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Grass Eaters 2 | 7 | Holdout II
🕑 Added 2024-05-31 16:47:00 +0000 UTCPriunt Fusion Power 2, Datsot-3
POV: Skhork, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Six Whiskers)
Skhork squinted at the squad of Lesser Predators milling around the guard house in his helmet mounted night optics. There were only eight of them: all rifles, no heavy weapons. Four of them were seated at a picnic table, engrossed in one of those card-and-token gambling games that the Lesser Predators loved to play. The other four were chatting loudly in a cluster; even from over two kilometers away, his helmet sensors could still pick up some of the sounds they were making. At least half of the guards were holding or enjoying alcoholic drinks.
They were clearly not prepared for any kind of combat.
The enemy thinks they’ve won, and the planet is secure, Skhork realized. Time to show them how wrong they are.
He watched as his platoons of conscript infantry slowly creep up towards the guards at the edge of the tree line on their bellies. Intellectually, he knew these troops were not trained or bred for this mission, but their movements betrayed none of their lack of expertise. They were survivors: they had been fighting in the swamps, forests, and urban jungles of Datsot for months, thrown into the toughest meatgrinders that commanders and planners couldn’t justify wasting his expensive crews and machines on.
And they were somehow still alive. That said something about them.
One of the platoon leaders made a paw signal in the air and the troops ceased their forward movement. For the umpteenth time, Skhork wished that they could still use their radios on these raids instead of these unwieldy paw signals, but the risk of early detection by the enemy was too great. The infantry still carried radios just in case there was an emergency, but they would only transmit on those if something has gone truly fruit-shaped.
“Pssssst,” his Gunner hissed at him.
“What is it?”
She pointed at the sky. There were two full moons, shining brightly overhead.
Skhork immediately understood what she meant. The illumination wasn’t enough to expose his troops, especially not against the incautious guards at the checkpoint, but it could pose a problem later if they had to fight other Lesser Predators. Despite being underequipped, his conscripts still had far better night fighting equipment compared to the average Lesser Predator. That’s why most of these raids occurred at night, and the bright moons cut into their advantage.
“Yeah, I should have considered them against the timing of the mission,” he whispered back, acknowledging his error. “I take full responsibility for my negligence in planning.”
She nodded and continued scanning the environment as he ordered earlier.
Skhork glanced at his digital watch synchronized to the rest of his troops’. They were ahead of schedule by about half an hour.
He ordered, “Go check if Platoon 9 is in position.”
She slinked away in the low grass. A couple minutes later, she returned noiselessly. “I spotted Platoon 9 from the clearing next to us. They’re in position next to the main road. They’ve rigged it up with explosives, and their anti-air gunners are set up at the edge of the forest.”
“Good. Go monitor them from there. Let me know if anything happens.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Skhork watched intently as the timer on his watch counted down to zero. It vibrated once on his wrist.
Down at the guard house, a single paw raised in the air. A volley of well-aimed rifle fire tore apart the Lesser Predators on duty and shattered the glass of the guard house windows. They were dead before the sounds of the shots reached him.
For a minute as his conscripts moved up through the checkpoint, Skhork thought it was possible that maybe, just maybe, the Lesser Predators hadn’t heard the shots or noticed that their entrance was breached, but his hopes were quickly dashed. He tensed as the sharp wail of the campus alarm pierced the night, echoing through the dense forest around the facility. His conscripts hastened their movements, knowing that they were on borrowed time.
In his optics, a combat engineer from Platoon 2 quickly wired the secondary gate with small explosives, blowing it wide open. His two hundred conscripts poured through the opening with their rifles at the ready, hopping towards the reactor control building.
He glanced towards where his Gunner had left with the corner of the eye, knowing rationally that the Lesser Predators couldn’t possibly respond this quickly.
A few minutes later, he heard sounds of sporadic grenade explosions and gunfire towards the reactor area. Within another few seconds, it went silent and more of his people streamed into the control building.
One of the designated signal communicators left near the control gate waved towards him and the waiting platoon in the tree line with her paw. He carefully deciphered her paw signals.
Control room taken.
No casualties.
Ready for next phase.
Accompanied by a small platoon of thirty around him, his Engineer sprinted as fast as he could into the complex from the tree line.
Skhork watched as they disappeared into the control room as well, his heart pounding in his ears. More minutes passed and he had a sudden urge to rush down there to get things rolling but quickly suppressed the irrational instinct. There was nothing he could do for them now.
He glanced at his watch again.
Fifteen minutes elapsed. They still had plenty of time.
Twenty minutes elapsed. He saw another signal from the gates.
Engineer searching in maintenance area.
No casualties.
He breathed a small sigh of relief but kept alert. They were coming up to the pre-arranged thirty-minute mark where they expected there would be some kind of response from the Lesser Predators. Probably some kind of vehicle response force from the spaceport, as their combat computer had calculated. Lesser Predators were generally predictable in these aspects of war.
As he stared down at the guard house, another signal came from the direction.
No casualties.
Skhork frowned in confusion. Why did they need to signal—
Then, the loud cracks of a series of interior-sounding rifle shots from the direction of the control room wafted towards his position.
Ah, he realized after a second, they’re executing the prisoners. Good call.
He made a mental note to praise the platoon leader that came up with the idea after the mission and to add that to the instruction list for the next mission.
