“Are you sure you want to send out an expedition team? All we know about the planet is that it’s almost inhospitable. And that’s coming from our last attempt at colonization, shortly before we lost contact.”
“That’s precisely why I want to do it, sir. With all due respect, our duty is to make sure that the residents are living comfortably, or, at the very least, living at all.”
“I don’t know, Major…it just seems like a rather dangerous and costly plan. God knows what Lieutenant General Alistair would say. He’d probably have both of our heads up on poles for everyone to see.”
“I could hardly care less, Colonel. If we can send Task Force Hawkeye out, and bring them back in successfully, maybe we can actually know just what the f—what the hell is happening on Eliomin. Hawkeye is a very reliable group, as we all know very well…they didn’t turn tail when the last skirmish on Martian soil turned ugly. They protected our assets without so much of a casualty. I have reasonable cause to believe in these troops.”
“Armored infantry or not, I still don’t like it. It’s one thing to try to colonize a planet with only rudimentary information, but it’s a whole other story when troops are sent out on a rescue mission on a planet where it’s almost certain that everyone is dead already.”
“Who said anything about rescue, sir? I think we all know that it would be futile to try to bring any civilian back alive. What I’m suggesting is that we simply send the team out on a recon mission to see what’s happened over there. Just something to put on paper, that’s all I’m asking.”
“I don’t like it, but I guess I can’t convince you otherwise. I’ll authorize the mission…but remember, you are solely responsible for the welfare of our troops as well as any strains on our budget this year!”
Master Sergeant Matthew Santiago grunted in his efforts to fit his armor on. He was somewhat tall as a man, and muscular as well. His tanned, square-jawed face was weathered with scars, his curly black hair hanging loose from his scalp. His right eye, although visually identical with his left (and fitting in with the rest of his face) was replaced with a cybernetic implant that allowed his brain-chip to see even better than what his natural eye could. He growled irritably as every attempt to fit his shin guards either failed or fit wrong.
These things were never fit right, and it always strained his patience to put every single component on. Sure, it would provide superior protection as well as all those other physical augmentations when worn properly, but it was still a pain in the neck to do just that. His shoulder armor clanked loudly against his torso plates as he adjusted his gloves. The ultrathin muscle fibers conformed to the familiar contours of his hand, and Matthew sighed in relief. Finally, the blackly painted piece of junk fit properly.
Picking up his customized T75-B helmet piece, he stood up. He’d just received orders from Major Jeremy Konevitch, and apparently he was to find out what happened on Eliomin an Earth year ago. As far as he knew, Eliomin was just one of the newer colonies of Earth, with a bunch of eggheads and grunts going on the trip. According to Major Konevitch, there had been a lack of any reports concerning the current state of affairs for the past twelve months.
Matthew personally thought it was just one of the many cases of there being either a hostile alien race already inhabiting the planet or some sort of bacteria killing off the civilians. Either way, he was being sent, along with his team, to investigate what happened, and report back. He didn’t really care about the fate of humanity in Eliomin—don’t stick your nose into other people’s business, and it won’t get bloodied was what his mother used to say—but when higher-ups told him to do so, he didn’t question it.
He shrugged nonchalantly as he walked from the Fitting Room into the Armory. Carrying his helmet in his left arm, he slid his way down the aisle marked “Plasma Weapons” until he found his particular model, the DER-T14b. He stopped and stuck his head snugly into the cushioned interior of his helmet before handling the massive rifle.
It was a beauty, the T14b. It could fire plasma at incredibly high speeds and none of the blooming issues present in laser weapons. Matthew grinned, holstering the gun. He probably wouldn’t end up using it, but he always felt naked without it resting on his back—and he was never comfortable naked, especially in a battlefield.
He took the long way to the loading deck, his heavy composite boots clanking onto the floor. The rest of the crew was already there and ready—some more than others, by the look of it. Squad Commander Jan Weber was tapping his foot impatiently before the launch pod. Matthew shook his head and tapped his helmet, motioning for Weber to put his on as well.
“You’ve got to remember to put it on, Weber. Can’t step foot into the pod without it.” Weber snorted at this, but did so anyway. The straps tightened with an audible hiss, and Matthew nodded his approval. He then addressed the entire platoon.
“Boys and girls, looks like we’ve got some place to go. So get your a**es in the pod and let’s get the hell out of here!”
The interplanetary vehicle performed as smoothly as it was made to do, sailing through deep space almost effortlessly. The ion thrusters pushed continuously and silently, eventually guiding the pod towards an enormous wormhole. Once it exited out the other end, the thrusters resumed their work and directed the pod towards an Earth-sized, cloudy planet. This planet was the subject of Task Force Hawkeye’s mission. The team braced for gravity to take hold again as the pod neared the planet.
