The Autumn War Vol. 04: Succession

"So, uh," Hernandez began as he shifted his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. "What's it like drivin' that thing around? Do you have a little control panel in there, or...?"

"I'm a Pilot, so the suit connects directly to my nervous system," she explained as though it was the most normal thing in the world. "It has umbilical cables that plug into sockets that run down my spine. I see what the suit sees, and I feel what the suit feels. It's an extension of my body."

"Kind of looked like you were sittin' in a giant mess of wet noodles back there," Hernandez continued.

"Those tentacles are muscular appendages that wrap around my body to secure me inside the cockpit like a harness," she said, her suit's inscrutable lenses scanning the horizon beyond the trench for threats. "They're coated in lubricating slime to prevent them from chafing against my carapace when they constrict. They also act as a layer of protective cushioning to help absorb impacts and reduce shocks. Think of them like a...full-body airbag."

"What do they feel like?" Hernandez asked with a grimace.

"They're kind of warm, tight, slippery," she replied with another chuckle that came off distinctly suggestive. "I'd invite you to come try them out, but I think it's a little cramped in here for two..."

Tatzi walked over to Hernandez without so much as a word, gripping a handle on the back of his rucksack, lifting him off the ground like she was scruffing a misbehaving kitten.

"I was just curious!" he protested as she set him down at the other end of the trench, Sunny filling the radio with her giggling. Hernandez knew better than to argue with the Borealan, turning his attention back to the field beyond.

An explosion lit up the landscape ahead of them, the glow slowly fading. A loud bang followed behind it, the blastwave whipping at the airborne dust.

"I guess the scouts found the AA Scuttler," Brooks mused. "That looked like a bunker-buster."

"It must have been dug in deep somewhere if it survived the initial artillery strikes," Collins added as he watched a plume of smoke rise in the distance.

The squad waited around for a few minutes more, Evan listening in on a conversation between the four Jarilans as he drank from his canteen through his open visor. Jarilo must still be a small colony because they were catching up like people who had been raised in the same town. While Sunny didn't seem to know Jade, Aster, or Cardinal on a personal basis, they were still direct relations. It was strange to think that all of the Jarilans were siblings, made from the same genetic material that had been provided by their Queen and her human...lover? Mate? Donor? Did the term sibling even make sense for social insects, or were they closer to clones? Evan didn't know enough about the subject to say.

He was eventually distracted by the sound of an engine, a UNN dropship gliding low over the trenches behind them. It came to a hover a couple of meters off the level ground between the two lines of fortifications, its troop ramp lowering to disgorge a squad of Marines who quickly fanned out to secure the area. The dropship shot back up into the sky as abruptly as it had come, more of the vessels descending through the roiling cloud layer, circling overhead to shed velocity.

"New orders coming through," Simmons announced. He gave Garcia a gentle kick as he walked down the trench, the Marine tossing a candy bar wrapper aside as he scrambled to his feet, sealing up his helmet. "Scouts have zeroed in on that radio signature they've been tracking. They don't have eyes on it yet, but they've narrowed it down to a grid square, and they need someone to go take a look. Ghost Company drew the short straw, as usual."

"We've been picking up those signals too," Sunny added, the hulking Warrior turning its armored head to glance down at Simmons. "We managed to decode them and isolate them from the interference produced by Kerguela's overactive magnetosphere, but we haven't been able to pin them down. Our best guess is that they're some kind of mobile radio emitters that are serving as nodes in a larger comms network. The Bugs are likely moving them around to keep us from finding them."

"Well, we just found one," Simmons continued. "Whatever it is, it's booking it, so we need to get out there ASAP before it gets away again. The armor is gonna get here in five, so pack your shit and get ready to go. Sunny," he added, turning to the Warrior. "Can you keep pace with a Puma IFV?"

"Not at full tilt, but this baby can do about fifty klicks at a sprint."

"Well, okay then," Simmons replied with an impressed whistle. "Hope you don't get tired easily."

Sunny hopped from foot to foot for a moment as though she was preparing for a hundred-yard dash, the suit's immense weight shaking the ground. The bizarre sight was enough to get a laugh out of Evan.

