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Grass Eaters 2 | 8 | Holdout III
🕑 Added 2024-06-03 16:47:01 +0000 UTCPriunt Fusion Power 2, Datsot-3
POV: Vmusht, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
“Demolition Engineer,” Vmusht urgently barked at the creature next to her with a bundle of explosives in his chest carrier. “Finish it. We don’t need prisoners here.”
“Yes, Five Whiskers,” he replied, pulling himself up out of the trench. He sprinted to the disabled enemy vehicle in a low stance.
Vmusht’s eyes tracked him as he ripped the adhesive tape off the explosive bricks with shaky paws and prepared to secure it to the damaged vehicle’s rear exit door, a logical weak point of the vehicle that should—
Abruptly, the entire rear hatch, a solid creature-sized slab of composite steel twelve centimeters thick, exploded off its hinges and away from the vehicle. A deadly projectile now, it launched itself twenty meters down the road, smearing the unfortunate demolition engineer into liquid paste on the asphalt.
Without prompting, her squads opened fire, a hailstorm of rifle fire peppering the newly opened rear exit of the vehicle.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” she shouted a few seconds later into the din. “There’s nothing there!”
It took a few seconds for the word to pass around and the rifles in her trench to stop. Perhaps sensing the slacking fire, the troops in the other dug outs also complied.
As Vmusht readied another command, her eyes caught a glint of metal. A solid cylindrical object — painted with brown stripes — tumbled from the exit of the vehicle. Her helmet interface screamed warnings, the interface outlining it clearly in red as a potential explosive device, warning her to take cover.
For the benefit of her troops, she yelled, “Grenade! Cover!”
Most of her platoon ducked into the cover of their dug emplacements. But instead of a bang, a soft pop sounded and an enormous cloud of dull-reddish smoke materialized next to them, quickly covering the entire vehicle and all their dug positions in half a second. It smelled like chemical fire-starters.
She sneezed, clearing the irritating smell from her sensitive snout.
“Switch to thermal vision!” she commanded, her own claws deftly activating the optical overlay on her helmet.
But there was nothing, not even on the infrared spectrum. She frowned as she noticed that even the burning vehicle’s large thermal signature was no longer visible through this odd alien fume. She looked beside her, and she could barely even see the outlines of the squad next to her.
Something in the smoke must be interfering with our optics, she realized.
That was when she heard them inside the broken vehicle — the loud, unmistakable sound of metal banging on metal, accompanied by a low-bass electronic whirring.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Someone— something exited the enemy vehicle, and she could hear the precise moment when the sounds of their footsteps went from metal-on-metal to metal-on-asphalt.
Then, the shooting started.
It sounded nothing like the punchy, slow-firing standard issue rifles of Lesser Predator troops. Nor was it even the automatic staccato of her own service weapon. It made no audible sound of gunpowder discharge, but the new enemies were close enough she could hear the operation of their weapons — cycling round after round too rapidly for her ears to differentiate — and the resulting sonic cracks of the outgoing ballistic projectiles.
The enemy fired in short bursts, their weapons purring death at their positions like the whine of a well-oiled, high rpm electric motor. She saw four… then five of her troopers’ life signs disappear from her helmet simultaneously.
She realized they’d gone for the machine gunners first. The enemy could clearly see through this concealing cloud, and they wasted no time neutralizing the most imminent threats.
Next, they went for her squad leaders.
One of their deadly projectiles tore a massive hole through the ballistic helmet of the squad leader whose foxhole position was next to hers, splattering his brain matter in every direction including onto her visor. He was dead before his ears hit the ground — what was left of them.
By instinct, Vmusht took cover in her trench.
Just in time.
Half a heartbeat later, a line of projectiles stitched across the open air where her head just was, kicking up a puff of dirt behind her. Feeling an unfamiliar fear in her gut, she stayed down in her trench and watched the chaos around her unfold in her helmet interface.
Eight… nine… ten life signs went flat.
Her conscripts returned fire as they’d been trained. Through the concealment and in the darkness, they aimed their automatic weapons towards the direction of the enemies. Inaccurate fire, but they could still hear the enemies, and she had a lot more Marines than them.
