First in, Last out
The Siege of Combat base Gloria
A/N: If you have any suggestions for the story, please post them as I'm extremely open to any comments/critiques/advice. Also, I'm toying with the idea of getting together a sort of Starcraft writer's guild and writing a round robin story. Everyone tosses in a chapter. If your interested e-mail me @ chrisfromcali@hotmail.com, I would like at minimum three or four people and a forum to discuss everything. It would be interesting to see everyone working together to produce a high quality story.
Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless gray
On the fight, for they are right, yes, by who's to say?
For a hill men would kill, why? They do not know
Suffered wounds test there their pride
Men of five, still alive through the raging glow
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know
For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls
Take a look to the sky just before you die
It is the last time you will
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now they will see what will be, blinded eyes to see
Combat shock! That was the official term for it. At the outset of every battle, the CMC suits the marines wore were programmed to pump a certain amount of drugs into the marines. One of them was a small dose of synthesized hormones from a carnivorous creature out beyond the rim worlds. The drugs, combined with the natural adrenaline, made anyone experiencing it quite literally want to tear the enemy apart.
Taggart bent to one knee and swung his C-14 up. He squeezed the trigger back, flames shot out the barrel and every few seconds a cigar shaped red tracer would leap from the barrel trailing smoke. More marines were landing now, running screaming out of their dropships and opening fire. Taggart, still shooting, ran to a nearby shell crater and jumped in, his surviving radioman and FO jumping in behind him. They too brought up their rifles and opened fire. 8mm gauss slugs from the marines slammed the lead Zerglings into the dirt or blasted them apart. Taggart burned an entire magazine of 500 rounds low into the northern tree line. The chattering recoil of the gun made him feel invincible. He held the power of life and death in his hands. He didn't have any clear targets but he fired anyway. Shell casings started forming a pile next to him as he emptied the magazine. He coolly slammed another full magazine into his rifle.
Taggart dispassionately noticed that the strip was scarred heavily with crates and abandoned marine fighting positions. The bottom of his shell crater was filled with rusty shell casings and the other wreckage of war. This area had seen a lot of fighting.
Turning his head, his rifle still firing, Taggart saw Captain Chris Ryan and his command group. "TAKE THAT TREE LINE CAPTAIN" Taggart yelled and turned back to his rifle. "Lets go Alpha!" screamed Ryan and started to run northwards. The marines of Alpha let out a roar and surged forward. Some dropping and shooting while others ran then getting up and running while the others dropped and opened fire. The jungle thrashed with the impacts of rounds, trunks splintered and branches went pin wheeling off into space.
Somewhere over on the right someone got a Heavy Machine Gun working, tracers flicked high into the tree line blowing apart anything in their path. A second and third opened up, spraying the Zerg positions with heavy 20mm Armor piecing rounds. Taggart ran from cover to one of the HMG positions set up on the lip of one of the shell holes. As he ran Taggart tripped on something, he kicked at it, a human skull bleached white by the sun went bouncing across the ground. Jesus Taggart thought. Taggart continued running and did a roll into the position with the machine gun in it. One marine was on the gun, firing twenty round bursts in the tree line. A second was loading cans of ammo. Taggart slid into their position and tapped the gunner on the shoulder. The man turned and looked at him "Fire on my tracers!" Taggart yelled. Taggart punched the magnification level on his suit to maximum, something that normal marine suits couldn't do. Through the amplified screen he could see Hydralisks half out of their burrows, laying the electronic sight on one of the hydras and fired a fifteen round burst. Three tracers streaked into the thick armored carapace of the Zerg, the 8mm slugs shattered armor but weren't nearly enough to put it down.
The gunner on the HMG opened fire where Taggart's tracers had disappeared. The heavy gun fired with a slow deliberate ka-chunk seven times a second. The heavy 20mm rounds were tipped with depleted uranium that ensured they would penetrate even the thickest armor. The general area that the HMG was firing at exploded in a spray of debris. Taggart watched the other machine guns spraying the wood line with shells. The Zerg fire notable slackened and Zerglings stopped pouring from the tree line.
