Starcraft

One man looked out over the green, verdant valley through the perfect, clear window from an office in the secret facility. His datapad was on a mahogany desk computing multiple equations that he had entered on b3mc39x. Sighing he took off his glasses in the darkened room, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. So much work had gone into this project, and all of it could fail if they weren’t careful. Phase one of their work was complete and subject b3mc39x’s mind was being scanned for imperfections after the procedure. This project of his received full funding after a few remote colonies, and remote facilities went silent, as in when the facilities failed to report in a marine squad from an orbiting battlecruiser was sent to check up on them. All they found were dozens of bodies, and scientists missing even though the facilities had an A class defense system as well as an orbiting defense task force. Sources inside the Confederacy eventually pinpointed these small, surgical strikes as originating from the Confederate’s “ghost” program, aptly named. Smiling, he thought about how his brain child could defeat the Confederacy’s in the race for super human soldiers. Their inevitable battle was soon coming, very soon.

Moving back over to his desk he grabbed the datapad, and scrolled through the final solutions to his computations. All of them indicated some chance of minor problems in the project, but that was to be expected when the program was so young. Going to a new directory he looked over the new suits schematics. It was far superior to a normal marine’s armor. These Hlojin Mark V suits, and the one Hlojin Mark VI would be part of the machine that would destroy the Confederacy’s ghost program; the suits were upgraded from the mark four after the resources began pouring in. Still, his program was a decade behind the “ghost” program. Top officials in Umoja wanted a preemptive strike. Rubbing his black hair, he thought about his twenty six soldiers, and how they would fair up against an unaccounted number of ghosts that had years to build their program. Looking at the hands on his watch he realized he had not slept for twenty eight hours, and needed some desperately before he made an error. Entering more computations for the datapad he set it down, and left the room, clutching his small, plain, silver cross over his chest in his hand as the chain it was connected to dug into the back of his neck.

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B3mc39x awoke to find himself on an operating table. Knowing the drill he stood up, and left the room. Moving through the facility he found what he was looking for. Stepping inside the barracks designed to hold a platoon his team in there. Checking on them he found each to have achieved their “zen” state in rest. B3mc39x worried about them all. It was his job as the field commander to make sure that when they were dropped into a hostile environment all of them would make it out, and that drop was coming soon. B3mc39x cared about all twenty five of them. He was their older brother, and keeper. He would make sure they all came out of this alive. He had to.
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B3mc38 struggled in his sleep. All he had ever known was his brothers, and what his instructors had taught him, and trained him to do from birth. That was to kill his fellow man as efficiently as possible. His five man squad was designated Alpha squad, and was the best out of them all. All training simulations pointed to them as the lead assault team. Something still bothered him though. He didn’t know it, but it was the fact that all he would ever know was death and destruction that bothered him. Still, he knew his brothers and that was good enough for him. But, there was that nagging feeling that was still there. One thing he knew though was that the rest of his brothers had turned sixteen, but he waited looking at the digital clock placed in the barracks as it glowed red in the darkness. In one minute he would be sixteen when the clock turned to the zero hour, and than he would be just the same as the rest of them. He was the second youngest; the first was their field commander who was born ten years behind them. His name was Fenix because he rose from the ashes when the program almost died out six years ago, and was cycled to achieve his artificial, sixteenth year long existence tomorrow. This was because the enzyme in his cells subsided after their six year existence, but B3mc38 didn’t know that. Looking up at the ceiling he wondered why the youngest was so important, he wasn’t the fastest, strongest, or really the best of anything, but he wasn’t the worst in any category either, just like he was. Sighing, he closed his eyes as the digital clock read 0:00:00, he was the same as his brothers again so he went to sleep. Tomorrow they were promised new equipment, and he couldn’t wait to see it.

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Sharp, short pain spread across B3mc38’s thigh. He missed the audible alarm because he only had five hours of sleep. Rolling off his bunk he hit the ground, bringing his arms up to absorb the short fall. Shooting into a standing position he filed out of the room with the other twenty five soldiers, and proceeded to fill his position in the five by five block for their morning exercises. When they finished they were ushered into the firing range, and issued their standard C-14 impaler gauss rifle weapons for practice. A sleek, angular weapon was presented to each of them also in its black case, except for the field commander who was issued a more compact design. They left them in their cases, and waited for someone to speak. A man showed up in a black, army dress uniform. He glanced at them individually before speaking.

