A quick update came through an unexpectedly restored LBNet before the system went down again. According to the updated relay, Runser over in 1st Section died before even breaching the main QEP, and Pearl and Andrew from his fire team had retired as well. Half his fire team dead, that couldn’t be right, could it?
He was about to again query Dewi about the updated situation report, but almost psychically she seemed to know what he was about to ask and pre-emptively answered it. I have verified the recent update to the LBNet package, but I can only confirm what killed Runser. He was taken out by the automated defensive systems. It is possible that this is what got the rest of our team, but we don’t know what killed them at this moment. However, we must continue the mission and grieve later when we know more. I am now interfacing with Kobal and monitoring ours and the Mini’s sector. I detect no movement, no trace of any sentient lifeform, but my readings indicate ambient sounds congruent with movement of other non-Marine lifeforms. This could indicate that a creature is out there that we can’t see, but more likely is a result of whatever device is jamming this station. I still believe that rogue automated systems are at play here.
Paul was not sure what to do, what the right answer was, a situation he had never found himself in before. He hesitated, though he knew it was unwise to stay stationary with blind spots in his coverage, and not an ounce of cover or concealment.
He was stuck in his head and didn’t notice the dark, hulking Ravanac creeping up on him.
— Chapter 10 —
Deck 3 Sierra: Thrydwulf win Krigaren
Thrydwulf stalked the last two demons on this level. He found them squatting down, searching for him. They didn’t know he was protected by Jumalatar, safe from their impure eyes. He was facing the larger one, the one without the string attached to its spitting stick. This one seemed to be in charge, so its abhorrent presence had to be cleansed first; it was Jumalatar’s will.
Thrydwulf stumbled as he slowed to a stop. He knew what he had to do: wait and watch. Then, he needed to take his opportunity to creep closer and send the demons back into the void. When it became obvious that these two changelings weren’t going to move on their own, Thrydwulf took the initiative. He deftly flicked the wrist holding his karau, stabbing his obsidian blade into the weak neck plating of the demon’s armor. The changeling never felt a thing as the dark blade severed the spinal cord, leaving it dying, and the globules of blood floating around him. It wasn’t even aware enough to be upset at the indignity of having died without firing a shot.
Without the first changeling to protect the second’s back, Thrydwulf was able to quietly eliminate it. As soon as he pulled the blade from the first neck, he was slicing through the second in a practiced maneuver that conserved movement while increasing the force of the blow.
How could these creatures die so easily? Is there even any honor in these kills, for they die like defenseless cubs? Thrydwulf pondered these thoughts about the Kor-Lir minions as he cleaned their blood off his blade, wiping it as best he could on their ceramic-looking armor. These creatures will surely go to their command level eventually, he thought. I will await them there as I pray to the Great Good for a swift victory. The Prophecy must be fulfilled.
— Chapter 11 —
Wren Shuttle Outside QEP 16
Lourdes Fontaine was never a patient woman, so sitting in the cramped shuttle was definitely grating for her. She continually pestered her AI for any update to the situation, practically breaking the arm rest of the small three-Marine shuttle she was sitting in to monitor this mission. It had been about six hours, though it seemed like six days, when she was finally alerted that the jamming had ceased and a data update had been received. After reviewing the data with Captain Grimgerde, she contacted the mission leader.
“Lance Sergeant Nourse, do you copy, over?” There was a brief pause, possibly the delay in the signals, before she received a reply.
“Roger, Lance Sergeant Nourse here.”
“Lance Sergeant, 2nd Section has already lost two Marines. We don’t know what happened to them, they could’ve been handed their discharge papers by the security system like Runser. We aren’t aware what threat we are facing, so stick together and eliminate the threat. Oh, and above all do NOT panic at the unknown, embrace the chance to prove your worth. Now go do your jobs, Marines!”
— Chapter 12 —
Deck 4 Sierra: Alpha Team, 2nd Section
Corporal Blythe Hauer couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her, but her sensors and her AI assured her that her Marines were alone. The recent deaths of her squad mates, however, had her questioning her sensors and her AI. If we are alone, how did we lose Andrew and Pearl? And now I’ve got new orders that say I’m to keep my section together from here out. She made a mental note to herself not to separate her section again, even when her orders gave her the leeway to be more cautious.
