Second Lieutenant Mira Kusanagi, November 20, 2525 (Military Calendar) \ Nova Curitiba, Setubal IV, Setubal System
"The convoy will go straight through the second avenue," Erwin said, tapping the map and highlighting the entry point in blue, then sliding his finger all the way to the edge of the map.
"Our guys will raise some ruckus here, here and here," He continued, tapping three other points in the map. " While the police are distracted we'll intercept them at the intersection with Pearl Street."
"We'll take out the transports escorts, then Blue will airlift the launcher out of here before the reinforcements arrive. Any questions?"
"Yeah, one," João said with his thick Setuban accent "How is Blue gonna get out of the city without being blown out of the sky."
"That's for me to know and for you to find out big guy," Blue answered, she was standing in the corner of the room, back against the wall, her long black hair falling sideways and covering her ears.
"It's an important question, I'd like to know if the plan is gonna work before going up against a UNSC convoy," I asked, I had no idea how she planned on doing that, so it was good intel.
"It's gonna work, don't worry about it. Besides, we don't have the time to discuss the intricacies of our plan right now, convoy gets here in two hours," Erwin said, the guy knew how to keep tight lips.
We were in a dark, moist room in the basement of a run-down bar by the city center. Ten United Rebel Front operatives making up one of the dozens of cells in Setubal IV.
I had provided the cell with Intel showing that the UNSC would transport a new Mark 23 Surface to Orbit missile launcher with nuclear warheads through the city if we managed to snag it for ourselves the SOM would force the UNSC to engage us on the ground where we actually stood a chance of winning.
So here we were, lying in wait for our mission in this filthy basement, they were at least, I had something else to do right now.
"I'm gonna have a smoke." I said, "Anyone wanna come?"
"Jesus Nora, that shits terrible for you," Noah said from his chair.
"Yes, I should follow your example and drink juice every day" I replied, ironically purple juice, Noah's drug of choice, was not unhealthy because of its hallucinogenic properties, but because of its extremely high cholesterol levels.
"At least my juice doesn't stink, seriously cigarettes make me gag."
"Whatever, I'm out."
I climbed the stair to the bar and walked outside, there was a drizzle but it didn't matter. I walked to the other side of the street and appreciated our little safehouse, the basement was terrible, but I would miss it, it was a cozy place.
I took a cigar out of my pocket and snapped it then threw it in the trash. Noah was right, cigarettes sucked.
A Terry's Tacos truck appeared around the corner of the street and decelerated next to me, a concealed door suddenly opened and I was grabbed by two strong hands that pulled me inside.
"Great job Lieutenant!" Major White said from a leather chair sitting next to a monitor inside the truck.
"Thank you, Major," I replied, looking at Sergeant Chang, who was still holding me by the shoulders, "You can let go of me now Chang, I'm not gonna jump out of the truck."
"Sorry Lieutenant, I'm still a little nervous," He said, letting go of me and scratching his arm in anxiety, how was this guy in military intelligence? Still, I was also having some trouble masking my nervousness, this was my first mission after all.
I looked at the screen and saw a squad of plainclothes ONI operatives storm the bar, the same thing should be happening at the three other cells in Nova Curitiba, crippling the United Rebel Front's activities in Setubal IV for months.
"At the current rate, the URF cells should be down by the end of the hour," The Major continued, ignoring our presence, "Just in time, Blue Division received orders to return to Reach, something big is going on."
The excited tone in the Major's voice filled me with dread, exciting in intelligence meant deadly and prone to SNAFUs. The fact that all of Blue Division's two hundred operatives were being recalled was especially worrying but at the same time, I felt happier with the opportunity of participating in a big operation by the second.
Private First Class Thomas Rashid, November 29, 2525 (Military Calendar) \ 23.5505° S, 46.6333° W, Jotunheim, Fenrir System.
The blood tray was flooded by crimson light, meaning we were coming up to our LZ in two minutes, time for final equipment check.
I had checked all of my equipment two times already, but the tension of the coming operation, my squad's first operation, forced me to check my equipment with religious fervor.