“These are the first, long term use, personal rail guns that have been constructed. Each of them has a penetration ranging from two centimeters of Neosteel to a meter of Neosteel depending on the discharge rate, which can be adjusted from your suits HUD, but can also be done manually. Each shot drains some power from the energy storage, but is recharged through a small fusion generator in the butt of the gun. Discharging at a ninety five percent capacity or above can cause a wildcat destabilization of the fusion process inside the weapon. Each weapon fires a two point five six centimeter depleted uranium slug done so by directed magnetic fields that propel a slug to mach one before reaching the fifth field that boosts the slug to the desired velocity as set by your discharge rate. There are five fields to boost the slug to a high velocity while causing a minimal kickback. This weapon fires at a rate of one shot a quarter second, and the shots must count, because reaching a ninety six percent depletion of the energy source can cause permanent damage to the storage capacitor. The expected range of the weapon is five kilometers before the slug loses its penetration rate. Some of the ammo issued will have a smart computer in it to process when a target is near, or when it has penetrated a target, and then explode, sending out shrapnel fragments in a preset pattern. Private B3mc38 suit up in a Hlojin two, and take your shot. The rest of you still need practice, I want those reflexes tightened up.”

One of the individuals in the group stepped forward. Almost impossible to tell them apart, because of the same looks of the individuals. All short cropped black hair, and same physique. The only real difference was twenty individuals had black eyes, and five had blue eyes. One individual off to the side holding the compact R-11 had dark brown hair with very light blue eyes, almost silver. The beta squad leader stepped forward, and left the room as twenty four soldiers practiced shooting the targets at variable ranges from ten meters to five hundred. Each metal target that popped up was knocked down by several rounds, but only the first counted. After twelve minutes the targets stopped popping up, and a display screen rolled down. It was sorted into columns with an A group to an E group. Each of the columns was followed by rows with time measured in tenths, and hundredths of a second, an integer, and a percentage number. These represented their “names”, reaction time to drop a target, number of targets dropped, and the kill efficiency which was measured by shot placement, headshots being a ninety percent to ninety nine, and a hundred when the shot was placed in the imagined area of the obdula oblongata.

Sighing, the officer looked at the numbers in the booth, a room with a one way window, and displays of all their statistics over the soldier’s existence. Better than any enlisted soldiers rate, and better than the expected rate for them, but he still shook his head. Would it be enough? Some of them still showed signs of a decrease in efficiency as the drill went on. A second monitor showed a compact, angular suit walking down the corridors. He entered a command and the targets stopped popping up, as well as a red light going on in the firing range. Waiting for the suit to enter, he directed him over to one of the experimental weapons, and ordered him to fire at the empty marine suit that arose from the ground at the max range for the underground firing range of one kilometer.

B3mc38 shouldered the weapon, and prepared to fire it. Sighting in on the empty suit he looked it over. It was damaged in the torso, as well as having severe cracks in the legs. Smiling, he took the shot. The first metal screeching from the suit as it tore itself apart from the exit velocity of the slug was followed by a crack nearby. Placing the weapon on the rack, he looked at his own suit for what had caused the second crack. A small fracture traced itself on the shoulder from the kickback. Smiling, he knew he would like this new weapon as he looked at the metal fragments from the other suit down range.
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Combat drop: one
Umojan Special Forces. Division 1x, Four Horseman
Location: quadrant 529
Target: Confederate outpost
Objective: search and destroy ; no secondary
Failure chance based on simulators: zero
Expected casualty rate: zero

Mission Log initiating…

Twenty five Hlojin Mark V suits stood in the middle of the loading area, glistening in their black armor. Twenty five R-10 weapons were wielded by each of them as their main weapon of choice, as well as one R-11 being wielded by their field commander. Not the typical conventional gauss rifles, or canister rifles, but the railgun. A far slower rate of fire than the gauss rifle, but a far greater punch, say one shot every quarter second compared to the C-14 impaler gauss rifle’s rate on energy depletion, considered pretty slow by the soldiers wielding them. The rifles also sported a vast improved accuracy. Still, where a gauss rifle could only penetrate a marine suit’s armor without any special ammunition the railgun could easily penetrate a main battle tank’s hull. A problem with recoil for normal soldiers was the severe amount of backlash, even that generated by a magnetic field used as the force behind the projectile, with the slug leaving the chamber along the four rails that guided it. That’s what these soldiers were trained for though.

