After dispersing from Secturo he had sought out Colonel Carbera and presented him with a plan he had developed. With the help of the 98th ACR Duntan’s team could help lure away the enemy troops pursuing Colonel Hofens and his entire infantry regiment. The 23rd Regiment had been charged with evacuating the entire supply convoy from Secturo on their way to Mirjian Peak. To buy them more time the Markus’s Reapers had separated from the actual main force and drawn as much attention to themselves as possible. Markus had agreed with Colonel Slaige that it was time to stop the running and actually hit the enemy from time to time. It was time they knew that the Federation military forces could inflict losses on their troops as well. Duntan was determined to start making the enemy pay for each square kilometer of ground they managed to take.
In accordance with his plan some of his men were now inside the forest distracting and harassing the enemy squads operating in the area. Minutes ago some of the Armored Cavalry Regiment had popped out of the dense trees for just seconds and had made their presence known. It didn’t take long before a group of alien transports appeared over that very area and dropped off a reinforced platoon sized unit. Duntan’s troops had let those soldiers have a few minutes peace before letting them stumble upon them. It was now these men and women that were moving through the forest and drawing as much fire as possible. Groups of the large enemy soldiers advanced against them and Duntan watched these larger objects finally appear on his map. A group of five moved to take each position abandoned by his own forces while other enemies spread out among the trees.
“Cat ready,” he heard and looked up at another tree over a hundred yards away, where just like him Sergeant Katherine Questok crouched on a thick tree limb.
“Mule ready,” confirmed Faiad a second later from another tree further down the line.
Duntan sent back a nonverbal acknowledge and looked back down at the ground in time to see Jade or Lieutenant Aldrish run by. In one fluid motion she stopped mid-stride, twirled around, and kneeled on the leaf covered ground before firing in the direction she had just come from. In response two orange beams flashed by with one striking the ground beside her and the second shattered a large chuck off a nearby tree truck. More weapons fire, both friendly and not, was hear right after as two other human operatives ran past. Captain Porter and Lance Corporal Liandro could be seen moving past Jade in their powerful armored suits. Jade waited a few more seconds before he too turned and ran further into the forest behind his two other comrades.
It was at that moment that Duntan finally visualized the enemy. First it was just a pair of the bearish looking soldiers that ran in on all fours. As they began to stand up in order to fight a barrage of blue plasma bolts hit them from beyond visual range. Each shot was either absorbed or completely deflected by the full body armor worn by the Teddies. Still Duntan was patient and waited for the rest of the group to catch up. It didn’t take long before five other brutish soldiers jogged into view almost directly below the colonel and began to fire back towards the operatives harassing them. Two soldiers stood firing like the first pair while the rest hunched over to bring their large back mounted cannons to bear. These three unleashed a loud and deadly counterattack directed at his men.
His map display showed other groups of enemy soldiers moving through the forest in order to flank his own warriors, but Duntan had hoped for this to happen. Those flanks had been exposed for a reason. The positions had been prepared by him and his men before the fight had even started. Unbeknownst to those alien creatures they were being lured into those areas.
“In position,” Cat and Mule transmitted almost at the exact same time to indicate that the two other groups were now in proper places.
Finally it was time and Duntan triggered the shredder mines. The first group to his left went off a millisecond before the others, sending a cloud of matter and dirt into the air just as those below him detonated. What had only a second ago been seven clearly visible enemy soldiers became a thick cloud of mixed of debris and green blood. He watched various detached body parts fling forth from the center of the alien formation in all directions as the hundreds of bullet shaped explosive flechettes tore into the enemy. Having seen the effects of the shredders before Duntan was relatively unfazed by the gore beneath him. With his special helmet optics he was able to see directly through the thick cloud. Five of the Teddies lay unmoving in multiple pieces and the forest floor was now soaked in green fluids. As he kept watching two of the enemy actually rose off the ground on all fours and stumbled around, trying to regain themselves after the concussive blasts.
