Flickers of movement caught his eye around the impact zone, which he ignored, not wanting to flick on the spotlight again to look at the woman’s mangled remains. Cray didn’t want to think of how much it would hurt being dropped from that height, or think about whatever horrible trauma had happened in the events leading up to the death but there they where. Little figures moving about the area so he resigned himself to thumbing on the IR again. "Dirty little fuckers," he muttered with a dry throat as he looked out over the street, 30 metres away a group of what he could only generously call 'people' where fighting over the remains. Clad in the dirty disposable paper clothes that they wore down here, pale skin, painfully thin with features so pinched from starvation he wondered if they where walking skeletons at first.
A larger one about five and a half feet tall slapped about the others fighting over the corpse and they cringed back away from him until he managed to snarl enough orders for two of them to carry off the body. Seconds later the group moved off back around the corner with their bountiful feast held high, a few of the little ones, not much bigger than 6 year olds. Lingered around in the impact crater stuffing gobbets of flesh and organs into their mouths until two of their parents came over and dragged them shrieking miserably into the darkness.
Cray flicked off the IR and tried to convince himself that it was just a bad TV show about bare-arse hairless monkeys living in a concrete jungle. It didn’t work of course, "they ate each other down here!" His mind turned this over a bit more before he just decided to pack the radio away in its new home in the APC, there where other things to that needed attending before he could waste time with the natives. There was armour and guns to clean, check in on the troops to see that they where all there and maybe he'd just check in on the rest of the APC's features.
Compared to anything that Thresher had the SLA Battle taxi APC was fairly simple in terms of features and electronics, it was outfitted ok but only just to the bare essentials. There where numerous design flaws he noted, ground clearance was substandard for a vehicle of this size, power to weight ratio was 'ok' but nothing to write home about and best of all he discovered where the firing ports along the sides. It was one of those things that looked like it was a good idea on paper, "stick holes in the sides so people inside could poke guns out of and shoot the bad guys." Any soldier worth his salt knew that firing ports in an IFV where next to useless, you couldn’t aim, couldn’t see and if you where real lucky. Some nice man from Thresher might visit and stick his 'Incinerator' through there and fill the whole thing with burning Naphtha gel and methane. Then everyone inside could have something to complain about apart from the rough suspension that could rattle the teeth out of your skull and bruise kidneys.
The floor armour was pretty poor too, one vehicle mine could gut the entire drivers compartment and unless you liked your nuts peppered with burning molten bits of metal this was not a good thing. There was one thing going for it though, it was free, in good condition and kept the rain, bugs and natives out so Cray couldn’t dislike it at all. Slops didn’t have AVM's, flamethrowers or anything much in the way of explosives or ammunition that could hole this vehicle so there where worse things you could be in right now.
"What the fuck now," came snarling from Cray as a sound of metal scraping and then a dull 'thunk' of something heavy being put down. He was just about done with whatever was happening out there and considering just getting the shits on things with the 10mm Power reaper up top. 'Power Reaper', another one of the tough sounding SLA guns that probably helped sell it to Slop wankers... "Power Reaper," he thought it out again. "Anyone looking to reap some power today?" Obviously they hadn’t ever had ever had a go of a Scythe SSW then they'd know what it was like to be cooking with gas.
The funny looking 6 foot tall figure crouched out on the road didn’t seem to notice the APC as Cray lit up the street in IR, huddled in his rags with what looked to be a piece of wood in his hands. "Carriens"
He'd heard about the Carriens on Mort and decided that they where not much of a threat to them in the APC as long as it was buttoned down securely.
"Nyum yap!"
"Go nyum yap yerself you ugly little prick."
"Nyum yap!"
"Yer feckin little furry buddy too"
"Nyum yap!"
Carriens came crawling out of the sewer manhole by the dozens and slinked off to the roadsides carrying their little bits of wood, hockey sticks and the odd knife. One poked its ugly little head round the corner and pointed at the APC.
"Nik nik nik! Breeeeeem!"
Cray flipped him the bird from behind the windshield, "fuck off or you'll be a bumper sticker!"
"Nik no nik no!"
"Thats fuckin right"
Good, they had an understanding now Cray felt and the posse of Carriens avoided the vehicle until one of them appeared from the manhole that was bigger than the rest by at least half again. Huge horns stuck out from its temples making the creature wiggle its head awkwardly to fit through the hole.
"Goddamn uglier than a hat fulla arseholes!"
The rest of the section was awake now and taking turns looking at the monitors, "want I go up there and hose 'em off with the machine gun sir?" Marr kindly offered.
"No, it'll wake up every SLA varmint for miles, besides I dont think they will bother us anyway. You lot can go back to sleep if you want."
"What the hell is that thing sir?" Waylan was deciding to perch himself on the ladder up to the machinegun and stay up while the rest filed back into bed. "Carriens private, that big critter there is the boss."
As if on demand the Greater carriens took offence to something yapped at it by one of his ugly little cohorts and Cray chuckled as the beast 'bitch slapped' its subordinate back into submission.
"See, they even practice proper military discipline Way, dont backchat the boss or he'll break his foot off in your arse." This brought a chuckle from someone, probably Marr in the back of the APC and Waylan managed a weak smile.
They did have a rudimentary idea of tactics too, 'Major Fugly' as he was now known began barking orders to his underlings and they scampered off in loose groups of 120 to 200 around one of the smaller tenement blocks. Fugly waited until they communicated a few 'yips' and 'yowls' that reminded Cray of the native cats back home, he had a fair idea of what they where up to as well. The largest group took the front entrance, crashing through the flimsy chipboard doors whilst the rest came in from the other three points they had managed to force in, smashing glass, cracking of wooden beams and then it went quiet for awhile.
"Maybe theres no one living there. Should we do something sir?"
"Like what?" Cray whispered back to Waylan who was starting to look even more pale than usual. "We have neither the ammo or need to agitate them. Besides, we don’t need anymore enemies than we have right now."
Cray didn’t like saying it but there wasn’t anything they could do, assisting the enemy’s civilians wasn’t on their list of orders. The screaming started ten minutes later punctuated by the occasional gunshot as the Carriens began eating their way through the 15 floors. Waylan crept off to his spot in the APC and crawled under the covers of the sleeping bag, looking for the entire world like a silver grub in the shiny material.
"We're just canned meat to them."
He stuffed the empty containers of his last meal in a waste chute not wanting to make any further comparisons tonight. Four hours later before the pale sun emerged to cast a dim grey light on the dirty streets the screaming finally stopped completely. Major Fugly took his now fattened troops back to the sewer covers and retreated back into the gloom where the things like him still reigned supreme. Tomorrow night it would be another tenement block and they would eat well again.
For all his 27 years Cray had been told stories about how SLA has this, SLA has that and how they don’t let their people ever have any of it, but instead hold the baubles out at arms length only to snatch it away when they got close. Like a teasing school bully with another child’s ball. He'd listened to the stories and never really given them much thought until now, except for the occasional bout of drinking Cray always just considered himself doing a professionals job.
Get in, do the job, make a quid or two and retire.
Some people joined up for an ideal, Cray didn’t like ideals, they blinded people to the broader situation but maybe there was some substance to them being here after all. Maybe one day if Slayer and his thugs where removed, people wouldn’t have to put up with this type of treatment. SLA could build thousands of foldships, equip vast armies but they couldn’t even defend their own people, it just didn’t make sense.