Shades of War

         Steady, thought Sergeant Jaila Ain’Hwa. “Steady, Mickey, steady,” he whispered, willing the fire team’s sniper from across the hundred metre gully. In Jaila’s HUD, visible on the interior of his helmet’s visor, a red cross briefly flashed beside Lance Corporal Meeka ‘Mickey’ Kunstler’s name. Across and down into the gully, a single Kellik sentry dropped.
    Perfect, thought the Sergeant. A double click from his comm. unit signalled the all clear from Mickey, and suddenly the canyon’s shadows moved. Close to sixty shadows peeled themselves away from the canyon walls, rose from bushes and dropped from tree branches. They were ghosts, phantoms and spectres. They were Shades. The elite of the elite, sent in when no other option was left, save one; kill anything that didn’t’t bear a United Fleet insignia.
    Jaila slid down the small embankment to his right, making the barest hint of noise. His bio-mimetic cloak, billowing slightly while he ran, altered its molecular structure to reflect the dark greens and blacks of the grass about him. His weapon, hidden within the folds of the cloak, clicked quietly as he ran, the hard casing of the weapon tapping against the three centimetre thick ablative armour that encased him and every other Shade running through the night. His Fire team -- comprised of himself, Mickey, and three others -- met at the downed sentry and proceeded to strip the corpse of anything useful. Both the United Fleet and the Kellik used similar weaponry, allowing the ammunition from one faction to be used in the weapons of the othe and the Shades had been behind enemy lines for nearly three weeks and cut-off from any UF supply line.
    “All done, sir,” said Meeka as she rose from a crouch. “Total of one thousand rounds recovered. Power-cells are useless, though."
    Her voice was hushed despite the fact that it was being broadcast via her helmet’s built-in mic. Anyone standing even two feet from her would have heard nothing, not even her breath. Jalia accepted the few extra clips offered to him and slipped them into his near empty bandolier.
    Three weeks ago, in the dead of night, the platoon’s CO, Lieutenant Jonathan Redjeck, had called Jaila, along with every other fire team leader, to a briefing. The brass at Fleet Intel wanted a certain area of Finan mapped out and any significant hostiles neutralized. Apparently Finan had once been the site of some ancient civilization, which had left ruins on Finan -- most of which were buried beneath rock and sand or within deep caverns. This fact seemed to have been left out by the settlers who had landed there some years ago in 2203. Now every major manufacturing corporation, every R&D egghead and, most especially, Fleet Intel wanted to take a look at those ruins and any secrets they might hold. If they couldn’t... Well then it would be your typical ‘playground bully’ scenario; If we can’t have it, no one can.
    Jalia was snapped back to the present by a click from his comm. unit. The space in front of him rippled slightly and the form of the Lieutenant took shape.
    “Sergeant,” said Lieutenant Redjeck.
    Jalia and the Lieutenant crouched and huddled close together to minimize their profile.
    “What’s up, LT?” Jalia asked.
    “Fire team Kappa’s found a cave," the Lieutenant began. "So far we have little movement within it, but our motion trackers can’t see anything past twenty metres, so that’s not really saying much. Not much rad-readings coming from down there either; no infrared, UV, nothing. Just the typical background noises.”
    “So… you looking for a couple of lab rats?”
    “More like canaries.”
    Jalia cocked his head to the side and asked, “Sir?”
    “Ancient Terran miners used to take canaries down into the mines with them. If the birds passed out or died, it was an indication that the air was poisonous. I’ve already got Kappa volunteered, but they need fire support. Your team is the best in a tight fire fight, but we don’t know what’s down there. It could get messy.”
    Jalia thought a moment and decided to ask his team what their thoughts were. But before he had the chance, a serious of double clicks passed over his comm.; An indication of their affirmation.
    Jalia smiled within his helmet. He would have to reprimand them for listening in on the conversation, but he couldn’t help but feel proud at their willingness to serve.
    “I’ll take that as a yes then, Sergeant?” asked the Lieutenant.
    If the breach of protocol had bothered him, it did not show in his voice.
    “Yes, sir. Send us the nav-point and we’ll be on our way.”
    The Lieutenant nodded and stood. A nav-point sprang to life on Jalia’s HUD, appearing as a small pale blue arrow pointing towards the northwest, with the distance ‘.8 km’ marked beside it. The Lieutenant nodded once more and turned to leave, fading into the shadows and terrain as he did.
