Eve Berg

Location: Launcher A, Yangon System, Eastern Block

“This can’t be good.” Eve stared at the scene in front of her.

Alpha Company 2511th Infantry Battalion, or what was left of it, was joining the flow of troops toward the ass-end of the Launcher. From what Eve had heard over TACCOM, the rest of the Launcher was under their control. A team had seized control of the command center thirty minutes ago. All enemy hardline communications had been severed, external defenses were now squarely under Commonwealth control, and most importantly, the quantum entanglement communicators that were the reason these big stations existed in the first place were offline. No one was going to be coming to help the system anytime soon.

The job was ninety-five percent complete, but that wasn’t good enough for ADM Ward, CAPT Simpson, GYSGT Cunningham, or little old CPL Eve Berg. The enemy still held engineering, which meant they could blow everyone to hell by overloading the reactors if they really wanted to. Knowing how the Blockies liked their last stands, Eve wasn’t willing to count out that possibility. So, she marched at the front of the formation with the GYSGT toward the enemy stronghold.

Eve shook her head as they passed battle-damaged corridors. She recognized more than one of the places where she’d fought over the last several hours. A grenade explosion here and plasma scorched duro-steel there. This place had been full of screaming and dying people not that long ago.

It was surreal, and she didn’t like it, but she shook her head and focused on the present. The fight wasn’t over yet, and the scene in front of her showed it.

An aide station had been set up and there was more than one dying soldier lying on the cold floor or hovering on grav-stretchers. The stretchers allowed the medics to maximize their use of space. The injured soldiers were stacked three high in some places.

“Damn.” The GYSGT looked around the hallway. One side was stacked with the living and the other with the dead. They were about even.

“Alpha?” A hurried looking LT appeared in front of them.

His helmet was off and sweat coated his face. His gloves were stained red, and he ran them through his drenched hair leaving streaks. It looked like a murderer had done highlights in his hair, but the officer didn’t even notice.

“Yes, Sir.” The GYSGT halted the formation.

Alpha had lost a lot in taking their section of that station. Half had died in transit, and another dozen in the fighting. That was an over sixty percent casualty rate. They were down to four understrength squads.

The LT saw this but his expression didn’t change. “We need you at the front.”

“Sir, my troops have been fighting for hours without a break. We’ve lost a lot. Give us half an hour to grab a bite to eat, resupply, and then we’ll be good to go.”

“Negative, Gunney.” The LT shook his head and little droplets of red flew through the air. “We’re getting hammered. We need you now.”

“How about you brief me on the situation while my men grab a few minutes.” The GYSGT’s tone was still respectful but firm.

Alpha felt like hammered shit. They needed a minute.

“Fine, but they need to be ready to move ASAP.” The LT relented, and waved for the GYSGT to follow.

“On me, Berg. No rest for the weary.”

Eve knew she was going to say something like that, but she still activated her LACS’ internal systems so a high-calorie energy bar and water found their way to her mouth. She munched as the LT explained the situation.

The LT was the OIC of Bravo Company. While Alpha had cleared their section Bravo had made their way here, fighting through light resistance, until making contact with the main force. The dead and wounded in the hallway were from them.

“The situation is a tactical shit-storm.” The LT didn’t sugar coat the situation. They had a small holo-projector set up just beyond the aide station. “Whoever designed this place planned for just this scenario. Bastard. ”

“Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot of first-rate planning from the Blockies.” The GYSGT shot Eve a look.

Eve looked away like she suddenly found the wall very interesting.

“What we’ve got is a two hundred and fifty meter kill zone.” The LT fired up the projector which showed a detailed outline of the corridor. “It’s only about ten meters wide, so we can’t rush with a large amount of troops.” He drew a horizontal line and measurements started to appear. “We were ordered to try…and we did.” He pointed over his shoulder at the injured and dead. “Everyone made it over from Aggie fine, I had two WIA on the way here, but since then I’ve had nearly fifty casualties. More than half are KIA.”

Eve felt bad for the guy. After all, he’d just lost a ton of his soldiers. These were men and women he’d trained and gotten to know personally. He was a significant part in their lives, and him in theirs. Now, they were lying in the hallway all around him. She took all of that into consideration as she waited patiently for him to continue. There had to be more to the situation. There was no way a full Company was going to take those types of casualties without the deck being stacked against them.

The LT took a few deep breaths before highlighting the far end of the corridor. Intelligence populated on the side, and Eve read it over.

“We estimate between one and two hundred Blockies behind those prepared positions. They’re well-armed, well-supplied, and dug in good.”

“These are projections.” Eve stated when the LT paused again. What they knew was true and what was assumed was highlighted in different colors on the projection. “Did the drones not get a good look?”

“Drones only made it to within a hundred meters of the position, which was fifty meters farther than us.”

Eve winced at the LT’s reply.

“We missed the swatters until our HI trooper tried to send some 40mm down their throats. We’re pretty sure they were covered with camo-nets that got torn to shit when they opened up. They took out the shells and in the resulting confusion they took out our HI with these.” The LT highlighted two weapons stationed on either side of the corridor behind the Blockies’ position.

“You’ve got to be shitting me. They’ve got Lances.”

