Doveshire
Chapter 2
Suburbs of Doveshire
McAuliffe VI
Sullivan threw himself to the ground just a spilt second behind the veterans in his units. A few Marines were even slower, and they paid the prices. Tungsten masses driven out of an autocannon slammed into their unprotected flesh. At hypersonic velocity, anything striking the human body would create a spectacular, albeit brief, meat fountain. Gore splatted all around Sullivan as those slower than him ended their careers in the Corps.
“Return fire!” Fuchian barked. The sergeant did not enjoy hearing Kilrathi weapon fire and Terran weapons silent.
Like the rest of the Marines, Sullivan had trouble locating the Kilrathi autocannon. This did not stop a few from blindly firing away at any glint of light that caught their attention. He had to blink away the dust away from his eyes. When he hit the deck, he took a more literal slant on the phrase, planting his face firmly into the tarmac of a dilapidated road. He roses his head slightly, to get a better look of where his attackers sat.
There was not much to see of the city. Doveshire, or its suburbs, were not pounded at levels anywhere near the intensity of Courland Bay. Fighters worked over stretches of the city with plasma cannons, and Marine gunships dropped bombs of a more restrained type than the nuclear barrage of the invasion beach. No sense in destroying the very city the Marines were suppose to liberate. Even less sense in risking terminal damage to the Doveshire Spaceport.
The Cats were firing away from one of the abandoned houses. At lease Sullivan assumed they were abandoned. So run down where the buildings, and overgrown the lawns, surely not a single human has lived in the neighborhood for years. Opposite the houses, Sullivan’s unit had the Edward River as protection. Nothing stirred on its banks, except native species of grasses rustling in a slight breeze.
Several other Marines noticed the breeze and turned their weapons on the plants. The grasses did not stand a chance against super-hot plasma, and all blades burst into flames upon impact. Roars came from the growth, a sound not even the most exotic of plants could produce. Sullivan briefly saw large humanoid shapes emerge from the grasses, his fur ablaze. The four Kilrathi struggled against their own pain as they fired on the Marines. One Cat tried to make for the river. Cats might not like water, but they enjoyed burning alive even less.
The retreating Cat was cut down by Terran fire, only a second before his three comrades were overwhelmed by two squad’s worth of plasma rifles. Sullivan’s first glimpse of the enemy was not all he expected. He imagined a wave of blood-thirsty Cats charging him with claws extended. Instead, he saw nothing but soldiers slogging through the undergrowth. They did look something like lions, that much of the stories was at least true.
As many veterans told him on the flight to Mac Six; there was no time to fear in the middle of a firefight. Plenty of time for fear after the rifles fell silent. Sullivan struggled to heed their advice. His heart was hammering inside. Where he saw wind blown grasses, his comrades saw enemies. He never would have known their presence, at least not until they leapt upon him. Uncontrollable shaking began to rack his body, unsteadying his aim.
Sullivan paused to take a deep breath. No, he had to push his terror into a corner of his mind. He could not let it overwhelm him. Any Marines who gave into fear was a dead Marine. True, Sullivan feared a fate at the claws of the Cats, but what he feared even more was appearing a coward in the face of his fellow Marines.
“Wake up Sully!” McCoy crawled up to him, planting an elbow into his helmet. Sullivan looked at him, struggling to fight the trembling. “No time for napping. Just point your rifle at that old house and fire. Don’t worry about aiming, just fill it full of plasma”
Sullivan nodded, unable to form words in his mind. Laying prone, he followed McCoy’s example and began to unleash bolts of plasma at the autocannon. He could faintly see flashes in the darkness of a broken out window, flashes and motion. The house might have been nice, once upon a time. Now, with so many Marines firing upon it, its lawn began to smolder and the paint was all but vaporized.
He could faintly hear his sergeant shouting commands into his headset. Obviously a different channel if Sullivan could not hear him. It was a strange realization in the middle of a battle, and one that almost set Sullivan laughing. He fought back the giggles, afraid that if he started, he could not stop. Afraid that madness might follow. He would not be the first Marine, or even soldier, to crack up in the face of the enemy.