She noted dimly in her helmet interface that they were at least having an effect: one of the enemies clattered to the ground: its weapon, however, did not stop even as it hit the ground, still humming out accurate torrents of projectiles towards her troops for a second until it either ran out of ammunition or couldn’t locate another target.
As the cloud of smoke began to clear, she could see three enemy silhouettes back-to-back-to-back near the rear of the disabled enemy vehicle through her helmet, calmly and accurately dispatching her people like they were at target practice.
Combat robots, she realized dully. Just cold, efficient machines.
The sensors on top of their heads would swivel almost imperceptibly, their alien weapons would snap to a new angle, there would be a short whir, and another life sign disappeared from her helmet.
With the obscuring smoke dispersing from view, more of her Marines were beginning to shoot back with some accuracy. Vmusht saw one of the robots hit in its center mass stagger once. It immediately pivoted to dispatch the rifle-bearing conscript that scored the hit. One fewer life sign in her platoon.
The improved vision lasted for only a brief moment. One of the machines released another smoke grenade at its feet, renewing the dissipating concealment.
Bloop. Bloop. Bloop—
One of them launched a burst of grenades — lethal ones this time — at a cluster of her conscripts: they burst in the air above their foxhole and eight more life signs disappeared under showers of deadly shrapnel.
Vmusht heard screams of pain. She wasn’t sure whether it was the enemy’s or hers, but quickly realized that it could only have come from her people: the horrible shriek and gurgling of someone drowning to death in their own blood could not have come from the enemy machines.
There was another explosion in the night, this time on the robots.
Finally.
Thankfully.
One of Vmusht’s light anti-armor teams had recovered enough to launch a rocket at the enemy, and by either luck or— it was definitely luck, the high explosive caught all three of the active robots in the blast. She saw them clatter to the ground on her command interface. As she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, one of the robots — its bipedal legs severed and thrown somewhere to the other side of the road — pulled itself up with one of its metal arms and continued firing with its other.
Whrrrghnnnnnnn.
Vmusht heard a low electronic reverb come from the machine inside the smoke.
Was it anger? Or pain? Or was it the machine’s way of giving a last warning, unheard by its dead comrades?
Two more Marines in the anti-armor team flatlined under another one of its launched airburst grenades. Another one of its grenades targeted a previously hit trench, finishing off one of her wounded Marines lying unconsciously in it with neither malice nor mercy.
Her troops re-engaged and poured fire towards the remaining enemy. The anti-armor team’s launchers barked again, and this time, the rocket landed near enough to its target to blow the final crippled robot apart, the shrapnel fully separating its body from its weapon systems.
But her Marines were taking no chances. A second later, another rocket found its way into the passenger compartment of the vehicle, its explosion making sure that there were going to be no more surprises.
As the sounds of gunfire slowed to a stop, Vmusht looked around her helmet interface in a daze. Corpses lay scattered like discarded dolls all around her. Thirty plus dead, maybe more. Dozens more injured.
She checked the time, frowning in confusion at how little of it had passed.
Less than a minute.
It felt longer. The firefight had lasted mere seconds, and half her platoon was gone.
Cautiously, she raised her head above the trench. Her medics were springing into action, gathering the injured and conducting triage. One of them made a negative gesture at her after a short examination of the slumped-over figure of a squad leader who had a burst of projectiles go cleanly through his upper throat.
She stared hatefully at the enemy combat robots left on the road. Turning to one of the combat engineers next to her, she commanded, “Go bag a sample of those robots. Six Whiskers Skhork might want to—”
The pile of electronic debris on the road burst into flames with a loud crackle. She instinctively ducked back down into cover.
A moment later, Vmusht reemerged. It wasn’t a big enough explosion to injure anyone else, but one glance at the burning metal told her there would be nothing meaningful left of the enemy robots to collect.
“Never mind that. Go signal the command platoon. We’ll need to pull out from here.”
“Yes, Five Whiskers.”
“Medic!” she yelled at one of the figures running around in the still-smokey dark.
One of her combat medics rushed to her side. “Five Whiskers! Are you injured?”
