Left Flank
Posted on Thu Jul 3rd, 2025 @ 5:46pm by Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius Tremble & 1st Lieutenant Jeksyne Vale & Lieutenant Mira Jayna & Sergeant Azure Thompson & Sergeant Tyrigus Fry & Sergeant Miranda Schultz
Edited on on Fri Jul 25th, 2025 @ 4:49pm
2,099 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Episode 16 - Silent Cries
Location: Surface of Wren IX
Timeline: MD010 0745 hrs
One moment Tyr was aboard the Pioneer, fully suited out in his MARVEL-EAS suit, taking up an outward facing position on the marked transporter booster pad in marine country.
The next, he was staring through his helmet’s view plate at a towering columns, broken stonework and a winding dried up…what must have been a water canal. His suits sensors processed for a few beats, then the gloominess receded as the electronics chased away the dark. The stone structures looked abandoned and lifeless. Maybe the only memories of a past slowly fading.
Focusing, Tyr saw his HUD uplink and he didn't feel quite as alone. Hefting his phaser rifle around, he checked the flamer attachment he'd affixed to the weapons slot beneath the emitter and ran checks on all his gear.
Azure looked around, her HUD illuminating the area. She wondered how long this 'city' had been abandoned. The lack of plant life made it difficult for her to make a proper estimation. She checked the modifications that had been made to her suit for this mission. The grenade launcher, located beneath her suit's right arm, fired grenades containing a plant-based 'bug spray'.
Miranda took a moment to look and the environment around them, to process what she saw. Part of her was curious, but she could not lose her focus. She ran a check on her Suit, then checked her comms to make sure the link was solid and clear. Then she looked for Jeksyne and the river.
Jeksyne had beamed in at the head of the small fireteam. He brought his rifle up, scanning the horizon and the area around him. The city looked like it’d been abandoned for centuries as the vegetation had begun to grow over the city and man built towers and roads. Like something out of an old post WW3 novel.
“Right, form up, standard patrol formation. We’ll take it one block at a time.” He spoke into the suits built in comm link.
Tyr began moving up the canal, nervously watching ahead while his sensors swept around him. He only had his own team’s information with a general overlay of the other teams as he walked into darkness. He had to remind himself to walk normally, let the suit do the work and it was a relief when they'd fully entered the canal and the sides were enclosed so the risk of any sorts of weapons fire from above was diminished.
His comm hummed slightly, letting him know the team net was open. After two hundred meters into the canal, his feeds began picking up movement on the periphery. Nothing they could lock onto, but something was moving around. He paused, then continued on, knowing his HUD would have flagged the movement to the LT but still he said, "Some contact. Three hundred meters ahead. Rock is starting to degrade our range."
Schultz kept one ear on the comms and her eyes on her surroundings as she stayed in formation. She expected the giant bugs to jump out at any moment and hoped they'd get through this alive.--especially knowing that their job was to distract the enemy long enough for the geeks to shut down the portal. Well, after the Marines drove the entity back to it. Still, they couldn't discount everything else that was out to kill them here.
Azure moved up beside Schultz. "Not exactly, Freiberg is it?" She asked the comm specialist.
Miranda grinned. "That all depends on which Freiberg you're referring to. I prefer to think of the rocker."
Azure moved her antennae quizzically, quite a feat in the cramped confines of the helmet. After a pause she said. "Oh, you mean the shoes."
"David Freiberg was in a late 1900s group called Jefferson Airplane and then Jefferson Starship. I only know of them because they were a part of the 1960s hippie movement on Earth." Miranda grinned. "When we get back to the ship, I'll let you listen to them. There's a great holodeck program with several of their iconic concerts, including one at a place named Woodstock."
Static sounded over the command net, then Neil's voice came through. “All Elements, Fleet Team has contact and are engaging. Looks like the Silence’s platform was an ambush. Stand by. Bringing up his combat grid, which was populating despite the interference."
There was a pause over the team net, then Neil's voice came back. “Left Flank, Lieutenant Vale, converge along your planned route. Don’t get bogged down when you get contact. They’ll be looking to keep us separated.”
Schultz' focus immediately switched to the colonel, then to her display. Too bad they didn't have an ACME Bug Zapper 5000. But Marines knew how to improvise, adapt, and overcome.
"No Bug Zapper, but I did bring some bug spray." Azure said.
"Good, because I've got a bad feeling about this," Miranda replied.
Tyr's HUD updated and he began moving, then realized he hadn't heard anything from the LT and he stopped and keyed his mic on the team channel. "LT? We good to go?"
"We're good, keep moving!" Vale came over the comms, weapon raised, slowly still, moving forward.
Abruptly, a CnC transmission scrolled across their HUD's: >>>"All Team, all CURE Elements. Be advised. This Species is the same as the Malificus entity. Be mindful of our previous experiences and watch each other's back. Tremble out."<<<
Schultz swore quietly.
"Form Up, Diamond formation. Watch your sectors, we don't want to get caught with our pants down here." Vale ordered through the comms.
Azure moved into formation, pulled out a few 'bug bombs' in preparation for the insects' attack.
Fry moved out on point, building his speed up to an eight meter loping run, using occasional jumps to clear obstacles. Within a klick, they'd run out of river bed and moved into a twist tunnel complex. The stiletto drones they'd launched were ahead of them.
