gun spiders, with many of the legion’s corpses being carried off into the darkness toward fates unknown.
Samuel saw many of the squad leaders get up from their chairs and storm out of the room while others gathered around the work stations of squad leaders like himself who still had active soldiers on the ground.
A shout from Shoto brought Samuel’s attention back to the fight at hand and he saw Shoto squeeze the trigger of her shotgun and blow a convict off his feet as he swung his rifle at her, presumably to get at her weapon for himself and she’d killed him for it.
Gun spid
ers took the last two convicts in a hail of bullets and Shoto broke into a dead run towards the lander. A metallic chittering sound filled Samuel’s ears and he saw through the feed as Shoto turned around to face three of the machines that were rushing across open ground to reach her.
Shoto bellowed a war cry and unleashed the full fury of her repeating shotgun. The hurricane of shot from her weapon shredded two of the hostiles but the last one kept coming. Shoto dropped her shotgun, drew her pistol and started firing at her remaining attacker. When another hostile appeared on her flank she quickly ran out of ammunition trying to track two separate targets, but managed to take out one. Her weapon clicked dry as the last hostile was bearing down on her. Dropping her weapon, she turned to flee, making it only a few steps before the hostile leapt on her and her feed went dark, her vitals spiking red before going black.
Samuel sat in silence for nearly five minutes as the observatory thrummed with activity. After another twenty minutes the observatory was mostly empty, most of the Reaper squad leaders having left the room to prepare themselves for the coming battle.
All of them, including Samuel, knew that Grotto had invested too heavily in the mission for such an overwhelming defeat to alter their plans. The entire purpose of the penal legion had been to reveal the enemy and give the squad leaders a chance to study the enemy without risking marine lives.
The mission clock had not been altered by Command, and that meant that in a few hours the Reaper units would make planetfall and move into the city. Most all of the convict stats were black across the board, with the few red bars moving to black by the second as five thousand men and women died in the city. Saying “this is the job” seemed to Samuel an insufficient sentiment given the situation, though the marine knew that little else applied.
The penal legion had served as intended, providing Reaper Command with highly valuable intelligence that would enable the actual invasion force to be more combat effective. Though the size of the force that awaited the Reapers was as yet unknown, the hour long engagement had visibly yielded multitudes of hostile casualties, and the marines could expect to face an enemy that was at least marginally weaker than it had been previously.
With a heavy heart, Samuel stood up, removed his headset, and left the observatory with one last glance at the mission clock. He’d known it would go badly. No salvage this big came without the cost being paid in blood.
METAL STORM
In the hours after the crushing defeat of the penal legion by the gun spiders Reaper Command had assumed full mission authority from the Warden Corps. Investigators and engineers had worked in conjunction with the Grotto military advisors who accompanied the mission to analyze the data collected prior to the battle and during the penal legion’s failed engagement.
Command had modified the landing strategy. Instead of surrounding the city with smaller forces, the Reaper battle force would enter the city as a single fighting unit certain their superior equipment and experience would be enough to enable them to defeat the gun spiders with relative ease.
Using available intelligence from the penal legion’s brief time in the city proper it had been determined that the entire city was laid out in a grid that was relatively rhomboid in nature. The layout of the streets and buildings converged upon a ziggurat pyramid with a flat top that dwarfed all of the other buildings. The Reaper force would move into the city and seize the ziggurat as priority one. Once it had been fortified they would begin conducting surveys to determine the nature of the building and any possible threats within the city beyond the spiderbots.
A tertiary objective was to determine the fate of the penal legionnaires whose corpses had been hauled away by gun spiders.
Several hours later the landing craft carrying Tango Platoon slammed into the planet’s surface just outside the urban limits of the alien necropolis.
Samuel pounded out of the open bay doors, his boots crunching gravel. The marine could see the sky burning with dozens more landing craft making planetfall in nearby landing zones.
Squad Hyst formed up behind him as his gaze swept across the city and an involuntary shudder moved through him. He thought of the penal legion’s defeat and found himself frustrated at the brutish strategy of simply hurling wave after wave of soldiers at an entrenched enemy.
Samuel thought that it would have been standard procedure to embed a tracking device in each of the penal legionnaires to track them from orbit. When he inquired, he was politely informed that the cost to track them was much higher than the cost of simply embedding the cheap explosives to prevent them from wandering too far. To Samuel, the desire of Grotto to save the cost of tracking was simply transferring the burden of the cost onto human beings, which he was learning more and more were Grotto’s most renewable and exploited resource.