"You look like you're gonna puke dude, relax," Ryan, the squad's automatic rifleman said, he was seated to my right inspecting his M739 SAW.
"How are you so relaxed right now?" I asked incredulously.
"You saw the mission briefing," He replied, "It's a secret lab, how much security could they really have?"
"More than you think private," Sergeant Povey said, she was the only veteran in our squad so saying that only made me tenser. She looked at me with an empathetic face.
"Relax kid, momma's not gonna let anyone hurt her babies today,"
"If you're my momma, are you gonna give me presents for Christmas," Ryan said.
"Yeah, I'm gonna give you a very merry ass-kicking, now get ready!"
The pelican decelerated fast and the blood tray was flooded with snow as the aft bulkhead opened up.
"Thank you for flying with us today gentlemen, we hope you have a nice trip" Emilia's voice sounded over the COM as she hovered the pelican a meter off the ground.
Rashid -one of our riflemen- was the first to get out, sinking knee deep in fluffy white snow, the rest of the squad quickly followed and formed a standard wedge.
The horizon was a dull blue monochrome that went on for kilometers with no discernible landmarks, this really was an excellent place to hide a base. We walked for half an hour before reaching our NAV marker only to find nothing but more snow.
"We are at the entry point right?" Lance Corporal Cyril - our drone specialist- said, looking around the featureless white ground. "Was the intel incorrect?"
"You really think ONI would send us to the middle of an ice ball based on faulty intel?" Lance Corporal Mamika -our anti-vehicle specialist- said.
The guys kept up their banter as I walked towards the exact location of the marker. Maybe it's hidd-.
I fell about two meters down, followed by another half a meter of snow, into a metal cube of about two square meters with a ladder on one side and a door on the other. My ass hurt.
"Nice going private" The sergeant chuckled, "Maybe you should've been a detective." Her face got suddenly serious as she barked orders " Blue team join up with Tom, get that door open!"
Ryan, Cyril and Corporal Toa jumped down, Ryan helped me up while Cyril unlocked the door with a spoofer and Toa prepared for breaching with an M90 shotgun.
With a shrill beep, the spoofer opened the door, Cyril and Toa entered the lab first, followed by Ryan and me.
"Clear" We all announced as we checked the room, it was a dark featureless corridor with an elevator shaft at the end, I went over to check the shaft as the rest of the squad came in, Cyril walked up to me and released a datapad sized rectangle into the air. The flying recon drone started going down the shaft before suddenly crashing down.
"Looks like an EM field sarge," Cyril said "No way to know what's down there without going down"
"Thank you for volunteering corporal," The sarge replied, " Toa and Rashid go first, you and me after, no one fires unless fired upon or ordered by me."
I walked up to the lift cables, took my rappel motor and linked it to them. The little-motorized handle lowered me silently down the shaft for some hundred-so meters before I touched the ground.
Ahead of me stood a spotless white corridor leading to a T intersection, a door on either side of the corridor and an armored guard right in the middle.
"Fuck!" I shouted as I raised my rifle and fired, he fired at the same time, fortunately, his round missed me and hit Cyril on the side.
The guard got hit three times in the chest and fell on the floor, Cyril stumbled back shouting in pain while Ryan and Sarge hit the ground.
Ryan sprinted and tackled the guard before he could get up while the sergeant ran up to him, ordering for me to tend to Cyril.
I walked back to him and inspected the wound, one shot had hit and cracked his bodysuit while another had penetrated and come out of the other side of his torso, no major bleeding and only a little bleeding, he'd be fine with some Biofoam.
"That went well huh?" I joked while Cyril looked at me with a murderous glare, I took a Biofoam canister from my rucksack, pushed the nostril into the wound and filled it with the antiseptic, reparative foam. Cyril bit his lips to hold the momentary pain and then relaxed, breathing normally again.
"You two, call up the rest of the squad and then check the intersection," The sergeant ordered as the retreated to Ryan's position. He had managed to subdue the smaller guard and was cuffing him at the moment.
I pulled on the lift cables, raised my rifle and walked up to the end of the corridor. "Clear," I said into the COMs, followed shortly by Cyril. "Their climate control is shit, my wound is freezing," He complained.
