A/N: And I'm back! Thanks for the reviews, everyone, and yes, I'm going somewhere with it. And no, this isn't marine corps propaganda, my country doesn't have a marine corps, so...
Jessie James. No kidding, that was how that Spectre called herself. No only that, but she even wore a cowboy hat and desperado-style mask over her rebreather. She looked downright ridiculous in Jackson's opinion, but Coldmann thought the Zerg teeth sewn in a grin on that mask gave her a frankly fearsome look.
Sarge, though he kept quiet about it, thought the whole sewn trophy thing was nice, but the face mask would mean no smoking and that didn't sit right with the non-com.
All four Terrans were having a peaceful stroll in across Char's lava field, Jessie having started a match of 'I Spy' only Coldmann was brain-dead enough to enjoy.
The Spectre being lightly armored and exposed to the extreme heat, she rode on Jackson's shoulder, her suit's reactor jacked to his battery as compensation for the added weight.
His suit's power level had not dropped below seventy percent in the hour and a half they'd been walking, though it did fluctuate according to the Spectre's level of awareness.
Ghost's suits were powered by their own brain and there were rumors floating around about Spectres being enhanced Ghosts or something…
Basically, the girl powered his armor with her brain and that made him very uncomfortable.
"I spy with my little eye… Something red… And hot.
-Lava?" Offered Jackson as Coldmann thought hard about it. Jessie shook her head,
"Nah, man, lava was the last one, keep up!
-My exhaust ports then?
-Bingo! Your turn."
Henry actually looked around, but they were walking down a natural trench with nothing to see but volcanic rock and ashes.
"I spy… Wait, you're a telepath, you already know what I'm gonna say!"
This earned him a sigh as the psionic assassin, previously perched on his right shoulder pad, straddled his helmet like a child on her father's shoulders. "You're no fun, smart guy, you…" All trace of playfulness and humor left her voice and the following sentence was barked with precision and cold accuracy, "Multiple contacts on our six and twelve, Zerg. ETA: ten seconds, coming in hot!" She stepped off his shoulders and dropped to a knee, gun aimed at the ash cloud now obscuring the trench entrance.
"Coldmann, on point with me!" Hollered the Sarge, his rifle at the ready, "Jackson, James, bring up the rear!"
Henry fumbled with his rifle safety catch, the thing clogged with ash, and promptly aimed down sights at the growing cloud.
They waited that way, all three marines in an standing firing position and the Spectre squeezing herself into the smallest possible target, motionless and quiet outside of a soft whine from their suits' servos as they tracked every shadow until a subtle beep from the threat recognition software got them on their toes again.
Ten seconds drew near and things remained eerie quiet, then they passed and nothing happened. Twelve seconds, Coldmann took a hand off his rifle to wiggle his fingers, then returned it to the weapon.
Twenty seconds. Jackson lowered his weapon, turning to Jessie, mouth stretched in a smug grin.
"You know, they can cure tha-" A positive beep rose from his suit and multiple silhouettes were outlined in red on his HUD. "Cont-Contact!
-Open..." He opened fire just as the first Zergling, equally surprised to find them there, stopped dead in its track. Jackson's Impaler kicked up dust, as it was still pointed down, but the recoil soon brought it on target, blasting a row of smoking holes in the Zerg's carapace.
He lined up another silhouette and shot a controlled burst where the multiple limbs joined in a twisted mess. The creature yelped and died just as James' rifle cracked, ending another Zerg's life.
Coldmann opened up next, bagging three targets in one burp, a feat the sergeant was quick to imitate, but not before spitting out the stump of his previous cigar to stick an unlit one in its place.
The Zerg were not expecting them to be down there and whoever controlled them obviously took a while to understand they would not get the Terrans in that chokepoint.
Bodies were piled up to shoulder height when the Zerg finally stopped coming. All eyes converged on Jessie, who shook her head and got back on her feet.
"Tactical withdrawal, they'll wait just out of range until we leave the trench." She checked her ammunition reserve and scowled. "As soon as we're out, they'll cut us off, surround us and we're happy meals."
Jackson's own ammo stock looked decent, one clip and a half left, about six hundred shots, not counting his sidearm.
"So what?" Asked Coldmann, rolling his shoulder and stomping around like a boxer before a fight, "We go back the way we came? Take them by surprise?"
The barrel of his Impaler smoked and glowed in the dust as he talked. A step behind him, Sarge was using his own rifle's overheated barrel to light his cigar.
When he looked up, the non-com spotted Jackson's perplexed look and laughed. "Only two ways you should light a cigar, son: Wooden matches or the smoking barrel of your rifle.
