Jane ran her hands over the intricately carved legs of the chair., admiring the fine details.
'I swear to God, Leonne, this is amazing!'
Leonne flashed her a grin. 'Told you that he is great with his hands. Whenever he has a free moment around the house he starts fiddling with anything made of wood.' She pointed upwards. 'Case in point.'
Jane followed the finger and her mouth fell wide open as she saw the artwork depicted on the wooden ceiling. Every plank and beam had been touched and reworked, leaving nothing bare. 'Good God!' she shouted. 'Is that your village?
'It is,' came the proud response. 'He used a satellite picture as a base and then carved it out in the ceiling. Honestly I wouldn't even know how to begin on something like that, but it has lead to me holding a running battle with him in regards to the rest of the house. He'd like to do the walls as well.' She tapped the wooden support beam nearest to her, highlighting her point. A quartet of Chinese dragons ran up from the bottom to the ceiling, intertwining with each other in a complicated puzzle and extending themselves in every direction at the top. 'I'm really grateful that a good chunk of the house is made of granite and that it's utterly useless for carving. It shatters when you try to add details. Which, and don't even ask me how, did not stop him from making the bloody roof tiles out of the stuff.'
Jane snickered. Leonne was displaying both pride and annoyance on a single face. She had never been good at having people outperform her. 'Well, can't be good at everything, miss Alumni,' she teased, twisting the knife. Leonne's face contorted, earning the newlywed a devilish grin.
'Honestly, I'm still annoyed that you didn't send me an invite. I know you are utter crap at keeping track of social connections, but come on! I'm your best friend!'
'I'm sorry! It just didn't occur to me!'
'Did you invite anyone else outside the village?'
'No. It was just me and my parents really.'
'And me,' came a manly voice from behind her, causing Jane to scream.
'Yeah,' Leonne sighed. 'He does that to people.'
Jane put a hand over her heart, feeling it beat like mad. 'Siblings?' she guessed. His face turned distant for a brief moment.
'Yes,' he simply stated.
'Your husband's not the most talkative, is he?'
'No, but he makes great coffee so I forgive him. Thanks,' Leonne said, taking the steaming mug from him. Jane did the same and sniffed it carefully, causing Leonne to cough in a bad attempt to cover up a laugh.
'Oooh, this smells good. Apology accepted, Mentuc.'
Mentuc gave her a strange look before turning around and returning to the kitchen while Leonne grabbed a chair and sat down, motioning at her friend to do the same.
Jane watched him go, eyes narrowing.
'Leonne. I have questions. A great deal of them. I remember a girl who wanted to travel the world. Explore the galaxy. Go out every night and have as much fun as possible.' She took a slow sip as she shifted her focus away from the strange husband onto her friend. 'At least in theory. I also remember that same girl who wouldn't have gotten away from her studies unless I dragged her. Sometimes literally. So that leads me to wonder...'
'How such a savvy socialite as me lucked out and got married?'
Jane sneered at that before continuing. 'You never were one to settle down. I understood that you didn't do much when your studies kept you at first. Then the entire incident happened and your parents kept you under lock and key. But now... You're married. Why are you sitting here on your ass playing house-wife and farming?'
Leonne looked away, seemingly embarrassed. The young woman might have more degrees in psychology and its many fields to her name than anyone else on the planet, but Jane had known her for far too long. 'This isn't you,' she concluded.
'Mentuc likes it here. That is the main reason. And I like him. Love him. Otherwise I wouldn't have married him.'
Jane nodded, sipping from her tea and waiting for her friend to finish explaining. She was carefully observing her friend. In contrast to Leonne, who was usually frighteningly intelligent and only loosened up in certain circumstances, she always acted as a goofball and only dared show her brilliant mind around friends. Leonne was the alumni, but she had been not too far behind.
'He originally moved to the village to be away from it all. The city, civilisation, the hustle and bustle of large population centres. He moved out here to be rid of that all. Getting married to me wasn't really in his plans.'
'And yet you're the one who stays with him and not the other way around,' she observed.
'No. I guess that's true. I want to go back to the city at one point. Not to live there, stars no, Mentuc would hate it. Just to visit. A few days at most.'
'But you haven't. And you're not going to. Not unless he agrees.'
Leonne didn't reply, choosing to look away instead, clearly feeling guilty about it.
'Girl, what have you gotten yourself in to?' Jane asked, getting up and hugging her friend. 'If you are in trouble, you can tell me,' she whispered.
'What? Stars! No! No, no, no! I'm happy!' she retorted, genuine shock on her face. 'Jane, I am happy. Happy. He's strange, weird, quirky and well, some things I can't talk about because I'd be breaking his trust, but I love him and he really loves me and honestly, being with him is all I need. I can talk to him about anything. I'm not his prisoner! I can handle him just fine! I'm not kidnapped!'
