Sacremon (Harmony War Series Book 1) (23 page)

           
“Well this day just keeps on getting better,” Jerome complained.

           
“As long as it's not on us we keep moving,” Mark said, jogging through the undergrowth. There was a myriad of colors but none of them cared, they just wanted to get through the tangled mess as fast as possible.

           
It took them about ten minutes to get close to the other division's section.

           
“Stupid.” There was no answer to Marks challenge as he signalled for Jerome and Tyler to flank as he moved up, he nestled his E-12 into his shoulder as he crept forward.

           
He came to a ridge and found the squad. They were all contorted around the hole they'd dug. It looked like they'd opened their visors to rest when the poison had hit. They'd struggled in pain, their eyes had bled and their skin had opened in blisters. Their lungs and airways filled with blood as they fell apart. A few had been lucky enough to kill themselves.

           
Fear, raw and terrible filled Mark.

           
He'd seen death before, but this wasn't killing, this was exterminating.
That's how I'm going to die, with no one and nothing, in the dust on some shitty planet.
He wanted to throw up but knew it would just stay in his helmet. He wanted to run as far and as fast from here as possible. He pressed his fear, his vulnerabilities and emotions down and let anger fill him.

           
“Put your gun down!” Someone said in accented Universal. Mark saw three people emerge from the tree line behind him; lines showed that they'd been in the trees waiting for a victim. He'd been so wrapped up in grief he hadn't heard them.

           
Mark knew that they'd kill him if he turned, in his head he was swearing at himself for letting his guard down.

           
“I have three assholes behind me,” Mark said to Jerome and Tyler.

           
“Coming.” Tyler's voice cold as hardened steel.

           
Explosions went off somewhere in the background as Mark took off his sling and lowered the gun.

           
He twitched his triceps, catching the blade with a thumb.

           
The three manoeuvred so that they were behind him as they advanced.

           
“Look at that you have a perfect grave already,” one snarled.

           
“Fucking Company pig,” another said as Mark fear turned to anger.
Wait.
He thought as one of them pressed their gun to his head, the others at twenty degrees from him on either side, not ninety so they had a clear shot.

           
“Do it Syd!” One said to the executioner, their barrel shaking on Mark's helmet.

           
“Any last...” The other that had called Mark a company pig started.

Mark turned, his left hand slapping the rifle that had been pointing at his head, away. It went off as Mark drove his blade into the would-be-executioner's neck. He left it there as the hand he had used to slap the rifle away now grabbed it, finding the trigger.

The Executioner dropped.

           
Mark's augments were ramped up as he eyeballed the two others that had been lounging back with their guns.

           
He fired on the first. Their chest and head disappeared. The rifle was some sort of grenade launcher.

The third was already running. Mark fired at their legs, he must've nicked them with a round as they went down sprawling.

           
The person beneath Mark was kicking and screaming. Mark had apparently gotten their windpipe instead of jugular. They were drowning in their own blood the noise sent a shiver even through Mark's haze.

           
“Thought you could kill me fucker?” He snarled as he ripped off their helmet.

           
He stood and looked at his executioner, anger turning to dread and guilt.

           
It was a girl, she must have been in her teens and now she was gargling on the same poison that killed the other section. She clawed at her face to somehow try and stop it. She tried to scream but nothing came out but gargles from her opened windpipe.

           
Thoughts raced through his mind of how much she had to live for, how she could've had an
actual
family here. Maybe the other two had been relations even.

           
He looked at her, his eyes filled with horror at what he had done. He moved to his rifle, grabbing it with numb hands. Training driving him forward.

           
“Mark!” Tyler yelled out as Mark got his rifle. He looked at the girl.

           
This is fucked up. She could've had a normal life, not one lived in a dump, or fighting for her life in some forest somewhere.

           
Even with her last breaths she was fighting for that life. He knew it wouldn't come, he could only end her suffering.

           
“Mark!?” Tyler said as Mark pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the girls head.

           
It bucked in his hand, her arms falling to her sides. Her silent attempt at screaming stopping as she looked up at the sky with crying eyes. He looked at his hands which were covered in her blood from putting a knife in her throat.

           
He pulled the blade from her neck, wiping it on the ground.

           
“You okay?” Tyler asked, his rifle up and ready, scanning the area.

           
“Yeah, let's go meet up with the section,” Mark said, knowing that he wouldn't forget that moment for the rest of his life.

           
“Victor's report in,” Pullo demanded.

           
“It looks like the local population is using gas. I'm marking the section's position, they're all dead. I've got a sample of the toxin.” Mark said.

           
“Good, I've got in contact with higher. We'll get that sample to the medics and they should be able to get us a vaccine. I want you back here immediately,” Sergeant Pullo said.

           
“Yes sergeant,” Mark answered..

           
Jerome was moving to the man that Mark had sent tumbling.

           
“Is he alive?” Mark asked.