The field commander moved to the front, and addressed them verbally. B3mc38 disengaged his right arm gyros by means through his neural lace before it began to shake. He was worried about the commander finding out, but learned to block what B3mc39x could feel from him. Still he listened to, and respected his commander, and paid heed as he spoke, except for the objectives that were being displayed on his HUD. Flicking his eyes down, his suit read the motion, and scrolled to the last part of the mission briefing.

“Planet info: hostile environment, HEV recommended, development: class 6f, gravity:1.”

“We are going to go in, and smash the area. These are the enemies we are fighting, not to preserve our government, but to preserve the human race. You will smash the area, and kill without hesitation. Any non-hostiles in the compound will be taken captive, even though there shouldn’t be too many. We need to find out how and why they took out our citizens in quadrant 521. There is a platoon of enemy soldiers in the compound, and are veterans of the combine war. They haven’t seen us before, nor will they see us in this life again. You all now your drop vectors, and what to expect, the burden will be placed on the four squads not including alpha squad when they hit the facility first. Most of the defense is thought to be outside by the perimeter. Drop in ten seconds. Our band of brothers will bond through battle and beat the beast.”

An amen echoed through their secure communication network. Four squads each rushed to their solo drop pods on the sides of the stealth frigate as Alpha squad moved to the back. Markus moved to a vacant drop pod, and stepped in. The door of the frigate shut on him as the hatches of the drop pod closed vertically to seal him in as each layer was sealed. After each layer was secure the foam was injected to fill the pod to squeeze out any air, the foam solidified as a second chemical was injected to solidify it to that of steel. He checked his squad’s mental stability, increased levels of adrenaline in all, typical. Checking his own suit through the neural lace it was a green light so he waited for the hit they were trained for. Than it was there like a hammer from above. Markus checked his team’s vitals, seven blacked out but all were still green. This “hammer” was when they hit an atmosphere or gravity well after being launched from a magnetic acceleration system from the frigate, at least a five gee increase from standard in a perfect launch. He felt the increased temperature inside his pod, and waited as the first skin peeled off, and threw off its metal coating as he passed the upper atmosphere, and his pod showed its radar absorbing layer. Markus felt an unhealthy tug on his pod as some Confederate anti-aircraft took a vendetta against the first metal scraps that were thrown off. This must be more than an “outpost,” because nothing short of the best technology could hit them at their entrance velocity, or even come close. But what that tug meant was that his pod had no way of controlling itself as it began to spin in its descent, and this began to manifest as the lopsided gees began to force the blood to his head. Markus entered a preset code into his neural lace before blacking out.

His pod continued its descent, and four squad’s second layers blew as planned as the other pods continued their perfect descents to target zones. That uncontrolled spin on Fenix’s pod however manifested itself as it slammed into the concrete roof horizontally that was reinforced with neosteel instead of its nail shaped design punching through to the first layer as planned. It indented itself the ninety nine meters into the rock instead of the hundred past the neosteel. The pod’s preset code injected the third chemical to liquefy the foam as the third layer disengaged its locks, and the “top” layer blew off from the force of Markus’s suits jump system as it gave a short burst, revealing an unconscious soldier. Alpha squad’s pods penetrated into a large hollow chamber detected in the facility by a spy satellite. They were in for a rude awakening.

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Delta squad leader ejected from his pod one hundred meters above the surface as his suit’s thrusters took control to slow his descent to a reasonable break neck speed for normal solo pod drops. Raising his weapon, and through a neural lace ordered his infra-red goggles to drop down over his eyes. Sighting the large output of heat by a marine command suit he fired his railgun, and switched to his new target. A tenth of a second later four other thermals flashed on his screen as they were hit with four other slugs fired by his squad. By the time his team hit the ground in that second sixteen marines lay dead. A tenth of a second, his neural lace measured the time from his pod finishing deployment, and his first shot to that of a one hundredth of a second. He wondered about the other squad leaders and if he would be guaranteed the bragging rights for their first mission. [Oh yeah, no way any of my brothers can beat me.]

