One Week Later
Maybe it's the light. It's later in the day, so the shadows are longer and maybe that's making the slaughter pit I'm looking into look much worse than it actually is, though I doubt it. I've never seen anything like it (not that I go looking around after a battle's over with much), a good six meter wide crater in the earth, probably created by a tank's artillery shell, filled with the flesh-eaten corpses of humans and zergs all pawing and crawling over each other as if trying to get away. . .
Let's just say it's an unfortunate sight that even a vet like me wishes he'd never seen.
I'd like to think it's the worst I'll see out here, but I'm not ready to concede that point just yet. The scars of the battle the Dominion fought with the zerg extend for kilometers in every direction: busted bunkers, exploded tanks and gollies, and a whole lot of rotting corpses -- both zerg and ours, all being slowly covered over by new vegetation. So who knows what other tidbits of gore are out there awaiting my discovery.
Maybe instead of dwelling on how horrible all this is, I'll just focus on why we're here, that'll probably make a better story. And, yeah, I know I said I'd keep the updates plentiful and timely last time, but I think it works better this way 'cause I'll have more to say.
Where to begin? Well, let's see. The day after Bard's entombment we got hit by a small group of mutalisks, about five of 'em. They must've been out patrolling or something like that when they stumbled across us.
I remember most distinctly the feeling of being totally exposed, as I lay in my foxhole in broad daylight, watching them circle overhead.
Once they'd taken notice of us, they shot a few of their glave wurms into the rock face of the knoll, probably trying to hit our artillery up top, but they ended up missing, distracted by we below who had started firing at them.
From there, it was the usual routine: Lanz and Tolson rolled out the heavy artillery and everyone else let loose when they were able.
Once the fighting had begun, the birdies homed right in on the big gun, and took it out with a concentrated attack. Luckily, Lanz and Tolson didn't get hurt, but the gun's a total loss until it can be repaired. While that was going on, I and most of the other sentries got a number of good shots dropping all but two of them.
The remaining pair happened to swoop down on Marcus, who was holding down the fox two down from mine. And they hit him hard, not a killing blow, but he was down and writhing from the injuries. Like we're trained to do, me and Lankasar tried to get over to provide some cover and protection for Marcus, but he did take another good lick before we could get there.
The mutas at this point were flying around real fast, swooping in to take shots at close range and using their quickness to avoid return fire. Lankasar and I went on one knee facing in opposite directions by Marcus to try and intercept them, as the medical team scrambled down from the cave entrance and started running our way.
Let me tell you, those suckers are ugly. I'd never seen one up close before, but when it dived in, I got a good look at the crusty saliva on its snout, with its beady little animal eyes set back on its head, and those veiny, gross looking bat-wings. Getting such a close look at such a nasty beast doesn't come without its penalties, however. I got a nice ricochet would on my stomach about kidney high. I can only thank the one of the snipers up on top of the knoll for making one heck of a shot that the wound wasn't much worse, 'cause one of 'em made a nice shot that knocked the creature to the ground, where it flopped about angrily until a few good shots put it out of its misery, right before it got off its final glave wurm, the one that burrowed about a quarter-inch into my stomach after ricocheting of the lip of the fox.
The bottom line of the incident for me was that I got to spend a few days working in our small factory while my injury healed. Marcus came out fine too. We've got the "good medicine" here, as it's usually called, so we can heal pretty much any injury that comes along no matter how severe. It's also reassuring to know that two of the women with us are trained medics.
Anyway, I enjoyed the change of pace and having a good, solid stone roof over my head after having spent so many days and nights in the unprotected foxhole.
To give you a brief description of the our little manufacturing plant, let me say that it was cut out of the solid stone just like our sleeping area. We've got four tables in various states of disarray set up in there. Two of 'em are reserved for ammo manufacturing, that's where me and Kurtz worked, and the other two are where our resident techie, Burnitz, tries, usually in vain, to build the devices we don't have but need.
