Troopers - Book 1

The March

                “What’s your name?” She asked

                “Lieutenant Simmons, Private. Use your eyes next time to see the rank of the person you are talking to” The co-pilot spat.

                “I highly recommend Sir, that the single fleet officer on this highly hostile world. Respects the Mobile Infantry Troopers whose job it is to keep him alive, Sir. Actually, that’s not our orders.” Morrigan said with a grin as she climbed back into the marauder. Simmons watched as she moved one of the manipulator arms to be pointed straight at him.

                “Don’t” Was the single word from Aasith, and it stopped her plan in its tracks.

                “He’s dead weight; I can cut him loose as if I slipped on the controls during landing.” Morrigan moved the arm again this time a little further forward, the blades of the pincers forced Simmons to take a step back, his resolve melting away.

                “We can also use him as bait later on” Aasith said over the comm.

                “I doubt that” she replied, moving the manipulator back away from the fleet officer.

*

                Looking over the crevice the unit saw the Ape dangling by its lizard lines attached to the canyon side, stepping closer to the edge, testing their footing all the time, they could see that the lizard lines were nowhere near the top of the canyon, Medb was still not responding over the comm.

                “I need two volunteers to go down and see what’s happened” Thorne said. Without speaking a work Thoth and Eastre fired their lizard lines into the ground next to themselves and began walking towards the edge ready to abseil down.

                “Good Luck and keep in contact” Oakham said as they walked by. They stepped off the edge casually as if it was a normal day and then began running face first down the wall heading towards the stranded marauder.

                Clipping their lizard lines to their armour they began to crawl over the marauder both setting to work without a word to each other.  Eastre went directly towards Medb, opening the front to get into the marauder to see to Medb. Thoth began to inspect the marauder itself looking for structural damage or why it hadn’t used the jump jets. Eastre registered that Medb was fine just been knocked out from the sudden impact. Eastre inserted the stimulants to the suit regulator; the needle inserted itself automatically into her arm pumping the drugs in. Eastre watch the bio-readout on the suit and watched as the stimulants did their work on her heart rate and brain activity. Thoth had scampered round the back of the marauder and found the problem for the jump jets, the heavy landing from the evacuation of the ship had caused dust and debris to enter the intake vents for the jump jets, without the air to keep them working there would be no strong ignition and flight for the ten tonne marauder.

                “What the fuck?” They all heard whispered over the comm.

*

                Aasith was scanning the area through her scope looking at the path ahead, it seemed empty of threats. She increased the magnification and began to trace the up their mountainous objective. What she saw she didn’t understand. Hundreds of plasma bugs slowly moving into the mountain range. She watched as two bug ships lifted off and headed towards an asteroid drifting overhead. The crack in the mountain began to be filled, increasing magnification once more she saw that ripplers and hoppers where latching onto each other to cover the gap. Smaller chariot bugs were being herded in by warriors for some purpose but no bugs were headed their way. Just as she was dialling back the magnification, something caught her attention, she focused on it, one of the chariot bugs were speared by something, it was draining the chariot of something and the warriors were staying back, they moved a few paces away and the shadow they were casting disappeared and the spike that was attached to the chariot bug shone brightly for a moment then crumble away.