His suit overloaded the internal layer with the hydrostatic gel, and prepared his gyros for the shock absorption program for when he hit the ground. Delta squad leader felt a jarring effect as each of his squad mates hit the ground at forty kilometers a second, nothing to phase any of them after their first three practice jumps in the suits. He remembered to their first jumps with modified marine suits, and the months they spent in the medical lab. that was a long time ago though, so long ago that it was the first thing he remembered, but that was a different time so he refocused on his mission. Seeing no more targets not marked by the dead box he flipped up his snoopers, and looked at the damage they had caused. There really wasn’t much of a suit left as much of a lower torso, because of the force that shattered the top half when his slugs hit the face plate, and shattered the face plate as well as tearing off the top half of the marine suits except for the twelve other clean kills with a hole through the targets roughly three centimeters in diameter. For some reason Beta squad leader just liked to see all that blood and metal spread around like that, and set his capacitors to discharge the slug to effect his pleasure. Then it popped up on his screen, [mission leader incapacitated: continue with mission and accomplish objectives. Expected reinforcement time of enemy forces by sat probes placed at entrance warp points to system: thirty nine minutes four seconds]. That was the screen they hoped to never see, their efficiency as a division would decrease to ninety two percent as well as losing their psychic commander as well as their brother. But he just gave a shrug, the reinforcement time of the Confederates was faster than what he expected from the briefing. Then he heard the scream of an Alpha squad pfc.

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Squad leader AxmL saw the box go red indicating their field commander’s status. That was bad in any scenario. As his thrusters blew his pod, and only four others in this room did the same he flipped his snoopers down, and it hit the fan. A green box was in the middle of at least twenty thermals, and the field of fire to take out all the hostiles was a no go with the rail guns, but that wouldn’t stop him from clearing his share. Firing as his mind was occupied he was slower than the three other privates as new thermals flared on his screen of the heat signature of the slugs that tore through their targets. What amazed AxmL was the reaction time of these thermals though. They were already moving, and going for the meat in the middle of them. The pfc assessed the situation too slowly, and attempted to jump as he shot and was just a split second behind his nearest adversaries. He screamed as they attempted to pierce his suit with something solid, which seemed to at least make contact with his suit. Each of the other four suits automatically snapped their face shield down as they received the message of a jump of a friendly in their view. Looking on this room with bare eyes would have resulted in blindness from the transition of darkness to light as the three jets on the bottom of the pfc’s suit initiated their burn, and put him out of their reach, the top jets activated, and placed him ten meters on the ground away from the enemy thermals.

AxmL waited for that tenth of a second for his visual software to show up on his screen, and identify the enemy thermals for him with his blast shield still down, itching to take that shot before his privates did to show him up again, but also to reassure him that his pfc was still alive. Hell, it was already fubar enough without the psychic commander. Then his imagery system displayed positions transferred from his thermal readings on the outside of his seat to his suit’s view, and placed his targeting reticule according to where he aimed his weapon. He didn’t like the five hundredths of a second delay between the imagery and display. Taking the first shot he watched as he heard discharge of the other slugs in the room echo off the walls but heard one metallic pierce from the concrete sounds. Seeing the green box still clear he flipped up his snoopers after verifying that the thermals displayed all hostiles as neutralized. Turning on his floodlights he looked over the room and would have been scared had that not been beaten out of him in his early childhood. The “thermals” had been something he had never seen before, and looked like a mutated dog with plating of some kind. Changing his thoughts to the mission he turned to see where that metallic ping had come from and saw the door that looked like it had put resistance to the slug set at a twelve percent capacitor discharge. He turned to see the cameras, another challenge. He patched into the division’s secure frequency and radioed what had happened.

“Unidentified hostiles sighted inside the facility, repeat unidentified, not human. PFC Axm3 is injured, but his internal layer is sealed according to his suit. Proceed to penetrate the facility, enemy aware.”

Alpha squad leader inspected Axm3’s suit and watched as a slow trickle of crimson began to leak from a hole in his suit. Turning back to the pile he saw a larger corpse, almost snakelike with scythes instead of limbs or hands and one tail. Its tip of its scythe gleamed red, it had punctured through the two millimeters of reinforced, high density neo-steel as well as the Neosteel fiber weave placed underneath interwoven with their suits electronics. These suits were designed to not even have a dent from the c-14 impaler gauss rifle armor penetration rounds, but reality never matched up to what was expected in the lab. That’s what field tests were for….

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Squad E had an even better time. After mopping up the marines in their area they saw an angular dropship coming in fast. The squad leader increased his charge to forty percent for penetration of a dropship, and watched as his round deflected, leaving only a sizable indent in the side of the dropship.”

“Assistant leader increase charge to ninety four percent, and fire with an armor piercing round designed for shrapnel after penetration inside the ship.”