Thirty minutes elapsed. Skhork felt his stiff body getting tenser as the watch counted up. Any time now…
Another ten minutes passed, and he was beginning to think that the Lesser Predators were just all asleep at the wheel when he heard a duet of loud booms in the distance, in the direction of the main road instead of the power plant facility. It was followed a few seconds later by the sound of intense gunfire. Then, there were another couple of loud explosions and some more gunfire before the night went still again.
His heart pounding in his ears, Skhork was internally debating what to do when a silhouette came crashing through the foliage. It was his Gunner. She panted heavily, struggling to catch her breath.
“By the Prophecy! What happened?” he asked urgently. “Is Platoon 9 still in position?”
A moment later, she had finally recovered from her sprint to be able to speak. “Commander, there was a firefight on the main road. There are casualties…”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
10 minutes ago
POV: Vmusht, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
Platoon 9 was led by an experienced five whiskers named Vmusht. Participating in the invasions of Gruccud and Datsot, she’d somehow managed to survive long enough to be promoted three times, a rare feat for someone who was haphazardly conscripted into the Znosian Marines. And while the Marines did not usually allow its platoons to be led by its enlisted or conscripted members, the retreat from Datsot and the ensuing chaos had left Skhork’s outfit with a dire shortage of non-commissioned officers that wasn’t going to be fixed any time soon.
Her final field promotion and elevation to platoon leader came naturally after the platoon’s previous leader rejoined the Prophecy at the paws of a Lesser Predator sniper a month ago.
Vmusht examined the icons representing her slightly oversized platoon of fifty conscripts through her helmet interface. There had not been enough combat troops to form a tenth infantry platoon, so the extra leftovers were thrown into her outfit.
Here, they were charged with blocking the main road between the target power plant and the spaceport. When the gunfire went off at the facility, no doubt the Lesser Predators sent a warning over to the spaceport, and there were going to be reinforcements. It was their responsibility to make sure those reinforcements did not make it to their objective. Due to its oversized nature, her platoon was used to being sent on relatively independent missions on raids, like this one.
In preparation, her demolition engineers had buried a line of shaped charges on the road, covering about eighty meters, or the length of about a dozen Lesser Predator transport vehicles; they were now hiding behind a berm next to the road, ready to set them off. Six of her people hid in the tree line further up the road, in a high vantage point, ready with their shoulder-fired surface-to-air launchers in case the spaceport sent out rotary wing assets.
The remaining forty of her people were dug in near the ambush point around the road next to her. Most had their rifles, with a few heavy weapons mixed in the crowd, and two machine guns set up in a classic kill box slightly behind them in case anyone managed to escape the explosives.
Vmusht saw the enemy vehicles first: three Lesser Predator armored transports. Old transport vehicles with treads instead of gravity engines. They were equipped with thick armor, but the demolition engineers had prepared enough shaped charges to blow through whatever armor they’d have on the soft underbelly of these vehicles.
She raised her paw to sign for enemy contact in case someone in the command platoon was observing them, though she was sure wherever they were, they’d most likely already seen the incoming vehicles. She cursed the inconvenience of not being allowed to use long-range wireless communication devices under her breath; the best they could do was a short line-of-sight pulse mesh network between the helmet computers of each of her Marines.
As the incoming vehicles drove closer, her people came alive, their bodies tensed, ready for combat.
But Vmusht could already see a problem: the third enemy transport was lagging further behind. Far behind. It was too far behind to get caught by the explosives. She swore under her breath at the unforeseen complication, but quickly recalled the alternate procedures for vehicle column ambush from her training.
She spun, her eyes locking with the weapon squad leader. “Tell one of your anti-armor launchers to shoot the lagging vehicle when we get started. It’s too far back for the charges.”
“Understood, Five Whiskers,” he replied with a nod, then relayed the command to the other foxhole with a few paw gestures.
The enemy vehicles came close enough that she could see the grass green camouflage pattern painted on their hulls and the serial numbers painted on their sides. For some reason, the Lesser Predators never attempted to hide those serial numbers, which were very helpful for Znosian reconnaissance units in the field.
Vmusht counted the seconds down to zero, and without needing her orders, the demolition engineers triggered the charges.
Booooom.
A loud explosion rang out through the valley.
Vmusht’s troops were far away enough to not be injured from the blast, but its concussive force still rattled their skulls and ear drums.
The Lesser Predators were not so lucky. As anticipated, the first two vehicles turned into instant fireballs. The leading vehicle’s fuel ignited, turning it into a funeral pyre for the enemy troops inside. A moment later, its magazine detonated in a secondary fireball. The other vehicle’s entire front caught on fire, rolling off the road before meeting the same fate a few milliseconds later.
Vmusht turned her attention to the third and final vehicle in the convoy, right as a light anti-armor rocket raced out from one of the dug positions next to her. It reached the troop carrier, climbed a meter above it, and detonated its explosive charge into the weakly armored top of the vehicle hull.
Baaaang.
By some miracle, the enemy vehicle did not explode into flame. It slowly rolled to a stop right in front of her troops, its front engines emitting black smoke and its thin armor obviously perforated in multiple places.
A series of irregular sounds emanated from the interior of the vehicle.
Someone is still alive inside.
Comments
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Desurtfawks
That cliff hanger definitely isnt going to stop whats in that car. 😆
