Walker Brigade - Book of Incidents

"Okay, okay," I told her.

"Continue, Phinn, if you would be so kind." Becky was pouring the syrup on again.

The Captain talked as we ate, and Becky and I listened intently. He told us how my father's section had been trying to break the M'roby encoded signals, and understand their language to no avail, until now. It seems that once we had decimated them and surrounded what was left, they had never spoken in the clear as they started doing when we heard them. He said that after a little less than twenty minutes, our translation machines could understand and speak M'roby.

"What was the first thing you said to them?"

"Why?" Phinn sat there waiting for us to ask. When we didn't, he shook his head and laughed.

"You don't care why do you?" I smiled at him, and Becky just cracked up.

"Not really. The only thing I want to know...is it over? And when do we ship out?"

Phinn sat there looking at Becky and me, back and forth, back and forth. Shaking his head, he lowered his eyes to the table and chuckled.

"Okay, but you had better be prepared for more assignments like this. Your father has been shifting you and your squad around the galaxy to put you in positions like this. He wants you to join DevSecCom, you know that?"

"I know, and I won't. Not as long as he is in charge."

"He said you would say that if I asked you to join my squad."

"Fat chance..." Becky poked me in the ribs again. "What?"

"You could listen to the man. Mark ten's!" Becky's eyes were wide with excitement.

"I don't care if they are Mark twenty's. I will not work for my father."

"But..."

"Silence, Second Latham!" Becky's jaw snapped shut with a loud click of her teeth slamming together.

"Well, I have to go. It's been nice talking to you. It was a pleasure to have met you, Second Latham," Phinn said, extending his hand to Becky.

"The pleasure was all ours, Captain Brook. But before you leave do you have any idea where our next assignment will be?" Becky asked as sweet as sugar.

"Why, yes I do." He smiled at her as he turned and walked away.

* * * Simon

The first thing that hit me was the fetid smell of the water and muck through which I was crawling. How I got here, I couldn't fathom. Why I was here, I hoped would make itself known. As I tried to get to my feet, I fell back to the ground in agonizing pain. My left foot was burning, and lightning bolts of pain went shooting up my leg into my belly. I looked down at my slime-covered leg and saw the gleam of white bone sticking out of my dirt-encrusted skin.

I rolled onto my belly and continued to crawl through the muck, stirring up the smell of long-dead things, as I dragged my left leg through the slimy mess. In the far distance what sounded like thunder reverberated through the air. The flashes on the horizon behind me were not those of lightning. How I knew this, I don't know. It was the thunderous booming of artillery shells hitting the ground. Fragment HE, by the sound of it. Rolling over on my back, I looked up into the sky. A sky that was green with a touch of purple, not the blue that I remember. I looked around at the vegetation, and what I saw was a sickly shade of green, like pea soup.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember who I was and what I was doing here. Nothing, nothing but questions, I was so tired, tired of...what? My eyes wouldn't open, even though I willed them. The blackness of sleep soon overtook my thoughts and wrapped me in its comforting arms.

5.25.0093/6

* * * Max Jones

A world of shit was raining down upon us. Artillery shells were falling all around us as we advanced on the capital city of this hellhole of a world. It was the final push to quell the uprising of the infamous despot Chrispin Alabaster.

"Echo Two, advance the squad, by the numbers, two on two."

"Aye, Chief," Becky answered. "Echo squad, by the numbers, two on two, advance."

I ducked to my right as an artillery shell exploded to my left. That was close, only fifty meters away. We were about three klicks out from the arty emplacements slicing our way through their infantry. Our job was to break through the infantry and take out the arty while the Marines took the infantry and armor head on.

"Echo Two, move 'em all out half speed."

"Aye, Chief. Echo squad half speed, heading one-five-oh degrees," Becky shouted over the chatter.

Twelve blips on my heads up display moved out of the city toward the artillery.

"Echo Two, hold at half a klick from target," I told Becky.

"Echo squad, quarter speed, on my mark, halt. Wait for it. Wait for it. Mark."

"Echo One to Echo squad, open fire on designated targets." I lined up the furthest arty, eighty-eights by the look of them, in my sights and opened fire. Bolts of white-hot plasma streaked to the target. The arty turned to slag in an instant as the crews sprinted away from their emplacements to blockhouses behind each weapon.

