Authors: Max Feinstein
“Get the casualties out of here!” Dexter yelled through the TacNet as the enemy growled and charged forward
.
As he yelled out the order he switched the fire-select to micro-grenades and
fired one of the armor piercing slugs at hypervelocity speeds. The slug impacted the Teddy’s abdominal armor and punched clean through unlike the plasma bolts. Dexter saw a small spray of green blood rush through the entrance indicting to him that the projectile had in fact penetrated the natural thick bone armor underneath that was the creature’s inherent defense mechanism. The bones acted much like ribs on a human to protect the alien’s heart. They were external and arranged in overlapping fashion, sort of like scales, to allow for increased ease of movement upon bending and twisting.
The large alien staggered slightly and Dex thought he saw the soldiers face contort in pain before its entire abdomen exploded out. With a loud growl the Teddy stumbled and fell to the forest floor, clutching its torn belly. A large pool of blood spread out around it, but the soldier slowly began to pull itself up to a kneeling position
and reached for its grenade launcher. Dexter in turn sent out his own battle cry and rushed forward while firing more plasma bolts at the injured warrior. Most either exploded harmlessly against the thick armor plating or ricocheted away. A few of them hit home at some of the shoulder joint sections of the armor and burned through, causing it more pain as well as the loss of that limb. When he closed in on the enemy soldier he pinned the rifle back into his chest plate and activated the oscillating blade within his right wrist. The fourteen centimeter blade quickly extended and locked in place just as Dexter reached the Teddy. He batted away one of the creature’s arms with his forearm before jamming the vibrating blade into its neck.
The oscillating knife
tip effortlessly slid through the malleable material covering the alien’s neck and clean through its tough skin. He heard the soldier’s growl turn into an unintelligible gargle as the blade pushed through the bony spine. With a quick slash outward Dexter’s knife severed the neck from the rest of the large body, causing it to come off followed by a spray of arterial blood splashed over his arm and chest. He didn’t even blink as the green blood covered his armor and took one last look at the fallen body. A warning icon flashed on his HUD and caused him to turn in time to watch one of the other soldiers rush towards him. Unclipping his rifle once more from his chest compartment Dex brought the rifle to his shoulder and squared himself to the running creature. He pulled the trigger when a beam of orange light shot by him and impacted the outer part of his left shoulder. His bracing stance was enough to keep the blast from spinning him around, but still caused his body to shift enough so that his double shot missed very wide. Thankfully the shoulder armor plating saved his arm and only produced minor discomfort.
Dexter took another breath and readjusted for another shot. By this time the Teddy was already much closer and taking aim again. Before either one of them could take another shot, however, the Teddy was propelled backwards into the air. It hung there for a second before being slammed into the ground by an unseen force. He was confused for a moment, but Dexter soon saw the MTES come into view. Within the center of the unit
sat one of the engineers driving it personally and directing its attack against the enemy with the attached FGMS gravity beam. As he watched the large system trotted towards the soldier, who was crawling back its feet, and wrapped one of its heavy armored appendages around the Teddy’s entire body. Dexter saw it get lifted back into the air physically and get crushed in the four fingered metallic hand. The alien fell to the hard ground, like a ragdoll, once released from the MTES’s grasp and to Dexter’s relief stayed motionless.
There was still one more Teddy remaining so Dexter called up a map of the area on his helmet to try and locate it. After a second a re
d dot appeared behind him and he quickly began to turn with his weapon at the ready when he heard the distinct sound of BR-112 fire. He completed his spin in time to see the large enemy soldier’s bulk rock and shake with the impact of multiple plasma bolts. The rifle fire came from two of the remaining army guards that had arrived with the ambulances. These two soldiers were rushing the lone alien and Dex watched as most of their shots hit armor plating and did no damage, but some sliced through thinner joint sections as well as the creature’s thick lower limbs. Even these wounds didn’t stop it, however, until another series of plasma bolts struck the soldier’s head and neck. It fell to the ground without a sound in an ever expanding pool of blood.
