Terran Federation, Western Federal Frontier, "Eastern" Attican Traverse, Unnamed Sector, Akuze, outskirts of Pioneer Station Papa, 2678GS/2350AD November 30th

Corporal Jane Shepard shifted her shoulders, trying to unknot her cramping muscles, she grunted as the motion sent her tripping over her own two feet thanks to her overladen backpack, "My dogs are barking! Why didn't the el-tee get us transport?" She bitched, searching around the mountainous jungle that surrounded the squad she was a part of. She could just make out the other units of her platoon searching the brush for tracks and whatnot by the disturbance in the trees and foliage.

The only good thing about this march was it taught her how to see the signs of movement in a jungle. So if the four-eyed bastards decided to attack this shithole, she'd be ready. But she'd rather be rid of this place than defend it. The jungle was just as inhospitable as Cassandra, if not as psychotically aggressive, the batarians could have it for all she cared.

A voice below her chuckled, "Probably because he thinks you're getting fat and lazy." The voice was smooth and modulated inside Jane's mind, almost lyrical in its delivery. Padding beside her, tail waving at the walkies, was Jane's linked neodog, Elie.

Elie brushed against Jane, both in an attempt to stabilize the clumsy human, and pressed the edge of her armor plate against Jane's largely unarmored leg, "Ow, could you not stab me in the side of the shins?" Jane bitched some more, this time pulsed to Elie.

Elie, as a dog, could not smile like a human, but she sure did grin, "Hard not to. You're such a soft target." Jane felt the smile through their linkage however.

"Bitch." Jane muttered aloud, resuming her rhythm forward.

Elie's smugness did not disappear at the crass language thrown at her, "Yes, that would 'e the correct word." She announced aloud, then paused, " 'ut while I walk it, you hug it."

Jane smiled. To an outsider, the bad-mouthing they gave each other could indicate mutual hostility. But to Jane, it helped bleed away the tension, "Fine, well I guess a hike now and then does me good." Jane pulsed as she readjusted her Morita's position along her shoulder, "I will say though, being out here searching for idiots is better than being cooped up in the barracks. Knock off pathfinders that we are." She added aloud.

A voice behind her interrupted her private conversation with her dog, "We're technically more expensive than Pathfinders." Staff Sergeant Eran Gummer idly commented. While Jane was struggling underneath forty kilos of equipment strapped to her back, he had that, plus a Morita, and his anti-material rifle hanging off his jump pack.

"Pathfinders get more expensive training, but a caleb isn't cheap. Especially our mark fours. Ain't that right Grizz?" Eran rubbed between Grizzly's ears, and the good boy leaned into that affectionately. Jane could just imagine Griz announcing he was a slut for head pats.

"Why don't you head pat me more?" Elie pulsed to Jane's mind telepathically, "I'm a slut too!"

Jane smirked, carefully reaching down to give a scruff, "I thought you were a bitch?"

Elie scoffed, "I'm multidisciplinary! I can be a slut and a bitch. Like you!"

Jane almost fell again, but this time it was because she couldn't contain the laughter bubbling from her mouth. She had to mute her suit mic to prevent breaking noise discipline.

Jane had to admit though, once she crunched the numbers, that Eran was right. The mark threes like Elie and Griz' were not fucking cheap. All natural eezo nodes visibly rippled from their canine forms, alongside their extensive surgical cybernetics, brought the cost up from a few tens of thousands to a few tens of millions of dollars easily. Factor in finding the few human troopers with biotics, like her, and with the amount of money the government spent was easily in a hundred million per pairing.

"We're near unique Shepard." Eran continued, "Not some clunky knockoff Pathfinders."

"Well if we're unique, why don't we get power armor? I mean, we're what? A billion total as investments?" Jane joked. She knew why they didn't get power armor, but it didn't mean she didn't get to be jealous that her blockhead younger brother got a suit before she did.

Eran sighed the long-suffering sigh of a senior enlisted explaining basic shit to a greenhorn recruit, "Because the sensor packages in current gen power armor suck! And we're not exposed to fight, we're exposed to find. The more we know, the more we can predict, and the more we predict, the less danger our tushes get into."

Someone behind Eran pushed him gently, "Yeah yeah snowflakes, 'Dogs do the eyein', MI do the dyin'!"

