Chapter 1: "Every Other Day"
March 3rd, 3066
Outside New Serang
Fanardir, Magistracy of Canopus
Alanza "Kitten" Altamirano snarled to herself as she marched alongside the convoy of armor, double checking her BDUs wrist mounted system readout and confirmed that everything was operating correctly. Clearly, something wasn't communicating correctly or she wouldn't be having such a fogging problem with her mask and feeling the biting cold of Fanardir's frigid air. She spun to get a better view of her surroundings and the rest of the soldiers marching with her.
She picked out her actual squad mates quickly, their BDU's distinctive with their separate camouflage and customized weapons. Alanza once again felt a grating irritation, thinking about how combat patrol wasn't her or her squads usual operation but command wanted to foster "unit cohesion".
"Yea, tell that to the 'mech jocks sitting pretty back at the heated base laughin' at us out here…" Alanza thought bitterly as she got a push notification from her squad mate, Momiji Sakurai. It simply asked if she was warm. She sent back a quick response, also simple, that told him to fuck off. Turning, Alanza could see him laughing, the good natured medic as reliable to relieve tension as ever.
The deployment of the 1st Canopian Cuirassiers to this frozen ice ball was a miserable experience so far, uneventful and with poor weather. Alanza had served with the unit through Operation Bulldog, and the difference between fighting the Smoke Jaguars and now was such a stark contrast it was almost mind bending. Not that the time before their incursion in Clan space was much more eventful but this was a whole new level of nothing happening.
Alanza found the boredom one of the most trying things she had ever experienced and the restructuring of the unit wasn't helping. Alanza was a Raider, trained to attack fast, brutally and, when needed, quietly. She was meant to operate in places no one had ever or would ever heard of. Instead, she found herself marching patrol routes with an armor column, like she was back in her first tour with the Magistracy Armed Forces.
Alanza was about to let out another heavy sigh when she heard it, the loud hissing whistle before watching what appeared to her eyes to be a glowing tube punch straight through the side of the vehicle, a Scorpion light tank thank burst into flames as she and the rest of the infantry ducked out of instinct before taking cover as the other armored vehicles rolled to a stop and turned turrets towards where the fire had come from.
Alanza peered through the scope of her Designated Marksman Rifle, trying to find anything moving up in the tree line. It took a moment but she caught a human sized form running between trunks of trees and scoped in.
"I've got movement here." Alanza said into the units radio frequency, currently a buzz with traffic trying to figure out what hit them and where.
"Where is it, Star Corporal?" The voice of the convoy commander asked back in a suddenly clear radio channel.
"100 meters, tree line to the west. I can drop them." Alanza responded, keeping the reticule of her scope over the figure.
"Negative, let the armor soften them up and then advance in force." The commander said before beginning to direct the armors' fire. Alanza muttered more than a few guttural epithets to herself as she held her aim, a second before the thunder of tank and APC guns roared, the trees splintering into a million pieces of tiny debris and shrapnel. The tree line vanished into a cloud of smoke and steam, the snow vaporizing into a fine mist as the infantry waited. When the fire from the vehicles stopped, Alanza looked at the last spot she had seen her target, finding nothing but the smoking lip of a crater.
As she and the rest of the infantry moved up methodically, weapons trained until they got to the remains of the tree line, boots crunching on still smoldering pieces of what had been trees. Alanza was shocked that she saw very few bodies or body parts, it seemed like whoever had hit them had vanished amidst the shelling even though it had lasted less than a minute. Alanza moved into the cratered remains of what had been the start of the forest. Alanza found an arm on the lip of the crater, looked at it for a moment, and kicked it back into the crater dismissively. It was cold, but it also would save some of the newer members from seeing something they didn't need to yet.
"Anything up there?" The call came over the radio, once more thick with traffic.
"Negative. Looks like it was another hit and run blow." Alanza said as she was joined by Momiji, who gave her a thumbs up.
"We have a weapon over here." Someone else called over the radio.
"Looks like a shoulder mounted launcher. Old too." Another voice said as another member of Alanza's squad joined her, Raina, carrying the large light machine gun as if it was nothing. Raina had been an interesting addition, daughter of a minor noble that everyone thought joined as some sort of political play. Instead she had become an accomplished soldier with no signs of wanting to remove herself from the unit.
