They had been marching across the face of Paradise for only several hours, but to Tanlon it felt like months. In the span of those several hours, their regiment had not been assaulted by more waves of Yabanchi bursting from the ground, but they were on edge. Of the three thousand men that had initially jumped onto the planet, only twenty-five hundred were in operational condition, the rest were either dead or laid out on stretchers between survivors.
Tanlon and his newly acquainted squad mate, Haylock, had been given said stretcher duty, so when a break was ordered by the new regiment commander, their aching muscles screamed in relief.
“Are you leaving me to die?” the Midder on their stretcher started babbling again. It had been a nonstop stream ever since they first started. “Are we being attacked again?”
Tanlon knelt down to the man's level and squeezed his shoulder, "Sssh, no comrade, we’re not leaving you behind. We’re just taking a fiver. Rest now.”
The pain medications should have dulled most of the edge, but Tanlon was not sure if he’d be able to sleep if he was missing half his right foot either, but blessedly the Midder closed his eyes and seemed to drift off.
Taking a squat next to the stretcher, Tanlon inspected one of the rifles that they were using as a part of the stretcher. It was not even his original IM-3, the original was a ruined mess that he had left behind at the jump point when he had broken it on a Yabanchi’s head like a club. His armor still bore the remembrance of that meeting with three gouging claw marks scarred across his breast and splotches of sand from where its blood had spattered on him.
Wishing he could wash it off, but not daring to use any of his precious water supply, Tanlon whispered to Haylock, “How are you feeling?”
Haylock had his helmet off and was running a hand through his brown locks, wishing he had shaved his head like others had done. “What are you whispering for?”
Tanlon nodded toward the sleeping Midder next to them and Haylock shook his head, “I reckon he won’t be waking up with whatever the medics gave him. Looks like it finally kicked in.”
Listening to the snoring of the other man, Tanlon figured that his friend was right and spoke louder, “You know, this place,” he paused trying to think of the right words. “It’s not what I expected.”
Haylock snorted, the sound partially muffled by his mask, “You mean it sucks.”
“Yeah,” Tanlon slumped, “It does. I think I’m starting to understand why you vets are so jaded.”
“Oh, Trooper Tanlon goes on one jump and he's suddenly a hardcore stormtrooper now?"
“Do you think we’ll survive?”
“Probably and probably not.” It was not Haylock who replied.
Tanlon and Haylock jerked toward the Midder, who was sitting partially upright on the ground and staring at them. The blaze of panic was gone from his eyes and he seemed to have regained some of his clarity.
“What makes you say that comrade?” Tanlon asked the Midder.
The injured Midder took his canteen from his belt and pressed its lid against one of his mask’s ports, taking a small slurp without having to remove the whole system. “What I mean, is that it’s rare for a whole regiment to get wiped out in a single jump.”
“So, we’ll live.” Tanlon felt hopeful.
“Like I said, probably. That little welcome party was probably the worst we’re going to get on this jump. Now that we’re on the ground and going to regroup with the other regiments it's pretty good odds that we're going to make this jump."
Tanlon breathed a sigh of relief, but was interrupted by the Midder, “It’s the other jumps that make me say probably not. You are a One right? Well, I guess you’re Two after this jump.”
Tanlon nodded and listened as the Midder continued, “That means you’ve got nine more jumps before you can cash out your time and leave.”
Haylock broke in, “But it’s only eight more jumps until he can join the Stormtrooper Corps.”
The Midder laughed, "Right, but don't think I don't recognize you. I know you didn't take that option, but a lot of guys do because they'd rather go there than do one more jump with a vanguard regiment." He whined in pain, the leg with half the foot missing spasmed an inch off the ground. Gritting his teeth he asked, "Why do you think that is?"
Haylock fumbled with his canteen, and also took a drink knowing the answer, but the answer also came to Tanlon immediately, a grim example sitting next to him. “Because no one is supposed to survive their tenth jump.”
“Bullseye kid,” the Midder laid back down on his stretcher. “But I would not say ‘no one’. There’s always one or two guys on their final jump like Haylock here each mission, but this is my sixth jump and you know how many I’ve seen make it to retirement?”
Tanlon shook his head and the Midder answered, “None.”
Sitting so close to the Midder, Tanlon could see his eyes through the mask’s eye holes. The man was speaking so certainly, but he kept blinking and staring off into space, not really looking at the men he was speaking to. His pupils were constricted, a sign of the opioids that were stopping the man from feeling the effect of half his foot going missing.
The fear and uncertainty that was snatching the other man’s heart was soiling his own with its dark claws of a future portended by death and injury, so Tanlon changed the subject to something more hopeful.
“Your foot comrade, maybe they will give you a red handshake and this is your last jump?”
The Midder looked at his foot and laughed again, “If only it was that easy bud. I’ve seen men missing arms and the commissars just slapped on prosthetics, expecting them to go out on the next jump.”
Haylock was feeling a little less respect toward the man since he was obviously spooking Tanlon and leaned forward, saying, “Eh, maybe you shot yourself in the foot? Hoping you could ride this jump out in the rear with the gear?”