He never wondered what Fuchian was calling, not even as the gunship flew over head. The streamline of the Marine gunship was evidence that it was an atmospheric vehicle, never to see the blackness of space. It was a gnarly looking durasteel hawk, with laser turrets instead of talons. Lasers flashed from the belly of the gunship, illuminating the Kilrathi strong point past its flash point. The former house both melted and burst into flames, destroying anything within it walls.
Calm fell over the Marines as the sounds of crackling fire replaced those of rifle shot. Several Marines, each veterans, cautious stood to survey their surroundings. If the Cats had any snipers in the region, Fuchian just made himself a tempting target. When his head did not explode after a few seconds, the rest of his squad slowly drew themselves up from the ground.
“Time to get up, Sully,” McCoy said, grabbing hold of his arm and lifting him from prone position.
Sullivan discovered standing was not as easy as it looked. Gravity was still the same, but his knees were having difficultly supporting his mass. Uncontrollable shakes wracked his body. He found himself very annoyed with his own body, so openly betraying what it felt. He struggled to stop, but to little avail. The hands that were suppose to hold his own body were shaking the worst.
McCoy noticed it. Not difficult, since Sullivan’s whole body jiggled. “Relax, Sully.”
Fear began to creep up upon him, and Sullivan found himself very jumpy. Those Kilrathi in the brush could have killed him. So could the gunner. He could have been hit, instead of the Marine a few meters behind him. “I– I–“ Sullivan tried to talk, but his jaw was not as steady as it use to be.
The Martian gave him a wane smile. “Scared? Good! That proves you’re not stupid. Don’t worry about it. Any man here who says he’s not is either a liar, or just not paying attention.” How many times in the history of human armed forces was that line uttered to rookies? By the look on McCoy’s face, the PFC could not believe he even said it. “That was too bloody cliche. Ah, forget about it, Sully. The shakes will stop in good time.”
McCoy proved correct. The shakes did stop, taking far longer than Sullivan planned. Looking around at other rookies, and even a few vets, he lost some of his shame. Even hard-nosed ground pounders’ hands shook. A few Marines ever grow visible, and audibly ill, after the firefight. The vets gave those rookies a hard time, but none were purposely malicious in their teasing. Even McCoy joined in.
Siting next to Sullivan at their first rest since the fight, McCoy pointed at one rookie who lost his breakfast, and part of last night’s dinner. “See, could be worse Sully. Poor Jones there won’t hear the end of it.”
Strangely enough, his stomach was one of the few parts of his body that did not bother him. If anything, the energy burnt in the fight made him hungry. With only so many ration bars on him, he had to conserve food. Water was another matter. He pulled the stopper on his canteen and took a swig. It was almost as warm as the air in Doveshire, but still as refreshing as if it were chilled overnight. “Give it time,” Sullivan finally said.
McCoy laughed. “That’s the spirit! ‘Cheer up, it could be worse. So we cheered up, and it got worse’.”
No matter how rotten Sullivan felt, he was several grades in better shape than Doveshire. Though still kilometers from the city center, and almost as far as the spaceport sandwiched between the Edward and Emerald Rivers, Doveshire was all around them. It looked not a whole lot different from urban centers on Earth. In the middle of the city stood towers– or what was left of them after the Kilrathi conquest. All around those towers for many kilometers sprawled development.
His squad took five at an intersection of two wide streets. No signs remained standing to give him a clue as to street names. On the corner they sat, a grocer’s once existed. The shop was long since boarded shut. Two other corners held commercial buildings of one sort or another. Sullivan spotted the word dentist on one of the faded signs. On the fourth corner stood a battered apartment complex. Sign of inhabitation were abound, including the fact somebody ploughed under the lawn and established a corn farm upon it.
Sullivan brought his rifle up quickly at a sudden motion in the half-grown corn. McCoy reacted instinctively, taking aim at whatever Sullivan saw. He relaxed slightly when he noticed that Sullivan was not staring down a two-point-five meter tall hairball. “Would you look at that.”
Sullivan was doing just that. Across the street, three figures emerged from the corn, with several more eyes peering through boarded closed windows, and cracked doorways. “Hey Sarge! We got company.”
“Hostile?” Fuchian asked as he hustled to his feet, rifle in hand.
