Front line tales: Specters-Recon Goliath Squadron
Anderson leaned on the window frame, watching the rain drops plunk down in the puddle that had accumulated below. It was the third day of uninterrupted pouring rain and he had drawn the short straw for observation post duty. Just his luck.
Reaching inside the cockpit, he picked up a chocolate bar from his ration pack, it wasn't like the real thing but it was the closest you could get on the front lines. This had to be the most boring sector to patrol on the entire planet. There hadn't been a single contact in the last six months.
Oh well, maybe he shouldn't complain. Having a break from the messy battle fields was a good think. Anderson took another sip from his thermal flask and bit into chocolate bar. The whaling of the proximity scanner warning caught him totally off guard and he spilt the industrial coffee all over his battle suit.
'Shit! What the hell now?!' Sliding into the command chair, he checked the scanners.
'What the...' Hundreds of blips showed on his screen, less then a K away. Zerglings! Those tunneling vermin got in everywhere.
'OP-1 to Outpost Command! I have multiple contacts all over sector 13!'
'Confirm, multiple bogeys in 13?'
'That's what I said! Get some Wraiths and marine squads here ASAP! I'm falling back to grid 31!'
Anderson flipped the combat walkers standby switches and brought it out of 'silent' mode. Slamming onto the motion controls, he swung the Goliath around and opened the throttle, rotating the torso to face backwards. Systems were coming on-line and the twin anti-armor 20mm auto-cannons started warming up, feeding ammunition belts into the breech chambers.
Activating the autopilot to follow the set waypoints, Anders brought up the targeting system and swore under his breath. The hill side seemed to writhe as the masses of aliens appeared to ooze over the terrain in a churning wave.
His targeting systems were useless with so many possible targets so he shut it down and took hold of the trigger grips, hearing the multiple barrels whine as they started spinning. He let loose a hail of canon projectiles, spraying the front lines of the encroaching mass while de-activating the auto-tracking on the Hellfire missiles to fire them unguided into the swarms.
Time went by in slow motion and the distance to the next waypoint seemed to grow further. Sweet was running down Andersons face and the cockpit was starting to heat up. A quick scan to the side told him that his cannons were quickly starting to over heat, soon he would be defenseless.
One K from the outpost lines, his number two cannon cracked its casing when it overheated and he ejected the remaining ammunition to prevent it from igniting. Friendly air contacts showed on the fringes of the scanners but they were still a few minutes out.
Nine hundred meters away, the second ran out of cannon rounds. This was it, overriding the control protocols and safe guards, Anderson released the weapons pod attachment clamps. Both cannon mountings along with the missile launched fell to the ground, lightening the Goliath considerably.
At eight hundred meters, the separation between him and the monstrous creatures grew smaller by the second. Their was no way that he could outrun them, it was all a matter of time if no re-enforcements arrived soon. His scanner showed a wall of red right behind his own blue dot.
The few leading zerglings had reached him by now and a few started leaping at the legs of the walker. Moments later, several had gotten a hold and the shear wait was starting slow the Goliath down. Anderson had no choice but to carry on, dragging the zerglings along.
He only got another fifty meters when the mighty combat walker ground to a halt under the onslaught of the vast numbers. He waited, terrified, until the first alien started scratching at the cockpit canopy, then Anders hit the ejection controls.
A blast of heat washed over his face, the centrifugal forces pinning him in his seat and then he was clear, climbing into the sky at a high speed. Seconds later, the Goliath disappeared beneath a sea of organisms just before the walker self destructed. A fountain of organic debris shot into the air.
The ejection rocket died and the chutes deployed with a loud pop, letting the seat drift slowly down. Anderson prayed for an eastern wind that would blow him towards friendly lines and for a moment it seemed like he was doomed as he started drifted the wrong way.
A sudden gust of wind, tumbled him over and he entered a different air stream layer that carried him quickly to Terran ground. He had never felt more helpless than those twenty minutes it took to touch down but there was no time to think about it.
