Ch: 113 Back to Karma (Patreon)

Edited by Aldous

Sorry for the late chapter. Had to help a buddy out. Working on this weeks chapter and it should be out by Monday as long as everything works out. Stay safe and health everyone.

Chapter 113

Back to Karma

Freya blinked as she exited the door to the hangar where her ship was parked. They had left Pop’s not ten minutes ago, after they had finished the pitcher of beer. They had stumbled back to camp only to get sober the moment they entered it, which was a good thing as Sergeant Kruz had gone over the plan on the way to the mission lobby door. It was very basic as Kruz didn’t have the normal, detailed plan.

Instead of the usual, detailed plan they got a set of general orders. Those orders were for Freya to fly to the planet and land at a newly constructed base. There the platoon was to spawn on the ship since there hadn’t been a problem for people spawning in respawn pods. The problem came when a person died while fighting and their data got corrupted. So Sergeant Kruz, Monkeyman, and Lurch were to spawn on the ship instead of riding down with Freya. It was, Freya had to admit, a good idea, since if the ship got destroyed then they wouldn’t lose what was left of the platoon. She would be the only one in danger if that happened.

Once down on the mission planet, they would meet up with a bunch of people who had been added to their platoon as replacements. From there, they were supposed to find some kind of transport, Kruz didn’t know what kind, only that it would be there for them when they landed. Their overall mission was to go when called to check out a potential site, after it had been cleared, to see if there was a non-construct Ketica hiding there. There would be techs who would be joining them to see if there was a non-psychic way to detect the Ketica. And that was the plan.

It made Freya nervous because everything relied on her finding the Ketica. She was not sure if what had happened was a one off-thing or if they would have to risk their souls trying to get the Ketica to reveal itself. It was not how the Marines normally planned their missions, and that made Freya very nervous. Usually, they liked to have a very detailed plan, but the very nature of the mission made that impossible. There were just too many variables to accurately plan such a mission.

“Magic!” A voice that Freya recognized as belonging to Diaz yelled out happily. Freya turned to where the voice sounded from and found Diaz walking pretty fast towards her.

Freya smiled at her crew chief, and was completely taken by surprise as the other woman reached out and hugged her. Freya didn’t hesitate for a second and hugged the other woman back. She let go after a second or two but Diaz held on for another couple of seconds. Freya felt awkward and almost hugged the other woman again when Diaz finally let her go.

“Hey.” Diaz said, taking a step back. “How are you doing? We're getting some very bad reports about what’s going on down there. The rumor is that you guys are taking ten percent true-death casualties down there.”

“It’s higher.” Freya told her. “I heard it was at fourteen percent and rising.”

“By Tom’s thumb.” Diaz whispered, sounding horrified. “That makes what I heard more believable now. There is a rumor going around that they called in support from three other ships. The Condura, the Izodius, and the Stella Rue. Rumor has it that the Condura is only twenty-eight days out, which is weird. They should be much further out than that.”

Freya frowned, then gave Diaz a half smirk and a shrug. “This one is going to be ugly.” She told her friend. “Lots of people aren’t going to come back from that planet.”

“I know.” Diaz said, sounding very sad. “You need to take care of yourself down there. I know I call you marines corpsicles, but you guys ain’t replaceable. I heard from other crew chiefs that their pilots got wacked, and aren't coming back. They are forcing some of your people to get pilots’ licenses, and giving a bunch of people loans to buy ships. I know three crew chiefs who have already been reassigned because of that.”

“That sounds… bad.” Freya said, looking down. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but all she could think of was that things would really get worse if they already called in reinforcements when the invasion wasn’t even an hour old.

“Hey, I had to completely replace the hull of your ship. The thing was nearly paper-thin in places, and so full of holes not even Tom could repair it back to combat readiness.” Diaz said, gently grabbing Freya’s shoulder and tugging her towards the ship. “That’s nothing compared to the top cannon. It was a complete wreck ….”