Grizz playfully yipped, "Fuck off 'eat shield. Don't ya got a 'inefield to walk in?"

A few rapid-fire clicks of microphones going off indicated their entire column was laughing now. Shit they were going to get smoked in the after-action report for lax comms discipline, but it was worth it.

Jane stepped over a fallen set of logs and boulders, "Right, well if you're so good with info, I'm sure you know all about the boy scouts we're looking for already, huh?"

Jane could imagine it now, Eran rolling his eyes and muttering how she had no respect under his breath, "It's an Eldfell-Ashland Energy corporate pioneer team Shepard, not boy scouts. These guys aren't exactly defenseless either. They were supposed to check in last week, and they didn't. Being a private company, it took a while for their bosses to admit something had gone wrong, hat in hand. If the reports of what they were packing are true, that means they're probably already dead." He huffed as he climbed over the boulders, using Griz for support while he did so, "Didn't you read the reports? We've been hiking for like, two days girl. You've got text-to-speech if you can't read and walk."

Jane bit her lip, vaguely insulted on that one, "I skimmed them, yeah, I'm not an amateur Gummer. I passed basic and specialist school just like you. And don't give me that, 'back in my day', bullshit." She swallowed a mouthful of water and helped Eran down onto flatter terrain, "Though aren't you being a bit harsh on these boy scouts? We're having trouble even getting to them. Could be equipment failure. We're cheaper than mercs after all."

Eran shrugged his pack to get it resettled, "Just calling it as I see it. I've done these types of patrols before. Eldfell-Ashland isn't some mom-and-pop startup. They've survived the bug wars and hire Morita Arms mercs for security on the reg'. If they've announced they lost contact and don't know why, they're dead."

He sighed heavily, "We're out here to do damage control and forward recon. If whatever is responsible for this can take out an EAE pioneer team before they get an SOS out, it can take out the colony. EAE middle management can have their heads up their asses, but this ain't corpo politics." He sniffed, "It's their lives on the line. Their friends too."

"It could be Batarians. We're pretty far out in the ass end of nowhere. So slavers could hit us while tensions are high with the Hegemony. It's not like we have orbital coverage." Jane theorized. It was fruitless, but she didn't exactly have a lot to do while hiking besides breathing and watching.

Eran made a noise indicating how dubious he thought the idea was, "If my scuttlebutt back from FleetCom is good, Bat's are up to something. War could be on for all we know, here in the ass crack of the galaxy." He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, "Either way, they won't send any troops who aren't already here to deal with it, unless absolutely necessary. Same for EAE, they got holdings all over the Traverse. They're stretched just as thin."

Jane sighed, kneeling while Elie sniffed about, Griz joined her and they began to confer. Eran held up a fist and then made a five-minute motion to their squad. Gratefully the rest of their column sat down for a break while the dogs did their thing. After a quick conferral with the rest of the platoon, Jane took another sip of water, "Well, I guess that's our shitty luck. But you'd think they'd at least have a plane or helicopter take a look before we got sent out."

Eran chuckled, "Maybe, but then again, the Buenos Aires conspiracy theory exists."

The younger woman blinked, "The what?"

The old salt leaned back as much as his backpack would allow, "The Buenos Aires conspiracy. It's a crackpot conspiracy that SICON knew more about the bugs' movements after the first war than was reported." He paused after taking a sip of his water, "Okay, so maybe that's true, in the same sense that the United States 'knew' that Pearl Harbor-"

"What's Pearl Harbor?" Jane interjection

Eran ignored her, "-was going to happen. Similar conspiracy theory, same problems. In short, they think that SICON let Earth be struck to push civilians to sign up at rates that hadn't been seen since the Disorders. Or, knowing the bugs were just hiding, struck Buenos Aires themselves in a false flag operation to pump up volunteer numbers to drive the bugs out of the Sol system and Terran territory."

Jane gave that five seconds of thought and automatically said, "That's ridiculous. And irrelevant!"

"It is!" Eran laughed, "The logistics alone of that operation would have a few squealers by now. Besides, we know for a fact the bugs did it, they took credit for it after all!" He touched his power suit visor and deactivated his exterior mic, leaning so close that Jane could hear him through his helmet. She also disabled her helmet's audio and recording features, if Eran was good for anything it was scuttlebutt, "Almost as ridiculous as baiting a trap for the Batarians at Elysium."