As the chair hit the ground and came to a stop after a few rolls, he had the safety harness off and scampered to his feet. A quick check told him which way to turn and he set of at a full out run. With some luck, he could at least reach the covering fire range of his lines. Glancing back every few paces, he was somewhat relieved not to see anything move although the ground tremble slightly underfoot as the hordes approach with a thundering roar.
He crested the next hill and turned. Blood drained from his face and a chill gripped his spine. The reason why he had not seen any pursuers was because the had stuck to the natural flow of the terrain which had diverted them around the large depression he had landed in.
A multitude of gnashing maws and claws raced towards him from both sides, not more the two hundred paces away. It was all over, there was no where to run and no time to try. Anderson sank to his knees, tears running from his eyes, whether from the dust or hopelessness, he didn't know and didn't really care at that moment.
It was a whining sound that announced his salvation, the whining of heavy Mjolnir Artillery Cannon shells raining from the skies. The blast of the plasma-charged barrage was so close, it knocked him off his feet. His hearing was gone, a blessing in disguise, but soon he wished that his sense of smell would also vanish when the stench of shredded alien flesh reached him.
He leaned on his elbows as the smoke cleared and found himself on an island of intact land, surrounded by a lake of craters. It was a temporary reprieve as the next wave of zerglings started filling in the craters.
Then something tapped him on his shoulder and he jumped. The concerned face of a hover cycle rider looked at him, yelling something at him. For a second he was dumb struck and merely stared at him. The man hit him hard in the face which did the trick as he started to move. The scrambled on his cycle and sped of in a cloud of dust.
Their going was slow as they negotiated the five-meter-deep craters. The driver was good and they made good time when another AAV-5 Arclite Siege Tank barrage shook the ground. The cycle lost its tacking but kept going as the dust and smoke from the explosions blotted out the sun behind them for a while.
The alien assault seemed endless, wave after wave rolled onwards regardless of the devastating fire, tearing their front ranks to shreds. Some of the zerglings survived the barrage and where homing in on them at a much faster pace. Regardless, it looked like they were going to make it as they crested the last hill between them and the Terran lines, until they slid into a smoldering crater with a sandy bottom.
Try as the driver might, he could not get the hover cycle to budge, they were stuck. Anders jumped from the Vulture, grabbing a C-14 "Impaler" Gauss Rifle from its mounting and scaled the steep crater side. A sight greeted him as it did many times that day, a organic wall of serrated edges advancing rapidly.
He felt strangely calm as he lifted the rifle and started laying down rapid-fire U-238 shells, cutting numerous monsters to pieces at long range until he finally ran out of ammo. Dropping the rifle in disgust, he placed his gloved hands on his hips and quietly watched the Zerg brood approach.
Several volleys of burst lasers hid the enemy from site in a cloud of dust and smoke as a flight Wraith fighters thundered overhead. Anders jumped into the air and cheered as another flight come up to their position from behind. This flight drop several strings of canisters containing a new experimental weapon. A thick black cloud enveloped the front ranks, bringing the front lines of the onrushing zerglings to a halt.
Anders had heard rumors about the new weapon, supposed to have a sensory neural paralysis agent that confused the aliens to the point of immobility. Whatever it was, it was working and he was forever thankful.
A low droning sound rumbled the earth as the Vulture driver joined him on the rim of the crater and they were treated to the spectacular sight of about twenty Dropships coming in low over the terrain. The drone turned into a thunderous roar as the made turns hovering over and around where Anders and the driver stood.
One by one the dropships deployed its cargo of marines and firebats who took up firing positions aimed at the black cloud. And as the last marines were deployed, Anders saw the black cloud starting to dissipate.
The last dropship draw near them and lowered until the entry hatch was within range and the two could scramble aboard. The dropship wasted no time and banked steeply as it immediately head for the rear as swarms Scourge streamed over the hills on the horizon.
As if in response, two squadrons of Valkery missile frigates ascended from behind the low hills just beyond the Terran lines. In unison, the all fired their 8-missile volleys, creating a wall of speeding death. Only a few single Scourges emerged from the fireball explosions and were quickly dealt with by the Wraiths.
