(Art by Bryce Doerksen)
Index: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Shot to the face
“For carrots’ sake!”
Sacky had been screening every nook and cranny of the enemy field base for the past twenty minutes. Terran time, not the weird spacefaring civilization favored star-time. He finally pulled his head from the holo-scope and reached for a ration pack.
“I gather them Tazzies are on high alert?” – mumbled Mice while he scarfed his favorite ration pack L23, slurping the peach energy jelly from its pack with a polyplastic straw.
“Well...” – began Potatski, speaking in between spoonfuls of Applecratean goat and hot pepper stew – “we stomped them heckin’ hard.”
The sniper unwrapped his ration and chomped a hefty bite of cold meat and noodle combo, slow cooked on some distant, terraformed asteroid. For some reason Terran soldiers called this ration pack Rk04, rockcandy and every newbie almost lost his or her mind rummaging inside the packaging looking for sweets. Sacky knew exactly why, because he had served on that very same nameless asteroid, but not a single word escaped the bugger’s furry snout.
“All too hard, I say. Potatski, we should’ve saved that Taknuk for later, bruh.”
Potaski made a funny face and shoved another spoon of hot stew in his gob – “Yeah, I ‘gree, but that ol’ patron from the Life Squad asked me real nice. Plus, I’m a sucker for mushyroom clouds!”
Mice made his mission obligatory “why the heck I was even assigned to this team” face and sighed – “I swear, one day you’ll give them your socks, Potatski.”
“Do ya evar see me jumping sockless?” – Potatski snickered and slurped the last of his stew.
“We have to force our way through their outer perimeter, and, let me tell ya, killing even a few patrolling troopers will not go unnoticed this time.” – said Sacky in between his bites and cracked open a jet-black can of something soft drink adjacent called “Orbital Drop Juice”.
“Bruh, please!” – Potatski avowed his protest – “Not evan wiff the eliment of surprise?”
The sniper took a fizzy sip and smacked his lips. His fellow commandos knew that this so called juice was his favorite, but, just like with the ration’s weird nickname, Sacky refused to elaborate and that often infuriated them. Especially Mice, who was a combat ration aficionado and collected all sorts of them, even alien and long since expired ones. Training his poison resistance was the official reason their scout gave them, but Potatski always claimed it was a mild case of food hoarding.
Mice began his service as a line infantry supply man after all.
“Time comes when no amount of skulduggery can convince your enemy that you are not there, nor are their vehicles and storage depots blowing up in flames.” – Sacky cited from one of his favorite Terran tactical manuals, Unseen and Efficient, a book by Maj. Lavender Fields.
“Then ‘tis time for our team’s favorite combo, the two, one, three.” – grinned Mice and projected the scan-data of their target over an excellent holo-map of the area – “I and Sacky will create distractions, while Potatski drops them a gift.”
The enemy base was one of their biggest forward ammo depots. It had just been reinforced with a full battalion of Taz’aran line troopers, portable pillboxes, sensor mines and turrets. To make things worse, the Tazzies had deployed portable scanning arrays, which meant that jamming individual soldier scanners was a no go. Each device was positioned so it could overlay both its passive and active sensors with multiple sec-cams, screening literally every avenue of approach.
To make things worse a trio of Crot VF scout cars floated around the compound. Its outermost security, with their heavy particle-beam repeaters, resistant to hacking sensor packs, crewed by a bunch of angry scout troopers, their fingers on the firing buttons. The Tazzies did not field combat dogs, but these armored cars were very much their version of them.
“I’ll give the stinkers a nice, juicy sensor glitch to chase after, so they don’t perforate your backside, Potatski.” – continued Mice as he projected every step of his plan, marking targets with missile and programmable hand grenade targeting solutions – “Sacky will fry one Crot car with our last Wire. For number two and three I laid my last stealth mines, the Grasshoppers. Without their scout cars sensor sweeps, the Tazzie detection grid could be temporarily confused by my attack bots. I’ll follow up with a diversionary attack on their left, while Sacky snipes the heavy beam repeaters here, and here.”
“How long do I have?” – asked Potatski as he stacked the ration’s empty packaging with that of his colleagues and then tied it around the demo charge.