'About that,' came Mentuc's voice again, causing both of them to scream. He put down a chair and sat down in it, seeming to tower over them both. Even from behind his sunglasses she could feel his gaze on him and it was unnerving. He folded his hands together and put his head on top of them, something about the way he moved seeming utterly unnatural, as if he was a bumbling actor trying out a play, but he still radiated a presence that she couldn't place.
'I never did hear the full story about her being kidnapped.'
Leonne made a show of standing up and putting her mug down, before strutting over to Mentuc. She grabbed his face between her hands and gave him a hard kiss. A long one too. Then she pressed herself down against her husband and Jane felt a blush creeping up, looking away. When she heard the scraping of a chair she turned back and saw a much more relaxed Mentuc and a smug looking Leonne. Her friend peered at her from over her mug. Told you I can handle him.
Jane shook her head, choosing to trust her friend.
'Well then,' she began, clapping her hands. 'It all started when this stupid girl went to a club without waiting for little old me.'
Sheepdog ran his eyes over the green lines of text in the bottom corner of his HUD. Nineteen names. Nineteen men that he had to lead, use and wield as a weapon in name of the Empire. Nineteen men that looked up to him for directions as he ordered them around, making them take up defensive positions, exchanging ammo packs between one another, prepping grenades and double checking their armour. Unlike the new stuff that the freaks had, they didn't have shields. He would have killed to have his platoon equipped in the same fashion. He looked at the intel he had received from Testy, the only freak who actually talked to him. It wasn't looking good. There were far too many bugs coming. He grimaced. They'd be overrun, no matter how good the freaks behind him were. It was a simple matter of mathematics. There were sixty of them in total and despite the freaks busying themselves with utterly fragging any entrance that was remotely fraggable, hijacking systems and dialling the gravity up past eleven and onto paste-o'clock whenever possible, that still left three main entry points to the bridge, two minor ones and four maintenance corridors. The maintenance corridors were fairly small and would only allow a single person to pass at a time, but the minor entrances were much more of a pain. They were still fairly narrow and without cover, but the bugs would be relentless in their assault. The freaks somehow decided they only need three men to hold a minor entrance and only one bloke at the maintenance corridors. That meant that the fuck-huge main passages only had fifteen men each, his own zone excluded. He had the full twenty men, hallelujah.
'Gutsy, you stay in the back, I want you ready to hammer them the very moment I say so. You'll have all the missiles. Only use them when I say so. If I go down, you're in command.'
'Sir!' the young sergeant shouted back, sliding the missile launcher behind cover and arranging his back up missiles in front of him.
Twenty men against the bugs' counter-boarders. He hated that his men were so professional at times like these. He knew them all so damn well and they trusted him to see it through, but were experienced enough to know that the situation was FUBAR. Sixty against more than ten times their number just wasn't a fair fight.
'Enemy at two hundred', clicked Testy's voice in his head.
'Roger that. Good hunting Testy,' he replied. A long silence followed and Sheepdog sighed. The freaks were good fighters but they were unnerving to have as allies. They were just so damned quiet and unnat—
'You too.'
Well I'll be damned. Seemed like they could behave somewhat normal after all. He made sure he was properly in cover then turned the alert symbol in his local HUD to red. The party was about to start.
The first bug rounded the corner and his front man opened fire. A short burst of three gauss rounds struck true and the bug screeched loudly, his armour taking the shock. Another two bursts followed the first and the bastard went down, a lucky shot having perforated a part his carapace didn't cover. Three more rounded the cover and the rest of first squad opened fire, using the long hallway to their advantage. These bugs were radically different than the ones they had encountered so far. Their armour was bloody superior and given how the newcomers immediately went to cover they had a solid understanding of basic tactics. What was worse was that they moved far faster than they had any right to. More bugs came into view and occasionally one went down, but they stuck to the walls like glue, the armoured bulkheads providing them with cover. Sheepdog barked an order and second squad opened up, taking over from first squad and allowing them to fire at the opposing sides of the walls they were taking cover at, their hit rate increasing exponentially. The bugs screeched loudly and they pulled something that looked like a half-breed between a pistol and a rifle.
'Incoming!' he shouted, pulling his head down. Not a moment too soon as a well aimed salvo struck where he had been a moment earlier. He watched the incoming fire sail over his position and saw the blue tint of plasma, cursing. That shit would melt through their armour like a superheated knife through the shit the mess hall swore was butter.
'Plasma weapons! Keep your heads low and return fire! Second and third squad, fire per team! Reversed order!'
His soldiers obeyed and third squad popped from cover, timing it with second squad as two teams of two men each popped out of cover and laid down a short but accurate fusillade, relying on the shared targeting network shared between their onboard computers. More bugs went down, but they still kept coming. First squad was starting to feel the heat but also doing the most damage. The gauss weaponry grew more powerful as the distance shrunk and carapaces that had been able to shrug off several shots before were now pierced with a single burst. Bugs fell and were replaced and they steadily came closer.