The pod burst through the atmosphere and gently touched down onto the hard, rocky surface of Eliomin. The whole place appeared to be covered by reddish clouds, below that a dystopia of nature. The pod door opened, and the platoon stepped out gingerly onto the dry, cracked mud. All around them, they could see nothing but dry land, dotted with the occasional ruins of what may have been a human settlement. There were piles of dead trees here and there, as if they had been felled with intent to use them…but had never gotten the chance.
Matthew slid his MultEye Scanning System over his visor and began scanning the area for any signs of life. He looked on for a good one minute before shutting it off and returning to normal view. Life there may be, but whatever was left was, for some reason, heavily irradiated. Good thing their suits had been hardened against radiation.
He turned to the platoon. It was clear that something far from expected had happened here—as far as he knew, colonizing expeditions didn’t bring fusion nukes with them. But being prepared for the unexpected was part of the job criteria, so he simply began delivering orders to his troops.
He warned each of them to be careful and watchful for any Martian ground forces in the area; chances were that they had sparked a battle and had caused this whole fiasco in lonely little Eliomin. Treaty or not, fusion bombs could have fallen…which would result in the radiation. It may have been that the planet was simply heavily irradiated from the start, but that was unlikely at best. Planets full of the rare-earth elements were few and far in between, and even then in much smaller sizes.
Matthew signaled for his squad to follow him as he walked into the barren wasteland. His boots crunched into the sand with every step he took, at times dislodging small, oddly shaped desert creatures. As they scuttled from beneath the sand, some of them began devouring each other, pincers and jaws flying.
The rest of the platoon emptied out of the pod, closing the door. Cautiously, the scanned the area, their guns up and ready for fire. Good, Matthew thought. The crew was prepared for this, just as they should be.
Matthew and his squad had walked for about a few miles when they encountered an Earthling, sprawled before a large settlement with a tattered Martian flag—a red sun surrounded by rings of various color. Martians had been the culprit after all. Not that he was surprised much; quite the opposite. He just hadn’t expected to find something like this so soon.
She was lying down on her side, still equipped with the remnants of a now-degraded set of T68-D power armor. Her helmet had come off, and the brown, shriveled skin of her face clung to her skull. Her eyes had long since decomposed, and for one Matthew was glad to have his suit on. High Private Jennifer Limmeck knelt down at the body and yanked the dog tags off of the corpse’s neck. Engraved upon it was her rank and name: Private Lucia Auburn.
“Get a picture, and take her equipment. We need to take it all back to the space station, although I’m pretty sure she died of dehydration and radiation.” Matthew knew there was no time for this, sad as it may be. “It looks more like she was shot at first…but only the armory technicians can tell us what really happened, and when.”
While one of his squad members took the dead body back to the pod’s storage booth, Matthew pondered what could have led to a shootout. From the lack of any live human presence here on Eliomin, it couldn’t have been just any Martian occupation. It was likely that they had come here for permanent residence…but then, where were they? It was clear that the soldiers had cleared out most of the civilians and grunts on the Earth-sponsored trip, and just as obvious that nobody lived here anymore.
He shook his head. He couldn’t find out if he didn’t find just what was in those settlements. He signaled to the men and women to split into pairs.
The building was a large place, to put it in simple terms. White “shadows” from gamma rays were scattered across the massive, bare-boned structure that remained. Here and there were, clearly visible amidst the drab-colored interior, flakes of dried blood as well as various signs of damage: a plasma burn here, the crater from a rail gun shot there…
The doorways, however, weren’t as tall as expected— which signified Martian invasion onto an Earth-owned compound. There were several corpses which neither army had cared for—Earthling corpses were mainly in the defensive, facing the invading Martians, while the Martian corpses were, for the most part, attempting to get in. Matthew didn’t bother to even say anything. Everyone simply began taking pictures.
Matthew made it his first objective to check out the supplies. He didn’t expect much to be left, if at all; any remains of food or water was probably irradiated anyway.
His suspicions were confirmed when he opened the cryo-room in the back. It was bare but for a few gnawed-on bones and empty cartons of water. His suit warned him about the radiation once he was inside. He shook his head.
Matthew walked further into the ruins. Civilian bodies littered the area, most of them shriveled (from starvation? He wondered), some of them bone, and a certain few who appeared to have died very recently. He crouched down and yanked the tags off of these few, taking pictures as he went.