The armor arrived right on time, the vehicles driving in from the left side of the trenches, their headlights cutting through the swirling dust. They had presumably been going near their top speed since they had split off from the infantry, and they had only just made it around the circumference of the blockade that the Bugs had set up. The squad's Puma pulled to a stop nearby, and they climbed out of the trench, heading up the ramp and into the troop bay. Sunny followed along behind them, probably scaring the souls out of the crew.

"Strap in tight," Simmons warned, securing his harness.

Evan tapped into the external cameras, watching the rest of the company move into position. Eight IFVs, a dozen Kodiaks, and the eleven Warriors that had made it to the ground lined up in formation.

"Driver, you got an uplink to the scout company?" Simmons asked.

"I got 'em," the driver replied. "They're tailing our target five klicks out. It'll take us about six minutes to catch up."

They waited a couple of minutes more, the low rumble of the engine making Evan's seat vibrate, then the signal came through from the company commander. The IFV lurched into motion, starting to accelerate as its eight wheels churned up the ash-caked soil. The rest of the company followed in a rough delta formation, the Kodiaks kicking up clouds of dust behind their tracks. Sunny began to jog alongside the Puma, gradually picking up speed, her suit taking loping strides on its digitigrade legs. Watching it move up close was so strange. Evan couldn't tell what was muscle and sinew, and what was metal and servos. Its gait was so heavy, each footstep making its massive body quake, soft flesh quivering where it was visible between the armor plating. Its arms began to swing like a sprinter, helping power it forward, the gun on its shoulder remaining paradoxically level.

"Woo!" Hernandez yelled, bouncing in his seat as they went over a small hill. "Look at her go!"

The ground was whipping past beneath them now, the IFV's suspension rocking, Sunny running at a flat-out sprint alongside them. Her clawed toes seemed to give her a lot of traction, her top-heavy suit remarkably balanced. The terrain here was still flat, devoid of trees, an endless expanse of ash that stretched out of view in every direction.

"How are you doing, Sunny?" Jade asked.

"Feels good to burn some calories after being stuck in that drop pod," she replied, her voice wavering with the impact of her footsteps. She didn't sound tired or out of breath, though. What did the suit even run on? Was it purely organic, or did it use some kind of fuel?

After a little driving, Evan spotted a dust cloud in the distance. As they neared, he saw that it was a Timberwolf from the scout company, the six-wheeled vehicle veering towards them to match pace with the rest of the formation. There was a second cloud ahead of them, gradually growing nearer. It was soon revealed to be a trio of three Scuttlers. Two of them were armed with cannons, while the third had no visible weapons. Instead, the space on its carapace that would usually have been occupied by a gun or a SAM system sported a bulky, tumorous growth. A blend of organic and metallic antennae jutted from it, rising high into the air. Their eight legs were powering them across the plain with alarming speed, the organic vehicles running along like giant spiders. While their crab-like limbs offered them a lot of mobility in rough terrain, they were clearly less suited to fast movement over open ground, the convoy slowly gaining on them.

The Kodiaks came into range, one of them firing off a sabot, its gun remaining perfectly stable even as it bounced over low hills and craters. The round streaked across the plain, narrowly missing one of the Scuttlers. The vehicle in question suddenly ground to a halt, its eight feet skidding in the ash, its turret swiveling to face the oncoming formation. It fired off a bolt of green plasma, the projectile impacting just ahead of the lead vehicles, forcing them to take evasive action as it kicked up a plume of dirt.

A second Kodiak round took it out, a HE-shell impacting its hull, tearing open a wound in its carapace to expose the living flesh beneath. The Scuttler staggered backwards under the impact, then toppled over, its sensory appendage lolling from its beaked mouth like a tongue.

Evan's IFV had to swerve around the body as they passed it, gaining on their primary target. Another Kodiak fired, the shell impacting the ground a few meters from the radio Scuttler, forcing the thing to veer off-course. It remained surprisingly agile, executing a turn that took its pursuers by surprise. It scurried off again, the convoy making a much wider turn in an attempt to follow it, Evan feeling himself pressed into his seat as the IFV swerved. Sunny was much more limber, pulling ahead of her wheeled counterparts. She was close enough to use her railgun now, the turret on her shoulder firing off a stream of slugs, the molten metal acting like tracer rounds. Some of her shots found their mark, harassing the second Scuttler.

