Breathing a long sigh as I looked out at the city before me, I was almost disappointed when my visor didn’t fog up immediately which was something I’d become very used to while running training kit since that armour didn’t have the same locking pressurised system our actual suits had. Then again training in an indoor facility wasn’t anything like being out in the atmosphere of Ganymede or most of the moon colonies for that matter.
Anyway I scanned the blacked out destroyed cityscape with the black and white thermal filter on my helmets visor looking for any signs of people or corpses, a few white dots ran across my view of the street darting into black spots to hide from me as my boots made a crunch stepping on rubble from strewn across where I was walking. They were just rats or mice so I wasn’t going to fire off at them, not when I had bigger problems making so much noise even with my suppressed C27 SMG, suppressed or not the gun would still have the telltale sound of the bolt slamming back and forth.
Plus it wouldn’t be very humane to put 45.acp through a rodent.
Pushing forward down the long straight road by the toppled high-rises and other tower structures I carefully placed my feet step by step as silent as I could be looking back and forth listening to all I could hear. My gun was at the ready in case of an actual emergency-
Zzzzzcrrrttttzzzzz
The loud crackling of my comms made me jump in my skin shattering the quiet in my helmet, the transmission passed through.
“This is Wyvern-Tail to all Wyvern factors, we’re picking up a large gathering of heat signatures in grid 86, can anyone confirm visual, hot copy?” Through the crackling static of the transmission came the familiar voice of our company head.
“Tail this is Wyvern Two-Four, I’m Negative on visual, still in grid 54, over.” I answered back letting my shoulders sag as the adrenaline settled.
“Wyvern Two-Two & Two-One here, we met up near grid 79 and 80, we can have a visual soon? Copy?” Martian answered for himself and Korinth.
“You’re going to investigate the anomaly then Wyvern Two-One and Wyvern Two-Two, report as soon as you reach grid 86, hot copy?” Tail responded not long after.
“Got it Tail, Wyvern Two-One and Two-Two out.” Korinth answered this time, cutting off their connection.
I stayed on in case they wanted more out of me.
“Wyvern Two-Four I’m not receiving from Wyvern Two-Three, do you have their last known position?” Tail asked with a tinge of worry in their otherwise apathetic tone.
“I don’t Tail, when did they last check in their grid? I can head over and check if someone hasn’t unplugged their tracker on something again.”
“Please do Wyvern Two-Four, tell me when you find them. This is Wyvern Tail out.” Tail lost some of their initial care voice sounding more dejected.
Sighing once again I flicked the button on the side of my TAC-pad for the thermal vision off and just turned the night vision on before reading the co-ords of my wrist TAC-pad displaying the message Actual had sent me. The soft blue glow of the screens light was brief before it transferred to my visor hud as I tapped on the touch screen, the map which took up displaying the topographical satellite images of the area, from what I saw it would take me an hour to get over to where Marson was last checked in.
Before setting out I checked my tourniquet and made sure it wasn’t in my bag any longer in case Martian had gotten mixed up in a bad way. I also checked the safety on my gun to single-fire as I marched through the dark of the dead city to where my squadmate was hopefully still alive.
I really hoped that fucking moron wasn’t dead, I didn’t want to casevac his dumb ass for tripping on a slab of concrete and pulling his comms accidentally again. It had happened twice before on patrols where he ended up knocking himself out.
About an hour or so later further into the dark of the night I stepped over a melted wreck of twisted metal that used to be a car, nothing was even salvageable from the mass, it was supporting a slab from the side of a building somehow. Anyway I mentioned it because there was a splatter of brown dried into the grey that I used my flashlight to confirm as blood. I couldn’t quite tell if it was human yet, but considering how dry it already was with how damp and moist the air was, something was up.
Turning my flashlight off I turned back to the alley next to me that led out to where Martian checked in, there was still some electricity it seemed, as some warning and other lights flashed softly over doorways in the alley and I could see flickering street lights on the other end. The silence was making it more tense than it needed to be as I slowly moved forward, eyeing just about everything hoping my visor would highlight my comrades' form when I went over it.
Passing through the alley I did check in the two doors that were in it seeing nothing but empty exit spaces and blank walls. As I reached the end of alley I heard a soft groan of metal as I’d heard thousands of times before, the sound of too much weight or pressure being applied to steel before it got louder and louder-
CRACK! TCHUNK!
The sound of steel bar supports snapping in two resounded ahead of me on the road somewhere before something even louder crashed and shattered in a heap of noise destroying any semblance of quiet as some of the vehicles around were set off, alarms blaring loud as could be, lights completely showering the darkness before untouched.