Alpha company was still on the assault. Marines leap frogged from shell hole to shell hole under covering fire from the machine guns and other marines. Captain Ryan was at the forefront of the assault, shouting orders and firing his rifle. Taggart watched from a shell hole as the entire company of marines assaulted into the tree line. The camouflaged CMC suits, despite their size, broke up the outline of the marines, making it so that even Taggart, who watched them rush the last twenty five yards to the thick scrub brush and jungle, had difficulty picking them out.
As the Alpha marines rushed the tree line, the three HMG crews lifted their fire, the gunners quickly twisted the guns off their tripods and threw them over their shoulders. By the time Alpha was all the way into the tree line
The roar of Impaler fire reached a fever pitch as the marines closed with the Zerg. Taggart picked himself up and ran back to his battalion command post that he had placed in a 120mm shell crater. His FO and radioman were busy screaming into their radios, as Taggart slid into the crater he noticed two wounded marines making their way towards his shell hole. They didn't look too badly hurt but one of them was limping. Taggart directed them towards a crater next to his and told them to wait for a little while. The medics would be coming with the second wave. The wounded were stumbling towards the crater when there was a massive green flash.
An explosion erupted where the two marines were, Taggart could see pieces of human flesh fly even as he was tossed back against the lip of the crater. Taggart turned to his radioman, "Guardians!" he shouted and was up and running towards the two prone figures. More explosions rocked the strip, the results of the Guardians long range plasma bombardment. Taggart couldn't even see the flying Zerg they were so far away. All he could see were the green plasma bursts racing in from a certain area of the sky.
Taggart cursed, the Goliaths of Bravo and Charlie companies might have been able to reply with their missile launchers, especially with their new Charon Booster upgrades, but they were still en route to the LZ. Taggart knelt by the two marines who had been hit by the first blast. They were a mess, one was probably dead, there was a gaping hole in his chest, his left arm was smashed to pieces and his left leg was a bloody stump at the shin. The other marine looked slightly better, his armor was shredded to pieces and the Taggart could smell burning flesh and organs but his appendages were still intact. Ignoring the blasts from the incoming plasma bursts, Taggart lifted the less grievously wounded marine and slung him over his shoulder. He grunted as a near miss almost slammed him into the ground. Taggart was glad the Guardians were at their maximum range, if they had been closer he and his battalion CP would have been a red smear like the two marines. Taggart slid into his hole and set the marine down, then he was up and running for the second marine.
Taggart slid into his CP and dumped the second marine down next to the first. The front of his CMC suit was coated in blood. It took several moments for Taggart to realize that his FO was staring at him in shock. "That was…" he started to say.
"That was nothing, now shut up and get some fire support for Alpha" Taggart cut him off sharply,
"Yes sir!" he could still hear Alpha's firefight raging in the tree line. Besides, Taggart had seen too much pointless death over the years to even entertain notions of heroics. Taggart turned to his radioman "Find out Alpha's casualties and tell them I'm sending Bravo to support." As if on cue, ten dropships touched down. Their ramps thumped down and the battalion's Goliaths walked down the ramps, they coolly formed up into platoons of four despite the explosions that were throwing geysers of dirt high into the air. The dropships, their splotched brown and tan camouflage patterns standing out against the blue sky, hadn't even touched down all the way. The Goliaths had simply dropped from twenty feet up in the air. This allowed them to be gone before the last Goliath had formed up. They would be back in twenty minutes with Delta company and more support personnel.
There was a thump and then the harsh slithering sound as a rocket screamed skywards. Another one launched, followed by two more then five in quick succession. The Goliaths of Charlie company continued to launch rockets at the distance Guardians while those of Bravo company advanced on the northern tree line, spaced fifty yards apart, firing short bursts of Autocannon fire high into the jungle to avoid hitting marines.