Once all the arty had been turned into melted junk, Becky called ceasefire. Our primary objective realized we were now free to help the Marines clear hot spots and destroy armored vehicles.

"Echo squad, Echo one, listen up. Akers take your team to the west side and help the Marines clear that sector. Latham, you have the east side. I'll take the middle. Move out."

"Aye Chief," the responses came so close together as to be one. Eight blips started moving away from my position on my HUD. Switching to team comm., I told my team to move out in the direction of the city center. On our drive to the artillery, we had bypassed city center, which was too heavily fortified, just to bulldoze through. Now it was time to reduce the fortifications to rubble.

Once the arty had stopped, and Echo squad started to help the Marines, the opposition surrendered in mass. The fighting just stopped. Weapons dropped and vehicles were abandoned. The soldiers just went home. My team was now surrounding the palace at the city center as the Marines talked with Chrispin Alabaster.

"Echo squad to all teams, rally my location soonest," I called out on all-com.

Standing behind the Marine negotiator, I scanned the palace window for any weapons. None displayed. A group of men waving a white flag came out of the palace doors with their hands on top of their heads. The leader of the group peeled off and headed to the Marine major who was talking with whomever they left inside the building.

"Major, he refused to come out. Says you have to come in and get him, and that you have no authority over him or his world. He's insane, you know." The Major waved him away as he continued talking to Alabaster. Since this was one of our worlds, the Marines were not equipped with walkers or armor. Our assignment to the Marines was as their armored platoon.

"Chief, go in and get him," the Major called out to me.

"Aye, sir. Latham, Wickers, Akers, Wilcox, follow me." I headed for the door of the palace. To get in the door, I had to park my pulse cannon on my back, so the only weapons I would have were my particle beam projectors and gauss-guns.

"Echo One to Marine Commander."

"Go, Chief," the Major replied instantly.

"Do you have a fix on his location yet?" I needed to know where he was; I didn't want to waste time looking in places he wasn't.

"Affirmative, west wing, third floor, north side, looks like his bedroom suite. Also, the leader of the palace guard says he has an arsenal up there. Transferring the data, Chief," the Major told me.

"Thanks, Major. Echo One out."

I started toward the west wing, my four teammates followed. When we came to stairs wide enough that all five of us could walk up side by side, I led them to the second floor. The data displayed on my HUD as we went down the center hallway. On the north side, of the hall was a set of massive doors set in stone. Pushing with my walker's arm, the doors flew open. I walked to the center of the room until I was right under the red dot in my HUD. I indicated a circle around me for the rest of my team to take up positions. Once we were all in place, I raised my walker arms to the ceiling and punched the pinchers into the floor above. Everyone else did the same thing and the center of the circle crashed to the floor in front of us. There, sitting in a round plush bed, was Alabaster. He had a look of amazement on his face as he stared at five monsters with gauss-gun barrels pointed at his head.

Becky reached out with her pincher, and picked the pip-squeak despot up by the shirt collar, then held him up for all of us to inspect. He kicked and screamed, shouting obscenities at us as we walked him out of his palace. The hand over to the Marine Major went without a hitch.

* * * Becky Latham

I walked the piece of trash I had in my pincers to the Marine Major outside the palace. Placing him none to gently on the ground, I formally turned over custody of Chrispin Alabaster, ending a yearlong reign of terror in this system. How this fat pip-squeak got people to follow him in his quest to take over one of the Stellar Federations out systems would forever elude me. What had the Federation done to this world, to have people disgruntled enough to raise arms against it? Their world was theirs to do with as they saw fit. The only requirement from the Federation was that they send some of their own armed forces to serve in the Stellar Federation Armed Forces. We needed soldiers, not cannon fodder.

Well, that was something for the bureaucrats to work out, not us. Once we turned him over, our squad headed for the spaceport to load our equipment and shuttle up to a transport ship waiting in orbit. Then it was off to another world, another battle, or maybe even to homeport for some R and R. I don't even think the Chief knew where they would send us after this. I'm sure it would be a choice assignment since the Chief's father kept us jumping from place to place doing his dirty work, or things he couldn't have any of his people handle.