An eerie silence had descended on the battlefield. Smoke tendrils drifted slowly from smoldering craters and heaps of charred carcasses. The marines didn't move a muscle as grew smaller in the portal Anders was watching from.
The whole valley floor between the marine position and the fringes of the thinning black clouds started wriggling, as if the ground itself shivered from the devastation inflicted upon it. Hordes of red-eyed, spiked, brown carapaces burst from the soil and were met by a crescendo of concentrated Gauss rifle fire, slicing through the first few ranks of aliens in a messy mass of pulp that splattered everywhere.
The unexpected borrowing together with the joined force of several hundred Hydralisks, the marines were out gunned and soon to be in big trouble. Anders felt a sudden pang of guilt, after all, they had been called up to safe his skin and now they were in mortal unforeseen danger. It was only then that he fully realized the unshakable motto that the marines lived by, 'Never leave a soldier behind'.
Anderson was thrown of balance when the dropship suddenly banked again for no apparent reason and only when it resumed level flight again was he able to see out the window as the giant shadow of two Behemoth-class battlecruisers slid over them towards the scene of fighting.
The very air seemed to vibrate as all the burst laser batteries opened up a barrages at the same time. Burnt ozone even seeped into the dropship cargo bay and heated up the air in the immediate vicinity of the giant ships. This, combined with its almost leisurely cruising speed formed a contrasting but looming sense of awe struck power.
A sea of fleeting flashes descended on the crawling fields brown and red, creating dancing patterns of destruction as every available weapon on the front line joined the carnage and decimated the alien ranks. All sight of the creatures was quickly lost in billowing haze of dusty brown-black smoke.
The end of the battle came abruptly, marked by the firing of the devastating Yamato Cannons that sprouted plumes of mushroom clouds, raining bits of carapace and innards on man and machine alike as a deathly hush ensued.
It was the site of a newly formed landscape that bid him farewell as the flying machine whisked him away to base camp. A landscape sculpted by violence and cemented with destruction, bonding the soil with oozing husks and spilt shells and sealed with alien bodily fluids. A rustic brown hillside and a graveyard for thousands.
Anderson leaned on the window frame, watching the rain drops plunk down in the puddle that had accumulated below. It was the third day of uninterrupted pouring rain and he had drawn the short straw for observation post duty. Just his luck.
Reaching inside the cockpit, he picked up a chocolate bar from his ration pack, it wasn't like the real thing but it was the closest you could get on the front lines. This had to be the most boring sector to patrol on the entire planet. There hadn't been a single contact in the last six months.
Oh well, maybe he shouldn't complain. Having a break from the messy battle fields was a good think. Anderson took another sip from his thermal flask and bit into chocolate bar. The whaling of the proximity scanner warning caught him totally off guard and he spilt the industrial coffee all over his battle suit.
'Shit! What the hell now?!' Sliding into the command chair, he checked the scanners.
'What the...' Hundreds of blips showed on his screen, less then a K away. Zerglings! Those tunneling vermin got in everywhere.
'OP-1 to Outpost Command! I have multiple contacts all over sector 13!'
'Confirm, multiple bogeys in 13?'
'That's what I said! Get some Wraiths and marine squads here ASAP! I'm falling back to grid 31!'
Anderson flipped the combat walkers standby switches and brought it out of 'silent' mode. Slamming onto the motion controls, he swung the Goliath around and opened the throttle, rotating the torso to face backwards. Systems were coming on-line and the twin anti-armor 20mm auto-cannons started warming up, feeding ammunition belts into the breech chambers.
Activating the autopilot to follow the set waypoints, Anders brought up the targeting system and swore under his breath. The hill side seemed to writhe as the masses of aliens appeared to ooze over the terrain in a churning wave.
His targeting systems were useless with so many possible targets so he shut it down and took hold of the trigger grips, hearing the multiple barrels whine as they started spinning. He let loose a hail of canon projectiles, spraying the front lines of the encroaching mass while de-activating the auto-tracking on the Hellfire missiles to fire them unguided into the swarms.