Taggart's radioman spoke "Sir, Alpha says they've got four casualties total, two lightly wounded they sent back this way, one KIA and one walking wounded who got patched up." Taggart smiled inwardly at this, the weeks of training on board the ship had really paid off. His marines had accomplished on of the hardest tasks possible, beating an enemy off an LZ immediately after landing, with minimal casualties. Most training exercises didn't go that well. He made a mental note to commend Captain Ryan. The man was a born combat leader, he had been aggressive and had taken the lead, but he had also made good command decisions.
Eight figures, bent low, raced one after the other into Taggart's shell hole, which was becoming rather crowded. They wore armor that while it bore the same camouflaging as the marines, was much less bulky. They were also female. The eight medics from the 447th Naval Medical Regiment immediately got to work on the two wounded marines. Taggart spoke to the lead medic, a Captain. "Captain set your, aid station here, I'll mark it on the tactical map, Charlie company will stay here for security, I'm moving up to the tree line." The Captain simply nodded, the less grievously wounded marine had become conscious and started screaming. The high pitched wail was half rasp and half scream rolled into one inhuman sound. Chills ran up and down Taggart's spine, no matter how many times he heard that sound he could never get used to it. It was one aspect of war he hadn't become dulled to. His radioman was staring at the bleeding man in stupefied shock. "Let's go!" Taggart growled and heaved the man to his feet. His FO was already on his feet, having finished coordinating fire support with Alpha company.
There was a sudden rush of noise, looking up Taggart saw streams of white projectiles racing straight down into the jungle. There was a steady stream of explosions as the heavy 88mm autocannons on the BCS Hammer shredded the jungle in front of Alpha company. The explosions tossed whole trees into the air. The projectiles ceased raining down and the firefight, which had been going at a steady pace dropped to the occasional burst of C-14 fire or an infrequent thump of a grenade.
Taggart and his two RTO's pounded across The Strip, the only sound the thumping of their feet on the ground and the harsh sound of their own breathing. They passed the shattered bodies of Zerglings, still leaking red blood into the soil. Black oily smoke rose from the trees. It accompanied death and destruction. Taggart had seen it so many times that he was convinced it had been indelibly burned into his soul.
The Siege of Combat base Gloria
A/N: If you have any suggestions for the story, please post them as I'm extremely open to any comments/critiques/advice. Also, I'm toying with the idea of getting together a sort of Starcraft writer's guild and writing a round robin story. Everyone tosses in a chapter. If your interested e-mail me @ chrisfromcali@hotmail.com, I would like at minimum three or four people and a forum to discuss everything. It would be interesting to see everyone working together to produce a high quality story.
Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless gray
On the fight, for they are right, yes, by who's to say?
For a hill men would kill, why? They do not know
Suffered wounds test there their pride
Men of five, still alive through the raging glow
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know
For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls
Take a look to the sky just before you die
It is the last time you will
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now, are his eyes, to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now they will see what will be, blinded eyes to see
Combat shock! That was the official term for it. At the outset of every battle, the CMC suits the marines wore were programmed to pump a certain amount of drugs into the marines. One of them was a small dose of synthesized hormones from a carnivorous creature out beyond the rim worlds. The drugs, combined with the natural adrenaline, made anyone experiencing it quite literally want to tear the enemy apart.
Taggart bent to one knee and swung his C-14 up. He squeezed the trigger back, flames shot out the barrel and every few seconds a cigar shaped red tracer would leap from the barrel trailing smoke. More marines were landing now, running screaming out of their dropships and opening fire. Taggart, still shooting, ran to a nearby shell crater and jumped in, his surviving radioman and FO jumping in behind him. They too brought up their rifles and opened fire. 8mm gauss slugs from the marines slammed the lead Zerglings into the dirt or blasted them apart. Taggart burned an entire magazine of 500 rounds low into the northern tree line. The chattering recoil of the gun made him feel invincible. He held the power of life and death in his hands. He didn't have any clear targets but he fired anyway. Shell casings started forming a pile next to him as he emptied the magazine. He coolly slammed another full magazine into his rifle.
Taggart dispassionately noticed that the strip was scarred heavily with crates and abandoned marine fighting positions. The bottom of his shell crater was filled with rusty shell casings and the other wreckage of war. This area had seen a lot of fighting.