    “You know,” said Private Katya Ivanov from where she was crouching a few metres away. “For the new guy, he’s not half bad.”
    “Stow it, Private.” said Meeka, though not in a harsh way. “Our jobs aren’t to stand around and gossip about the LT. Pack your gear and let’s go.”
    Katya shrugged and stood slowly, moving off towards the nav-point’s heading with Private KienFi Taank-Nian in tow. While most other fire teams lacked heavy firepower, choosing instead to use the lightweight Welsner GR26-A1 rifle as their weapon of choice, KenFi easily carried a DennEk GC05 Assault Cannon. The two Shades were quickly followed by Private Jacob Johnson, Meeka, and Jalia.

    It did not take long for the group to work their way over to the cave. When they arrived, they discovered team Kappa waiting for them and, after a brief greeting between the two groups, team Kappa lead the way into the gaping maw of the cavern. With one last look at the stars above, Jalia followed underground. The two teams, Kappa and Epsilon, moved through the cavern, weapons at the ready, bio-mimetic cloaks hanging loosely from them. Little sound came from their booted feet as they worked their way across the hard stone floor. As Epsilon approached the twenty metre mark, small sensor echoes began to play across Jalia’s HUD. The sensitive equipment built into his mark IV combat armour detected brief pings of movement off to the left with traces of infrared radiation -- heat. With a mental command given via a neural-net, his comm. unit switched from his team’s frequency to narrowcast and opened a private channel to Sergeant Messic of Kappa team.
    “Messic; Ain’Hwa. Movement to the left and something hot, about body temp. Recommend we split.”
    A moment passed and the return signal was snagged from the air by Jalia’s comm. unit.
    “Agreed. Take your team and check it. We’ve just passed a passage heading to the left. Your team should hit it in five. Maintain blackout protocol until further notice. Good luck.”
    The comm. unit went silent and Jalia relayed the information to his teammates. Katya, the team’s scout and point-man, had already reached the tunnel entrance and she waited till Jalia arrived before moving down the tunnel. A short hike lasting eighty metres deposited the group in a large cavern. The tunnel had curved around to the southeast with the cavern running lengthways from northeast to southwest, the cavern stretching almost one hundred metres lengthways. The team had come in at the southwestern corner, where a series of rocks hid them from the rest of the cavern. With a few hand signals, the team began to move out. Meeka moved up one of the boulders and sighted down the scope of her rifle, while Jacob and Jalia began to move south, towards the far side of the cavern. KenFi and Katya moved along the northern wall, towards the area where the heat signatures originated. Katya and KenFi had only gone about twenty metres up when Katya broke radio silence.
    “Uhh, sir? We may have a problem.”
    Jalia signalled Jacob with a series of hand gestures and Jacob dropped to the ground, crawling behind cover. Jalia followed suit before opening the channel to respond.
    “What is it, Katya?” he asked.
    “Well, sir, it seems the Kellik wanted to have a lookey-see at what was down here as well. Only they've been here longer than we have. I count three HAPs and quite a few heads as well. Can’t get an exact count.”
    Jalia clicked his comm. twice and took a moment to think. HAP was an acronym for Heavy Anti-Personnel weapon. They were considered the bane of most ground forces, able to literally tear an attacking line apart in seconds.
    “Mickey,” Jalia said as he opened a channel back to Meeka. “What’s our status?”
    There was a slight delay while Meeka took a moment to assess everything and then she said “I count thirty-five, sir.”
    “Line of sight confirmed. Set for mark,” signalled KenFi.
    The statement indicated his weapon was trained at the closest HAP. Three small points appeared on Jalia’s HUD, indicating the locations of the three HAPs, courtesy of Meeka. Jacob had, sometime during the conversation, moved further up into place, as had Katya. Jalia quickly found his way along to suitable cover and leaned out, his weapon pointed towards the Kellik line. His suit activated fully and power began to flow through it, a powerful magnetic field making his skin tingle.
    “Clear them out.”
