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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/LordsOfJoop on 2024-12-25 16:16:59+00:00.
"Sir."
The young, frightened private looked to the somewhat distracted veteran lieutenant, motioning to the war-zone outside of the habitat module; in the space between the door and the horizon lay a wasteland of bodies, heaped upon each like discarded toys, and a faint, still-tangible sensation of a tidal force having only withdrawn for the time being, not forever.
"Yes, private?"
The private shuffled nervously, his skin flushed with embarrassment, and then cleared his throat before speaking. "Sir, we.. that is, I.. regret to inform you that our sergeant is, uh.."
"He's dead."
"Sir, yes, sir."
A crude, sloppy salute follows this for some inadequately explored reason, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the lieutenant.
"Good to know. Reinforcements will be here within six to eight hours. We have twice that until the sun rises again. Between then and now, collect up the remaining firepower, organize the wounded, if there are any this time, and set the perimeter guard." The lieutenant paused for a moment. "Also, see to yourself being promoted to corporal, and inform the corporal who was just here she just made sergeant. As you were."
With wide eyes and a slight tremble, the newly-minted corporal could only provide a more assured salute, then give a sharp, short, "Sir-yes-sir" in the proud tradition of the clueless slowly becoming aware of how truly desperate times can become. With that accomplished, the corporal withdrew and the lieutenant was left alone again, still looking out of the window in the habitat.
"We could have made a bridge," he mused, shaking his head softly, his voice a whisper. "Instead, we threw rocks. Shame, really." As he turned, he caught a glimpse of something on one of the command and control monitors - an outlying recon body-cam, still active, capturing video of an enemy troop, one of the mobile horrors which had been assailing his encampment for the last four solid days - always attacking at dawn, when his people were less visually capable, some of them barely awake. A time-honored battle strategy, that.
Approaching the monitor he could see the beast, snuffling loudly, and grunting to its off-screen compatriots, or perhaps talking to itself. That had been observed more than a few times - prayers, perhaps, or just an idle thing, done by the idle soldiery, a constant of the cosmos.
Still, he watched as the monitor told the same story his recon team survivor had, as had the satellite telemetry until it failed and as did the post-mortem of the scant bodies which were recovered from the initial ambush scene. On the screen he could see the beast as it snuffled, drawing in vast amounts of air, and according to reports, memorizing scents for later tracking purposes; reportedly, they could do the same by taste, which elicited more questions that it ever answered, yet that fact, like a rotten tooth, swelled in his mind and lay horrible and eternal.
The beast picked up several shattered weapons, holding them aloft, then began to disassemble them; their reported capabilities as tool-users was far from accurate - the species seemed built to tinker and fiddle and even invent, and his command structure barely accepted them as fellow sapients. After bearing witness to what the "barely sapients" could do, the lieutenant imagined the high command being forced to listen to a sunrise full of shrieks and moans of all-too-familiar voices, faces soon to be erased from future and hope itself.
Again, it began to assemble something anew - endlessly creative, their initial efforts seemed to be based around clubs, then sharpened edges and finally, crude projectiles. Seeing an advanced photon arm-cannon, still oozing the original operator's blood and with two bones jutting from the end of it, as it is being forced into the form of a simple, inelegant spear, it does wonders to one's morale - namely, it gives it a summary execution and a burial in the mud.
What he saw on the monitor, though, it chilled him to the marrow. It held up the gun, in that case a phased plasma rifle, and then chambered a fresh round with a low, ominous humming sound. As the bolt ratcheted back and the primary fuel chamber filled, thus arming the weapon and preparing it to discharge the titanium-beryllium fragment dart at eighteen times the speed of sound, he saw the glee in the beast's eyes as he finally grasped how the world was going to burn, having just mastered the fine art of arson.
"..oh, we are so fucked.."