For a few minutes, he just stayed in that position. He was, as he should be, resilient against all forms of physical pain—blunt, sharp, temperature extremes—but he had never really been one for seeing dead bodies of the brave young men and women who served in the Armored Divisions. Inside his helmet, he sighed, grateful for the concealment the mask gave him. Casualties like this couldn’t be avoided, he supposed. He scanned the room one last time, knowing that he had seen all that he need to see.
Something caught his eye, however, as his gaze swept the rubble within. It was something that looked like a doll’s hand, protruding from under a large layer of rubble. That was to say, if said hand could rot. After months of decomposing and animal infestation (or were the tooth marks vaguely simian?), the small hand was now mostly bone. Was this the remains of a child? Suddenly, as he looked around, he could see teddy bears, kid’s trinkets, and other miscellaneous items in the wreckage.
He turned and noticed a security camera in the corner. He shot it from its position on the wall, accessing the feed. He didn’t have to press play to see what was on it; it was stuck in a continuous loop of what had presumably happened here.
Beneath his visor, his eyes widened in horror as he saw just who the Martian army had really been.
“Well, Major, I’ll be damned. So it turns out that it was those goddamned Martians who attacked Eliomin.”
“Don’t act as if you didn’t know what really went on, sir.”
“What?...Has Santiago said something about it?”
“Damned right he did. Not only did he tell me about the orders you gave out, but he also gave me video footage of it.”
“Are you accusing me of treasonous activity? I only did what I had to at that time, Major. Don’t blame a busy man for his small mistakes.”
“Treasonous activity? This goes beyond that. You don’t…you don’t do that kind of thing. It’s not human. And I don’t think this counts as a small mistake, Colonel.”
“Well, in that case, Major, you and I must both agree that the Situation Program was a success. Only a handful of people are allowed to know, however…you and Santiago have breached that line. Security!”
“What?! Are you—“
“Yes, Major. Yes I am. It is you who has crossed the fine line between patriotism and treason. Let this be a lesson to you: when we conduct experiments, it is for good reason. We are above our own laws…perhaps not officially so, but we are immune all the same. You, Major, haven’t reached that rank, and never will. You should know better, really. You really were a good asset. Oh, McGraw? Could you shoot down the incoming pod? We really can’t have something like this on our hands.”
High above Earth’s surface, an atmospheric reentry pod burst into flames. A tiny crack in the shielding was blamed for the explosion. There was, however, one survivor.
Faintly etched upon the rough, scarred dog tag of this man were the letters M and S.
“That’s precisely why I want to do it, sir. With all due respect, our duty is to make sure that the residents are living comfortably, or, at the very least, living at all.”
“I don’t know, Major…it just seems like a rather dangerous and costly plan. God knows what Lieutenant General Alistair would say. He’d probably have both of our heads up on poles for everyone to see.”
“I could hardly care less, Colonel. If we can send Task Force Hawkeye out, and bring them back in successfully, maybe we can actually know just what the f—what the hell is happening on Eliomin. Hawkeye is a very reliable group, as we all know very well…they didn’t turn tail when the last skirmish on Martian soil turned ugly. They protected our assets without so much of a casualty. I have reasonable cause to believe in these troops.”
“Armored infantry or not, I still don’t like it. It’s one thing to try to colonize a planet with only rudimentary information, but it’s a whole other story when troops are sent out on a rescue mission on a planet where it’s almost certain that everyone is dead already.”
“Who said anything about rescue, sir? I think we all know that it would be futile to try to bring any civilian back alive. What I’m suggesting is that we simply send the team out on a recon mission to see what’s happened over there. Just something to put on paper, that’s all I’m asking.”
“I don’t like it, but I guess I can’t convince you otherwise. I’ll authorize the mission…but remember, you are solely responsible for the welfare of our troops as well as any strains on our budget this year!”
Master Sergeant Matthew Santiago grunted in his efforts to fit his armor on. He was somewhat tall as a man, and muscular as well. His tanned, square-jawed face was weathered with scars, his curly black hair hanging loose from his scalp. His right eye, although visually identical with his left (and fitting in with the rest of his face) was replaced with a cybernetic implant that allowed his brain-chip to see even better than what his natural eye could. He growled irritably as every attempt to fit his shin guards either failed or fit wrong.
These things were never fit right, and it always strained his patience to put every single component on. Sure, it would provide superior protection as well as all those other physical augmentations when worn properly, but it was still a pain in the neck to do just that. His shoulder armor clanked loudly against his torso plates as he adjusted his gloves. The ultrathin muscle fibers conformed to the familiar contours of his hand, and Matthew sighed in relief. Finally, the blackly painted piece of junk fit properly.