Freya listened as Diaz went over everything she fixed, which was something she hadn’t done before. Freya followed Diaz around, noting everything the crew chief had fixed, which was pretty much everything. It really wasn’t necessary, but Freya did it for her friend. She let her friend talk it out and didn’t interrupt. Diaz finished her walkthrough of her repairs by the ramp. Freya wasn’t too worried about taking forever to finish the outside part of the preflight check offs. She knew the time dilation would make it so that less than a second had passed. With that in mind she turned to her friend and gave her a big smile.

“Hey, you guys have a Pop’s on the Navy side?” Freya asked when her friend stopped talking.

“Yeah, why?” Diaz asked, looking confused.

“Great.” Freya said with a big smile. “So you know how much of a hardass Sergeant Kruz is right? So she comes in and buys us this huge pitcher of beer. Crazy, right? So then she pours us all drinks and gets hammered. It was the weirdest thing.”

“That is weird.” Diaz said with a slight smile.

“I know.” Freya told her. “The really cool part, though, was that the Pop’s on our side was completely empty since everyone is down on Karma. It was the best party ever.”

“With Sergeant Kruz?” Diaz asked, putting her hands on her waist.

“Yeah, I know.” Freya told her, smiling. “It was out of nowhere. She comes up to our table and plops down the beer. Could have knocked me over with a finger.”

Diaz chuckled a bit louder and shook her head, but she didn’t speak. Freya could still see her fear in her face, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. Freya smiled and waved Diaz forward into her ship. Diaz went in and kissed the name plate with her two fingers. Freya did the same and then Diaz was off explaining a few things that she had repaired or replaced. Diaz finished her tour at the last respawn pod. She opened it slowly and turned to look at Freya.

“Kill those ghost things, and come back safe.” She said to Freya.

“If I don’t, then I’ll see you in Valhalla.” Freya quipped as she stepped into the pod.

Diaz’s fist lashed out and hit Freya in her shoulder. “Trying not to live up to your name, corpsicle.”

“Hey, that wasn’t nice.” Freya said, rubbing her shoulder.

“Shut up, and stay alive.” She told Freya. “Remember, you friggin’ marine. Your job is to make the other guy die for his people. Not to die for yours.”

Freya gave her friend a sloppy salute and a grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Stupid marine.” Diaz muttered and closed the pod door. Freya didn’t have time to close her eyes as Diaz hit the button. One second she was staring at her friend and the next she was standing behind her chair in the cockpit.

Shaking off the sudden transition, she turned the chair around and sat down. She spun it around and fastened the seatbelts. It only took about a minute or so to complete the final preflight checklist. She started up the engines then opened up the menu for the respawn pods. She went to start cloning the rest of her platoon when she noticed that Captain Thompson and Agent Smith were also on the list.

“Holy crap, he survived.” Freya said, stunned. Then she looked at the information under the name and lost her smile. The gender was listed as female. The Agent Smith she knew was a guy. Even though she really didn’t know the guy very well it hit her in the stomach when she realized it wasn’t him. For a second she thought it was possible that some of the people who had died were still alive, but seeing that it wasn’t him hurt more than she expected.

She sighed and looked up and spotted Diaz and her underling, the loadmaster, standing in the small office looking at her through the window. She was kind of glad that the other hadn’t been there for the walkaround. It had given her some time with Diaz, alone. The loadmaster gave her a wave, but Freya was already reaching for the mic on her communication console. She nodded to him then keyed up to talk to the Controller.

“October, Marine RDS B127 request permission to disembark.”

“Marine RDS B127, October. Skies are clear. You’re free to disembark. Good luck, Magic.”

“Thank you, October.” Freya replied as her ship lifted upwards and the red lights started flashing.

A few seconds later, the floor to the hangar dropped open and Freya dropped the nose of her ship and exited out of the huge ship. She keyed up her generator to seventy percent until she was clear and circling around the top side of the ship heading towards Karma. She boosted the power to eighty percent as she followed her flight path towards the planet's surface. Her sensors noted some debris around the planet in small patches here and there. She assumed that they were the living weapons used to be. She didn’t check as she was already dropping into the atmosphere.