“Now,” was all the colonel said to the rest of his team before leaping off the Fronta tree in the direction of one of the unsteady enemy soldiers.
As he fell silently through the air towards his target Duntan’s left hand pulled back and a narrow blade extended outward from its wrist. The Teddy was still in a state of daze when he slammed into its exposed back. His weight drove the creature back down into the ground. This disorientation gave Duntan all the time he needed to pull the cannon atop the soldier’s back away and drive his wrist blade into the area between its neck and shoulder. He felt only the slightest vibration in his left arm as the disintegration field activated around the knife as the tip encountered resistance from the Teddy’s armor. The field was active for only a split second, but it was enough time to destroy the armor beneath the blade and let it slide cleanly into the creature’s body.
Having studied the being’s anatomy days before from the one captured by Alpha Company he knew exactly where to position the blade. He angled it just enough to sever two major arteries and mostly importantly its spinal code at the thoracic level. The effect on the Teddy was similar to that of a human being. Its lower extremities instantly went limp and the large body collapsed forward to the blood soaked ground. His cut complete Duntan ordered the blade’s retraction and swung both armored hands up to grab the enemy’s head. The entire move to break the creature’s neck was purely instinctual muscle memory, but was a good reassurance to its death.
His right shoulder vibrated at the moment to warn him of motion in the direction and allowed him to quickly turn in time to see the second Teddy rush towards him. To Duntan it was actually a testimony to the lack of training and combat experience the enemy underwent. Instead of firing its weapon from a distance the soldier had let rage overwhelm him. Before the Teddy even covered half the distance between them Duntan raised his right hand and triggered a directed repulsion pulse. The effect on the enemy was instant. For a moment it seemed to be stopped directly in its tracks, as if hitting a solid wall, before getting quickly thrown back to the ground.
Duntan was upon the Teddy before it could even think about getting back on its feet. He leaped into the air and came down on top of the other soldier’s body, his armored knees smashing into its large chest. The alien let out a deep guttural groan and tried to swipe at Duntan with its power arm in order to knock him off. Anticipating the fight he clamped down on the Teddy’s wrist with all his might, feeling the armor plating surrounding it crumple from the force applied on it by the powered exosuit. This multiplied strength allowed him to push the Teddy’s limb out of the way, almost completely across its head, to expose the softer underarm area. Not taking any more time Duntan jabbed his left fist into this fur covered armpit and triggered his blade once again. The disintegration field assisted blade instantly stabbed into the creature’s body. Feeling the arm go instantly limp told Duntan instantly that he must have severed the nerve plexus heading into it and the Teddy roared out in pain. He maneuvered the wrist blade inside the alien until the enemy let out one last scream and convulsed before finally going still beneath him.
“Chief, behind you, new group of Teddies,” said a soft voice through his TacLink just as his sophisticated external audio sensors picked up something large fall to the ground a good distance behind him.
Turning around in the already kneeling position Duntan detached his PC-105 carbine from his chest.
He brought the weapon up to his shoulder just in time to see another enemy soldier drop dead after its entire head exploded. Having seen damage like that before Duntan knew right away that the kill was the doing of Broke, Sergeant Zawelak, and his hypervelocity rifle. Broke was the team’s designated sniper for his mission as well as overwatch of the entire battlefield.
Duntan mentally thanked the man and squeezed his own trigger at another Teddy as a third soldier went down a second later with another head shot. This time the explosive armor piercing slug sliced through the soldier’s abdominal armor plate before detonating and shredded the creature’s heart. Even without a functioning heart the Teddy kept moving forward for a moment with its rifle firing deep orange energy bolts in various directions under reflexive neural impulses alone. The movement caused Duntan to adjust his fire and a trio of plasma bolts hit the dying soldier into its now exposed bleeding abdomen. Whether it was those final shots or not that brought that large beast down he would never know, but the Teddy finally succumbed and fell over motionless.