Eve pulled up the blueprints and studied the 3D image that began to rotate on her HUD. Lances were a 90mm Blockie heavy energy weapon. They fired a tight beam of ionized particles, like a lance, that could overwhelm LACS armor. Judging by the GYSGT’s surprise she didn’t expect to find anything like them on the Launcher.

she let the thought die out. It didn’t matter why the Blockies decided to put the energy weapons on this Launcher and not others. They were here and they needed to figure out how to deal with them.

Using her Ranger credentials to gain access, Eve pulled the vids from Bravo’s assault. She saw the movement to contact from several different angles. The men staggered and spread out as much as they could, but in a ten-meter corridor it was still a tight squeeze. They made a hole and the HI trooper launched a quick three-round-burst from his spine-mounted cannon. Apparently, the brass gave them the ok, but didn’t think Eve should be able to fire 40mm. She checked her irritation and went back to studying the assault.

The rounds didn’t make it halfway there before being intercepted, and in the tight space there was no room to maneuver. The explosion blocked the line of sight to the enemy only to be suddenly filled with two lances of bright-red light. The red light was thanks to the HUD’s optics. In reality, the 90mm Lancer’s beams were invisible.

One drilled the HI trooper right in the chest. He wasn’t able to activate the ES function of his armor before it overwhelmed his scales and punched through the duro-steel beneath it. The man toppled over like a great, metal tree while a second beam slashed across the corridor from left to right. More than one soldier lost a limb as the particle beams sliced through just about everything. That’s when the Blockie soldiers joined the party and added their own 1mm and 3mm chorus.

Bravo bounded back like professionals. They attempted to cover their buddies, and even took a few of the Blockies with them, but they had a hundred meters to cover, and that was a lot of open ground to run through with beams sweeping through your ranks left and right.

“You see my predicament?” The LT continued talking to the GYSGT. “I need more troops to take engineering. My Company is spent, and you’re next in the queue.”

“Maybe before sending the rest of my soldiers into the meat grinder we look for alternatives.” The GYSGT enlarged the projection. “What do we have here?” She pointed to the walls on either side of the corridor.”

“They’re packed full of crap: machinery, power conduits, environmental systems, water processing, coolant exchange; you name it and some of it is in there.” The LT shook his head. “We looked for access points to get troops around and hit them from the flank, but the people who built this place already thought of that. The only way to assault that position is down this hallway, and I need more troops to do that.” The LT’s mind was clearly already made up. He was frustrated, strung out, but still determined to kill the enemy.

The problem was that he’d closed his mind to other possibilities, and that’s why a fresh set of eyes was always a good idea.

“Take a look, Berg. I’ll be there in a second.” The GYSGT ordered, and turned to take the heat from the LT while Eve got to work.

She muted the argument between the LT and GYSGT. He was pissed that the NCO doubted his recon, and she was trying to smooth things over. Frayed nerves didn’t help, but Eve ignored them. She examined the streaming data directly into her HUD and got to work.

The LT was right. The space behind the walls on either side of the corridor leading up to the Blockie position was stuffed full of crap. Troops could theoretically get through, but they’d cripple the area, and maybe even the entire Launcher. Since that wasn’t in the mission, Eve looked at other solutions.

It came to her quickly, and triple checking some data showed it was viable. She didn’t hold it against the LT for missing it. He didn’t have the equipment to make it happen, so this was in his blind spot.

She switched her audio back on to tell the two leaders.

“…if you don’t get your troops on their feet now. I’ll…!”

“I’ve got it Gunney.” Eve stepped in quickly before the LT said something he regretted or the GYSGT did something that would mean she wasn’t a GYSGT after this op.

“Show me, Berg.”

Eve transferred the data over to the GYSGT’s HUD, and after a second did the same for the LT. “The LT was right. It’s tighter than a tick’s asshole in there and there is no way we’d be able to get troops through without the Blockies knowing.” She mollified the officer to stay on his good side. “However, it’s got enough room to fit a line of Crawlers through.”

Crawlers were small drones built for just this type of mission. They’d originally been developed by Gold Technologies for work in shipyards. Getting the equipment into places where a normal human couldn’t fit was always a bottleneck in ship development. The spider-looking Crawlers were able to haul and install equipment where humans couldn’t.

The Fleet saw the genius in the idea, and for lack of a better term stole the design and modified it. The nano-built critter with a powerful processor was cable of hauling several kilograms worth of material on its six rotatable legs. The ends of those legs were equipped with multiple, programmable, tools that could be manipulated by a trained operator. The SEALs and SAS got more use out of the Crawlers, which were excellent tools for sneaking around ships and gathering intel, but Eve had been given a full training course back at Ranger School. Now, she just needed to remember.

The GYSGT and LT looked over the path laid out on their HUDs. The LT looked like part of him was fuming at missing this, and being outsmarted by a CPL, but part of him looked relieved. He didn’t want to go back into that corridor and eat a bullet. This made sure he didn’t.

“Looks good to me, Berg. Lieutenant?”

“We’ll need the supplies, but with this mission’s priority I don’t think it’ll be an issue.” The LT replied as his shoulders slumped as he accepted the relief flooding through him.

“We’ve got a few snake eaters on this thing. I’m sure they’ll lend us their creepy crawlies.” The GYSGT looked at Eve. “Get it moving, Berg. Your plan, your mission, and your responsibility.”

Eve gulped, but that was her only hesitation. She got on TACCOM and put in the requisition.