When you've run out of everything but the enemy, you are in combat. - Murphy's Rules of Combat
An NCO in motion outranks an officer at rest. - Murphy's Rules of Combat
Anything that the creator states is unbreakable has never handed it to a private with the instructions: Hold this for a second. - Unknown, Terran Resource Wars Era
It was raining black ash that tasted bitter on the tongue and smelled of scorched metal and burnt flesh. The clouds were black and heavy, with orange, purple, and red lightning flickering in the contours. The sun was blocked out, making it dim and chilly on the surface of the planet. Skyrakers made of high tech super-tensiles still stood even if they were tilted up to 11 degrees. In some places they had snapped in half, the upper half falling over to hit another skyraker. The wind made the bones of the skyrakers, many of which had suffered damaged from atomic detonations, shiver and vibrate, filling the city with the moaning of injured and dying buildings. The air was full of screeching from the Mar-gite, the shriek or pounding of the defender's weapons, and the rumble of atomic weapons being fired off or vehicles exploding.
Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o was crouched down behind the sandbags, reloading his LMG magac with motions that had become all too familiar. All four of his hands shook from lack of sleep and his eyes felt grainy, the liquid feeling thick and gummy as it leaked from all five of his intact eyes. The odd one out, the socket was packed with healing omnigel, a bandage taped over it. His tail was gone, burnt away or snipped away, he didn't know. He had a cast on his hand with a quikgen cast with articulation to regrow/replace his missing finger.
The new ambloc slid in smoothly, locking in place. He slapped it at the bottom, hit the stud to release the bolt carrier to shave off a round from the ambloc, then smashed the forward assist with the heel of his hand. Again, he felt it lock in further. He slung it around his back, then picked up the battered and damaged light machinegun that he'd had since...
since...
...forever.
He used his hands to check his ammo as he crouched down behind the berm.
It was funny. At the entrances to the Firebase there was a sign "You must fill one sandbag" over a stack of empty sandbags. There was the same sign outside the chow hall.
They were stacked on top of the berms like armor.
Apparently, even in the age of hypervelocity weapons, plasma guns, lasers, and mass drivers, good old fashioned dirt and sand were some of the best protections.
The realization, which came to him while he was filling his meal sandbag, had made him crack up laughing.
He didn't have as much ammo as he had and the nanoforge for the LMG was long gone.
The only one of the squad that still had an ammo forge was Yee, who had it strapped to the side of her rocket launcher. He could see Yee out of his left rear eye, crouched down and shoving debris into the grinder jury-rigged to the side of the launcher. The whole forward third of the launch tube was streaked with rainbow colors, the paint having blistered and cracked until it fell off. It still fired, but an observant being could see where the tube was warped slightly from being used to beat Mar-gite to death.
A quick look up, exposing the bubble-helmet top of his helmet, and he saw that the Mar-gite were no longer flooding "No Man's Land" between where a skyraker had fallen over, hit a brother, and vomited its guts into the street, forming a large berm of twisted wreckage.
Next to him on either side a Solarian Descent Human crouched down, staring over the berm. They wore synthetic plating armor, had on helmets and gas masks, and pouches on their side. Their armor was black with gold trim. One carried a flame-thrower on their back, the ejector hanging from the side of the case but easily reachable by a Terran thanks to their weirdly designed shoulders. The other had a light machinegun slapped down on the sandbag covered berm, the bipod extended and unfolded.
The reporter was making the rounds again. She'd been doing interviews when they got to the Firebase, and had managed to convince Azzy to give a quick ten second one before he'd staggered to bed. When he had woken up he saw that both her and her cameraman were still at work.
Now she was coming up to Azzy.
Azzy gave a groan inside.
She knelt down, the Hamaroosan looking ragged. Her jumpsuit was hastily repaired, she was missing a sleeve, and it looked like she had scorch marks all across her clothing. She had a bandage on her arm that had leaked pink blood down her fur.
"We're live to the shelters," she said. She adjusted a patrol cap she'd picked up somewhere. "I thought you'd like to say hi," she looked at the humans. "How about you two?"
"My relatives are forty-thousand years dead," the one on the right said. "Let those who see my visage know that my name has been spoken and I live again."
"I hear I have descendants but they do not know me, have forgotten me in my near-endless slumber," the one on the left said. "Let them view my visage so they may know me even if I fall here."
"Uh... OK," the Hamaroosan said.
Azzy nodded. "A few seconds. It appears that that the Mar-gite are being handled by Space Force. There hasn't been any major landings near our area of operations."
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In the shelter, little Hahpi'mo'o looked up from where she was washing dishes. Di'ikhedmo'o, the Lanaktallan in charge of the dishwashing section had turned on the big trivee on the wall. The picture was low rez, only 480p, and was red-tinged, but she recognized that voice instantly.
She went still, staring at her brother. He still had the ammunition belts hanging off his upper shoulders. His helmet was battered and worn. His large gun was beat up looking but had "Wait for the flash" written on the forward skinny part in blue paintstick. His armor was dented, scraped, battered, but she knew that voice.
"Held through the night. We believe they're massing for another zerg rush," Azzy was saying.
"Turn that boring shit off," one of the other Lanaktallan yelled.
"Shut up! I'm listening!" Hahpi'mo'o yelled back.
"...better than it has been," Azzy was saying.
"At times I was unsure of my survival," the reporter chuckled.
"You shut up. That's all boring. Nobody cares," the other Lanaktallan yelled.
"That's my brother!" Hahpi'mo'o shouted.
"Well, if what I heard is true, he won't be for long!" the other teenager yelled.
Some of the other workers laughed.
Hahpi'mo'o's hooves skittered on the tile floor as she rushed forward, lowering her upper torso and slamming it into the other teenager. Before she could react, Hahpi'mo'o was punching with all four fists, pummeling the other teenage girl.