Picking up his customized T75-B helmet piece, he stood up. He’d just received orders from Major Jeremy Konevitch, and apparently he was to find out what happened on Eliomin an Earth year ago. As far as he knew, Eliomin was just one of the newer colonies of Earth, with a bunch of eggheads and grunts going on the trip. According to Major Konevitch, there had been a lack of any reports concerning the current state of affairs for the past twelve months.
Matthew personally thought it was just one of the many cases of there being either a hostile alien race already inhabiting the planet or some sort of bacteria killing off the civilians. Either way, he was being sent, along with his team, to investigate what happened, and report back. He didn’t really care about the fate of humanity in Eliomin—don’t stick your nose into other people’s business, and it won’t get bloodied was what his mother used to say—but when higher-ups told him to do so, he didn’t question it.
He shrugged nonchalantly as he walked from the Fitting Room into the Armory. Carrying his helmet in his left arm, he slid his way down the aisle marked “Plasma Weapons” until he found his particular model, the DER-T14b. He stopped and stuck his head snugly into the cushioned interior of his helmet before handling the massive rifle.
It was a beauty, the T14b. It could fire plasma at incredibly high speeds and none of the blooming issues present in laser weapons. Matthew grinned, holstering the gun. He probably wouldn’t end up using it, but he always felt naked without it resting on his back—and he was never comfortable naked, especially in a battlefield.
He took the long way to the loading deck, his heavy composite boots clanking onto the floor. The rest of the crew was already there and ready—some more than others, by the look of it. Squad Commander Jan Weber was tapping his foot impatiently before the launch pod. Matthew shook his head and tapped his helmet, motioning for Weber to put his on as well.
“You’ve got to remember to put it on, Weber. Can’t step foot into the pod without it.” Weber snorted at this, but did so anyway. The straps tightened with an audible hiss, and Matthew nodded his approval. He then addressed the entire platoon.
“Boys and girls, looks like we’ve got some place to go. So get your a**es in the pod and let’s get the hell out of here!”
The interplanetary vehicle performed as smoothly as it was made to do, sailing through deep space almost effortlessly. The ion thrusters pushed continuously and silently, eventually guiding the pod towards an enormous wormhole. Once it exited out the other end, the thrusters resumed their work and directed the pod towards an Earth-sized, cloudy planet. This planet was the subject of Task Force Hawkeye’s mission. The team braced for gravity to take hold again as the pod neared the planet.
The pod burst through the atmosphere and gently touched down onto the hard, rocky surface of Eliomin. The whole place appeared to be covered by reddish clouds, below that a dystopia of nature. The pod door opened, and the platoon stepped out gingerly onto the dry, cracked mud. All around them, they could see nothing but dry land, dotted with the occasional ruins of what may have been a human settlement. There were piles of dead trees here and there, as if they had been felled with intent to use them…but had never gotten the chance.
Matthew slid his MultEye Scanning System over his visor and began scanning the area for any signs of life. He looked on for a good one minute before shutting it off and returning to normal view. Life there may be, but whatever was left was, for some reason, heavily irradiated. Good thing their suits had been hardened against radiation.
He turned to the platoon. It was clear that something far from expected had happened here—as far as he knew, colonizing expeditions didn’t bring fusion nukes with them. But being prepared for the unexpected was part of the job criteria, so he simply began delivering orders to his troops.
He warned each of them to be careful and watchful for any Martian ground forces in the area; chances were that they had sparked a battle and had caused this whole fiasco in lonely little Eliomin. Treaty or not, fusion bombs could have fallen…which would result in the radiation. It may have been that the planet was simply heavily irradiated from the start, but that was unlikely at best. Planets full of the rare-earth elements were few and far in between, and even then in much smaller sizes.
Matthew signaled for his squad to follow him as he walked into the barren wasteland. His boots crunched into the sand with every step he took, at times dislodging small, oddly shaped desert creatures. As they scuttled from beneath the sand, some of them began devouring each other, pincers and jaws flying.
The rest of the platoon emptied out of the pod, closing the door. Cautiously, the scanned the area, their guns up and ready for fire. Good, Matthew thought. The crew was prepared for this, just as they should be.
Matthew and his squad had walked for about a few miles when they encountered an Earthling, sprawled before a large settlement with a tattered Martian flag—a red sun surrounded by rings of various color. Martians had been the culprit after all. Not that he was surprised much; quite the opposite. He just hadn’t expected to find something like this so soon.
She was lying down on her side, still equipped with the remnants of a now-degraded set of T68-D power armor. Her helmet had come off, and the brown, shriveled skin of her face clung to her skull. Her eyes had long since decomposed, and for one Matthew was glad to have his suit on. High Private Jennifer Limmeck knelt down at the body and yanked the dog tags off of the corpse’s neck. Engraved upon it was her rank and name: Private Lucia Auburn.
