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Grass Eaters 2 | 58 | Margins II
🕑 Added 2024-09-27 16:47:00 +0000 UTCTRNS Crete, Datsot-3 (1,200 km)
POV: Carla Bauernschmidt, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
“I shouldn’t order you to do this, Carla,” Amelia said from her screen. “Your people aren’t even supposed to be there. Your Puppers are supposed to be on leave.”
“I know,” Carla replied simply. “But we are. So you will.”
“So I will,” Amelia confirmed. “Those are your orders.”
“I understand. The stakes are too high.”
Amelia nodded reluctantly. “Yes, the stakes are too high, and we have no other choice. Everything is on the line.”
“We’ll get it done, Amelia. Crete, out.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
POV: Baedarsust, Malgeir Federation Marine Infantry (Rank: High Pack Leader)
In the hangar, many of the crew were gathered in a circle around a card game between several Malgeir Marines and a few brave Terran spacers. The Terran enlisted had brought an actual drum set next to the game, and an aspiring musician was on it, banging on the loud instrument to the beat of one obnoxious song after another.
The apparent hypothesis was that the noise might be enough to distract and equalize the advantages the Malgeir card players had in reading subtle Terran body language, especially hearing irregularities in their heartbeat. It was evidently not enough to stop Pack Leader Frumers, who had gathered a large pile of tokens on his side of the tablet.
Suddenly, Spommu ran into the hangar, breathless from her sprint.
Baedarsust greeted her as she entered, “Spommu! Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“The officers are coming!”
“The LT?”
“All of them! They’re out looking for blood! Or worse, volunteers!”
Before he had time to comment on that development, Aida strode through the same door Spommu had just entered.
“Attention on deck!” Aida shouted as she entered.
The drummer dropped his drumsticks, and the entire hangar immediately stood at attention. Aida straightened up as well, pivoting to face the hangar entrance.
A few seconds later, the officers entered the hangar, including the captain, her XO, and several of the bridge crew they all recognized.
Carla spoke up first. “At ease.”
Some of the Marines relaxed their posture, but they all remained listening attentively.
“All of you know the situation we are in. The danger our home system is in. Atlas has put Admiral Waters in charge of the entire defense of Sol; that’s how you know it’s desperate. I won’t lie to you. We can’t stop this fleet from getting to Sol,” she said, her eyes sweeping through her crew. “But what we will do is we will defend it and its people with every ship, every spacer, and every Marine we have. That is… our duty. And in preparation for that duty, we have been ordered onto a difficult mission. Some say impossible.”
The hangar was deadly silent except for the ambient hum of the inertial compensators.
“I say, it’s just not been proven possible yet.” She turned to face the Marines. “My Cretan Marines and spacers. You have been tasked to do the most dangerous, the riskiest jobs Atlas could find for us in the Red Zone. You have done it well. And you have done it all without complaint. But now, I must ask another miracle from you.”
Carla pointed in the direction of the hangar main door. “Out there, in this system, there is now a fleet of over five thousand Znosian ships. On one of those ships, there is intelligence vital to the defense of our home. We need to board that ship. We need to extract its data. And we need to transmit it back to Atlas.”
There were a few murmurs in the crowd, and she waited for them to absorb the information. The hangar quickly quieted down again so she could continue.
“Those are our orders. Atlas thinks that our task ends when we hand the data over to them. But our mission — it is much more than that; it is much more difficult than that. This will not be a one-way trip for our Marines. We are going to go home with that data, and we are going to go home with our Marines. We are all going home. Together. That is my personal promise to every one of you.”
Carla looked at the faces of each of her Marines, and she had no doubts in her heart. Her sincerity was written on her face. And on their faces, she saw total and complete faith in her.
“The Crete is not a taxi. We are not going to just drop the Marines off and get out of dodge. We will stay — under fire if necessary — and we will stay until every last Marine has been evacuated. Because we are… one crew!”
“One fight!” the hangar roared in unison.
“One crew!” she repeated.
“One fight!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Baedarsust followed the captain curiously onto the upper decks. They entered an empty conference room, the one where he was promoted.
Abruptly, she turned around and stared into his eyes. “High Pack Leader Baedarsust, do you understand the mission assignment you have been given?”
“Yes, Captain. I have reviewed the briefing material.”
“Good. It is of vital importance to the defense of Sol. It must be completed, at any cost. Do you understand what that means?”
He looked her in the eye earnestly. “I do, ma’am. I do.”
“Good. If you do this… I’ll make sure you get a Defender of the Republic medal for it.”
The second most prestigious medal given out for combat. It would qualify him — and his clan — for a comfortable lifelong pension and free rides wherever in the Sol system. Only a handful of Malgeir Marines had ever earned one of those, in the Red Zone campaign, and there were even fewer who received it alive.
“I don’t— thank you, ma’am.” He stood up straight and snapped his best Terran salute. “The mission will be completed. At any cost.”
“Good,” she said. Carla studied his complex expression for a few seconds. Then, she looked down at her well-decorated dress uniform. With a pinch, she removed one of the medals on it, and she pinned it on his chest next to his other campaign medals. “Take mine for now.”
