SNAFU: Future Warfare

Invasive Maneuvers Tim Marquitz & J. M. Martin

I clung to my seat as we hurtled toward the Saaart Worldbreaker.

The raidcraft was dark and reeked of sweat and the woody scent of the traditional Cral whiskey we’d all downed before boarding; a toast to victory or a quick death. My fellow burrowers sat in uneasy silence, crowded against one another, armor rubbing in the cramped confines. We should have been deep within the extinction zone by then, but without instrumentation there was no way to be sure. We flew blind. No windows, no energy signature, no instrumentation, and nothing to indicate the raidcraft was anything different than the thousands of other projectiles sent streaking toward the Saaart ship.

It was better that way.

Just the other side of the flimsy hull that protected us from the ravages of cold and dismal space, a war raged. Saaart cannons would be shredding our offensive as it crept toward the planet Zeti 5, a leviathan swatting at gnats. The quiet stretched on, every tick carrying us closer. We’d know soon enough if we made it or we’d know nothing at all.

I held my breath while we waited, my hands inching toward the bolt rifle magclasped to my belt, fingers sliding along the grip. It was still there, just as it’d been the last time I’d checked. A chuckle slipped out when I realized what I’d done. It earned me a few glares, nerves on edge inside the sleek coffin ship, but I met them with a grin. As the only man aboard the raidcraft with eight spikes stitched to his skull emblem, each spike a successful burrow, these nervous twats could fuck right off. Most of them wouldn’t be coming back anyway.

Before I could get too worked up about their attitudes our raidcraft slammed into the side of the Saaart ship. The front quarters buckled on impact as designed. I covered my ears on instinct as the grapples hooked us to the hull and the laazdrill went to work. Vibrations rattled the craft, jouncing us in our seats, but it was nothing compared to what Shalarouse experienced in the Kevorkian Cradle up front; the suicide seat.

He’d drawn the short straw as we boarded and resigned himself to the glory of being first to board the enemy craft. If he was lucky, there would be no resistance. If he wasn’t, he’d have the honor of clearing our path.

As soon as the drill quieted I tapped the go light on the blast door between our two compartments. The green light blinked twice on our side and Shalarouse went into motion, the hum of the forward door opening right after. Our ship bounced as he stormed the Worldbreaker. There was silence for a moment, and I dared to hope we’d struck clean, then Shalarouse’s blastpack was triggered. I swallowed hard at the sound and pulled my helmet from beneath my seat, settling it into the brackets at the shoulders. Next I grabbed my pack and slung it, ready for the job ahead. The rest of the burrowers followed suit. We were going in hot.

Bolt rifle in hand, I counted ten ticks before triggering the blast door. The heat hit us the instant it creaked open, steaming my face mask with a thin coat of mist before auto-temps took over and cleared it. I ran through the cramped space of the Cradle and dropped into the massive corridor beyond. My boots landed in a clingy wetness, and I pushed aside the thought that I stood in Shalarouse’s remains; the blowback rig on his blastpack had liquefied him to minimize damage to the raidcraft. The man hadn’t made it three feet from the Cradle.

I scanned down the passageway and saw the shattered remains of Saaart defenders, their mechagel guts splattered across the walls, floor, and ceiling, oily green-black fluid dripping down over top of us and coating the deck. Spider-like limbs twitched among the wreckage, still receiving pulse commands to repel the enemy, but Shalarouse had done his job well. None of the defenders held their trans-forms enough to be a threat.

“Clear the hall and form up,” I barked through the comms. Khaladan command had designated me lead on the mission. It was a hollow promotion by dint of me being the only one with experience aboard.

To their credit though, the troopers did as ordered, spreading out across the corridor and sweeping forward with precision, guns leading the way. I joined the squad of twelve, and we stomped across the ruin left by the bomb, smashing the last of the defenders’ carcasses so they couldn’t report our actions to the hive. Seconds later, we were down the corridor and headed for the engine room, what had been dubbed the nidus — key areas where Saaart multiply. The longer we lingered the more resistance we’d come in contact with. The sooner we’d die.

Our boots clanged down the empty corridors as we marched. My knuckles ached from clasping the stock of my rifle, tendrils of throbbing pain shooting up my arms in anticipation. I’d never run across a Saaart ship with so few defenders, especially this close to a nidus. The mausoleum stillness of the craft unnerved me, but our mission was scheduled to the kron, every tick accounted for, as the Worldbreaker edged toward Zeti 5. Failure of the burrower teams meant more than death for just us; it meant the death of everyone planetside and the Saaart gaining a foothold in the Tullane system from where they’d stage a larger scale invasion. I’d seen it happen at Zanth, my first burrow — a failure, despite my survival. The planet died while I watched from space, waiting for a drone to scoop me up.

