Chapter 44
Lieutenant Brink's lips pressed together in a grim line as he did a headcount.
Including himself and the synth they recovered, he had eleven bodies. That was half of the number of Marines that had stepped off with second platoon that morning. The four survivors brought their total up to fifteen.
"Fifteen." He said quietly to himself. Fifteen, of which fourteen had come down with him. Fourteen left. Fourteen out of the total fifty-two that had made the drop to the planet. "Fifteen…" He muttered again.
Fourteen. The reminder hit him like a slap to the face. One of those fucking things had snatched Corporal Manny Yanez during the retreat. No one had even noticed until they'd made it out of the courtyard.
They'd set up in two of the large houses within the city. The two houses, which were connected by a shared wall that had a doorway set in it, were huge compared to the Marines. They'd been built for the planet's inhabitants, and it made the Marines feel as if they were children again. Feet didn't hit the floor when they sat in chairs, cabinets and table tops were at neck height, and the stairs weren't built to their proportions.
The design reminded the well-read Marines of pictures they'd seen of homes in ancient civilizations such as Greece, Rome, and Mesoamerica. A style that the affluent enjoyed recreated on artificial islands floating in the Mediterranean.
"Movement in the street!" Someone hissed. Brink walked to the nearest window, which was thankfully set at waist-height for the giants that had once inhabited this place, and looked out.
"Hold fire." Brink said to Busch, who had painted the approaching figure with his rifle's IR laser. Even from this distance, Brink could tell that they were human.
"Sierra Two, I have eyes on your group." Brink all but whispered into the microphone. While they weren't sure if the aliens had tracked them or not, Brink had ordered everyone to keep quiet. No sense blowing their temporary sanctuary because someone decided to have a loud conversation.
"Tracking your IR strobes, sir." Rook replied. From here, Brink could see the synth was supporting someone who wasn't wearing cammies or combat equipment. Must have been the company guy. Two more figures trailed behind, both limping.
Rook and Kurt made it in first. The synthetic warrant officer helped lower Kurt into a seated position. The man was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, and he thanked Rook for helping him along.
Liscomb and Fulmer all but collapsed once they made it to the house. Jackson and Hopkins helped them inside and Reed slowly closed the wooden door behind them. Jackson handed Liscomb a canteen, and the Marine drank from it as if he hadn't had anything to drink in a week. He then passed the canteen to Fulmer, who waved it off. That was when Liscomb noticed how bad of shape Fulmer was in.
Her face was pale and her entire body was shaking. Her hands drifted down to the piece of shrapnel that jutted out from her stomach, fingers gingerly touching the edges.
"Oh shit." Jackson said when he saw the injury. "Hey, Davis." He looked around. "Where the hell is Davis?" He asked, voice a hurried whisper.
"I think he's upstairs. I'll go get him." Reed replied. With that, he started up the large stairs. It reminded him of when he'd been a kid and insisted on taking long strides to take stairs two or three at a time. Except this was for each individual stair.
"Hey." Jackson said. He lowered himself into a squad in front of Fulmer and Liscomb. "Hey, you two are gonna be alright, ya hear?" Fulmer looked at him and smiled. Blood from a cut cheek and bitten tongue covered her teeth.
"You've still got a shitty poker face, Jackson. You know that." She croaked.
"Only cause I knew you always stacked the deck." Jackson said with a sad smile. "I'll prove you wrong when we get back to the ship. Give me a chance to win some of my money back, yeah?"
"Shut up." Fulmer let out a pained laugh and punched Jackson's shoulder. "And deal." Jackson smiled at this, then turned to see Lieutenant Brink walking towards them. The Lieutenant lowered himself into a squat beside Jackson.
"Sir." Liscomb said, pushing on his good wrist to stand up.
"No no no, easy." Brink said, putting a hand on Liscomb's shoulder. "Relax, relax. You don't have to get up." He looked over Liscomb and Fulmer. "You two have been through the ringer, huh?"
"Understatement of the year." Fulmer groaned. "Sir." She added. Brink smiled at this.
"Both of you take it easy. I don't want to see either of you on your feet until you've had a medic check you out. Clear?" Brink said.
"Sir, I am a medic." Fulmer replied. Brink smirked.
"That doesn't count, Corporal." Brink said. She smiled and gave him a thumbs up. He patted each of them on the shoulder before standing and making his way towards where Rook stood over the two other synthetics.
"Sir." Rook said with a small nod.
"Rook." Brink returned the nod. "You look like you've been through hell and back as well." The Lieutenant said, taking in Rook's wounds. The synth had lost his helmet at some point, and the right shoulder strap of his vest appeared to have been torn away with the chunk of his shoulder.
"There's been some damage sustained, sir. But other than my hand, I'm still operational." Rook reported. He held up his left hand to show Brink the stump. White lubricant fluid had scabbed over, sealing the wound and closing off the synth's systems. "Nothing a short stay in the repair shop won't fix once we're back on the Findanza." Rook said, giving Brink a surprisingly reassuring smile.
"I like the attitude. Keep your chin up, it'll help around here." Brink said to Rook, then turned to Knight and the other synth they'd recovered. It was only then that the Lieutenant realized that the other synth was active again.
"Sir." Knight said from his seated position, rifle across his lap.
"How bad?" Brink asked.
"My spine is broken. I can't move my legs." Knight reported. "Other than that, my system has all but repaired itself. You won't have to worry about me bleeding out, sir."
"Will you be able to fix your legs once we're back on the ship?" Brink asked.
"More than likely." Knight said. "If not, you can put me in for repairs once we return to the Core. A spinal transplant is much easier for an AP than a human, sir." Brink nodded. He appreciated the optimism their synthetics kept despite the dire situations.
"And what about you?" Brink asked the other synth. "What do you go by?"
"Walter." The shredded synth asked, his voice still bubbled and tinny.
"Hm." Brink said. "We have one of those as well."
"Walter One, if it makes it easier." Walter said.
"Sir." Rook said. "Walter…our Walter, Sierra One, was destroyed by a neomorph before the dropship went down." Brink turned around to face first platoon's synthetic.
"The dropship went down?" Brink asked. He hadn't been fully brought up to speed on the fate of first platoon yet. "What happened?"
"One of the neomorphs, the hostile life forms that we were running from, got aboard and into the cockpit. I was able to pull myself, Mister Miller, and Corporals Liscomb and Fulmer to safety." Brink stared at Rook for a moment.
"So they're all dead?" Brink asked.
"Yes sir." Rook said. Brink closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. Dammit...
"What were you doing here?" Walter asked.
"We were told it was a personnel recovery mission." Brink said quietly. He looked down at Walter. "What about you?"
"I was the synthetic assigned to the USCSS Covenant." Walter said. "A colony ship. Fifteen crew. Two-thousand colonists. One-thousand-four-hundred second-generation embryos." Walter paused, his mind ticking back to the information that he hadn't thought about during his short-term 'death'. "Original destination was Oregai-Six. We stopped on this planet when we picked up a ghost transmission. Then we found…we found…"
"Found what?" Rook asked. Walter looked up at his mirror image.
"David…"