The only real benefit to being a Sergeant in the glorious Confederate Marine Corps who has been assigned to the Wastelands of Mar Sara was that no one really gave a crap if you decided you'd much rather sleep in an old supply shed at the edge of the outpost.
Or, if they did, most people shut up about it because they had their own personal problems to deal with.
No one got sent to the Wastelands without a reason.
This is what Erik Dalton found himself contemplating as he laid in his cot, staring at the bland gunmetal gray ceiling of what he referred to as his home.
And it was the train of thought that was derailed when someone came banging on the door.
"Sergeant!"
Dalton sighed and threw back the blankets. Rising to his feet, he crossed his little shack and pulled open the door. All he had on at this point where his boxers and his dogtags but everyone had seen everyone naked already thanks to communal showering.
"What is it, Private?" he grunted. Before the kid could answer, Dalton fired off another question. "You got a cigarette?"
"Uh...yeah," he replied, patting at his pockets. He produced a battered pack of Yeheyuans and fished one out, then passed it to him. Then he pulled out a lighter as Dalton stuck it between his lips. He cupped his hand around it as the Private lit it.
"Thanks, Fish," he muttered, then took a drag on it.
"Yep. There's a problem, Sarge."
Dalton felt a cold stone settle somewhere deep in his intestinal tract. "What kind of problem?" That had been happening a lot more just lately.
"Night patrol ain't come back. Overdue by half an hour now."
"Shit," he muttered.
"CO wants to see you in Command pronto."
"I'll be there."
Dalton shut the door to his shack and headed for the chemical toilet.
It was all routine and mind-corroding boredom…
Until it wasn't.
The Mar Saran Wastelands were supposed to be the very definition of backwater tedium where the most that ever happened was some idiot got piss drunk and wandered into the desolation and had to be fished out or, and this was truly rare, some 'deviants' might make a sorry excuse for an attack on particularly lax and unguarded Confederate outposts.
When Dalton had been consigned to these badlands, it had been...a lot of things.
But mostly it had been a relief.
He finished lacing up his boots, muttering miserably to himself. Here he'd been looking forward to lounging around doing jack shit for maybe another twenty minutes on this fine Saturday morning, then a shower and maybe a shave, a lazy breakfast…
He wouldn't say that he'd gone soft out from under the watchful eye of the Confederacy, but certainly he took his time about things when he could afford to. And nowadays, he could afford to more often than not.
Once his boots were on, he was up and out the door, marching across the sun-baked, cracked earth that made up most of the surrounding countryside. The base was strangely alive with activity. Normally most people would be in the mess or shooting pool in the rec room this time of day, but he spotted a dozen fully suited Marines walking around, and with their Gauss rifles. Two them looked at him as he stalked by.
"Hey, Sarge, what's goin' on!?" one of them, Private Wheeler, the freshest face at the base, demanded.
"Patrol's missing. Just do what you're supposed to be doing, Wheels," he replied.
"Yes, Sergeant!"
Wheeler's neural realignment was still pretty fresh so it was easy to get him to 'Yes sir!' or 'Yes Sergeant!' himself off in another direction.
Dalton made for the big domed shape of the Command Center that resided at the core of the outpost. Every other structure almost seemed to be in orbit around it. He paused briefly outside the main entrance, taking a quick look around while also pulling a few more times on his cig. He and his CO mostly saw eye-to-eye on stuff and they had an understanding. No smoking in the CC was a rule that everyone, Dalton included, respected.
Lieutenant Miller had never elaborated on why he was such a stickler for it but hey, he didn't need to, he was the CO.
But mostly Dalton was looking out for their guest.
Good chance she was already in the Control Room, but she might not be.
The fact that a Ghost had come to their tin-shit little outpost was honestly freaking him out. A lot of weird stuff had been happening over the past week or so. There were all sorts of bizarre rumors about strange creatures, missing people, whole outposts vanished, bizarre craft sighting in the skies. It was normal scuttlebutt, but what wasn't normal was the frequency. Everyone seemed to have heard something, or had something to say over the unofficial network where normally the most interesting thing happening was comm-sex.
The sudden arrival of a Ghost yesterday, a real, actual, flesh-and-blood-and-psionics Ghost, suddenly seemed like a punctuation to all those strange happenings.
If anything, it seemed like an exclamation point, validating everything.