Turning his head, his rifle still firing, Taggart saw Captain Chris Ryan and his command group. "TAKE THAT TREE LINE CAPTAIN" Taggart yelled and turned back to his rifle. "Lets go Alpha!" screamed Ryan and started to run northwards. The marines of Alpha let out a roar and surged forward. Some dropping and shooting while others ran then getting up and running while the others dropped and opened fire. The jungle thrashed with the impacts of rounds, trunks splintered and branches went pin wheeling off into space.
Somewhere over on the right someone got a Heavy Machine Gun working, tracers flicked high into the tree line blowing apart anything in their path. A second and third opened up, spraying the Zerg positions with heavy 20mm Armor piecing rounds. Taggart ran from cover to one of the HMG positions set up on the lip of one of the shell holes. As he ran Taggart tripped on something, he kicked at it, a human skull bleached white by the sun went bouncing across the ground. Jesus Taggart thought. Taggart continued running and did a roll into the position with the machine gun in it. One marine was on the gun, firing twenty round bursts in the tree line. A second was loading cans of ammo. Taggart slid into their position and tapped the gunner on the shoulder. The man turned and looked at him "Fire on my tracers!" Taggart yelled. Taggart punched the magnification level on his suit to maximum, something that normal marine suits couldn't do. Through the amplified screen he could see Hydralisks half out of their burrows, laying the electronic sight on one of the hydras and fired a fifteen round burst. Three tracers streaked into the thick armored carapace of the Zerg, the 8mm slugs shattered armor but weren't nearly enough to put it down.
The gunner on the HMG opened fire where Taggart's tracers had disappeared. The heavy gun fired with a slow deliberate ka-chunk seven times a second. The heavy 20mm rounds were tipped with depleted uranium that ensured they would penetrate even the thickest armor. The general area that the HMG was firing at exploded in a spray of debris. Taggart watched the other machine guns spraying the wood line with shells. The Zerg fire notable slackened and Zerglings stopped pouring from the tree line.
Alpha company was still on the assault. Marines leap frogged from shell hole to shell hole under covering fire from the machine guns and other marines. Captain Ryan was at the forefront of the assault, shouting orders and firing his rifle. Taggart watched from a shell hole as the entire company of marines assaulted into the tree line. The camouflaged CMC suits, despite their size, broke up the outline of the marines, making it so that even Taggart, who watched them rush the last twenty five yards to the thick scrub brush and jungle, had difficulty picking them out.
As the Alpha marines rushed the tree line, the three HMG crews lifted their fire, the gunners quickly twisted the guns off their tripods and threw them over their shoulders. By the time Alpha was all the way into the tree line
The roar of Impaler fire reached a fever pitch as the marines closed with the Zerg. Taggart picked himself up and ran back to his battalion command post that he had placed in a 120mm shell crater. His FO and radioman were busy screaming into their radios, as Taggart slid into the crater he noticed two wounded marines making their way towards his shell hole. They didn't look too badly hurt but one of them was limping. Taggart directed them towards a crater next to his and told them to wait for a little while. The medics would be coming with the second wave. The wounded were stumbling towards the crater when there was a massive green flash.
An explosion erupted where the two marines were, Taggart could see pieces of human flesh fly even as he was tossed back against the lip of the crater. Taggart turned to his radioman, "Guardians!" he shouted and was up and running towards the two prone figures. More explosions rocked the strip, the results of the Guardians long range plasma bombardment. Taggart couldn't even see the flying Zerg they were so far away. All he could see were the green plasma bursts racing in from a certain area of the sky.
