by Isaac Hooke
“Fire at will,” Rade said.
He launched two Hellfires and sent body parts geysering into the air. He switched to the grenade launcher in his left hand, the electrolaser his right, and managed to take down two of the creatures before the front ranks met the line. A hornhead plowed straight into his mech, swinging its neck at the same time.
Rade was sent hurtling away and he landed on his back in a snowdrift.
The hornhead leaped down upon him and pinned him with those heavy legs. From its snout emerged a green, starfish-like... proboscis, for lack of a better word. It lashed out, striking his Titan in the torso. The creature emitted a high-pitched squeal and gushed some sort of acid from the proboscis, which began to burn through the mech’s chest area.
“Watch their proboscises,” Tahoe said over the comm.
“Now you tell me.” Rade wrapped both hands around the tissue connecting the proboscis to the snout and twisted, ripping it away.
The creature howled wildly, then jabbed its large head down upon Rade, opening a wide, toothy mouth.
Rade stabbed his grenade launcher inside and released a small bomb.
The massive head exploded.
Rade sloughed off the dead body and clambered to his feet. The other Titans were finishing up the surviving hornheads in the snow. The beasts went down as he watched. He realized the pursuers hadn’t been all that numerous. Rade counted about twenty corpses in total.
He approached Tahoe, who stood beside the last terminated creature.
“Well, at least we know how the aliens feed their bioengineered creations,” Lui said.
“Fret, shut down your automated ping transmission, would you?” Rade said.
“Done,” Fret replied.
“Worried that the nano-machines in their brains will transmit our location?” Tahoe said.
“Somewhat,” Rade replied. “The lieutenant commander told us the machines depend on their organic components: when the body dies, the machines deactivate shortly thereafter. But the LC never said how long it would take before that deactivation occurred.”
“Isn’t it too late to hide our positions?” Manic said. “If these bioweapons have nano-machines in their brains, they’ve probably already notified nearby enemies.”
“Very true,” Rade said. “But why make it even easier to find us? Everyone all right, by the way?”
He glanced at the vitals as everyone reported in. Grappler had wrecked the servomotor in his right elbow, but other than that no one had suffered any lasting damage.
“I like the star,” Bender told Rade.
Rade glanced down and saw the pattern etched into his chest from the acid of the proboscis.
“You’re a superstar, boss,” Fret said.
“Jerry, tell me this acid isn’t going to eat all the way through to my cockpit?” Rade said.
“It won’t,” the AI replied. “The acid has already ceased its corrosive action.”
“All right then people, let’s proceed.”
“Wait,” Manic said. “There’s one thing I don’t get. If it’s true that the nano-machines exist in the brains of all these bioengineered creatures, then why didn’t the fleeing herd attack us?”
“Fear of the hornheads probably overrode any existing termination objectives,” Lui said. “Either that, or maybe it’s not true that the nano-machines infect every one of their bioengineered creations, especially when those creations are reserved for the food supply.”
The next hour toward the drop site passed uneventfully. The snow and wind abated somewhat, allowing the party visibility of seventy-five meters.
About fifteen minutes from the drop site, Fret spoke up.
“I’m detecting a weak ping,” Fret said.
“I thought I told you to shut off your automated ping?” Rade said.
“I did,” Fret said. “It’s not a reply to any signal of mine. It’s an incoming ping from someone else.”
Rade searched the terrain and sky on all EM bands, but saw nothing out there.
“Where is it coming from?” Rade said.
“Twenty kilometers to the northwest,” Fret said. “Or about five kilometers away from the original drop site. It’s UC.”
“Are you certain it’s genuine?” Rade said. “And not an alien trap?”
“I can’t be certain of anything at this point,” Fret replied. “Do you want me to respond to the ping?”
“Negative,” Rade said. “Everyone, keep your handshake protocols disabled for the time being until we’re sure what this is.”
Rade had them adjust course to proceed toward the signal, rather than the drop point proper.
A moment later Fret said: “Reading more pings.”