"Suck it up marine," The sarge said as she crouched next to the guard, "You're under arrest, obviously," She said "But if you cooperate, maybe we can sweeten the pot a bit"
"You can't do shit groundpounder," He answered perfectly, that was some tough armor to keep him in this condition, well-armored guards were a problem.
"Well, yeah" She replied, pulling her pistol and pointing at his foot, "I can't make it any better, but I can sure make it a whole lot worse.
His eyes widened, "So much for rules of engagement," He sighed. "I'm not paid nearly enough for this. Command center is down that way," He pointed to the left passage of the intersection "Turn right and walk straight down some five hundred meters, you'll enter the executive area, keep going straight until you see some stairs to your left, climb them and there you are."
"I was not expecting you to give up so easily," Ryan said, surprised.
"What'd you want from me?" The guard replied, "I'm paid to point and shoot, far as I see the shooting is over for me."
"That's fair," Ryan said, he then switched to TEAMCOM, "What kind of insurrectionists are these? As far as I knew they tend to put up more of a fight."
"Nothing about this place screams innie to me," I said, the apprehension of the drop had been killed by my first successful shot and replaced by curiosity. "Especially the 'executive area', this looks more like a corporate compound to me."
"We'll find out later, right now we focus on the mission." Sergeant Pam interrupted, "Green Team hold this area and secure the prisoner, Blue, and Red teams will secure the command center. Private Lewinski, we getting anyone else on coms?"
"Negative sergeant," Our radio guy replied, "This facility is tight, but Bravo Squad should meet us at this executive area at about the same time."
"All right, form up marines, off we go."
We moved in a diamond formation following the guard's instructions. Toa at the lead with me and Ryan at the flanks and Cyril forming up the rear. The other team doing the same some twenty meters back. The corridors were tight and smooth, no cover at all.
The path stopped some twenty meters before instructed, a wide white steel door blocking the way, I laid down on my belly as the squad prepared for engagement.
"Toa set some charges, Cyril flank him, I want a hole in that door. Mamika get your launcher, on my mark you launch both missiles, HE." Sergeant Pamela ordered.
Toa and Cyril took position by the door while Mamika crouched and took aim with the SPNKR, a small amount of C12 was placed on the door and Toa raised three fingers.
Two. I tensed up.
One.
A large hole was blown through the door, my helmets sensors scanned past the smoke to see a group of mobile barriers set up with heavy machine guns and a squad's worth of guards.
"Mark!"
The two rockets flew straight through the hole and impacted the walls behind the guards, the explosion knocking them to the ground and disorienting them.
One of the two machineguns roared to life. I aimed at the gunners head and shot, two of the three rounds hit his chest and neck. He fell to the floor, lifeless, my first kill.
The corridor turned into chaos as round flew everywhere, I noticed some round pinging to my right and rolled to the left, out of the zone of fire.
An explosion came from the other side, followed by two more, and the fire died down. Toa took a peak-trough the other side before saying, "All clear, Bravo squad showed up."
"Good, that wasn't gonna end well for us, Blue team go ahead and meet them, Mamika and Serra are wounded, and I have to take care of them."
We winked our affirmative light and moved up, Sergeant Silvia stood in front of us smiling, the wild hared veteran marine was a glowing with happiness.
"Hey boys!" He said, "Buma set charges on that door, we're breaching."
I and Ryan took up position behind Silvia's marines, having someone else take the first salvo would be fun.
Once again the marine in charge of breaching held up his hands.
Three. I still had 24 round in the magazine, no time to reload now.
Two. I think a bullet hit my ankle armor, it was hurting a bit.
One.
Flashbangs.
The two breaching marines took position by the doors while the other streamed in under covering fire.
I passed the portal, nice gray carpet, two-floor ceiling, glass walls, this was an office building, not a lab.
I ducked behind a plush cashmere sofa, fire was coming from upside.
A grenade landed near me.
Shit.