I growled, bringing myself back on task, just as we reached the nidus’s entry portal. A burrower whose name I didn’t know — and probably never would — slapped a shapecharge on the maglock and triggered it. The charge sizzled and burned its way through the locking mechanism, acrid smoke billowing from under its vent hood. I put my boot in the center of the door and slammed it open as soon as the lock gave way, dropping to my knees so those behind me could fire without hitting me. The narrow, thrumming chamber was empty.

I hesitated to issue orders in the wake of no resistance, and the quiet stretched on, only the kron in my helmet clicking at me with angry insistence, driving me forward.

“Damn it! Place wrecks,” I called out, using the slang term for the gelatinous cubes we used to take out the Worldbreakers, each a mix of white phosphorous and volatile plasma capable of searing through the hardened walls of the engine casing and razing the systems inside beyond repair, spreading through the ship much like the Saaart intended for the planet below.

Six men charged into the room and made it halfway across before the sensors in my helmet detected an electrical surge.

“Retreat,” I screamed, but it was too late. The trap was sprung.

Blue-black sparks rippled across the floor, lightning across steel gray clouds, and the men were engulfed. Their screams were cut short as the current arced through their bodies, smoldering points of char where each furious tongue lapped. The burrowers stiffened and kron slowed as I spied the first of the wrecks toppling from a soldier’s rigid hand. I raced forward, careful not to touch the sparking floor, seized the big metal door, and yanked it closed just ticks before the first of the wrecks ignited.

The explosion blew the door from the hinges and flung fire into the corridor. The steel hatch clipped me as it blew past, triggering my armor’s kinetic shields. I tumbled end over end, grav sensors shrieking, and barely felt myself strike the far bulkhead. The ground rose up to embrace me, the hatch buried halfway in the wall above, and I watched as my helmet display shrieked red warnings. Something inside me felt wrong, broken. Then the stims kicked in, flooding my veins with painkillers, and I felt nothing.

I swept aside the display so I could see how the others had fared. It wasn’t well. Two of the remaining six had caught the full brunt of the explosion and were little more than blobs wreathed in glowing phosphorous, suits and flesh melted into one. Indistinguishable. The others had been out of direct line of the blast but they stumbled drunkenly from the concussive force, struggling to remain standing. One failed and dropped to his knees. Blood stained the inside of his visor.

I crawled my way back to my feet and steeled my voice against the tremor that ran through me. “Status?”

“Kin-shield 12 %, otherwise okay,” the first replied, sounding almost honest. He swayed unsteadily.

The second tapped his helmet, signaling comms down and gave a shaky thumbs up. The third, Rawlins as I remembered, barked an A-OK. The last, the trooper on his knees, said nothing, eyes wide and staring at the crimson that darkened his viewscreen.

Grateful for the magclasps that kept my rifle firmly adhered to my forearm, I stumbled forward and put the barrel against the kneeling man’s helmet. “A warrior’s boon,” I offered, then pulled the trigger. He slumped to the floor as the bolt tore through his head. The others stared in silence, likely believing me cold, but I’d offered the man mercy. He was dead before I put the rifle to him.

“Move,” I called out and started down the corridor. We’d scored the nidus but the Worldbreaker crept on unimpeded. “We’re not done yet.”

The men followed after, keeping a distance between us. I didn’t bother to call them on it. Rooks on their first burrow, they’d no understanding of what they’d signed up for. The glory and honor the Khaladan brass sold them was just smoke and ash in their mouths by now, a soldier’s wet dream turned nightmare as reality sunk in. It was too late to turn back; all that was left was the mission. We had a ship to scuttle.

I marched on, ignoring the slosh of liquid inside my chest, my suit’s enviros working overtime to filter the blood from my lungs. The scent of copper teased my nose as I led the remaining burrowers toward another target. Two nidus’s and a forward disbursement point — where the first of the Saaart would be injected into the atmosphere — pinged on my display. I chose the nearest of the former, the latter a last ditch effort, and veered down a side corridor toward the blinking red dot of the nidus.

The Saaart found us about halfway there.

“Contact!” Rawlins shouted over the comms, the burst of his bolt rifle nearly drowning out his voice.