“Get a picture, and take her equipment. We need to take it all back to the space station, although I’m pretty sure she died of dehydration and radiation.” Matthew knew there was no time for this, sad as it may be. “It looks more like she was shot at first…but only the armory technicians can tell us what really happened, and when.”
While one of his squad members took the dead body back to the pod’s storage booth, Matthew pondered what could have led to a shootout. From the lack of any live human presence here on Eliomin, it couldn’t have been just any Martian occupation. It was likely that they had come here for permanent residence…but then, where were they? It was clear that the soldiers had cleared out most of the civilians and grunts on the Earth-sponsored trip, and just as obvious that nobody lived here anymore.
He shook his head. He couldn’t find out if he didn’t find just what was in those settlements. He signaled to the men and women to split into pairs.
The building was a large place, to put it in simple terms. White “shadows” from gamma rays were scattered across the massive, bare-boned structure that remained. Here and there were, clearly visible amidst the drab-colored interior, flakes of dried blood as well as various signs of damage: a plasma burn here, the crater from a rail gun shot there…
The doorways, however, weren’t as tall as expected— which signified Martian invasion onto an Earth-owned compound. There were several corpses which neither army had cared for—Earthling corpses were mainly in the defensive, facing the invading Martians, while the Martian corpses were, for the most part, attempting to get in. Matthew didn’t bother to even say anything. Everyone simply began taking pictures.
Matthew made it his first objective to check out the supplies. He didn’t expect much to be left, if at all; any remains of food or water was probably irradiated anyway.
His suspicions were confirmed when he opened the cryo-room in the back. It was bare but for a few gnawed-on bones and empty cartons of water. His suit warned him about the radiation once he was inside. He shook his head.
Matthew walked further into the ruins. Civilian bodies littered the area, most of them shriveled (from starvation? He wondered), some of them bone, and a certain few who appeared to have died very recently. He crouched down and yanked the tags off of these few, taking pictures as he went.
For a few minutes, he just stayed in that position. He was, as he should be, resilient against all forms of physical pain—blunt, sharp, temperature extremes—but he had never really been one for seeing dead bodies of the brave young men and women who served in the Armored Divisions. Inside his helmet, he sighed, grateful for the concealment the mask gave him. Casualties like this couldn’t be avoided, he supposed. He scanned the room one last time, knowing that he had seen all that he need to see.
Something caught his eye, however, as his gaze swept the rubble within. It was something that looked like a doll’s hand, protruding from under a large layer of rubble. That was to say, if said hand could rot. After months of decomposing and animal infestation (or were the tooth marks vaguely simian?), the small hand was now mostly bone. Was this the remains of a child? Suddenly, as he looked around, he could see teddy bears, kid’s trinkets, and other miscellaneous items in the wreckage.
He turned and noticed a security camera in the corner. He shot it from its position on the wall, accessing the feed. He didn’t have to press play to see what was on it; it was stuck in a continuous loop of what had presumably happened here.
Beneath his visor, his eyes widened in horror as he saw just who the Martian army had really been.
“Well, Major, I’ll be damned. So it turns out that it was those goddamned Martians who attacked Eliomin.”
“Don’t act as if you didn’t know what really went on, sir.”
“What?...Has Santiago said something about it?”
“Damned right he did. Not only did he tell me about the orders you gave out, but he also gave me video footage of it.”
“Are you accusing me of treasonous activity? I only did what I had to at that time, Major. Don’t blame a busy man for his small mistakes.”
“Treasonous activity? This goes beyond that. You don’t…you don’t do that kind of thing. It’s not human. And I don’t think this counts as a small mistake, Colonel.”
“Well, in that case, Major, you and I must both agree that the Situation Program was a success. Only a handful of people are allowed to know, however…you and Santiago have breached that line. Security!”
“What?! Are you—“
“Yes, Major. Yes I am. It is you who has crossed the fine line between patriotism and treason. Let this be a lesson to you: when we conduct experiments, it is for good reason. We are above our own laws…perhaps not officially so, but we are immune all the same. You, Major, haven’t reached that rank, and never will. You should know better, really. You really were a good asset. Oh, McGraw? Could you shoot down the incoming pod? We really can’t have something like this on our hands.”
High above Earth’s surface, an atmospheric reentry pod burst into flames. A tiny crack in the shielding was blamed for the explosion. There was, however, one survivor.
Faintly etched upon the rough, scarred dog tag of this man were the letters M and S.
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