Time went by in slow motion and the distance to the next waypoint seemed to grow further. Sweet was running down Andersons face and the cockpit was starting to heat up. A quick scan to the side told him that his cannons were quickly starting to over heat, soon he would be defenseless.
One K from the outpost lines, his number two cannon cracked its casing when it overheated and he ejected the remaining ammunition to prevent it from igniting. Friendly air contacts showed on the fringes of the scanners but they were still a few minutes out.
Nine hundred meters away, the second ran out of cannon rounds. This was it, overriding the control protocols and safe guards, Anderson released the weapons pod attachment clamps. Both cannon mountings along with the missile launched fell to the ground, lightening the Goliath considerably.
At eight hundred meters, the separation between him and the monstrous creatures grew smaller by the second. Their was no way that he could outrun them, it was all a matter of time if no re-enforcements arrived soon. His scanner showed a wall of red right behind his own blue dot.
The few leading zerglings had reached him by now and a few started leaping at the legs of the walker. Moments later, several had gotten a hold and the shear wait was starting slow the Goliath down. Anderson had no choice but to carry on, dragging the zerglings along.
He only got another fifty meters when the mighty combat walker ground to a halt under the onslaught of the vast numbers. He waited, terrified, until the first alien started scratching at the cockpit canopy, then Anders hit the ejection controls.
A blast of heat washed over his face, the centrifugal forces pinning him in his seat and then he was clear, climbing into the sky at a high speed. Seconds later, the Goliath disappeared beneath a sea of organisms just before the walker self destructed. A fountain of organic debris shot into the air.
The ejection rocket died and the chutes deployed with a loud pop, letting the seat drift slowly down. Anderson prayed for an eastern wind that would blow him towards friendly lines and for a moment it seemed like he was doomed as he started drifted the wrong way.
A sudden gust of wind, tumbled him over and he entered a different air stream layer that carried him quickly to Terran ground. He had never felt more helpless than those twenty minutes it took to touch down but there was no time to think about it.
As the chair hit the ground and came to a stop after a few rolls, he had the safety harness off and scampered to his feet. A quick check told him which way to turn and he set of at a full out run. With some luck, he could at least reach the covering fire range of his lines. Glancing back every few paces, he was somewhat relieved not to see anything move although the ground tremble slightly underfoot as the hordes approach with a thundering roar.
He crested the next hill and turned. Blood drained from his face and a chill gripped his spine. The reason why he had not seen any pursuers was because the had stuck to the natural flow of the terrain which had diverted them around the large depression he had landed in.
A multitude of gnashing maws and claws raced towards him from both sides, not more the two hundred paces away. It was all over, there was no where to run and no time to try. Anderson sank to his knees, tears running from his eyes, whether from the dust or hopelessness, he didn't know and didn't really care at that moment.
It was a whining sound that announced his salvation, the whining of heavy Mjolnir Artillery Cannon shells raining from the skies. The blast of the plasma-charged barrage was so close, it knocked him off his feet. His hearing was gone, a blessing in disguise, but soon he wished that his sense of smell would also vanish when the stench of shredded alien flesh reached him.
He leaned on his elbows as the smoke cleared and found himself on an island of intact land, surrounded by a lake of craters. It was a temporary reprieve as the next wave of zerglings started filling in the craters.
Then something tapped him on his shoulder and he jumped. The concerned face of a hover cycle rider looked at him, yelling something at him. For a second he was dumb struck and merely stared at him. The man hit him hard in the face which did the trick as he started to move. The scrambled on his cycle and sped of in a cloud of dust.
Their going was slow as they negotiated the five-meter-deep craters. The driver was good and they made good time when another AAV-5 Arclite Siege Tank barrage shook the ground. The cycle lost its tacking but kept going as the dust and smoke from the explosions blotted out the sun behind them for a while.
The alien assault seemed endless, wave after wave rolled onwards regardless of the devastating fire, tearing their front ranks to shreds. Some of the zerglings survived the barrage and where homing in on them at a much faster pace. Regardless, it looked like they were going to make it as they crested the last hill between them and the Terran lines, until they slid into a smoldering crater with a sandy bottom.