With a long sigh Lieutenant Iorns lowered his rifle and turned his head to survey the scene before him.
“LT, Second is ready to move on your order,” came the voice of 2
nd
Lieutenant Cassandra Graves through his TacLink.
Dexter knew he had to keep going since his platoon had an important job ahead of it, “I’m on my way. Prep for immediate departure.”
“Copy that sir, we’ll be ready,” the lieutenant confirmed, but paused all of the sudden, “wait one, sir.”
“What’s going on?” Dexter asked and waited for a reply, when one didn’t come back in time he yelled out, “sitrep Lieutenant!”
For what seemed like forever there was a deadening silence within his TacLink until finally Cassandra’s voice broke through, “…under…attack…surround,” came the broken transmission, “Teddy’s and Thumpers…failure…TacL…trying…break through…your position.”
“Say again! Graves repeat last!” Dexter shouted into the comm, but received no reply
.
Thumper was the Army designation for one of the enemy’s heavy walkers. They were massive three legged armored machines around twenty meters tall and bristling with various weapons and heavy shielding. If the transmission was right and they were indeed attacking Secturo, the base was worse off than thought
. Thumpers carried weapons powerful enough to breach the defenses of even the heaviest vehicles in the Army’s arsenal and were very difficult to disable. It was similar to another even larger mobile system that had been encountered in certain battles, which was designated Skorpios. The Skorpios was an armored gun platform on top of eight legs and contained both defensive and offensive weapons similar to those seem on enemy gunships. This made the system very effective against both ground and air targets as well as giving it the ability to attack multiple targets in rapid succession.
Surprised at this terrible new development Dexter quickly checked the TacNet for the location and identification of all transmission relays in the area. Previously the entire base had been equipped with both ground based relays on top of building and mobile aerial
Jayhawk systems that allowed for uninterrupted commutations throughout Secturo. Now, however, as Dex studied the information flowing through his visor he could see that a good number of those system were offline. Worse still those areas were reporting encounters with enemy formations. It was also as if the aliens were hunting down the relays and destroying them, making TacLink communication between the various scattered units that much more difficult.
With no time to waste Dexter looked back at the debris of what once had been their medical center and then one last time back towards the armored ambulance vehicles that were now lifting off, before taking off at a dead run towards his units location.
Not five seconds later a crippling headache tore through his skull and caused him to lose balance mid-step. Reflexively his hands dropped the battle rifle held within them and rose up to hold his helmet covered head as he sank to his knees yelling in pain. Whatever the pain was and wherever it had come from, the migraine and electric shock feeling was not something the meds in his uniform could help to relieve.
The pain was also not the only issue he faced. It was quickly accompanied by an intense sense of failure and despair and seemed to rise from within his own mind. Mentally
the thoughts drained him, reaching up to him from the depth of the darkest parts of Dexter’s begin and threatened to consume him entirely. All he saw for the longest time was death if he resisted the invaders. The only images in his mind were of defeat and surrender, but Dex’s personally, upbringing and training would not let him give up so easily. With all his might he fought back against the assault on his conscience and moral, pushing the thoughts out of head. He clinched his teeth and forced his arms back towards the ground, blindly searching for his dropped rifle. It took a moment, but he finally wrapped his hand around the barrel and breathlessly began to stand back up.
Each step he took felt as if he was weighed down by many tons of mass, causing him to stagger forward slowly and unevenly.
It took all of Dexter’s will to keep moving forward in the face of an overwhelming urge to just surrender and curl up right there on the ground. Telling himself that the feelings were not really his, but simply implanted by the enemy he continued moving further towards his soldiers. He knew they were in trouble and that he had to get to them in order to help. That mission alone fueled his every agonizing movement until finally, after almost a dozen steps, the images and feeling inside his head ceased just as quickly as they had appeared. Free of their grasp he finally took in a deep breath and stood up straight panting for air. Somehow his body felt as if he had been running for hours without pause, every muscle group aching deep inside him.
