July 4th, 2186
12:53
USS Alamayer
A pair of feet hit the cold, metal floor of the cryo room. A pair of blue eyes blinked repeatedly in vain hope of clearing the dreariness of sleep from them. They fell upon the nearest digitally displayed clock, looming large over the empty room. Well, empty of other soldiers, full to the brim with cryo tubes, most of them now empty. Nearly an hour after the initial wake-up. Shit. No one around to bitch at him for sleeping late, no time to grab a shower. He�d call that breaking even.
Private First Class Caldwell, Aleric (�Klepto� to anyone who wasn�t an officer yelling at him) had never been a model soldier. Tall, thin (despite the chow), messy dark hair (not that hair regs seemed to exist these days) and more inclined to stealth and speed than strength or valor. Ask him to tackle a baldie doing something stupid? Not likely. Empty their pockets unnoticed? Better odds. Not that he tried to advertise those talents for...obvious reasons, nor the Colonial origins that had given him such skills.
The speed served him well in his preparations, at least. Chow in the mess hall (chicken and cornbread, shoved into his face as he made for the prep room). Uniform, boots, armor (light, he hated the feeling of being encumbered), helmet? He normally stuck with the beret he had uh �found� a few ops back. Something made him brush it from his head and slide a helmet into place. He liked to call it �coward�s intuition�. Self deprecation never went out of style. A few short minutes later he was vaulting the barricade line to get to the front of the now-empty requisitions line. In all of his half-asleep wisdom, he had vended an AP mag for a gun he wasn�t using from his gear vendor. Some hyperactive Charlie gave him a pat on the shoulder, dancing around the req line like they had emptied the coffee machine in the chow hall. Maybe they had.
Five minutes more and he was strapped into the Normandy, the second of the two dropships aboard the Alamayer, sharing the ride down with two Longstreet tanks, crammed into a dropship barely designed to hold one. If that wasn�t indicative of the USCM�s attitude, he didn�t know what was. Comms were quiet, but best he was able to piece together, this colony, �Trijent Dam� had been occupied by a UPP (�Union of Progressive Peoples�) Tank Battalion, and the cold war between them and the USCM had just escalated to a very, very warm one. He wasn�t entirely sure what an M39 SMG was going to do against a tank, even with the AP rounds he had swiped from squad req, but that�s why they had armored support.
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Fuck, fuck, fuck! What good was the damned brain bucket he was wearing? Klepto had peeked through a window and managed to catch a stray rifle round straight to the skull. The force of impact send him reeling back, slumping heavily against the wall. He could feel blood matting his hair, warm against his skull. Okay, he wasn�t dead yet, he needed to keep it that way. Helmet came off, and he tugged down the bandana from his face so he could breathe. Normally adroit fingers fumbled with the medical pouch at his belt. Gauze? No, he could feel his skull shifting in a way it definitely was not supposed to. Splint from his satchel, shot of painkiller to keep him on his feet. Maybe the lines of wounded he had passed en route to the front should have been a warning. Maybe the rifle fire should have been. He�d always fancied himself pretty good at not getting shot. So much for that.
There was a time where an injury like that (plus some cracked ribs he�d managed to accrue earlier) would have sent him home. Not with the miracle of modern medicine. Ten minutes from touching down shipside, Private First Class Caldwell, Aleric ('Klepto' to the doctor who still hadn't forgiven him for the oxy thing) was on his way back down, skull secured and ribs no longer jabbing at his lungs. The jog back to the front was uneventful. Suspiciously so. Comms were quiet, and he strongly suspected that his squad, Delta, had taken some significant casualties. A fellow PFC acting as squad leader was something of a giveaway there. He had no tac-map, no direction from command or his squad lead on comms, not much to do but push east until he found the front. Unless he never did. He�d heard earlier that there was some skirmishing at the colony canteen, and he was already across the river that served as the main divisor between USCM and UPP territory when he got word to pull back, gather on the friendly side of the river and push. Right, time to double back.
He hadn�t made it halfway to the river when he took contact. Lone UPP soldier, clad in olive drab and looking just as surprised to see Klepto as he was them. Aleric fired first, shifting left (towards the river) as quickly as he could without completely throwing his aim. The UPP grabbed their own rifle and returned fire, dodging opposite him. Klepto had lighter armor, a lighter weapon, but he could barely stay on target with how quickly he was moving, squeezing off short bursts as rapidly as he dared. River to his back, he finally caught the UPP directly in his sights and pulled the trigger. Click.