With a heavy sigh, Dalton stubbed out his half-dead cig on the bottom of his boot, pocketed it, and headed inside.
The Command Center was the cleanest, most high-tech part of the entirety of Outpost Gamma Seven. Which wasn't saying much. There was still dust on the deckplates, some of the lights in the disused areas flickered, and something important was always needing maintenance or missing a part that wouldn't arrive for another month.
He marched through the broad central corridor, passing a technician here, a medic there. G Seven was a small outpost, supporting barely three dozen personnel, and he knew them all at this point. They all looked anxious.
When he reached the end of the central corridor and arrived at the Control Room itself, he saw three people standing together before the core workstation in the middle of the room. Three people who made that cold stone in his guts sink even deeper.
Their Ghost, Frost, was indeed there. CO Miller was there. And the closest thing he had to a best friend, Dix, was there.
If Miller wanted him and Dix then he didn't think this was a couple of idiots trying to go AWOL or a broken down ATV.
"Lieutenant," Dalton said as he approached.
"Sergeant," Miller replied. "I'll cut to the chase: Philbrick and Pilsner went out on night patrol last night in Dorothy."
As Dalton stepped up in between Miller and Dix, with a tight nod to his half-nuts Firebat buddy, he studied the screen they were scrutinizing. He immediately recognized it as a topographical view of the surrounding area, going out for about a dozen miles. There were a handful of other installations around, little more than glorified outposts, and one of their few actual duties was to help provide some kind of semblance of a security net, which included patrols in the ungodly hours of the cold Wasteland night.
Dalton had pulled more than a few himself and they could be great, even soothing. It all depended on who was riding shotgun.
"Tracker is still functional," he said, noticing the steadily blinking red dot about eight miles north of their outpost.
"Yep. Our best guess is that they were on their way back from the check-in with Gamma Nine and something happened. They haven't responded to any hails. I talked with the CO over there but he didn't have anything to tell me. Didn't even know if they'd gone by or not, but you know how bad those two can be about checking in. I want you and Dixon on this, now. Suit up and get out there. Find them and find out what happened," Miller said.
"I'm coming too," Frost said, breaking her silence for the first time.
Dalton had only heard her speak maybe half a dozen times so far, and each time her voice still shocked him. It didn't seem to fit her at all. This slim, pale redhead with eyes so electric blue they seemed to tremble in her narrow skull had an air of brutality to her, cold and calculated brutality, but brutality nonetheless. And her soft, quiet voice just didn't match.
Though it did nothing to invite questioning her statements.
"Very well," Miller replied. "Could probably use the help. But Dalton's in charge."
"Fine," Frost said, and he found that more than a little interesting. Though he also knew that if the situation changed or he made a call that Frost didn't agree with, she would no doubt immediately assert her authority as a Specialist.
The three of them turned on their heels and began marching out of the building, making for the Armory.
"I'll meet you at the Motorpool," Frost said, her tone clipped.
"Got it," Dalton replied. They'd made it to the Armory and as she said it, Frost kept on going down the central corridor, making for one of the storerooms where she must have stowed her gear. Dalton and Dix headed into their own change-out area.
As two of the three Sergeants at the base, they pretty much had their own area dedicated to their armor and weaponry. Another perk of wasteland life.
"You're scared of her," Dix said as they went to their lockers and popped them open.
"You aren't?" Dalton replied.
Dix let out a small, cynical laugh. "Not scared of much anything these days."
"Ghosts kinda freak me out, but that's basically in their job description," he replied, stepping back into his power suit and letting it seal around him. Firing it up, he tapped at the wristpad to start running a quick diagnostic on it while he stepped out of the secure area.
"What do you think she's doing here, anyway?" Dix asked, getting into his own suit.
"Hell if I know," Dalton replied, distracted by the suit's report.
He took good care of his CMC-300, mostly because he'd been in too many situations where he would've been absolutely screwed if it had failed, but also because it helped pass the time and, like training and pumping iron, it was a good habit to keep going.
Well-maintained gear saved your ass.
He frowned as a few areas reported back some breakdown. Some of his plating needed replacement, some of the auxiliary power packs needed recharging because they weren't holding a charge like they used to, and his sensory suite needed a tuneup. He'd done all he could, but at a place like Gamma Seven it was hard to get proper tools and parts.
"Think it's those things that got Philbrick?" Dix asked.