Once at the spaceport, we racked our walkers in the special shuttle that they assigned to us after we had settled things with the M'roby on three-four-alpha-nine. It was not only big enough in which to pack all of our gear, it was actually our walker and squad bay onboard the transport. Shedding my armor, I headed for the squad bay and the showers.

* * * Max Jones

When I returned to my room in the squad bay after showering, there were orders waiting for me in my mail slot. Sitting down, I pulled them out of the tube and unrolled them.

BEGINTRANS - 1A1255B4510C8899W3395548VVWJ1010

Date: 5.25.0093/8

To: Maximillian Q. Jones Jr., Chief Warrant Officer - 64ARB/1B/3MD

From: DevSecCom Joint Strike Force HQ, Pacifica

Re: Current assignment

Subject: Eckles, Simon DevSecCom Mission Specialist

Pursuant to Article 454 of the Stellar Secrecy Act of 0092, you are hereby requested to find and locate subject soonest. Last reported location was Highland IV spaceport with orders to proceed to the palace to provide intel on the number of opposition forces.

Contact lost on 5.24.0093/5. Presumed KIA. Body and equipment must be returned if at all possible.

Beacon # 45-00-A98 Freq. 112.454565

36 hours have been allotted to this operation.

Signed,

M.Q. Jones

Fleet Rear Admiral

2nd TechCom, Pacifica

800200099998IIIIF453Q1GVB901-09090901110E ENDTRANS

Why didn't he ever give me something easy to do? Find one man on a world of millions? Right, I can do that. At least he was equipped with a beacon.

At chow, I took Becky and Akers aside to explain what our next assignment was. They both laughed after I finished.

"At least we won't be getting shot at while we do this," Becky pointed out.

"True, but we probably won't be getting much help either," I responded.

"It's now twenty-two hundred hours, local. We'll move out at oh-six-thirty tomorrow morning," I told them. "Full kit," I added as an afterthought.

"Aye, Chief," Becky and Akers answered.

I went to bed, setting my alarm for oh-five-thirty. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

* * * Simon Eckles

Rain was hitting me in the face as I crawled up out of the darkness of sleep. Opening my eyes, I found they were full of water. I opened my mouth to catch the rain that was coming down in sheets; it was cold and refreshing as it soothed my parched throat. Rolling on my stomach, I looked around. Nothing. The artillery had stopped while I was out. The only sound was the rain. It was dark, was that because of the rain or was it now night? How long had I been out of it?

The throbbing pain that was my left leg was now begging for attention, attention that I couldn't give it at the moment. Reaching out, I started to crawl through the ever-increasing muck toward the spaceport. I had to get there I had to. Just why I couldn't remember, and I guess I really needed some medical attention. I've been in worse situations but not many. Crawl, rest, crawl, rest, this was my world now, crawling through the muck. I could see fairly dry ground ahead, things were looking up.

Although the dry ground was only about a hundred meters away, I was exhausted by the time I got there. Rolling over on my back, I decided to rest a while before starting again. The sky was clearing, the sun was trying to peek out from behind the clouds. Things were truly looking up.

5.26.0093/3

* * * Max Jones

"Blip bearing one-eight-five true, ten klicks," Scans called out as we left the city headed for the spaceport.

"Roger. Echo squad, heading one-eight-five true, half speed," I called out over all-com. He was only ten klicks away. This would be one of the easiest missions we had been on in the last two months.

"Five klicks," Scans sang out.

"Two klicks."

"Echo Squad, stop, spread out and look for our missing mission specialist," I ordered the squad. "Scans were is he?"

Looking around, I saw nothing but flat unobstructed wetlands. Our walkers were sinking into the muck the further we walked into the stuff.

"Chief, my scanner shows you're right on top of him."

Looking down I saw nothing. Very gently, I lowered my right walker arm into the muck. Scans switched his view onto my HUD to assist me. I could now see the tracer between my pinchers. Gently, I pulled the closed pinchers out of the muck and held it up in front of me. It was nothing but the tracer.

"Alright, people, we have our mission specialist out here without his tracer. We don't know how the tracer came to be here, but we have our orders. Spread out and search the area, twenty-klick perimeter standard grid search. Scans, I want to know anything that's living or moving in the perimeter. Everyone move!"

Things had just gotten a lot harder.