That assessment had barely left his lips when he heard a smartly-dressed officer enter the habitat by way of the permanently-opened doorway, and cough as to introduce themselves. Turning to face them, his hand was already raised in a salute, crisp and authentic, if automatic, at the officer in question. "Sir," he said, his mouth moving independently. "Welcome to Firebase Six. How can I help? Sir." The last "sir", a hitchhiker to the sentence, leaped away, leaving the saluting lieutenant staring down at what must be the highest-ranking officer yet to visit the planet itself - it being just a backwater hellhole on the ragged edge of contested space, barely worth the munitions it took to destroy what sparse habitation existed on its surface.
"As you were, lieutenant," the colonel said, then migrated to the lieutenant's desk, claiming his chair; being it was once in the custody of the captain running the combat unit to which the fire-base belonged, it becoming elevated in social standing was par for the course. "I'll need refreshments, someone to clean my bunker and an update on the current situation. Command has seen fit to have me oversee what's left of this fight. Your reinforcements are due within the hour." Smirking, the colonel put his feet on the desk, dislodging a few chunks of muddy earth onto some loose, barely-defined paperwork, and then sighed dramatically. "Well?"
Without pause nor apparent inward reflection, the lieutenant spoke candidly. "Sir," he began, "I'd say we have about eighteen or so hours before this isn't our planet any longer." Then he pointed to the monitor. "I just witnessed, as in, within the previous one hundred seconds or so, one of them arming and preparing a Clarvell-Briss phased plasma rifle, then .." He paused. "You.. you really don't know about what happened, do you, sir?"
The colonel, his amusement vanishing rapidly, stood slowly and approached the lieutenant. "You," he began, putting his index finger against the lieutenant's sternum. "Will never presume my knowledge nor experience. I was appraised of your previous commander's absolute and abject failure to maintain order, discipline, sensible conduct and regular communications with high command. Frankly, corporal, and oh yes, it will be corporal by end of day, of this I can assure you, you are being held liable for the failures still echoing. Does this idea penetrate?" With a smirk, he looked down at his subordinate and glared with pride.
To this, the former-lieutenant nodded gravely and spoke with quiet conviction. "With all due respect," he began, "They are only killing the officers and leave the enlisted alone. So, thank you.. sir." Then he beamed brightly, and walked a step back, saluting proudly, and in full line of sight to the doorway - the same one which had been ripped off of the hinges on the first dawn of the attacks, courtesy of just one of the beasts' least efforts. When it pried the captain's head off of his shoulders and did that.. obscene.. biological process to the stump, that seemed the more strenuous activity.
The colonel had only time enough to blink before he turned, facing the doorway, and realized how absurd of a quality target he was - backlit by a monitor, captured in the early evening hours, and with no obstruction provided, a child could make that shot count, and whomever it was, they very much did that very thing.
The hole was the size of a fist when it began at his sternum, and his internal organs simultaneously vaporized and were turned into a thin slurry by the fast-moving darts in the cloud of super-heated hydrogen gas, and his last breath was thrown through the monitor behind him, robbing him of even words at his own demise. Without further ado, the former commanding officer of Firebase Six hit the floor, his wounds dried and devoid of mess - the weapon was known to cauterize what little fluids might leak, what with the majority being drawn from the body so rapidly they tended to look like extended tentacles before splashing to the ground.
As he stripped his uniform of all rank insignia, the newly-minted corporal walked outside, looking up at the deep, rich blue skies overhead, then sighed, relief and joy filling his expression as he saw the first of the beasts beginning to thread their way back into the encampment; as before, none of the enlisted were threatened, simply ignored, as they began their new search for officers to engage in wanton, abject cruelty. It was not the enlisted men who had bombed their homes, shattered the lives and stolen their world - true, some did fight, and those who did were torn asunder, to rise as flame and fall as ashes.
The smarter, wiser troops simply allowed it to happen, and of those, most began to remove their uniforms, walking into the jungle so very much like the ones on their collective home-world. To fight and die on behalf of the distant elite stopped mattering. And so did the corporal join them, merging with the woods, vanishing body and soul, never to emerge again.
B...
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