Chapter Text
Maruushta Prime
Delta Quadrant
Circa 1975 A.D., Terran Calendar
The armored flyer’s ramp slammed down with a hollow clang of metal on dirt, and Lar’ragos felt himself shoved forward as the two lines of fusiliers surged forth to exit the vulnerable craft.
“Go, you sons-of-bitches!” their platoon sergeant roared, “Move!”
As he stumbled off the bottom of the ramp, Lar’ragos emerged into an inferno of light, noise, and the concussions of overlapping explosions. He flinched involuntarily at the sudden scream from a flight of Hekosian assault-drones that flashed past, their auto-cannons seeming to rip the fabric of the air with sustained fusillades of lethal metal.
Lar’ragos gaped at the carnage surrounding him. Fifty meters away the burning hulk of another, less-fortunate flyer lay crumpled as Maruushtan anti-aircraft missiles corkscrewed through the air to savage a half-dozen others on approach to land. The load-bay of the wrecked flyer had burst open as the craft folded in upon itself on impact, spilling the smoldering, dismembered bodies of dozens of Hekosian troopers onto the gritty, unforgiving soil.
‘Gone, just like that,’ Lar’ragos mused numbly. ‘All that training, all those simulations… and they never even got to fire a shot.’
Another fusilier raised her plasma carbine, the weapon cackling as the woman fired at the scuttling form of an insectile Maruushtan warrior as it darted behind cover. Lar’ragos turned to look towards his squad leader, only to see the man’s head removed from his shoulders in a ghastly spray of blood that avulsed across the front of Pava’s battle-armor.
Someone grabbed Lar’ragos roughly from behind and shoved him down, face first onto the stoney ground, just as something sizzled close overhead. Lar’ragos could feel the hairs on the back of his neck singed off at its passing.
A body rolled off from where it had lay atop of Lar’ragos, the person gasping in shock and pain. Lar’ragos lifted his head and turned it to see the horrifically burned form of Subadhar Jorl, their platoon sergeant, writhing in agony as smoke wafted upward from dozens of charred patches across his body.
Lar’ragos scrambled to his knees, reaching for his battle-aid kit with shaking hands as Jorl bit down on his own fist to keep from screaming, eliciting rivulets of blood that trickled down a forearm the skin of which had been charred to a crisp.
He stared numbly at the contents of the kit, trying desperately to remember what of the various med-vials, bandages, or protoplasers would be of use in this situation. So fixated was he on his task that he almost failed to notice the arrival of a combat med-bot as it charged forward out of the wafting smoke and knelt beside Lar’ragos to assess Jorl’s injuries.
“Poet!” a voice yelled through his headset, shocking him out of his daze. “Leave him to the ‘bot and get your ass back in formation!” Thus prompted, Lar’ragos pushed away from what was certainly Jorl’s last moments to stagger in the general direction of his squad. The location of both Hekosian forces and their Maruushtan enemies were emblazoned on the virtual screen that seemed to be hovering in the air in front of the young soldier’s eyes.
Something exploded a few meters from him, showering him with dirt and debris as it threw him off his feet. Lar’ragos rolled down a slight incline before tumbling into a good-sized crater just as a flight of something whistled viciously past, chewing up the soil at the crater’s lip.
Lar’ragos lay at the bottom of the depression, trying valiantly to catch his breath and slow his racing heart. On his eyepiece he could see green dots, signifying the positions of his comrades, winking out two or three at a time. They were being chewed to pieces, and they were only the second of six waves of this attack. An attack which was actually nothing more than a feint designed to draw the enemy’s attention away from the target of the actual invasion force. ‘Thousands of us are being sacrificed as nothing more than a diversion,’ he realized, aghast at the implications. This isn’t what he’d been promised, nor what he’d trained for.
More explosions sounded nearby as another flight of combat-drones roared overhead, screening the third wave of transport flyers that were tucked in tight behind them. Lar’ragos caught sight of columns of Maruushtan small-arms fire reaching skyward from someplace nearby, trying to bring down the flyers and their escorting drones. He girded himself to clamber up the side of the crater, extending a helmet-mounted periscope over the crater’s edge.
He could just make out the frantic, gyrating movements of Maruushtan warriors in close-quarters combat with a small knot of Hekosian soldiers, both sides emptying their weapons into each other a point-blank range. Some of the clashes closed to hand-to-claw combat, savage struggles involving knives and razor-sharp mandibles. Lar’ragos gripped his plasma rifle so tightly his hands trembled as his instinct for self-preservation warred with his brief yet memorable fusilier training.
‘Just do it! Get out there and help!’ he screamed internally. But he couldn’t move. His legs felt as though they were encased in concrete, and no matter how he yearned to take the fight to his enemy, Lar’ragos remained rooted to the spot.
A grunt and the sound of rattling body-armor sounded behind him, causing Lar’ragos to spin around and discharge his rifle in a blind, stuttering arc of fire, screaming maniacally as he did so.
A booted foot kicked out and forced the muzzle of the rifle skyward as Lar’ragos came face to face with a fellow Hekosian. The older, larger man cuffed Lar’ragos roughly across the face and then pulled him to the ground by the collar of his armored breastplate. “Calm the hell down you little shit!” the man roared. “I didn’t survive all that just to get snuffed by some rookie conscript!”
Lar’ragos struggled to rise, and when he found the other soldier’s grip unbreakable, finally relented and sank back against the sloping wall of the crater. “Sorry,” he muttered quietly. “You surprised me.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” the other man relented, finally releasing his hold on Lar’ragos. “No more spastic moves, kid. I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will if you make me. We clear?” The man suddenly raised a hand-pulser towards Lar’ragos, causing Pava to cover his face and cry out as the weapon thundered.
The sound of something sizzling above him and the realization that he was unharmed finally prompted Lar’ragos to look up and over his shoulder. There, at the lip of the crater, was the perforated remains of a Maruushtan drone-warrior, dribbling purplish blood-analogue from a dozen mortal wounds to its chitinous carapace.
The older soldier gave Lar’ragos a wizened smile. “First taste of combat, eh?”
Lar’ragos allowed a reluctant nod as he finally had the presence of mind to change out his weapon’s empty power cell for a fresh one.
“The next fifty hours or so are going to be the hardest for you,” the man said. “After that, the odds of your surviving this little party begin to climb.”
“I can’t believe anyone can survive for more than a minute out there,” Lar’ragos groaned, gesturing weakly to the surrounding battlefield.
“That’s the secret,” the soldier said with a knowing smirk. “Nobody can. Not until the number of Maruushtans has been whittled down significantly. That’s why you and I are going to stay right here and cover one another until say… the fifth wave comes in. Then we’ll climb out and join the fight.”
Lar’ragos blinked at the man in disbelief. “We just sit here? Isn’t that cowardice?”
“Nah,” he answered with a sharp laugh. “It’s enlightened self-interest. Think of it as fighting smarter. Let those other idiot hard-chargers die for the honor of the Hekosian Empire. We’ll still kill our fair share of the enemy, but unlike the others, we’ll live to fight another day.”
Lar’ragos eyed the man warily but settled back against the crater wall just the same. “That sounds oddly rational, given the circumstances.” He flinched as debris from a nearby explosion pattered down around the both of them.
The man laughed. “Stick with me, kid. I’ll make a soldier out of you yet.”
“I’m afraid,” Lar’ragos blurted, unsure as to why he made the sudden admission.
The older man nodded sagely. “That will never change.”