Two Soldiers

CHAPTER 1:

Caleb waited. He waited and he listened. Lying deathly still, he closed his eyes and strained to hear over the crackling of the burning wreckage that was his squad's recon transport. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. That had to be long enough, right? They had to think he was dead. Everyone else certainly was, and they'd taken a direct hit which should have blown the transport directly in two if he was right about what he thought they'd been shot with.

He nervously pushed himself up, a part of him terrified that at least one of his limbs had been disabled in some way, and breathed out a sigh of relief when everything worked. He looked around and grimaced. The transport had been blown in half, along with Jex, the hellbender that had been functioning as their communications operator.

He'd known him for at least six years now. They were friends, good friends at that. Multiple times they'd saved each other's asses in heavy firefights with URG conscripts. Caleb could have sworn he saw his pink skin start to to turn red with how pissed he was when they all found out that the Union of The Red giant was gonna be on their side for the foreseeable future, although direct cooperation between their two militaries in the field of battle would still never happen. He also remembered that even Jex understood that the Merkeb Dominion was still leagues worse.

Shit, six years? That's longer than Caleb Donovan had ever planned on being in the military, and four of those years hadn't even been spent fighting the guys he thought they'd be fighting. Common enemies made strange bedfellows.

And the Merkeb Dominion were one hell of a common enemy. Although how they came to be the way they currently are wasn't known to the alliance, they've made their intentions perfectly clear. They sweep through systems with ferocious speed, slaughtering any sentient life they can find, taking anyone stupid enough to surrender to them as slaves where they're worked to death on massive, planetwide factories they set up behind them on conquered worlds, manufacturing simple things like field bunker prefabrications, sometimes ammunition. That's why even after some of these prison planets had been liberated it did next to nothing to help alliance scientists reverse engineer any of the ridiculously advanced technology the Merkeb were fielding.

There were guesses as to why they were up to all of this heinous shit. Some thought they were test tube soldiers working for some other race, and while their genetic makeup definitely points to their biological advantages being unnatural, such as near immunity to most bacteria and viruses and the ability to function for weeks on end with little to no sustenance, most doubt that they were just the attack dogs for somebody else. Somebody or something out there was definitely controlling them, but it had to be somebody else of the same species, or subspecies at the very least. They don't seem like the type to play well with others, much less work for someone who wasn't as vile as they were.

Caleb mused on this a few times before, and started musing on it again while he searched through the bottom half of Jex's uniform for ammunition and supplies. He found two magazines for his field carbine, with a third one being damaged beyond use from an ammunition explosion, a few spent casings jutting out from the top if the jagged metal edges of what was the feeding end. He also noticed that the husks of the larger rounds for the carbine's underslung rocket launcher were scattered around his friend's body. That's what did him in, it looks like the shockwave from whatever they hit their transport with -- probably an AA round and not energy based -- had set off the rockets inside the pouches on his belt.

At least it was instantaneous, or at least he hoped it was. Caleb dreaded the thought of Jex simultaneously bleeding to death and drying out to a husk due to the failure of his uniform's moisturization system. As a race of big, sentient salamanders the hellbenders were more than capable of walking around on land, piloting vehicles and using firearms and laser weaponry, but they still needed a constant supply of moisture or else they'd wither away from the elements. Caleb had heard horror stories of Red Giant interrogators tossing captured hellbender grunts naked out on the sand on desert planets. Drying out in this jungle wouldn't have been as swift as that, the humidity in the air being just enough to prolong his suffering if the bleeding didn't do him in. At least as a human Caleb would only have to worry about bleeding should something like that happen to him.

He shook his head to clear his mind. Now wasn't the best moment ot be thinking about that kind of shit. He still had to figure out kind of stuff to take with him. All Pulsar Defense Enclave soldiers and marines from the lowliest grunt to special forces units such as the Sirens and the Shadow Unit had been given guerilla warfare training, owing to them getting their start as two species of slaves that had banded together to revolt against their masters around 650 years ago.