Jane recoiled, "Damn it... don't joke about that," she growled, "my brother's ship is patrolling around there."

"You still haven't heard anything about your brother?" Eran asked with some concern.

Jane frowned, "Where do you get this shit?"

Eran's laughter was harsh, "I'm a neodog handler. It's my job to gather intel." He settled in, and reactivated his helmet, "Still haven't answered my question."

The Shepherd sister blanched, "I- I got a letter."

Eran, thankfully, kept his trap shut while Jane processed this, "I thought it was some fuckup from the auto directory. I'm not exactly the black sheep of the family, but he's also not exactly one to send me letters every chance he gets." She spent a minute digesting it all, and Eran was about to stand up when she spoke, "The automated letter told me he's listed as MIA, possibly KIA. I thought it was a mistake, pretty generic name ya know? Could be any John Shepard, and someone fat-fingering a distro' report for some MASCAS. Apparently none of his unit has been found for the last week, and the Blue's Dues is reported lost."

Eran nodded consolingly, "From what I've heard, after whatever goes down at Elysium, he may not even be missing. I could be wrong and he's just lost, lost partying during Fed-day."

"And if you're not wrong?" Jane prompted.

Eran shuffled himself uneasily, "A place like Elysium? You could build a city for the wounded on a front like that. I've been there before, can't imagine fighting through any of the plateau cities there. We're talking, I don't know, millions, tens of millions of soldiers on either side. It's more than possible he's just been lost in paperwork—a John Doe among a million other John Does."

Jane began to twiddle her thumbs, a telltale sign of worry. If Elie sidling up to her, and nuzzling her wasn't signal enough itself.

Eran smiled behind his visor, "He'll be fine. He's a Marine. Those bastards don't die, they just redeploy through hell to commence a surprise attack."

Despite herself, Jane laughed. "Where's that quote from?"

"Can't remember." Eran's smile turned a bit brittle, "A book I read once, maybe an old FedNet show. Hell, it could've been one of the public battle reports I used to read when I was a kid."

"You were a kid?" Jane teased.

Eran chuckled to himself, "What, SICON didn't plant me in the ground as a little rubbed-out chutzpah, and I certainly didn't spring fully formed as a private ready to die for democracy and Federation." He winked, but that brittle smile remained, "We were all kids one day."

Jane shook her head, "You're a weird one ya know that?"

"Have to be," Eran countered, "coming from a planet plagued by giant worms."

"Point," Jane admitted. Their five minutes were up. Griz and Elie reported an all-clear. With their report, Sergeant Everest began a conference call for the squad.

"Bear Dogs, orders from up top. Deploy in a skirmish line." He was using the moniker the unit had earned on some faraway shithole just like this. They were the "Constanza Russian Bear Dog" Neo-dog 231st Detachment. It sounded a lot more romantic in its native russglisch, but they were currently deployed with some of the 9/9th infantry company too, so mouthful it was.

Regardless, they all dropped their backpacks and deployed info formation, establishing a scattered line. A dozen meters away on either side, supporting squads did the same until fifty-ish troopers and nearly an equal number of dogs were coming forward in a staggered advance along the final ridge.

At said ridge, Jane took a knee as she was all business now. Unlimbering her rifle, she looked through its scope trying to see what was up. As the pioneer reports said, they had hunkered down in a relatively isolated valley in an attempt to make a waystation for aircraft and an eventual train line. They had started by clearing the tree line to the ridge they were on now, all the way through the two-hundred-meter bowl that lay at the bottom of the valley. In the center of it all, she spotted the old Federal insta-fort, and neatly stacked rows of lumber waiting for pickup.

Now when she heard old, she knew they meant it. The fort looked like it had been deployed during the Second Bug War multiple times, judging by the rust and the wear and tear it had gone through. She bit her lip again. It appeared as if some of the metal walls had fallen over in the interim. It wouldn't hold up in a real siege, but for a small group of pioneers, it would make a great base camp. Controlled entryways, and already standing buildings. She saw signs of new construction, in particular, a halfway built log cabin had been erected in one corner. Hardly surprising. When you were out here it could get very boring, so why not make a log cabin with all this wood lying around? It certainly was more productive than getting drunk and playing spin the bottle to see who you'll fuck next.