"...atomics a few times. I've probably soaked up so many rads I'm going to grow a fifth arm out of my back," Azzy said.
The other girl whirled around but Hahpi'mo'o stepped forward and shoved the other girl halfway through, sending her tumbling to the ground.
"...glad I'm not blind," the reporter laughed.
Hahpi'mo'o reared up and slammed her forward hooves on the other girl, her left hoof hitting the other girl in the face.
Once.
"...got pretty hectic..."
Twice.
"...Patrick just keeps coming though..."
Thrice.
"...worried they're cooking something up."
"BITCH, I'LL KILL YOU!" she shouted.
"...Navy is doing their job though..."
Other Lanaktallan grabbed her, pulling her away.
Her opponent was sobbing, covering her head and torso with her arms. Her face was bleeding from pressure cuts from Hahpi'mo'o's shoes.
They wrestled her away as the Chief Dishwasher First Class Overwatcher turned off the trivee in hopes it would calm his work force.
Azzy chuckled as the reporter hurried away, shouting at the officers that had just left the Tactical Operations Command tent.
There was a flash deep in the dust, followed a few seconds later by a low rumble. A skyraker screamed its death scream further in the city.
Azzy knew it was an atomic that the computers determined was too far away to put him in danger.
"It's quiet," the one on the left said.
The air practically vibrated as the hyperalloy struts sheered and tore, the groans and screeches of a dying skyraker sounding out.
"Too quiet," the other one said. He tapped his helmet. "TOC, this is OP-Nine, firing probing fire." The Solarian tapped his helmet and nodded. "Confirmed. Out."
He brought the butt up, socking it into his shoulder joint. "Get ready."
Azzy's link clinked. "Probing fire. Fifty rounds or one magazine, whichever is first. Prepare for possible enemy assault."
Azzy lifted up his light machinegun, socking it into his shoulder joint. He used his lower right hand to make sure the ammo would feed clean off the belt. His left upper hand was on top of the barrel shroud, his regen cast clunking. His lower left hand had a hold on the left strut of the bipod.
His field of fire lit up in his retinal link. Green for safe. It flickered and went yellow as he took the weapon off of safe.
The BATTACNET was working, inside the firebase.
Of course, a hundred meters and a few feet in change and it stopped.
The zone flashed red and Azzy fired a few bursts into the berm on the others side.
With a screech hundreds, thousands of Mar-gite swarmed over their berm. They all had black or silvery-blue backs, showing they'd absorbed hyperalloys to layer onto their outer surface like a oyster layered a pearl.
Not that it save them. The hypervelocity magnetic accelerator rifle fired the APDSDU-T 7.62mm rounds at insanely high speeds, the coils at the end of the weapon imparting a spin and pulling the sabot off of the density compressed penetrator.
All of that went through his head as he raked the Mar-gite as they screamed and rushed. It was far away, but it still went through his head, a byproduct of subliminal sleep-learning that was supposed to make him a better fighter.
The way he flicked the trigger, the way he moved it in a rough sideways figure-8, the song he sang to himself to keep the barrel from overheating, none of that was from the sleep lessons.
He'd learned all of that over the last four days.
stayin alive stayin alive stayini alive
He saw something odd. Not cresting the far berm, but via an odd reflection on the glass of the building just on the other side. There were a handful of panes of macroplas still intact.
One showed a blurry and streaked and distorted view of something.
Something new.
And Azzy's four days of being a soldier had taught him: New means bad.
It was tall, shaped like a fluted column with strands coming out the top. The bottom was a bowl-like affair with barbed and hooked tentacles hanging off the bottom. It had a ring of red eyes at the top and six arms arranged in a circle around the upper half of its body.
Azzy tagged it with a set of blinks.
It lifted up and the rounds Azzy hosed onto it were reduced to little more than sparks by some kind of bubble around it that only slightly became visible when Azzy's rounds hit the field.
It pushed both hands out.
Everything went white.
His retinal link crashed. His datalink burned, causing him to scream in pain.
His gun didn't stutter and he kept firing. It felt different, it even sounded different. The rate of fire slower, now more like cloth tearing than one loud RRRRAK of a normal burst. It hammered against his shoulder and he realized the recoil absorption system was offline.
"YEE! YEE!" he yelled as his vision slowly came backi.
Both the humans were still firing, the one with only a rifle up on one knee.
He pointed.
"BACKBLAST AREA ALL CLEAR!" Yee shouted.
The rocket screamed out, armed, and the sprint motor kicked in.
The rocket exploded, a bluish white snap of antimatter and then a plume of reddish yellow.
The creature was still there.
More and more lines of tracers were hitting it.
Azzy realized that it was taking the pressure off of the Mar-gite and lowered his weapon, raking the oncoming Mar-gite and splattering them two deep. His weapon was completely offline, only the chemical propellant system working.
Which meant his high tech weapon could still kill.
A look back showed the tanks were still. The big 1,000 metric long ton monsters just sitting there. The artillery was silent.
"This is Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o at OP-Nine! We need close air support and danger close artillery support," he called out, touching the mic near his mouth.
Nothing.
"Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o to any receivers. We are in need of danger close support!" he called out.
Humans ran from the tanks, from the tents, loping forward to kneel next to the berm.
One nudged Azzy, holding something out.
A Cutting Bar Mark II.
He grabbed it, letting it mag-tac to his harness.
Sergeant Breaker came running up, still helmetless.
"Everything's down!" he shouted.
The Mar-gite screeched and that creature began to move forward.
"GENTLEMEN!" Breaker yelled, pulling his pistol and aiming it straight up.
Azzy kept raking the Mar-gite with his LMG and his rifle.
"PREPARE TO DEFEND YOURSELVES!"