by JR Handley
“Yes, Field Marshal,” said the corporal confidently, “if I take off my combat suit and do things the old-fashioned way. Without my AI nearby, it can’t be hacked. I’ll let my AI record all the data she needs and then strip down out of range. Someone will stand back and shout her instructions to me. It’s a slow, cumbersome way to do things, but it should work.”
“Only should?” queried Marchewka.
“Well… we could all be crispy critters, or we could defeat an ingenious trap. I’m willing to risk it, sir.”
“Make it happen,” Marchewka replied.
Two hours later, every one of the dropships had been cleared of the insidious traps, and Marchewka gave the Marine who’d accomplished the feat a field promotion.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant. When we secure this island, I shall put you on my staff. I need smart minds and keen eyes on my side,” Marchewka told him.
Once the entry point was cleared, Marchewka’s detachment pushed onward. They ultimately linked up with the rest of the task force, moving farther into the supply annex. The facility was only three-quarters full, though it was evident that it had been recently raided. Unfortunately, the maglev lines had been sabotaged and were inoperable. The engineers assured him none of the damage was irreversible, but it would take parts they didn’t have on hand.
“With the facility secure, I want an exhaustive inventory of the supplies. We might need them, so don’t unnecessarily damage things. Marchewka, out.”
— Chapter 39 —
Early Morning, Post-Revival Day 212
Supply Annex, Cardamine Island
12th BN, 5th TAC RGT, TF Retribution, Human Legion
“The assault into this frakking Supply Annex was dull as desert dust,” said Marine Chris Winder. “Least it’s secure, so we can relax.”
His friend, leaning against one of the unopened pallets, nodded his agreement. He won’t use his damn words to answer, for fear of being overheard by the NCOs, thought Chris.
“Boring, maybe,” replied his friend, “but least we found more of those drones the officers love. They’ll help keep us alive, so I call capturing this place a tactical win.”
Chris knew the building was secured, and pointedly ignored his friend, who still wore his full kit. He took off his helmet, setting it on the box next to him. Looking around for his sergeants and corporals, and not seeing them, he continued chatting with his buddy as he opened the nearest box.
“Look at this,” Chris told his buddy. “Looks like this box held grok for the officers. Let’s just have a nip and make sure our reports account for what we keep.”
“Frakk, yeah,” said the Marine next to him.
With support from his peers, Chris picked up the bottle on the top of the opened box. Seeing that the bottle hadn’t been tampered with, he broke the seal and took a deep swig. His buddy, seeing that Chris didn’t die, laughed and punched him in the arm. Taking the bottle, he too took a deep swallow.
“There’s plenty for everyone,” Chris said as he reached into the box to pick up another bottle.
Chris heard an odd click when he picked up the bottle.
Boom!
— Chapter 40 —
Late Afternoon, Post-Revival Day 212
Kalino City, Cardamine Island
Commander, TF Vengeance, Human Legion
Waiting for the other two task forces had been the worst. Sitting outside Kalino City, his home, without entering it was hard for Colonel Lance Scipio. He’d been gone for a long time, and much had changed. The city still sat on the gray, rocky tundra, between two rivers that emptied into a lake just south of it. The rocks weren’t as big here as they were on the southern part of the island, but he knew they’d still hide the sally ports. He remembered getting lost among those rocks as a newly minted cadet, hunting through the shadows to join his mates in safety.
Lance could almost see the ghosts of his long-dead friends in the shadows of those rocks as he set up a temporary defensive position in the fields where he’d once conducted hand-to-hand training. There were huge patches where the stones had been pulverized by trigger-happy Marines, creating a rocky circle where they’d practiced their assault cutter tactics. He was contemplating when Xena spoke inside his helmet.
Lance, I know there are ghosts here for you, she said in a voice laden with human emotions Lance wasn’t sure she could feel. We weren’t together, so I only know what’s in your official records. But you can’t rush into this. It would likely end poorly. Wait for your brethren. We’ll be inside the city soon.
Before Lance could reply to her comment, the sensor network they’d established lit up.