-Enlightening," Spoke the Spectre, still all business, "could we save the testosterone talk for after we've figured this out?"
But that sentence brought a spark of inspiration in Henry's mind, one Jessie would have spotted were she not keeping track of enough Zerglings to start an alien trashball team.
"We climb on their corpse." He spoke, already getting to work, hauling the dead Zerg of one pile to the other.
"Fekkin' insane…" Was Coldmann's prognosis, but the other two quickly caught on to the simple solution: Pile up corpses until they could reach the edge of this trench. The Zerg kept just out of sight, so that whichever directing the Terrans picked, the Swarm would know and the forces in the opposite direction would advance.
If the Terran somehow found a third way out… "James, are they all in the trenches?" Jackson's voice was even, relaxed, an odd contrast with the panting and shaking marine that had squeezed half a dozen shot in the dirt a minute earlier. He worked with ease and confidence, letting his suit do the work.
Sarge kept quiet at this private's overdose of thinking. As a good NCO, he knew when and who to listen. Lots of grunts were much smarter than their bosses and every grunt was, thus, encouraged to feed suggestions up the chain of command. A sergeant's job was to filter the rare flashes of genius from metaphorical verbal diarrhea.
"Affirmative, eighteen this way, twenty that way…"
Jackson thought about it and sighed. "Shame we don't have any explosives…
-You mean like these?" Coldmann pulled a leather belt from his rear ammo pouch, which made it look like some very disturbing porn vid about steel gorillas and anal beads. The 'beads' turned out to be fragmentation grenades, retrieved from the sabotaged dropship as they headed out.
Henry smiled as he hauled the final dead Zerg.
"Completely fo-" Alarms went off all over Jackson's suit as the Zergling's mouth clamped shut on his helmet. The thing's guts hung from its bisected thorax and it had only one claw left, but it didn't need them; the metal of Jackson's helmet groaned and caved in under the pressure, the HUD flickering off to give Henry a perfect view down the Zerg's throat… Its tongue lapped his visor, as if trying to poke through and only when cracks began to appear in the thing did the marine began struggling.
Punching got him nowhere, so he grabbed a fistful of tendrils and flesh, where the thing's hind legs should have been, and yanked hard on them, ripping out the Zergling's inner organs in one terrified groan.
The creature went limp, its jaw slack, and Henry carefully pried it off his face.
A few hesitant beeps and flickering of lights later, his suit came back online, droning 'Threat detected' as if nothing had happened.
"Fuck you."
He scaled the corpses without another word, trembling like a Pomeranian on cocaine as tears rolled down his cheek. Just one Zerg, an injured one at that, a second of carelessness, and he'd almost bought the farm. Pucker factor: off the fuckin' chart.
"Sarge…" He spoke once at the top, quickly joined by his interlocutor, "Sarge, I want out of this shit… Is there a form, discharge papers, something I can fill to just… Bail out?"
The edge taunted them, just out of reach, so Jackson kneeled to help his NCO up.
Once on solid ground, the sergeant did a quick perimeter sweep, walking five steps out, weapon at the ready, before returning to the traumatized marine in the trench.
"Sure, I could say you trash talked me, dishonorable discharge, maybe some brig time, no pension, then it's like nothing ever happened, you can go back to whatever the fuck you did before the Corps…"He kneeled, "But if you think there's some paper I can sign that will make the Zerg quit trying to kill you, you don't get it at all." The sarge's visor rose as he extended his armored hand, "The Zerg'll kill everyone and everything until there's nothin' left but them, wether you got a gun or no don't mean shit to them, but being a marine means you got a suit, and a gun and pals with standard issue balls of steel to watch your back when they come for you."
Jackson took the hand and gasped as he was dragged upward like a ragdoll in a twister. The sergeant kept talking as he helped Coldmann up.
"I served in the Confederacy, colonial militia, the Sons of Korhal and now I'm Dominion, believe me, I've seen every cause, every ideology and every tyrant you can think of, so I won't bullshit you about patriotism."
Coldmann took the sarge's place as he went to talk with Jackson face to face. He sounded… Not angry. Passionate. Not the Resoc kind of passionate, though…
"Thing is, son, we human are an endangered species, the only thing standing between hell and us is the Marine Corps. Umojan, Dominion, Confederate, doesn't mean shit, some people are cut out for great things, politics, prophets, heroes, and some, like you and me, are meant to hold the fucking line while those indecisive cunts make up their minds. Now, if you think you'll ever do anything more meaningful of your existence, then don't let me keep you, otherwise, soldier, shut up and soldier."
He handed Jackson a set of grenades. The marine smiled before taking the spherical devices from his NCO.
"Balls of steel, huh?"