“Ma’am?” Baedarsust asked, his face balling up in confusion as he looked down at the gold-colored star adorned with an intricate shield. “But that’s— that’s— this one’s yours. I haven’t earned it yet.”
“You will. I can see it on your face.” She clasped a hand on his shoulder. “I’m pinning this on you now, because I know you’ll earn it tomorrow.”
And at that moment, if she’d asked him to jump into vacuum, he would have done it for her, head-first and without hesitation.
Which was… not that different from what the mission was, after all.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
ZNS 1006, Plaunsollib (4,800 Ls)
POV: Stsinkt, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Ten Whiskers)
The ships of the Grand Prophetic Fleet cut through the system of Plaunsollib with haste. There were no strategic targets in this system. No targets worth destroying — or defending — no planets worth settling, and it was one of the rare systems without a gas giant. Its only point of note as a system was that it was one blink away from Datsot, and its only claim to fame was when it became known as the last system on the infamous Highway of Death during the Lesser Predator campaign to isolate and retake Datsot orbit from the invasion fleet led by Zero Whiskers Ditvish.
Nonetheless, Stsinkt was taking no chances. She had dispersed her ships in a wide pattern — almost thirty light-minutes apart from wing to wing — to avoid potential mines and FTL traps. They proceeded through the system, scanning with their sensors in every quadrant they could aim them at. She found herself missing the radar ships the Great Predators destroyed in Preirsput; she wasn’t sure how useful they would be in a fight, but that the Great Predators bothered to target and take them out earlier was a sign that they must have seen them as valuable.
“Any signs of them?” she asked for the dozenth time since they blinked into the system.
“No, Ten Whiskers. Not even a defense station. They must have evacuated this system.”
“Keep looking,” Stsinkt insisted.
Half an hour later, her paranoia became justified as the consoles beeped a warning.
“Enemy ship spotted,” her computer officer reported, sitting up in his chair. “Near an asteroid near Plaunsollib-6. They are boosting for our fleet! They’re right on top of the 4291!”
“The 4291?” Stsinkt clarified. “What is its importance to our fleet? Which one is—”
“One of our battlecruisers! Flagship for Squadron 54!”
“Are we in range?” she asked urgently.
“No, they’re twenty light minutes out. The information we’re getting is twenty minutes out of date. They might have already… rejoined the Prophecy.”
“It’s just one enemy ship?” Stsinkt puzzled.
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. Just one.”
“It may not be just one ship. Alert captains across the entire fleet: be on the lookout for more enemies. This might be another diversion, or a trap. Whatever happens, do not overreact. We must make it to the other side with as many ships as possible and get to the next system.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. Should we… converge on 4291 to kill the predators?” he asked.
“No,” she said, sighing and shaking her head. “They have already rejoined the Prophecy. And our ships near her— they have either destroyed that enemy ship by now, or they too have rejoined the Prophecy, or the predators have gotten away. By the time we send an order out to them for anything, it’ll have been forty minutes since they saw that ship.”
“Yes, Ten Whiskers. Their lives were forfeited…”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
ZNS 4291, Plaunsollib (5,400 Ls)
20 minutes ago
POV: Baedarsust, Malgeir Federation Marine Infantry (Rank: High Pack Leader)
Clad in heavy EVA armor, Baedarsust gripped his rifle tightly in his left paw and the forearm of one of his squad’s combat robots, “Marvin” in his right. He sat sandwiched between “Marlene” and “Marvin”, facing his squadmates Frumers, Spommu, and Quaullast.
Sandwiched. Sandwiches are great. Sandwiched, not so much.
Next to the front exit of the assault shuttle sat another four combat robots: “Marcy”, “Margaret”, “Marco”, and “Margot” to fill out the whole squad. At only ten butts, the confined assault pod was technically understrength, but the remaining two seats were taken up by the extra munitions and heavy equipment that Margot and Marco were tasked to carry.
Ignoring the radio chatter in his helmet, Baedarsust concentrated on the sound of his own breathing in his helmet, trying to ignore the rattling and extra loud hum of the inertial compensator counteracting the powerful burn thrusters burning at the back of the pod. The external camera monitors showed nothing but an empty star field. They were too far from the Crete to see it and too far from their destination ship to see that either.
Too far from anything else to even judge from relative motion just how much acceleration their pod was putting out with its burn-out thrusters. Unless he looked at the numbers on the instruments. Which he tried not to.
Better not to see.
As far as he knew, the ZNS 4291 was randomly chosen. It was just a big, command-type ship on the edge of the enemy fleet that was passing unaware next to the asteroid that the Crete had been hiding behind.
Baedarsust was not sure how the Crete planned to make it out alive from here, but he was sure he would be on it when it did. One way or another. The captain said so herself.
The pod’s rattling shook him out of his thoughts. The monitors showed the star field outside flip, and the inertial compensators went up another octave as the assault pod flipped and started its rapid deceleration burn.
“Two minutes,” he warned into his radio.
His squad was quiet now, knowing the grave danger they were heading into. This wasn’t a Red Zone patrol, nor even one of the high-risk raid missions there that could always end in some nutjob triggering a suicide vest in their snouts.