Lieutenant, Junior Grade Elizabeth Reichel, November 21, 2525 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC Paris-Class Heavy Frigate Cannon Fodder FFG - 301, Luna Orbit, Sol System.
Beautiful.
That was all I could think, my first ship, a brand new ship, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes upon. Prep school at New Alexandria, five years at OCS, my parallel Masters in plasma physics, it all led up to this moment.
The air smelled of fresh bagels, I didn't know if it was an air filter or a hallucination, and I didn't care.
The Officer's quarters door stood in front of me, I took a deep breath and entered the room, the door automatically detecting my uplink and sliding open.
"Uno!" A slender woman with short red hair and hazel eyes said. She looked at me and without missing a beat said, "Hey! You must be weapons, I'm Lieutenant Kara, Navigation"
"Hi," I replied smiling, she seemed fun, "Lieutenant Elizabeth, nice to meet you"
The dour-faced Asian with jet black hair stood up from the game, "Takahashi Kenji, coms. I suppose game over?"
"Not a chance, I still have to beat you," Kara said.
"And I'm Eleni Gani, ops, pleasure," The blond woman at the edge of the small table said, switching between me and her cards.
I scanned the room and found an unoccupied bed, I stored my bag and sat, the form-fitting crash gel was extremely comfortable.
A blue twentieth-century cosmonaut materialized in the rooms holotank, "I see that everybody's settled in, ma name's Viktor and I'll be y'alls AI for the duration of our service," He looked at us with a wide smile, "Commander is on the bridge waitin' fer Y'all."
"Why does a Soviet Cosmonaut have a Texan accent?" Kenji asked.
"Why do you bother trying to understand an AI's avatar choice?" Eleni answered.
He hesitated before stating, "True."
We quickly changed into our service uniforms and strode towards the elevator that would take us to the bridge.
The corridors were busier now as crewmen settled in and learned their routines.
The elevator ride was extremely fast and smooth, nice, the artificial gravity on this boat was certainly more sophisticated than Luna OCS's.
The doors opened up to a relatively large room adorned with monitors on both sides and facing a large viewscreen, the captain's chair stood on a raised platform in the middle of the room, a holotank behind it and two operation booths ahead on the lowered floor.
Unlike the training ships I had flown before, this one had not only normal viewscreens but the new curved holoscreens that my IT professor had gushed so much about, the blue glow from the monitors made the whole area look like a private yacht's command deck.
The command chair turned towards us, a middle-aged man with a commander's insignia on his shoulder looked at us with a tired smile. His nameplate read Elon Hargrove.
"Commander on deck!" Eleni said, and we all saluted in unison.
"At ease officers," He replied, "FLEETCOM wants us on Reach on the double, so man your stations and let's take this beauty for a ride."
I grinned ecstatically as I sat on the starboard fore station, Kara smiled at me from my left. Kenji and Gani took their places on the upper stations to my left and right, respectively.
A blue icon flashed on my holoscreen.
Initiate Neural Interface.
I pulled a retractable cord from the headrest, connected it to my uplink and pressed the icon.
A chill flew down my spine as the ship's systems updated my brain with information and read my neuroelectrical patterns, capturing my thoughts and interpreting them as input data and commands. These interfaces were brand new technology, I hadn't even had the time to test them at Luna, and they were incredible. It was like I could feel the ship in my mind.
Now, where are those weapon readouts?
The holoscreen instantly displayed all weapon statuses as the system read my thoughts. This was amazing, the interface increased our reaction time beyond anything that I could have ever dreamed of.
"I did not have this on the Manitoba," The captain said, startled.
The holoscreen responded again, throwing up the Manitoba's service record before I could even think of querying it. It was funny thinking how different two Paris Class frigates could feel just because of a decade between their launch dates.
Captain Hargrove shook his head and said, "Ops, what's the status on the Shaw-Fujikawa drive?"
"Spooled up and ready to go, quantum field calculations are updated and we are ready to jump on command." Lieutenant Gani answered professionally.
"All right then, off we go."
The starfield on the front viewscreen disappeared as a pitch black sphere materialized in front of the frigate, my stomach churned as we accelerated and ran to Reach at several times the speed of light.
