Roughnecks: STC The Longest Day

by bcampo

My version of unproduced episode 33. SICON's psychics are under attack, and no one knows why or how. While the Roughnecks chase the only lead, the Bugs are carrying out their plans for their most devastating attack to date.

1. part 1: Shriekers

Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles

episode 133 - part 1: Shriekers

by Brian Campo

This is a work of fan fiction. It is in no way to be taken as official. If the producers of the series ever see fit to finish it, I would be the first one to plunk down my money to buy a copy. This is simply my way of expressing my affection for a TV series that has brought me many hours of pleasure. This is my version of episode 133, an episode that was planned but never produced by the makers of the series. It is partially based on information about the episode that can be found on the net and stuff that was mentioned on the homefront dvd commentaries. I also borrowed from the original novel for some ideas. The original episode would not have played out like the one I have written. This is just how I would have done it. Hope you like it. If people want more, I could do my versions of the last three episodes of the series, that were also not produced.

For weeks, SICON had been running the Roughnecks and other trooper squads around the globe in a seemingly perpetual cycle of transport and combat. We were reclaiming the sites the Bugs had taken in their opening attack of the Homefront Campaign while SICON command tried to stay one step ahead and figure out where they would strike next.

As we moved from site to site, it became clear to us that the Bug's intelligence information was frighteningly accurate. We had all had a good laugh at the Bug's expense when we heard they had chosen a tourist attraction like the Eiffel Tower as a strategic target, but our laughter quickly died when we arrived in Paris to reclaim the secret facility hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower. The Bugs had known that the control center for a planetary missile defense system was there and their attack had created a window in our defenses that had allowed countless transport Bugs to land in the western hemisphere and offload their troops. We took back the facility, but the damage the Bugs had done while they held it would take weeks, possibly even months to repair. While we were emptying out the last of those Bugs, more had struck at other key locations around the world, disrupting food and water supplies, destroying dams and bridges, and tearing holes in our military defenses.

We were on the move twenty four hours a day, day after day, only catching an hour or two of sleep when two missions were a greater distance apart and the longer transport time would allow it. It was three weeks in before there was any lull at all. On our way back from a little skirmish in the Alaskan oil fields, we landed at the Tongue Point Fleet Supply Depot, near the port city of Astoria, Oregon to refuel and resupply. It was 3:30 in the morning when we touched down on the landing pad in the middle of a rather nasty rain storm.

At first we didn't realize what had happened. The ship was refueled and we sat on the tarmac waiting for our orders. An hour later, there were still no orders coming. Razak was the first to figure out what was going on. He realized that somehow, SICON traffic control had forgotten all about us, dropping us out of the rotation of troopers on the bounce. Not being one to pass up an opportunity, he acted quickly and decisively. He told us to disembark, and that we were on R and R until further notice.

Well, an order is an order.

We felt kind of guilty for a little while, knowing that other troopers were still fighting around the world with no rest while we would be getting our first shower in weeks. The El-Tee told us to stow that guilt, though. He said that any of those other squads would have made the most of the opportunity if they had been the lucky ones. Any traces of guilt we might have had vanished as soon as we collapsed into our bunks. As we surrendered to much needed sleep, we thought about all those other troopers and could only hope that eventually they too would fall through the cracks, if just for a little while and get a little break of their own. We sure wouldn't have begrudged them for it.

The Memoirs of Robert Higgins, Fednet Journalist

Tongue Point - Sleep hadn't lasted anywhere near as long as they would have liked. Weeks of catnaps had left them with an inability to sleep for any significant length of time. Four hours after they hit their bunks they had awoken, groggy, but unable to fall back to sleep.

Johnny Rico's bunk was empty. No doubt he had been called away by his sergeant's duties while they were sleeping. The restocking of the transport ship's stores of ordnance and supplies couldn't just be left to the base's staff. Since their lives didn't depend on those supplies, they were much more likely to leave out something essential. Sergeant Rico would have to make sure that every item that was needed was put on board and stowed correctly. SICON could notice that they weren't running one of their squads ragged at any time, and the ship needed to be ready to go whenever they called.

Lieutenant Razak hadn't been seen since shortly after they had landed. That wasn't unusual, though. He rarely slept in the same barracks as his squad and spent what little free time he had keeping up to date with the various hotspots of the Bug war. He had many friends in high places who would feed him Intel when he asked for it, so their lieutenant was remarkably well informed no matter what theater of operations the Roughnecks found themselves in. Throughout the war, they had grown used to not seeing Razak during downtime. When they did see him again, it would probably mean that they were going to be sent out once more, so as bad as it might sound, no one particularly missed him or was eager to see him.

The remaining members of the squad rolled from their beds, looking and feeling like the living dead, only hungrier. They shuffled sleepily from the barracks to the mess hall, where they inhaled food they would have called slop only weeks before without a hint of complaint. Like their sleep patterns, their appetites had adjusted to life on the bounce. Their bellies were used to eating a bite or two of MRE's when they had a free minute, so they were only able to eat a small portion of the food they had piled on their plates before they felt as full as Thanksgiving day. Convinced that she would be able to renew her appetite before long, Dizzy snuck her plate out of the mess hall while no one was looking and the others followed her example.

They ended up in the base's Rec. Hall, a dreary, windowless room in the basement below the barracks. It had white washed cinder block walls and a green zigzag patterned carpet that had been ugly and out of date when it was installed forty years before. Against one wall was a cabinet containing puzzles and board games, and if their experience with other rec. halls across the galaxy was any indication, most of these would be missing pieces. A shelf with a small library of books stood next to that. Most of the books were of the military variety and had creased bindings and yellowed, dog-eared pages. The front wall was occupied by a small kitchenette that featured a filthy microwave and a non-working coffee-maker. Gossard had tinkered with the coffee-maker for a little while, and with a rubber band and two paper clips, he had rendered it functional again. Some anonymous ape with equal ingenuity had rebuilt a broken down pinball machine using odds and ends to replace its missing parts. A pair of mess hall spoons made for the flippers, a piece of hydraulic hose sat in place of a ramp, and the bumpers and bells were made from empty thread spools and tin cans of various sizes.

Carl Jenkins played the pinball game, a little sullen that he had been denied a seat at Doc and Gossard's poker game. "No psychics allowed." they had insisted despite him swearing not to use his mind reading powers. He honestly wouldn't have cheated at the poker game, but neither of them was willing to risk losing all the chocolate chips they were betting with to him. Irritated at the situation, he smacked the flipper button a little too hard and wedged the ball between two bumpers at the top of the game. After a couple of good, solid knocks with his knee on the front of the game were unsuccessful in knocking it loose, he used a little telekinetic nudge to release the ball and was able to resume his game.

It wasn't really being left out of the card game that was bothering him. He was tired, and it was making him cranky. His sleep had been fitful at best, full of ominous and foreboding dreams of a massive, dark object moving through the vastness of space, something with a gravitational pull so strong that it would make planets warble in their orbits as it passed. The dreams had left him feeling disturbed, anxious. It wasn't in Carl's nature to be dramatic, but the words "impending doom" didn't seem completely out of the question. At first, he had only passed them off as dreams brought on by the round the clock race to hold back the tide of Bugs, but the feeling of dread was getting stronger and he was starting to suspect that what he was feeling might be a warning of something the Bugs were planning. If the feeling persisted, he would have to go find a FedNet monitor that he could use to log onto the Psychic Intelligence Network (P.I.N.) and see if any of the other psychics were picking up on the same things.

A delighted cackle came from the far end of the room. Carl glanced in its direction in time to see Dizzy punch Higgins in the shoulder and shout, "Now that sucker's gonna be sorry! Wally will have him beggin' for mercy!" There was a large but slightly dated TV over there and Higgins and Dizzy Flores were sprawled out on a worn, food-stained sofa, catching up on some cartoons to fill the time. Dizzy had fallen asleep with wet hair earlier and she now had a bad case of bed head that she was either unaware of, or indifferent to. Next to her, Higgins kept nodding off, but between Dizzy's shoulder punches, charlie horses and obnoxious laugh he kept snapping back awake.

T'phai sat in a chair nearby, holding a book about federation history and pretending not to watch the cartoon. But every once in a while he betrayed himself with a little chirping sound that his squad mates recognized as a rare Tophetti laugh. Each time he would glance around sheepishly and then pull the book back up to eye level. His eyes kept wandering to the TV screen, though.

The cartoon was one of the many 'Washout Wally' shorts. Washout Wally was a cap trooper who had washed out of boot because he wasn't big or strong enough to pass the tests. But what Wally lacked in stature and physique, he more that made up for in dedicated patriotism and sly moxy. He was short, scrawny, and wore a homemade "Powersuit" made out of hockey gear, football gear and baking pans. To compensate for his bad case of nearsightedness he wore black rimmed eyeglasses with lenses that were about an inch thick and made his eyes appear to be enormous. Despite the fact that he had been kicked out of the M.I. (Mobile Infantry) he still managed to mischievously sneak his way into the war with the Bugs and give them a taste of his own brand of justice. His brand of justice involved a lot of slapstick humor. The Bugs were anthropomorphized, far less dangerous looking versions of their real life counter parts. In the episode that was currently playing, a Brain Bug with a Hitler style mustache, a Swedish accent, and twenty monocles on the twenty eyes on one side of his face was seeing his plans for world domination foiled by Wally's quick thinking and shrewd use of pocket sized thermo nukes. Enraged, the Bug chases Wally, a chase which leads into an opera theater where Wally quickly dons the disguise of a theater manager and convinces the Brain Bug to stand in for a sick tenor.