"Maybe," Dalton replied, finishing with his report and deciding none of it warranted a reason to delay. He moved over to his weapons locker and pulled out his Gauss Rifle. "You really think they're aliens?"
"Could be, sure been hearing enough about aliens recently," Dix replied. "Kinda hope they are."
"Why?"
"It'd be interesting. Not much interesting these days."
"I think I've had my fill of interesting."
Dix just grunted, indicating he disagreed but wasn't willing to pursue the argument. Dalton sympathized. Dix's world was going gray, fading out, and it was getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. He didn't even need the guy to tell him that to see it written all over his scarred, miserable, grizzled face.
"Think I'd kill for a goddamned 400 at this point," Dalton said as he finished loading up his rifle and his slugthrower sidearm and extra ammo.
"Hey, at least yours doesn't have a decent chance of blowing up with you in it," Dix replied. "Way they treat us Firebats, though, I've come to realize that's a feature, not a bug."
"They hate all of us," Dalton agreed, "just looking for any excuse to file a KIA and make their own paycheck just a little bit fatter."
"What makes the planets spin and the stars burn," Dix said.
Dalton still felt that twinge of fear that he'd always felt when saying something subversive about the Confederacy. It was stronger than usual, probably because there was a damned Ghost around and you never knew what they might be up to. The wrong person heard and reported him, and Miller would be forced to come down on him, give his brain the old sandpaper rubdown so that he'd remember just how great and glorious his Confederate overlords were.
Not something he ever wanted to experience again, if he could help it.
The fact that there was a part of him that actually longed for it only made it worse. He knew part of it was just a side effect of the process, but he also suspected that there was a part of him that still longed for the simplicity of blind, unthinking loyalty. The ability to just turn off your higher brain functions, survive on rations, cigarettes, and moonshine, and like it.
He remembered the rations tasting better, back when he was more plugged into the system.
"We good?" Dix asked. "Because I'm ready to burn."
"Good," Dalton replied, finishing a quick, second check of his armored pockets, making sure he had all his gear: spare ammo, a few fragmentation grenades, stimpack, emergency medical kit, tactical combat knife, and some emergency power cells. Not all of it was a traditional loadout for a Marine but Dalton had learned to be as self sufficient as possible.
"Let's do it," Dix grunted, lighting up a fresh cigar.
Dalton did the same with the remains of his Yeheyuan. As they headed out of the Armory and marched towards the Motorpool, he thought about Dix's aliens.
Were there really aliens on Mar Sara?
There'd been conspiracy theories and even actual alien ruins discovered across the settled worlds, but as far as Dalton had ever heard, the most contact anyone had had with an 'alien organism' was wildlife. Not what he'd call an alien so much as just a new animal. But it was coming up over the comms network again and again, people claiming to see weird hopping creatures from a distance, and some outposts just going dark, people going missing…
It felt like too much to just pass out of hand, as much as he wanted to.
Because he'd actually been settling into his life here.
But he'd been wrong about things before. Maybe it was just some new breed of animal, or mass hysteria, or some crazy coincidence.
Better than the alternative, that there were nightmare aliens coming for them all.
They reached the Motorpool and found Frost already waiting for them by one of the rovers that was big enough to carry all three of them in their suits. She was fully kitted out, covered head-to-toe in darkish armor, even her eyes hidden behind green-lensed lenticular scopes. He found himself keeping a poker face and pushing back against certain thoughts as he approached. Her formfitting armor was fitting over a particularly attractive form.
"Were there any problems?" she asked, her voice cold and mechanical behind its filter.
"No," Dalton replied, getting in the driver's seat.
"Shotgun," Dix said, climbing in the passenger's seat.
Frost wordlessly climbed into the back, laying her Canister Rifle across her thighs after buckling in.
"Okay," Dalton muttered as he fired up the onboard nav system. He sighed heavily as the screen flickered and died. "Come on, you piece of shit," he growled, tapping it several times. Early in his career, he'd learned the hard way that a good, hard slap while wearing power armor usually destroyed equipment. The screen flickered back to life and then resolved into the painfully dated basic menu screen that this twenty five year old rover sported. He tapped into the equipment and had it reach out and hunt for the missing rover's nav beacon. "Gotcha," he said after a moment.
"Where are they?" Dix asked.
"Still in the same place." He fired up the engine and began driving them out of the Motorpool. "Let's go see what happened."