"Copy. And no signs of enemy forces?" The convoy lead asked, still down with the armored vehicles.
"Unless you count parts, no ma'am." Momiji responded, a moment of silence following on the radio before returning to the previous amount of traffic.
"Hey, Alanza, I've got a blood trail here." The last member of her squad, Haley White said as Alanza found her crouched down, looking further into trees. Alanza moved over to her and followed her eye line.
"Ma'am, Hunter has a trail the enemy possibly used to retreat. Permission to pursue." Alanza called over the channel.
"Negative Hunter, we need to secure the downed vehicle. Infantry, secure that area and set a perimeter while we secure the downed Scorpion for transport." The commander said before turning her attention to other tasks.
"For fuck's sake…" Alanza muttered to herself before keying the link open again. "Copy ma'am. Setting perimeter."
"Another day in paradise." Momiji said with mock enthusiasm.
"Yea, remind me to book a vacation." Alanza said as they moved back to the perimeter the rest of the infantry was setting up.
"Think the quiet is making command lazy. If this was Meinacos we'd have chased these assholes until they got off planet." Raina said, clearly bristling from the lack of activity and freedom she had become accustomed to.
"If this was Meinacos, we'd be up to our eyeballs in Elementals and dealing with trying to coordinate with Combine and Confederation commanders. And ours." Haley said as she knelt on the roadside. "And we'd still have Margie as our commander."
There was silence between them then, Alanza keeping her eyes on the tree line as the vehicle crew began extinguishing the fire inside the cabin of the Scorpion and medics waited to pull the crew out and place them in body bags. Alanza still wasn't convinced it was pirates like a lot of the other NCOs believed, figuring they were close enough to the border with the Duchy of Andurien that it could just be upstart locals looking to reignite old feuds. It'd make how the enemy was able to hit them and vanish into the terrain like they had been make a lot more sense, not that Alanza's command structure was helping by more or less letting them cut and run.
The removal of the bodies and preparation to move the Scorpion took the better part of an hour, each minute that passed making Alanza's anxiety grow as she watched the smoke dissipate from the former tree line. She was itching for an actual fight, one way or another, and was becoming sorely tempted to join some of the other grunts in the makeshift boxing ring they had in the gym at base to blow off some steam.
"Alanza. Hey!" Raina said, pushing Alanza's helmeted head hard with her hand. Alanza hadn't realized she had been being talked to, lost in her own world staring at the barren hill.
"What?" Alanza asked, turning to look at Raina.
"I was saying we should lodge a complaint with someone higher up the chain. This cohesion shit is fine but we're getting hit pretty much every other patrol and then put on a leash so we can't even pursue the enemy. Shit, we don't even know who the enemy is!" Raina said, probably a bit too loudly. Alanza looked at the others in her squad who nodded in agreement and Alanza gave a brief nod.
"Alright, I'll bring it up at the NCO briefing. Maybe we can at least get a RECCE goin or something." Alanza said, which seemed to satisfy them.
"Alright, everyone mount up. No sense in doing a slow march home at this point." The convoy lead said as the infantry piled into the APCs and waited to get moving again.
The trip back to base was uneventful and Alanza was more than happy to get out of her BDUs and feel the recirculated, heated air against her skin. She was toned, as a career soldier would be, but with natural curves that were helped by her naturally tan skin. She looked at the unit tattoo on her left forearm and followed the line of her muscle up her arms, marked with tiger stripes as she looked at the small mirror in her gear locker. She ran a hand through her orange hair, the cybernetic tiger ears twitching at the movement as the also cybernetic tail did the same. She smirked at herself, remembering how angry her grandmother had been when she had come home with the "additions" at the age of 16. Personally, Alanza still thought they fit her well, forgetting they where even there half the time they had become such a part of her natural body.
Slipping the khaki green t-shirt on, she closed the locker and made her way to the base commander's office, deciding to take her teams concern up to the highest authority on planet currently. Seeing as half the 1st was stationed on this miserable ice ball of a world and the rest were back home on Canopus, it was all she could do without sending and HPG message to Colonel Meisel.