“I don’t think so,” Sullivan said. “Or if they are, they won’t be much of a match for us.”
The shambling wrecks were slowly shuffling towards them. These people were not the emaciated zombies one might find on a liberated world that was not fully self-sufficient. Mac Six had enough food to go around, so the civilians’ bodies were not skeletal. To his surprise, the civilians did not even have the stench of occupation. Doveshire had more than enough water for bathing, as well as farming.
What struck him first were their eyes. The eyes of each civilian carried the horrified look of people who have seen too much. McCoy told Sullivan about his own first invasion, and how the civilians carried around a haunted stare. He could not imagine what these people had suffered after thirteen years of occupation. Sullivan did not want to know. Probably the sort of things that would take a team of psych-guys a lifetime to untangle.
“Are they gone?” asked one of the stumbling civilians. She was young, perhaps a couple of years older than Sullivan. In her arms she held a bundled infant. Hers, Sullivan could not tell. Both had the same shade of dark skin, but the infant could be a cousin or niece of nephew. Not that any of that mattered to the Marines. The native might have been pretty once, but now her face was covered with years worth of worry lines, premature wrinkles.
Sullivan and McCoy exchanged glances. The Cat? Gone? They both wished. That would make liberating Mac Six a lot easier. Neither had the chance to answer, for Fuchian stepped in to take charge. A good trait in a sergeant. “For now, ma’am, the Cats look to be hiding for the moment. Anything you or your neighbors can tell us about them would be a great help.”
Sullivan did not care for how the civies were starting to crowd them. If the Cats were to jump out and ambush, all the natives would be mowed down. Still, he found it hard to yell at them to get away, not when he saw glistening hope beneath the years of despair in most of their eyes. Sullivan paused. Most of their eyes– but not all. One of the civilians looked at the Marines, or rather through them. His face was all but blank. Not only that, he wore enough clothing to look like he belonged in an alpine climate.
“McCoy, what do you make of that one?” Sullivan pointed at the blank-faced man.
As usual, McCoy drew his own conclusion. “You mean the blonde? She’d be worth chancing after she washed some of that dirt from her face. She must have just came out of the garden.”
Sullivan grumbled beneath his breath something very unflattering. “No, I mean the fellow who looks like he’s planning on climbing glaciers in the Urals.”
McCoy scrutinized the odd man. “That is strange. He probably seen more of the Cats than the rest of them. They can do things to your mind, weird things.”
Which was close to what the brown lady was telling the Sarge. “Sometimes they come at night to drag someone away. We usually see them in a week or two. Sometimes, they never come back. That’s the worse part; not knowing what happened to them, or if you’re next.”
Fuchian nodded. He heard similar things on other worlds. The Cats loved to play their mind games with conquered peoples. Escaped Varni often told of their own people being brainwashed to kill other Varni. The Lizard could be normal as could be one moment, the next– they snap and start shooting until somebody knocks them out.
“I wonder if they did that here,” Sullivan mused.
McCoy shrugged. “We’ll find out when–“
His words were silenced by a deafening blast. A blast so strong that the two Marines, and most of the crowd were thrown to the ground. Sullivan slammed into pavement with a muffled grunt. The blast stunned him momentarily, blanking his own mind. McCoy was quicker in shaking away the cobwebs. “Sully, you’re hit!”
Sullivan could feel nothing but the ringing in his head. Wherever that shell landed, it was close. A minor miracle that the explosion did not pull his lungs out through his nose. His had ran up and down the length of his own body, checking for shrapnel imbedded in him. He shook his head, unable to find anything. He was covered in gore– as was McCoy. “I’m not the only one,” he shouted, pointing at the blood splattered all over McCoy’s light armor.
As the ringing stopped, the screamed of wounded and terrified civilians filled the air. Wails of the mortally wounded echoed in Sullivan’s mind for days to come, like the wails of banshees. Fuchian was already up– or did he even fall?– barking orders. Marine corpsmen rushed over with stretchers. With so many civilians down and wounded, a few medics were not going to cut it. Sullivan made his way over to assist the corpsmen.