"But I don't know how to sing opera." says the suddenly nervous Brain Bug.

Wally pokes at the Bug's fat rolls and says, "Well, you're certainly built for it!"

"I don't know any of the words!" protests the Bug petulantly.

"Neither do real opera singers!" said Wally. "They just make it up as they go along! Blah, blah fellisimo, blah, blah rotisserie-chicken-O!"

The Bug searches through pockets in his fat rolls, as if searching for a pen. "I really should be writing this down. . ."

"No time!" shouts Wally. "We gotta get you dressed!" This lead to a scene where Wally packs the enormous Brain Bug into a tight pair of pants and a tuxedo jacket using a large, rather cruel looking set of hydraulic presses, causing an enormous amount of discomfort for the Bug. With his suit threatening to burst at the seams, the still protesting Bug has a microphone shoved into his hand and is pushed out onto the stage and into the spotlight.

"Sing!" yells Wally from just off stage.

The Bug nervously clears his throat and tries a couple of croaking notes into the mike. "Fa, la, la."

"You gotta hold the mike a little closer!" says Wally as he discreetly slips his hand into his pocket.

The Bug pulls the mike closer, opens his mouth to sing, and that's when he notices the tip of the microphone looks suspiciously like a remote controlled thermo nuke. His terror filled eyes snap to Wally, who he can now see is holding a remote detonator.

"Finito!" he sings and then he's instantly reduced to ash and his shadow is burned into the curtain behind him. The opera crowd goes wild.

Wally struck a heroic pose, puffed out his chest and speaking directly to the viewer, said, "Are you doing your part?"

Dizzy shoved her fingers in her mouth and blew a loud whistling cheer. T'phai chirped again.

"I believe I am starting to understand the human sense of humor." observed T'phai cheerfully.

"Trust me," said Dizzy. "seeing Brain Bugs get what they deserve is funny no matter what corner of the galaxy you're from."

Across the room, Doc growled with frustration. "Something tells me I would have been better off against the psychic." he muttered as Gossard collected the chocolate chips from the center of the table.

"You flare your nostrils when you bluff." said Goss with a smug smirk.

The door opened and Rico walked in with his gear slung over his shoulder and a stack of disk cases under his arm. His hair and uniform were damp; it was still raining outside. "I heard that you lousy bunch of layabouts had holed up down here."

"Just laying low and tryin' not to get noticed." Dizzy said, not taking her eyes off of the TV.

"How's it going, Sarge?" said Goss.

Carl took his hand off of the pin ball game long enough to acknowledge Rico with a wave and then went back to playing.

"We missed you at chow." said Doc.

"The El-Tee has been keeping me busy. Some of us have to work for a living, you know." With a derisive look on his face, he took in the room and all it had to offer and declared it a dump. "More 'wreck hole' than Rec. Hall, isn't it? At least the TV works." he said.

The other roughnecks agreed, but they knew that the fact that the TV worked made this Rec. Hall better than most of the others they had been in. It was the nature of grunts to complain, though, and they wouldn't have admitted the place was halfway decent even if there had been an open bar and a carnival down there.

"Whatcha got there?" asked Goss, indicating the disks under Rico's arm.

"Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Razak burned off our netmail. Looks like there's something for everybody." He pulled out the top disk, looked at the label. "Higgins."

Higgins launched himself over the back of the couch and caught the case when Rico sent it spinning towards him. He scanned the list of addresses listed on the cover and proclaimed, "Sweet!" before heading towards the door, on his way to find a mail reader.

"Paper-boy getting that excited," muttered Doc. "they must have picked the Dairy Queen back in Hickville."

Gossard chuckled behind his cards.

"Hey, Bobby! Can you grab me a reader, too?" Dizzy called after him.

Higgins hesitated for a moment, contemplated the abuse he would have to take if he refused, then with a shrug, said, "Sure, anyone else?" Hands shot up around the room, everyone with the exception of Johnny. "Okay, six mail readers. No problem."

Rico circled the room, handing out disks to everyone. When he handed over Carl's mail, Rico couldn't help but notice that his friend looked a little pale.

"You alright, buddy?" he asked.

"I think so." said Carl. "I've just had a feeling all day. It's probably nothing."

Rico had known Carl long enough to know that when he got one of his "feelings" it paid to pay attention. "Is it the Bugs? Are they trying something? Should we go to Razak?"

"Like I said, it's probably nothing. I'm going to go log on to P.I.N. and see if any of the other psychics are getting anything. I'd hate to make a big deal out of it if it's just lack of sleep or indigestion."

"Ok, well, you know what you're doing. Be sure to talk to the lieutenant if you find anything."

Carl responded with a nod as he rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand. "Will do, Sarge." Still concerned, Rico watched as his friend headed for the door.

Higgins returned a few minutes later with a precarious stack of readers. At T'Phai's request, Rico helped him insert a disk into one of the readers and work through the menus in order to get it to play. T'phai's clawed, three fingered hands were not really made for handling delicate disks or manipulating the readers tiny buttons.

When his vid-mail began to play, Rico handed the reader over to T'Phai. The Tophetti let out a contented little sigh and a look of pride shone on his face. Rico started to walk away, to give him privacy, but T'Phai called him back, eager to show him how his children back on Tophet were growing. Johnny watched over his shoulder, not understanding what the young Tophetti were saying, but knowing whatever it was delighted their father.

"They say that the schools are running again, and both are doing well. T'Phal is has found an interest in Geothermal Engineering, which is just wonderful. We need more Engineers. As you know, many of our greatest minds were lost when the Bugs had us enslaved."

Rico nodded. Many of the Tophetti had been worked to death in mines while under the influence of mind control Bugs. Unable to control themselves, they had slaved away until they dropped dead, leaving their control Bug alive to crawl away and find another victim.

"T'Phal and . . . M'Ret, is it? They are staying with your sister?" asked Johnny.

"My wife's sister." replied T'Phai. He seemed pleased that Rico had remembered his children's names.

"Is there still no word about your wife?"

T'Phai's wife, L'Uarr, was a soldier, as he was. She had disappeared in the early days of the Bugs invasion of Tophet and since SICON had freed the planet from the Bug stranglehold, no sign of her or about a million other Tophetti had been found.

"None." said T'Phai. "But I must believe that she is still alive."

It was easier to believe after the Bugs had first been defeated there. The planet was in chaos, all communication was broke down, and nearly the entire population had been displaced. Your loved ones could have been anywhere. Everyone thought that if you were patient, they would find their way home eventually. But now, so much time had passed. Hope was getting harder to hold onto. Rico could see it in T'Phai's eyes that reality was sinking in. He put his hand on his team mate's shoulder and squeezed.

"She's out there." he said.

T'Phai nodded, but made no reply. Then he shook it off, tried to put his mind on other things.

"What about you, Rico? You have word from home, do you not? Would you like to use this reader?"

Rico looked at the label on the case in his hand for a moment, and then said, "No. I'm pretty sure I already know what he has to say."

T'Phai's face took on an expression that was something like puzzlement. "Who? Wait. No I'm sorry. I do not mean to pry."

"It's nothing." said Johnny. "My father has never approved of my joining the M.I. When I get mail from him it's just so he can once again tell me all the things I've done wrong."

"Ah." said T'Phai. "It is often this way between fathers and sons."

"Even on Tophet?" Rico asked with a bit of a smile.

"Oh, yes. With my father it was my choice of spouse. I married outside of my guild, and he never forgave me for it. Your father does not approve of the Federation's military?"

"Actually, he used to be part of it. Before he and my mom were married he enlisted and did a couple of tours. He was discharged honorably and earned his citizenship. But by the time he got there he was disgusted with the Federation and the way they did things throughout the galaxy."

"I do not understand." said T'Phai. "I am trying to learn about the history of the Federation. What was it that bothered him?"

Johnny picked up the history book that T'Phai had been reading and thumbed through some of the pages. "You're going to find that they don't tell the whole story in books like these, T'Phai. There was a lot of things he saw out there that he didn't like, was ordered to do a lot of things that he thought were morally wrong. Things like sanctions and embargos that he had to enforce that he could see led to innocent people starving to death. He saw people losing everything they had because of the Federation's eminent domain policies and there was nothing they could do or say to defend their property or rights because they weren't citizens. We made allies out of despots if it benefitted us and turned a blind eye to slavery and genocide. He saw all these horrible things and he swore he would try to change things when he got out."

"And did he?"

"He tried. He became an activist. He worked hard to get the information out there to the citizens, show them what our government was doing in the boondocks and backwaters of the galaxy when no one was watching. That was the worst part. When he showed people, very few of them seemed to care. He had his vote, but found out how little it counted when the majority of citizens couldn't be made to care what the Federation was doing.. They wanted stability and tended to vote in the interest of stability, not morality. It's been an uphill battle for him, but he's being trying ever since. "

"Do you disagree with your father's beliefs?"

"I think his views of the Federation are a little too paranoid, but I think he makes some good arguments."

"Then what have you done that he doesn't approve of? One would think that having someone who believes as he does earning the right to vote would be a good thing."

