Authors: Casey Calouette
The squad streamed into the cargo hold. It looked like a steel circus gone wrong. Thousands of conscripts all flailed about and slammed into walls, armored vehicles, and each other. One particularly energetic individual rebounded off the ceiling and lay crumbled on the floor, bawling like a pup.
“Don’t do that,” Sergeant Roo said and set them free.
It still smells like dog.
Denali cracked a smile and ran off into the carnival of armored suits.
D
ays passed and Denali noticed a change in the way they were treated. Gone was the harsh treatment and rough comments. It was replaced by more instruction and less anger. Like sharpening fine steel, when the rough edge was gone it was time to refine the edge.
Again, she was different. A runt. The Recon runt. But, she noticed, a very agile Recon runt.
By the end of the week they had grown comfortable in the armor. Not expert, not even proficient, but good enough to run and dodge and work as a team. They spent their days in squad training, learning how to move as a unit, but most of all how to work together to accomplish the goal.
Mjol stretched out in the sleeping hall. “I didn’t think it’d be like this,” he said to Denali.
Denali blinked her eyes open. Sleep, just let me sleep.
“Did they say anything more?” Mjol asked through a yawn.
“No,” Denali answered, trying to halt the conversation.
“So just support? Will we have weapons? Fusion lances? Kinetic pods?” Mjol’s tail wagged and thumped onto the floor.
“I don’t know.” Denali rolled over onto her side. Every muscle ached, where the others could stand and brawl she was always, always, moving. She never thought a suit of powered armor could be so much work.
“Tomorrow?” Mjol nudged at her back with his nose.
“Tomorrow?” Bellow grunted.
“She said tomorrow,” Haru barked.
The chorus of tomorrow-tomorrow rumbled through the sleeping hall.
“No! I mean, I don’t know! All he said is we’re still traveling in space. I guess it varies,” Denali mumbled and squeezed her eyes tight.
Particle variation in the interstellar fold has most likely caused a translation delay.
“
Particle variation in the interstellar fold has most likely caused a translation delay,” Denali repeated Cicero.
“What?” Mjol and Bellow both said at once.
Samson raised his head off of his paws and looked at Denali. “What’s that?”
Denali felt very awake. “Something I heard an engineer say.” She sensed a chuckle from Cicero.
Corporal Rain poked his head into the room. “Lights out! We’re deploying in the morning.”
The lights snapped off. Dogs yipped and barked excitedly. The sound of thumping tales drummed through the room.
Denali felt a sting of fear. Only support, she reminded herself. Her stomach rumbled and she felt a bit dizzy. Was this normal? Should I feel like this?
She exhaled and rolled back over. She eyed up her squad and wondered what the day would hold.
The planet was ash colored with swirls of white cloud. Great rectangular gashes were dug through the earth. Wreckage of starships floated about, dead. A planetary defense system hung in space, broken and blackened by the sieging starships. Now nothing returned fire from orbit.
Denali peered out through the crystal glass and stared at the planet below.
Her squad chattered on their comms channel.
“Look at it! Look at it! It looks so different!” Haru said.
“Different from what? We’ve only seen one other planet,” Samson said.
“Empty? I ain’t see nothing down there. Empty, eh?” Bellow mumbled.
“Gonna grab ‘em! And tear ‘em! And shred ‘em!” Sabu growled.
The others barked, yipped and growled. They were excited, the tension was coming to a head. They had already been waiting hours outside the dropship. Equipment and armored vehicles moved all through the cavernous hall.
A flare of white mushroomed on the surface of the planet and rings of ash rose. Clouds of titanium white swirled and danced around the rising pillar of heat. Something big had just exploded.
Denali’s legs shook and she took a deep breath.
The squad chatter dropped away. They all watched the rising mushroom cloud in silence.
A heavy cargo cart trundled by and the squad turned to look. It was loaded with metal crates, each studded with cable hookups and hose connections. A pair of engineers walked alongside. They led the cart to a wing of gunships.
One by one the crates were offloaded and set gently underneath each gunship. Each crate was hoisted into position and locked inside of the gunship. They were sealed up tight, and the engines flared with a thrumming sound.
