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Grass Eaters 2 | 27 | Serenity IV
🕑 Added 2024-07-17 16:47:01 +0000 UTCMarine Base Camp Serenity, Charon
POV: Baedarsust, Malgeir Federation Marine Infantry (Rank: Head Pack Leader)
“Three… two… one… go!” Baedarsust ordered as he pulled the door open.
This time, instead of his squad members rushing into the corridor beyond, their attached Terran combat robot sprang into action. Following his instruction, the bipedal machine marched into the room with its weapon at the ready.
In his helmet display, a dozen red triangles popped up beyond the door. Their robot began engaging them with mechanical precision, rapidly dispatching the enemies.
Its weapon ran through the targets like a buzzsaw. Within half a second, the triangles had all disappeared, the targets they represented clattering to the floor.
The robot signaled back to them, “Room clear.”
“Go, go, go,” he shouted at his squad. They filed into the corridor to a horror show. Various corpses were splayed around the room, a couple over overturned tables and makeshift barricades in what looked like a dining hall. Only a couple of them even managed to fire back.
“Well, that one was easy,” Quaullast commented. “I love robots.”
“Good job, Marvin,” Spommu patted the machine affectionately on the back. Following Terran tradition, they’d given the deadly machine a name. Marvin was merely a virtual creation of the training room, but that didn’t matter. Any robot that rolled with their squad, real or virtual, was called Marvin. Unless there was a second one, then she was Marlene. And the third one… Marcy. Then, Margeret and Marco. There was a general theme.
“One last room,” Baedarsust said, pointing up at a closed metallic door ahead.
“Send my camera drone first?” Quaullast asked.
“No hole… and no time,” Baedarsust said, glancing at his watch. Thirty seconds remaining. “Stack up!”
The squad hurried to the door, standing at the ready on both sides of it. Marvin took his position at the head of the squad.
“Alright, three… two… one… go!”
The robot winded one of its legs back and kicked the center of the door with machine strength and precision. It flew off its hinges and crashed into the room.
Immediately, the sensors on Marvin identified three targets in the room.
Baedarsust immediately recognized the new icons on his display. “Oh no.”
Enemy combat robots. Three of them.
Marvin barely had time to respond. As its rifle started whirring at the first spotted target, a hail of gunfire came out of the room, shredding their friendly robot into bits. Marvin clattered to the ground.
Baedarsust checked the status of the enemies in the room.
At least he got one of them.
“Crap!” Baedarsust swore. “Frumers, thermobaric!”
As he watched Frumers fumble to load a round into the rocket launcher carried on his back, Baedarsust realized it was going to be too slow. Half a second later, a high-explosive airburst projectile launched from one of the hostile robots inside the room instantly took out the entire squad stacked up on the door.
His screen went black.
“I hate robots.”
“Nice try,” Aida said. “Had the right idea. Just too slow to execute.”
“Which robots were the hostiles using this time?”
“An older generation of your Marvin. Grenadier variant, obviously. Actually, I think these are some of the ones we sent to help you guys fight on your planets.”
“Oh. You gave our Marines these robots?” Baedarsust asked. “For liberating our planets?”
“Yup. Did pretty well, I hear. Beat the snot out of the remaining Bunnies holding out on Datsot. Much less problematic there, I’d imagine, since they just told them to shoot everything with big, white, fluffy ears.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Baedarsust squinted at the symbols on the four Terran cards displayed face up on the table, then looked up at the other players at the table.
Spommu and Quaullast had already gone out.
Frumers was unreadable as always.
And Abe was not so much unreadable as Baedarsust didn’t know the first thing about Terran body language.
He glanced at the cards in his own hand: a three and a seven.
Garbage.
He knew better than to bluff with this group. “Fold,” he sighed as he tossed his cards face down into the pile.
It was just Frumers and Abe left.
Frumers put yet another two small tokens, improvised metal washers, into his betting pile. “Raise to eighteen.”
Abe stared at him, as if trying to decipher his face. “Raise, to twenty-one,” he declared confidently, putting down five more tokens.
Frumers scratched his snout and looked at his cards again. “You’re bluffing again, Abe.”
He snorted. “Yeah, tell that to my double kings.”
Frumers sniffed. “Not a chance. I’m thinking… two low value cards, both under seven. And none of that… five cards in a row thing.”
“A straight, you mean. And now I know you don’t have one of those,” Abe retorted confidently.
