Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

“We don’t talk about Tango Platoon,” snapped Boss York as all eyes in the compartment went to John, and he looked like he was about to say more on the subject when the warning lights began to flash and the launch sequence began its brief countdown.

“Twenty seconds!” came Estrada’s voice over everyone’s comm-beads.

“Reapers ready!” responded Boss York as everyone prepared for the gut churning launch of the dropship.

“Vultures ready!” growled Rhett through the pain after making eye contact with each of his comrades.

“Good hunting,” said Estrada. Vitrian released the hatch to rocket the dropship into the void.

Everyone was shaking in their grav-couches as the dropship screamed through the void towards whatever landing zone Vitrian had scoped on the surface. No sooner had they hit space than the dropship began executing maneuvers physically impossible in atmosphere, and still somewhat difficult in three-hundred-sixty-degree void.

Rhett wasn’t sure if Vitrian was piloting the dropship or if they had Bella on the stick since the Six was still in the thick of the storm. Regardless, Rhett knew by the jinks and jolts that it was some expert flying.

“Something just scratched one of the marine transports!” screeched Bella, confirming Rhett’s theory as the dropship banked hard. “There’s a frakking mech warrior on the asteroid!”

A salvo of shots, presumably from the mech warrior, tore through the dropship. There was precious little atmosphere in the troop cabin and what little there was bled out through the multitude of holes.

As Vitrian and Bella shouted at each other over the team channel about the pilot attempting to engage the mech with the Vulture Six ’s plasma lance, Rhett noticed Sparks. She sat quietly, her body slack despite the turbulence of the wild ride to the landing zone. It took a moment for him to realize that much of her chest cavity was gone, along with the strap keeping her bound to the grav-couch. The only thing keeping her body from floating around the cabin every time Bella changed course was the fact that her body was plugging the hole in the hull. Rhett looked away, no time for grief, only action.

The Reaper with the face mask looked at John and spoke.

“You see action like this before you retired?” asked the man called Ben Takeda.

“Ellisian trade war,” nodded John as the ship jostled more and righted its course as cheers went up from Vitrian celebrating having burned out the mech warrior’s cockpit with a precise hit from the plasma lance. “Never retired though. Laid down my rifle and went AWOL not long before the Reaper strike. Bond enforcers sold me to Vulture Six instead of dragging me back to Kratos 12.”

“Hard universe,” said one of the other Reapers, prompting nods and grunts of agreement from the rest of the people in the dropship.

The warning lights changed and the initial seals broke on the dropship’s ejection hatch, prompting everyone to brace for impact. Once they hit, the hatch would blow and the grav-couches would eject them in the usual cascading fashion.

Rhett clenched his fist and then gripped his compact rifle, ready to balance accounts.

Sokol had been monitoring the battle as best he could, though once the Fatalis went dark there was little to hear but what Angron could see from within Thunder Walks.

The Reaper tug had barreled into the debris field like a stampeding stud bull, shrugging off just about everything the ravager defenders could throw at it. The security frigates made a few attempts to follow, but were soon driven away with fresh wounds to lick by the mines and defensive batteries. The tug launched wave after wave of troop bearing assault craft as it drove hard for the Fiat Lux asteroid.

Thunder Walks accounted for himself well, and smoked two assault craft before being blindsided by a bounty scrapper ship equipped with a daring pilot and a precise plasma lancer. That made it the second mech warrior to fall against these glorified scavengers. Sokol hoped they attempted to re-take the Tasca ship. There was no other reason for such a strong force to risk attacking the Fiat Lux, especially since there was so little financial incentive in hard goods or raw materials.

It had to be the slave cutter.

Sokol fired once more with his auto-cannon, splattering a salvage marine across the corridor as the mech warrior lashed out with the mag-cannon to knock another marine off his feet in the chamber Sokol had just emerged from. The mech pilot had decided to climb down and patrol instead of waiting in the hangar bay, his impatience to get his piece of meat for the tribe overpowering his tactical certainty that the slave ship was the point of this attack, not revenge for the Andromeda.

Ogre One’s headset pinged on requests for reinforcements as another platoon of Reapers pushed past the defenders and assaulted the greenhouses.

Sokol sprinted down the tight corridors and then across a wide cargo catwalk that gave him access to one of the skiff tunnels in the network that crisscrossed the commune. The tunnels had been allowing him to strike and fade with devastating effect, considering that the marines were only just now learning that the tunnels connected everything.

Sokol emerged from the tunnel several minutes later and smashed through the flimsy hatch that connected the tunnel access and the first of three greenhouse grow chambers.

There were bodies everywhere, nearly all of them ravagers, and Sokol could see from the tiny corpses that were among the dead that the Reapers were not discriminating between combatants and non-combatants. He stepped over the bodies and the trashed grow chamber, following the sounds of fighting.

Ogre One entered the second chamber and immediately the targeting systems chimed with opportunities. Sokol unleashed his auto-cannon, betting on the small arms fire to get the attention of the marines, perhaps kill a few, and most certainly distract them from the defenders they’d been engaging moments before. Two marines collapsed in bloody heaps as the rest spread out and bracketed him with return fire in a disciplined manner that only soldiers could execute. Sokol pushed Ogre One through the chamber, smashing his way across the grow room, crushing the delicate crops beneath his metal feet as he exchanged withering fire with the marines.

Suddenly his mech shook from the force of sustained impacts and he hurled himself through another series of growing beds to escape. His mech’s vital systems were screaming at him, and Sokol noticed that one of the Reapers was using a heavy machine gun. Sokol overrode the warning chimes and let loose with his mag-cannon.

The high velocity rounds punched through the walls of the greenhouse chamber in addition to shattering the armored body of the heavy machine gunner. Without releasing the trigger of the mag-cannon, Sokol brought up his auto-cannon and poured on the full fury of the mech’s armaments. The remaining marines had spread out and managed to flank him, the mech’s targeting systems were struggling to keep up, yet Sokol let his instincts guide him, letting his breath sync up in time with the pulse of the grindcore.

He wasn’t sure at what point he stopped firing and resorted to his claws.

Sokol blinked to clear his vision and then realized that it was not his eyes, but the cockpit that was smeared in gore. He engaged the wipers and they revealed a greenhouse complex piled with broken bodies of ravagers and marines. He stood alone, Ogre One the only survivor of the grisly encounter. His ammo drums for both weapons were exhausted, and the re-loaders were mounted on the wall in the hangar bay. Sokol growled and began running back towards the tunnel network, determined to get re-armed before the next platoon found him with naught but claws.