As they grew near, those signals kept multiplying until there were hundreds of them by the time they reached the transmission point.
“Is this the spot?” Rade surveyed the white plains before him. There was nothing out there.
“Yes.”
“Then where the hell is everyone?” He activated his local-beam LIDAR and proceeded to scan the area. The LIDAR picked out several small humps in the snow that he hadn’t noticed against the white.
“Keelhaul, see that protrusion in the snow beside you?” Rade said. “On the LIDAR?”
“I see it.” Keelhaul approached and dug out something underneath.
Rade switched to Keelhaul’s viewpoint. It was a robot. The wreckage of a Centurion.
Rade had the party split up, and with the LIDAR and signal sources uncovered more troops: Centurions by the truckload. HS3s. Fallen mechs. Dead men. Marines lay outside the cockpits of some of the mechs, jumpsuits chewed open, half eaten entrails frozen in the snow. The pings the party received were from the PASS devices on the utility belts worn by the dead—the Personal Alert Safety Systems used to help locate fallen soldiers.
“Any sign of the remaining members of Alpha Platoon?” Rade said.
“Nope,” Bender replied. “These are all Marines. Different companies from 3rd Battalion 27th Marines and 1st Battalion 31st, judging from the profile tags.”
“Guess it’s probably a good thing we didn’t make the drop point after all,” Fret said. “Don’t think I’d want to meet whatever did this.”
“Found something,” Tahoe announced. He had uncovered a PASS device strapped to a severed Centurion leg that had been impaled into the tundra.
Rade approached. “What is it?”
“There’s a storage device here,” Tahoe said. “Wirelessly accessible. I think it’s a message from the chief.”
“When was it recorded?”
“On the twenty-fifth,” Tahoe replied. “At oh seven hundred standard time.” Almost twenty-four hours ago.
“Let’s hear it,” Rade said. “Broadcast it platoon-wide.”
“Wait,” Tahoe said. “It’s encrypted. I’ll try the private key from my embedded ID.”
If it truly was from the chief, in theory Facehopper would have granted decryption rights to all of their private keys, so that any of the platoon survivors could have played the message.
“That did it,” Tahoe said. “Broadcasting.”
Facehopper’s voice came over comm. “This is Chief Facehopper, Alpha Platoon, MOTH Team Seven. If you’re listening to this message, you’re either a stranded Marine who somehow cracked my decryption codes, or you’re one of my very own MOTHs. I’m going to assume the latter.” The voice was strained, as if Facehopper had recorded the message during combat. “I have Harlequin, Trace, Mauler, TJ, Bomb, Skullcracker, and Snakeoil with me. We’re under attack. Overwhelming forces. Comms are down. No air support. We’re falling back to the closest alien city. We detected a UC distress signal coming from the nuked city a few hours ago. It’s either an alien trick, or survivors from another drop group. We’ll learn soon enough. I’m attaching the location of the distress signal to the end of this message. Make your way to us as soon as you can. We’ll be waiting for you, my brothers. Chief out.”
The message e
nded. A location transfer request appeared on Rade’s HUD.
“Let me accept it,” Fret said. “I’ll scan it for viruses.”
“Go ahead,” Rade told him, though it seemed an unnecessary precaution.
“Seems safe,” Fret replied a moment later.
The request appeared again and Rade accepted. A flashing icon appeared on his map. Located forty-five kilometers to the north, it was located almost precisely in the middle of the nearer alien city, or what was left of it anyway.
“Are we picking up any further UC signals out there?” Rade said.
“No,” Fret replied. “If there was a signal, it’s not transmitting anymore.”
“If Facehopper is at the site,” Grappler said. “Wouldn’t we be able to communicate with him at this very moment? It only makes sense... after all, he was able to receive the distress signal from there, all the way here.”
“There may have been working repeater drones operating between here and the city at that point,” Tahoe said. “Those repeaters have obviously gone offline since then. Which would explain why we aren’t receiving any further distress signals.”