"Not in him. In his opinion, the Federation and the military were immoral and he thought he was wrong to have helped enforce the Federation's policies just so he could have a say in them. The last thing he wanted was to see me make the same mistakes. He wanted me to do well in school, which I didn't do, then go on to college, which I also didn't do. If I wanted to become a citizen, he said, there were other ways of earning it. Instead, he thinks I enlisted for all the wrong reasons and will probably end up getting killed for all the wrong reasons."

"And why did you enlist, Johnny Rico?"

Johnny grinned and said, "For all the dumbest reasons, brother. I saw all those soldiers coming home from Operation Pest Control and I wanted to be just like them, to be a hero with medals all over my chest and have girls throwing themselves at me. And there was a girl I liked who had joined up, so I joined up, too, trying to impress her. I was an idiot."

"You regret joining up?"

"Oh, no." said Johnny. "I like who I've become since I did. That's what my Dad doesn't understand. I may have been an idiot, and joined for all the wrong reasons, but I've stayed for all the right ones. I've done a lot of good as a trooper, and I've yet to have been asked to do anything I would have moral qualms about. I'm proud to be in the M.I."

"Have you not told him how you feel?"

"I haven't actually talked to him in a long time. Not since the beginning of the war. We both said a lot of things we shouldn't have. Every time we tried to talk things went badly. Eventually, I just gave up. He sends me a letter every once in a while, but it's always the same thing. All about all the mistakes I was making, what a fool I was being, and how if I would just see sense he could help me get out. I stopped even watching them after a while. I hadn't even bothered to download them for years now. I usually just leave them on the Fednet server. The luitentant didn't know. Downloaded everything I had waiting for me and burned it to disk."

"How regrettable that things should have gone so badly between you." T'Phai said solemnly. "But, strangely, I envy you."

"How so?" asked Rico as he unzipped one of the side pockets on his duffel bag and slid the disk case inside.

"As I told you, my father and I had a . . . how is it you say? Oh, yes, a falling out. He died before we could make peace. I believe I would love to have a message from him like the one you have, even if it was just him telling me what a fool I was being. When I think of all the things I just had to be right about, I do feel like a fool now. If he were alive today, I believe I would send him a message, not about who was right or who was wrong, but just simply telling him how much I love him."

Rico stood there for a moment, thinking perhaps that T'Phai was making some clumsy attempt at moralizing and feeling a slight flush of anger because of it. But looking into T'Phai's alien, but oh, so human eyes, he saw no condemnation there. The alien was simply telling him how he felt about his own father. The anger melted away to guilt as T'Phai's words sank in.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Rico nodded. "Maybe I'll try that." he said.

The door was thrown open with a bang. Rico turned to look and saw Lieutenant Razak quickly striding in. One look at his Lieutenant's face and Johnny knew right away that something was wrong. Razak's eyes swept the room and then came to rest on Rico.

"Where's Jenkins?"

"He isn't here, sir." replied Johnny. "He just left to go check with the other psychics on the network and see if any of the other P.I.N.heads were picking up on a funny vibe he was getting. Is something wrong?"

"We need to find him." said Razak. "Word just came off of the horn that the Bugs are pulling some kind of sneakiness, and we got psychics dropping left and right."

"Dead, sir?" blurted Dizzy, horrified. She was on her feet and crossing the room in an instant. Doc and Gossard dropped their cards, and shoved their chairs away from the table, the poker game forgotten.

"No, but definitely out of commission. They're having fits, falling down, flopping around. Some kind of seizures. They're completely shut off."

"We'll find him." said Rico with a sinking feeling in his belly. "I think there was a Fednet station upstairs by the barracks. He might have gone there." They hurried out of the room and up to the next level.

"This way." said Rico, leading them to a metal door with the words "Fednet Station" stenciled on it. Razak pushed past him and threw the door open. Then he was turning and shouting, "Doc, front and center!"

Rico looked over his shoulder and saw his friend laying on the floor inside the room, convulsing, contorting and spewing froth from his mouth. Little trickles of blood were running from his nostrils and ears. The back of his head was smashing into the concrete floor violently with each spasm and Rico could see smudges of blood under Carl's head. He wondered, how many minutes this had been going on while they were down in the Rec. Hall chatting it up? Johnny was faintly aware of Doc moving into the room and shouting for someone to help him hold Carl down. Then Gossard was throwing his whole body onto Carl, trying to pin him to the floor and stop him from hurting himself anymore. Razak was yelling something, something to Dizzy about getting a stretcher, then he was saying something to Rico, but Rico couldn't take his eyes off of the red smudge on the floor that was getting bigger every time Carl smashed his head back.

"RICO!"

Razak bellowed his name with uncharacteristic ferocity. At the sound of his name being shouted with such force, Rico jerked in surprise and snapped out of his daze.

"Sir?" he responded shakily.

"Go secure us some kind of transport so we can get Carl to the infirmary."

Rico responded with "Yes, sir!" and was away at a run. By the time he had sprinted through the rain to the Administrative Building, commandeered an idling jeep that was parked out front and returned to the barracks, the rest of the squad had strapped Carl to a stretcher and had him ready to be transported. When Johnny slid to a stop by them, they quickly loaded Carl's stretcher onto the back of the jeep and secured it with canvas straps. Then all of them found a space to wedge themselves into on the jeep, and they were off.

By cutting across a couple parking lots, a covered picnic area, and a muddy football field they had Carl to the infirmary in minutes. Once they had him inside and transferred to a gurney, Doc yielded to the doctor's superior knowledge without a seconds hesitation and let them take over Carl's care. He had a pretty solid education in battlefield medicine, but felt very out of his league with whatever was afflicting Carl.

Not that it did much good. They did what doctors all over the world were doing to the stricken psychics. They pumped him full of drugs until the convulsions subsided and he slipped into a medically induced coma. That was all that could be done, really. No one knew what was wrong with them, much less how to treat the problem.

Once Carl had been stabilized, they moved him to a private room so they could keep him under observation. Needing to find out more about what was going on, Razak had left them, telling them he would return as soon as possible. Hopefully he would have some answers when he got back. The rest of the Roughnecks stood by their fallen comrade, feeling useless and in the way of the infirmaries staff.

Carl's room was small, with only a couple of chairs for visitors. With so many people in such a small space, it was very crowded. The doctors had tried to get them to wait out in the waiting room, but the squad hadn't budged.

"What could be doing this?" Rico asked Goss and Doc, hoping that one of them might have an answer in one of their fields of expertise. Technology and medicine had no answers, though.

"We still don't know much about how psychics work, Rico." said Doc. "The only evidence we have to prove that their powers do work are the results psychics provide us. You can have two psychics sitting in the same room sending messages back and forth, but science still hasn't found a way to detect that message moving between them."

Johnny shook his head disgustedly. "Well, apparently the Bugs have it figured out. What about you, T'Phai? Your people were fighting the Bugs long before we were. Have you ever heard about anything like this before?"

"Regrettably, I have not." said the Tophetti. "The very idea of a psychic was foreign to me until your kind came to Tophet. This kind of attack would have been useless against us."

Dizzy stepped in close to them, looking sick with worry ."Does all this mean that we may not be able to find how the Bugs are doing this?" There was hint of panic in her voice. "That he could stay like this? There has to be something we can do."

"I don't know." Doc told her. "When it comes to psychics, the ones who are going to know the most about them are the psychics themselves. And they aren't throwing in their two cents worth right now."

"The way he was bleeding from his ears and nose." said Rico. "I've seen him do that before. When he's pushed his powers too hard."

"Maybe that has something to do with it." Doc said with a shrug. "Maybe the Bugs are overloading them somehow, with some kind of signal. That would make more sense than this being some kind of disease."

Dizzy ran a hand over Carl's wrinkled brow, smoothing back his hair. Despite the drugs, he was still feeling the effects of whatever was happening to him. His hands were balled into tight fists, his jaw was clenched, and little twitches kept twisting his face into a grimace. She sniffed, and then quickly wiped her eye with the back of her hand. She took a deep breath, held it for a second and then let it out. "I hate seeing him like this." she said. "He's hurting."

"The lieutenant is working on it." said Higgins. "He'll come up with something."

A little over an hour later, Razak's voice crackled over the intercom system, telling Alpha Squad to grab their gear and meet him at the transport. The intercom clicked off for a moment, and then, a few seconds later, back on and Razak spoke again, saying only, "We have a lead."

The drizzle outside only added to the glumness of the day and did nothing to improve their moods. It was late morning, but the sky was so overcast and dark that it looked like it was much later in the day. Spurred on by the urgency of the situation, they quickly collected their belonging from the barracks and headed out to the landing pad where their transport waited.

Despite the thick layer of fog covering the entire base, they could see several figures moving around beneath the ship. As they drew closer, they could see that none of them were Razak. However, one of them was their pilot, Lieutenant Carmen Ibanez. From the looks of their uniforms, the other two people with were base mechanics, and Carmen had them running in circles, getting the ship ready for take off.

They hadn't seen Carmen since they landed here hours before. Her being Fleet, she would be have bunked in a completely separate part of the base. Most likely she hadn't had much bunk time, though. Because they had been on the move for so many consecutive days, the ship hadn't had any real maintenance in weeks. Being the pilot she was, Carmen would have taken the opportunity their little break provided to see to it that everything on board got the once over. Sure, the base mechanics could have done the work, but she would have wanted to be there, supervising, making sure everything was checked. Sometimes the only way to make sure things were done right was to stand over the person who was doing it with a big wrench in your hand.