“Or maybe that was a trick, to fool you into thinking I don’t have a straight,” Frumers suggested.
“Are you going to play or not?” the Terran asked impatiently.
“Call,” Frumers said as he placed the additional tokens into the pile.
They revealed the final card in the pile, an eight of spades.
“Raise again,” Frumers said, this time much more confident, and putting five tokens into the pile.
“Raise you another five.” Abe matched his action and put down another five.
“Zero chance. I call,” Frumers replied, shaking his ears and putting the tokens in the pile. Then, he revealed his cards: an ace of diamonds and a queen. Pointing to the cards in the middle, he said, “That’s two queens.”
Abe tossed his junk cards onto the table in disgust: a two and a six. He pushed his tokens to Frumers’ side of the table. “Ugh, how did you know?”
Frumers collected them triumphantly. “You have a tell when you bluff.”
Abe shook his head. “No shot.”
“It’s incredibly obvious,” Frumers added, a smug grin creeping up onto his snout.
“No. Shot.”
“Wanna bet?” he asked.
“No. What is it? Tell me!” Abe insisted, putting his hand on the card deck before Frumers could start another round. “What is my tell?”
Frumers hesitated a second, then shrugged. “Your heartbeat.”
“My— my heartbeat?”
“I can hear it change pace when you’re nervous about your cards. And…” Frumers made an exaggerated sniff with his snout, “There’s a distinct smell you Terrans make, depending on how you’re feeling, like when you lie.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Frumers shook his ears and pointed at his squadmates. “Ask them.”
“You guys can literally hear my heartbeat and smell it when I bluff?” Abe looked at Baedarsust and demanded.
Baedarsust raised his paws. “Hey, I haven’t been listening for it… but yeah, if I pay attention, I guess I can kind of hear your heartbeat. It’s pretty loud. No idea what he’s talking about the smell though. You sniff anything different, Spommu?”
Spommu shook her ears. “Nope.”
“That’s because they have shit noses,” Frumers said, still grinning. “You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”
Abe shook his head in disgust. “Great. Now I’ll be thinking about my heartbeat and smells when I play poker… Damn Puppers.”
“Another round?”
“Nah, I have to run anyway,” Abe said, getting up to leave.
“Going somewhere fun?”
“Yup, new contract. Piloting. One of the companies on Ceres needs pilots, and I need hours to maintain my cert.”
“Have fun,” Frumers said, collecting the cards remaining on the table for him. He frowned as he stared at a card. “Huh. Whose faces are on these cards?”
He raised his ace of diamonds to show Abe.
“Oh yeah, this is the Red Zone Most-Wanted deck,” Abe replied, pointing at the woman with a heavily scarred cheek on the card. “That’s the one we call the Ace of Diamonds in the Saturnian Resistance Navy. She’s in charge of their money… or something.”
Frumers tilted his head. “Interesting. And if we see them, we’re supposed to capture or kill them?”
“It’s unlikely, but if you see any of these people on the cards, call it in. There’s a… hmm I’m not sure if you’d get the bounty since you’re technically Marine, but we do. A few years back, someone in Black Hole Sun found one of their terrorist cell commanders… I think it was the five of… spades? He found her at a casino on Titan — talk about irony. He’s retired now. Nice big mansion on Mars.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You know what? Keep the cards,” Abe tossed it to him. “I’ll just fabricate another set.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
MNS Oengro, Gruccud-4 (3,000 km)
POV: Grionc, Malgeir Federation Navy (Rank: High Fleet Commander)
Grionc sat calmly at her desk as her subordinate stomped into her office.
“Take a seat, Loenda,” she said looking at the aged squadron leader who strode in impatiently. Stubborn but loyal, Grionc would often look to the alpha leader for her advice.
And Loenda never had a shortage of advice for her.
“I’m fine standing,” Loenda said, starting to pace.
“Suit yourself,” Grionc smiled. “What can I do for you today, Loenda?”
Loenda got straight to the point. “They took the last of my ship’s Marine shipboard detachment today. Cleaned them out. Every single one of them.”
Grionc frowned. “Who did?”
Loenda shrugged. “I don’t know. The Marines just said they got new orders, got on a transport ship, and left! I don’t think even they themselves knew. Our readiness is hurting. How are we supposed to conduct any offensive planetary operations when we don’t even have Marines?!”
“Well, I’m pretty sure they’re going to our friends in Sol. They have some kind of a major conflict brewing in their own system—”
“That’s what they say, but we haven’t heard anything from them in weeks other than ‘we will get back to you’ and vague promises!” Loenda fumed.