He treaded carefully, avoiding stepping on civilians. Or even parts of them. Parts– yes, that might explain why he heard no incoming fire. He glanced around, looking for the mountain climber. Where he was more or less standing, all that remained were a pair of shoes and some ragged flesh sticking out of them. “McCoy!” he shouted again, this time against the cries, pointing at the shoes.
“Your mountain climber blew up!” McCoy said in genuine astonishment.
“What are you two gumming about?” Fuchian snapped, gesturing for them to aid the corpsmen. When Sullivan explained what he saw earlier, Fuchian’s jaws clenched and his face with white with rage. “Damned Cats!” He paused to tap into his helmet’s microphone. “Captain, the Cats have suicide bombers out here. We just met one– No, sir, none of men were wounded, but the civies are a horrible mess. Yes, sir, assistance would be greatly appreciated.”
“Suicide bombers?” Sullivan asked, looking at McCoy. His comrade simply shrugged. He heard of pilots during Earth’s Pacific War crashing into enemy carriers as a last line of defense. He even recalled some religious fanatics– he disremembered which sect, doing the same thing. The later were hated in the Corps; crashing into a heavily armed warship was one thing; blowing ones’ self up in a crowd of noncombatants was quite another.
Once finished speaking to the Captain, Fuchian switched back to his squad’s channel. “Alright Marines, we’re going to have to keep our eyes open for more of these bombers.”
“Hey, Sarge,” one of the other Marines asked. “Why would these guys blow themselves up after we arrive?”
Fuchian scowled, remembering other worlds liberated. “They probably don’t even know they are. The Cats are real good at screwing with your mind. Some of the civies that gone missing for weeks on end were probably brainwashed and programmed as suicide bombers. The hairballs love playing mind games.”
Sullivan clenched his own fist, tight enough he could feel his nails digging into palm. Sullivan never knew hatred before in his life, nothing even remotely as intense as what he felt for those who killed that man. He was not alone in his visible anger, and Fuchian caught on quickly. “Cool your reactors, grunts. Don’t go losing you heads over this. That’s what they want you to do. And trust me, turning humans into mind won’t be greatest horror we’ll face here. Trust me.”
Chapter 2
Suburbs of Doveshire
McAuliffe VI
Sullivan threw himself to the ground just a spilt second behind the veterans in his units. A few Marines were even slower, and they paid the prices. Tungsten masses driven out of an autocannon slammed into their unprotected flesh. At hypersonic velocity, anything striking the human body would create a spectacular, albeit brief, meat fountain. Gore splatted all around Sullivan as those slower than him ended their careers in the Corps.
“Return fire!” Fuchian barked. The sergeant did not enjoy hearing Kilrathi weapon fire and Terran weapons silent.
Like the rest of the Marines, Sullivan had trouble locating the Kilrathi autocannon. This did not stop a few from blindly firing away at any glint of light that caught their attention. He had to blink away the dust away from his eyes. When he hit the deck, he took a more literal slant on the phrase, planting his face firmly into the tarmac of a dilapidated road. He roses his head slightly, to get a better look of where his attackers sat.
There was not much to see of the city. Doveshire, or its suburbs, were not pounded at levels anywhere near the intensity of Courland Bay. Fighters worked over stretches of the city with plasma cannons, and Marine gunships dropped bombs of a more restrained type than the nuclear barrage of the invasion beach. No sense in destroying the very city the Marines were suppose to liberate. Even less sense in risking terminal damage to the Doveshire Spaceport.
The Cats were firing away from one of the abandoned houses. At lease Sullivan assumed they were abandoned. So run down where the buildings, and overgrown the lawns, surely not a single human has lived in the neighborhood for years. Opposite the houses, Sullivan’s unit had the Edward River as protection. Nothing stirred on its banks, except native species of grasses rustling in a slight breeze.
Several other Marines noticed the breeze and turned their weapons on the plants. The grasses did not stand a chance against super-hot plasma, and all blades burst into flames upon impact. Roars came from the growth, a sound not even the most exotic of plants could produce. Sullivan briefly saw large humanoid shapes emerge from the grasses, his fur ablaze. The four Kilrathi struggled against their own pain as they fired on the Marines. One Cat tried to make for the river. Cats might not like water, but they enjoyed burning alive even less.