Second Lieutenant Max O'Connor, November 27, 2525 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC Phoenix-Class Support Ship Target Practice CFV-101, Reach Orbit, Epsilon Eridani System.
I have a bad feeling about this.
Something was about to go wrong or had already gone wrong, I was sure of this. Sixty-eight ships and an entire MEU, a hundred thousand marines, this kind of force hadn't been assembled since Operation TREBUCHET.
I have a really bad feeling about this.
I jumped as the ship's AI materialized in a holotank next to me.
"Greeting lieutenant," she said in a soothing voice - her avatar was of a dark-skinned woman with a black cat head, "I am Bastet, the artificial intelligence of the UNSC CFV-101 Target Practice." Formal, that was unusual, but welcome, for a smart AI.
"Nice to meet you Bastet, If you could send me the directions to my company's staging area."
"Of course lieutenant, the information is being uploaded to your neural uplink right now, be aware that your company's officers will meet in thirty minutes, the route to their meeting room has also been transmitted."
My retina display showed a blue arrow snaking along the corridors, I used the travel time to review my first assignment.
21st Marine Expeditionary Unit, 51st Marine Division, 227th Marine Regiment, Fourth Batallion, Third Platoon.
They seemed like a good unit, most of them had only participated in one engagement early this month. An operation on Jontunheim, they accomplished their mission with few casualties and even managed to take some prisoners.
My XO was one Staff Sergeant Minoru Draper, Trebuchet veteran, it would be good to have an experienced noncom on my platoon.
I forgot how huge these ships could get, I had been walking for a good ten minutes and had yet to see one of the armored exterior bulkheads, but my waypoint indicated that the staging area was near.
We'd be spending most of the trip to our destination, wherever it was, on cryo, so we didn't need large areas for sleeping or other activities, but the ship still had a large room next to the deployment hangars so that we could ready for battle or spend some time while outside of cryo.
And our particular area was indeed huge, not a surprise considering this was a refitted civilian fleet, and I wasn't about to complain about extra space.
A heavyset woman with blond hair tied up in a ponytail -Sergeant Pamela Povey according to my HUD- spotted me and immediately saluted, "Officer on deck!"
All the other soldiers stopped what they were doing and saluted. My retina HUD identified them as just the people I was looking for, my platoon.
"At ease soldiers," I said with a smile "It's nice to finally meet you."
Their previous lieutenant had received a promotion and shipped off to ODST training, so the atmosphere wasn't heavy. A pair of soldiers -a dark-haired short one with a serious face and a tall blonde with a lopsided grin- approached me.
"Hey, lieutenant!" The tall one shouted. The short one elbowed him, "Sorry sir."
My HUD identified them as PFC Thomas Rashid and PFC Ryan Gerhardt.
"It's ok, I'm not one for formalities," That wasn't strictly true, but I didn't want to start my command by reprimanding my soldiers on their costumes. "So, this is our platoon."
The short one -Rashid - said, "Yep, Sarge Minoru's with the captain," He paused, "Hey El-Tee, you got any idea where we're going?"
"No idea," I replied, "But I have a feeling we'll find out soon. I have to meet the captain now, but I want a platoon meeting later."
I walked away towards the meeting room, at least it was close this time.
The 'meeting room' turned out to be a dark closet with a folding table in the middle, at least it had privacy.
The captain sat at the edge of the table, his close-cut dark hair framed by the sole LED light.
"Ahhhh, lieutenant, take a seat," He said, gesturing at a chair next to a dark haired Asian woman. There were 9 other people at the table, I could see the NONCOM and officer insignias on 8 of them, a brown-haired woman with starking gray eyes sitting next to the captain had a black dress with no identification.
ONI.
Shit.
"Now that we're all here," The captain's nameplate read Owen Lockhart, he continued, "I can tell you all that I know by now. It's not much, we'll have a briefing after this meeting is over, until then this briefing will have to suffice."
We were being deployed to Harvest, a remote but productive colony at the edge of human space. No enemy composition, no sitrep on local forces, but at least we had a name. The lack of intel was concerning, more concerning was the fact that the spook - Lieutenant Mira Kusanagi - would be accompanying third platoon, my platoon, for intelligence gathering and asset retrieval operations.