Their transport was a retrieval ship called the 'Bouncin' Bettie '. The 'Bettie' was an older model, a couple of decades old in fact, less stealthy than some of the Retrieval Ships coming off of the line now. She was a little beat up maybe, a little rough around the edges, but a well maintained, solid ship. Just below the pilot's window was a painting of 1950's pin-up queen Bettie Page in a leopard skin bikini striking a cheesecake pose. She had one eye winking suggestively and a cartoon balloon over her head stating, "I'll catch you on the bounce, Trooper." The ship had practically been their home since the war with Bugs had come to earth, and had pulled them out of some pretty hairy situations. They couldn't help but feel a certain kind of affection for it, like a cowboy would for a steady horse.

Looking away from her work for a moment, Carmen spotted the Roughnecks headed out to the ship. She left the mechanics with a couple of quick parting orders and then sprinted out into the rain to meet the approaching troopers.

Sicon was trying to keep the situation with the psychics under wraps, but despite their best efforts, word was still getting around. Carmen had heard through the grapevine about Carl and the first words out of her mouth were asking about how he was doing.

"They've got enough drugs in him to make a Plasma Bug woozy." Dizzy told her as they walked the rest of the way to the ship. "The seizure he had was pretty bad and the doctors are worried he may have given himself brain damage. They say there's no way to tell how badly he's been hurt until he wakes up."

Carmen, Rico and Dizzy had all gone to school with Carl, had grown up with him, really, so this was hitting them particularly hard. "Well, they've got all of you and me out here, so maybe there's something we can do."

"You seen Razak?" Rico asked her. He wiped at some water that was running off the tip of his nose.

She was about to respond in the negative when she noticed something over their shoulders. "I think that's him coming right now." she said, pointing behind them.

She was right. A jeep was driving out towards them; the same jeep Rico had borrowed earlier. Razak was in the passenger seat and as it pulled up, he hardly let the jeep come to a stop before he was bailing out and making a beeline for the ship's loading ramp.

"You said something about a lead, sir?" Rico asked him, trying to keep up.

Razak said, "We'll discuss it in the air. Time's a wasting."

Carmen double-timed her pace, running ahead of them and heading to the cock pit. Minutes later, they were in the air and headed south with the throttle wide open.

Somewhere over Nevada - Razak stood in the middle of the cargo bay, steadying himself against the ship's rocking motion with one hand on a vertical support beam. He was in full combat gear and was holding his helmet under his other arm.

The version of powersuit he was wearing was the one designated for what SICON called "non-hostile environments". From the sound of it, if you were wearing this suit it was all smooth sailing ahead, a pleasant day walking in the park. This was a bit of a misnomer, as they were only referring to the hostility of the environment itself, not to any of the creatures running around in it. Hostility in an environment referred to temperatures, air pressures, atmospheric gases, gravities and toxins that were detrimental to human life. Enemy hostility could still be expected in non-hostile environments.

The suit he was wearing was a stripped down version of the hostile environment suit. The helmet only covered the top, back and sides of the head and left the face exposed. The air recycling system was gone, as was the full body pressure suit. Otherwise, it still had all the same advantages of the full version, including strength enhancement, protective armor, communication and targeting technology, and jump jets. If you asked a trooper what the biggest advantage to the stripped down version was they would tell you it was the privilege of not breathing canned air.

The rest of the squad were geared up in the same kind of powersuits, and were buckled into seats that could be folded down out of the walls. The Lieutenant had said that he would fill them in on what he had learned after they had suited up. Knowing there was no point in trying to negotiate with Razak, they donned their battle gear as quickly as possible and got themselves settled into their seats where they waited to hear about this lead he had alluded to.

"Anybody ever heard of Neo-Dogs?" He had to speak loud to be heard over the roar of the ship's engines.

In response to his question, they looked at each other and shrugged in ignorance.

Everyone except for Higgins, that was. He spoke up. "I did a piece for FedNet about them one time." he told the others. "They're genetically altered dogs. I hear they're super smart, for a dog anyway. They can talk, but real funny like on account of their mouths aren't shaped for language. Much bigger than your usual dog, somewhere around three hundred and fifty pounds. They're used for reconnaissance, locating bombs and searching for missing people. "

"Sounds like you know more than I do." said Razak. "What do you know about their relationship to their handlers?"

"Not much, but then again I don't think that there's many who do know anything. I know they're symbiotic, they have some kind of connection. I hear that if the handler gets killed they have to put the dog out of it's misery. If the dog gets killed the handler has to go through years of rehabilitation and therapy. Spooky sounding stuff. Don't know how much of it is true."

"That seems to jibe with what I'm hearing from the Brass." said Razak "Apparently, the link between dog and handler has never been completely explained but the people running the program have a basic idea of how it works. The handlers have a natural empathy towards animals that is enhanced through many months of training until the dog and the handler form some kind of mental link. Eventually, communication between the dog and the handler is almost exclusively telepathic. The handlers aren't psychic in your normal sense, they can't read people's minds or sense events outside of the range of their senses but they seem to be tapping into some of the same kinds of powers."

The question was obvious and leapt to everyone's minds simultaneously, but it was Rico that asked it first. "Are they being effected by whatever is happening to the psychics?"

"It appears so." Razak replied. "All the same symptoms." The squad seemed to deflate with disappointment.

"What good does that do us?" Dizzy asked with an air of frustration. She didn't see how any of this was helping their friend.

Goss had it, though. "The dogs aren't effected, are they?"

"You get the gold star." said Razak. "Apparently, they're in a lot of pain. There's some kind of nasty feedback coming over the connection with their handlers, and it's hurting them pretty bad, but they can speak. They're telling us what they can. Apparently, they have a sense of the direction where this thing is coming from."

Once she got what he was saying, Dizzy broke out into a laugh. "We can track it!"

"We think so." said Razak. "We're going to make a little pit stop in Phoenix, Arizona and pick up a couple of passengers. Then we should be able to hunt this thing down and put a stop to it."

K-9 Corps training facility, Phoenix, Arizona - The rain had thinned as the Bettie had come south and had disappeared completely by the time they crossed over the Nevada border. They entered Arizona only a little after noon and it was sunny and cloudless out over the desert. When they had landed, the loading ramp had lowered, and the Roughnecks had been treated to a drastic change in climate. The air that rushed into the Bettie's cargo bay had felt as dry and hot as an oven in comparison to the weather they had left behind in the Pacific Northwest.

The two passengers Razak had mentioned were a comatose K-9 corps officer named Frank Bennett and a Neo-Dog named Smoke. When Razak and Johnny stepped down out of the Bettie, one of the facilities doctors was waiting for them, ready to explain why they would need to take an unconscious corpsmen with them. He introduced himself as Phil Walsh.

"Two reasons." said Phil. "Number one is, Smoke is already in a high state of anxiety. Between worrying about Frank's welfare and the pain he's receiving over their link, I'm surprised he hasn't had a nervous breakdown already. You separate him from Frank and it will probably be more than he can handle. He'll be useless to you.

Reason number two is, his ability to sense where this signal is coming from is through Frank. Frank is detecting the direction and Smoke is picking it up from him. If you want to track it to it's source, you'll have to take Frank along and Smoke will know when you are getting close."

Razak didn't like the idea, but he didn't have time to argue it either. "What if your corpsman takes a turn for the worst? I have a field medic on my squad, but I can't be leaving him behind to tend to your man. I'm going to need him on the ground to help us deal with whatever is causing this."

"I can come with you to keep him stable." said Phil. "I know the situation isn't ideal, but for this to work, I believe you must take both the dog and the handler. We understand the danger to our man, but considering the circumstances I don't see how any of us have a choice. If we don't find the source of the signal, I'm afraid we will lose all of our handlers and you will lose all of your psychics."

Razak looked across the tarmac at a group of doctors surrounding a man strapped to a combat stretcher, then at the forlorn looking beast laying beside him and sighed with resignation. "I hate to seem rude, or ungrateful, but you have to take full responsibility for anything that happens to your man. We absolutely can not turn back if he starts having any problems. Even if his symptoms get worse, we have to keep pushing on until we locate the threat."

"I understand." said the doctor. "Trust me, it's what Frank would want." He paused for a second and then said, "Before I introduce you to Smoke, I'd like to cover a few points about Neo-Dog."

"That's fine." said Razak. "But we need to make it quick."

"I'll try to keep it short and to the point. A Neo-Dog is about as intelligent as a human five or six year old and emotionally they're about the same. When you want to talk to him, just talk to him like you would any of your troopers, but keep it simple. Clear commands with as little jargon as possible. If you don't think a little kid would understand what you're asking, he probably won't either. Try not to talk down to him, though. No baby talk. They hate being treated like dogs and they're smart enough to know when you're being condescending. Don't try to pet him, either. Only their handlers get to do that, and if you try you're just going to upset him."

"Sounds pretty much like how we used to treat Brutto." Rico whispered out of the side of his mouth.

Razak suppressed a laugh, but gave Rico a look that said "Can it."

"We'll try to avoid offending the pooch." he said to the doctor. "Anything else?"