“Maybe the repeaters are actually still out there,” Keelhaul said. “But there’s no one left to send anything.”
“No, we’d get a ping from the repeaters if they were operational,” Fret said. “It’s actually too bad, because without them we have no way of knowing whether the chief or anyone else actually made it to the site.”
“They made it,” Rade said. “Salvage what supplies you can from the wreckages, people. We have a nuked alien city to visit.”
seven
Because the blizzard had abated entirely, Rade and his men made good time across the snowy plains. Visibility was once more four kilometers in every direction underneath the dreary, overcast sky.
“You know, out of all the missions I’ve been on,” Fret said. “I have to say this is the most downcast. It’s the lack of sunlight, I think.”
“We’ve been on worse,” Bender said. “You forget the stealth mission we had aboard the Róng Fù. Trapped inside the cargo hold bulk carrier for all those weeks while we sneaked across SK lines. No gym. No natural light. Man, talk about cooped up. Even the virtual reality sucked. They had no selection aboard.”
The Róng Fù was a captured SK privateer also known as the Royal Fortune. Unlike everyone else apparently, Rade had only fond memories of it. Because that was the ship where he had met Shaw again after bootcamp, at a time when he thought he would never see her again. Shaw.
He hoped his ex-girlfriend was doing well on her side of the galaxy. Better than him, anyway. He wondered what he would write to her if he ever got out of this alive.
Probably not a thing. They were through.
Though if he was truthful to himself, deep down he knew he still had feelings for her.
Why would I be thinking about her at a time like this, otherwise?
Bender still talked in the background. “And what about the numerous moons we’ve hunted privateers on?” he was saying. “Moons without atmospheres. Now those were dreary-ass missions. Not that I’m complaining. I’m all about the missions, dreary or not. It’s what I do. Bring them on, I say. I’d rather be on some shithole like this than sitting around bored back on Earth, or aboard some tin can of a ship like the rest of the navy.”
“I wonder how this planet looked before we nuked the place?” Lui said. “From the surface, I mean.”
“We’ll never know, probably,” Keelhaul said.
“Sure we’ll know,” Bender said. “Take a look at the preliminary planetary scans when you get back.”
“Assuming the Brass declassify them,” Lui said.
“What was this place called again?” Manic said. “XYZ-789 or some crap like that?”
“Xerces-98 II, I believe,” Tahoe said. “After the system, Xerces-98.”
“Yeah, about that,” Manic said. “Who’s the moron who comes up with these names? Why couldn’t we have called it Alien Homeworld or something simple like that?”
“As if Alien Homeworld is a better name,” Fret said.
“All right, fine, but why the Xerces-98 II crap?
“Well II stands for the second planet in the system, of course,” Lui said. “And Xerces-98 is the star.”
“Yeah I know, thanks, Genius,” Manic said. “But it’s so typical. I can just imagine the naming committee that comes up with these things. ‘Man, we’re so lazy, we can’t be bothered to think of a real name, so we’re just going to count the number of orbital positions the planet is from the star, append the resulting number to the star name, and voilà we gots ourselves the planet name!’ Though I guess at least it’s better than the dudes who throw together a couple of random characters and numbers and call it a planet. ‘Welcome to ABGH-12, citizens!’ Of course, then you have the names stolen from ancient mythology or history. ‘Oh fiddlesticks, we can’t think of anything on our own, so we’re going to pilfer from the ancients and it’ll sound cool! Look, it’s Planet Nebuchadnezzar and its Moon, Sphinx!’ Then you have the terribly unoriginal names where they just throw the word new in front, and all of a sudden you have a whole new planet. ‘Oh look, it’s New Earth and New Mars! And is that New New York on New Earth?’ The same applies to starship names, and cities. New Coronado, anyone? I tell you, sometimes I feel like I’m living in a universe where originality and creativity is a thought crime or something.”
“Manic, shut up,” Bender said.
“But I’m—”
“Shh!” Bender said from his position on point. “I’ve had enough of your raspy voice.”