Then they weren't
"LT," Fry called out as they moved into another set of interlinking tunnels. Or what should be. Something had happened to the drones, which didn't bode...
Then they had movement coming up from the floor directly in front of them and they had bugs among them. Bringing up his micro-grenade shotgun, he began ripping bursts into the bugs as they came at them, pincers and sharpened mandibles clacking menacingly. "Contact Front!!!," he yelled out as he fired. Adjusted aim and fired again. And again. And again.
Jeksyne raised his rifle, firing on the same horde of bugs, calling out to the squad as he did.
"All Stations, LIGHT THEM UP!!"
Jeksyne aimed down range, phaser firing in bursts, streams flying down range.
Azure threw her grenades. When the insects came in to contact with the insecticide, they began to melt like characters in a Cronenberg movie.
The Corpsman then laid down on fire on any insectoids that got close.
A bug's serrated leg tried to take her head off. She ducked and drove her modified gardening trowel into it soft under belly. Eliciting a roar of pain and a rush of innards.
Tyr's shotgun shredded bugs and he rotated through as someone, he thought it was the L.T. moved past. Looking over his shoulder he saw Miranda in drag position starting to get left behind. Stepping close, he grabbed the pull at the back of her armor and tugged, yelling, "Miranda, don't get mired down. On the bounce, Marine!!" Firing his shotgun one handed, Tyr blew another pair of bugs into chutney as the enemy pressed in.
Schultz growled, but more at herself for focusing more on the bugs than the team. "Roger."
Neil and Jayna were on the bounce. They’d been covering ground quickly, moving from a supposed crumbled city, to what looked like a viaduct but was too short to be believed as having been functional at any time. Now they were in short winding caves, slowed down to thirty kph, four Stiletto drones rolling slithering ahead of them to clear the way and make linking up to Vale’s team much faster.
The Drones suddenly winked from four to two as they reported contact and the preset ROE’s caused the SM-215’s to explode. Ten seconds later, Neil and Jayna were running through a section of tunnel painted with bug guts.
But the way was clear.
He checked her bio feed and all looked normal, but he keyed their common channel and said, “How’s the suit feel?”
"So far so good. Just don't ask me to turn on a dime," she quipped. She was adapting to the speed, but she wasn't quite as proficient as Neil. Yet.
Neil’s suit HUD flickered as Gaagii’s report was decoded into text: >>>“Command, RECON we have an abnormal energy reading. We are going to follow the reading and investigate. Breadcrumb trail is being relayed to your HUD. Will advise further. Raven out.”<<<
Neil sent a ping in acknowledgment. The Gunny was the best in the business. They’d get the Cure where they needed to go.
Then they lost the last two drones in an echo of thirty seconds before. Neil automatically ordered Rommie to update their sensors and went weapons hot. “Jayna,” he said, “We lost our eyes until we link up with Vale.”
"Got it." Jayna adjusted her own weapons and HUD to accommodate for the lack of advance notice. She was well-practiced in stealth and using her senses. Even with the training Neil had given her, she was still getting used to the new awareness the suit provided.
Then they were into another crossroads section. He had the waypoints set by the drones and was picking up feint signals from Vale’s flank team.
And there were bugs.
Half a tunnel full.
Neil’s eight cm pulse phaser began blasting away as he skidded to a rapid stop, lets working to keep from tripping and his heels dug in. The recoil from the pulse phaser and the ambient heat quickly filled up his heat sinks after seven shots, but the Runabout classed phaser cannon had punched rather large holes in the massed bugs.
His backpack chuffed twice and two micro photon grenades launched up, then rocketed down the passage past forty meters of the four meter high, angular shaped bugs that were bearing down on them still. They the grenades exploded in the middle of the enemy formation and mushroomed out, the shock wave of shrapnel shredding the bug carapaces.
Now they were close enough for his flamer and he waded in, gouts of flame singing their way ahead. Even so, a few bugs waded through.
Jayna's pulse phaser began to pick off the bugs that survived, splattering chunks of carapace across the tunnel. "I'm doing my part."
Neil's foot skidded again. This time in goo and he felt the spur on his heel dig into the ground, keeping him upright. More grenades chuffed and his shoulder mount blasted a wider opening through the bugs that he and Jayna slipped through, getting behind this patrol. The grenades gave emphasis to their having made contact with the enemy. Rommie's voice sounded in his ear, telling him that she was picking up Vale's team net and he mapped their way to link up.
"Lieutenant Vale, this is Tremble. You have myself and Jayna inbound. Don't shoot us. We're linking up."
With the bugs coming hard and fast, Jayna could hear the stress levels rising. Part serious, part tongue-in-cheek, she added, "Fourth rule of combat: don't shoot your backup."
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius Tremble
Executive Officer, USS Pioneer
Battalion Commander, The Cure
Sergeant Tyrigus Fry
Rifleman, Team 1, The Cure
USS Pioneer
Lieutenant Mira Jayna
Intelligence Officer, The Cure
USS Pioneer
Sergeant Miranda Schultz
Communications Specialist HQ, The Cure
USS Pioneer
First Lieutenant Jeksyne Vale
Company Executive Officer, The Cure
USS Pioneer
Sergeant Azure Thompson
Corpsman, Team 1, The Cure
USS Pioneer
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