A tree trunk exploded to his right at that moment, shattered the tree in half, and sent a concussive wave into Duntan’s body. Inside the padded suit he was fully protected from the change in air pressure. The exosuit also protected him from the heat and shower of splinters that flew in all directions from the blasts center. Using the wave to his advantage Duntan rolled to the left even as he felt pieces of debris glace off his armor plating and came up on his feet already running and firing. Each shot was dead on even mid-run, taking down another of the Teddy’s with multiple shots to the neck and head. At that point he was too close the two remaining enemies to use the carbine so he quickly let it and allowed it to automatically reseal itself before attaching to his chest once more.
It was at that exact same time that he finally braced himself and slammed his shoulder into the closest soldier. Thanks to his armors synthetic musculature he was able to actually stun the large creature push him into a nearby tree, feeling its chest armor crack from the impact. Remarkable it recovered rather quickly and tried to punch him away. With increased speed Duntan avoided the assault while reaching behind his back to grab one of his grenades. He punched the creature thereafter with the same hand, blocked another swing with the other arm, and stuck the grenade to the alien’s chest. Right after he slammed his elbow into its jaw with all his might. The power behind the elbow destroyed the lower part the soldier’s helmet and fracturing its jaw. Disoriented and growling, with green blood pouring from its mouth, Duntan used all of his enhanced strength to lift the heavy creature into the air. Without a moments delay he launched the over half ton weighing being at the last enemy soldier taking aim at him. The creature was able to only fire off a single shot before the body of its squad mate crashed into it and detonated, killing both in the process.
“Four new transports on approach, ETA twenty seconds,” Broke informed him at that moment, relaying the data given to him by Colonel Carbera’s Reapers.
Duntan acknowledged and took a quickly look around him. Beyond the dead bodies, some of which were still twitching, littering the immediate area he saw other Echo members finishing off the other enemy squads. The three operatives that had previously been used to draw the enemy in had quickly returned to fight and were helping mop up the remaining alien forces. He noticed one of his soldiers had damage to his one of his legs and was limping around the field of battle, while another had his right arm held tightly again his chest plate. The unit’s TacLink connection gave the colonel instant information on both soldiers indicating that Cat had a fractured tibia and Joker had broken his humorous. From somewhere behind him a thunderous explosion went off, vibrating the ground beneath his feet and taking his attention away from the health status display. The initial blast was followed by a string of others almost immediately after only these were a little closer than the first.
“Reapers report new enemy formations coming from the West and North,” Broke transmitted right after the last detonation.
“I guess we’ve overstayed our welcome,” Duntan said and glanced around him one last time, “everyone pull back to EZ Two. Let the Reapers deal with those transports.”
SITTING two kilometers away in his Multispec covered Beacon armored command vehicle Colonel Markus Carbera watched the entire ambush engagement unfold atop a wooded covered hill. From this elevation his instruments were able to monitor Colonel Slaige’s SOU Echo and his own armored cavalry platoons maneuvering through the dense forest. Some of his units were now hovering steady just above the forest canopy and were starting to bombard the newly detected enemy forces. These units were almost completely invisible to all means of detection due to their adaptive camouflage. Divided into three separate forces the alien formations were trying to surround the Marine Special Operations team and close off their escape routes.
Upon his orders the Regimental artillery unit let loose with a barrage against the centermost formation before moving to a new location in order to avoid return fire that would surely be coming. Markus knew they only had a limited time before the enemy ships in orbit flew over their location and firing down on them. When he heard Duntan call for extraction at the secondary zone he quickly reorganized his forces. One formation composed of mostly infantry fighting vehicles and half of the Reapers Chimera tanks broke away and began to fight their way towards EZ Two. These heavy units had little trouble breaking through the enemy infantry formations. On the glowing screens in front of him Markus could see a few of his IFVs take some damage, but none of it was excessive enough to warrant much attention.