“Fucking Hell.” I cursed peaking out of the alley further to see what the hell had caused the building as I’d soon seen collapsed into a heap.
There wasn’t anything that jumped out as the cause in the concrete and steel pile kept moving some more before stopping as dust settled and I came out from where I was half hiding looking at the damage. The road and its lights under where the building had fallen were now all upturned and in ruin.
Flicking on my thermal vision and the NV off I made sure there weren’t warm bodies amongst it all, there weren’t any-
“Ah shit-!” I swore rushing over to where I could see an armoured body trapped under and speared through by a bar of metal cleanly into the ground.
The metal was through Ceres' chest blood leaking out onto the stone, his helmet light was on and I could see his distorted face staring into nothingness as more red dripped from the corner of his mouth. The worst part was that it wasn’t even the same building that had collapsed just now, he’d died easily two hours ago by the looks of it.
“FUCK!” I yelled even though I knew the helmet's dampened sound that wasn’t purposefully broadcast from the helmet speaker.
I checked over his person hoping to see signs that this wasn’t just his idiocy going on, nothing seemed amiss until I found that he’d fired off half of the magazine in his gun that was a few metres from his body. The cases were around moved by the crashing of the building, but there was a spray of bright glowing blue blood on the ground nearby so I checked the distance and trajectory of it all to where he was.
He’d been shooting at whatever was bleeding when he’d been impaled by the looks of it, then the gun was smacked away going by his broken hand and arm to where it was now, with the creature lets call it, dragging itself away going by how fucked up and much blue blood there was. I was not about to get horror movie’d so I called in-
“Wyvern-Tail, this is Wyvern Two-Four with the sitrep on Wyvern Two-Three.” I said before turning my helmet's cheek flashlight on.
“I read you Wyvern Two-Four, what is the situation?” They asked.
“Wyvern Two-Three was dead upon my arrival at his last known location, he appears to have been killed. An unknown element fought him and while they were fighting the side of a building appears to have collapsed catching him in its fall impaling him, this resulted in his bleeding to death. After his death the unknown element left while leaving a long trail of blood.” I explained my version that I’d inferred from the surroundings.
There was a sigh on the other end. “Alright Wyvern Two-Four, we’ll send Dragon to meet with Bravo-Five, then redirect Drake to your location and have Wyrm begin sweeps together. Be sure not to investigate this element on your own Wyvern Two-Four, we have no clue how dangerous they are. Hot copy?”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Copy sir, Wyvern Two-Four out.” letting out a long breath I hadn’t even realised I’d been holding I sat down next to my friend and looked over his gun.
[Night Ops]
“Corporal Saturnalia!” A voice called out on the familiar crackling of a helmet speaker.
There were three soldiers walking toward me in familiar gunmetal grey suits of armour with our company’s distinct Roman style helmet. When we’d been allowed to customise them so we could appear different at a glance we all decided to have them look like the imperial italic helmets of the roman empire we’d seen in images since another company had already taken the spartan helmet design. The other defining feature of Drake was that they all had dark blue stripes on their gear, one on the helmet, one on each bicep and forearm and lastly one on each calf. On everyone’s right shoulder under their shoulder armour itself was a steel plate engraved with their name, blood type, DOB, rank, religion and home world.
My team, Wyvern, had a rusty orange-brown as our colour though, Dragon had a fiery red and Wyrm had purple. Mind you Wyvern and Dragon are team one and team two is Drake and Wyrm, but for some reason we never really worked with Dragon and they were always off doing other spook type shit. But that’s a story for another time.
“How’s it going Sgt. Gary?” I asked as she and her squad approached.
It was a nickname she’d found herself slapped with when one of the recruits in basic misread her name as Gary somehow, though that was years ago now, it hadn’t ever stopped being funny especially once it became a platoon-wide in-joke.
“I will hang you from that post Saturnalia!” She growled lowly at me before turning on her own men when they chuckled quietly to themselves.
“Did you guys get caught up by Drake Wings?” I asked not continuing the conversation that would have gotten my ass beat.
“Most of the important parts.” Cassowary answered stepping forward, he was the team medic with a large pack unlike anyone else's that had some equipment sticking out of it.
“Well then let's throw a flare and follow this blood, I have no clue what it could be since it's all blue.” I took a flare from my pack and lit it, tossing the red coloured stick to the ground near my comrades body.