Other than lingering over the half constructed cabin, she saw no signs of movement inside, so there was no telling if the team was still there or not. She pulled her eye off her scope to give Everest a sad shake. He nodded, and held the side of his helmet, most likely on a private line to the LT.

"All right, boys and girls," the sergeant sighed, breaking from the private call, "we're first in. The other squads will stay back while we make sure it's clear. Reminder, check for IEDs, ensure no booby traps are lying around, and if you spot any sign of the bugs, scream it loud and clear. If it's all good they'll follow us in and we'll break for chow." Everest pulled up his wrist and started his watch, "Stay low, stay vigilant, and stay smart." He counted down the last seconds as everyone got ready, "Let's go." He led the way toward the fort, the rest of the squad close at hand in an even three meter spread.

It was anticlimactic in its own way. The squad bound from cover to cover, or what counted for it in this no man's land, until they reached the outer wall of stacked tree trunks. No one reported seeing anything. That was the Neodogs' cue to start sniffing about, and they went about their business searching for mines, just in case.

Jane noted that the clearing had been slashed and burned recently. Whoever led the pioneers unsurprisingly knew the basics of fort defense, which was always good. Excepting of course the neatly stacked piles of wood that served as their only means of cover bare meters from the base entrance.

She wouldn't have noticed it last month, but Shepard had participated in enough hikes and marches to spot something peculiar. Oddly, she noticed the earth around the fort was also torn up, breaking up the normally uniform black dirt of the jungle disrupting the coating of burnt undergrowth and ashes to form large piles. It had been done recently, after the slash and burn had been completed and the ash settled down.

Her neodog whined, and turned her head up to Jane, "This place doesn't smell good," Elie muttered. Jane was about to relay that when she saw everyone else with a caleb about to do the same thing.

"Doesn't look good either from where I'm standing, but what does it smell like?" Jane asked through her telepathic link,

Elie obliged, blinking her cybernetic eyes, "Decay. And rotten meat. But not good rotting meat."

That surprised Jane, normally they had to incinerate all meat scrap and animal corpses, otherwise the neodogs would desert their post to rub themselves all over the carrion. So Elie and the other dog's reporting the same thing was a disturbing sign. That was like a biotic not using their godly power to annoy their little brother, or an MI private not blowing their first paycheck on a brand new Dodge Charger, it just didn't happen.

Well, there was always a bright side, "Glad my air goes through my helmet's scrubbers then." She joked as they reached the main gate. Closer now, she could see the inside was a mess, and not the kind you'd expect from age or jungle growth. This was the aftermath of a battle. Bullet holes, shell casings, laser cuts, and all kinds of battle damage, plus blood. Lots and lots of blood.

Through a few swift hand signals, Sergeant Everest made it clear they were to enter quick and quiet. Stacking up on the gate, they clambered into the fort and began clearing it crevice by crevice. After about ten minutes of searching, they found exactly what they'd seen outside—and nothing else.

No bodies, just blood. Something, or someone, had dragged the bodies away.

"Looks like I win the grim-pool. Looks like slavers came by." Jane declared, kicking over a half-open box of fifty-cal ammo. Spent shell casings when tinkling everywhere at her petty act of littering.

The elder among them remained quiet and alert, "Something bad happened here." Eran whispered, coming up behind Jane, "Whatever it was, it was brutal. There's more than enough blood to say the pioneer team is all dead."

Jane frowned, "Well, that's just great," she said, annoyed, looking down at the ground in frustration.

Then she noticed something, "Hey, is it just me, or are there footprints here? These don't look like they were left by someone running around." Jane leaned down to examine the coagulated prints in the blood. They were more even than they should have been, and the pattern seemed off.

Eran kept his distance, "This is creepy. All this blood, coagulated too, and no insects slurping this shit off the ground?" Jane motioned for him to get a closer look, and he only relented when Jane looked up at him to give him a long stare.

"Fine, okay." He leaned over and gripped his thighs as he peered straight down at the boot print, "Huh, that's a Deago. Don't see those around these parts."

Jane raised an eyebrow, "A what?"