On the bright side, the brass decided to compensate for the lack of intel with new goodies. The captain sent us data packets with schematics for a new armor system, the Mark 1 Aegis.
The file was mostly redacted, but what we could see was good, very good. A new miniaturized powerpack several times more efficient than our old armors, a titanium exoskeleton that allowed us to carry up to 80 kilos of equipment and armor with no strain and run for prolonged amounts of times with the same ease as a light jog, a reinforced bodysuit with integrated climate control and embedded self-healing capsules, a removable face covering with 15 minutes of oxygen and a revamped HUD and communications suite.
The digital color titanium plates had a beautiful brown camouflage pattern selected, this was the best gift a marine could ask for.
So why did I feel even more scared?
Lieutenant Mira came up to me as we filled out of the meeting room towards the regimental atrium.
"I know we don't have a good reputation with the rest of the forces," she said, "But I'm Section One, my job is to gather intel on the enemy and only the enemy, I know how to handle myself in combat and most importantly, I'm not Section Three, nobody's getting kidnapped because of me."
"I know that, but I'm not the one who you have to convince, the rest of the platoon will have to trust you, and that'll be tricky"
"Yeah," she smiled mischievously, "Fortunately, I like tricky."
The auditorium was huge, it had to be to contain five thousand people, yet somehow it as still eerily quiet, good sound design I guess. The lights dimmed and a man with colonels insignia stepped up to the podium.
A hologram of a lush green planet appeared next to him, it was large enough for all of us to see, Mira shook uncomfortably next to me.
"This!" The colonel's voice boomed through the speakers, "Is Harvest"
"Population of three million, a small but very productive colony on the edge of UNSC space.
"At February 3rd, 1432 hours standard military calendar, the Harvest orbital platform made long-range contact with the following object.
A blurry outline replaced Harvest.
"Spectroscopic analysis identified an object of material unknown to us"
What.
"Contact was then lost with the colony, the CMA sent a scout ship, the Argo, to investigate. It reported a successful exit from slipspace and then went quiet."
"FLEETCOM sent a small battlegroup, one destroyer, and two frigates, to investigate, they discovered the following."
The hologram changed to Harvest once again, but this time the planet had a deep red gash close to the equator, a black outline followed it for kilometers."
"We assume all inhabitants are lost."
I could feel my heart beating faster, that didn't look like a nuke, what could have done that?
"And this," The hologram morphed into the blurry object and then sharpened into an insectlike purple-pink ship, "Is what they found in orbit."
What.
"The unidentified vessel immediately attacked" Blue flashes of light and red globs of energy emanated from the ship and struck the battlegroup, melting armor and igniting the atmosphere.
"These were energy weapons, some kind of pulsed laser and what we believe to be superheated plasma."
No one had that kind of weapon, not even ONI.
"These technologies are," He inhaled before continuing, "Not of human origin"
The silence of the audience broke as a murmur emerged.
"Before the Heracles jumped out of the system," He said, "The ship broadcast the following message, it is not translated."
"Your destruction is the will of the gods... and we are their instrument."
"As of November 1st, the UNSC has been ordered to full mobilization, forces like this are being assembled throughout human space to deal with this alien threat." The murmur grew louder.
"WE!" He thundered, quieting the audience, "Will have the honor of being the first marines to fight against this threat. Admiral Cole will kick their asses in orbit so we can go to the ground and show them what happens when you mess with humanity."
Silence.
"Am I right marines!"
"Sir yes, sir!" We all shouted, full of adrenaline, even Mira raised from her seat.
"Damm right I am"
Here we go.
So.. I'm back, I've decided to restart the story so I could have more flexibility and acknowledge some of the feedback that i received.
If this first chapter looked a bit rushed, that's because i'm trying to get it ouf of the way and get past introduction without losing my momentum again, after i've had some time to establish the story and (hopefully) find a beta reader, i'll come back and re-edit this.
Next Chapter should be out tomorrow.