She did wonder why the October was so close to the planet's surface, but she didn’t have time to wonder too much as she dipped into the upper atmosphere about fourteen thousand feet above the cloud cover. It only took her a few seconds to meet up with the cloud cover, but she remained on guard. She didn’t enter the clouds, but remained above. The last thing she wanted to do was miss something fired from the surface. She knew the odds were low that the enemy had anything left to throw at her, but she wasn’t going to chance it.

The October was parked just above the south pole of the planet, so Freya had to adjust her flight path a bit to get to the correct continent. For the most part she came in steep, and only leveled out just above the clouds. Once on the correct path she slowed down a bit and let the ship cruise about three hundred feet above the clouds. Her sensors alerted her to some drones within the clouds, but told her they were terraforming drones, not military ones. Still, she kept an eye on the clouds just in case.

Fourteen minutes later, she came in range of the new fort. Her sensors told her it was still being built, but she got challenged by friend or foe signals. She sent back a signal, and it must have been correct because nothing fired on her. The fort was under active camouflage, which, she knew from experience, must have cost a lot and took a long time to set up. Still, she was glad that it was there.

“Federation Fort, Marine RDS B127 requesting landing instructions.” She called over the radio.

“Marine RDS B127, Fort Victory. Dropping a waypoint now. Please come about to …” She got in return, along with coordinates directing her on how the controller of Fort Victory wanted her to approach the fort.

It was annoying, but Freya turned her ship to the south and circled around the fort until she was on the correct path. She killed her speed as soon as she was close enough and started a declining flight path towards the waypoint. She ended her flight about fifty feet above the waypoint and lowered her ship directly over the waypoint. It only took about six seconds for her ship to land after that. Her timer on the clone printing indicated that they were ready so she downloaded their data then she despawned.

Opening her eyes, she found herself in a pod staring at her reflection. She quickly popped open the door and stepped out. She glanced around and spotted her crew along with Captain Thompson, who had spawned next to a stranger. The stranger looked young, unlike the last PsyOps agent who had looked like he was in his thirties. The new PsyOps agent had short, blonde hair that was styled in a bowl cut that ended just above the woman’s ears. Freya noted as the woman turned towards her locker that, while she had a somewhat normal hair cut on the left side of her head, she had shaved the right side. She also sported a fist tattooed on her scalp with its middle finger sticking up.

Freya smiled as she turned towards her own locker and keyed up her armor on the console. Closing her eyes, she let the warm printer fluid spray across her body. In less than a second she was armored. She reached in and pulled out her weapons. She went with her normal loadout because she had no idea what kind of mission they would be sent on. She had debated taking her short-range rifle, but took her Irish Nester instead. There was never a debate on taking her primary weapon, her ASO, as it was just too useful with it’s three firing settings.

As soon as she was finished pulling both weapons out of the printer, she got a request from a Gunnery Sergeant Tasso to turn her ship over to him. It wasn’t unexpected, but she did note that the notification she got when she did was different. It was just one line, but it wasn’t something she had ever expected to see. It stated that the copyright fee was waived due to it being essential equipment in a combat environment during a declared war.

“Hey guys, just got a notification that this is now a declared war.” She told her platoon.

“Happened just before the start of the invasion.” Captain Thompson replied over the radio. “Not much difference to us, except in some situations you can use any weapon you find in the Federation arsenal without a copyright fee, as long as you are in a combat situation. Your normal loadouts don’t count. You still have to pay for those, but if you happen across a nice gun you always wanted, but didn’t have the credits for, you can pick it up and use it.”

“If I were you people, I would abuse the shit out of that.” An unknown woman’s voice said over the radio. The info on Freya’s radio told her it was the new PsyOps agent. “Hi everyone. I’m Agent Smith, but you can call me Danna. Me and Thompson go way back.”

“She knows her stuff.” Thompson said, agreeing with her. “If she gives you an order, consider it an order from me and do it.”

“And if you’re good little marines, I’ll tell you some stories about Thompson when she was just a private running her skinny ass around the battlefields we were dropped on. Trust me, you’ll get a kick out of some of the shit she pulled back then.” Danna told them.

“You can spoil the kids later.” Thompson told her. “We need to find our wheels. I just got a read on our first mission.”