The organic tank turned again, cutting across the path of the convoy, the turret on its back taking aim. It brought its rocket pods to bear, sending a hail of missiles sailing towards the company. They arced down towards the ground, explosions kicking up clouds of ash and soil, the yellow haze of chemical munitions lingering in the air to create a kind of smokescreen.

When the IFV blasted through it, they emerged on the other side to see that the Scuttler was racing towards them, its cannon leveled. It fired off a bolt of plasma at an approaching Kodiak, the tank too close and moving too quickly to evade. The projectile melted into its front armor, slagging the ceramic panels and the hull beneath, liquid metal splattering the soil. It wasn't enough to halt the behemoth, and the Scuttler was already committed, the two colliding like a pair of freight trains.

The impact was enough to lift the Kodiak's prow off the ground like it had just hit a ramp, the barrel of its turret bending upwards as it scraped against the Scuttler's carapace. Seventy tons of metal and ceramics went from traveling at fifty K to maybe five in the space of a second, dumping all of that energy into the overconfident Scuttler, prompting the organic vehicle to violently explode like a deer that had been hit by a truck. Like a balloon full of mucous-colored paint, it coated the tank's hull with unidentifiable guts and fluids, pieces of shattered carapace and dislodged ceramic tiles sent flying into the air. Thrown tracks and dismembered limbs skidded to a stop in the ash as the hulking tank settled, crushing what was left of the unfortunate Scuttler's carcass beneath its bulk. The Kodiak was mostly intact, but it wasn't going anywhere now.

The rest of the convoy continued on, chasing down the fleeing radio Scuttler. It was heading for another patch of scorched forest, but it was a desperate bid to find cover. Another tank round landed beside it, taking off some of the legs on its left flank, sending it crashing to the ground. It skidded for a few meters, then rolled, dumping all of its momentum before coming to a stop to lie broken on the field. The company encircled it, the Jarilan Warriors slowing to level their weapons at it, but the thing was spent.

"That's a radio emitter alright," Simmons mused, watching on the external cameras. There was a sudden flurry of movement, the downed Scuttler's sensory organ snaking forth to sweep around, as though it was blindly searching for aid. Two of the nearest Warriors opened up with their thirty-millimeter guns, ichor splashing as they punched holes in its carapace, the living vehicle going limp. "This must be how they're keeping in touch with the Queen. If we can take out enough of these things, they're going to lose coordination over any kind of distance."

"That means any Bugs that aren't in direct line of sight of the Ant Hill are going to be completely directionless," Jade confirmed with a nod. "They rely on a very rigid command structure to be effective, and they're not good at improvising. They'll probably just dig in and wait for instructions that will never come."

"Our new orders are to secure the area and prevent the Bugs from recovering their transmitter, though I don't think there's much left to recover," Simmons continued. "They need to airlift that Kodiak out of here too, if they can separate the fucking thing from the Bug it smashed."

"UNNI will probably want to dissect it," Garcia added. "I wonder if they can get the body inside a lander? Maybe they can tie it to a sled."

"We'll form a safe perimeter using the vehicles, but our spotters aren't picking up any enemy activity nearby," Simmons said as he relaxed back into his seat. "We can probably take it easy for a couple of hours - get some rest and a bite to eat before we move on the Ant Hill. This might be the last break we get for a while, so make the most of it."

CHAPTER 2: SUNNY DISPOSITION

Evan leaned back against one of the IFV's wheels, setting his pack down beside him. The armored companies had formed a circle around the downed radio Scuttler, creating a kind of wagon fort, the Kodiaks pointing their cannons out into the empty expanse beyond. He had no idea whether this place had been a grassy plain before the orbital strikes, or maybe a lake, but it was completely barren now. He glanced up at the sky, seeing a few slivers of blue here and there, the glow of the auroras bleeding through. The wind was slowly blowing away the ash clouds, and he was grateful to have the IFV shielding him from the worst of it. With nothing to get in its way, it was whipping up the ash like a sandstorm, and he could hear it impacting the other side of the vehicle.

