THE TRAVIS HICKS DIARIES
CHAPTER 2
ENTRIES 6 THROUGH 10
SPECIAL SYNDICATE ORDER # 98364-X
PRIORITY: HIGHEST
TO: ADMIRAL BESSON, COMMANDER OF ARMY BASE 613. LV-212
FROM: THE HIGH ADMIRALTY OF THE SYNDICATE
ORDER: USE "SUBJECT A", SENT TO YOU ON MARCH 14TH, TO PREPARE FOR AN ATTACK ON THE UNITED EARTH ARMY BASE IN YOUR DIRECT VICINITY. IF IT HASN´T ARRIVED BY NOW, THEN IT WILL IN THE COMING DAYS. PLACE "SUBJECT A" CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE ENEMY BASE, THAT THEY WILL FIND IT AND BRING IT IN. THE SUBJECT HAS A XENOMORPH GROWING INSIDE OF IT, THAT WHEN IT HATCHES COULD POTENTIALLY WIPE OUT THE ENTIRE ENEMY ARMY AND IS OUR HOPE WILL LEAVE YOUR SECTION OF THE PLANET OPEN FOR OUR DOMINATION. THIS IS A MATTER OF THE HIGHEST SECRECY AND ONLY THOSE, WHO YOU DEEM AS ABSOLUTELY NEEDING TO BE IN THE KNOW ON THIS MATTER, ARE TO BE TOLD ANYTHING. ANY BREAKING OF THIS CODE OF SECRECY IS TO BE PUNISHED WITH IMMEDIATE TERMINATION.
Entry #6:
March 16th, 2194
USS Nebulus
Orbiting the planet LV-212
They say that for every fifteen days you´re in stasis, it takes you an extra day to recover from it. One thing is how if fucks with your mind to know that 2 and a half months have passed in what feels like seconds to you, another thing is how sore you feel, since you haven´t used any of your muscles for so long. No muscle pain can live up to the pain in my head over what I was forced by circumstances to do however, and I guess it´s time, I told you my story.
My parents are what you call planetary engineers. You know those atmosphere processors, they set up to create breathable atmospheres on unihabitable planets? Well, my folks are basically among those who get called in to fix them, in case one of them breaks down or is on the verge to. This also meant that (with the exception of the few times that me and my brother Dwayne were brought along) we were more or less raised by the officers and teachers on the space station we lived on, as much or more, than we were by them. Not that it´s anything to cry over or that it made us special from the other kids on there, but it´s also why I never felt like I got to know them, like I wanted to. Dwayne was supposed to take care of me and when I look back on it, he did the best he could under the circumstances, until he signed up to join the Marine Corps, when I was 11 years old. Since then, I´ve seen him one time, when he came back on a week´s leave a few years later, but he´s as much of a stranger to me, as those who gave life to me are. I sincerely hope that he´s not dead, it´s not like that, but apart from that, I rarely think about him. As for my parents, I doubt that they´ve been told the truth about what happened to me and the rest of the 491st Infantry Brigade, I was a proud part of. Weyland/Yutani never would have become the giant that it is, unless they were masters at hiding their own shortcomings.
By the time I was done with my basic training, the war against the Syndicate had been raging for over five years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives already, while having grown to span more than twenty planets. It was one of these, a depressing desert world mainly known for its enormous dust storms called LV-89, that me and my unit were assigned to. The reason why it´s considered so important to both sides are the minerals to be mined there however, and in spite of us being outnumbered two to five and the other side having close to complete air supremacy over that part of the planet, we were told to hold our base at any cost. In case you´re not in-line with the Weyland/Yutani lingo, that means "Fight Until the Last Man is Dead, or You Will All Be Executed for Treason".
Nothing they taught us in basic training however, could have prepared us for the devastating power of the supersonic bombs, they would dump on us in what seemed like it was never-ending barrage at times. Among first to fall were the senior officers, most of whom were so dedicated to the army edict that "A Senior Officer Has to Stand as an Idol of Bravery for His or Her Soldiers", that they also forgot to jump for cover, when a bomb was about to land on their heads. After a few days, it became a running joke that anyone, who survived a day in the job deserved a special medal. Me, being a mere Junior Sergeant, was perhaps 25th or 30th in line to take command, when we arrived there, but with every day that passed, a painful truth became clearer to me all of the time: Either I was going to die very soon or eventually, I would end up as the Captain of what everyone could see was a rapidly sinking ship, where the just as rapidly shrinking amount of passengers were being forced under penalty of death, to stay on board until the bitter end. Which of the two scared me the most, is hard to say.