“Twenty-two secs, bro.” – was Mice’s immediate reply – “They’ll try to box you in or suppress you when they redeploy their repeaters from distant pillboxes. Sacky may not be able to slag them all, so ya better hop in and out real fast, bruh.”
Their scout always presented them with the worst case scenario.
“We could use our Quackleh baby mortars,” – said Sacky and patted Potatski’s backpack – “blow up some of Mice’s targeting solutions, make things a bit easier.”
“Mkay, getting bored carrying mine ‘round anyways.” – Potatski agreed and assembled his short-range mini mortar, swiping targets to its integrated PDA.
The “Quackleh”, or QUAC 22M, was a lightweight mortar developed for specialist teams. It was fully autonomous and was capable of launching twelve 35mm mortar shells from its boxy magazine. Cheap, efficient, and disposable, the baby mortar was created to be used both as a distraction and pocket artillery. Commandos called it the Quackleh since its overly loud firing sounded a bit like a raging goose on the loose, and the thing fired super fast.
Its shells had simple, mechanical internal guidance controls, which followed a preprogrammed set of targeting coordinates. Fitted with a set of “fins” which when deployed mid-flight looked like open duck bills, the mortar rounds had quite the reach for an engineless munition. No wireless networking, just as the prudent Terrans liked it. When it fired its magazine, one could leave the tube behind if in a time crunch.
The three were soon deployed and a good number of targets, programmed into their PDAs. Of course, the three QUACs were placed in different positions to further confuse the enemy.
“Not worth the risk.” – Sacky canted his head when he saw Potatski ogling one of the smaller ammo cashes in the enemy camp.
“Yeah, but we need ‘splosives or pew-pews to slag tanks an’ stuff.” – countered Potatski and clicked his faceplate shut after gracing his friends with a huge, cheeky grin – “Promise, I’ll nick a crate onle if ya can cover me behind.”
“Stop snickering you two, and get in position! You can get your furry ass beamed some other day.” – chastised them Mice as he masterfully vanished from view, covered by the chameleo-cloak.
Grinning behind their faceplates as if this was not a deadly dangerous gambit of an attack, the three Terrans snuck into their respective positions. Timers on the autonomous mortars ticked and, as soon as Mice goaded one of the Taz’aran scout cars into their missile launcher’s range, Sacky fired.
Hit in the top, the Crot car was half-ripped open and flipped on its side, what was left of its burning crew desperate to crawl away. Immediately, the QUACs ripped the air with their loud, zip-like quacks, near invisible to the naked eye and even scanners mortar shells flying at the enemy. As the red and opaque colored explosions of the shells detonated above their targets, showering men, vehicles, turrets, and mortar pits with burning shrapnel of nano-thermite, the two remaining Crot scout cars flew past Mice’s concealed grasshopper mines.
These had mechanical legs with a powerful, lightweight spring and when it uncoiled, their cone shaped warheads hit the grav-vehicles’ sides. Made to counter light armored vehicles only, the Grasshopper was perfect for this kind of action. Fitted with an old school chem and mechanic detonator just in case, the explosive charges could not be prematurely detonated by most modern anti-mine or RPG round electronic defense systems. The mine simply had no activation chip or a wireless detonation signal to trip...
Ripped asunder, the armored cars transformed into smoldering heaps of scrap, bits and pieces of their crews dotting the ground around them. Their outer perimeter patrols wiped out and camp bombarded by mortar fire, the Taz’arans who were already on high alert, immediately opened fire from their generator powered heavy repeaters. Beams streaked over the burning landscape, blasting everything which even appeared to be a threat. Thanks to Mice’s expertise, without the overlapping scan-data of the Crot cars, all of this vicious beamfire could hit was the sensor ghosts which their own portable scanners fed them with.
The shadow of Potatski glided into position and began lobbing his micro-truster grenades. He simply hopped over pillboxes and earthworks, throwing with wild abandon, while the powerful hand grenades followed their preprogrammed targets. Of course, the Tazzies saw him and opened fire with their sidearms and rifles, but few actually hit his elusive shapes, while he, on the other hand, managed to shred over a dozen of them with his overpowered gun.