He had no sidearm, but he wasn�t helpless. He shifted his off-hand from the weapon to his belt, plucked a throwing knife from the knife-rig he was wearing, and let fly. His aim was true, and he saw the blade bury itself in the enemy soldier, luck or reflex landing it in a gap between armor plates. It wasn�t a fatal blow, but he just needed to slow them down as he turned and ran for the river.
He might have made it, too, if it wasn�t for the tank. He stared for a moment into the maw that was the main cannon of the armored behemoth. His eyes tracked the grenade the vehicle spat in his direction. His back hit the asphalt, breath knocked out of him and the clear, blue sky filling his gaze after it detonated.
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Two arms? Check. Two legs? Check. A ringing in his ear that drowned out any other noises that made have been otherwise audible around him? Check. A blood-red UPP tank towering over his prone form? Check.
PFC Caldwell, Aleric (�target practice� to every enemy soldier on the damn rock) was still alive. He took to his feet, even as the movement sent pain jolting through every inch of him. His vision was blurry, his hearing was shot, and every move he made, the tank tracked him. Toying with him? Waiting for a clear shot? He didn�t know. He did know that he stood no chance of avoiding it. Limping to the river would give it plenty of time to line up a clear shot. Dancing with it in his state was just going to lead to him collapsing or it getting a shot off anyway. His gun was empty and not likely to do anything to the armor plating.
Discretion was the better part of valor, right? He dropped to the ground, wincing as the impact reminded him of every bruise and burn the grenade had inflicted. He yelled (still unable to hear his own voice) his intention to surrender. Did the UPP tank crew speak English? Did they even take prisoners? Hell, they probably couldn�t even hear him in the tank. He yelled it again. Waited for the fatal blow to fall.
It never did.
Instead, he was dragged deeper into UPP territory, passed off to a rifleman, who relieved him of his armor and weapons. He still couldn�t hear, but loudly he announced exactly what weapons he had on his person. He didn�t want to give them a reason to gun him down. His knives followed his firearm into a small pile of gear. He had forgotten, at the time, about the .357 stuffed into his satchel, although in hindsight he was likely to claim it a clever deception than an oversight. If he lived to claim anything.
He had thought the ringing in his ears would last forever. It didn�t, thankfully. There were other soldiers around him now, maybe three or four UPP, and none had put a round through his skull. Again. He wasn�t sure the marines in his unit would have been so disciplined. As he glanced around, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, turning to the dark building on his left. A marine with purple accents on his armor (Charlie squad) leaned from the darkness, a sleek black pistol in his hands (88 Mod 4, 9mm, armor piercing, Aleric recalled).
Gunfire rang out, several rounds punching into both of the escorts currently dragging Klepto down the street. Neither fell, but he saw blood streaming from beneath their armor, and all the soldiers about scattered to return fire. Arcing from the darkness, a shrapnel grenade landed between him and one of his guards, the other catching several more rounds and dropping to their knees. Klepto had just enough time to roll onto his stomach and cover his head with his hands before the grenade detonated, the pressure wave throwing him backwards, away from the blast. When he came to, he couldn�t move, and he felt a heavy weight atop him, pinning him in place. He felt blood, and it took him several moments to realize that one of his guards was lying dead on top of him. He didn�t dare move, wary of being caught in the crossfire, or outright gunned down by another UPP soldier.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted the body atop him, peering out. No movement, friendly or otherwise. If he was going to go, now was the time. Before he stood, he drew both autoinjectors from his medical pouch. Trico(rdrazine) and tram(adol), a low-powered healing agent and painkiller respectively. He counted to three to give them time to kick in and then rolled the dead UPP off of him, jumping to his feet and sprinting for the river. He passed a friendly tank and managed to find his current acting squad leader, doubling over to catch his breath and marveling at his fortune. Not only was he not dead, he was free!
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Stonewall. That was the name of the Charlie marine who had ambushed his captors. He made no secret of his surprise that Klepto had survived the blast (and retrieved his equipment), and their reunion was cut short by the untimely arrival of yet another UPP tank. The rest of the operation was an ebb and flow or progress. They would regroup and push, then be driven back.