“The supply shipments are still coming periodically. I think the Amazon is in the border systems looking for signs of the enemy.”
“That’s all we’ve been doing for months: looking. We know where the enemy is!” Loenda said, pointing at a picture of the situation map on Grionc’s wall. “Look, right there.”
Grionc shrugged. “It’s not that simple—”
Loenda’s voice rose into a righteous crescendo. “It is that simple. Look! Eternity, the occupied border system between the Federation and the Granti Alliance. That’s three empty systems and we have our old border back. Look out the window, we can see it from here! And then the other axis. Plorve. Two systems, one of them empty! Priplae, three systems. Uidquu, four. We take those three, we crush the Grass Eaters in the entire axis against Second and Third Fleet in Stoers!”
Grionc nodded. “Yes, I see that too, but the analysis and simulations from our allies say we’ll take heavy losses if we try to brute force Plorve and—”
“Screw heavy losses. We are Malgeir. We know what heavy losses are, and we accept them. I’m sixty. I’ll happily volunteer to lead the first ship into the breach.”
Grionc vigorously shook her head. “That’s unnecessary, Loenda. There is a plan. We just need to trust it. Remember the Gruccud campaign? Seventeen systems liberated in a few months. Not a single combat ship casualty. This new way, the way they do things: it is the right way to do things. Remember our previous, failed Gruccud offensive? Like I keep saying, we have to think about this the new way, not just tactically with our new weapons, but strategically.”
Loenda looked at the map for a few more seconds, then sighed. “You may be right, High Fleet Commander. But I’m not the only one saying these things. The whole fleet is asking. What in the galaxy are we waiting for? We rolled up an entire axis, kicked the Grass Eaters out of the entire northern wing, and now— now we’re just sitting on our tails, back doing exercises in the Celestria Red Zone again.”
“We had a raid into Plorve a couple months ago,” Grionc countered.
The squadron leader shook her head. “Two ships and a munitions depot. During the Datsot Counteroffensive, we were blowing up more Grass Eaters than that every day for weeks.”
“Well, their main defense fleet showed up with twelve squadrons and more on the way. I’m just happy everyone followed my orders to withdraw,” Grionc joked.
Loenda pointed a claw at her. “You jest, but I was tempted. We all were.”
“None more than me,” Grionc assured her. She touched the scar on the right of her snout, a reminder from a loss at Uidquu. “We’ll get there, Loenda.”
“I sure hope so. I want to burn Znos to the ground in my lifetime. Or at least watch our new friends do it. Malgeir knows they’ll do it without hesitation, those grass-thirsty critters. They just need the right motivation.”
Grionc smiled, recalling a previous conversation with Loenda. “Perhaps… at the head of your own fleet? Did you give that promotion idea some thought from the last time we talked?”
Loenda pointed an accusatory claw at her again. “This again? No! Not in a million years. I like my job. I’m too old to learn a new one. Fleet commander? There isn’t even a position open in the Navy that I’m aware.”
Grionc sniffed. “Not yet, but you know the other fleets. With those idiots in charge? It’s a matter of time.”
“None since our grass-eating advisors took control of our strategic planning,” Loenda pointed out. “One of the downsides of not losing all the time, I guess. All the incompetents get to stay on. Though, I heard a couple of them got canned due to pressure from the advisors, so that’s a plus.”
“See? You’re thinking like a fleet commander already,” Grionc grinned.
“Nice try, but like I said, I like my job. You’ll have to shoot me before you can drag me into a fleet command chair.”
“Temping as that is— oh, huh, that does give me an idea,” Grionc said. “You’re itching to go on the offensive, right? I want you to run offensive fleet exercises with our simulation computers. Strategic exercises. We’ve got the computers now, we can run them ourselves.”
“Oh? What’s the target?”
“Like you said: Plorve, Priplae, Uidquu, and then roll up the whole axis until we crush them against Stoers, right? And we’ll try a few other options too. I’ll send you the parameters and scenarios later. I want you to come up with the plans and contingencies with your squadron, and we’ll run every squadron leader through it until we get a green light from our friends.”
Loenda’s eyes lit up, then narrowed in suspicion. “Wait. This isn’t part of some subtle ploy to turn me into a fleet commander against my will, right?”
“Of course it is,” Grionc’s grin widened to her whole snout. “But that won’t stop you from trying your best, will it?”