Screeching through the air, Sacky’s rifle fire quickly ripped two of the nearest enemy beam repeaters, which could pin down Potatski with heavy automatic fire. Mice and his silenced gun added much new deaths to the absolute chaos and mayhem which was about to grip the Taz’aran camp in its bony grip. He too lobbed what few programmable hand grenades he had left, thus blowing up two of the pillboxes and another beam repeater to bits.
The armored line troopers were hard at work frying everything even remotely near him with a literal wall of particle-beams, yet he managed to suppress many with bursts of armor piercing projectiles from his Colt railgun snub gun. His job done, Mice swiftly hopped away and having confused near half the garrison force he was part of a flanking attack force, the scout’s hazy sensor shadow nearly vanished from their screens, when he was hit.
“Sniper! Mice, give me an active scan, stat!” – Sacky roared in their coded comms, fast tracking the beam already dissipating origin, a floating marksman protected by a cloaking shield.
Though concealed by his thermal optic camouflage shroud, nevertheless, he changed position following every six shots. The appearance of these Taz’aran snipers happened when he was on the hop, as the bunnies say, and Sacky had to prematurely position so he could take that sniper out.
“Two over there, and more are floating down!” – panting reported Mice as he swiped Sacky his scan-data file, having been forced to run since the Tazzies used their sensor modules to pin his last position.
“Stato-troopers?!” – shouted the limping Potatski, who’d just burst fired his way near the main plasma shell storage and set the demo-charge.
Mice got grazed again and Sacky finally managed to shoot dead two of the enemy snipers.
“Heck, I barely scanned them through their localized jamming field!” – said the scout, as he finally left the enemy scanner range and hid under his TOC field.
Two new particle-beams, coming from different vectors up in the atmo, glassed Sacky’s most recent sniping position. Without saying a word, the sniper reloaded his Remington J15 with a fresh mag, traced one of said beams and his armor-piercing needle perforated another Taz’aran torso.
“Universe, I pity not the Tazzie fools who faced me today!” – the sniper uttered a prayer even as he was hit by another beam, which melted a piece of his armor plating.
Gritting his teeth, Sacky leapt high in the air and on the way down, aimed and fired, his needle goring the head of the barely visible Taz’aran marksman. Landing, the sniper shrouded himself in his TOC field and short-hopped away from the camp’s sensor network.
“You reap what you sow!” – whispered he, firing his Remington on the move, ripping the last enemy sniper’s guts to shreds.
Potatski, though he had been quite successful at shredding a dozen or so enemy troopers since he assaulted them pretty much head on, suffered more hits. Parts of his armor were damaged and heated by one of the more accurate particle-beams, his leg was giving him grief. With a gentle limp, the man maglocked his Winchester AIM shredder rifle on his back and drew his sidearm. A rare act since most of the time he engaged the enemy from medium ranges with his rifle, nevertheless it was another favorite of his.
Insanely overpowered, just like all of his guns, the Walter LP pistol appeared handcrafted and a bit rough on the edges even. Dark-blue, its beams soon clashed with the three line troopers who charged him, rifles and snub guns firing. Leaping with one leg, the commando proceeded to empty one entire power pack, turning them into metal dripping torches.
“Mine!” – bellowed Potatski and hugged the big crate full of Taz’aran handheld RPGs.
He punched another of the crates open and lobbed the plasma grenade he produced from it at the pile of containers. Holstering his Walter, Potatski attached the smaller crate on his grappling cable and, made sure to hop inside one of the smoldering pillboxes, just as his demo-charge activated. The entire base became awash in debris turned shrapnel, flying shells, missiles, and whatnot short-circuiting. Joining their detonation to the original blast wave, pretty soon half the base was gone and he staggered out of the shattered fortification.
Ignoring any and all leftover enemies, Potatski hopped as fast as his wounded leg would allow him, tertiary explosions coloring the landscape behind him with red, yellow, opaque, and blue.
They had to lay low for a while since the Taz’arans ordered their deadly Black Leaf skaers to look for them. Screeching on their powerful grav-drives, these swift atmo fliers crisscrossed the sky, their leaf shaped black wings often throwing shade right over the three sneaking Terrans…
"For Carrot's Sake!" I love it!
“For carrots’ sake!” Haha... 🥕🐰😎🐰🥕