"It's a Deago," Eran mimed a shoe, "it's a shoe brand that rich Zegama Beach assholes wear. Each one is custom-made for the buyer, for a perfect fit. I can tell because the company uses Arabic calligraphy for their prints." He motioned to the center line where the arch of the foot would be, "That there says, I think, I'm not fluent, Deago, and flowering around it, they repeat 'class' and 'skill issue'."

Jane was Sanctuary born and raised, so seeing something so preposterously ridiculous made her scoff, "Why would anyone… Zegama Beach… Wait, a Deago's not a combat boot or anything like that, right?"

"Correct." Eran nodded, "Daego is explicitly a luxury shoe brand."

"Then why would someone be wearing it out here in the middle of nowhere like Akuze?" she muttered, standing up and following the prints to the edge of the fort where the wall had collapsed. Eran followed close behind her, equally as intrigued. They saw the prints continue westward out of the fort, "Sergeant, I've got a trail of fancy shoe prints heading west of the fort. Permission for Gummer and me to check it out?"

Everest looked around, then sat on an overturned barrel, "Granted. Let me know what you find, and keep in contact. The other squads will be moving in with the Elltee soon to secure the fort. Chung wants to prep the site for forensic experts to search it top to bottom, so don't damage the footprint trail."

"Aye boss, understood. We'll keep in contact." She said, jumping down into the dirt and starting to follow the prints toward the jungle.

"We're not fleet pukes Shepard! You say yes sir, not aye aye." Everest teased with mock annoyance, followed by the sound of MREs being torn open, and McHaggish giving Everest crap and vice versa about McHaggish's accent.

Their neodogs led them after the foot trail, all the way to the edge of the clearing, where they disappeared at a spot where something had landed. Kneeling for a closer look, she could tell the ship had been small, probably a system shuttle. Nothing capable of interstellar travel, but that didn't mean whoever it was hadn't arrived on a larger ship still in system. Assault boats weren't exactly uncommon in these parts either.

"Still think it's slavers?" Eran asked.

"Well who else has a motive? C-Space corporate sabotage? Please. Akuze doesn't have anything worth killing over." Jane scoffed again.

Eran couldn't help but agree, "Maybe, but unless we find something, then we may never know."

"I scent rot," Elie said aloud for everyone, padding over to the churned-up dirt. She began to dig as Jane and Eran approached, guns raised. After a moment of digging, Elie gently pulled an arm out.

"I think I found one of the pioneers." Elie said, panting.

"Jesus, I think you're right." Jane knelt to help uncover the body, scooping handfuls of rich black dirt away, but something was off. Through the torn flesh, she saw wires running through the arm. "Shit! IED!" On instinct, Jane grabbed Elie by her flak vest and used her jump jets to push them away from what could be a bomb like a bottle rocket out of a PVC pipe.

There was no explosion, what happened instead was worse. The body sat up, pulling itself from the dirt. The rotten flesh that had once been human turned to face them, revealing a pair of red mechanical eyes where human ones had once been, its jaw hanging loosely from decomposing flesh. Then its head exploded, an anti-tank round going off in its cranium. What the fuck it was, its face had been armored enough to detonate the round!

"Oh shit! The fuck is that? A zombie?" Eran asked, checking around in a fit of paranoia, then looking down at his feet where he stood, dawning horror overtaking him.

"Fuck if I know! Boss! Boss, we have a big problem!" Jane shouted, tapping her comms. "Sir, we've got some weird shit out here!" Before she got a response, more gunfire erupted from back at the fort, with the faint simmerings of panicked shouting from the other soldiers.

Everest cursed and gunfire screamed on his end, "Let me guess! Gray, rotting fuckers with metal cores and bad attitudes?! Get your asses back here! The Elltee's calling for evac, and don't turn your back on that thing you found. They don't need heads."

Looking up, Jane saw the truth of it. The body was pulling itself out of the dirt, red lights flickering in the mechanical bits of its chest, beeping that was rapidly increasing in tempo. Eran fired another round at it, exploding its chest into bits and pieces that all started to beep now.

"Run!" They both chorused, turning back toward the fort into a dead sprint. They got about twenty meters when the body, or what was left of it, exploded with the force of a toad charge with bomblets.