It took a quarter of a second to change the ammo, and increase the charge so the assistant squad leader fired at the troop bay as the squad leader aligned his shot for the cockpit at a thirty percent charge for the glass at a range of one kilometer. Easy pickings with the dropship only going at a thousand kilometers an hour for its drop run, and both shots hit. The squad leader watched with satisfaction as the glass of the dropship cracked very slightly from the shrapnel round inside as well as turn to a red color, seen with the optical zoom on their faceplates. The second round fired tore through the side of the ship, and it showed a two meter hole appear in the ship where the metal attempted to withhold the blow. Listing, the dropship turned to the near hillside and crashed, throwing up rock and a dust cloud as well as the smoke now billowing from the ship, just at the time the three privates noticed a new problem, three dots signifying wraiths in the distance which would soon get very close. Each private of the squad shifted to a thirty percent discharge of the capacitor and used their optical visors to great effect. Zooming in by 40x they took their shots, and watched the wraiths descend without grace to the ground and explode, still dots on the horizon. The assistant squad leader checked his railgun’s readout. It would charge up from the battery soon, but he could still take two ten percent shots. Squad leader E was still focused on the crash site with his optical zoom at 100x, extreme even for these soldiers, but he needed to make sure of the kill. What he saw didn’t bode well for them, half of a shrapnel fragment moved through the air to interrupt an approximately six foot by three foot section of smoke billowing from the dropships open hatch, another bad sign that it wasn’t even a ramp.

“Saddle up squad. We’re hoofing it to check the crash site. Keep thermals up.” Radoing in to the division frequency he checked in, “squad epsilon proceeding to crash site of a reinforcement boat one kilometer inside our target zone, checking status on enemy personnel inside, over.”

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Thirteen minutes later squad epsilon was at the crash site. “Squad leader checking in. Approaching downed dropship.” After checking for thermals, the only one being a shielded temperature from its engines at around thirty two degrees Celsius because it had overloaded the heat absorbing metal to get there that fast, they jumped the last one hundred meters to the ship. Es13xL gave a short hand signal and the two pfcs took up a breaching position next to the door. One nod to the other the one on the left of the door swung his weapon to cover the inside while the other moved through the opening of the black dropship. An all clear signal was radioed in, and the squad leader moved inside to investigate. Three bodies sat upright, secured by latches and buckles to their seats, punctured by slivers from the two hundred fifty fragmentation round with their heads drooped down while a fourth was laying on the floor in the middle of the dropship with two seats being empty. Two blood covered three inch slivers were embedded into the backs of one of the seats, one at shoulder level and one at neck level for someone sitting down. Signaling to one of the pfcs Es13xL moved to the prone body. Rolling it over he looked over the tight body suit of what he supposed to be the commander as the pfc raised his metallic boot, and caved in the dropship door that was secured by a four vertical horizontal locking mechanism. Raising his boot again he kicked the door in, and looked in on the two pilot’s bare musculature, and the fine, red spray from the ten thousand fragment round covering every available surface as well as the controls that sparked. Turning around he nodded his head and proceeded outside. Sliding his hand over the body suit, Es13xL noticed that the slivers from the two fifty round were somewhat held back by the suit.

“Squad Epsilon grab the bodies and proceed to dust off. I think this is the intel they wanted.”

Four other squad leaders from division X four horsemen radioed in their dust off. E4xL shook his head, the prone body had three spikes going through the right lung, and one spike penetrating the left lung.

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After two hours of waiting, a hostile environment ghost suit appeared in the engines of the downed dropship. Stumbling out of the engines she moved towards the facility. So much was going through her mind, because of the depleted uranium round that had driven itself into her neural inhibitors. Her suit dripped the bright red blood from another puncture in her left shoulder. Looking up, she saw the smoking facility. Something bothered her though, she felt a sense of relief for the facility being up in smokes, but also a failure for it happening but couldn’t understand why. Moving to the destroyed facility door she moved inside. New thoughts emerged in her mind but they weren’t hers.

[Knight to take his bishop, than move the queen for the checkmate, I wonder if this kid knows who he is dealing with, and what he is doing here. Top crack team that blew the shit out of this facility though. If I win this game I might be able to convince him to join my rebellion, and cause some real damage to the confederacy. What the crap… I lost.]

The other thoughts were not cohesive, and she felt a kinship with whoever held them. A broken string of thoughts, but it still wasn’t confused as hers were they had a sense of purpose. She had to find this person and find out what had happened.