The retreating Cat was cut down by Terran fire, only a second before his three comrades were overwhelmed by two squad’s worth of plasma rifles. Sullivan’s first glimpse of the enemy was not all he expected. He imagined a wave of blood-thirsty Cats charging him with claws extended. Instead, he saw nothing but soldiers slogging through the undergrowth. They did look something like lions, that much of the stories was at least true.
As many veterans told him on the flight to Mac Six; there was no time to fear in the middle of a firefight. Plenty of time for fear after the rifles fell silent. Sullivan struggled to heed their advice. His heart was hammering inside. Where he saw wind blown grasses, his comrades saw enemies. He never would have known their presence, at least not until they leapt upon him. Uncontrollable shaking began to rack his body, unsteadying his aim.
Sullivan paused to take a deep breath. No, he had to push his terror into a corner of his mind. He could not let it overwhelm him. Any Marines who gave into fear was a dead Marine. True, Sullivan feared a fate at the claws of the Cats, but what he feared even more was appearing a coward in the face of his fellow Marines.
“Wake up Sully!” McCoy crawled up to him, planting an elbow into his helmet. Sullivan looked at him, struggling to fight the trembling. “No time for napping. Just point your rifle at that old house and fire. Don’t worry about aiming, just fill it full of plasma”
Sullivan nodded, unable to form words in his mind. Laying prone, he followed McCoy’s example and began to unleash bolts of plasma at the autocannon. He could faintly see flashes in the darkness of a broken out window, flashes and motion. The house might have been nice, once upon a time. Now, with so many Marines firing upon it, its lawn began to smolder and the paint was all but vaporized.
He could faintly hear his sergeant shouting commands into his headset. Obviously a different channel if Sullivan could not hear him. It was a strange realization in the middle of a battle, and one that almost set Sullivan laughing. He fought back the giggles, afraid that if he started, he could not stop. Afraid that madness might follow. He would not be the first Marine, or even soldier, to crack up in the face of the enemy.
He never wondered what Fuchian was calling, not even as the gunship flew over head. The streamline of the Marine gunship was evidence that it was an atmospheric vehicle, never to see the blackness of space. It was a gnarly looking durasteel hawk, with laser turrets instead of talons. Lasers flashed from the belly of the gunship, illuminating the Kilrathi strong point past its flash point. The former house both melted and burst into flames, destroying anything within it walls.
Calm fell over the Marines as the sounds of crackling fire replaced those of rifle shot. Several Marines, each veterans, cautious stood to survey their surroundings. If the Cats had any snipers in the region, Fuchian just made himself a tempting target. When his head did not explode after a few seconds, the rest of his squad slowly drew themselves up from the ground.
“Time to get up, Sully,” McCoy said, grabbing hold of his arm and lifting him from prone position.
Sullivan discovered standing was not as easy as it looked. Gravity was still the same, but his knees were having difficultly supporting his mass. Uncontrollable shakes wracked his body. He found himself very annoyed with his own body, so openly betraying what it felt. He struggled to stop, but to little avail. The hands that were suppose to hold his own body were shaking the worst.
McCoy noticed it. Not difficult, since Sullivan’s whole body jiggled. “Relax, Sully.”
Fear began to creep up upon him, and Sullivan found himself very jumpy. Those Kilrathi in the brush could have killed him. So could the gunner. He could have been hit, instead of the Marine a few meters behind him. “I– I–“ Sullivan tried to talk, but his jaw was not as steady as it use to be.
The Martian gave him a wane smile. “Scared? Good! That proves you’re not stupid. Don’t worry about it. Any man here who says he’s not is either a liar, or just not paying attention.” How many times in the history of human armed forces was that line uttered to rookies? By the look on McCoy’s face, the PFC could not believe he even said it. “That was too bloody cliche. Ah, forget about it, Sully. The shakes will stop in good time.”
McCoy proved correct. The shakes did stop, taking far longer than Sullivan planned. Looking around at other rookies, and even a few vets, he lost some of his shame. Even hard-nosed ground pounders’ hands shook. A few Marines ever grow visible, and audibly ill, after the firefight. The vets gave those rookies a hard time, but none were purposely malicious in their teasing. Even McCoy joined in.