    Whistles filled the air as hundreds of rounds poured from KenFi’s weapon and into the first HAP emplacement. Rounds blew past over Jalia’s head from Mickey’s location, slamming into the Kellik manning the second HAP and the combined fire of Katya and Jalia brought down the third gunner. The opening salvo was emptied in only five seconds and had taken less the an entire eighty round clip from Katya, Jalia, and Mickey combined. KenFi had yet to release his weapon’s trigger as he swept the camp. There was a low ‘whumpf’sound, followed by a second and third as Jacob, the team’s demolitions expert, fired RPGs into the camp. Jalia stood and raced towards the camp, clicking his comm. as he went. Katya’s blip on his HUD began to move as well, as did Jacob’s. A second or two more and KenFi’s fire ceased. There were small bangs from the Kellik line and the trademark whistle of a supersonic round, but most of it was almost drowned out by screams and moans from the injured.
    Jalia ran to the HAP nest and spun the weapon around to face the Kellik camp. To his right and left, Katya and Jacob did the same. The HAP, consisting of six barrels which rotated in a chain gun-like set-up, jumped to life and spun. A terrible whine filled the air and liquid death poured from the end. The three HAPs, which only moments before had served as the camp’s defence, extinguished all life in seconds. In the end, barely three minutes after entering the cavern, fire team Epsilon stood victorious, their ammunition fully replenished, with surplus, and a few pieces of vital intelligence recovered.
    They policed the bodies as best the could, but anyone who was expecting a camp would know something was wrong right away. Their only saving grace was the Kellik’s arrogance and belief that they could not be ambushed by the ‘lesser’ beings of the Three Worlds Alliance. As a result, the Kellik rarely sent out patrols.
    While Jalia and the rest were busy disposing of the bodies and looking for anything of value, Katya scouted out the rest of the camp and cavern.
    “Sir," she reported a moment or two later. "I found another tunnel. I took a look down it, just a few metres. Seems to curve round towards the west, but dead ends. It runs just behind the southern wall of this cavern. I was getting some serious IR readings; A lot of critters crawling around on the other side of the wall. Other than that, the only way in here is the tunnel we came in through.”
    Jalia nodded and said, “Jacob, mine the other tunnel -- Prox-ident only. I don’t want friendlies being vaped.”
    Jacob nodded and ran at full speed towards the entrance. Jalia crouched and tuned his comm. unit, switching to the more powerful transceiver built into his suit and breaking the blackout protocol. The powerful signal created a brief ring over the team’s comm., but disappeared quickly. A second later, the image of Lieutenant Redjeck appeared on Jalia’s HUD.
    “Sergeant?”
    “Sir, we split from Kappa approximately fifteen minutes ago. My team and I encountered a small Kellik base, numbering thirty-five with three HAPs. Area has been secured. But my scout, Private Ivanov, found a tunnel that dead ends a little ways in. Seems to be a lot of movement behind that wall. Could be that the direction Kappa took leads into that cave. I think they’re going to need a few more fire teams for support, but Messic is under blackout.”
    “We know, Sergeant,” said the Lieutenant. “Messic voxed in about eight minutes ago. Said he’d encountered some rather stiff resistance. Asked for at least two more fire teams. When they pushed further in, they encountered some sort of obelisk with an entire damned company of Kellik. They seem to want the obelisk real bad, whatever it is. I’ve left Tau and Sigma at the entrance to the cavern, to cover our exit. The rest of us are hunkered down near the obelisk.”
    The Lieutenant’s image froze for a second. There was the sound of a weapon discharging in the background and then the Lieutenant’s image became animated once again.
    “We could use your help, Sergeant. I’m uploading our local now.” A small pale blue navi-marker appeared on Jalia’s HUD, marking the platoon’s location. “Messic’s entire team is gone, Jalia, and I’ve lost almost half of two other teams. There is no way we’re getting whatever this thing is. We have orders from HQ to paint the target and get out of here, but our retreat is cut off. Think you can open us up a door?”
    “We’ll think of something, LT. Ain’Hwa out.” Jalia said.
    He cut the comm. unit and turned to find his team already on the move. Katya took point, leading them to where KenFi stood ready, his weapon pointed down the second tunnel. Fire team Epsilon broke into a run, moving up the tunnel as fast as their legs could carry them. They had gone about three quarters of the way to where the Lieutenant’s signal was coming from when they encountered a wall. With a glance at Jalia, Jacob moved forward, pulling several devices from his pack. The others found cover with KenFi pointing his weapon at a place where a very large hole was about to form.
    A ring played across the platoon’s frequency and the usually quiet Jacob bellowed, “Fire in the hole”.
    Jalia’s sensors spiked on every major EM band and a large ‘CRUMP’ sound filled the air. A concussive wave slammed into Jalia, nearly lifting him from the place where he was crouching. The tunnel shook, rocks fell and a great dust cloud billowed from the spot where a rock wall had stood moments before.