“Looks like the Storks saved me from myself,” Lance told Xena.
Turning to his Marines, he began issuing orders for them to prepare for the arrival of both task forces.
“I want the field marshals escorted to my command tent the moment they touch down. I want their troops to be sent to our temporary lines, and for frakk’s sake, there better be grub for them.”
With the orders given, Lance prepared to present his plan to Field Marshals Nhlappo and Marchewka. They didn’t keep him waiting, and they hurried into his small command tent accompanied by Kaden Roy, his new aide-de-camp.
“Thank you, Major Roy,” Lance said before turning to the senior officers. “Field Marshal Nhlappo, Field Marshal Marchewka–”
“Enough,” said Nhlappo. “We don’t have time to wordplay. What’s your plan? I see no reason not to continue with what has worked for the rest of the island’s outposts and facilities.”
“Yes, Field Marshal,” Lance said. “Instead of worrying about tactics, let’s focus on objectives. My task force will secure the upper four levels as quickly as possible. We’ll clear it of the enemy and have Task Forces Retribution and Justice follow behind to sweep up the minutia.”
Lance was cut off by Marchewka asking if he’d marked his map with what he remembered.
“Yes, Field Marshal,” Lance promptly replied.
Marchewka grunted.
“Where was I?” Lance continued. “Right. So when we finish clearing level four, Task Force Retribution will bound forward after us and secure the next four levels, with Justice following behind them. We leapfrog our way down until the city is secure. It sounds more complicated than it is, but it lets us work the city.”
When they agreed to his plan, with a few minor changes, the field marshals ended the meeting and set the timer for commencing the operation. Lance turned to his XO and had her prepare his task force for the assault. Wires acknowledged his order and began coordinating his task force’s mission with Xena.
Within ten minutes of finishing his planning, Lance received the alert that they would be moving out as soon as the officers were in place. Turning to Sashala, he began inspecting her combat armor while she checked his. Lance talked through his anxiety while he kept his hands busy checking the seals on her armor.
“We’ll clear the city,” said Lance, “and make it our home again. I know our Marines will win the field. I worry about what we’ll find. This is my home. Will it be the way it was when I left? Will the Marines I served with be there, iced and waiting for us to merely wake them up? Will–?”
Stepping closer to him, Sashala leaned in until their helmets touched. “Lance, shush. We can’t know, so relax. The 6907th will be with you. We’ve got your six. I’ll be there for you, in any way you need. Until we know, let’s just kick ass and make that bitch pay for breaking our toys and hurting our friends.”
She took his hand, and together they headed to where his task force was preparing the assault. With the order given to advance, Lance followed behind the lead elements across the rocky expanse, deep into the subterranean city. He followed, expecting more traps left at the sally port entrance, given how devious the insurgents had been previously, but it was anti-climactic. They waltzed right into the city; their caution cost them time. They found no traps, only walls with cryptic graffiti written in blood. The sally por
t into the city was a downward-sloping passage scarred from the pockmarks of sabot fire. Pits and craters scored every polycrete wall, present witnesses to past firefights. The passageway narrowed periodically, forcing the assaulting troops to bunch up, subjecting them to fire from the defending forces. The entrance bottlenecked where the slope leveled out and curved out of sight, marked with battle scars as far as he could see. It struck Lance as odd, since he was sure the Recon Marines hadn’t met any resistance at the gates.
The most disturbing sight was the mass of skeletal corpses that littered every nook and cranny of the city’s entrance. Lance mourned at their not having been buried. This isn’t how you treat Marines, he thought soberly. When this is over, I’ll see to your final resting place, he told his fallen brethren. While the Legion stopped to let their scout drones loose, Lance had Xena test the tacky blood’s DNA. He wasn’t surprised when she confirmed that it belonged to their dead Spec Ops Marines. He knew they’d been killed deeper inside the city, and took the warning for the implied threat that it was. Turning, Lance sent Sashala a private message.
“They will pay for this bloodshed. This isn’t the way honorable Marines fight wars.”
