A/N: Izwan: Not really a cliffhanger, I just cut it short...
I'll try not to touch stuff that will clash with HotS, but story-telling prevails over canon here, if I write something and it's made AU by HotS (Which I didn't play yet, because it's not out yet, so if you're in a coutry where it is or you're a pirate scum, revealing any spoilers in my review section with cause me to hate your face until the end of time... Where was I? Oh, yeah, I'll try no to make this AU, but if it ends up being, so be it.
Looking back to the sergeant, up on the platform, twenty meters to the left, Henry silently wondered if he wouldn't be better off on his own, instead of taking orders from some brainwashed meatsack in a suit.
Though he certainly wasn't officer material, Jackson had been described by the Corps' psychologists as being held back only by motivation and self-esteem issues. Which, in a way, meant he had the tools he needed to succeed here… If only there was time for him to work out a lifetime worth of quirks and mental issues.
The marine scoffed inside his helmet and blinked up a com with the sarge. "Orders, sir?
-Go sit in the bird," the NCO replied, stopping to suck on his cigar, "switch your suit to sleep mode and await further instructions."
Great, put on standby like some god damned video game character. Just hang around 'till we need you…
Coldmann soon switched places with the sergeant, who immediately set to recovering dog tags from downed marines, along with ammunition and power packs.
Zerg corpses littered the ground, covering already red armors with even more crimson and making it hard for the marine to walk around. A clean path extended from the troop bay, where Impaler fire had eroded the zerg forces.
It looked like a grotesque honor guard, escorting Jackson on his way into the poorly lit bay. He couldn't recall when the green light had gone out. Was it after the ramp had lowered? Diring the second wave, or when the Zerg had begun digging through the cockpit?
Heller was already there, inventorying whatever gear her bird carried. Five AGR-14s, downsized gauss rifles with three magazines each, a Flak pistol, a needle gun, a flare gun, six AGMG-11s, even smaller than the AGRs, and a handful of cylindrical hand grenades, big enough to be used by a suited up marine, though Henry certainly didn't have the dexterity to pull a pin yet.
He squeezed the suit's ample butt in a seat and powered off systems one at a time. Heller paid him no mind and he ignored her too.
He did not power everything down, however, as he might have to jump back in action quickly. Instead, he opted to read. Not some novel or essay, most were propaganda anyway, he instead read a Confederacy-era article about CMC armors, enjoying the writer's snide humor and cynical praises of the 'glorious Marine Corps'.
One passage in particular, written prior to the Chau Sara incident, struck him as quite funny.
"Assured mutual destruction ensures that no matter how big your armor is, the other guy will have a gun big enough to punch through, and the CMC is rather ironical in that it allows its wearer to carry a gun big enough to punch through other CMCs. Why not just all go in the fight with slug throwers and vacuum suits? Sure would save everyone some money…"
Then aliens popped in and that whole theory, though he somewhat explained it later on, was sent crashing down in the dust. The one thing that allowed Terrans to go toe to toe with Zerg and Protoss was the CMC armor. Humanity's warmongering had saved them from destruction and kept them on equal footing with creatures infinitely more powerful.
In the end, violence solves everything.
Right now, on this burning planet, in the middle of the most retarded invasion in recorded history, all those optimist sayings about peace and tolerance being the answer to everything sounded hollow, distant and meaningless.
All his life, Henry had seen mercs and marines bitch about life and drink themselves to a stupor. He'd always treat them with polite contempt, not openly disdaining them, but convince on the inside that he were better than they.
Today, he'd only seen one man die, and even then, it had been quick and he'd looked away before the Zerg could finish the armless marine, yet he still heard the guy's voice, screaming for his mother during the drop. Not the animalistic howl when the Hydra had chopped his arms off, this didn't affect him in the least, but to know this man had a family, a mother he would have wanted to see one last time before dying, despite his broken mind and bleak situation, his only thoughts had been for a woman he probably barely remembered.
Some veterans would see things like that every day for years. They found themselves in his situation countless times before, how could anyone back home ever understand? Jackson might not have been a true marine yet, he could still understand them better.
Outside, Coldmann received a fresh power pack for his suit, taken from that of a downed marine, and earned himself another two hours of functionality, and went back to his sentry duty.
He scanned the debris field for a minute, then turned to the landing pad. Jackson's boot could be seen inside the dropship, motionless in the dark.
He didn't like Jackson, the other private had abandoned his post by the ramp without permission and again acted without the sarge's word when he recharged his suit on damaged turrets. The man was unreliable, undisciplined and a coward, unfit to be a Dominion Marine. And that thing he'd seen on his back, earlier. Coldmann thought it had been light playing tricks with his eyes, at first, heat waves, maybe, but thinking back, he became convinced there really was something riding along on Fresh Meat's back. A parasite, maybe? Who knows with Zerg? But nobody else seemed to have spotted it and nothing in the private's behavior indicated he could be working for the Zerg… Coldmann decided to keep a close eye on his comrade from this point onward, and to shoot him at the first sign of infection.
Heller, apparently desperate to keep busy, soon retreated to the cockpit, where she did her best to fix the mess of wire that had replaced her flight instruments.
The Spectres, two men, two women, clad in black and armed with supressed AGR-18s, arrived a few minutes later, cloaked and perplexed.
Three resocs and a child, the sole survivors of a Zerg surprise attack. Should they make contact? It seemed risky, something felt wrong about these people, their behavior thus far made little sense. Why not call for evac? Why set up on an untenable position to wait for reinforcements that could take days to reach them?
Three of them agreed to just keep on walking, but one, plugged to the mind of the only real marine in that squad, decided against it. She like how the man thought, though confused and disorganized, his thoughts almost had a poesy to them. Quite a bit of paranoia as well, but what can you expect from marines?
The others, however, were harder to read, fuzzy. One was a coward, one pretended to be something he wasn't and one had no thoughts of his own, only propaganda. The Spectre stayed put, but remained hidden, smiling to herself as she just enjoyed the show.
Only one out of these four would survive. She had her own preferences, but didn't get her hopes up: Although a warrior at heart, her favourite's mind remained poisoned by the Dominion, and his adversaries were already moving against him while he focused on the wrong threat.
This would be an entertaining show indeed.