'Sir!' one of his men screamed. He took a risk and peeked across the metal cover he was turtling down behind and cursed loudly. The bugs had put grav-lifts on a slab of starship hull and were moving it forward, using it as cover to advance in the middle of the hallway. That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all.
'Gutsy! Take the shot! And if you miss that I'm running PT on your ass until it falls off!'
'Sir yes sir!' came the respond.
'Fourth squad! Cover him!'
A torrent of fire poured from new positions as his final squad opened fire, taking the bugs off guard and forcing them back into cover, only claiming one kill in the process.
'Clear!' came the shout, followed by a sinister clunk as the missile engaged. For the span of one heartbeat Sheepdog saw the beautiful star that was the engine of the missile light up the hallway before it smashed into the bugs with all the force of a very angry and overweight rhino. The slab was blasted back a good metre, the grav-lifts wrecked beyond recognition and the shockwave of the hammer had slammed the nearby bugs into the wall. And they weren't getting up. The sheer amount of Newtons they had consumed had turned their insides to paste. The remaining bugs that were in front of the piece of hull were quickly dealt with while the rest huddled behind it.
'Good shot! One through four, status!
'One, two wounded!'
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
'Two, one wounded!'
'Three, good!'
'Four, good! Three missiles remaining!'
Sheepdog nodded. 'Well done. Get ready for round two. I doubt they'll give us a break.'
He made use of the short lull in the fighting to check the global HUD that he shared with the rest of the freaks. They were opening fire like it was nobody's business. Their entrances were far more busy with bugs pouring through by the dozen, but they were held back by the powerful repulsor carbines, the violent impacts throwing back the advancing bugs even if the shot failed to kill the target from the get-go. Whatever fire was returned slid off their shields. Still, sooner or later the bugs would switch tactics and he didn't like that idea one bit.
'Sir,' came the voice of the sergeant of first squad, 'lot of skittering in front of us, think they're JESUS! FIRE! FIRE NOW!'
The sheer panic and urgency in the man's voice overrode anything he might have said. Sheepdog left his cover to see what was happening. What he saw made his eyes widen and his rifle snap up, opening fire on full auto and adding his own ammunition to the stream of fire pouring down the hallway.
'GRENADES!' he shouted and his men obeyed, snapping out of their panic as half a dozen orbs containing the triple D of death, doom and destruction, sailed out to meet their foes.
Dozens of bugs were leaping over the slab. They were bigger than the previous group and were shrugging off a sickening amount of fire before their carapace finally cracked. They also lacked the rifles that the previous group had used, but were wielding horrific blades instead of arms, reminding him of the bugs from an ancient movie. The grenades exploded and peppered the first wave with shrapnel, shockwaves and other pleasantries. They were torn asunder but the assault didn't even slow down. More bugs followed the first and Grey Platoon desperately opened fire.
'Gutsy!' he shouted and a moment later a new missile sailed through the air, blowing apart the front of the second wave. A third came through and this time others were mixed in.
'Keep firing!' he shouted. He turned and saw Gutsy reload the Hammer as quickly as possible while the bugs returned fire from amongst the ranks of their melee units. A chime rang in his ear as a gout of plasma nailed a young man from first squad, burning through his outer armour and moving him from green to orange. Somehow his armour held. Then a glowing orb landed next to him and Sheepdog didn't even have time to register it as a grenade before it went off. It was plasma based, as was damn near anything these bugs used and it melted them and their armour to gloop in a heartbeat. He numbly wondered what kind of mad bastard used metal-melting equipment aboard a fucking starship as the two names turned red.
The rest of the grenades were thrown, the missile launcher fired again and more bugs died, bringing up the tally somewhere upwards of fifty, but it didn't slowed them down any. Gutsy tried reloading again but was forced to throw himself flat when a rain of plasma whistled past him, setting off internal alarms as his environmental systems tried to siphon off the sudden influx of heat.
'First squad, fall back! Two to four, cover them!'
Fifteen men opened up with everything they had as the three men of first squad abandoned their positions and made a desperate dash towards their friends. The first went down amidst a hail of plasma, melting down parts of him. Another, who was much closer to second squad, was roughly pulled to the side by an ally causing the incoming fire to narrowly miss him. The man wisely decided to not retreat further and added his rifle to his new squad. The last took a hit to the leg and lost his balance as the plasma ate through his armour. He screamed in pain as the liquid heat vaporised his foot and blistered his leg up to the hip. He turned around, knowing he would never make it to safety and opened up on full auto, planning to take as many enemies with him as he could.
