"looou-ten-ant are you alive sir?"
"Make mine a double, no ice"
"Maybe he hit his head?"
"He's alive at least, well done sir you got us down."
Cray had to assume he was alive, being dead couldn’t be this painful or annoying.
"Sah, the locals are getting 'irritated'. We had best expedite our departure," Jrt'kn whispered to him while Waylan disappeared out of his blurry line of sight.
"I’m ok, lets skedaddle before someone with a gun turns up and starts as gettin ornery about my drivin." The shaktar helped him to his feet and handed him his carbine, "the ships ready to be blown and the sergeant and private Dett are keeping the locals away." He managed a mumbled "good, good and followed the red skinned alien out through the side access ports which had managed to be free of obstructions. From what Cray could see from the holes on the building the ship was imbedded in, the craft had cut about a 5 kilometre swathe of destruction before coming to rest. Thousands lay dead and dying amongst the burning wreckage of vehicles, people moved amongst them, Cray thought that they must be helping the wounded but the magnification revealed something different. Looters where picking them over for whatever meager possessions they could scavenge before the authorities turned up.
"What manner of animals are these, people?" He whispered quietly over the comms, not expecting an answer. In most cultures he was familiar with people helped their community in times of disaster and he did feel really sorry for the dead civvies. Even though it wasn’t really his fault that the ship crashed where it did but he was in some way responsible for it being there in the chain of events.
"We should get about half a kay away from the ship before I pop it sir. The blast should knock out their communications for a few minutes and cover our tracks a bit." Mack informed him in a completely monotone voice but he could tell that there was a slight element of excitement creeping in, "good, ok, Jrt'kn you take point with Gaz, Way, your on rear, Mack back up Marr and lets get this show on the road."
The scouts did a good job of picking them a way through without being seen by anyone, the streets seemed strangely devoid of traffic and life, all attention was probably being directed to the mess a block over. The section Cray ordered to hole up in a dirty alleyway while Mack fished out the remote detonator, had a look around at where they where in regards to the Stingray and asked if they should blow it now.
"Don’t see why not private if you think we're clear."
Cray had a basic working knowledge of explosives but he admitted to himself that there was every chance of risk even when they where 300m away. Mack thumbed back the cover on the little black trigger, extended the wire aerial and pressed the button. There was a white flash that caused the armour's compensators to dim the vision and eventually a dull thump reached them seconds later shaking their bones. Nothing much happened after that for several seconds, "your sure its toasted private?"
They all stood there silently watching the building, listening to the screams a few blocks over from even more people injured at having a 97 gigawatt fusion reactor blevy its radioactive coolant into the street.
"Yeah, no ones going to be picking through that." Mack said unconcerned and packed his gear away
"Righto, lets go find somewhere to hide then," Cray muttered and got them moving away from the area which was already becoming filled with sirens, flashing lights of fire and SHIVER crews on their way in.
After 3 hours of hiking through some of the worst suburban environment he'd ever seen, Cray had a true appreciation of just how crap this entire planet was. It was full of greasy, shitty, no good people and the same held true for whatever it was that falling out of the sky, rain cunningly disguised as greasy, shitty water that ran down greasy, shitty buildings. He'd put even money that the food and beer here where probably greasy and shitty too, the women didn’t even warrant thinking about what would happen to his bits if he decided to sample the local whores. "Permission to speak freely sir," Gary asked from somewhere up ahead of him on the comlink. "Yeah go ahead corporal," Cray replied lacklusterly sure that his sniper would say whatever was on his mind anyway.
"I'd have to say, this is the most shitty planet Ive seen."
"Im sure your observation as a Recon soldier will be duly noted by command when you file your report corporal. Sometime next century there will be a training program dedicated to this and you will be quoted accordingly."
"Gee, you reckon sir," Waylon piped up from somewhere in the rear.
"Oh, sure as shit Way," Mack told him, "they listen to recon soldiers all the time. Especially when they come across SLA so's we know where to dump the artillery barrages."
"Ok, thats enough chatter for now y'all. I gotta send a quick message off on the Aleph so amuse yourselves and dont start nothing with them there natives."
The small aleph band radio was buried in a leg compartment on his suit of Endeavour armour and he began typing in the passwords manually while Waylon busied himself running the 5 metre long wire antenna up a fire escape for better reception. As long as it was kept short the enemy had a very slim chance of being able to triangulate where it had come from, Cray calmed his mind and thought out the exact letters and numbers which ran down the neural interface behind his right ear and into the radio.
//start TX Flashtraffic
LT 038382-7TH
SALTWATER IN TOWN
SITREP OK
READY TO ROLL
//end TX
That was it, somewhere off in the atmosphere the little message went floating off and did what little radio signals do until they where picked up by other little radio units. He just hoped whoever was on the other end of the line was who they where supposed to be, there where rumours about SLA using ebons to drag information out of their agents without the spy even knowing it was happening. Cray hadn’t found an ebon yet that could do that weird ebb stuff with a gutfull of DU so he wasn’t overly worried about them, biogenetics where another matter altogether. They where to damn stupid to know they where dead half the time, SLA certainly had the market cornered on freaks and weirdo's. If he was forced to admit it they probably had the market cornered on just about everything else too, including shitball planets like this one.
Waylon climbed down from his perch while Cray retrieved the antenna, nimble as a rat in the light 'Aegis' armour bristling with weapons. It was a pity they couldn’t have scrounged up something better for the boy and Jrt'kn he mused, the Aegis was good but it was unpowered and tended to come apart quickly under fire. As a whole he wasn’t entirely pleased with what they had, the heaviest armour was on Gary and Marr, One way TH.002 power armour and then there was himself in Endeavour TH.001 along with Mack who also had a suit. Still he wasn’t at all surprised that Thresher would give a bunch of scumbags like them going to a crappy planet like this anything decent.
He knew the odds of them coming out of this alive after 6 months where about 2% and if they didn’t get enough achieved in that 6 months then they would end up there for another 6 months until they did what their command here wanted.
They'd die here.
Cray just hoped he'd die first so he wouldn’t have to see the soldiers under his command die before him. As bitter and cynical as he was and as awful as most of them where, Cray actually liked them, except Mack whom he mostly feared.