The officer's area was lush, as she had grown accustomed to it being. Officers seemed to always get the best of everything; best food, best accommodations, best R&R program. It always made Alanza's skin crawl a little and was one of the reasons she had chosen to stay at Star Corporal rank. She reached the Major's office and knocked on the door, standing at parade rest until she was summoned inside.
Major Amber Crane's office was surprisingly low-key compared to the rest of the officer's area, still more flashy than her own accommodations and the rest of the grunts, but less ostentatious than Alanza would've expected.
"Star Corporal. What can I do for you?" Major Crane asked, not looking up from her datapad as she was busily tapping away, no doubt dealing with day to day bureaucracy to keep the base up and running.
"Ma'am, I'm once again requesting my team be allowed to go outside the wire to do RECCE. We lost another Scorpion today and, despite Lance Corporal White finding a clear trail, we were held back from pursuing." Alanza said, considering her next words carefully. "If I may be blunt, ma'am."
"By all means, Star Corporal." Amber said, suddenly very attentive to Alanza despite the tone of her voice giving all the warning Alanza needed to proceed with caution.
"I understand the need for unit cohesion and I don't disagree with that strategy but I do disagree with my team not being allowed to use our own skills when we have the opportunity and reason to do so. It feels more like we're being held back to coddle the new blood in so they don't feel left behind." Alanza said, trying to broach the subject as diplomatically as possible.
"Sounds to me like you're getting bored after being used to having a special place during Bulldog. And like you're looking to start a fight." Amber said, folding her hands in that particular ways only senior officers have that make anyone of lower ranks skin crawl.
"Yes ma'am, I am. And my teams training is being wasted on milk runs when we could be getting actionable intel." Alanza said, doing her best to keep her temper in check. "Maybe it is nothing and maybe we're chasing ghosts, but I'd rather be out doing something than walking patrol line and waiting to get shot at and then told to sit with my thumb up my ass."
Alanza realized she had probably said the last bit too harshly and judging by the silence that followed, Alanza was also fairly certain she was about to get chewed out. The moment seemed to stretch on for an eternity before Amber sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair.
"Alright, here's the deal Altamirano…" Amber began and Alanza knew for sure this had not gone as she had hoped. "…we're here to garrison. I understand you're used to more…interesting deployments but this isn't one of them. You might as well think of it as an extended vacation."
"Well, for the record then ma'am, I prefer my extended vacations on planets that aren't near or below freezing every damn day." Alanza said, feeling herself getting angrier by the moment.
"I'll take it under advisement, Star Corporal. Dismissed." Amber said and Alanza snapped a crisp salute before turning and leaving the office.
Alanza walked back to the area her team had staked out and flopped down on the empty chair with a thud. Momiji handed her a cup of coffee and gave an apologetic smile.
"Guessing it went about as well as the last time we asked to do something?" Momiji asked as Alanza sipped on her coffee, finding it just a gritty as always and wished she had asked her grandfather to send her some actually decent coffee in a care package.
"Same old song and dance. 'We're a garrison force' blah blah blah 'think of it as an extended vacation.' Blah blah blah." Alanza said, twirling a finger in the air as she rolled her eyes.
"Great. So, what? We just sit around waiting to get shot at?" Raina asked and Momiji shrugged.
"Well, if it's a vacation, why not treat it like one?' Momiji asked, a sly smile Alanza was all to familiar with.
"Go ahead…what's your plan?" Raina asked and Momiji smiled wider.
"Well, we have downtime for a bit. We're not on patrol schedule for a couple days. And I know our team leader has a penchant for hunting." Momiji said, looking at Alanza and she grunted in acknowledgment, smiling behind the Styrofoam cup.
"I see. Definitely won't be all of us or it'll look suspicious, so what do you say Raina? You ever been hunting before?" Alanza asked and Raina smirked deviously.
"Can't say that I have. What should I pack?" Raina asked as Alanza finished her drink.
"Binoculars, some maps and pens, and a gun. For deer, of course." Alanza said as she stood up again to go talk to staff about using some of her accrued R&R time.