Strangely enough, when it finally did happen, it was (more or less) by my own choice. The night before and the morning after, we were subjected to an infantry attack, the likes of which we could do little against. When the last of us retreated to the site that had been designated as our rendez-vous point, there were only a few dozen of us left, out of the more than six hundred we were, when I had first arrived there. Everyone could see that any attempt to fight on would be suicide, except for the one in command, a brainwashed drone of an asshole named O´Neill, who was as fit to lead anyone into battle, as I am to be in command of the entire army, plus his favorite boot-licker, Pierce, who was technically still second in command. Those two became the only two I killed in that entire battle and I can with all honesty say that I did it to save the lives of the men and women, I was standing in that room with. Once again, though, I ended up being played for the fool.
Surrendering was easy enough, but as we were already warned, this isn´t a war that will be remembered for the amount of POW´s that were taken in it. I was told with a gun to my head, that as the commanding officer, I would be allowed to choose five soldiers to survive and have their minds be "Re-Shaped" to fit more into the Syndicate´s way of thinking. Every night in my sleep, I see the faces of those I didn´t choose and thereby condemned to die. After the last of the massacre was over, I begged them to take my life too, but they wanted me to stay alive, so I could tell their enemies exactly what had happened on that base that day. A few days of imprisonment later, they handed me over to a neutral bounty hunter, who turned me in for the standard reward for turning in a coward in the eyes of the army. Maybe I could have lied and gotten off easier (although it´s highly doubtful), but I wanted to clear my conscience the most I could, so I confessed to everything, including my part in the deaths of O´Neill and Pierce. I still don´t feel any remorse for what I did to them, but the faces of those who died, because I chose that they should, will forever hound me until the day, I die.
I considered killing myself several times during those many long hours, while I was waiting for my fate to be sealed. Perhaps it´s a foolish sense of pride in me, that won´t allow me to give up, but since I made up my mind to continue living, I´ve tried to think of every day as my last, so that I´ll be prepared for it, when I take my last breath. Whenever it comes, I´ll be ready for it and unless I by some gigantic miracle (and heavily against the odds) manage to survive for next ten years, it will in all likelyhood happen on the planet, we´ll be landing on in an hour or two.
Entry #7:
April 2nd, 2194
Giger Mobile Space Complex
LV-212
That old officer wasn´t kidding, when he spoke about this shit-heap of a planet! If anything, I would say that he was being overly positive in his description of it! Thankfully, we´ve been allowed to stay inside the base most of the time, because the foul smell that´s in the air constantly outside and the soul crushing heat in the day, mixed with the blistering cold of the nights truly makes it a place, where it´s like the entire planet is trying to get us to leave, as quickly as it can. That the days are also 8 hours longer here will take a while to get used to, but that´s the least of our problems.
The Commander of the base is Colonel Emery, who we´ve so far seen one time, when he spoke to all of us on the day we arrived. He´s a sixty-something, who´s clearly as gruff and tough as this planet is, so in that way the two of them strangely fit quite well with one another. My direct superior is still Corporal Biehn and above him is Lieutenant Lucassen, a Belgian woman whose main job is deciding which squadron gets sent off on which mission. She´s a looker for sure, I won´t lie and most of the men in our squadron, as well as a few of the women, are clearly quite infatuated with her. Glau even told me, that if she was ever going to make love to a woman, then she would want it be Lucassen, so I guess that not even she is entirely immune to Lucassen´s "Spell".
So far, the only missions we´ve been sent on have been scouting missions out in the vicinity of the base, which can be disassembled in less than a day and put up again in twice that time. One thing you have to give the company, is that when it comes to creating efficient products for use in the army, they´ve always been second to none. Today on our patrol, we came upon a Syndicate scouting unit, but they spotted us before we could get a jump on them and made their getaway after a brief fire fight between us. For someone like me, who survived the bombardments on LV-89, it was nothing, but it´s clear to see that it isn´t all of us, who have any real combat experience and we had to stop a few of those in our own squadron from making a run for it. Cowardice is punished here like it is everywhere else in the army, and the last thing they care about is what kind of good excuses, you can come up with.
One of them was Sanderson and it looks like it´s created a rift between him and Glau, who called him a "Lousy, Spineless and Gutless Coward" in front of all of the rest of us, when we were making our way back to the base. It looks like if there´s one big turn-off for her, it´s a man who´s willing to leave her to die, to save his own hide. I can´t say that it´s too hard to see things her way in that regard.
Entry #8:
April 19th, 2194
Giger Mobile Space Complex
LV-212
Things here are getting strange in a way that un-nerves all of us. After a few days more of probing attacks in the days following my last entry, we have seen no sight of the Syndicate troops at all and since it´s more than a little unlikely that they´ve left the planet entirely, this could mean that they´re planning a major attack sometime over the next days. If they do, we´ll all be prepared for it, but from what we´ve heard from other soldiers, who have been here longer than we have, this is the longest they´ve gone without having any kind of contact with them.