When she got towards the end of her rounds, Blythe noticed that there were scuff marks along one of the bulkheads. She called a halt to her fire team, and began to slowly advance on the position to investigate. Maybe this was what killed my friends?
Luckily, as she got closer, the marks looked too softened by age to be connected to the current situation. Nothing to worry about, but it did appear someone had tried scavenging the station’s ammunition stores. Could there be pirates in this quarantined system? After some thought, Blythe decided that she needed more information about it so she could address it in her after action report, and marked her TacScreen to indicate this section. She then set to recording what could be seen through various lenses: x-ray, gamma ray, ultraviolet, heat sensitive, and low-light vision settings. Satisfied that she had done her due diligence, she used her hand and arm signal to motion her unit forward.
After making it back to the elevator, Blythe made the appropriate reports and continued to the rendezvous point at the elevator’s exit on Deck 5 Sierra.
— Chapter 13 —
Deck 5 Sierra: Alpha Team, 2nd Section
Blythe couldn’t shake that feeling that something was amiss. Even her most trusted grenadier’s body language indicated he was worried, which frightened her too. Fear was a feeling the warriors in the Human Marine Corps were familiar with, but this felt different. No matter how hard she tried, Blythe couldn’t shake the feeling that this mission was about to go south for her squad.
After ordering them to form a defensive perimeter protecting the elevator from anyone attacking it from Deck 5, and from any hostiles emerging from the elevator, Blythe’s Marines began to wait for their comrades. Hurry up and twiddle your thumbs was a common enough Marine occurrence that it took about fifteen minutes before anyone got worried. After another quarter hour had passed, she knew that the rest of her section had run into some sort of trouble.
Not one to sit quietly, keeping his thoughts to himself, her trusted grenadier, Jason, pinged her for a private conversation. Jason jumped right into the meat of his concerns, as was his way. “Blythe, buddy, this doesn’t feel right to me. I think if Beta was gonna join us, they would’ve already done it. We can’t sit here forever; we need to act. Do we go forward and frakk our friends, or do we investigate what happened? I say we go after our fellow Marines. Heck, maybe even wait for 1st Section to join the party.”
Jason was clearly prepared for the worst, which pissed Blythe off. She was never one to avoid a dressing down from her superiors, even if it meant her stripes, so his expecting such behavior angered her more than she liked. What did this mean about my relationship with Jason? Did this fear of taking another dressing down like the one he had gotten earlier from Veteran Sergeant Fontaine make him gun shy? Can I still count on him anymore? Jason’s voice spewing on pulled her out of her head. Blythe made a decision there to cut off his comms and address his concerns directly to her fire team, hoping that the rest of her section was out there somewhere.
“Alpha Fire Team, with Beta Team not arriving at the rendezvous point,” she began, “we have
two options. We can go forward and continue the mission with unknown threats at our six or we can go find our brothers and sisters. To me, the answer is obvious… No Marine Left Behind!”
Jason was obviously still upset, which made Blythe even angrier with him, because he pinged her a private message through his LBNet. “That seemed forced. I wonder if I could do better as a striper? Maybe it’s time we find out? After this mission, I am challenging for your job. De Wit out.”
— Chapter 14 —
Deck 3 Sierra: Alpha Team, 2nd Section
Corporal Blythe Hauer knew that the best tactical solution would be to start on Deck 1 Sierra, re-clearing each floor and herding whatever delayed the rest of her section towards the weapons deck on Deck 13. However, she didn’t have the manpower to hold each floor after clearing it, so she decided to head straight for where she’d lost contact with her Marines.
“Alright, Alpha Team, stay sharp and keep on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Trust your AI, but rely on your own senses too, because our sensors have been acting so craptastically that I suspect the Navy is frakking with us. Call out if you observe anything suspicious. When in doubt, shoot that mother frakker until the carousel runs dry.”
