Sean-Michael Argo - Dead Worlds

More gunfire from the circle took Samuel’s attention to the camera feeds of those legionnaires and he could see that their bullets seemed to have little effect on the strange walls of the buildings themselves. He made a mental note that for better or worse, it looked like at least small arms fire would cause little in the way of collateral damage.

Unsurprisingly, it looked like the discipline of the legionnaires, still green from their training, and experiencing a truly terrifying first taste of battle, was breaking down swiftly. Most of the soldiers were firing blinding into the fog, blasting away at shadows with no effect before fumbling to swap out magazines.

It was during those shocked moments of vulnerability that the gun spider creatures seemed to strike; leaping out of the fog and shadow to wrap metal arms around their victims and pull them away in a spray of blood or to rush the legionnaires and rapid fire their projectile weapons with deadly effect.

Samuel watched from Shoto’s camera as her vision tracked one of the gun spiders climbing up the wall with a convict in its grip and could see as he zoomed in on the feed that there were tiny green pulses of energy that rippled through the blocks of the buildings as the machine spider’s legs ran across it. It seemed to Samuel that the building itself was somehow aiding in the gun spider’s apparent defiance of gravity and the opposing mass of their prey.

Shoto shouted for her platoon to maintain firing discipline but her cries fell on deaf ears as the platoon fell apart. They’d already lost eight of their number in the last few seconds, while those that weren’t attempting to flee were being divided into smaller groups by the swift attackers.

In another handful of seconds, most of the lone soldiers who had been separated from the larger groups of legionnaires were picked off by the creatures, falling to the scything limbs or hails of bullets from the hostile machines.

From Samuel’s vantage point he was only able to see through the live feeds from the cameras of the legionnaires still in the fight, as the feeds from those who had been killed were limited at best.

The repeated bark of Shoto’s shotgun brought Samuel’s attention to the Line Warden and he watched in horror as she gunned down two convicts who were attempting to flee. That fatal show of force galvanized the remaining convicts to stand their ground as Shoto approached them with grim authority.

“Line Warden Shoto, this is happening across the whole damn city, pull your people back to the landing zone!” ordered Samuel while the observatory exploded with activity as hostiles were being engaged by the full legion. “We can rally there and wait for further orders; at least you won’t have it coming at you from all sides. How copy?”

“Form a square and fall back on my command!” she shouted as she brandished her shotgun at another soldier who looked as if he was about to run. “We retreat properly or die right here! Form up!”

Shoto snapped orders as the legionnaires rushed to form a tight square, standing shoulder to shoulder so that each soldier’s line of fire overlapped the other. The shattered and smoking bodies of several gun spiders were strewn across the streets, though far too few in comparison to the heavy casualties sustained by the legion so far. Shoto stood in the center and shouted for them to move out, insisting that they maintain tight fire discipline.

“We’ve only got the ammo we came with and your ammo is your life! Keep it tight, only shoot when you know you can hit something,” she growled as the remaining soldiers moved briskly back down the street.

The hostile attacks became sporadic as the legionnaires rushed towards the landing zone. The convicts did their best to fire only when a hit was assured. However, the legion had pushed deep into the city and it was a long way back to the landers.

Once they’d cleared the main skyscraper section of the city, Shoto’s platoon of twenty-nine had been reduced to a mere eleven soldiers in addition to the Line Warden.

Though Samuel had a hard time following the camera feeds through the fog he was positive that they’d eliminated at least four more hostiles. It was likely that others lay destroyed in the fog and shadow beyond the camera’s view.

These creatures seemed to have been built for stealth and lightning assault rather than a stand up fight and he was confident that had it been a platoon of Reaper veterans down there the tide of battle would be flowing in the other direction.

The legionnaires weren’t equipped with the kind of battle armor and multi-functional helmets that the Reapers used, much less the security forces and elite troopers of the greater Grotto military. Had the legionaries been better equipped, with infra-red and low light vision settings on their faceplates, proper rifles and more than just a few weeks training then perhaps the fighting would have gone differently. By the time they reached the lander Shoto’s platoon had been steadily whittled down to only the Line Warden and three convicts with empty rifles.

Throughout the city the scenario had been similar, with the legionnaires being relentlessly assaulted by the gun spiders, with many of the legion’s corpses being carried off into the darkness toward fates unknown.

Samuel saw many of the squad leaders get up from their chairs and storm out of the room while others gathered around the work stations of squad leaders like himself who still had active soldiers on the ground.

A shout from Shoto brought Samuel’s attention back to the fight at hand and he saw Shoto squeeze the trigger of her shotgun and blow a convict off his feet as he swung his rifle at her, presumably to get at her weapon for himself and she’d killed him for it.

Gun spiders took the last two convicts in a hail of bullets and Shoto broke into a dead run towards the lander. A metallic chittering sound filled Samuel’s ears and he saw through the feed as Shoto turned around to face three of the machines that were rushing across open ground to reach her.

Shoto bellowed a war cry and unleashed the full fury of her repeating shotgun. The hurricane of shot from her weapon shredded two of the hostiles but the last one kept coming. Shoto dropped her shotgun, drew her pistol and started firing at her remaining attacker. When another hostile appeared on her flank she quickly ran out of ammunition trying to track two separate targets, but managed to take out one. Her weapon clicked dry as the last hostile was bearing down on her. Dropping her weapon, she turned to flee, making it only a few steps before the hostile leapt on her and her feed went dark, her vitals spiking red before going black.

Samuel sat in silence for nearly five minutes as the observatory thrummed with activity. After another twenty minutes the observatory was mostly empty, most of the Reaper squad leaders having left the room to prepare themselves for the coming battle.

All of them, including Samuel, knew that Grotto had invested too heavily in the mission for such an overwhelming defeat to alter their plans. The entire purpose of the penal legion had been to reveal the enemy and give the squad leaders a chance to study the enemy without risking marine lives.

The mission clock had not been altered by Command, and that meant that in a few hours the Reaper units would make planetfall and move into the city. Most all of the convict stats were black across the board, with the few red bars moving to black by the second as five thousand men and women died in the city. Saying “this is the job” seemed to Samuel an insufficient sentiment given the situation, though the marine knew that little else applied.

The penal legion had served as intended, providing Reaper Command with highly valuable intelligence that would enable the actual invasion force to be more combat effective. Though the size of the force that awaited the Reapers was as yet unknown, the hour long engagement had visibly yielded multitudes of hostile casualties, and the marines could expect to face an enemy that was at least marginally weaker than it had been previously.