They all fell from the force of the blast and the ground shaking beneath them, but they all got back up immediately. They ran, desperately, towards the jagged hole in the wall that disconcertingly looked like a toad charge blew up there.

Everest shouted at them, on the rampart of the base, "Troopers, get the fuck up here! There are more of these things coming, and you're in a prime position to hold this gap until evac gets here."

"Yes, Sergeant!" Jane answered. Looking back out towards the edge of the clearing, she saw a couple more slow-moving monsters shambling in their direction. Most of their flesh had been ripped off by various means, but whatever fueled the mechanical pieces kept the bodies moving. Some of them had entire limbs replaced with metal parts.

"Eran," Sergeant Everest roared, "use your AT rifle to kill those fuckers. Our C-spec and Morita's aren't doing dick!"

"On it boss!" Eran shouted, lying flat in the gap and setting the rifle's bipod up. Looking out across the field, Jane wondered what had created these creatures. One of the closer zombies exploded from an anti-tank round to the chest. It dropped, head flopping limply, and then it began to crawl, small red lights beeping.

Jane didn't stand around and gawp, she raised her rifle and fired at another monster staggering out of the dirt. It was close enough for her shot to hit, but the body only stumbled before continuing to dig itself out, "Gotta find the weak point, or we're going to need some bigger guns."

"Good news boys and girls, EAE has a shuttle inbound!" The sergeant called from somewhere behind her. Jane looked up and saw a slingshot recovery boat coming over the jungle toward them. Thank god for small coincidences! It must've been here on standby in case they found any wounded.

A small cheer rose through their ranks as ht platoon finally got their wits together and focused fire. Then the earth moved. Everything shook, the whole fort shook as one big piece even. Jane looked back towards the boat, as something huge emerged from underground. Before anyone could call out a warning, a thresher maw flung itself out to latch onto the slingshot in its tentacle-like claws. Burning yellow fluid billowed over the craft, causing it to buckle and melt. Then entire thing was crushed by the damnable worm as it retracted itself back into the black earth.

"Uhh, boss! Was that thing wearing fucking armor?" A random trooper screamed. Jane blinked and realized what he was talking about. She'd only ever seen holovids and simulations of these things, but even her layman's eyes could tell that the metal plates lining its body shouldn't be there. As the beast turned, dropping the half-melted ship behind it, she noticed it had metallic structures jutting out of the sides of its head.

"It's another one of those cyber zombies!" She yelled, as the creature finished its retraction into the ground. They all watched in horror as the earth furrowed in a direct line straight to the fort. With a roar, it spewed more of the golden fluid onto the walls, a few poor bastards had been manning it, and their screams slowly turned to gurgles as everything melted.

"Get to cover!" she shouted, grabbing Elie and running for a nearby barracks.

"What fucking cover! It just dissolved a solid foot of concrete!" Eran gibbered in borderline panic as he Grizzly bounded inside after her, alongside half a squad. With their combined might they managed to slam the rust thing back into its place.

"What where's Kellogg?" Someone shouted, looking around frantically for their caleb.

Eran ignored him, as he futilely kicked the door, "This shit isn't going to stop that thing! How does this help?" He demanded.

"It doesn't, it buys us time while we come up with a plan," Jane said, peeking out a window. The monster loomed over the fort, its tentacles smashing down on the various buildings and stranded troopers, trying to drive people from their cover before it sprayed more of the acid-like plasma over them. As Jane watched, she saw a hatch open in the creature's chest. Mechanical tentacles reached down, grabbing the corpses of her fellow troopers and carrying them back inside, one of them was still screaming.

"What the fuck is it doing?" she asked.

"Probably making more zombies... I ain't never heard of anything like this before!" Eran replied, everyone else agreed, no one had ever even heard myths of something like this.

"I don't want to end up like those things." Everest piped in on the radio, "Does anyone have any idea on what to do?"

"Well, unless we get out of this fort, I don't think we'll have much choice." Someone else said.

"Not the time," Jane muttered, tapping the side of her helmet. "Sergeant Everest, me and Gummer are locked up in the barracks to the south. What's the plan?"

"Shepard, I have no fucking idea. I'm trying to catalog what the people I have with me got. Maybe if we had some toads or demo charges, but we're not exactly flush with anti-giant-worm shit right now."