She checked herself. There was plenty of blood matted in her soiled fur from the wounded and dead next to her, but there were no new holes in her own body. “No. We need to move out immediately. How many of our wounded can be quickly moved?”
“All but five, maybe six, of the worst injured,” he replied briskly.
“Their lives were forfeited to the Prophecy the day they left the hatchling pools,” Vmusht murmured, bowing her head in respect at their sacrifice.
He, too, lowered his head in understanding. “Yes, Five Whiskers.”
Shouldering his rifle, he headed purposefully for the makeshift triage center in the trench, making his way towards the hopeless cases.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Skhork, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Six Whiskers)
Skhork felt his eyes widen at the report.
“They were… fast, even when caught in an ambush. Platoon 9 got into a firefight with them. It lasted about fifteen or twenty seconds. We lost almost forty of ours, and several of the remaining are injured. Platoon 9 signaled they were falling back into the forest with the ones they can get out.”
He breathed a heavy sigh as he considered the casualties. Forty dead. He was hoping they’d be able to get out without losing any of his, but accidents happened in the field, and they’d learn from this and plan better next time.
“We’ll determine who is responsible later,” he declared. “But for now, we have no one watching the road anymore, so we need to pull our teams out.”
The Gunner nodded, tossing him her backup radio.
After only a moment’s hesitation, Skhork activated the transmit button and spoke clearly into it, “Fearless, lunchtime is over. Wrap everything up. Immediately. And get out of the house. I say again: wrap everything up, and get out now.”
He peered down towards the guardhouse with his optics. After a moment, the designated communicator gave him the paw signal for acknowledgement. Not waiting for anything else, he took his eyes off them.
Skhork gripped the radio in his stronger left paw, wound his arm back, and pitched the electronic device as far away from him as he could, like it was an activated grenade.
He fixed his gaze on his Gunner.
“Run.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Less than ten minutes of breathless hopping later, there was a whistle overhead. Skhork dove right in time as the forest behind him exploded. Trees shattered, sending a hailstorm of splinters soaring over his flattened form.
Luckily for him, the missile that hit his former position must have been fired blindly at his radio from somewhere else on the Datsot surface and not orbit. A short-range cruise missile from the spaceport probably, tracking his radio. Had there been an orbital support ship overhead to direct the attack and follow up with another strike, Skhork knew he likely would not have been allowed to escape alive.
Despite that, it still took Skhork almost three hours before he was convinced that they were safe enough to make their way to the rendezvous point, a small clearing in the middle of the forest. His Engineer and bulk of the infantry had already assembled there.
Most of them.
Five Whiskers Vmusht’s head dipped in a solemn bow as Skhork approached. “Six Whiskers Skhork, I take full responsibility for the losses in Platoon 9. I did not foresee the effectiveness of the enemy’s combat robots, and the heavy losses in my platoon are due to my carelessness and lack of preparation.”
“How many of yours made it?”
“Enough to carry the rest, but we suffered many injuries,” she said, her paw sweeping towards the battered Marines in the medical litters.
“What happened?”
She sighed wearily. “My preliminary analysis is that the fault lies mostly with me and the remaining of it lies with the anti-armor team leader for failing to use appropriate munitions in the opening barrage. His judgement that a light rocket would be sufficient to destroy the enemy transport vehicle was flawed, but it was based on my ambiguous command. Unfortunately, he did not survive the firefight, so the full responsibility lies with me.”
Skhork nodded glumly, accepting her explanation. “You will remain in command of your platoon, as I do not have a superior alternative for your position. We will determine your penance after this campaign. Turn in your platoon’s helmet footage for our computer to analyze when we get back to camp so we don’t make a mistake like that again.”
Her head bowed again. “Yes, Six Whiskers.”
Skhork then turned, eyes landing on the bulging sack slung over the Engineer’s back. “What about you? Did you get us all the parts we need for the Longclaw charger?”
“Not all,” the Engineer began, a grin creeping across his face. “But we found most of what we need. I can begin assembling the charger device, and we only require one or two more parts to complete it. In fact, we might not need to try another raid like this again. There’s another, far easier target we can hit for them…”