“I’ll stay with the body to make sure it gets taken if you take longer to investigate.” Cassowary said sitting down next to the body.
“Thanks John we’ll be back.” I said before walking over to where I’d seen the splatter and pointing my gun light at it for the others to see as we went into the darkness.
Agartha or Gary I should say and Huang followed alongside me with their own flashlights on checking the other spots of the poorly illuminated street for any signs of life besides the main blood trail I followed closely. Stalking around the area the trail went into another dark alley easily a hundred metres from Ceres’ body when I approached it I was sure I could hear grunting and low groaning like breaths.
“Guys I found something, come to me.” I blurted out over the radio no wishing to charge into what could be around the corner.
A few moments later the sound of boots on pavement just about startled me as I turned seeing the two women with their helmet lights on scanning the area as they approached, they did so as we’d had beaten into us- always with a hand resting on their C27 SMGs that were on a sling clipped to their chests, with careful strides and side by side instead of a line.
“What is it?” Agartha asked as she stopped next to me, responding through our comm channel instead of outloud.
“Listen.” I responded and pointed to where I could hear the sounds of heavy breathing still continuing.
“Lights out, NV on.” My superior officer responded as she and Huang appeared to hear it as well, the pair of them switched over to thermal and so did I. “Take point Saturnalia, don’t shoot until my mark- Sync?”
“Course Ma’am, Sync.” I replied.
“Sync.” Huang also replied as we all set out TAC-pads to share scans of our vitals so if something went wrong we could see what our suits were scanning.
An example being that one time we were shot at by insurrectionists on Io and we’d Sync beforehand, when I was hit in the thigh, even though Korinth was nearly a Klick from me when we got separated he hit me up on comms to check that I wasn’t outside in the hot sulphuric air.
Anyway, we stacked up with me at the helm, then Agartha and last was Huang, I checked the safety on my gun as we were against the right wall when looked directly at the alley from our side then peaked the corner and couldn’t believe my eyes-
It was huge, a hulking 8 or 9 foot tall muscular mass hunched over on its side with a stream of white leaking out of its humanoid legs and torso, it looked like some kind of Elephant sized Gorilla with a hippo like head when it moved enough for me to make out details like its smooth looking scales for skin like a snake or something.
“Whatthefuck” Cursing out as I was taken aback by the alien creature in front of me.
“What are you doin-” Agartha started saying before cutting herself off as she caught sight of what I’d seen.
“What do we do…?” I asked unsure how to proceed anymore.
“Kill whatever it is, this thing got Lance Corporal Ceres killed.” She replied simply, sounding fierce and ready to do away with whatever the fuck was in front of us.
She was so mad she didn’t even bother to keep it from playing out loud and the creature looked our way, large sharp eyes glaring our way as it watched us emerge out into the open moving its mouth making crude, foul dark noises before loosing a guttural scream as we unloaded our gun magazines into the monsters flesh spraying a bright viscera everywhere-
Thwip Thwip Thwip Thwip Thwip Thwip Thwip Thwip
The near perfectly suppressed sound of the sub machine guns firing in unison was distorted and echoed in the confined alleyway until the guns emptied and the familiar soft sounding click of the bolts shutting whispered to our ears. Watching the monstrosity keel over and the light leave its eyes in the shredded bloody pulp that it now was, we turned off our Night Vision on the TAC-pad and put the flashlights on to get a better picture of what we were looking at.
“It’s an Alien?” Huang said as she kneeled down next to the remains not waiting for anyone’s orders as she took out her large bowie knife from its sheath on her calf and inspected the corpse.
“Aliens… now of all times? We’ve gone 500 years of space exploration and not once seen anything like this… so why now?” Sgt. Melissa said, sounding baffled and she knelt next to her teammate and the pair spent a moment taking samples while I called in.
“This is Wyvern Two-Four with Drake, we’ve encountered the foreign element that killed Harrison, also is there any chance of extract? we have something to show command.” I asked wondering if the nearest FOB had something to facilitate this… this thing.
“Receiving you Wyvern Two-Four, this is Outpost Delta-3-6, we have a bird that can be at your location shortly, any personnel requests?” they asked back after a minute or two of silence.
“Yeah, if the transport that gets sent could have a refrigeration unit for preserving bodies that would be good, otherwise nothing else.”
“Copy that Corporal, Outpost Delta-3-6 out.” They signed off the line and I returned to my comrades seeing them about ready to perform a field dissection in a way that would make the researchers I knew shudder.
“What even are you two doing?” I asked with my brow raised, though I guess they couldn’t see that.