The first thing Dexter did upon regaining his own free will was look back in the direction he had just come from. He wasn’t sure whether eve
ryone was as similarly affected, so he was utterly surprised when he saw every soldier within the medical center area simply standing motionless in one place. It was almost as if they had been frozen in time and the same was true for the MTES unit which had previous been manually operated. Seeing all of this Dexter was completely clueless as to what was really happening. He guessed that it was some sort of enemy weapon, but he saw no reason why the others were so differently affected. None of those men and women seemed to be willowing in any sort of pain.
The real question, however, was why he was now unaffected, unlike the others. There had to be some sort of explanation for that phenomenon.
Perhaps later, if he survived, he would ponder on the question, but he knew that for the moment he didn’t have time for such things. With no time left to waist he turned back towards his unit’s direction and at the same time his eyes caught a glimpse of the MultiSpec netting. It was then that Dexter realized that the only difference between the locations where he had been hit with the migraine and where he was now standing was the netting stretching over the area. The covering over the entire medical center had been ripped apart by the disintegrating enemy fighter that had fallen in the area.
Knowing that there was really only one way to test this theory, Dex prepared h
imself and stepped back out from where he had come. The pain and order to surrender hit him like a fist to the face and would have brought him to his knees had he not been prepared for the occurrence. Dex clinched his hands into tight fists and controlled his breathing. Fighting the horrible sensations and pain was somewhat easier this time than the first with him knowing what to expect from the assault. His experiment now complete Dexter slowly eased back under the safety of the MultiSpec netting. Relief from the migraine and inserted feelings of fright came almost instantly just like before, but his recovery was much faster this time around.
Dexter knew that he now had to warn his platoon. He couldn’t let the same thing happen to them that happened to the engineering team he had just left behind. Activating his TacLink to try and contact 2
nd
Platoon Dex got a flashing red ‘Unable to Connect’ icon on his HUD, just as he expected. What did surprise him, however, was the green ‘Satellite Uplink’ light that came on all of the sudden within his helmet a few seconds later. For the first time since the invasion the light had activated to denote the suit’s connection to an orbital satellite. A status wheel popped up following the connection and quickly filled up with a solid progressive color as his PCU-34 received a whole stream of new data and updated its database. Once full the circle faded and was replaced with an entire new map of the area, showing the locations of all nearby units. It zoomed out to showcase the entirety of Secturo and Dexter watched the different units scattered throughout the base turn into their designated chevrons.
Wondering about the appearance of this new orbital object Dexter queried it directly
, amazed that somehow it survived in orbit after all this time and questioned why it had only just now activated to transmit data. In return a graphic of Frontiera appeared in front of him, spinning slowly, and a small satellite icon joined it in mid-orbit directly above the continent. The satellite quickly identified itself as RSX-58 and according to the accompanying data it had only activated a few minutes prior. It was also more sophisticated than anything that had previously been deployed around the planet, which in itself brought up even further questions. Those questions would have to wait, though, as the TacLink and TacNet lights turned green informing him of the reestablished connection to his unit.
It only took a single thought about contacting 2
nd
Platoon to open up a channel to his XO and bring up a map of the unit’s location. On the map overlay each squad and fire team of his platoon was designated with their four Centaur IFVs hovering in a box formation encircling eight cargo transporters in the middle of it. All of around these soldiers were red triangles showing enemy forces closing in on their location. He also caught what looked like a pair of small alien dropships streak across the live satellite feed and set down between the trees on the periphery of the platoon’s established perimeter. From these two ships came groups of new enemy soldiers which ran out and advanced on his unit. At the same moment some of his IFVs began firing on the enemy and Dex saw part of a nearby prefab building shatter before three of the triangles disappear from the map when a number of particle beams tore through them.