"Like I said before, Smoke's pretty wound up with everything going on. If you want to keep him calm, try to keep his mind on other things. Neos love simple jokes, knock-knocks, that sort of thing. If you guys got any, I'd suggest telling him a few. I think it'll help him, and he might warm up to you."

"With the crew I got, he'll be in dumb joke heaven." Razak said with a smile.

"That's great. Now, if you're ready, I'll take you over to meet him."

The dog looked up at them as they approached, sniffing.

Phil said, "Smoke, this is Lieutenant Razak and Sergeant Rico. They're here to help us stop whatever is hurting Frank."

The dog wagged it's tail half heartedly, in an attempt at a greeting.

When Rico looked in it's eyes, he could see pain there. Seeing this, he felt a wave of sympathy wash over him. He knelt down next to the dog and said, "How's it going, buddy?"

"Hurts." said Smoke in a high pitched cross between a whine and a yip. "Frank hurt, too. Something shrieks in his head."

"Well, with your help, maybe we can do something about that."

The dog wagged it's tail, a little more forcefully this time.

Higgins was right, the Neo-Dogs were huge. Smoke looked like he may have come from some kind of English Mastiff breed, but he would have made those dogs look positively frail in comparison. His head looked like it was the size of a prize winning bull's. His muscle structure was much thicker, much more pronounced than a normal dogs. His fur was gray with a mottled, almost tiger-stripe pattern in black on his back and sides. When he got to his feet, his shoulders were even with the bottom of Johnny's rib cage. Rico could have easily ridden on Smoke's back, and he doubted that the dog would have noticed he was there. Smoke wore no collar, but did have a harness made of leather that wrapped around his rib cage. It could be used to attach packs of supplies that the Neo-Dog and his handler would need on a mission.

"Sergeant." said Razak. "Why don't you show Smoke on board the Bettie while these doctors here load up his friend.

"Yessir." Rico replied and then said, "Come on, Smoke."

The dog took a moment to sniff his handler, and then followed Rico to the transport. He stopped in the cargo bay to make brief introductions to the rest of the squad and then led Smoke into the cockpit, where Carmen was idling the engines.

"Say hello to your new navigator." Rico told her. "This is Smoke. Smoke, this is Carmen"

Carmen smiled at the dog and said, "Hello, Smoke. Which way are we headed today?"

Smoke pointed his nose out the left side of the cockpit and said, "South. All I know now."

Carmen nodded and said, "It's a start."

The doctors secured Frank Bennett in the medical bay and then disembarked, leaving only Phil Walsh behind. Razak saw them off of the ship, closed the loading ramp and over a com, let Carmen know they were clear for take-off. In a matter of moments, they were in the air once again, headed south into old Mexico.

Eventually, their route turned more towards the south east than due south. Smoke's directions became clearer the further they went. They crossed down through the plains and deserts of northern Mexico, angling more and more eastward as the landscape below began to change to jungle in the southern part of the country.

According to both the doctor and Smoke, Frank's symptoms were getting worse the further south they traveled. The dog was doing his best to ignore the pain, but every once in a while he would let out a yip, as if he had been bitten. He would shake his head, as if trying to dislodge the discomfort and then go back to staring out the ship's windshield. The doctor was giving Frank more medication, but it was getting less and less effective as time went by. He was groggily struggling against the straps that were holding him to the stretcher, and they eventually had to strap his head down when he started trying to smash his own skull in again.

Rico stayed in the cockpit with Carmen and Smoke, trying to keep the dog's mind off of his handler's suffering. It took a little while to develop an ear for the Neo-Dog's accent. The words were formed out of whines, yips, barks, growls, howls and moans but if you listened close enough, you could hear the words he was trying to say. Before long, Rico, Carmen, and Smoke were having simple conversations. He followed Dr. Walsh's advice with Smoke, telling him jokes he could remember from his childhood. It did help keep the dog calm. You could tell if Smoke liked a joke because he would wag his tail afterward. If he didn't think it was so great, he'd roll his eyes, sniff and say, "Not funny." or "Heard it before."

Carmen had a laugh at Rico's expense after one stinker and said, "He's right. It was pretty bad."

"Oh, yeah?" Rico retorted. "What time is it when a Neo-Dog sits on your cat?"

The dog shrugged.

"Time to get a new cat."

Smoke rolled his eyes, but then after a second, wagged his tail, too.

They crossed the border into Guatemala an hour after they left Phoenix with rain forest covered mountains whipping past beneath them. The mountains grew taller as they moved into the Alta Verapaz region, giant green humps rising up out of cloud covered valleys. Occasionally, they could see columns of smoke rising up from small villages situated next to winding rivers.

"It's close now." Smoke told them.

Carmen eased off of the throttle, bringing the ship down to a cruising speed that was less likely to overshoot their target.

"Is it still dead ahead?" she asked.

"Yes." said Smoke. He tilted his head to the side, slightly and his eyes half closed."Very close now." About minute later, he said, "Stop. We passed it."

Carmen pulled back on the yoke, slowed to a stop, and then circled back to the spot Smoke had indicated. She dropped her altitude until they were only about thirty feet above the treetops and then just let the Bettie hover in space. Having noticed the change in speed and direction, Razak appeared in the cockpit doorway.

"Is this it?" he asked.

"Yes." said Smoke. "It's below now."

"Where are we?" Razak asked the pilot.

She flipped a keyboard down out of a panel to her left and typed a few keys. Maps appeared on a screen in front of her. "We're in Guatemala near an area called Cancuen. There are lots of archeological sites in the area but not much else besides jungle. Directly below us are some mountains with underground rivers crisscrossing through them. There's a pretty extensive cave system."

"Sounds like Bug country." said Razak. "I'm in the mood to do a little spelunking."

Rico and Smoke followed Razak back to the cargo bay where the rest of Alpha Squad were awaiting their lieutenant's orders with eager anticipation. Just by looking at them, you could tell they were itching for a fight. Dizzy looked like she was positively chomping at the bit.

"Alright, people, lock and load, practice your snarl and put on your mean face. Smoke says this is the place, and I'm saying this is the time. Goss, Doc, I want you in Marauders. Dizzy, T'Phai, bring along a couple of flame throwers." He turned and looked down at the Neo-Dog. "Smoke, I was wondering if you would mind helping us continue to track this thing on the ground."

"I'll find it." said the dog. "Help Frank."

"Good. I'm designating you an honorary ape." said Razak. "Rico, you can help me get our friend, Smoke, to the ground. We're dropping by jump jets in three minutes. Move out."

A very energetic, "Yes, sir!" rang out as the squad scrambled to get ready for the drop. Doc and Gossard climbed into their marauders and powered them up. After giving the hydraulic fluids a little time to heat up, the two noisily clanked their way out onto the platform in the middle of the cargo bay floor. Once they were in position, the platform was lowered, giving everyone a view of the jungle below. Already they could see evidence of a Bug presence. The treetops were covered in thick sheets of webbing, a telltale sign that Spider Bugs were in the area. Trapped in the webbing, they could see the corpses of hundreds of animals; birds, monkeys, lizards, small deer, rodents and even large snakes.

Directly below them was an open strip in the thick foliage that led up to a mountainside a short distance away. This was most likely the path of one of the rivers Carmen had spoken of. It would make for the best landing zone when they dropped.

T'Phai dropped nimbly down onto the platform with a flame thrower in his hand. Reaching back, he locked the flame thrower into place on one side of back pack and then pulled his Morita smart rifle from it's clip on the other side. He scanned the forest below with his gun raised in a shooters stance. His eyes caught a flash of movement and he tracked a Spider Bug as it jumped from tree to tree.

"We have Bugs." he said calmly. "Requesting permission to engage."

"Permission granted." Razak told him as he jumped down onto the platform with them. "Smoke 'em if you see 'em."

T'Phai opened up, firing off one round. The Spider Bug he had spotted curled into a ball and fell from the trees, shot through a key nerve cluster. The Tophetti search for another Bug and finding one, dropped it with another single shot. He continued to rain on the Bug's parade while the rest of the squad finished preparing for the drop. Doc and Gossard watched from their marauders, shaking their heads with amazement when each shot sent a Bug to it's doom.

Gossard cleared his throat. "Hey, T'Phai. Buddy. Heh, heh. Save some for us. We don't want to have come all this way for nothing."

"We still look way cooler when we kill Bugs." said Doc, feeling a little outclassed.

T'Phai cut yet another Bug's life short.

"Requesting permission to kick the Tophetti overboard, sir." Gossard called out.

"Permission denied." said Razak. "It's time to drop."

T'Phai lowered his rifle but kept a watchful eye out below. Dizzy walked to the edge of the platform and stepping off of it, said, "Watch that first step. . ." As she dropped they heard her call out, "It's a loo loo!" Then came the roar of her jump jets. She was followed by T'Phai and then Higgins, who had a camera pretty much glued to his eye and was muttering something. He was probably composing the narration that he would be adding to the video later. When the first three jumpers had been on the ground long enough to clear out of the way, the two marauders went over, jump jets already burning. The last to go were Razak, Rico, and Smoke.

"Grab that side of his harness." Razak told Rico. "Between the two of us we should be able to get him on the ground in one piece. Just remember to really crank your jets to compensate for the extra weight."

Rico acknowledged with a "Yessir.", secured a good grip on Smoke's harness and then the trio were stepping out over the open jungle and dropping down through the air to the river below. Rico watched how hard Razak fired his jets and tried to match him, so they came down more or less even, the intense weight of the dog hanging between them.