As much as he'd like to take the anti tank launcher with him, lugging that thing around the jungle along with the massive rounds it used just wasn't going to happen, he'd pass out in a few hours. He'd definitely take a few of the multipurpose proximity explosives. Placing just one of these on one of the gargantuan trees would definitely ruin a Merkeb death squad's day, the initial explosion would at least maim one of them and the massive splinters being launched everywhere would probably be able to penetrate even the robust, shielded heavy Dominion armor.

He continued to sift through the carnage and rubble, another two magazines for the carbine and three for his sidearm. He took only one of them, their pistols hadn't been able to do really much of anything against those bastards, so it would be most useful for causing distractions and luring them into traps, no need to carry too much ammo for it

Suddenly he felt his hand wrap around exactly what he'd been looking for, the unmistakable carrying handle of a an Infantry Fielded Focused Shock Unit. Sometimes referred to as a "Thunderbolt", it was a relatively new development. Essentially a handheld version of the titanic, electricity based cannons put on tanks and some atmospheric fighters, it amounted to a portable lightning bolt launcher. Caleb had only test fired one of these a few times several months ago, but he felt like God watching the target dummies convulse erratically before exploding gloriously, a thunderous boom echoing throughout the firing range a second after pulling the trigger.

He carefully slid it out from it's destroyed mounting case and whispered a triumphant "fuck yes" through clenched teeth as he noticed it was fully intact. Technically this thing had infinite ammunition, he didn't quite understand how it functioned, but the gist of it is that every time it was fired some of the electricity started spinning a complex series of moving parts and crystals in the weapon that would begin to generate more and more energy, and in combination with the solar panels lined on top of the weapon, all of this resulted in it "reloading" every 8 hours or so, but that that was only in optimal conditions. With mow much jostling he was going to be doing and the thick jungle blocking most of the direct sunlight, he could fire off one shot a day, possibly two. It was heavy, and it wasn't exactly subtle, but he couldn't pass on it. His carbine would only get him so far in the event of a direct confrontation.

He put the extra magazines in his bandolier and pulled back the charging handle of his carbine, then shouldered his pack and cringed slightly as the mines jostled around in it against the protein bars and canteens before silently reminding himself that they wouldn't detonate unless primed to do so. He then yanked the Thunderbolt up and put the strap on his other shoulder before deciding it would be best to wrap it around his back opposite his bandolier.

Hopping out of the transport he landed on his feet and stumbled a bit, barely managing to stay upright. He didn't exactly know where he was going, and his heads up display showed that he'd lost contact with the GPS system they'd set up in the planet's atmosphere, either that or something in his helmet got fucked up when he was thrown against the wall from the destruction of his craft. Without his GPS and map system, the long term outcome of this whole thing probably wasn't good. Heavily jungled planets are always hard to just survive on, much less navigate alone with no electronic help.

He figured he'd probably die out here, so he might as well just venture forth into any given direction and see if he could take out as many Merkeb troops as possible before he either got shot or starved to death.

There was another possibility though, maybe he'd find some help. There weren't any other PDE forces this far out into the Dominion's territory but other members of the alliance had sent scouts ahead. At least one individual from the Grand Fleet had been out here at some point, setting up listening devices and traps programmed specifically to go off for the Merkeb. Although not nearly on par with the Dominion, they were still the most technologically advanced members of the alliance, an entire race of nomadic cyborgs that spend their whole lives traveling around space in vast starships, constantly looking for new technology to modify and adapt into their "Universal Nexus", a big pool of cybernetic implants to mix and match at their heart's content. The extent of their modifications shocked Caleb. He himself had some joint implants installed in his legs following a previous transport crash, although that time it was an unfortunate case of incompetency on the pilot's part. Those would definitely help him drag this Thunderbolt around the jungle, but he couldn't imagine replacing nearly every single part of his body with a machine as the people in the Grand Fleet did. Sometimes it was hard to even refer to them as "people" seeing as nearly every one of them was damn near 99% mechanical, but they were tough and they were smart, and it was certainly a good thing to have them on his side in this whole shitshow. Hell, a few of their machinists actually managed to reverse engineer a Merkeb weapon, it was just a small pistol, but it was something.