Their wheels turned out to be an armoured command vehicle. It looked like a caterpillar to Freya. The tank had big, round tires that looked more like balls than normal tires. It was only about five feet tall, but it was as long as a bus. It had several machine gun barrels sticking out of the sides and two on the top. Also on the top was a huge gun. Not as big as the cannon on her dropship, but big for a tank gun. The tank had a grey, passive camo color on it, with occasional irregular black streaks.

The back ramp was down and Thompson and the odd PsyOps agent didn’t hesitate to duck into the tank. Sergeant Kruz followed them, with her hand on the side of her helmet. It reminded her of some bad video shows she had seen where the soldier/spy or whoever touched their communication gear on the side of their head. It was a stupid thing to do, and no marine would ever do something so dumb. Still, looking at her new boss, she couldn’t help but compare what she was doing to those bad videos.

The inside of the tank was extremely compact. There were benches on either side of the tank with enough room to sit three people side by side, but there was almost no room in the aisle. Freya had to turn sideways just to move in the aisle. No one was going to be able to get up and move about unmolested. A quick count told her that there was enough room for the entire platoon in those seats. The walls had small, one foot by two feet, see-through windows. Freya hadn’t seen any windows on the outside so she guessed they weren’t real windows but projections so they could keep an eye on what was going on outside of the tank.

Just beyond the bench seats was a small command and control console with two seats. Just beyond the console, Freya spotted the tank crew. There was a driver in the left hand seat all the way towards the front of the tank with a woman next to him sitting in front of a bank of screens. Freya guessed she was the gunner controlling not only the big gun, but the smaller guns that she had seen around the tank. The last was a frumpy-looking guy seated just behind the two. He had what looked like a very small command and control station. He was currently twisted about so he could see them from his forward-facing seat.

“Welcome aboard.” The man said as Thompson and Danna claimed the two seats in the command and control station. “I’m Sergeant Duggar. I’m in command of the tank. Our driver is Private Dozzi, and sitting in the weapon’s seat is Corporal Maxwell. Our drive time should be just under two hours.”

“Change of orders.” Thompson said, not looking up from setting up the command and control station. “We have a mission. I’ve already given orders for an assault ship to pick up the rest of the platoon and meet us there. I’m dropping a waypoint on your map now. We need to get there as fast as possible. If we have to, I can get us a transport to pick the tank up and get us there in a little more than an hour. Unless you tell me otherwise, driving there should be faster.”

“Yeah, I can get us there in forty minutes, less if we don’t kick up some constructs in the sand.” Duggar told her nodding.

“How likely is it we’ll be attacked while driving there?” Thompson asked.

“Very.” Duggar replied, looking grim. “The good news is that Karen, our tank, is fast enough and has enough firepower that, even if we see something big, we can take it down fast. Worse case, I can pop the gun ports off and let your people get some trigger practice.”

“Fine, get us on the road.” Thompson told him.

“Roger that, ma’am.” The tank commander said, turning around.

Pretty much everyone had taken a seat by then. Monkeyman had taken a seat in front of Freya and had his feet up on the bench seat with his back against the tank’s bulkhead. Freya sat next to the projection and looked out as the tank started to move. Across from her, Lurch was doing the same, with Sergeant Kruz sitting in the seat in front of him. She was looking down at something and seemed preoccupied. Freya turned around and looked at all the empty seats behind them and hoped it wasn’t an omen.

Their first contact came about fifteen minutes from the fort. Freya was watching the scenery go by when one of the smaller guns fired. The gun had a few tracer rounds so she was quickly able to see an ant-like creature rear its ugly head up from the sand not twenty feet from them. The gun tore the ant apart in less than a second. The tank never slowed down. A few minutes later, Freya heard the sound of another of the tank’s guns going off. A quick look around showed her an ant getting torn to pieces in front of them. The tank ran the thing over a second later. There wasn’t even a bump as it rode over the dead ant construct.

There was some quiet for a few minutes after that before the tank’s guns spoke again. It seemed like more than one this time, and they didn’t stop speaking as a bunch of ants boiled out of the sand all around them. None of them made it within five feet of them. Ten minutes later, the guns stopped firing and the enemy retreated.

