Chapter Seventy-Eight (Continued): Dead Space

Chapter Seventy-Eight (Continued): Dead Space

Luyten 68-28 August 15th, 3017

"Mark, I don't like the look of this." Hanse said as we advanced through the Yardship, seeing only scattered corpses and blood streaks along the walls and floors.

"Hanse, I don't either, but the lights are still on, and we're much better armed and armored than these poor bastards were." No sooner had the words left my mouth than the lights turned off, the emergency lighting casting odd shadows and causing a haunting effect.

"Night vision on people, and guns at the ready," I told the various fireteams with me. "I want everyone's head on a swivel, this isn't anything like what's happening anywhere else." I had advanced comms systems loaded into my custom Mithril suit, allowing me to at least monitor the situation.

"Colonel!" One of the Marines who had been with me since the inception of the Marksman called out. "This body looks strange."

"Huh, you're right." I replied, this one seems to have been torn apart instead of ripped apart by weapons fire." I raised my rifle. "Get ready people, this body was fresh, so we're getting closer to whatever it was that is killing these people."

We finally reached the door to the bridge, and it had been sealed shut. "Lovell, open it up." I ordered, even though I knew it was probably a bad idea. "Everyone else, get ready, whatever it is that's killing these people is stuck on the bridge."

"Ready boss?" Lovell asked.

"We clear?" I asked to head nods and affirmatives. "Open it." I uttered with finality, ready to shoot whatever came through the door.

What it was, was a man. A crazed man with open wounds, and open cybernetics chained throughout his body. You could see through his facial expression that he was in pain, but he was still fighting through.

"Kill me please." He said. "They put this stuff in me, made me do terrible things." He said while his body readied itself to try and kill us. Looking down the iron sights of my rifle, I pulled my trigger once, drilling the center of his head, and causing his body to drop lifeless and stiff against the ground.

"Give me your thermite." I told our explosives expert,. "I want this body burned now." The marine just nodded, unspooling his cords of thermite and helping me layer the body with them." As soon as we finished, the corpse tried to move and get up but we triggered the explosives, melting the cybernetics and flesh off of the body, and causing the skeleton to fuse in several places.

"This is why Comstar needs to be destroyed." I looked at Hanse's faceplate. "Because they believe it is their right to play God and do things like that to people." I sighed, "Let's take the bridge, I don't think there's anyone left on this Yardship to oppose us."

"Sir, computer systems are entirely intact, and my teams are reporting that they didn't even manage to start wiping the computers, probably due to that clusterfuck we walked into." Lovell reported. "We'll have the Yardship up and moving in fifteen."

"Everybody okay?" Acting Captain Rogers asked. "I know we just took a beating after all."

"I'm good." The gunnery officer responded, followed by the rest of the bridge crew. "I hope those Marines bring some extra medical supplies though." The communications officer said. "We've got more wounded crewmates than the infirmary is able to handle."

"They'll be docking in fifteen." Rogers responded. "I'll greet them and explain our medical needs to them." He sighed heavily. "It's not like we'd be able to put up much of a fight right now anyway."

"Commodore," The Comms officer said. "Duke Hull is reporting that the Yardship they hit has been taken intact, no casualties, the second Yardship is reporting minor casualties, and a partial lockout of the computer systems similar to what happened in the Ross 248 system, only not as comprehensive."

"And the space station?" Frye asked, I want the status on that.

"Mathis is reporting minimal losses, and that the station will take another couple of hours to clear out the last holdouts."

"Good, when we have our marines on board the CSV Bordeaux have them treat the enemy wounded, we're not savages after all."

"Yes Ma'am, relaying the message."

Odessa, Lyran Commonwealth, August 16th, 3017

"Those fucking Savages!" Paige swore. "They're lucky we managed to intercept the fucking thing."

"I get it." Major Jenkins agreed. "Even when we were out for blood against the Capellans, we never tried to take it out on a civilian population, much less what these bastards decided to do."

"Blaze is going to crucify Comstar against a wall." Paige said with finality. "Chopper was his best friend, and he died to a dirty fucking nuke!"

"Ma'am! We have multiple nuclear missile launches detected, they're targeting the Lyran Dropships."

"Fuck!" Colonel Felicia Paige swore again. "Wait, why are our Dropships leaving?"

"They're intercepting the Nukes ma'am." Jenkins said. "With everyone we have being in Mithril, we stand the greater chance of survival."

"We're going to lose a lot of people, Jenkins." She replied. "And those crews aren't easily replaceable."

"This is the Sting class gunship Archon's Favor." Echoed through the open comms channels. "Tell our old fireteam member Katrina that we'll…" A white flash shone as bright as the local sun for a split second before disappearing to reveal that they had managed to intercept alll of the nukes headed for the other dropships, at the expense of the lone gunship.

"Dammit." Jenkins swore. "Those guys were with us from the beginning, I served with them against the pirates while we were stationed in the Concordat."

"I know Jenkins." Paige patted his armor clad shoulder. "I know."

"I hate these kinds of ops." Jenkins muttered underneath his breath. "Even when you succeed, you feel like you lost something important in return."

"Yeah," Paige agreed, "Sometimes these ops make you feel like losing hope."

Author's note: Well, that took a much darker tone than I intended when I started this chapter, but I'm going to leave it because I think it fits..