That guy, or android, or whatever probably wasn't in the jungle anymore, though. And even if they were it wasn't like they'd be carrying food or water with them. Although they could probably lead him back to friendly territory.

He definitely wouldn't be seeing anybody from The Many and One. They were something of a polar opposite to the cyborgs in the Fleet. All of their technology was organic, even their spacecraft. To be honest he was a little happy about that. No offense to them as they were tenacious fighters, their acid based weapons doling out some much deserved suffering to enemy troops, and they were actually the first species in the galaxy to encounter the Merkeb, but they were real goddamn creepy. A quadrupedal species of fleshy, muscular... things that communicated using scents and pheromones and fed on this foul smelling slop composed of various fungi and muds. The jungle would have played hell on their ability to communicate one another, and it wasn't exactly a walk in the park to teach them how to "talk" like everyone else did, so they were sitting this operation out aside from providing spacecraft, and transport for anybody crazy enough to want to hitch a ride on one of those bulbous, pulsating monstrosities.

He wasn't going to be seeing any URG troops either, and that was for the best. Far too many of his buddies had been ruthlessly slaughtered by those three legged avian shitheels, and the stench of destruction still lingers in the back of his mind from that time they thought they were going to liberate a city under their control only to find that the crazy fuckers tried wiping out any of the indigenous people that wouldn't collaborate the second they found out the PDE was on the way. Luckily the occupying force was small and the people fought back, but it took a toll on them. There wasn't any cheering when they managed to get to the center of the city, only blank, shellshocked stares.

No, if he was gonna see anybody friendly it would be from the Lunar Sisters. They were previously an extremely isolationist society, with the PDE and the sisters choosing to leave one another alone as neither caused the other any real major problems. While on paper they were a democracy just like the Pulsar's Defense Enclaves were, the huge gap in numbers between women and men in their population led to them effectively being a matriarchy more than anything else. Hell, he hadn't even seen one of their men, not even in recordings or pictures. They were certainly never fielded in combat, and he'd never been deployed to one of their planets so it wasn't like he had the opportunity to visit one of the zealously guarded townships that the males frequented.

The Sisters, as full of themselves as they could be, were the closest to the humans and the hellbenders both in general physiognomy and in culture. They learned different languages quickly and spoke them damn near flawlessly -- albeit in a near constant ambivalent monotone that seemed to betray their complete lack of most complex emotions -- and they even had a near identical ranking system in their military. One of the more obvious differences between a human and a sister was that the sisters were about 7 feet tall on average while uniformly being very well built with extremely toned, muscular physiques. They shared a similarity with the hellbenders in that they were entirely lacking in body hair and their eyes seemingly lacked pupils, but instead of having hot pink skin theirs was a dark, ashen grey that almost seemed to absorb the light around them. They definitely gave off unsettling vibes but at least they weren't a theocratic dictatorship or a weird smelly centaur slug thing.

Finding help out here was starting to look extremely unlikely, though. It was hard to imagine anyone outside of somebody with his particular survival training skills surviving for more than a day, maybe two in this environment. It was a "bare planet", not bare in the sense of having no living creatures, that obviously wasn't the case, but bare in that no sentient beings inhabited it. As a result it had no name before the alliance gave it the rather uninspired moniker of "Green 11". It was the 11th planet in this particular solar system, and it was most certainly green, so that made as much sense as anything else.

The importance of the planet itself lie in it's position, just beyond it was a heavily colonized desert world serving as the new home of at least 5 different species, all of them who had their previous homes annihilated by the Merkeb Dominion. The alliance had only been able to evacuate them before, now they had a chance to properly save them, and they weren't going to throw that away. Not without a fight.