The sounds of sporadic gunfire echoed up from down below. Then the marauder's miniguns opened up, drowning out all the other sounds. As they came down, Rico spotted the other Roughnecks standing in the river a short distance upstream, blazing away with their guns at quickly moving shapes on the river banks. They were engaged in a hot little scrap with Spider Bugs. Bugs were leaping off of the river banks, trying desperately to reach the troopers with their stingers. Others were jumping in the tree tops and squirting liquid webbing at the troopers from above, hoping to snag one of them with a strand and yank him up into the trees where he could be dismembered. It was all the squad could do to keep the enemy at bay. Even Higgins had hung up his camera and was adding his meager shooting skills to the fray.

When they touched down in the calf-deep water, Razak and Rico released their grips on Smoke's harness and pulled their Moritas. They ran forward through the water, joining their comrades in the fight. Smoke followed at their heels, staying close.

Doc and Goss seemed to be trying to defend the honor of marauder pilots everywhere. They stood back to back, turning Bug after Bug into a greenish paste with streams of hot lead from their suit's miniguns.

However, the single Tophetti, armed with only a Morita pulse rifle, was keeping up with them in the body count and with far fewer rounds expended. He seemed to be completely oblivious to the damage he was doing to their egos.

"It's style points that really count, T'Phai!" Goss called out. He directed his fire into the trunk of a tree, cutting it in half and dropping it onto a scurrying Spider Bug. "Let's see you try that with your peck . . . peck . . . peck!"

"Move to the cave entrance!" Razak belted his orders at them over the roar of the gunfire.

Still maintaining a steady rate of fire, the squad moved up river, the marauders covering the rear. The Bugs realized where the troopers were going and raced quickly through the underbrush in an attempt to cut them off. They jumped out into the river's shallow water between the Roughnecks and the cave's mouth, blocking their path.. This turned out to be their undoing. On the river banks, the Bugs had been spread out and moving through thick undergrowth, making for much more elusive targets. Now, out in the open, bunched up and all coming from one direction, the Bugs were easy pickings.

It was here that the marauders came into their own. They stepped through the middle of the squad, moved to the front and opened up on the Spiders. They started their slaughter at the edges of the river, one marauder pointing his gun left, the other right. This caught any of the Bugs trying to escape out the sides. Then, gradually, they shifted the direction of their fire towards the center of the river, tearing into the main mass of Bugs. Their miniguns cut a bloody swath through the Spider Bug's ranks. Water, Bug juice, and bits of exoskeleton exploded into the air as thousands of rounds of ammunition ate through the swarm. Bugs shrieked in horror as their arms and legs went spinning away from them. Within seconds, the water flowing past the trooper's legs turned to green chum, a result of the carnage happening only twenty yards up stream. They didn't ease up until the last Bug stopped twitching.

Smoke drifting from his guns barrels, Gossard said, "I gotta tell you, I feel vindicated."

Doc seconded his opinion with a "I hear that."

They both looked at T'Phai smugly.

The Tophetti was still unaware of the feud in which he was involved. He watched a chunk of a Spider Bug's head float by and thinking aloud, said, "I wonder about the environmental damage."

Razak turned to the Neo-Dog and said, "What do you think, Smoke? You getting anything?"

"Smell something." Smoke said, trying to track a scent through the stink of gunpowder that still hung in the air. "More Bugs here, but something else, too. Something . . . Not Bug."

"Is it just me," asked Dizzy with a shiver. "or does that sound really creepy?"

Razak ignored her. "In the cave?" he asked the dog.

"Yes." replied Smoke. He wrinkled his snout. "Smell bad."

"Something 'Not Bug'" Goss said. "If we're about to find out that Sparky has turned to the Bug's side and is the cause of all this, I think I'd rather just go home now, thank you."

"We don't want to keep our friends waiting." said Razak. He took point with Smoke at his side and walked into the mouth of the cave. Doc and Gossard once again took their places as the rear guard.

As they passed into the cave's darkness, Doc said, "Ah, caves, tunnels. How I love them."

"I'd almost forgotten how little I miss them." Gossard replied.

The inside of this first cave was actually quite beautiful. It was both tall and wide, the ceiling a good forty feet above their heads and the cavern was sixty feet at it's widest. The rivers that were flowing all around the area had come up against this mountain range, but instead of finding an easy path around, they simply took a few million years and carved their way right through it. At some point, the river had been stronger and had filled his entire cavern clear to the ceiling. It had left it's mark on the limestone that made up the cave walls, shaping them over a thousand millennia into long, flowing, organic curves. It was as if some giant hand had reached into the mountain, and scooped out the insides like a child will do when he plays at the beach. Over time, the river level had dropped until now it was only a shallow strip of water a mere twenty five feet wide. The path where the river ran now was smooth, polished by the constant currents. There was a light coating of gravel on the bottom of the river near the mouth of the cave, which made finding good footing a little tricky, but the gravel thinned out the further into the cave you went until you were walking only on the solid stone of the river bed. In the parts of the cave where the river no longer ran, dripping calcium deposits had grown into stalagmites, some so tall that they reached up and connected with the stalactites that covered the entire ceiling. The sounds of running, trickling, and rippling water echoed back and forth off of the cave walls, blending together and creating almost musical notes. Holes in the roof allowed light that had been filtered through jungle foliage to shine through. It shone past the rock formations and threw twisted shadows up the cave's curved walls.

As far as caves went, Alpha Squad had to admit that this one wasn't too bad. Granted, their past experiences in caves had a way of souring their opinions and making them expect the worst. It was hard to really appreciate the beauty of the place when you were expecting a wave of killer Bugs at any moment.

Smoke continued sniffing his way up the river, following a scent that was drifting to him on air currents from somewhere further up in the cave complex. The cave narrowed to about twenty feet wide at the far end as it turned into a tunnel, leaving only narrow pieces of dry river bed on each side of the river as it wound from side to side. The ceiling dropped down in height until the tunnel was only as high as it was wide. The troopers walked in the middle of the current, their insulated powersuits protecting them from the chill of the water. They passed several tunnel entrances where the river split, part of it taking off in another direction. Farther on there was a bend in the tunnel and here another river came dumping in off of a high ledge, joining the one they were following. This created a waterfall, that it turned out hid a small grotto.

As they passed it, a Spider Bug launched itself through the water and slammed it's weight into Higgins, who went reeling and ended up going face first into the water. As a credit to his dedication as a journalist, he managed to keep his camera above water and pointed in the Bug's general direction the entire time. Dizzy reacted quickly, reaching for her machete rather than raising her Morita. In such close quarters, the Morita would have probably been just as perilous to her squad mates as to the Bug. Still holding the gun by the front grip with her left hand, she pulled the two foot blade from the sheath on her back with her right, stepped forward, and brought it down in a lightning strike on the Bug's head, all in one smooth motion. Half of the creature's skull was sliced away in a clean cut, leaving it's inner cranial organs visible. The Bug kept moving, though, intent on Higgins, who was trying to get to his feet and doing a lot of thrashing around in the water. Rico, the closest to him, grabbed him by the back of his power suit and pulled, hauling him away from the Bug and to his feet.

The damage Dizzy had done to the Bug did have an effect. The legs on the left side of it's body had ceased to function and were just being drug along as it pulled it's body towards Bobby with the legs on it's right side. Dizzy was still after it and the others stayed back, giving her room to maneuver. She drew back her right hand, sidestepped her way around the Bugs dead side, and drove the blade through the intact side of it's head with a stabbing motion. The legs on the right side splayed straight out, spasmodically, and then collapsed out from under the Bug as it died.

While Higgins breathlessly thanked Dizzy for saving his life, Razak flipped down the visor on his helmet and used it's heat sensing abilities to scan the little cave behind the waterfall for any more Bugs. It was empty.

"Sitting out here all alone like that, I'd say it was a sentry." he said. "We must be getting close."

"Smell is getting strong." confirmed Smoke. "Not too much farther." The unnatural smell of whatever they were tracking was clearly bothering the Neo-Dog. He held his head low, his ears were pointed forward, and his tail was curling down between his legs. His body posture suggested a high state of wariness and anxiety.

A few minutes later, the Roughnecks found what they were looking for. The tunnel opened up into a cavern where four river tunnels converged. The cavern was about eighty feet in length and width and twenty five feet in height. The four rivers came together in a shallow pool that flooded the entire cave. The pool was only a couple of feet at it's deepest, and filled with a gravel made up of small river-smoothed pebbles. The river the Roughnecks had followed in was fed from water pouring over the lip of the pool closest to them. There was a small dry ledge around the edge of the pool and on the far side was a large, flat slab of rock that had at some point collapsed out of the ceiling and landed between two of the tunnels. It was higher than the rest of the cave floor and part of it hung out over the water. One side of the slab had a broken edge that abruptly sloped down into one of the rivers coming into the cave.

On top of this rock slab was a heap of Chariot Bugs, probably numbering in the forties. These were the kind of Bugs you would usually see helping a Brain Bug move it's giant, flabby frame around. They weren't that dangerous, though they would swarm you en masse if the Brain was threatened. But there was no Brain Bug to be seen.