* * * Becky Latham

Somehow, the beacon we had been following had come out of the mission specialist we needed to find, and the Chief had widened our perimeter to twenty klicks. I was sitting at the center of the perimeter, coordinating the search.

"Echo five, search grid reference four-one by five-one. Echo six, five-oh by four-four," I gave them their coordinates.

As they cleared each section, it became a blue square on my HUD and I had to direct the squad member to a new grid square. It took a lot of concentration so I wasn't participating.

"Echo three, grid reference nine by one-four, Echo ten, eight by nine, Echo twelve, seven by two-four."

"Scans, you have anything for us yet?" the Chief asked Echo Eleven, who also wasn't participating in the regular search pattern. Scans was circling the perimeter trying to get a reading on our MS.

"Nothing yet, Chief," Scans reported.

"Keep at it."

"Aye, Chief."

I had a few seconds so I finally took a look around the only grid square I would see for the whole search. As I looked at the only vegetation around me, I was surprised to see a pair of eyes staring at me. I moved closer to the bush if you could call it that, and saw a hand, covered in mud and slime, waving at me. Holy shit, it was our mission specialist.

"Echo One, I found him, grid reference zero-zero. Get Meds up here on the double," I called out on all-com.

I cleared away the brush, ripped it right out of the ground, and put my walker in standby. Jumping down, I knelt beside our MS and tried to assess his wounds. Broken leg, various lacerations, and bruises, nothing a Med Ship couldn't handle. The Chief was standing beside me along with Meds.

"Get him out of that muck," the Chief ordered as he spread a tarp out on the ground next to him. Chelle was breaking out some saline solution and then started to wash the compound fracture in his leg.

"Must...tell..." He was trying to talk.

"Not now, buddy, let's get you out of here and back to the spaceport," the Chief told him.

"No...spaceport...no...back...scheddd...llleeedd...for...bo...bom...bombardment." He paused and looked at the sky. "Two...hours." He collapsed.

The Chief jumped into his walker plugging into all-com.

"Echo One to Control, we have information from the mission specialist that the spaceport is going to be bombarded in two hours. We don't know if it will be from space or ground positions."

"Received, Echo One." After a short pause, "Proceed to LZ Tango-Foxtrot, a Med Ship and your transport will meet you there. Control out."

It looked like the information was panning out if control was vectoring us to an LZ in the opposite direction of the spaceport. I helped Chelle to load the MS on her walker rack, strapped him in, and saw to it that he would be comfortable. Then I climbed into my own walker and followed the squad to the LZ. In the distance, we could see the transports lifting off and heading for the safety of space. Our shuttle roared overhead, followed by a Med Ship, as they headed for LZ Tango-Foxtrot for pickup.

It looked like we wouldn't be getting out of here anytime soon.

5.27.0093/8

* * * Simon Eckles

I woke in a nice, clean, soft bed in a sterile white room that I could only guess was in a Med Ship. I was numb from the waist down but, could see both feet poking the blankets up in little tents. They had me hooked up to all manner of apparatus that beeped, chirped and squawked. A nurse appeared beside me in a flash, and stuck something in my mouth and grabbed my wrist, smiling all the while as she watched the seconds tick by on her timepiece.

"Normal, normal and normal. Well, you gave everyone a scare there for a bit, Mr. Eckles, but it would appear that you will be just fine now."

She turned and rushed away just as fast as she had arrived. I never even got to say hello to her. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering what had gone wrong, how I had ended up in a Med Ship, and not wanting to go back into the field for a long time. But the old man wouldn't let me just sit around the office collating reports and such, he wanted me in the field, collecting the data for those reports.

Well, I might as well enjoy my time here as much as I could, at least there was nobody shooting at me.

* * * Max Jones

A Med Ship was transporting us! New orders had come through that attached us to the Med Ship until further notice. Luckily, our shuttle just fit in their biggest transport bay on the port side. We had to meet them in orbit to dock with them since a Med Ship really wasn't meant to boost the mass our shuttle carried. Med Ships are light, fast ships with full medical and surgical facilities, the best doctors and nurses in the known galaxy, and great chow.

After docking and stowing our gear, the squad met in the wardroom of our shuttle. The discussion underway was whether to stay here and eat or go to the Med Ship chow hall. I let the talking continue for a while and then spoke.