Passing the time, when the air is this thick with tension everywhere is another issue and fights among the soldiers are so common, that you don´t even bother to turn your head anymore to look at it, whenever one breaks out. Perhaps that was why they got the idea of setting up a boxing tournament, with each squadron submitting one man and one woman into the competition. Our male candidate was Mendoza, who did a fantastic job when it came to talking a big game, but far less great when it came to his performance in the ring. That left Glau to gain glory for our squadron and she beat the hell out of every girl, that was put in her way, with none of them lasting more than a minute against her. The one she "faced" in the final was smart enough to give up before the first punch could be thrown, probably in the knowledge that she most likely would get her face permanently re-arrranged, if she had tried to fight against our "Own Little Hell-Hound", as her nickname has become since that day. Afterwards we celebrated her in as much style, as we could and it was clear to see that this was the first time in a long time, if not ever, that she´d figuratively had her ass kissed so much in one evening. I told her that I was proud of her and after a long hug, she told me how much it meant to her, that I´d said it. Should the worst happen and we all die in some giant assault by the Syndicate Army one of these coming days, I at least hope that I won´t have to watch her die. If that were to happen, then I have no doubt that a great part of me would die with her.
Entry #9:
April 26th, 2194
Giger Mobile Space Complex
LV-212
After a few weeks of nothing happening here, something has, although it´s not what any of us in our wildest imaginations could have imagined would happen. This morning, while we were out on patrol, a group of around twenty Syndicate soldiers came to our base and surrendered. They have to know that all Syndicate members are routinely tortured and executed, whenever they do surrender (which is extremely rare), so why they would choose to take their chances here is a mystery to all of us. Whatever happened at their base has to have been so bad that they saw this as their only chance of survivial, otherwise what they´re doing is pure insanity from a logical standpoint.
I don´t really have much more to add, since it´s only been a few days since my last entry before this one. Rumors have it that Lucassen and Biehn have been getting it on, but if there´s one thing this place is full of, it´s rumors with little base in reality. Some are even saying that it´s those same aliens from LV-426, who took over the Syndicate base and forced those soldiers to flee, but I chuck that down as just being more un-roooted paranoia, another thing this place has more than it´s share of. One thing that is for sure though, is that things between Glau and Sanderson are as over, as they can be. From what she´s told me, she gave him one last chance and he blew it royally, so now she´s entirely finished with his sorry, cowardly ass. She asked me again shortly after, if I wanted to have sex with her, but I had to turn her down again, even if it was a lot harder to do this time, than it was the first time, she asked me. Maybe it´s the feeling that something ominous is in the air, that´s making me falter in my promise to myself against sexual gratification, or maybe it´s just that everyone else here are corpulating right and left, like the end of the world is coming soon, but I´m not sure that I could still get myself to say no, should she ask me a third time. If we´re all going to die soon either way, what´s the point in holding on to some vow of celibacy, that no one here cares about except for myself, anyway?
Entry #10:
April 29th, 2194
Giger Mobile Space Complex
LV-212
To say that things at the Syndicate base were fucked up is largest understatement in the entire history of the known universe! When we got the word the day after, that we (along with the other units, who arrived here with us) would be sent to the Syndicate to investigate what had happened there, most of us thought that they had to be joking. Even with everything that had been going on, making a direct move on that base with so few soldiers seemed suicidal, compared to the amount of Syndicate soldiers, we expected to be up against. What we eventually found there scared the living shit out of me eternally more than any fire-fight ever has.
It took a little under an hour to get there and from moment one, the one thing that struck us was how eerily quiet it was. No army base is ever this quiet, unless everyone inside of it is dead, I thought to myself, not thinking in my craziest dreams, that I could have been correct. Everywhere, in every hallway and even in their shitters, we found soldiers mutilated so badly, that Glau remarked that it had to be some demon, who was behind this kind of carnage. The lieutenant in charge tried to make it seem to us, like this was a normal sight for him, but we could easily see the fear painted all over his face too. Whatever had happened there, it was obvious that no man or known beast could have caused such destruction, so what had? A bomb? Then the whole place would have been blown to pieces, wouldn´t you think? Something here was seriously messed up and you didn´t need any fancy education, to be able to feel it for yourself.
Somehow, they managed to find one survivor, who has been brought back here for questioning. Rumors have it, that he or she had some kind of thing attached to their face, when they were found, a living organism of sorts. This place just keeps getting stranger by the day!
THAT WAS CHAPTER TWO
PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF IT IN THE COMMENT SECTION