Injured cases get sent to work in the shop while their recovering because no one around gets any real down time. We've got to stay vigilant 'round the clock if we want to live. That said, there's something strangely therapeutic about the environment. It has to do with the company 'cause the work's just tedious (any soldier that doesn't know how to reload spent cartridges won't be around long, that's for sure).
Kurtz represents what happens when the "good medicine" gets there too late: he's missing three of his limbs and has bad scarring over what's left. The story: his squad mate dragged him, full of hydra spines and covered in acid, to where our group was deserting when we were deserting. But by the time we could bring him the "good medicine" a day later when we were in transit to what would become our new base, it was too late, resulting in his current condition. If it bothers him any, he doesn't let on. He's one of the funniest and most talkative people around here, which takes away from the tedium of working in the shop. Kurtz is one-half of the therapeutic aspect of that work environment.
The other half is Burnitz, and for exactly the opposite reason. He never says anything to you, though he does talk all day long. Only he talks to himself, curses, actually, at the devices which he is trying to fix up, which he's no good at 'cause he's basically just a half-educated marine like me and most everyone else around here. We gave him the job 'cause he'd put in a coupla hundred hours as a mechanic servicing tanks and whatnot, so he's had to try and teach himself how to put stuff together from the components and manuals we have.
Burnitz's odd monologue created an interesting backdrop for the conversations Kurtz and I would be having. As in, we'd be talking about the codo wrestling champions for the past few years (for those who don't follow it, codo wrestling's basically all-in boxing) when Burnitz would disrupt our talk with a short exclamation to the effect that the machine he was working on was small and of illegitimate heritage. He repeated that line frequently, seeming to be quite fond of it, he used it on just about every gadget he worked on.
There was just something funny about the whole situation, being out in the middle of nowhere talking about sports and listening to Burnitz cuss to high heaven. Between the two, you stayed entertained all day long, and it took your mind off of all the tension of endless nights of guard duty. . . and being stuck out in the middle of nothing.
On the last day of my time down there, I was setting fuses in artillery shells and carrying on my usual jawing with Kurtz. I think we were talking about the finer points of codo take-downs and who had the best one or something like that when suddenly one of the comm. devices Burnitz'd been working came to life. It wasn't tuned properly, but a few phrases did come through ungarbled.
". . . position N010-0205. . . W. . .-0180-124. . . need . . . zerg. . . alone. . . support. . . over."
"Sweet Lady of the Lake," Burnitz said, staring at the device as if the blinking lights and panels on the suddenly functional device represented some kind of manifestation of the divine.
Me and Kurtz were dumbfounded too, just sat staring at the thing waiting for its next pronouncement as devout followers might.
"Repeat. . . position. . . zerg. . . alone. . . ," our oracle suddenly spoke.
Burnitz came out of his trance this time around and tried to respond. Toggling the communicate switch on the device, he asked whoever it was to identify himself. Unfortunately, whoever it was didn't respond or communicate any further. All we heard was static blasting through the speaker. Trying other stations had the same results.
After fooling with the device for a while, Burnitz turned to us and said, "Well, what the heck do you make of that?"
Kurtz kind of smiled and responded, "probably swamp gas or ionizing radiation or a glitch, something like that sucking in a transmission from somewhere else. Lord knows we're the only ones here, unless the Dominion tries to wipe out the zerg here again, but then all our comm. devices would be going crazy if a landing was going on. . ."
"This is local communications only. Anything we heard had to have originated on this planet somewhere," Burnitz interjected.
"I believe I heard some lat/long coordinates somewhere in there," I said.
"I got that too," Burnitz said, "maybe I can use the playback to help us figure out what they were."
Kurtz thought all this was amusing. "You do that," he said sarcastically, "what are we going to do about it even if you did finally manage to fix one of those contraptions and that someone out there actually was trying to communicate with someone.
"I mean even if they were only two hills over, we'd be nuts to go looking for them with the zerg out there.