Jane swore, then switched to an open channel. "Anyone else still alive?"

The Elltee came on, "This is Lieutenant Chung, identify yourself."

"Private Shepard, sir!" Jane did as ordered.

"Private, how many made it into cover with you?"

"Six other troopers and five dogs, sir." The horrific scream as the psychic feedback struck Kellogg's partner, the unnamed trooper fell spasming on his face. The scream echoing in their shared psionic noo-link between all of them made Jane's blood go ice cold, "F-five other troopers and five dogs sir." She amended.

There was a pause, most likely as the lieutenant processed the information before responding, "Alright, soldier. Do what you can to keep those tentacles back. Then give me an inventory count."

Jane swallowed, "Yes, sir,"

When she clicked off, Eran muttered, "The Elltee's got no plan."

"How do you know that?" Jane asked, too shocked to put the pieces together himself right this second.

"A 'holding action' always means they have no idea what to do." Eran admitted, "Fuck and I don't blame him." He took a deep calming breath and rubbed his hands together, "Well then... you want to hear my idea?"

"You have an idea? Not just random facts that are both annoying and interesting at the same time?" Jane snapped at him.

"Not the time to be stabbing me in the dick Shep. Yes, I have a plan. Private Barry over there," he indicated the private and his neodog, both frantically looking through their shit, "took a satchel from his backpack when we marched down here, he dropped it off at the front gate. Now, last month, he got hold of a Toad charge."

Jane's jaw dropped, "How the hell did Barry 'get hold of' a toad?" Shit, they really could use a TOAD right about now, an atomic warhead like it was probably the only thing that could kill that fucking thing.

Eran smiled, "Won it in a card game with some engineers, that's his story at least. I haven't really wanted to know all the nasty details on how he got a mini-nuke. Makes me an accomplice if I don't report it, ya know?" He laughed nervously.

Jane gripped him by the bandolier straps and shook like a mad woman, "Gummer, we can have a conversation about dangerous munitions and why they're not given to idiots like Barry later." She looked to Barry, "Barry, tell me you got the activation code as well!"

Barry nodded, "Yeah, it's all in there and ready to go."

"Ah, he don't seem that dangerous to me. I mean, my dad taught me how to arm and disable a toad when I was twelve." Gummer tried to calm Jane, gripping her hands in his.

Jane stopped shaking him only to look him in the eyes and scream, "Gummer! You're from a family of fucking lunatics. You willingly lived on a planet with giant man-eating worms! This is basically home for you right now!"

Looking out the window, she spotted Barry's kit, and there it was by the front gate, under the shadow of the siege worm.

Eran finally got Jane's hands off of him when she snapped back to reality, "Alright then… this is gonna be a shit show. Gummer, get on the comms and tell the Elltee we have a plan… Maybe."

The siege worm leaned over, crushing the gate and smashing deeper into the base, its metal tentacles breaking down doors, searching for troopers, and spewing more of that plasma over the buildings. At the same time, the comms went out completely, steady static jamming all wavelengths.

"Fucking fantastic! No comms, no command, no plan." She muttered, annoyed. "Plan B… Gummer, use your AT rifle and cover me. Elie, when I open this door, I need you to fetch." She sent her exact idea over to Elie through their telepathic link. It took a split second for them to be on the literal same wavelength.

Elie looked to Kellogg's partner, currently in the depths of a psionic backlash coma, "Can do, Jane." She said through a pulse after a moment of deep consideration.

Taking a moment to center herself, Jane took a deep breath. Several others joined her in preparing the door, "On three okay?" The three other troopers nodded, then on three, they pulled the door straight off its hinges, 'Shit, well here we go!'

Elie ran like a bat out of hell, Jane also leaped out, much to the confusion of the rest of the squad. Jane sprinted toward the gangway to the wall as Elie rushed toward the decimated gate. Two of the cybernetic zombies who had finally reached the base turned to look her way right before bullets from Gummer shattered their pelvises, allowing Jane to just pulse her jump packs to leap over them.

Once she hit the gangway, Jane turned and sprayed down more creatures that staggered toward her. From her position, she saw Elie use her biotic charge to bypass some of the metal tentacles and get to the backpack. Quickly, the neodog started running toward Jane, satchel charge in muzzle. Jane covered her alongside Gummer as Elie dodged attacks from the worm's tentacles thanks to Jane's mental forewarning.