           
“Yeah, looks like it,” Jerome replied.

           
“Sarge, we've also got someone from the local population, a fighter, he might be of use. Not sure if he's been infected or not though.”

           
Pullo took a few seconds to reply as Tyler and Mark moved into the trees and away from the section.

           
“Bring him, if he's too much trouble then drop him.” Pullo's voice was filled with cold fury, it was hard to not be angry at the losses they'd sustained already, they hadn't even attacked a city yet.

           
“Understood.” Mark turned to the channel with just Jerome and Tyler, “Jerome, search him and make sure he'll survive, higher wants him. Tag and bag him. I'll cover. Tyler, make sure no one creeps up on us.”

           
“On it,” Tyler said scanning the forest as Mark aimed at the man struggling on the ground. His gun had gone a fair distance when he had gone sprawling with a round to the calf.

           
Jerome had made sure there was no chance of him getting it. Jerome pulled everything he could find on the man, pocketing things that looked useful.

           
He checked the bindings on the man's arms, simple slap-straps, put a self-heal bandage on his leg and got him moving.

           
“Tyler, up front I'll take the rear.” Tyler moved off while Jerome was making the prisoner move none-to-gently. Mark grabbed the man's rifle, it was a magazine fed shotgun by the look of it.

           
He put it between his ammunition pack and his armor, moving off after the other two.

Chapter 9

           
Combat Shuttle One-four-nine

           
Sacremon Actual, Sacremon System

7/3169

           
Lieutenant Damien Yu was one of Earth’s Military Forces Carrier Reclaimer’s best combat shuttle pilots. He loved danger and he loved putting his foot down.

           
He knew the troopers on the ground or in his Cargo bays relied on him in a very big way. If they called him in, then they were well and truly in the shit, or they were about to be.

           
Now Reclaimer was on target and Yu was getting called down.

           
The massive shuttle bay doors opened all of the atmosphere had already been drained from the flight decks. The flight crew in colored suits moved between their Combat Shuttles.

           
“First flight is through atmosphere heavy resistance on the ground,” Yoo Ga-young said, his second. Meaning she helped fly sometimes, but her primary job was to operate the Combat Shuttle’s weapons systems.

           
“Got good feeds to the guns. Our payloads are looking bored and grumpy,” Bob Rickshaw the Cargo Master and gunner said, moving around his cargo hold.

           
Young might be the commander of the ship, but the cargo hold was Bobbie’s realm.

           
“Good ready up here,” Young said looking over the variety of touch screens that fed her the ships information.

           
“Looking green to me,” Yu confirmed, flicking switches that made the engines rumble into life.

           
He glanced through the door that separated the cockpit from the cargo bay. Troopers waited in their yellow and black lined harnesses. They pulled on them, sat there nervous, anxious and the idiots were excited.

           
“Sealing doors,” Bobbie said from his console to the forward right of the shuttle, right behind Young in the cargo hold.

           
Yu looked over Sacremon and the swirls of lights that dictated cities.

           
Shuttles were now fighting their way up out of atmosphere and towards Reclaimer.

           
The flight crews colored suits moved between crafts to make sure that they were all good to go.

           
Yu felt pride swell in him, even on EMFC Educator people had only worked when they absolutely had to. They did the bare minimum and went back to lounging in their quarters. Here the chiefs ran their crews like racing teams ran their pits.

           
They moved with quick and precise movements, ships were hooked up within minutes of reaching their intake pads, crews swarming over the ships to keep the shuttles in peak condition.

           
Yu was almost tempted to not look over his shuttle, though the pilot in him would never allow it. He needed to know the bird as well as he knew himself, even more so.

           
“Good to go,” Young said, looking to Yu.

           
“Flight control this is CS-one-four-nine, all green and good to go,” Yu said, moving his feet and pedals, looking at the wings and engines tilt and moved, getting a feel for them in no atmosphere.

           
“Understood, wait five, over.” Flight control said moments later. When all of the shuttles reported that they were ready to go and their flight plans were cleared they’d launch after Alpha flight. The process usually took ten minutes. Which was alarmingly fast for such a complicated evolution.

           
“Understood, flight control, waiting out, over,” Yu responded, the combat shuttle’s landing pad rotated forward to launch position as the vacated pads where Alpha flight had been moments before were pulled into the ground and out of the way.  

           
“Warming up sensors and moving heat shielding back,” Yu said, tapping commands in as armored panels opened and the shuttle’s sensor equipment started running checks.

           
Basically a way to waste time until they were given the go ahead.

           
“All flight crews this is flight control; an NR has been called. I say again, an NR has been called.” The voice repeated the message three more times as the flight deck’s armored doors started closing and shuttles closer to the center of the ship dropped on their pads, heading back into the volumous storage decks below.

           
Sometimes we’re so buried in the shit it seems that there’s nothing else, and other times we’re just stuck watching. God I hate watching.