"We're better off if we just act like it was some sort of glitch or something. Ain't nothing we can do, is there?"
Burnitz was teed about the insult to his abilities, "Look man, if you think you can get this stuff working be my guest," he said, gesturing to the pile of parts and scrap on his tables.
"Let's just keep this quiet," Kurtz replied, "we got something good here, don't we? No crazy wars to fight, no commanders to answer to, no crazies fighting with you or against you. The zerg, they don't care about us. We'd be dead otherwise. I think we can all agree on that one.
After pausing, in a conciliatory tone, "And you know you're the only one around here that can fix that stuff, except maybe Evie, and she's tied up making sure everything runs smooth around here, her and Downes."
All Burnitz said in response was that he'd think about it.
Kind of a strange moment there, it seemed like old Kurtz was scared about leaving or maybe getting left behind (which we wouldn't do, unlike a lot of mercenary outfits). I didn't want to take sides 'cause I hadn't had any time to think about it. Looking back on it now, maybe I should have, but hindsight's twenty/twenty, right?
That night at mess, Burnitz did, of course, bring up the transmitter. Said he was of the opinion that someone else might be out there or there must be another settlement or military base, and that we needed to try and establish contact with them.
Evie, being her usual whip smart self, told him to, by all means, establish communications and pursue it, anything to get us out of here would be great.
"I can't do it with what I've got here," Burnitz replied. "It's the antenna's we have. They don't have the range to do what we need. The partial coordinates we heard were way up north of here, and it'd be a miracle if we can establish firm communication with them with the smaller antennas we have here."
Now that really put Evie out. You could tell by the look on her face. "So when were you planning on telling us that. What the heck've you been up to for the past month if we need a bigger antenna."
Burnitz just shrugged. "I'm doing my best. You and everyone else know I'm not, strictly speaking, qualified to do what you're asking me to do."
"Well, start working on it then."
"It's just that we don't have some of the components here. The only place I can think of that would have them is back at the outpost."
"The one we saw wiped out and destroyed before we deserted."
Burnitz screwed up his face at that last remark. "Well, yeah. Where else?"
"And if the antenna was destroyed by the zerg when they destroyed everything else?"
"It's our best shot."
"And if we get the antenna, you're going to get our communications up and running for sure?"
"Well, yeah," Burnitz said, unsure of himself.
This set off a debate of everyone at the mess. Most seemed to be of the opinion that we'd be better off ignoring the whole thing. Nobody likes the idea of wandering back out into the wilderness for any extended period of time. We can fight the zerg on our terms here, but out there all the advantages swing their way, even in small numbers.
And nobody thought Burnitz could live up to his word on getting communications up no matter what we did.
Everyone at the table started jawing with each other about it, quite a commotion for out usually sedate group. Our two unofficial leaders, Evelyn Wu and Charles Downes, didn't weigh in at first. They just listened to the debate going on.
It was pretty heated, everybody talking at once to their neighbors and just into space too. The arguments came down for the most part into two camps: on the one hand, the majority was in favor of not risking an expedition and staying here in our modest utopia, away from the military and not at much risk from the zerg; on the other, a few people, Evelyn and myself included, didn't want to spend the rest of our lives here and even if the antenna wasn't a great chance, it was better than our other options.
She said, "We're safe here for now, but the future's unsure."
And that pretty much settled it, or it settled it enough that me, Burnitz, and the few others brave or stupid enough to argue for returning to the old battlefield were given permission to do so. There were a few other odds and ends Burnitz was hoping to get while we were there, and some of the others wanted to check around for some of the munitions we couldn't make, guided missiles, etc., here at out base. So that provided some extra impetus as well.
I don't have to tell you we made it 'cause you already know. The journey was, of course, uneventful. We set out in the APV we'd used to transport all the equipment to our base when we fled and got here in a couple of days.
To arrive at this stark reminder of where we came from.