Try as the driver might, he could not get the hover cycle to budge, they were stuck. Anders jumped from the Vulture, grabbing a C-14 "Impaler" Gauss Rifle from its mounting and scaled the steep crater side. A sight greeted him as it did many times that day, a organic wall of serrated edges advancing rapidly.
He felt strangely calm as he lifted the rifle and started laying down rapid-fire U-238 shells, cutting numerous monsters to pieces at long range until he finally ran out of ammo. Dropping the rifle in disgust, he placed his gloved hands on his hips and quietly watched the Zerg brood approach.
Several volleys of burst lasers hid the enemy from site in a cloud of dust and smoke as a flight Wraith fighters thundered overhead. Anders jumped into the air and cheered as another flight come up to their position from behind. This flight drop several strings of canisters containing a new experimental weapon. A thick black cloud enveloped the front ranks, bringing the front lines of the onrushing zerglings to a halt.
Anders had heard rumors about the new weapon, supposed to have a sensory neural paralysis agent that confused the aliens to the point of immobility. Whatever it was, it was working and he was forever thankful.
A low droning sound rumbled the earth as the Vulture driver joined him on the rim of the crater and they were treated to the spectacular sight of about twenty Dropships coming in low over the terrain. The drone turned into a thunderous roar as the made turns hovering over and around where Anders and the driver stood.
One by one the dropships deployed its cargo of marines and firebats who took up firing positions aimed at the black cloud. And as the last marines were deployed, Anders saw the black cloud starting to dissipate.
The last dropship draw near them and lowered until the entry hatch was within range and the two could scramble aboard. The dropship wasted no time and banked steeply as it immediately head for the rear as swarms Scourge streamed over the hills on the horizon.
As if in response, two squadrons of Valkery missile frigates ascended from behind the low hills just beyond the Terran lines. In unison, the all fired their 8-missile volleys, creating a wall of speeding death. Only a few single Scourges emerged from the fireball explosions and were quickly dealt with by the Wraiths.
An eerie silence had descended on the battlefield. Smoke tendrils drifted slowly from smoldering craters and heaps of charred carcasses. The marines didn't move a muscle as grew smaller in the portal Anders was watching from.
The whole valley floor between the marine position and the fringes of the thinning black clouds started wriggling, as if the ground itself shivered from the devastation inflicted upon it. Hordes of red-eyed, spiked, brown carapaces burst from the soil and were met by a crescendo of concentrated Gauss rifle fire, slicing through the first few ranks of aliens in a messy mass of pulp that splattered everywhere.
The unexpected borrowing together with the joined force of several hundred Hydralisks, the marines were out gunned and soon to be in big trouble. Anders felt a sudden pang of guilt, after all, they had been called up to safe his skin and now they were in mortal unforeseen danger. It was only then that he fully realized the unshakable motto that the marines lived by, 'Never leave a soldier behind'.
Anderson was thrown of balance when the dropship suddenly banked again for no apparent reason and only when it resumed level flight again was he able to see out the window as the giant shadow of two Behemoth-class battlecruisers slid over them towards the scene of fighting.
The very air seemed to vibrate as all the burst laser batteries opened up a barrages at the same time. Burnt ozone even seeped into the dropship cargo bay and heated up the air in the immediate vicinity of the giant ships. This, combined with its almost leisurely cruising speed formed a contrasting but looming sense of awe struck power.
A sea of fleeting flashes descended on the crawling fields brown and red, creating dancing patterns of destruction as every available weapon on the front line joined the carnage and decimated the alien ranks. All sight of the creatures was quickly lost in billowing haze of dusty brown-black smoke.
The end of the battle came abruptly, marked by the firing of the devastating Yamato Cannons that sprouted plumes of mushroom clouds, raining bits of carapace and innards on man and machine alike as a deathly hush ensued.
It was the site of a newly formed landscape that bid him farewell as the flying machine whisked him away to base camp. A landscape sculpted by violence and cemented with destruction, bonding the soil with oozing husks and spilt shells and sealed with alien bodily fluids. A rustic brown hillside and a graveyard for thousands.