At one point, he dived under a burst of fire from an enemy machine gun, then hopped to his feet to push the position, a gap in the enemy barricade line leaving the gunner exposed to several bursts of SMG fire. For good measure, Klepto put one last burst in him after he went down, not proud of the act, but not intending to take a burst in the back from a soldier he thought out of the fight.
Of course, it was all downhill from there. The friendly tank pushing with them got knocked out. Aleric caught the backlash of several flak rounds from the enemy tank, and was left crawling and limping back to friendly lines. At one point, being dragged back when his legs gave out, terrified all the while that the enemy tank would catch up with them. The medic back at the FOB pumped him full of drugs and meds and out he went. He was pretty sure the wounds he�d taken would have killed some. Were modern meds that potent, or had the USCM gene modded him at some point while he was out, to be more resilient, heal faster? He couldn�t say.
He could say that the light armor wasn�t cutting it, though. He needed something better, but UPP gear was going to get him shot if he put it on. Instead, he found a fallen Charlie clad in Intel gear, and after confirming that the poor bastard was staying down, he liberated it for himself. It wasn�t exactly doing the late marine any good, anymore. None too soon, for that matter, as the UPP were pushing again. He put three rounds in the first hostile to pop into sight, and then ducked into the shadows, waiting for a target to present itself. Instead, the painkillers faded and a sharp, aching pain made itself known within his chest. He had checked with a medic earlier and gotten a clean bill of health, but he sure didn�t feel like he was okay.
For that matter, he had received a promotion to acting squad leader, but an attempt to check in with his squad revealed that planetside comms were down. He grabbed a medic from the landing zone and pushed up to the telecommunications building to check it out. The inside was pitch black. Not a good sign. He took up his weapon and flicked his armor light on, sweeping it across the inside. Nothing. He kept a crowbar in his satchel for situations like these, used it to pry open the door (power was out, so the thing wouldn�t open on its own). As he suspected, the power was out, though the blood splattered across the wall opposite it didn�t paint a pretty picture. A half damaged Bravo engineering headset gave a general idea of who had been manning the place, and it wasn�t hard to guess that a UPP saboteur had taken out the engineer and the power in one fell swoop. Klepto didn�t know one wire from another, had no tools even if he did, and was left doubled over from a resurgence of the pain he was experiencing. Time to go.
The rest of the Op was quiet. A second trip to medical (and access to shipside comms to update Command to the situation), another trip planetside. Someone finally repaired comms, though by that point he didn�t have much of a squad left to rally. He listened in to the talks between a hostile tanker (Zhan Bogdanov) and friendly tank crews regarding Bogdanov�s surrender and missed the entirety of the last push. Last orders he had were to hold the LZ, but before he knew it, reports were flooding in of the UPP�s outpost being swept. Few prisoners were taken.
Klepto followed the road to the front, one last time. Corpses, friendly and enemy, were strewn about, no time having yet been allowed to retrieve or bury them. Hostile tanks dotted the landscape like grander corpses, though he never saw the bodies of the crew with them. Maybe they had escaped, or maybe they�d been dragged away. He couldn�t say.
He found out that Bogdanov was the tanker who had spared his life after blasting him with a grenade. It was good that he had survived the battle. Few enough had. He had the bloody throwing knife plucked from the UPP he�d stuck it in, having found her dead, slumped against a building, though it was impossible to know if he�d been responsible or not. All of the soldiers who had guarded him during his brief stint as prisoner, dead. He didn�t know where the bodies were, but the fact that he was acting squad leader meant it was safe to assume that his Staff Sergeant, squad Specialist, and Smartgunner were all KIA.
Corporal Caldwell, Aleric (�Klepto� to those few who had survived to know he had a nickname) was of mixed feelings about his promotion. He was due for a crash course in smartgunning soon. Honestly it seemed like a lot of weight to carry around. In more ways than one. He was being cycled out to a new unit. Infantry. As he understood it, most of the survivors were. There was talk around the ship about some of the replacements hoping for action. He wasn�t sure he shared the sentiment. He was looking forward to a quiet couple of months. Apparently he�d be heading for the Tychon Rift sector. Nothing exciting ever happened out there, right?