“Pilots,” Corporal Rain said. He shook his head from side to side and spat out from his faceshield. “Poor bastards trapped inside an iron box.”
Denali swallowed hard. That could have been her.
“Load ‘em up!” Corporal Rain barked.
They jumped into the confines of the dropship and took positions along the center of the bay. Corporal Rain ran down the line and snapped support cables onto each of the conscripts.
Denali breathed hard and stared at a blank wall.
“Hold tight!” Corporal Rain barked, and then they were off.
They accelerated smoothly up and out of the loading bay. The floor creaked and groaned and then the gravity drifted away slowly.
The dogs fluttered for a moment and legs kicked into space. The cables snapped tight and each of the suits of armor locked to the floor.
Denali knew it would be like this. The training run was like this, but still she felt terrified.
It’s always like this.
Acceleration darted the craft from side to side and the cables slammed tight.
“It might be a little hot on the ground,” Corporal Rain said. “Sergeant Roo said we shouldn’t see much for enemy contact. Remember the briefing, stay close to the squad leader. We’re just here to act as support.”
The acceleration halted and the dropship dove like a rock. Winds slammed it from side to side and a grinding hiss shot through the armored floor. The suits shook and the dogs cried out.
“Thirty seconds!”
Denali’s teeth chattered in her head and made a metallic clink in her ears.
The shuddering stopped and the flight path leveled out. Alarms blared and the dropship blasted to one side. There was a
thump-thump-thump
that rocked through the floors.
“Hold on!” Corporal Rain yelped.
Denali turned her head and saw light. Light where there shouldn’t be anything but armored floor. Behind her a suit hung limply with fur and blood exposed to the empty atmosphere. “Suit down!” Her voice cracked and she hoped no one noticed.
“Sabu is down,” Corporal Rain snapped back.
The dropship quivered in the air and a sickening turbine sound hummed and vibrated the entire ship.
Denali felt the floor quaking against her feet.
“Brace!” a new voice called out.
Denali tensed her stomach and didn’t know what to do. She felt alone, even with everyone near her she was still totally isolated. Outside was an atmosphere they said was thin enough to kill her. All she had was her suit.
The dropship smashed into the ground in a controlled landing that abruptly stopped against a wall of ash. A stream of it gushed up through the holes in the floor. The cable locks creaked and the suits slammed from side to side. Then it was silent.
Corporal Rain ran down the line past all of the suits and slammed open the rear hatch.
A dirty gray light poured into the dropship.
There was a clunk and the suits were released.
“Everyone out! Cover, move!”
Denali raced through the dropship. She gave one look at Sabu’s body, still locked in the descent gimbal, and put it behind her.
At least it’s not me.
The ground was mining waste, a mixture of sharp pumice and tumbled stone. Low hills rose up all around with a mining gantry several hundred meters tall in the distance.
The mining facility was the objective, an objective that was supposed to be clear.
She took cover near a wrecked titanium engine and watched as her squad filed out. “Bellow! Keep moving! Seblig, there’s cover by Mjol.”
Corporal Rain sprinted across the open and huddled behind an old piece of equipment. “Hold tight! I pinged Pack Six.”
Pack Six was the fancy name for the Combat Controller. A lower level AI that was a direct link to
Caesar
.
“Engage the kinetic packs!” Corporal Rain ordered.
Denali fumbled for a moment. A miniature turret deployed above her shoulder blades. The tiny barrel loaded a super enhanced kinetic round that dealt enough force to tear through a sheet of armor. If they didn’t have shields.
High velocity kinetic slugs slammed into the dropship. Dust exploded around them.
“Take cover!”
Denali sprinted away and searched frantically for cover, any cover. Everything around her was open. Already the equipment near Corporal Rain was packed with too many armored suits. Then she saw a shadow on the ground.
Denali sprinted towards it. She pumped with every bit she had and hoped whoever was firing the kinetic cell would ignore her. The shadow loomed closer and she skidded to a stop at the edge of the hole.
“I got something!” Denali called out on the open comms. She stepped inside and her nightvision kicked in. It was a mining tunnel that descended into darkness.