Blythe began her patrol, trusting her Marines to fall into line behind her. She reached the elevators, but after finding no trace of Beta-2 she ordered her team to search the deck again. This continued, until after the fifth iteration when she had to concede that she didn’t know and couldn’t find out what had happened to them.
“Alright, Alpha Team, we can’t keep wasting time searching this way. Our new priority is to find and destroy whatever is jamming our signals. If we can get signals back again, then the two survivors from Beta should be able to contact us, or their suits will ping our TacScreens. We will proceed directly to the elevator and start clearing deck by deck as efficiently as possible. Next stop, Deck 5 Sierra!”
As the fire team began pulling back and heading towards the elevator to continue the mission, Marine Mira Jones started muttering over the 2nd Section LBNet about ghosties and monsters.
“Stow that shite, Marine,” snarled Blythe, “or you’ll have bigger problems than some dead and rotting corpse!”
— Chapter 15 —
Deck 6 Papa: Beta Team, 1st Section
As Lance Scipio patrolled the corridors of the power plant, which took all of Deck 6, he felt something was off. As if sensing his unspoken question, Xena explained that he was feeling the energy generated by the plant in a subconscious way, but his suit was protecting him from any potential contaminant.
Knowing that he couldn’t afford to slack off – Tango Squad had already lost three Marines – Lance tasked Xena with maintaining a continuous monitoring of his sector, maintaining positive control over any communications issues which might need his attention, and interfacing with the other AIs in his fire team. Knowing that he had done his duties as a team leader, he went back to scanning his sector. Moving was difficult on the power plant deck, because of all of the wire conduits that snaked throughout every compartment they were clearing. To make matters worse, all of the hundreds of access panels had to be checked for anything which might disrupt communications. Also making movement tough through this deck was the zero-g, forcing the Marines to clamp their boots to the deck to avoid swimming through a space riddled with hazardous obstacles.
As Beta Team moved through the power plant deck in a staggered file, alternating sides, they scanned with AI-assisted human eyes and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Due to lock-down procedures and a lack of security access, they were prohibited from entering the hardened core of the plant, but from what Lance Sergeant Nourse briefed them on at the elevator, anything inside the containment center would be dead and glowing by now anyway. Lance had to mentally shake his head and get his mind back in the game, lest he end up like Ishrat.
As he continued his patrol it quickly became apparent that nothing was on this floor. With the mysterious deaths in 2nd Section they needed to hurry, but in a caution born of uncertainty, Lance kept his fire team tactically deployed until they secured the massive plant and met back up with Alpha Team at the elevators.
Lance could only shake his head, wondering at the actions of his section leader. Was Lance Sergeant Acheron Nourse losing his edge? Was he afraid? Why wasn’t he taking this seriously, when the section had already lost Ishrat, and the other section had lost two more? Does he know something I don’t about the other section?
— Chapter 16 —
Deck 6 Papa: Alpha Team, 1st Section
Lance Sergeant Nourse noticed how cautiously Scipio was conducting his floor-by-floor investigation of the downed QEP. He knew that Scipio was doing things in accordance with the DMs, but he’d eat a damn flenser pistol if that oaf kept him from his date with that tight little rifle bunny, Jillian from Grendel’s cryo section. In order to make it back to Jillian, he had to first go find out what happened to 2nd Section and pull their arse out of the sling.
There can’t be anything out there, the sensors would have picked it up. Whatever is going on, it is over in 2nd’s area of operations. This has to be standard mechanical failure over here, has to be. Let’s get this done and get home. Bad enough we lost Ishrat towards overzealous idiocy.
“Listen up, 1st Section,” instructed Acheron, “we are gonna mix things up going forward. Alpha Team will take point, clear the decks while Beta Team secures our egress route. No reason to miss dinner mess onboard Grendel… or the grok call. Plus, 2nd Section isn’t going to save itself. Now let’s fall back to the elevator and clear the CIC on Deck 7.”
