The city of Port Kessan was once a stunning place. now, it was a mere husk, the streets that were once teeming with life now echoed with the ghosts of better days.
we walked in a staggered column, boots crunching softly over what i think was once a great mosaic. we kept distance from each other just in case one of the guys stepped on a graviton spike.
a graviton spike condenses the gravity of everything within a 6 feet radius, the effect is instant, violent, and absolute. Bones crumble. Armor folds. and your organs rupture and turn to mush before you even start to bleed.
worst of all, if you were the one to trigger it, it only meant a quick painless death, but if you were caught in the kill radius, it was very unlikely that you would die.
no, it tore through muscle and marrow, shredded your insides, and left you breathing just enough to scream. These alien bastards designed it that way. They wanted you maimed. Broken.
a maimed soldier is not just a casualty, he is now a burden, a drain. Someone their squad now has to drag back to base for treatment.
Jex was the first to break the silence.
"you ever think we're walking through someone's tomb?" he muttered, scanning a bombed out building.
Marik grunted. "I try not to think at all. Thinking gets you killed."
"That's rich coming from someone who tried to cook next to the ammunition storehouse."
"hey, it almost worked man."
Rorke chuckled dryly. "almost worked is the motto for dead men, and Marik."
I cracked a smirk behind my visor.
After a moment of silence, Vendral chimed in, voice low over comms. "Eyes up. Got movement in the fifth-story window, two blocks ahead."
We froze, rifles instinctively raised.
"what is it?" Marik whispered.
I exhaled through my teeth. "Just keep your spacing and your head on straight."
"Roger that," came Vecht's voice over the channel. "Cut the chatter. Focus up."
The squad fell silent again, but the tension had lightened... just a little.
We kept moving, each of us alone in our own six-foot bubble of paranoia.
We kept walking until we reached what looked like an outpost. its walls battered, half-collapsed, and barely holding together. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement.
"Wait," I hissed, raising my rifle.
Ahead, a figure in tattered armor stepped out from behind the rubble. a soldier. Not one of ours.
Before we had time to react, the soldier raised his weapon, something we called a ripper gun, we all dove for cover as the ripper fired, a jagged beam of sound tore through the air.
"Light him the fuck up!" Rorke bellowed.
three more upyr soldiers emerged from rubble, weapons blazing.
A firefight erupted. Sabot rounds and kinetic blasts tore through the air, each shot a desperate gamble against the enemy's deadly precision. Vendral lobbed grenades at the Upyr soldiery like a professional pitcher. Me and Rorke focussed fire on the original Upyr.
The creature let out a gutteral screech as our slugs punched holes into his frame. It staggerd but kept at it's attempt at closing distance.
I pressed the advantage, squeezing off controlled bursts, feeling the railgun kick against my shoulder. The Upyr finally collapsed, a spray of black ichor staining the cracked concrete.
By the time me and Rorke finished peppering the soldier with railgun bursts, the rest of the fireteam had finished killing the 3 others.
We gathered behind the wall, catching our breath. The alien bodies lay twisted and broken, their black life essence seeping into the cracked rockcrete.
Jex wiped his face and muttered. "goddamn, these things look like they lost a fight with a blender."
Marik chuckled. "yeah, all those beady eyes and teeth makes me understand why I don't do face to face with thse freaks."
Rorke grinned, nudging me. "you ever wonder if the Upyr put as much effort into their hygiene as they do trying to kill us?"
I cracked a smirk. "if that's their idea of grooming, i'll take a week in quarantine over that any day... still better than Vendral's standard of grooming."
Vendral just shrugged. "hey, I'm a soldier, not a model."
Marik laughed, "I can smell you through my helmet."
Rorke knelt beside another corpse, this one smaller, with a fine mesh skin and what looked to be a speaker on it's head. "this was a screecher. Explains the brainshake i'm still feeling. We're lucky our ears didn't start bleeding."
"Bet your head was vibrating because there's nothing in there to absorb the shock," I said, nudging him with my boot.
Rorke paid no heed to me, still scanning the perimeter. "jokes aside, this squad wasnt random. a Reaper, screecher, maybe a drone we missed? this was a coordinated strike. They were waiting for something."
Vendral stood, reloading the fireteam's only Thermobaric launcher. "Probably smelled me."
Vendral pulled a fresh canister of coolant for his railgun and as he was putting it in, he remarked. "think they were baiting us?"
"wouldn't be out of the question," I muttered. "lets keep moving. We've still gotta find a platoon, if they're still alive."
The team fell back into formation, boots crunching softly over rubble and glass.
The silence intensified as we moved through the wartorn streets. the buldings here leaned in like corpses frozen mid collapse, their steel bones jutted out at odd angles and dust hung in the air. Then we smelled it. Burnt flesh and blood.
Vecht raised a fist, signalling a halt.
"there," Jex said, pointing at something.
My eyes looked at where he was pointing. There, half buried under ferrocrete debree was the remnants of a platoon encampment. We approaced slowly, railguns at the ready. No movement, no return fire, just silence.
All over the campsite bodies were strewn across the ground, some clutching weapons, others torn apart so violently it was hard to tell what parts belonged to who. Entrails were strewn about the campsite. A few helmets still had heads in them.
"Holy mother of god," Marik muttered, voice low. "they didn't even get the chance to scream."
Jex couldn't hold it in. His rifle dipped as he stared at the bodies. A ragged breath escaped him, then another, quicker, sharper. He turned away, shoulders trembling beneath the weight of it all.
Then came the sound. Soft at first. A whimper.
And then he wept.
No one said anything at first.
Rorke walked up behind him and placed a gloved hand on Jex's shoulder, quiet and steady.
"Take a second," he said. "No shame in feeling it."
"looks like they got hit hard and fast," Vendral said, examining one of the corpses.
I crouched beside a comms unit. Or. at least what was left of it. It was fused shut, slagged by what looked like a shot from one of the plasma jockeys. "No distress call made it out. The ticks dissected them."
Marik glanced at the charred remains of a soldier slumped against a wall. "hope whatever's next is easier than this."
"Don't bet on it," I muttered. "This was just the greeting."
I glanced back down at the slashed comms unit, blackened at charred. "No way to uplink from here. We need to turn back and report, let command know that theres something that took out a whole platoon."
Rorke nodded, "We're not equpped for whatever did this. They need to know the ticks are coordinating at this level."
Vendral slung his weapon, checking at his magazine pouches to see how many magazines remain. "And if they don't listen?"
"Then they're dumber than Marik's breakfast choices," I muttered, rising to my feet.
"hey," Marik said, pointing a finger at me, "I'll have you know that feral I shot tasted glorious."
"And then you proceeded to shit your guts out right afterwards" Vecht cut in, "come on, we gotta move. No point in hanging around here."
Jex gave a shaky laugh, wiping his face. "let's just not end up like them."
"No one's dying today," Vecht said firmly. "We move fast. No detours. We ghost it back to Grendel and drop everything we've got on this. That means visuals, body tags, and sensor logs. If all goes well we'll be back by sundown."
I inspected my railgun one last time and looked out towards the horizon. We then turned our backs on the massacred troops and began our trek back to base.