At the same time the rest of the camouflaged Reapers tanks rose slightly higher above the tree tops and unleashed a concentrated salvo of particle beams against the incoming alien transports. A number of cameras affixed to the Chimera tanks allowed him to visually see the blue particle beams strike the large transport craft as they flew towards what was previously team Echo’s combat location. To try and avoid the fire the enemy formation split up and began evasive maneuvers. For two of them it was already too late, their shields held for a few seconds, but the heavy barrage took its toll, causing the crimson protective layer to sudden fail. The first transport quickly detonated in midair. Its shattered debris hadn’t finished falling to earth when the second craft lost altitude after taking multiple hits across its entire body. Markus saw large holes form in its weakened hull plating and a number of large bodies fall out before it slammed into the forest canopy.
On the other display he watched the small beacons representing Duntan and his marines finally emerged at the small clearing labeled EZ Two. His units reached the locations seconds later and Markus thankful saw each individual of Echo disappear into one of his IFVs. Without waiting the armor vehicles accelerated towards another predestinated meeting area. It was at that moment that part of the forest exploded up sending whole trees flying into the air. The blast was followed and two others in the exact same location before the underground detonations switched a new area of the forest.
23rd Infantry Regiment
Telachia, Frontiera
Only an insignificant shudder could be felt as the Centaur smoothly accelerated forward once more. What remained of the 23rd Infantry Regiment surged ahead as one cohesive unit with the rescued cargo transports inside its center. They had stopped for a short break as well as a quick meeting between all of the unit commanders headed by Colonel Benjamin Hofens. After days of travel it was still clear that no one really knew where they were going. General Stelle had ordered them all to Mirjian Peak, but had revealed no other information to them. Now they were approaching this distinct location still had no idea of what to expect or do once they got there. Everyone assumed it was some type of hidden military installation or bunker, but nothing about it was noted on any tactical maps they had of the area. As such Colonel Hofens had devised a plan in which small units would break off from the main force and scout around Mirjian for any sort of entrance. At the same time his communications specialists would broa
dcast a constant message over TacLink in case there were actual troops or at the very least an RAI looking over the facility.
Spread out around the 23rd, in the different small valleys between the many hills of the region, were other small units that had made it out of Secturo. They were patched together formations of armored and infantry platoons as well as lighter support units. Their original units had been caught off guard just like everyone else during the start of the invasion and had been decimated by the enemy. The assault on Secturo had further degraded some of their capabilities. Still, even with so many losses, they continued to fight on. Hatred for the enemy now fueled their ranks and gave them something to fight for. Besides, there was really nowhere on the planet to retreat to if they wanted.
Inside his moving IFV Dexter Iorns knew those men and women would continue to fight until the last of them. It was what they had trained for and it was the reason for their being on Frontiera. The planet’s sole purpose was to function as a garrison in order to help stem the tide of any would be invasion into United Plants Federation space. Anyone serving on it knew their role in the order of things and knew what it meant for them to serve on Frontiera. Each one of these soldiers also had families spread across the entire Federation. Because of them they would fight not only for themselves, but more importantly for their husbands, their wives, their children, as well as their mothers and fathers. Without saying a word Dexter knew what everyone was thinking. The war couldn’t simply be on this one seemingly insignificant planet alone, which meant that those same families were now possibly in danger.
In this time of hardship they were all brothers-in-arms and did their utmost best to keep one another from crumbling beneath the heavy burden facing them. Thinking about everyone around him caused his mind to wonder about those were not. Some had not been so lucky and had perished without even firing a single shot, but others had died bravely in battle never to be seen again. Most of their bodies had not even been covered due to the fact that there simple had not been enough time and opportunity. Others, however, were not with the main group for an entirely differently reason. They were out there now trying to hit back at the enemy, something Dexter deeply wanted to do. Sitting there inside the safety of his armored vehicle Dexter bounced his knee up and down wishing he was out there with Colonel Slaige and the 98th ACR. Lieutenant Iorns knew the rest of his platoon felt the same way.
Con-Red: Recourse Page 44