And the fight was taking a long time. Far too long. Despite having no way of dropping reinforcements off on the surface as the immediate space around the planet was a total warzone with alliance starfighters having just enough of an edge to keep that from happening, more and more Merkeb kept showing up, relentlessly attacking forward positions all across the frontline. It seemed like they were slowly running out of combat vehicles, but small arms and infantry were another story, and they were a problem enough on their own. Their "small arms" might as well have all been anti materiel weapons, and while the jungle slowed down the Merkeb it also made combined arms strikes against them next to impossible, meaning that the threat the infantry posed to APC's and some of the less heavy tanks couldn't be effectively countered, so the past 5 or so months had turned into a grisly close quarters slugfest.

Caleb looked up to the sky and noticed through the leaves that the light filtering through was slowly dwindling. He'd been walking for what had to have been hours and hadn't encountered a single sign of life, not even from the Merkeb. Was it an automated system that shot him down and killed his squad? Had the main force managed to push them off the planet? Or maybe all of their craft had been destroyed by alliance fighters and now they were being picked off from the sky.

No, that didn't happen. They'd never gotten that lucky in any of the fights they won, each victory against the Dominion had been a slog with countless casualties and large swathes of destruction and horror left behind by both sides. Either they hadn't reached as far behind enemy lines as he'd thought, or they'd gone much farther than they anticipated. Either option wasn't exactly good, but Caleb had a Thunderbolt, so he wasn't complaining at the moment.

He looked around and spotted a tree that started to droop down, it's leaves forming a relatively spacious, natural tent. That would do for tonight. He walked over and crouched down underneath it, and noticed with delight that a thin stream of water was trickling down the trunk as it started to rain. Sure it was warm and tinged with the taste of dirt and leaves, but water was water, and the more he was able to save of his own stock the better. He flipped up his visor, put his mouth against the tree and took a big drink before plopping down on the ground and removing his pack.

He fished out a protein bar and hungrily wolfed it down, his thoughts had distracted him from his appetite, and now they had mostly left him alone, listening to the various whistles and grunts of the local wildlife. He hadn't had any issues with predators in this jungle before, and he knew that if one tried to cause him an issue they were in for a very rude awakening. As he swallowed the last bite, he lied down to sleep on his pack, not bothering to remove his helmet. He wasn't going to be much good at killing Merkeb if he was tired, and a few hours of sleep was better than no rest at all.

CHAPTER 2:

He was awoken by the sound of a fallen branch cracking in half outside of his cave of leaves. He slowly stood up to a crouching position and shouldered his carbine, flicking the safety off. Why hadn't he heard them before? He hadn't been sleeping that hard.

Didn't matter. This was it. Hopefully it was only a scout, a whole squad out there and he was dead. There wasn't enough room for him to get the Thunderbolt ready, but if there was a squad he could probably empty a magazine into one of them before firing a rocket from his mini launcher into the ground, detonating all of the ammo he was carrying and starting a blaze that would take every one of those pricks out.

He let out a primal scream and lunged from his shelter, raising his rifle to aim down the sights.

"DIE MOTHERFU-"

He saw stars as he was clubbed in the back of his head, his helmet took the brunt of the blow but it was still powerful enough to daze him. His carbine dropped to his side and he tumbled forward, landing face down in the mud and leaves.

So that didn't exactly go as planned.

"Wait... is... is that?"

The voice startled him. Merkeb don't talk in combat. He pushed himself to his knees and looked up.

Before him stood a Lunar Sister. She was one of the taller ones, down on his knees it was hard to judge her exact height but she had to have been at least 7 and a half feet tall, maybe slightly taller. Her armor clinging tightly to her amazonian physique, the two automatic plasma rifles she toted aimed directly down at him slowly lowering. Through her own helmet he made out the fierce, pure white eyes as they narrowed and then widened as she realized what and who he was. She leaned down to place one of her rifles on the ground before slowly offering one of her giant hands for him to grab.