When Elie bounded close enough, she tossed the pack to Jane who grabbed it, and without wasting time, she ripped the bag open with her knife. The yellow-green charge fell free from the container, and she quickly got to work arming it.

She was almost done when a metal tentacle with a spear tip smashed through her lower right leg. She shrieked, "Fucker!" Losing control of the shredded muscles in her leg, she fell face-first into the mesh metal steps. As Jane recovered from the shock, she realized two things: one, she still had the bomb, and two, she was being dragged toward the open hatch in the siege worm.

Oh shit, she had to Jaunny Rico this!

Quickly, she grabbed onto the steps and held on for dear life, though the pain from the tentacle shredding more of her lower leg quickly convinced her to let go. Elie appeared, biting down on her shoulder and tugging her back from the worm. It was a pointless effort, her ass was scraping against the slick concrete floor with no traction. At that moment, Jane asked herself, "Is this how I'm going to die? Ripped apart by my dog and a giant worm?" It seemed like a cruel joke, and it surprisingly pissed her off.

Focusing on that anger, she yelled, though it came out more like a pain-fueled screech, and she activated the Toad charge. She only had one shot at this. She hadn't had to stretch these muscles in a long while, but here she was using her biotics again.

With a biotically enhanced shove, she shot the Toad charge straight into the open hatch. But she was still rapidly being drawn in, and as she read the timer connected to her HUD, she knew she was going down, and she was taking the beast with her.

At least, that's what she thought would happen, when suddenly her leg was ripped free from the knee, and her armor pinged the injury as the result of friendly fire.

Disbelieving shock had set in.

Gummer shot her. Gummer shot her goddamn fucking knee!

That was the point where she passed out from the physical shock.

Writers note: huh…. Wait what fuck this coming out…. I guess i lied it wont be month between chapter 18 and 19… but don't think that mean 20 comes out next week i have to write chapter 20… that being said blood now looking at the short stories i been posting and we may be putting them out again with some better editing.

Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…

Edited by: Blood Raven

Community edited by:

Community editable doc (Chapter) No story suggestions in the community editing document, Keep all story suggestions and comments in the thread

Codex Neodog

Neodogs are genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced canine breeds with sharper hearing, smell, eyesight and special awareness than any dog, wolf or human could ever hope to possess. Descended from a patented Alsatian-wolf hybrid generically purified and enhanced in a Federation lab to become the final say in tracking and surveillance equipment on a battlefield.

These artificially mutated symbiotes also possess the ability to talk, and though they cannot pronounce b,m,p or v sounds, a trained handler can understand them perfectly. Neodogs and their handlers are often used as forward scouts and early warning systems. Lacking any mechanization or large-scale power generation like conventional detection equipment like radar or seismic sensors, they're able to traverse any terrain and keep up with their fellow soldiers without the hassle of such large machines or heavy equipment present.

A neodog handler is intimately involved in the raising and training of his companion and is bonded to it for life. Those who come to this discipline with an open mind and sympathetic heart can truly become one with their neodog. This provides some remarkable benefits but also runs the risk of permanent brain damage if the dog is ever slain.

The chief benefit and blessing of this specialty is the bond with the animal, though many neodogs and handlers prefer the term "caleb", through a symbiotic implant both he and the neodog share that links their cerebellums telepathically. The neodog and the handler can use each other's senses and communicate silently with each other as long as they remain within 250 feet of each other outside.

Neodog cybernetic implants include an integrated seismic sensor, a radar array, and x50 telescopic zoom for their foreward facing eyes. The powerful nose, naturally bred into the caleb, is capable of supplementing these cybernetic implants with that ever-elusive sense, and their hearing extends well past the range of normal humans.

Reviews
Colossus Bridger: yes
JasonSkeans: have another
.Knight:20 days ain;t bad (to be fare it would been out here like 2 week ago but i been busy)
Just a Crazy-Man Qrs-jg Coment9 AyeJimmy123: thank you all

Krieger Techpreist always
alexthom1 yes
Djangiti helldiver is fun but we can see where they got there ideas
The Quiet Psychotic yeah there who 20 chapter your missing