Instead, the Chariot Bugs were attending to a large, semi transparent globe that was constructed out of some dried, mucus-like substance. This globe was about eight feet in diameter and bluish green in color. Whatever it was filled with a gave off a faint incandescence, throwing an eerie glow through out the cave. When the troopers shone their helmet lamps directly on it, a blurry, indistinct mass could been seen floating in the center of the globe. It was something living, something that was moving around, undulating and twisting in upon itself. Though they could not be certain, there seemed to be tentacles waving out from this mass. Beneath this shape, at the bottom of the globe, was a lumpy pile of gelatinous material. Though much larger in size and yellowish in color, this goop resembled frog's eggs.

At the sight of all this, Smoke's hackles rose and a deep growl rumbled in his chest. Razak put his hand on the dog's back and tried to shush it, but it was too late.

The Chariot Bugs became aware of the squad's presence immediately and grew quickly agitated. They emitted a high pitched chirping sound and crowded themselves together at the base of the globe, shoving themselves up under it. Within seconds, they had hoisted it onto their backs and were rolling it along onto the backs of the Bugs ahead of them. Working with speed and efficiency, they moved the globe towards the slope that led into the river tunnel. Once the globe had rolled off of a group of Bugs, they would rush around to the front of it, ready to take it's weight again as it continued to roll forward.

Irritated that they had lost the element of surprise, Razak threw caution to the wind and shouted, "Open up on them, apes!"

The squad opened fire, but the Chariot Bugs already had their precious snot bubble rolled down into the tunnel and were fleeing away from them at a high rate of speed. The troopers splashed their way out into the pool, firing after the escaping Bugs and their prized treasure. They managed to hit a couple of the Chariot Bugs, but the rest managed to get their charge around a bend in the tunnel unscathed and out of the line of fire.

Still in hot pursuit, they trudged through the thigh deep water as fast as their power suits would allow. Halfway across the pool, they came dangerously close to being flanked. Gossard, who was bringing up the rear in his marauder, was the first to notice that the frantic chirping of the Chariot Bugs had attracted the attention of the defense team.

"We got Bugs at three o'clock!" he shouted as he turned to meet the threat.

From the tunnel on the far right, three Bugs had emerged. They were of an unfamiliar sub-species, about four feet tall and fourteen feet long. In many ways, they resembled lobsters, with the same general body shape and large crushing claws in the front. Their faces were lobster-like also, with long, three-segmented antennules and eyes at the ends of stalks that could move independently of each other. By arachnid standards, the mouths were rather innocent looking, just some small chewing mandibles, not the giant limb-rending shears of a Warrior Bug. Apparently this Bug's claws were it's weapons and it's mouth was just used for feeding.

The Bugs were light blue in color at the top but this darkened to almost purple on the lower side of their bodies. Besides the two pincers, they had three legs on each side that they used to propel their bodies forward. Unlike many of the Bug species they had encountered, each leg ended in a splayed, two toed foot. The toes were long and flexible, giving the Bug sure footing on the hard rock surfaces.

The abdomen or tail section, which made up about four sevenths of the creature's length, was very different from a lobster's. This part almost looked like an armored inchworm; there was little sets of short, wrinkly legs directly underneath the tail, four at the very front and four in the back. These little legs supported the weight of the tail and were scuttling forward at a much faster rate than the larger front legs, as if they were trying to keep up. The lower part of the tail looked fleshy, even muscular and was a mottled purple. The top of the tail was covered in overlapping, light-blue colored armor plates. In layout, these plates were kind of like the scales on a pine cone. The difference was that each piece of armor on the back of the Bug extended from it's point of origin all the way to the end of it's tail, growing shorter in length and smaller in size the further back you went. The plates nearest the front end of the tail were two feet wide and around eight or nine feet long. The plates near the end of the tail were only about four inches wide and six inches long. The abdomen ended in a tail fan, a set of plates that formed a fin that probably could have pushed the Bug very quickly through deep water.

These Bugs were on a converging path with the Roughnecks and seemed intent on cutting them off from the tunnel that the Chariot Bugs had used to escape.

Goss unleashed the marauder's guns on the lead Bug and the roar of them was deafening in the confined space of the cave. The force of the projectiles striking it's armor made the Bug stumble to the side a little, but seemed to have little other effect. The rounds bounced right off of the Bug's thick exoskeleton and went spinning off in all directions, striking the water of the pool, the cave's walls and ceiling, and even impacting against the Roughnecks themselves. Most of these ricocheting shards of metal struck their powersuit armor, but Rico was grazed across his exposed upper arm and Higgins felt a sharp sting in his chin that started dripping blood.

Seeing this, Razak ordered a cease fire, but Gossard had already noticed what was going on and let off on the guns.

"Sorry about that, everybody." he said, more than a little embarrassed. "That's a new one to me." It was true, not many Bugs of this size could take a blast from the marauder's guns and not be chewed to pieces.

"Well, let's not do that anymore with these guys." said Razak dryly. "Everybody all right?"

"Just a scratch." said Rico. "Higgins?"

Higgins rubbed blood from his chin and said, "Hey, maybe they have an award for journalists wounded in action."

"He's fine." said Dizzy with a sneer. "I've had worse when I clip my toe-nails. Suck it up, weenie."

"Any suggestions on what to do about the crawdads?" asked Razak. "Something tells me that explosives may not be such a good idea in here." He indicated the slab of rock that had fallen from the ceiling with the barrel of his Morita.

While the squad discussed their options, the Bugs continued to scuttle forward, putting themselves between the troopers and the river tunnel. They lined up side by side, and then backed up into the tunnel entrance. Their tail sections flexed in the middle just like an inch worm, the little legs at the front and back of the tail scurrying together and raising the middle of the abdomen up into the air. As these came up, each Bug's armor plates spread out into fan shapes that overlapped the plates of the Bug next to it. With only a little more adjustment, the three Bugs had become a solid, bulletproof shield with three sets of deadly claws facing anything that tried to approach the tunnel opening.

"Maybe we could try an armor-piercing shell" Doc suggested from his marauder.

"They are non-explosive." Goss said. "What do you think, El-Tee?"

Razak evaluated the situation carefully for a moment, and then said, "We can give it a shot. Gossard, you can be the shooter. Everybody else retreat back into the tunnel we came in through. Doc, you use your marauder to shield us from any surprises."

They took their positions and peeked cautiously around Doc's marauder while Gossard selected his ammo and lined up on his target.

"Let's see how they like a little Teflon-coated depleted uranium." he said. He raised one of the marauder's arms, took careful aim at the thorax on the center Bug and fired. The result was, to say the least, pretty scary.

The shell launched from the barrel on the marauder's arm with a concussive boom, crossed the distance to the Bug in an instant and bounced right off of it's armored back. The deflected round spun end over end upward, still packing an incredible amount of force. It hit the ceiling about four feet ahead of Gossard, bounced off again and buried itself in the gravel bed of the pool right between the marauder's feet. When it hit the ceiling, it had knocked loose a half-ton chunk of limestone and the dislodged chunk of rock hit the water directly in front of him. It threw up a massive spray of water that drenched every surface of the cave, sent water surging over the edge of the pool and down the river where the rest of the squad was standing. They had to steady themselves on the tunnel's walls to keep from being thrown off of their feet. Rico grabbed Smoke's harness and for a few seconds, it was unclear to both as to who was keeping who from being swept away.

Gossard's sharp intake of breath was clearly audible over the squad's comlinks. "Wow." he whispered a little shakily. "That was certainly . . . kinetic."

"I believe it's time to let the Tophetti show us how it's done."said Doc, jokingly. "T'Phai?"

"If you are asking for suggestions," said T'Phai. "I have one that might work."

Razak was still trying to get the ringing out of his ears. "As long as it doesn't involve being killed by our own ammunition, I'd love to hear it."

"The marauders carry devices called 'Lizard Lines', do they not?"

The rest of the squad stared at him blankly. They weren't following where he was going, yet.

"Yeah." said Razak, a little hesitantly.

"The tips on the end of these Lizard Lines are designed to drill deep into solid rock so they can support the weight of the marauder, correct?"

Rico caught on, and with a wince said, "Ouch! Bug Lobotomy!"

Razak laughed and said, "T'Phai, I'm taking away that gold star I gave Gossard earlier, and I'm giving it to you."

Over their comlinks, they all heard Gossard mutter, "I'm really starting not to like that guy."

T'Phai's idea worked beautifully. Doc and Gossard lined their marauders up side by side and then painted the Bug's skulls with lasers to show the grapnels where to go. Little panels opened up in the marauder's shoulders and with a WHOOSH, the Lizard Lines were launched. All they had to do at that point was stand back and watch the Shield Bugs have a very bad day. It sounded like a nightmare trip to the dentist. The barbed claws on the tips secured a grip on the Bug's armor and then the drills bit deep, burrowing their way into the skulls.

The Bugs reacted frantically, trying to reach the sources of their agony with claws that could not reach the drills, and were too large and unwieldy to have done any good if they could. They didn't even manage to get a grip on the lizard line itself. Within seconds the drills were through the armor and into the soft insides of the Bugs craniums. They really went wild then. All three Bugs let loose with a panicked squeal. That carefully coordinated shield formation was gone in a moment as they rolled over onto their backs and squirmed and jerked and thrashed their way out into the middle of the cave. Water and gravel were thrown everywhere by the Bug's frenzied movements as they raked the backs of their heads on the bottom of the pool, trying to dislodged the drills. Both marauders had to release their ends of the Lizard Lines to avoid being pulled over as the rolling Bugs wound all the slack around their bodies.