Siting next to Sullivan at their first rest since the fight, McCoy pointed at one rookie who lost his breakfast, and part of last night’s dinner. “See, could be worse Sully. Poor Jones there won’t hear the end of it.”
Strangely enough, his stomach was one of the few parts of his body that did not bother him. If anything, the energy burnt in the fight made him hungry. With only so many ration bars on him, he had to conserve food. Water was another matter. He pulled the stopper on his canteen and took a swig. It was almost as warm as the air in Doveshire, but still as refreshing as if it were chilled overnight. “Give it time,” Sullivan finally said.
McCoy laughed. “That’s the spirit! ‘Cheer up, it could be worse. So we cheered up, and it got worse’.”
No matter how rotten Sullivan felt, he was several grades in better shape than Doveshire. Though still kilometers from the city center, and almost as far as the spaceport sandwiched between the Edward and Emerald Rivers, Doveshire was all around them. It looked not a whole lot different from urban centers on Earth. In the middle of the city stood towers– or what was left of them after the Kilrathi conquest. All around those towers for many kilometers sprawled development.
His squad took five at an intersection of two wide streets. No signs remained standing to give him a clue as to street names. On the corner they sat, a grocer’s once existed. The shop was long since boarded shut. Two other corners held commercial buildings of one sort or another. Sullivan spotted the word dentist on one of the faded signs. On the fourth corner stood a battered apartment complex. Sign of inhabitation were abound, including the fact somebody ploughed under the lawn and established a corn farm upon it.
Sullivan brought his rifle up quickly at a sudden motion in the half-grown corn. McCoy reacted instinctively, taking aim at whatever Sullivan saw. He relaxed slightly when he noticed that Sullivan was not staring down a two-point-five meter tall hairball. “Would you look at that.”
Sullivan was doing just that. Across the street, three figures emerged from the corn, with several more eyes peering through boarded closed windows, and cracked doorways. “Hey Sarge! We got company.”
“Hostile?” Fuchian asked as he hustled to his feet, rifle in hand.
“I don’t think so,” Sullivan said. “Or if they are, they won’t be much of a match for us.”
The shambling wrecks were slowly shuffling towards them. These people were not the emaciated zombies one might find on a liberated world that was not fully self-sufficient. Mac Six had enough food to go around, so the civilians’ bodies were not skeletal. To his surprise, the civilians did not even have the stench of occupation. Doveshire had more than enough water for bathing, as well as farming.
What struck him first were their eyes. The eyes of each civilian carried the horrified look of people who have seen too much. McCoy told Sullivan about his own first invasion, and how the civilians carried around a haunted stare. He could not imagine what these people had suffered after thirteen years of occupation. Sullivan did not want to know. Probably the sort of things that would take a team of psych-guys a lifetime to untangle.
“Are they gone?” asked one of the stumbling civilians. She was young, perhaps a couple of years older than Sullivan. In her arms she held a bundled infant. Hers, Sullivan could not tell. Both had the same shade of dark skin, but the infant could be a cousin or niece of nephew. Not that any of that mattered to the Marines. The native might have been pretty once, but now her face was covered with years worth of worry lines, premature wrinkles.
Sullivan and McCoy exchanged glances. The Cat? Gone? They both wished. That would make liberating Mac Six a lot easier. Neither had the chance to answer, for Fuchian stepped in to take charge. A good trait in a sergeant. “For now, ma’am, the Cats look to be hiding for the moment. Anything you or your neighbors can tell us about them would be a great help.”
Sullivan did not care for how the civies were starting to crowd them. If the Cats were to jump out and ambush, all the natives would be mowed down. Still, he found it hard to yell at them to get away, not when he saw glistening hope beneath the years of despair in most of their eyes. Sullivan paused. Most of their eyes– but not all. One of the civilians looked at the Marines, or rather through them. His face was all but blank. Not only that, he wore enough clothing to look like he belonged in an alpine climate.
“McCoy, what do you make of that one?” Sullivan pointed at the blank-faced man.
As usual, McCoy drew his own conclusion. “You mean the blonde? She’d be worth chancing after she washed some of that dirt from her face. She must have just came out of the garden.”