The Midder did not seem to take offense at Haylock’s suggestion, but laughed more, the hardest he had yet, “The thought has occurred to me on more than one jump, but no, I didn’t blow off half my foot just so I could have the luxury of your company, comrade.” The Midder stressed the last word, mockingly.
Tanlon picked up what had probably happened, remembering the way the Yabanchi had burst from the ground, “One of them came underneath you, didn’t they? Bit your foot off.”
“Yup. You’re the smart one, aren’t you?”
Haylock growled, “Be careful comrade, we’re the ones carrying you.”
The Midder glanced at Haylock and shook his head, “Don’t be one of those who pretends to be more than he is. We’re both the same here.” This time the Midder’s voice carried no weight of sarcasm or underlying tone. It was like he was comforting a little brother.
“And how are we the same?”
“Well, we’re both terrified out of our minds aren’t we?”
Tanlon was soaking in the Midder’s words, trying to get a drink from his water too, when the whistles started blowing and the sentries started shouting their warning.
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“Yabanchi, right flank!”
There was a large dune to the regiment's right, large and long enough that it might have provided shade for all of them if it had been the right time of day, but at this point, it was an assault ramp for hundreds of Yabanchi that were sprinting down its slope. Having now been seen in their slow crawl towards the regiment, the horde of monsters jumped up at once and howled their fury at the Imperial soldiers below them. They charged erratically through the shifting sands, but all those extra limbs lent them speed.
Tanlon and Haylock ran a few steps forward, along with every other able-bodied man in the regiment, and twenty-five hundred IM-3s answered back the challenge cast by the horde. Pale bodies tumbled in the dirt, kicking up plumes and tripping the Screamers behind them, but the beasts continued their assault, heedless of the casualties that were being racked up on their side.
A second sun momentarily appeared in the sky and Tanlon saw it sail over the Yabanchi’s heads and into the Imperial soldiers’ ranks. Men disappeared in the ensuing explosion, not enough time to even scream, as they were caught in the conflagration of superheated plasma that erupted where it landed.
It was difficult to see where it came from, past the horde of Yabanchi bodies boiling over the dune ridge, but Tanlon saw another of the bright orbs flying through the sky and located its origin. It was one of those cybernetically enhanced monstrosities, bloated and malformed with boils bubbling all over its body. A cannon had been surgically placed on its shoulders, so large that it displaced the yabanchi’s head sideways, tilting it at a sickening angle. On its back, one of the larger boils was glowing and growing with light, a naturally generated weapon power source drawn directly from the creature’s body.
Tanlon aimed his rifle at the beast and held his breath. He had to ignore how close the last blast of plasma came, the heat of it washing over him and giving the exposed skin of his neck an instant first-degree burn. He had to ignore the wave of screamers drawing closer to the regiment’s position. He had to ignore the drum of fear beating in his own heart. He fired.
He missed.
The shot hit the sand next to the creature, kicking up a plume of dust, but otherwise doing nothing. The boil on its back swelled to fullness and the Yabanchi raised its plasma cannon to deal out more death, yet its time never came. Another shot from someone else, this time striking where it was supposed to, hit the bulbous boil and ruptured it. The creature exploded in a blast of plasma that caught a few Yabanchi screamers unfortunate enough to be near it. When the dust cloud from that explosion settled, there was nothing left of the beast except glassed sand.
None of the screamers ever laid hands on a man, the last Yabanchi died five feet away from their firing line, it was crawling despite missing several limbs and only stopped when a round took it in one of its red eyes.
Haylock whistled, joining in the cheers of the others. The assault had been repelled and they had hardly taken any casualties. "Did you see that shot? I think that was mine that killed it!" But Tanlon was not celebrating with the others. He had gone to check on the Midder they were talking to.
It turned out that the Yabanchi’s last plasma round had not been totally ineffectual and had landed close to the soldiers’ back line. The injured midder, not as lucky as Tanlon to get away with just a sunburn, had left enough behind to mourn for, but not enough that he needed to be buried.
----------------------------------------
That was not the last Yabanchi attack nor the worst one. Their enemies acted like beasts, but each time they were repelled it was as if the things learned from their defeats. As the day progressed, the marching line of Imperial soldiers endured more mass wave attacks, but the enemy artillery never showed itself again. Blindly fired blobs of plasma harassed their line until the regimental commander dispersed them into a pattern that minimized casualties.
The downside to this was that the next Yabanchi assault did not face a solid wave of rifle fire and so Tanlon witnessed one of the most horrific sights he’d seen yet. In a particularly large attack, the Yabanchi screamers reached a group of the disbursed soldiers and swarmed over them with wave after wave of grasping hands and ripping teeth.
Seeing that their comrades were facing such gruesome deaths, some grenadiers decided not to hold onto their precious dart grenades and cast them into the boiling frenzy of men and Yabanchi. The effect was as desired and many of the screamers died, flying through the air and disintegrating. The regiment survived that attack, yet not much the same could be said of the men who had been fighting in the middle of that bloody scene.