This was an entire enemy ship — hundreds of angry Grass Eaters, maybe over a thousand — ready to kill them all. And they were going to be playing on enemy home turf. Despite running what must have been thousands of ship-boarding training scenarios, it was where the enemy ate, where they slept, and where they went to work every day.
All his training told his gut… it was danger.
As if underscoring that point, their six combat robots ran a last-minute diagnostic on their rifles in unison, turning them over and fiddling with their settings before calibrating and arming them electronically. In the past, Baedarsust often observed amusingly how closely the Terrans had made their robotic and digital creations in their own image, copying everything down to even their odd habits.
Now, he just looked down at his own rifle, turned it over twice, and double checked its settings in his helmet display. He was a Cretan Marine now. It didn’t hurt to be thorough.
“One minute,” Baedarsust read out from his display.
Spommu called out into the radio, “Hey boss, you think we’re going to be the first Federation Marines to ever board a Grass Eater ship?”
“Maybe just of this ship type,” Frumers speculated. “I’m sure we’ve tried before—”
“Successfully board,” Quaullast qualified for Spommu before she jumped in to argue.
Baedarsust smiled reassuringly at them in his helmet. “First to take one and leave alive, that’s for sure.”
“At least if Badger Squad doesn’t beat us to the bridge first,” Spommu said grinning.
“No way,” Baedarsust said, shaking his ears dramatically inside his helmet at the newly acquired friendly rivalry with the other squad that now joined them at the front of the mess line for ice cream. “Besides, their primary objective is going for the reactor to prevent power cutoff and self-destruct. Now… Crickets Squad, we’re supposed to meet up with them right outside the bridge. If we see Badger there before we take it, something has gone truly pear-shaped.”
“Have you ever had a pear? Despite how the Terrans disparage it, it’s actually pretty good.”
“I’ve had the flavor in ice cream,” Spommu volunteered. “And the expression is about the shape, not the taste, you dummy.”
“Why would the shape—”
“Twenty seconds,” Baedarsust warned, and the squad shut up. They clutched their seats and rifles even harder. Only their suits’ intelligent limiters prevented them from breaking everything they held onto with their hard clutches.
Ten…
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
As the countdown timer approached zero, Baedarsust snuck a glance at the external camera. He saw barely a glint in the far distance, marked on the monitor as the enemy ship ZNS 4291. There were several bright lines stabbing out from it, tracers from its point defense engaging… something — several somethings. He hoped it was not another one of their fellow assault pods.
Thud thud thud thud thud.
He heard a rapid series of clunks as their assault pod ejected an array of decoys and countermeasures aimed to confuse enemy sensors.
One…
The enemy ship got bigger, a lot bigger, in just a split second. He didn’t realize that the pod moved that quickly, almost like he was riding a missile.
Wait, that’s exactly what I’m riding…
At the last moment, he remembered his training to secure his tongue safely inside his mouth—
Bang.
Baedarsust felt the impact. Even the advanced inertial compensators in the pod weren’t good enough to take out its bite. He felt like he’d been hit in the chest by something hard, knocking the air out of his lung. The edge of his vision went dark for a moment.
There was silence for a moment as the squad recovered from the momentary concussion. Looking up, he was relieved to see that all his squadmates were coughing, checking their arms and legs. Everything still looked mostly intact.
“Everyone good?” he called out.
“All good, boss,” Spommu coughed out. “Ouch, I hope we’re not doing that again.”
“I think I can taste some blood,” Frumers said, his voice funny. “I bit my tongue.”
“You’re lucky it didn’t just come all the way off,” Spommu commented as she peered into his helmet.
“I thound funny.”
“It’s an improvement.”
“Alright, let’s not just sit here all day, Lemmings,” Baedarsust said as he checked the sensors in his display and prepared to stand up. “We’ve got a ship to take. Quaullast, get your toys ready.”
The squad and their robots removed their seat restraints, got up gingerly, and carefully stacked up at the exit with Marvin and Marlene at the head.
“Our impact breached the hull. We hit the midsection as expected. No more air pressure in the hallway on the other side, but there’s still gravity from the inertial compensators,” Baedarsust read from his display. “Ready to go? Alright, three… two… one.”
At his word, Quaullast activated the door, which ejected off its explosive hinges into the hallway. Marvin and Marlene stormed onto the enemy ship, weapons ready. Taking a deep breath, Baedarsust followed a second later, and the rest of his squad tagged along behind him.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meta
Dis-pear-age.
Comments
AnAbsoluteVillain
Loving this! Boarding action, how fun. 🐶🥰🐰
Krzychu0304
If rescuing marines was forbidden because it was a sure death. If someone disobeyed orders, going to certain death, trying to take marines back on board... I expect there will be no plot armor, and such a daring risk will end as it should, i.e. with an additional, unnecessary death.
Spooker
That you, Mav?
Valdis Trautmanis
That, or the plan is to come back with the entire 4291 or one of her shuttles, rocking it's wings so that your guys know it's you. Let me guess now - they're after the 4291's prefix codes? 😅
Spooker
😭
51sydney
prediction: there's no plan to get them out