Sheepdog recognised the man as he roared defiance and spat lead. Sergeant Justin 'Jessy' Maverick. God dammit, the man had a family to return to! He had only become a father three weeks ago! He would not let him die! Sheepdog yelled at Gutsy to hurry up and watched in horror as the first of the melee bugs came within range.
Jessy saw the humanoid bug in front of him, saw the bullets flatten themselves against the monster's carapace. Shot after shot slid off before a crack finally appeared. He screamed as he kept pressing down the trigger, adrenaline wiping out his pain as he stared into the multi-faceted eyes. He felt the dead man's click and switched out magazines in the blink of an eye and resumed firing. The carapace broke and the bug's innards were pureed by a final burst. He didn't let himself slow down. His awareness fell back out of the tunnel he had been in and he searched for a new target. He found one right next to the bug he had just killed, it's arms raised. He felt the blade smash into his armour, his suit protecting him for only a heartbeat before it broke. Hot pain seared through him, through the haze of adrenaline that had fuelled him. The second arm came down and he screamed. As the bug tore him apart his last thought went to his wife.
'Damn you!' Sheepdog screamed as he watched the closest thing he had to a friend in the platoon get torn apart. The bug went down a moment later as most of the platoon switched targets in order to avenge their fallen comrade and Gutsy wiped out the rest of the wave with his last missile. Sheepdog cursed through the tears. He knew it was over. They were out of grenades and missiles, having expended both at a rate he hadn't thought possible. These bugs were tough beyond all reason and a new wave was already approaching them. As his platoon made a determined last stand the bugs crashed into second squad and torn them apart just as quickly and brutally as the first.
The bugs were barely hampered by the non stop barrage of fire that was thrown their way. They took losses but for every one they lost they just sent two more. He became somewhat aware that there seemed to be fewer of the melee bugs and more of the normal ones, but it didn't really register. There were enough of both to finish what remained of his men twice over.
Then a rain of green flashed into existence as a repulsor carbine violently coughed right next to his ear. The first melee bug that was about to claim another life took the hits dead centre and was blasted off balance before his carapace simply crumbled under the onslaught. Sheepdog ignored the dead man's click of his rifle as he turned to look at the source of the fire. Testy waded forward, carbine aimed at the incoming horde. Plasma flashed his way and crashed into his shield but the superhuman weaved through it, suffering only a glancing shot that his shields absorbed, a cold fury in his step as he and another freak slowly walked towards the incoming wave of death, returning the fire with interest. The melee bugs were singled out and blasted back, the superhumans switching targets at lightning pace to keep the bugs from overrunning third squad. Two more stepped into Sheepdog's world as they walked past him, joining their fire with that of their two brothers.
'You did not call in that you were being overrun. Do not let it happen again', came Testy's voice. It was neutral, no sign of anger, fear or any other emotion that normally ran through a soldier when he was in the midst of battle.
'Return fire!' Back up's arrived!' he shouted through his coms, replacing his magazine and lending his fire to that of the four freaks sliding in and out of cover or dodging incoming shots. As the four merged with the two remaining squads the assaults of the bugs was finally stalled, corpses stacking high as the superhumans proved their worth. His men roared, happy to be alive, seeing a chance at victory despite half of their number being slaughtered and most of the survivors being thoroughly blistered from near misses.
Then the bugs screeched and he could see a new, massive wave charge at them.
He looked down his sight and steadied his breath, sparing one glance at the sight of the massive freaks sitting in the midst of his men.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
The first bug broke through the wall of corpses and he pulled the trigger.
'So that's basically the story,' Jane concluded.
'I already told him!' Leonne protested.
'You told me you were drugged, kidnapped, that Jane called the police and tracked you by your datapad and were freed before you awoke,' Mentuc pointed out.
'That's what happened!'
'Are there any other events you summarised in a similar manner?'
'I didn't want to worry you...'
Jane saw Mentuc gave Leonne a withering glare and wondered just how the two got along.
'Nothing of the same level.,' she replied with a tiny voice. 'I just didn't want you to get concerned.'
Mentuc reached out and grabbed Leonne's hand, before pulling her from her chair and into his arms, the empty mug clattering to the ground. Jane's eyes went wide as the man held her friend in a surprisingly soft hug.
'I do not worry and I do not get concerned. I merely plan. It will not happen again.'
Jane frowned in confusion but Leonne's face lit up.
'So you'll take me to the city then?' she asked, looking like a child waking up on Christmas.
'Eventually, yes. Sooner if your friend agrees to chaperone you and relieves me from that duty.'
Jane knew she was missing out on some key communication between the two there, but decided to err on the side of caution and keep off the questions until she was alone with Leonne. So instead she opted for a broad smile.
'Oh joy', she teased, rolling her eyes dramatically. 'Back to babysitting duties. Yay.'
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