“I know, Lance, I know,” replied Sashala softly.
They pushed forward with the 6907th, though their progress was slowed by the meticulous search for booby traps. They’d already lost so many Marines to the nefarious devices, and Lance knew that everyone was on edge. The sheer volume of the traps began to wear down their engineers, and he was afraid they’d get sloppy. Taking a calming breath, Lance busied himself grabbing some water from the hydration tube in his helmet. When he’d pushed his anxiety out of his mind, he began to review schematics of Kalino.
At first, Lance took comfort in the predictable nature of their enemy. The insurgents didn’t engage you in a stand-up fight. Instead, they hid behind despicable tricks to get in close. This time we’re ready for you, he thought. They finally stopped their forward advance when they gathered up to assault Level 2, where Lance had watched the Recon Marines get murdered. Marchewka ordered the Legion to prepare to attack the location in force and send out stealthed recon drones to verify the area was clear. Those little buggers looked like someone smooshed a ball and threw hundreds of small antennas on it. Unlike the standard drones, this wasn’t shiny and was instead a slate-gray color that seemed never to reflect light. Those drones verified that the area was clear of hostile life forms, allowing the engineers to send out their own unique drones.
Lance had never gotten to play with the engineering drones, but he knew they’d zero in on the chemical signatures of any threats. As expected, the drones reported the area free of any booby traps, and Marchewka ordered the 6907th to lead Task Force Vengeance in the advance. They slowly pressed forward, carbines on their shoulders as they scanned through their integrated HUD targeting array. There were corpses from two battles, one as old as Lance was. The more recent bodies were still in their combat suits, though they were riddled with holes. Taking in the entire scene, Lance could see decrepit gravtanks, dented from thousands of sabot rounds, positioned to create funnels into an abandoned barricade. The fields of fire it aligned were precise, and Lance marveled at the former Aux who’d commanded the battle.
When they reached the empty defensive barricades, Lance ordered 5th Batt to secure the other side while the rest of the 6907th began processing the bodies of their dead comrades.
“Field Marshal Marchewka, we’re stopping to institute the reformat protocol before pressing on. Xena will notify you when we push forward. Scipio, out.”
While the other task forces waited, Lance ordered the rest of his regiment to begin recovering the AIs of their fallen. The 6907th spread out, with 6th and 7th Batt providing security while the 8th went to work searching the fallen. Next to him, a young Marine replacement from Whiskey Company squatted. She was fumbling with the chest cavity, trying desperately to get the suit to open so she could grab the AI inside. Lance watched her, afraid she might be cracking under the strain of dealing with dead Marines. Instead of hitting the eject button, the Marine hit the emergency beacon. As one, all of the suits sat up and grabbed the weapons they’d died fighting with. Those without weapons in arms’ reach sprang for the nearest Legion Marine, wrenching the weapon from the startled warrior’s hands.
Lance watched in horror as his surprised troops were killed before anyone could react. The flies still buzzed around the dead Marines as their suits went rogue and began to press the attack.
“Disengage, pull back, and we’ll hit ’em with EMP rounds,” Lance ordered his regiment over the LBNet.
“Sir, our suits are hardened against EMP. It won’t work,” replied Wires over a private channel.
“Our suits have more holes in them than a crècheling’s alibi. The weakened suits will succumb to the electromagnetic pulse.”
While his regiment began disengaging, Lance stood with his command element and fired sabot after sabot into the zombie suits. His training doctrine told him to aim for center mass, which seemed to be the only way to bring down these already-dead comrades. He kept firing, slowed by the need to avoid Legion-on-Legion hits. Still, Lance fired, transitioning from one clear target to the next. It went against his training to switch targets like that, while the enemy was still in the fight, but he knew it was the quickest way to end the skirmish. He continued firing, ignoring the decreasing percentages on the command HUD. He’d worry about combat losses when the fight was over.
The telltale click told him his carbine was empty, and Lance switched to his Flenser, trusting his retractable combat sling to keep his carbine attached to his suit. As he prepared to fire, the empty suit that he’d been preparing to target raised its carbine. Lance fired, and his security detachment did the same. They became singularly focused on that target and missed the zombie suit that had come into their midst.