    KenFi, apparently unaffected by the blast, squeezed the trigger of his weapon and the barrels began to rotate. 7.46mm rounds poured out the ends of the barrel at nearly twenty rounds per second. In ten seconds flat, the weapon’s ammo-drum emptied and the weapon spun to a halt. The rest of team Epsilon poured through the hole and ran atop the bodies of close to a hundred Kellik warriors.
    The brief lull, caused by the detonating concussion-packs, ceased and fire poured in from every direction. One gauss rifle, alone in an open field, is near silent, with only the slightest thunk sound as the projectile is fired from the barrel at close to the speed of sound. But place several hundred in an enclosed space and that one thunk can sound like something that closely resembles thunder. The whistles of supersonic projectiles was near-deafening, adding to the nightmarish sounds. Muzzle flashes from the Kellik’s rail guns, a result of microscopic amounts of their weapon’s barrels being superheated and expelled, sparked around the cavern -- mostly from the west. Answering shots, minus muzzle flashes, came from the east.
    Jalia’s team setup and began to return fire, attempting to cover the now moving blips of their platoon. Mickey’s deadly aim picked out one, two, three Kellik officers, dropping them within a breath of each other. KenFi’s weapon started up again, this time feeding from a large ammo-box holding several thousand rounds. He stood, rather than deploy the bipods, and hosed the far end of the cavern, the occasional stray round from the enemy bouncing from his armour in a shower of sparks.
    Jacob had already begun to strap more concussion-packs to the surrounding walls, in between sending a few of his own well placed shots towards the Kellik line. The Shades appeared, moving shadows coalescing to form Human, Ma’alor, and Arcillian forms before passing through the gaping hole and up the corridor. Those too wounded to move on their own were carried by one or two volunteers and soon more green blips were behind Jalia than in front.
    “Out!" yelled the Lieutenant as he ran past Jalia, turning at the hole to provide covering fire. "Out now!”
    One by one, team Epsilon turned and ran through the hole. Starting with Katya, then Jacob, then Mickey, then KenFi, and ending with Jalia. Much of the platoon had already moved on and were into the first cavern by now, but a few lingered behind. They all took cover, firing a few rounds into the hole and striking the one or two especially rash Kellik who tried to thrust themselves through the hole.
    With a word of caution, Jacob detonated the packs and the walls of the tunnel collapsed, sealing the hole. The thirteen or so Shades that had remained, along with team Epsilon, turned and ran at a full sprint up the tunnel.
    “This is Lieutenant Jonathan Redjeck requesting immediate evac at coordinates 595 mark 3119. We are go for orbital strike. Local is painted, I repeat, local is painted,” the Lieutenant said over a fleet wide comm. channel.
    Team Epsilon, along with the other few shades, ran through the tunnel, the first cavern and back to the main tunnel. A loud rumble from the cave entrance signalled the approach of a drop ship. Jalia marvelled, as he had countless times before, at the speed at which the Navy worked. As the last of the Shades exited the cavern, with a few Kellik rounds bouncing off the ground behind them, a ship came up and over the rise of the northeastern lip of the gully.
    Its thrusters flared and it spun on an axis, presenting its rear end to the Shades. A ramp on the rear dropped and the first of the Shades began to pile on board. Turrets, two per side of the ship, turned to face the cavern entrance and began to spray bullets, forcing any Kellik who were not outright killed to duck and cover. Jalia was the last to board the ship, launching himself onto it as it lifted off, the turrets still firing into the cavern and surrounding rock face, tearing great rents in the rock and sending debris falling to the gully floor.
    When the ship had gone only a few hundred metres, a great light appeared in the sky. Flames exploded through the cloud cover and metal rained from orbit, slamming into the mountainside and traveling through to where the obelisk sat, and the nav-beacon that had marked where the target stood abruptly cut-off. Jalia sighed and leaned back against the wall of the ship, the sounds of muffled explosions filtering in from the orbital bombardment. The object was gone, stopping the Kellik from using it, whatever it was, and an entire company of the enemy had been destroyed. The ramp closed, sealing the shuttle, and the dull roar of the ship vibrated through him. His head rocked back and forth against the bulkhead and exhaustion pulled at the corners of his mind. With a nod from Meeka, he let the sweet black of sleep pass over and claim him.