As Rico watched them die, he found the motion of their death throes was not unlike the seizure they had seen from Carl earlier, and be it right or wrong, there was a certain amount of satisfaction in that. There was a poetry to it.

The show was over in only a matter of a minute. One by one, the Bugs wound themselves down until they twitched their last and lay still and all that was left was the gentle lapping of the waves as the pool returned to a state of calm.

There was a moment of stunned silence while the Roughnecks tried to decide how they should feel about what they had just witnessed.

Doc was the first to speak. Quite somberly but with a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, he said, "I know that as a man of medicine it's wrong to take pleasure in the suffering of another creature." His couldn't keep a straight face. "But I have to admit, I could watch that all day long."

Realizing that everyone was having the same conflicting feelings, the rest of the squad relaxed and a few even laughed.

Razak put their minds back on the task at hand. He said, "Alright, you jokers, we got a job to do. We still got a psychic-shriekin', snot-ball-inhabiting whatchamathing to kill. Pull yourselves together. Goss, Doc, how much juice do you have left on your marauders?"

The Roughnecks had been on the ground for nearly an hour and both marauders were running low on power. Rather than risk having to drag two immobile marauders out of these caves, Razak told them to head back down river to rendevous with the Bettie. The rest of the squad would continue on to see where the Chariot Bugs had run off to.

Doc and Goss weren't happy with the situation. "All due respect, sir, but what if you run into more trouble like these Shield Bugs?" said Doc. "I don't like the idea of running off and leaving you guys like this."

"I hear you." Razak replied. "But you won't be doing anyone any good if you run out of juice and go all tin woodsman on us. You start now back and if you don't stop to frolic in the waterfall, you'll be just about running on fumes by the time you get outside. I want both of you to get going, and those are orders, get me?"

Doc sighed with resignation and said, "Yes, sir." Together, the two marauders got themselves turned around and headed back down the river. As they disappeared back the way they had come, Razak walked toward the now open tunnel entrance and called over his shoulder, "Smoke! Find it."

The Neo-Dog took the lead at a fast, loping run, and the squad had to hustle to catch up. As Dizzy passed the corpse of one of the Shield Bugs, she hawked and spat on it, contemptfully.

They didn't have far to go. Within a few minutes, Smoke led them to where the Chariot Bugs had run themselves into a corner. The side tunnel they had taken in their hurry to escape had turned out to be a small cave with a floor that sloped steeply away from the entrance. They were having a very hard time getting the globe rolled back up into the main tunnel.

Once he had located the Bugs, Smoke moved further up the tunnel before turning around and dropping down on his haunches, staying well out of the way. Higgins followed him, filming the transpiring events with his camera from a safe distance.

When the remaining members of Alpha Squad showed up in the cave opening the Bugs had rushed at them in a final attempt to protect their charge. Rico and Razak took positions slightly to the side of the opening and cut down every Bug that tried to come out with their Moritas. Between the two of them, it didn't take long before they had a nice little heap of corpses piling up. While they kept the Bugs in check, Razak yelled for Dizzy and T'Phai to get their flamethrowers ready. When they had the torches primed, the four troopers switched places and twin streams of liquid fire replaced the steady bursts of the Moritas.

"Rico! Frag Grenade. On my count." Razak pulled a grenade of his own from his belt, and looked over at Johnny so they could time the detonation. They pushed and held down the pressure sensitive detonators simultaneously and prepared to throw.

Razak said, "Flores, T'Phai, cover!" As the girl and the Tophetti turned and threw their backs to the wall just outside the cave entrance, Razak and Rico lobbed in their grenades and stepped back. Seconds later, the frag grenades went off and a mixture of shrapnel, fluids, and exoskeleton flew out of the opening and pasted itself to the opposite tunnel wall.

Further up the tunnel, Smoke jumped to his feet with surprise, let out a yip of joy and then reported happily, "Frank is talking. No more shrieking."

Razak smiled at the dog and nodded. Turning back, he said "Rico, check it."

Rico peeked his head around the corner and said, "Clear."

The squad entered the cave, sweeping the floor and making sure nothing was moving. The frag grenades had really done a number on everything in the cave. There were pieces of Chariot Bug strewn all over. There were even pieces of Chariot Bugs protruding through other Chariot Bugs. Each Bug hit by the blast had disintegrated and was turned to deadly shrapnel that had killed yet another Bug. That little cave had been no place to be during those few seconds.

The globe had been shredded and the largest piece of it that they could find was only about eight inches square. It's contents were all over the floor, walls and ceiling of the cave. Some of the fluids were dripping onto the top of the troopers helmets. The thing that had been floating in it was laying in the middle of the floor, mangled and quite dead. The globe and the fluids it had contained had shielded it a little from the grenades, so in terms of damage it wasn't as bad off as the Bugs, but it was dead nonetheless.

Rico poked it with the barrel of his Morita. "What do you suppose it was?' he asked.

"It sure doesn't look like a Bug." said Higgins as he filmed the carnage from the cave entrance.

He was right. It didn't look like any kind of Bug any of them had ever seen. It was somewhere between a starfish and an octopus, reddish-orange in color with black leopard spots. Spread out it would have been around three feet wide from tentacle tip to tentacle tip. In the center of it's body was some kind of an orifice that was lined with what looked like a set of eye lids complete with eyelash-like follicles. This opening was about nine inches long. Instead of an eyeball, between these eyelids hung a limp, wrinkly, fourteen inch long tube with a sucker on the end that was lined with several rows of tiny teeth.

"It probably isn't a Bug." said Razak. "The Bugs have conquered thousands of worlds across the galaxy. They must have whole zoos of creatures like this that they've found out there. Once they discovered what this one could do they must have figured it would be handy to use against us."

Thinking something looked a little funny, Dizzy pulled out her machete and reaching down, used the blade to flip it over. "Look at this." she said as she crouched for a closer view. "It looks like there's actually two of them."

The other creature that she had revealed was the same as the first, only a lighter, almost yellow color. It had the same eyelid-type organ with a tube hanging from it. The two were intertwined, with their tentacles knotted together and their undersides pressed up against each other.

Higgins decided that it was time to start asking the kind of questions a reporter should ask. "What do you think they were doing?"

Dizzy, gave him a sideways glance, watched him for a moment and then shook her head at his naivete. "I'd tell you what I think they were doing, Bobby," she said. "but I don't want to make you blush."

It took Higgins a second to get the hint and then he blushed anyway.

"You suppose all this goop is their eggs?" Rico stirred some of the lumpy slime material that had come out of the bottom of the globe with the toe of his boot.

"If they are, it wouldn't do to leave them laying around." said Razak. "If even one of them is still viable it could make trouble for us down the road. We'll bag these two lovebirds and a couple of eggs for study, and burn the rest."

With plastic bags pulled from packs on their belts, Razak and Rico collected the specimens while T'Phai and Dizzy prepared to burn the contents of the little cave. As she stood waiting for the other troopers to clear out of the cave, Dizzy reflected on the situation, and found that she couldn't help but feel a little sad for the pathetic little aliens that they had killed.

They hadn't meant to cause anybody any harm. The Bugs had simply used what they did naturally as a weapon and the two creatures had unwittingly found themselves in the middle of an intergalactic war. Maybe she was being overly sentimental, but she was kind of glad that while they had been forced to kill the slimy little suckers to save Carl, as least they had been with someone they loved when they died. Then, realizing that she was attributing romantic love to these hideous little creatures, Dizzy had a little shiver, shook off her crazy thoughts and set fire to everything in the cave. There were times when she had to wonder if there might be something wrong with her.

Tongue Point - When the shrieking in his head had finally stopped, Carl had tried to sit up, tried to speak, tried to warn somebody of what was going to happen. But he was strapped to his bed, and the heavy doses of drugs they had given him were making it very hard to say anything coherent.

The doctors ignored his babbling while they took his vitals and noted that his brainwave activity had returned to normal.

"You need rest." they told them.

"Bonnasaieees." he slurred at them in an angry tone.

"Yes, Bonsais." said a nurse as she adjusted his pillow. "We'll worry about those later."

"Buenos Aires." is what he had meant to say, but the words that came out were something like what a drunken sheep would say. Psychics the world over were finding themselves in the same position and as the critical moment arrived they struggled frantically against their bonds and shouted, trying to make someone, anyone understand that it was going to happen any second now.

Later, their only consolation was knowing that even if they had managed to get their points across at that moment, not much could have been done to stop the massive loss of life that was about to occur.

It wasn't much of a consolation.

Much later, after all the investigating and research had been completed, SICON pieced together the events of the following days. The psychic shrieking of the aliens, the scientists decided, only occurred while the creatures were breeding. The Bugs had most likely brought the two creatures to earth in separate little habitats and then, when they were ready, they had put the two together and let nature run it's course. During the whole operation to stop the Shriekers, everyone had assumed that the psychics were the target. But the attack on the psychics was only a diversion. The shrieking hadn't been enough to kill any psychic, it had just been enough to disable them while the Bugs carried out their most devastating sneak attack to date. When it was all over, the Roughnecks would never be the same.

The Memoirs of Robert Higgins, Fednet Journalist