Afraid to fire, fearing that he might hit his own Marines, Lance let his instincts take over. He tossed his pistol in the air, allowing it to spin until he had the barrel in his hand. With his impromptu club, he rushed to close with the enemy suit and began hammering away. He aimed for the weak neck joint. If I can manage to detach the helmet, maybe it won’t be able to see. He hit the enemy only a few times before it realized the danger. The suit turned and backhanded him in his gut. Although he grunted in pain, Lance quickly recovered and began grappling with the war machine.
“Grab its AI – do it now! I’ve got it distracted,” he ground out as he struggled to hold the suit.
His command staff was struggling to retrieve the AI, deactivating the threat. Lance was afraid that the suit would manage to get away, its gears and joints not limited by the constraints of human physiology. It twisted and turned as it tried to free itself. Lance was distracted and didn’t notice the auto-turrets dropped from the ceiling. The whirring sounds of the turrets winding up were distinct, but before Lance could react, Sashala tackled him to the ground. She’d moved just in time. The sabots flew over his head, killing Meadow Trevino, the 8th Batt’s XO.
Rolling onto his side, Lance grabbed his carbine from his back and reloaded it with a fresh ammunition carousel. He and the rest of the command element fired into the stationary turrets. The combined weight of the 6907th’s firepower finally silenced the handful of auto-turrets, but Lance knew it’d come at significant cost. Fortune shone dimly on them, however; the turrets had been indiscriminate and taken out several of the remaining zombie suits. The Marines took out the rest of the suits, and Lance stood to survey the damage.
— Chapter 41 —
Mid Evening, Post-Revival Day 212
Kalino City, Cardamine Island
Commander, TF Retribution, Human Legion
Field Marshal Marchewka held back the urge to abandon the final assault to focus on his personal quest of finding his mother. Only through a desire to honor his ancestors was he able to perform his duty to the Human Legion he’d sworn to serve. The facility was finally declared secured af
ter several hours, despite heavy losses from the auto-turrets and the suits of their honored dead. Even the maglev hadn’t been touched by Spartika’s devil spawn. There’d been a few more inert booby traps, but he wasn’t sure that those were left by the insurgents. They appeared too weathered.
With the city secured, all three task forces began looking for Captain Grimgerde, his mother. The progress was slow and despite the “secure” status of the city, Marchewka received a steady stream of reports regarding the various mines, traps, and armored dead that required the engineers to make inert. Initially, the scouts had attempted to handle these, but the cost in lives forced them to reevaluate and send in their munitions experts. The combat engineers have earned their supper today, he thought.
After a conference on the fly, all the Human Legion command staff suspected that his mother would be in cryogenic storage. Marchewka agreed that, should Grimgerde remain in the city, she would be with the rest of the iced Marines. When they got to the cryo storage on Level 10 and found it empty, they were surprised. Only after Wires applied her technical prowess were they able to determine that Spartika had used some surprisingly sophisticated technical wizardry to cover her tracks. She had taken the Marines left behind, but they couldn’t determine the exact number of forces she’d added.
“Frakking sakra,” growled Nhlappo at the news that her nemesis had grown her mutinous army. “With Marines from Scipio’s era, she knows everything that we know. Our force multiplier was just neutered.”
Despite all the signs, Marchewka persisted.
“We won’t give up. Search the rest of the city,” he growled.
“The 6907th will continue searching, level by level and room by room,” Lance replied sympathetically.
With that, the exhaustive search into the remainder of the city continued. They took the search through every nook and cranny, finding hidden levels and compartments. The discovery revitalized the officers, hopeful that it would lead to more tools in their fight against the insurgents. They’d searched all twenty-nine known levels of the Kalino City, only to find four more hidden ones. With each new room, Marchewka’s hopes plummeted. Time was running out, and they were still finding traps with each pass. Some were new, but most were the leftovers from whatever conflict left so many Marine corpses.