After several more hours of the regiment traveling south to meet up with the other regiments, the sound of battle drifted on the winds. Their regiment was not under attack, no Yabanchi were crawling out of the ground or charging them, but the sound of rifle fire and screaming was unmistakable. Every man picked up their step, their rifles weighed a little less and the pain in their feet was momentarily forgotten.
The call came through for the regiment to form a line again, except this time they were lining up along the lip of a large hill, all of the remaining soldiers were given a glimpse of the valley below them.
The largest Yabanchi horde yet, stretched out in the valley below, to a smaller hill that sat at the base of a mountain, and beyond the mountain were the shimmering blue waters of the ocean. The regiment had finally reached the southern part of the island, but thousands of Yabanchi screamers stood between them and their fellow imperial regiments.
Tanlon and Haylock’s squad disbursed along the line, the remaining regimental leadership had quickly decided to take advantage of the situation and assault the enemy from the rear, assisting their beleaguered allies below.
There were no horns, shouts, or whistles, for they wanted to get as close as they could before being noticed by the enemy. The Yabanchi were singularly focused on the targets in front of them, so much so that their artillery in the backline did not even realize they were being attacked until thousands of IM rounds and dart grenades obliterated them without warning.
The screamers were too stupid to notice either and quickly fell beneath the crossfire of bullets knocking them down from two directions. The imperial soldiers took grim satisfaction in being the ambushers for once and showed no mercy, destroying the enemy in close combat with bayonet whenever one of the wounded creatures tried standing back up. When the last of the Yabanchi fell, the regiment advanced cautiously toward their allies’ line at the base of the hill, wary of mines or a stray shot, but neither bomb nor shot greeted them. There was not much of a greeting at all.
To Tanlon’s eye, he could not tell if the soldiers of the other regiments were even alive. They were lying there in their hastily dug trenches, either asleep or dead. A few sat up to stare at the passing regiment, though they did not shout anything or even wave a hand. Their masks made the impression that they were walking through a graveyard and the silent soldiers just statues for grim decoration.
“Where is your regimental commander? Who is in charge of this rabble?”
Tanlon's regimental commander, who had been a wave leader before this jump, was grabbing one of the other soldiers by his uniform and hauling him to his feet. The man did not resist much, other than pulling away from the shouting officer and pointing to a cave halfway up the hill. The regimental commander gave the other officers their orders, mainly to get a count of their remaining forces and augment the hillside defenders with their forces, and then he started tramping up toward the cave.
Tanlon nudged Haylock and started following the regimental commander. Haylock whispered, “What are you doing?”
“Our squad leader had changed so many times that no one would notice if we were gone for a few minutes. I want to hear about how bad it is.”
“Look around you Tan, it’s pretty bad.”
“What are you two doing? Where is your squad leader?” The regimental commander had turned around and was looking at the pair of Ones following him.
Tanlon stepped forward, hands gesturing, "We wanted to sneak an ear in the meeting, sir. As for our squad leader, I think he’s dead.”
Haylock started stammering, “We’re really sorry sir, we’ll get right back to..."
“Names?”
“Tanlon and Haylock, sir.”
“Haylock! Stopped hiding in the background like you usually do eh? Well Tanlon, Haylock, consider yourselves my assistants now. I’ll be using you both in the coming days.” The commander turned back toward the cave. “Come along then, I need to strangle whoever is in charge here.”
Haylock looked at Tanlon, flabbergasted and Tanlon had the good graces to smirk only a little, though no one would have been able to tell otherwise with his mask on. They followed their commander up the hill to the cave, but no sentry stood guard at its entrance. Stepping inside they felt immediate relief from the blazing sun overhead and it took their eyes a moment to adjust to the dark space. A huddle of several imperial troopers were deeper in the cave, making maps with sticks and stones. One of them looked up and asked, "Ah, Talvorin, has the enemy been repelled already? Do you have a casualty report?”
“I am not Talvorin,” Tanlon's commander said, “I am acting Regimental Commander Stahl of the fourth regiment.”
“Fourth regiment? Here? Why didn’t Talvorin tell us?” The first trooper said. His compatriot next to him who was setting up a pile of rocks on the map in the shape of a mountain said, “Perhaps he died in the latest attack?”
Stahl's shoulders hunched and he stalked toward the other men, "Do you really have no idea where your man is? This camp is a mess, there are no minefields, machine gun nests, or anything that would be expected from a basic defense setup!" Tanlon knew he had a point and could feel some of that anger himself. The ten thousand man regiment that had been sent here should have been much more prepared than they were.
The troopers looked at each other and then back at Stahl before speaking, “We have only been here for a few hours ourselves, comrade.”
Stahl was stunned, so Tanlon asked the obvious question, “What regiment are you men?”
“We’re the third regiment.”
Haylock had been in the briefing, unlike Tanlon and processed the reality of the man's answer, but Tanlon’s mind went numb, his lips asked the question anyway, stepping past his regimental commander.
“Where’s the second?”
The trooper they were speaking to finally got off the ground and stood up, hands clenching.
“They were dead when we got here.”