The tone of the kinetic rounds shifted. Dogs cried out.
“Get to Denali!” Corporal Rain said.
Denali raced to the opening of the tunnel and watched as the rest of the squad ran towards her. The heavy assault suits were like lumbering giants. The kinetic rounds stitched away from the dropship and sent spurts of ash into the air. One struck a suit of armor and tossed it to the side, the suit stood back up and continued on. A second round blasted squarely into another dog, this one didn’t move.
One by one they raced into the darkness. Kinetic rounds smashed against the ceiling of the tunnel and clumps of sealant dropped down.
“Get deeper!” Mjol barked. The squad raced deeper into the tunnel.
Then the mouth of the tunnel collapsed in an enormous cloud of dust. The sound of impacts shuddered through the walls.
“We gotta move!” Denali said.
“Corporal?” Bev asked.
“He was hit outside,” Haru whispered.
Denali looked at the collapsed tunnel and knew that they weren’t getting out there.
“We need to hold tight,” Mjol said.
The kinetic cannon stopped.
“See?”
The thudding began again, but the tone was different.
“They’re shooting at someone else,” Denali said.
“Not much we can do about it,” Samson grumbled.
Denali pushed past the assault suits and stared down the tunnel. “I’m going to look, what if we can get out?”
“Who put you in charge?” Samson growled. “We need to call Pack Six.”
Denali spun around and came nose-to-nose with Samson. “Sergeant Roo did.”
Samson laughed over the comms net. “For a game, not for this!”
“She’s still the squad lead,” Mjol added. “I never heard any different.”
“Check your suit, there’s no signal to Pack Six,” Seblig added.
“I’m going to find an exit.” Denali turned and loped down the tunnel.
The others fell in behind her. Only Samson stood and waited before he finally growled and followed after.
They moved quietly through the darkness. Each of the dogs moved like a hunter, like an animal searching through the dark for prey, but also like an animal watching so that it too, didn’t become prey. They hugged the walls, dropped in and out of the contours, and swapped from one side of the passage to the next.
Denali remembered the scanner and dropped to the ground. “Hold!”
The squad stopped behind her and stood like iron statues.
She engaged the recon scanner. A blast of red flowed through the tunnel and into the walls like a low key wave. A few seconds later the data flowed in.
Tunnels and passages shot out from the main shaft like spokes from a wheel. On the edges of the scan the shaft went deeper and deeper until it was lost in static. Farther up the shaft rose and exited near one of the rectangular open pit mines. Strange readings fluctuated throughout the facility and the in-suit processor seemed at a loss to identify them.
“We can get out,” Denali said excitedly.
“Lead on!” Bellow barked.
Denali studied the map again and set off. She smiled. They were
following
her. Pride ran through her and finally she felt vindicated. The runt was useful.
In that moment she thought of Forge, and her family, and it didn’t bother her that she was gone. She fit in here, she had a purpose here, there was meaning.
She heard Cicero chuckle in the back of her mind.
And you fight for what?
“To keep my family safe,” Denali growled back.
So Caesar can take them and enslave them as soldiers?
Denali didn’t feel enslaved, she felt a purpose. But his logic hit her and she clamped her teeth tight.
They came to where the light filtered from the surface.
Denali crept to the edge of the tunnel. She peered over the edge and stared out into a rectangular gash that was thousands of meters deep. Her paws scratched backward and she felt fear in her stomach. Woah, that’s deep.
To her right a road rose up from the depths. A conveyor track snaked along the path. Chunks of blackish stone lay heavy upon the track. The machine was dead, nothing moved.
Then she saw something and signaled a halt.
A creature stepped from behind the conveyor. Its arms were long and it wore a suit of armor with heavy round spheres embedded at the joints. It clutched something between its arm that look like a weapon. Its energy shield rippled with static electricity.
“Hold here! I’ll get it,” Denali growled, and stalked out from the tunnel’s edge.
“Denny!” Rok and Mjol protested at once.
“I got this!” Denali replied.
The recon suit, dull and dark, blended in with the shifting gray shadows and the ash. She placed every step deliberately and kept her eyes on the alien. Slowly she stalked it.