Within minutes of planetfall the full company of nearly nine hundred Reapers had formed up by platoon and marched in tight wedges towards the heart of the city.
Tango Platoon was under the command of Boss Wynn Marsters, as had been their custom since Samuel’s first day as a marine, though, for the first time, Samuel found himself in a command position as well. The name Boss Hyst still sounded odd to his ears. Samuel found himself in charge of four more lives than he was used to.
Ben had always had Samuel’s back and over the years he and Patrick had shared many battles and adventures. Bianca was a solid veteran in addition to the personal relationship she and Samuel shared. Holland, despite the fact that he was the newest member of the squad, had served in Vorhold, which made him a hardened veteran in everyone’s eyes.
Samuel knelt down as the battle force marched forward and ran his hand across the grooves in the street that covered the city. Now that he was on the ground and observing them with his own eyes he found that they were more disturbing to witness in person. He wasn’t so sure that they were used for simple construction, and he began to get the nagging feeling that they had other uses he couldn’t fathom. Ben walked past Samuel and the machine gunner nodded as he followed Samuel’s gaze.
“It’s like you were saying, the angles are all wrong, kind of makes my head spin,” Ben said as Samuel stood and rejoined the ranks, “We’re only a few clicks in and I’m getting twitchy.”
“I’ll feel better once we have a hardpoint,” said Samuel as Squad Hyst moved through the streets towards the skyscrapers that loomed in the fog. “Those spider things are going to come from all directions when they decide to engage.”
“You said it, Boss,” agreed Patrick from the front of the wedge as he swept his muzzle back and forth over the perimeter ahead of them while he marched, “From what I heard at mess this morning those convicts got hammered fast.”
“Bravo Tango, we’re picking up a whole lot of nothing, what’s your status?” a voice crackled over the com-beads, and Samuel recognized it as Boss Harker, the leader of Bravo Platoon.
“Tango Bravo, no sign of hostile forces,” replied the voice of Boss Marsters, “We’re only a few clicks from the first point of contact between the penal legion and the hostiles, maybe that’ll stir them up.”
Squad Hyst reached the place where Shoto and her legionaries had first encountered the enemy, and two thoughts occurred to him at once. The first was realizing he had forged a more profound connection to the convicts and their warden than he’d thought. Despite being removed in orbit he had shared in their battle. The second was how odd it was that there was no evidence of their presence a mere three hours after the engagement.
“Hold up,” said Samuel as he threw his clenched fist in the air. His squad responded by stopping and holding position. “I know this place. I was the squad leader for a penal platoon that engaged the hostiles right on this spot.”
“Hyst, your squad is breaking formation and we just lost line of sight on you,” inquired the voice of Boss Ulanti, whose squad was one street over. “Report or fall in.”
“I don’t see anything, sir, that’s the problem. I ran ops for Line Warden Shoto and this
is the corner where they engaged the hostiles.” Samuel walked across the street and knelt down where Shoto had fired her shotgun. “No blood, no bodies, no shell casings. Boss, it’s like they were never here.”
“Copy that, we are finding no combat evidence either. Ditch your normalcy bias marines,” growled the voice of Boss Marsters in the ears of Tango Platoon. “Assume that the enemy has superior technology, numerical advantage, and entrenched defenses. We are the prey until we can flip the script on them. Stay frosty, in two minutes we are going to push double-time to the ziggurat. I want a hardpoint and I want off these streets.”
Tango Platoon girded up and started marching more swiftly through the streets, checking their blind corners and back-shadows as they moved. The lack of evidence that the penal legion and gun spiders ever engaged or were even present on the ground became increasingly disturbing to Samuel, the growing sense of dread began pounding in his skull.
It was as if he’d dreamed this moment, perhaps while in the darkness of his spinal injury, half remembering it as the marines plunged ever deeper into the cyclopean city.
Soon the ziggurat loomed out of the fog as they reached the base of the strange building. Like the others, it had been built of the greenish black material and had a polished smooth surface, but it was filled with deep terraces and staircases that created natural battlements.
Squad Ulanti joined Samuel’s team at the base of the pyramid shaped building and at a silent gesture from her, began pulling security details. While Squad Ulanti fanned out to cover possible avenues of counter-attack, Squad Marsters marched out of an alleyway and without breaking stride pushed past the other marines and began their ascent of the pyramid.
“Squads Marsters and Hyst on me,” ordered Boss Marsters as he took the lead in slinging his rifle and climbing over the first terrace, “Ulanti will hold the door open if we need to pull out fast.”
Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) Page 11