I spun to see the defenders spilling through a conduit in the ceiling, their arachnid trans-forms creating a black cloud against the manufactured sky of the corridor. Serrated legs wriggled with deadly intent as they fell. The whirl of their red-orange eyes were hypnotic, thousands of photoreceptors casting a sheen of malevolence. Rawlins fell beneath their mass as I raised my rifle and blasted away, mechagel flying.

But there was no saving the trooper. His visor cracked against the pressure and burst, shards of glass peppering his face. He’d no time to even register it as Saaart claws hooked their way inside. Rawlins screamed, voice redlining the comms with static, then went silent as a geyser of blood erupted from the hole where his visor had been. His body still thrashed and I turned my fire on him, punching smoking black holes through his torso, dropping him amidst the shattered husks of Saaart defenders.

The trooper whose comms were on the fritz turned his rifle full auto and sprayed the creatures as they choked the corridor, separating us. Golden surges tinted with splatters of green crackled between the swarming creatures as he unleashed volley after volley, but the Saaart defenders spilled into the gaps with relentless fury. A moment later I could see nothing but the horde.

“No! Nooooooo—”

With that gurgled screech ringing inside my helmet, the last of our force had fallen. I turned and fled, only to be detoured again as another sortie of creatures fell from a port in the ceiling ahead. Saaart skittered on my heels, razor-talons clicking against steel as I dashed blindly through the Worldbreaker’s labyrinthine corridors, chasing the only target available to me — the red dot of the disbursement chamber.

I wrestled with my pack and seized a wreck, grateful for the redundancy of packing more than one, and triggered it, tossing it behind me just before skidding around the corner of a side corridor. There was a tremulous whump as the wreck ignited, chasing the shadows away with a brilliance that rivaled Sol. It followed me down the passageway. I felt the heat an instant later, enviros struggling to cope with it and my injury at the same time, but the stims overrode the sensation of charred flesh as my back seared. I ran on, silencing my damage sensor alarms so they wouldn’t distract me.

My target grew closer and closer, but I realized I would never make it as the mechanical whir of the Saaarts echoed ahead. A wall of creatures clattered toward me, clambering across the floor, walls, and ceiling. I spun about and chose a corridor at random, nearly colliding with the bulkhead and sidestepped a protruding hatch, my visor display offering me few options for escape. The kron ticked on, relentless.

At a T-intersection I found both directions blocked by a seething mass of Saaart defenders. I let loose with a barrage of fire, spittle against an inferno, until the bolt mag zeroed. Then I retreated only to find the way back blocked. No choice left, I pulled a shapecharge from my pack and slapped it to the lock of the hatch and activated it.

Black smoke blurred my vision as I kicked the hatch open and leapt into the gloom beyond. I slammed it shut behind me, for all the good it would do, and leaned against the door as light globes flickered to life overhead, illuminating the room. My bio stats jumped across the visor in time with my thudding heartbeat. I’d done myself no favors coming here.

In the center of the oval room was a creature I’d never encountered before, yet recognized instantly: a Saaart overlord. A multitude of cabling streamed from every inch of his waxen flesh, running serpentine to the consoles encompassing the entirety of the chamber save for a blank plate at the rear. The dais rotated slowly, and the overlord faced me, bulbous eyes, like those of a fly, focusing. Little more than a skeleton of mummified gristle, the overlord stood impassive, lights dancing the lengths of the cables in random pulses.

I raised my rifle, only then remembering I’d spent its charge, so I just stared at the creature, unable to look away as it assessed me. The slanted triangle of its mouth split wide, blackened shards of teeth glistening in a sick imitation of a smile.

You are too late, a mellifluous voice sang inside my head, so at odds with the monstrosity looming before me. Witness what your failure has wrought.

The panel against the wall flickered and turned transparent, showing me an exterior view beyond the Saart Worldbreaker. My heart stilled as a planet filled the viewscreen, blues and greens under a haze of alabaster clouds. I slumped against the hatch. It wasn’t Zeti 5 in the ship’s deadly path; it was Rimot Prime.

My homeworld.

Brass had lied.

Impact in ten kron. Time enough to say farewell.

I started at the voice inside my skull and straightened, tugging my pack loose. The overlord watched me without concern. I glared at the alien and pulled the last of the wrecks from my pack. The creature’s crooked grin grew wider as I advanced, holding the bomb before me so it could see what I carried.

We admire your courage, Khaladan. It offered up a nod. You make admirable foes.

I triggered the wreck and held it to my chest. Rimot Prime drew ever closer.

The planet where I was born, the planet of my ancestors, was the last thing I ever saw.