— Chapter 17 —
Deck 7 Papa: Beta Team, 1st Section
Lance Scipio was pissed. He knew exactly why Lance Sergeant Nourse had pulled point. The frakktard wanted to rush so he could get grokked and inspect racks with that pretty little sailor who seemed to float between Marines on a weekly basis. Lance was about to begin his own patrol of the CIC, independent of Alpha Team and his section leader, but Xena read his mind and locked him out of his combat suit before he’d taken a step.
You need to rethink this one, said the AI. Being the Mini doesn’t mean your brains gotta shrink too, oaf. You make that call and it’s retirement time for you. If you die I might not get another human, so toe the line.
After saying her piece, Xena unfroze his ACE Combat Suit and went back to her priority tasks. Lance shrugged. He knew better than to ignore his AI. Least this mission will go quickly, he thought, and they can’t blame me for it. Doesn’t Nourse realize that we’ve lost good Marines on this Op and its past time to take it seriously? At no time did it ever occur to him that he might’ve misjudged his section leader, but in the heat of tense situations rational thought is often overridden with fear and paranoia.
No sooner had Lance finished his internal rant about his section leader than he received a call to rejoin his boss at Frame 29. He rushed there with his team, trusting that his friends in Alpha Team had cleared it successfully, drawing confidence in the abilities of his fire team to keep him safe. What awaited him when he arrived, however, shook him to the core. There were ribbons of blood floating everywhere, like some macabre version of the children’s digital games he played as a kid. Heads and limbs hacked off, moving around like flotsam crashing against the shore. If not for Xena, Lance wouldn’t have known that there were in fact four bodies of Navy personnel in among the detritus of lives cut short. I guess we know what happened to the missing Spacers sent to investigate the malfunctioning QEP.
With a confidence he didn’t feel, Lance knew he had to take charge so Nourse could make a heroic effort to reach Sergeant Fontaine outside the QEP. “Alright, 1st Section, while our section leader makes an effort to contact the Wren Shuttle, let’s see if we can’t find working helmets from these Spacers. Maybe we can get a look at what killed them, so we know what we are hunting.”
After several moments of searching, Chloe found an undamaged helmet belonging to one of the Spacers.
She quickly handed it over to Braden Campen so he could use his digital whiz kid skills to see if any of its data remained. Braden succeeded in unlocking the data, which he immediately turned over to Lance, before he resumed his joint efforts with Sergeant Nourse to re-raise the WBNet so they could communicate with their bosses and each other.
When Lance got the digital video stream, he was simultaneously afraid and enraged at the loss of the Spacers he didn’t even know that well, and probably wouldn’t have liked if he did. Whatever his feelings were, they were humans too and didn’t deserve to die like that. The recorded data was chaotic, but it clearly showed something was out there. It wasn’t merely the automated security going haywire, there was a creature with glowing eyes attacking them.
Lance quickly notified Nourse, who was still trying to break through the signal wall jamming the WBNet. “Sergeant, we have confirmed that there is a creature onboard the QEP. It killed the four Navy Spacers, brutally so. It was horrible. We need to proceed cautiously, but in an expedited manner to clear Zone Papa and relieve 2nd Section. I now believe that Beta-2 was also killed by this creature. It’s time to mount its head as a trophy on the 941st Regimental Wall! 1st Section awaits your orders, Sergeant.”
As Lance waited, wondering if his section leader would live up or down to his expectations, Nourse again proved why he was chosen for the sergeant’s billet. “Alright, 1st Section, we have several conflicting parameters for our mission. One, we have to thoroughly clear Zone Papa of the QEP. Two, we have to do so expeditiously which constrains our due diligence. Three, we have to eliminate the threat onboard the station, and finally we have to ride to the rescue and save the rest of our squad. After conferring with Team Leader Scipio, I believe that whatever killed the two members of Beta-2 is the same creature that eviscerated the maintenance Spacers. It is our conclusion that this thing cleared Deck 7 Papa, and then set up shop over on Deck 3 Sierra where 2nd Section should be located. We’re going to clear Zone Papa as quickly as we can, and then relieve 2nd because their lives depend on it. So stay alert, stay alive, and trust your own senses because our sensors aren’t working right. Move out!”
The Demons of Kor-Lir_The Sleeping Legion Page 4