Taggart cursed, the Goliaths of Bravo and Charlie companies might have been able to reply with their missile launchers, especially with their new Charon Booster upgrades, but they were still en route to the LZ. Taggart knelt by the two marines who had been hit by the first blast. They were a mess, one was probably dead, there was a gaping hole in his chest, his left arm was smashed to pieces and his left leg was a bloody stump at the shin. The other marine looked slightly better, his armor was shredded to pieces and the Taggart could smell burning flesh and organs but his appendages were still intact. Ignoring the blasts from the incoming plasma bursts, Taggart lifted the less grievously wounded marine and slung him over his shoulder. He grunted as a near miss almost slammed him into the ground. Taggart was glad the Guardians were at their maximum range, if they had been closer he and his battalion CP would have been a red smear like the two marines. Taggart slid into his hole and set the marine down, then he was up and running for the second marine.
Taggart slid into his CP and dumped the second marine down next to the first. The front of his CMC suit was coated in blood. It took several moments for Taggart to realize that his FO was staring at him in shock. "That was…" he started to say.
"That was nothing, now shut up and get some fire support for Alpha" Taggart cut him off sharply,
"Yes sir!" he could still hear Alpha's firefight raging in the tree line. Besides, Taggart had seen too much pointless death over the years to even entertain notions of heroics. Taggart turned to his radioman "Find out Alpha's casualties and tell them I'm sending Bravo to support." As if on cue, ten dropships touched down. Their ramps thumped down and the battalion's Goliaths walked down the ramps, they coolly formed up into platoons of four despite the explosions that were throwing geysers of dirt high into the air. The dropships, their splotched brown and tan camouflage patterns standing out against the blue sky, hadn't even touched down all the way. The Goliaths had simply dropped from twenty feet up in the air. This allowed them to be gone before the last Goliath had formed up. They would be back in twenty minutes with Delta company and more support personnel.
There was a thump and then the harsh slithering sound as a rocket screamed skywards. Another one launched, followed by two more then five in quick succession. The Goliaths of Charlie company continued to launch rockets at the distance Guardians while those of Bravo company advanced on the northern tree line, spaced fifty yards apart, firing short bursts of Autocannon fire high into the jungle to avoid hitting marines.
Taggart's radioman spoke "Sir, Alpha says they've got four casualties total, two lightly wounded they sent back this way, one KIA and one walking wounded who got patched up." Taggart smiled inwardly at this, the weeks of training on board the ship had really paid off. His marines had accomplished on of the hardest tasks possible, beating an enemy off an LZ immediately after landing, with minimal casualties. Most training exercises didn't go that well. He made a mental note to commend Captain Ryan. The man was a born combat leader, he had been aggressive and had taken the lead, but he had also made good command decisions.
Eight figures, bent low, raced one after the other into Taggart's shell hole, which was becoming rather crowded. They wore armor that while it bore the same camouflaging as the marines, was much less bulky. They were also female. The eight medics from the 447th Naval Medical Regiment immediately got to work on the two wounded marines. Taggart spoke to the lead medic, a Captain. "Captain set your, aid station here, I'll mark it on the tactical map, Charlie company will stay here for security, I'm moving up to the tree line." The Captain simply nodded, the less grievously wounded marine had become conscious and started screaming. The high pitched wail was half rasp and half scream rolled into one inhuman sound. Chills ran up and down Taggart's spine, no matter how many times he heard that sound he could never get used to it. It was one aspect of war he hadn't become dulled to. His radioman was staring at the bleeding man in stupefied shock. "Let's go!" Taggart growled and heaved the man to his feet. His FO was already on his feet, having finished coordinating fire support with Alpha company.
There was a sudden rush of noise, looking up Taggart saw streams of white projectiles racing straight down into the jungle. There was a steady stream of explosions as the heavy 88mm autocannons on the BCS Hammer shredded the jungle in front of Alpha company. The explosions tossed whole trees into the air. The projectiles ceased raining down and the firefight, which had been going at a steady pace dropped to the occasional burst of C-14 fire or an infrequent thump of a grenade.
Taggart and his two RTO's pounded across The Strip, the only sound the thumping of their feet on the ground and the harsh sound of their own breathing. They passed the shattered bodies of Zerglings, still leaking red blood into the soil. Black oily smoke rose from the trees. It accompanied death and destruction. Taggart had seen it so many times that he was convinced it had been indelibly burned into his soul.