For a while, Freya thought that was going to be it. She was wrong. Something like ten minutes later, the tank commander spoke. “We got a warrior. Main gun, target Alpha. Pen round.”

“Target alpha, pen round loaded.” Replied the gunner.

“Fire.”

There was a loud thud, and the gunner spoke again. “Round away. Hit. Confirmed, the target’s down. Nothing left above the waist.”

“Good hit.” The tank command replied. “No other targets at this time.”

“Good hit, no more targets at this time.” The gunner replied. “Standing down.”

“Load a pen round. I don’t think this is going to be the last one we see.” The tank commander said, looking at his screens.

“Pen round loaded, and waiting.” The gunner replied.

Not long after that Thompson called out, in an oddly calm voice. “We got a swarm coming in our direction. Dropping a waypoint.”

“I see it.” The tank commander replied. “We have in-coming. Indirect fire. Brace, brace, brace.”

The tank shook a bit and Freya looked out to see fast-moving balls of blue fire falling all around them. She couldn’t see the enemy as she scanned the horizon. There were a bunch of dunes in the way, but the balls of fire seemed to come from beyond the horizon. It was hard to see, but the enemy mortar fire left very faint blue streaks in the sky. The tank started to weave back and forth as the driver started to evade the enemy’s fire.

“Dropping waypoint on the swarm.” Captain Thompson called out.

“Gunner, fire the pen round on the waypoint, then load an APHE round.” The tank command called out.

“Firing.” The gunner called out. “Loading the APHE round. Loaded.”

“Fire.” The tank commander said, not bothering to wait until the first shell landed.

“Firing.” The gunner replied.

“First round on target.” Captain Thompson told them. Then a few seconds later. “Second round on target. Good hit. Fire again.”

“APHE round.” The Tank commander told his gunner.

“APHE round, loaded.” The gunner replied.

“Fire.”

“Firing.”

A few seconds later, Captain Thompson spoke again. “Good hit. Swarm is down. No signs of life. Remain on standby.”

Freya could have told them that as the mortar fire had stopped. Still, it was good to know that the tank crew had just killed an entire swarm in less than thirty seconds. The tank’s driver also stopped weaving side to side after the mortars stopped falling. Freya settled down in her seat as the tank commander replied to the captain.

“Copy, standing by.” The tank commander replied to the captain's order.

“Ammo check on the APHE rounds.” He said to his gunner.

“Got thirteen left, skipper.” The gunner replied.

“Copy, thirteen.” The tank command replied.

“Five minutes out.” The driver said into the silence a few minutes later.

“Copy, five out.” The commander replied.

“Okay people, listen up.” Sergeant Kruz said seconds later, turning around in her seat so that she was looking at all of them. “We are coming up to a fort that we just took less than an hour ago. Our job is to go in and see if there is a Ketica hiding in there. Magic, you’re in first. Take your team and secure the site. There should be no one inside the fort, so be careful. Me and the captain will escort Agent Smith to the site. If you see a Ketica, you are not to engage. Give us a warning then back out. You are not cleared to fire unless attacked. We will stay on station until Agent Smith clears us. First priority to Agent Smith's safety, then and only then the Ketica.”

“Do you want me to wire up the place?” Monkeyman asked.

“That would put the agent in danger. So, no.” Sergeant Kruz told him.

“Drones?” Lurch asked.

“That’ll be up to your team leader, who should tell you to deploy them before you go in.” Sergeant Kruz said, sarcastically.

“Still a bitch.” Freya thought as she gave her platoon leader a false smile. From the return smile, Freya was pretty sure the sergeant knew what she thought of her.

“Any questions?” Sergeant Kruz asked, still smiling.

No one spoke and the sergeant nodded and turned back around. Freya let her fake smile fade and shook her head. In front of her she heard Monkeyman chuckle. She gave him a glare, but he had already turned his head away from her. Shaking her head, she turned to look out the fake window. A few minutes later she started to see smoke and other signs of battle including corpses dressed out in Federation Marine armor. She watched in silence as the tank crept up over a large dune and she saw the aftermath of the battle.