Rade wanted silence, too, but he didn’t have the heart to order it at the moment. Morale was low enough as it was. So while he was somewhat glad that Bender had quietened Manic, he wasn’t certain whether that had been the best idea. He resolved to let his men talk now, while they still could. He knew that there would be little talking in the hours and days to come, as the food ran out and the enemies closed in.
They trudged on in silence for several minutes, the only sound the whir of servomotors and electromechanics, and the crunch of snow underneath metallic feet pressing down with the weight of several tonnes.
“You know, I always thought I would’ve quit the navy by now,” Grappler said, in a rare moment of candor for the man.
“How do you mean?” Fret asked.
“I’m thirty-eight,” Grappler said. “I’ve long since completed my required twelve years. I’m a full citizen.”
“No kidding?” Fret said. “Thirty-eight? You don’t look that old.”
“Tango Mike,” Grappler said. Thanks Much. “I actually transferred to the Teams from the regular navy at thirty-five.”
“What?” Manic said. “I thought the age limit was thirty?”
“I got a waiver.”
“How the hell did your thirty-five-year-old ass survive Trial Week in training?” Bender said.
“Hey, what can I say, I’m one tough sunnavabitch,” Grappler replied.
“Probably cheated,” Bender said.
“Not at all,” Grappler said. “All right, truthfully, I got some rejuvenation work done. Week before MOTH training, I spent half my savings and visited the best Rejuven doctor in town. He put my body back to the way it was when I was eighteen.”
“Told you he cheated,” Bender said.
“Getting rejuvenation done is hardly cheating,” Grappler said. “In fact, it was one of the conditions for my waiver.”
“So you got your body back to the way it was at eighteen,” Manic said. “But what about your libido?”
“That was rejuvenated, too,” Grappler said.
“Guess you put that to good use,” Manic said. “Given all the MOTH Hogs who hang out at the bars near the base.”
“Ha. I only wish I had time for those groupies. Wait, did we take different MOTH training or something? Because in the first phase of my BSD/M classes, I wasn’t allowed to leave the base, nor have any external conta
ct, for the whole eight weeks.”
“No, we had the same restrictions,” Manic said. “I was talking about in the week before class-up.”
“Nah,” Grappler said. “Didn’t have time then, either.”
“Must have had some good twister sessions with your hand then,” Fret said.
“Again, did we take different training or something?” Grappler said. “I had no time for self-gratification. Every day was pure exhaustion. I was just beat. Weary to the bone.”
“What’s that?” Fret said. “Weary of rubbing your bone?”
“We took the same training, Grappler,” Bender said. “But it was a breeze for the rest of us. That’s what you get for bringing your old ass to the grinder. I had enough energy each night to make ten mile runs around the base before racking out. And don’t even get me started on self-gratification, as you call it. I rubbed one out daily. Multiple times a day, in fact. I masturbated so often my hand got sore. Hell, I even found a way to jack during beach pushups: it involved the strategic placement of a happy sock dug just so into the wet sand. I guess my libido is simply that strong. And I didn’t need no rejuvenation treatments to get it that way.”
“Sounds like you had an easy class to me,” Grappler said.
“Hell no!” Bender replied. “My class was so hard, you could hear the gavel tapping the flint stone twenty-four-seven. Recruits quit by the hour. Their helmets formed a long white line beside the grinder. People threw up blood and shit sweat. Class 1088, baby. Toughest around. What about you, what easy-ass class did you graduate from?”
“I’m a proud graduate of Class 1107,” Grappler said.
“You were in Class 1107?” Rade said before Bender could get in a word. “You were the class before Cyclone and I.”
“No kidding?” Grappler said. “That’s funny. I have no recollection of hazing either of you.”
“I don’t remember seeing your ugly face on the base, either,” Rade said. “Did you train on East Coast, or West?”
“East.”
“Ah,” Rade said. “The real MOTHs train on the West. 1107 you say? I thought East Coasters used completely different class numbers.”