Hernandez, Brooks, and Garcia flopped down beside him, Garcia producing a collapsible stove from his pack. Tatzi and Borzka weren't far behind, sitting on the dusty ground with their long legs crossed, fishing inside their packs for their oversized MREs. Evan glanced up to see Foster and Collins making their way over. The usually surly Foster now had a smile on his face, and it seemed that he and Collins had made up, the two of them engaged in conversation.

Foster hesitated a moment before taking a seat beside the Borealans, but they accepted him just as they accepted the rest of the unit. Evan hadn't been shy about telling the squad what he and Foster had gone through during their brief separation from the rest of the team, and stories of the man's heroics had repaired much of the damage done by his initial bad attitude. Evan doubted whether he would ever truly warm to the Jarilans, but a lack of overt hostility was a pretty good start. If tolerance was the first step, then perhaps acceptance could come later.

Jade and her Jarilan counterparts appeared with Sunny in tow, the massive battlesuit lumbering along slowly to match pace with them, its footsteps shaking Garcia's little stove as he tried to light a flammable gel packet beneath it. It was so odd to see the thing in such a mundane situation.

The suit came to a stop beside their little camp, settling into a crouch on its digitigrade legs, its three arms hanging at its sides. Once again, the almost imperceptible seam that ran down its abdomen began to split open, the two halves of its inch-thick shell parting to expose the tentacle-filled cavity within. Ropes of thick, viscous slime dripped to the ground, soaking into the layer of ash as the muscular tendrils inside began to shift. The glistening mass retracted to expose lemon-colored carapace, unwinding their tight coils from around Sunny's slender limbs. She placed all four of her hands on the edges of the cockpit to pull herself out - if the term cockpit even made sense in this context - stepping down from her suit.

She was much taller than Jade and the other Drones, putting her somewhere between a human and a Borealan, though her build was more willowy. It almost looked like she had been stretched out. Save for her stature, she was identical to the other Jarilans that Evan had encountered, with the same feathery antennae and expressive eyes. Rather than a belt or a rig, she had a shaped recess in her thigh armor where a sidearm was stowed. She shook a clinging glob of slime from one of her upper arms, giving the visibly disgusted onlookers an innocent shrug.

"I'd usually have some Workers on hand to towel me down, so unless any of you fine gentlemen want to volunteer..."

Knowing that she wasn't going to get any takers, she turned slightly, inspecting something inside the Warrior's dripping chest cavity. Evan raised his eyebrows as he saw her from the back for the first time. The firm chitin plates that covered her body split apart down the length of her spine to expose something that resembled pink brain matter, covered over in a kind of waxy, translucent layer. There was a row of half a dozen sockets running from the base of her neck to her lower back, and each one was connected to the suit's shadowy interior via a flexible, fleshy cable that bore a disturbing resemblance to an umbilical cord.

Using her four arms, she reached behind her back, probing for the cables with her fingertips. She began to unplug them one by one, Evan feeling a shudder pass through him as uncomfortably long, metallic needles slid out of the sockets. The orifices themselves were encircled by metal rings that mated to the plugs, the holes sealing up as soon as they were disconnected, pieces of rigid chitin folding down over them to protect the sensitive tissue within. After a few moments, she was left with an overlapping row of plates running down her spine like scales, providing enough coverage that he could barely see any brain matter now. He watched them shift as she stretched, then she turned again, following her smaller counterparts to join the growing circle. She lowered herself to the ground using her lower pair of arms, crossing her long legs, sitting there like a yoga instructor about to teach a class.

"Okay, who wants to give me some sugar?" Sunny asked. "That's not a euphemism - I didn't pack a lunch."

"Here," Foster said, tearing open his MRE. He fished inside the plastic packet, producing a little container of Jarry juice the size of a toothpaste tube, then tossed it over to her. Sunny snatched it out of the air, then gave him a wink.

"Thanks for the honey, honey."

"Never liked that stuff anyway," he replied. "A bean burrito, on the other hand," he continued as he fished out a larger packet. He slotted it into the sleeve of a flameless ration heater, then added water, shaking it for a moment to get the chemical reaction going.

"I've always found a certain fascination in watching humans masticate," Sunny added, her mouth parts opening up as she extended her proboscis. She twisted the cap off the tube of honey, sliding the appendage inside.