Sullivan grumbled beneath his breath something very unflattering. “No, I mean the fellow who looks like he’s planning on climbing glaciers in the Urals.”
McCoy scrutinized the odd man. “That is strange. He probably seen more of the Cats than the rest of them. They can do things to your mind, weird things.”
Which was close to what the brown lady was telling the Sarge. “Sometimes they come at night to drag someone away. We usually see them in a week or two. Sometimes, they never come back. That’s the worse part; not knowing what happened to them, or if you’re next.”
Fuchian nodded. He heard similar things on other worlds. The Cats loved to play their mind games with conquered peoples. Escaped Varni often told of their own people being brainwashed to kill other Varni. The Lizard could be normal as could be one moment, the next– they snap and start shooting until somebody knocks them out.
“I wonder if they did that here,” Sullivan mused.
McCoy shrugged. “We’ll find out when–“
His words were silenced by a deafening blast. A blast so strong that the two Marines, and most of the crowd were thrown to the ground. Sullivan slammed into pavement with a muffled grunt. The blast stunned him momentarily, blanking his own mind. McCoy was quicker in shaking away the cobwebs. “Sully, you’re hit!”
Sullivan could feel nothing but the ringing in his head. Wherever that shell landed, it was close. A minor miracle that the explosion did not pull his lungs out through his nose. His had ran up and down the length of his own body, checking for shrapnel imbedded in him. He shook his head, unable to find anything. He was covered in gore– as was McCoy. “I’m not the only one,” he shouted, pointing at the blood splattered all over McCoy’s light armor.
As the ringing stopped, the screamed of wounded and terrified civilians filled the air. Wails of the mortally wounded echoed in Sullivan’s mind for days to come, like the wails of banshees. Fuchian was already up– or did he even fall?– barking orders. Marine corpsmen rushed over with stretchers. With so many civilians down and wounded, a few medics were not going to cut it. Sullivan made his way over to assist the corpsmen.
He treaded carefully, avoiding stepping on civilians. Or even parts of them. Parts– yes, that might explain why he heard no incoming fire. He glanced around, looking for the mountain climber. Where he was more or less standing, all that remained were a pair of shoes and some ragged flesh sticking out of them. “McCoy!” he shouted again, this time against the cries, pointing at the shoes.
“Your mountain climber blew up!” McCoy said in genuine astonishment.
“What are you two gumming about?” Fuchian snapped, gesturing for them to aid the corpsmen. When Sullivan explained what he saw earlier, Fuchian’s jaws clenched and his face with white with rage. “Damned Cats!” He paused to tap into his helmet’s microphone. “Captain, the Cats have suicide bombers out here. We just met one– No, sir, none of men were wounded, but the civies are a horrible mess. Yes, sir, assistance would be greatly appreciated.”
“Suicide bombers?” Sullivan asked, looking at McCoy. His comrade simply shrugged. He heard of pilots during Earth’s Pacific War crashing into enemy carriers as a last line of defense. He even recalled some religious fanatics– he disremembered which sect, doing the same thing. The later were hated in the Corps; crashing into a heavily armed warship was one thing; blowing ones’ self up in a crowd of noncombatants was quite another.
Once finished speaking to the Captain, Fuchian switched back to his squad’s channel. “Alright Marines, we’re going to have to keep our eyes open for more of these bombers.”
“Hey, Sarge,” one of the other Marines asked. “Why would these guys blow themselves up after we arrive?”
Fuchian scowled, remembering other worlds liberated. “They probably don’t even know they are. The Cats are real good at screwing with your mind. Some of the civies that gone missing for weeks on end were probably brainwashed and programmed as suicide bombers. The hairballs love playing mind games.”
Sullivan clenched his own fist, tight enough he could feel his nails digging into palm. Sullivan never knew hatred before in his life, nothing even remotely as intense as what he felt for those who killed that man. He was not alone in his visible anger, and Fuchian caught on quickly. “Cool your reactors, grunts. Don’t go losing you heads over this. That’s what they want you to do. And trust me, turning humans into mind won’t be greatest horror we’ll face here. Trust me.”