Sean-Michael Argo - Dead Worlds

With a heavy heart, Samuel stood up, removed his headset, and left the observatory with one last glance at the mission clock. He’d known it would go badly. No salvage this big came without the cost being paid in blood.

In the hours after the crushing defeat of the penal legion by the gun spiders Reaper Command had assumed full mission authority from the Warden Corps. Investigators and engineers had worked in conjunction with the Grotto military advisors who accompanied the mission to analyze the data collected prior to the battle and during the penal legion’s failed engagement.

Command had modified the landing strategy. Instead of surrounding the city with smaller forces, the Reaper battle force would enter the city as a single fighting unit certain their superior equipment and experience would be enough to enable them to defeat the gun spiders with relative ease.

Using available intelligence from the penal legion’s brief time in the city proper it had been determined that the entire city was laid out in a grid that was relatively rhomboid in nature. The layout of the streets and buildings converged upon a ziggurat pyramid with a flat top that dwarfed all of the other buildings. The Reaper force would move into the city and seize the ziggurat as priority one. Once it had been fortified they would begin conducting surveys to determine the nature of the building and any possible threats within the city beyond the spiderbots.

A tertiary objective was to determine the fate of the penal legionnaires whose corpses had been hauled away by gun spiders.

Several hours later the landing craft carrying Tango Platoon slammed into the planet’s surface just outside the urban limits of the alien necropolis.

Samuel pounded out of the open bay doors, his boots crunching gravel. The marine could see the sky burning with dozens more landing craft making planetfall in nearby landing zones.

Squad Hyst formed up behind him as his gaze swept across the city and an involuntary shudder moved through him. He thought of the penal legion’s defeat and found himself frustrated at the brutish strategy of simply hurling wave after wave of soldiers at an entrenched enemy.

Samuel thought that it would have been standard procedure to embed a tracking device in each of the penal legionnaires to track them from orbit. When he inquired, he was politely informed that the cost to track them was much higher than the cost of simply embedding the cheap explosives to prevent them from wandering too far. To Samuel, the desire of Grotto to save the cost of tracking was simply transferring the burden of the cost onto human beings, which he was learning more and more were Grotto’s most renewable and exploited resource.

Within minutes of planetfall the full company of nearly nine hundred Reapers had formed up by platoon and marched in tight wedges towards the heart of the city.

Tango Platoon was under the command of Boss Wynn Marsters, as had been their custom since Samuel’s first day as a marine, though, for the first time, Samuel found himself in a command position as well. The name Boss Hyst still sounded odd to his ears. Samuel found himself in charge of four more lives than he was used to.

Ben had always had Samuel’s back and over the years he and Patrick had shared many battles and adventures. Bianca was a solid veteran in addition to the personal relationship she and Samuel shared. Holland, despite the fact that he was the newest member of the squad, had served in Vorhold, which made him a hardened veteran in everyone’s eyes.

Samuel knelt down as the battle force marched forward and ran his hand across the grooves in the street that covered the city. Now that he was on the ground and observing them with his own eyes he found that they were more disturbing to witness in person. He wasn’t so sure that they were used for simple construction, and he began to get the nagging feeling that they had other uses he couldn’t fathom. Ben walked past Samuel and the machine gunner nodded as he followed Samuel’s gaze.

“It’s like you were saying, the angles are all wrong, kind of makes my head spin,” Ben said as Samuel stood and rejoined the ranks, “We’re only a few clicks in and I’m getting twitchy.”

“I’ll feel better once we have a hardpoint,” said Samuel as Squad Hyst moved through the streets towards the skyscrapers that loomed in the fog. “Those spider things are going to come from all directions when they decide to engage.”

“You said it, Boss,” agreed Patrick from the front of the wedge as he swept his muzzle back and forth over the perimeter ahead of them while he marched, “From what I heard at mess this morning those convicts got hammered fast.”

“Bravo Tango, we’re picking up a whole lot of nothing, what’s your status?” a voice crackled over the com-beads, and Samuel recognized it as Boss Harker, the leader of Bravo Platoon.

“Tango Bravo, no sign of hostile forces,” replied the voice of Boss Marsters, “We’re only a few clicks from the first point of contact between the penal legion and the hostiles, maybe that’ll stir them up.”

Squad Hyst reached the place where Shoto and her legionaries had first encountered the enemy, and two thoughts occurred to him at once. The first was realizing he had forged a more profound connection to the convicts and their warden than he’d thought. Despite being removed in orbit he had shared in their battle. The second was how odd it was that there was no evidence of their presence a mere three hours after the engagement.

“Hold up,” said Samuel as he threw his clenched fist in the air. His squad responded by stopping and holding position. “I know this place. I was the squad leader for a penal platoon that engaged the hostiles right on this spot.”

“Hyst, your squad is breaking formation and we just lost line of sight on you,” inquired the voice of Boss Ulanti, whose squad was one street over. “Report or fall in.”

“I don’t see anything, sir, that’s the problem. I ran ops for Line Warden Shoto and this is the corner where they engaged the hostiles.” Samuel walked across the street and knelt down where Shoto had fired her shotgun. “No blood, no bodies, no shell casings. Boss, it’s like they were never here.”

“Copy that, we are finding no combat evidence either. Ditch your normalcy bias marines,” growled the voice of Boss Marsters in the ears of Tango Platoon. “Assume that the enemy has superior technology, numerical advantage, and entrenched defenses. We are the prey until we can flip the script on them. Stay frosty, in two minutes we are going to push double-time to the ziggurat. I want a hardpoint and I want off these streets.”

Tango Platoon girded up and started marching more swiftly through the streets, checking their blind corners and back-shadows as they moved. The lack of evidence that the penal legion and gun spiders ever engaged or were even present on the ground became increasingly disturbing to Samuel, the growing sense of dread began pounding in his skull.

It was as if he’d dreamed this moment, perhaps while in the darkness of his spinal injury, half remembering it as the marines plunged ever deeper into the cyclopean city.

Soon the ziggurat loomed out of the fog as they reached the base of the strange building. Like the others, it had been built of the greenish black material and had a polished smooth surface, but it was filled with deep terraces and staircases that created natural battlements.

Squad Ulanti joined Samuel’s team at the base of the pyramid shaped building and at a silent gesture from her, began pulling security details. While Squad Ulanti fanned out to cover possible avenues of counter-attack, Squad Marsters marched out of an alleyway and without breaking stride pushed past the other marines and began their ascent of the pyramid.