Untitled Uncertain: Bugbusters
12 Mar 2022Meowers
I was sitting on the bed in my living compartment on Bluford Station and doing what I do the best. Being a lazy arse. Just out of the bathroom, I was wearing a towel on my head and in front of me was a big... no, giant pizza box. And two more on the table. And a dozen of those self-heating cans with tea. Let's rock!
Clicking buttons on the wireless keyboard, choosing the movie I want to watch tonight, I've stumbled upon one interesting trailer. "Tam-ta-dada-tada-taaaam! Bugbusters!". Oh, that sounds nice. Bugs? They mean Thargoids? That's good. Play!
Really? They're going to fight on these?! There was a wing of... Ships. Hardly recognisable from the distance, but when they came closer... Haulers?! Seriously? Yeah. Four Haulers. White Haulers, decorated with the weirdest equipment I'd ever seen in my life, some coloured pipes and barrels, antennas, armour plates, holo-screens, floodlights, one was even carrying an old satellite dish, they had some strange rods on the hardpoints, and there was a same sign on all of them. A cartoony cockroach in a red circle with a red line, diagonally bisecting it.
Haulers were... Troop carriers. Compartments were cramped and ships looked bloating from such an overload, as the soldiers stood almost on top of each other. And each one had that... Gun? Combat keyboard? Seriously, a faintly glowing pipe with cables all over it, a pistol grip, a stock, an optical sight, all that in a crude boxy metal casing, and a foldable keypad was attached to the side.
Anyway, Haulers were approaching a ringed frozen rocky planet. Rings were also weird. You know how usual rings look like, do you? Half-transparent, almost colourless, most of them are wide... These were not. They were looking like a damn rainbow, full of thin colourful stripes.
Their captain was wearing a beret with the same cockroach sign and had a mechanical arm with the same weapon installed on it.
"See that, maggots? If you see a planet with rings like these, be ready. I swear, that frozen worthless piece of rock is full of them!"
"Them?"
"Stop asking stupid questions, you greenhorn! You will know when you see one!"
Haulers were decelerating and dropping from the cruise mode... All except one. It was still moving towards the surface on a high speed, without any response on the comms. And then it... Disappeared. Blam! Nothing. Empty space. Not even a hyperdrive flash, an explosion or something like that. Oh, wow. What was that? However, remaining three ships landed near a usually-looking settlement and troops disembarked. Suddenly, an inhuman scream filled the radio chatter and camera turned around.
They had... Siamese twins in their ranks? Two soldiers looked like they were stuck in each other, and the leg of one of them was knee-deep in a boarding ramp, preventing any attempts to move. Then captain said something like "you were good guys, it was an honour...", and pressed a button on his weapon-implant. A pink ray struck the twins and evaporised them. Oh, we got first confirmed casualties! Still no idea about that fourth Hauler's fate.
"Alpha team, check the hangars! Bravo, move to the settlement! Charlie, warehouse are yours! Delta, guard the shi..shit! Delta was on that ship!.. Wha..What? Angry Bird Two, what the heck are you doing? Stop it immedia...", then camera moved to show the ships. One of the Haulers took off for some unknown reason, then its engines failed, the ship fell on the ground... And started rolling and bouncing like a ball. Pilot was lucky and ejected... But not completely lucky as his escape pod got stuck in the building wall.
Then I saw the hangars and a team of troopers in it. They were looking at the ships like they were trying to find something... "Gold Cobra - check, Scarlet Krait - check... Oh, a wing of Orange Sidewinders. Check. One Yellow Adder, one Mauve... What's that?! A White Python?! It's not on the list! Team! Erasing rays!"
Oh, those keyboards were amusing. They could do anything... except actual shooting. Erasing rays, freezing rays, heating rays, localising net, breakpoint- and jump-something, comment label placers, object moving beams, welding and cutting tools, shrinking, enlarging, rotating, twisting... No wonder that those recruits were making too much costly mistakes.
"Erasing! Erasing you, dammit, not break...AAAARGH!" and half of the team just dissolved into blocks of meat and armour that froze on their places, hanging in the air. Python was dissolved too, and chunks of metal shot in every direction, shredding and squishing the rest of the squad, leaving just one trooper alive. Standing close to the entrance, now he turned pale and started trembling and pressing keys on his tool wildly... Not for a long time. Eventually he clicked a 'twist' button and hangar walls turned red.
That's how they lost Alpha team. So, let's move to the warehouse. To the Charlie team. Did I say that everything was weird? Warehouse was none less weird, with crates hanging in the air and sticking out of the walls. One of the workers was already dead and his body was unnaturally stretched for, like, ten metres, with legs staying in front of the control panel, and head with torso stuck in the container.
"We can't help this guy... Erasing, Johnny. Mark, Arnold, Chris, put that containers in order... No, not on top of that...", then camera showed how one of the troopers 'moved' a container on top of another worker's head. But the guy was still alive and talking with his companion, with his head sticking out of the metal box. "Shit, you idiot... I'm erasing the box". And then squad leader pressed the button, container disappeared, but the worker, well... His body flown across the corridor on a relativistic speed and hit two troopers who tried to move another box. One was pulling it to the left, another one to the right. When the red cloud dissipated, the container began to rotate slowly in the air.
"Crap! You dipshits! Retreat! Retreat! Commander, this is Charlie One, we got casualties! Retreating now! Everyone, to the airlock!"
Should I say that the retreat failed? The airlock door suddenly got stuck and the rest of the squad tried to run through it as if it was open. Ugh... No wonder that those guys just lost their minds. But their captain looked completely unsurprised. "Charlie team - code Airlock", he said to the voice recorder on his datapad and clicked a pair of buttons... Remotely disabling the life support in the whole warehouse building.
Meanwhile, in the settlement centre, Bravo team was in the most precarious situation. Two smoking piles of ash were laying in the middle of a street, and the rest of the team was moving from shadow to shadow, covering each other with freezing rays.
"What's the type of that dull heater in the sky?"
"Red dwarf. According to the distance, it should be... Around 80K here."
"Then why the heck it's 8000?! We're like on the surface of a blue-white!"
"Gravity! Check the grav...AAAARGH!"
Cracks and screams filled the comms and then the rest of the troops had turned into a flattened red ooze. Camera moved to the crushed helmet and focused on the flickering HUD. The gravity monitor was showing 45.3G. Settlement inhabitants were walking on that 8000K 45.3G blood-covered surface like nothing strange had happened. One of them even stepped on the red mess and paid no attention to it.
Argh... Someone is knocking on my door. Ah. It was my neighbour, nicely looking middle-aged woman. She was also wearing a towel on her head, but wasn't looking so satisfied as me. She said that I should turn the volume down, her kids are sleeping, but Bugbusters main theme is giving them nightmares. However, a bit later she winked and said that I really should watch the sequel... Oh. Nice.
When I returned to the bed, there was a hospital ward shown on the screen. One of the troopers was sitting on the couch and talking with the therapist, with the glass of water in his trembling hands.
"I was... I was on that... Angry Bird Four, in the Delta team... Ship just... Fell... Through the surface! And began falling down to nowhere! Altitude was dropping below zero, thrusters were roaring... Helplessly. So I jumped..thought I'd die there, but... I got stuck in that..completely transparent substance. I was floating there like in zero gravity, and I saw...AAARGH! I saw... Everything! Every death! Poor Billy..he was just 17! I was like... Beneath the surface, and it was..transparent too! And the building floors!.. I've seen everyone of our guys... And the ship, it was falling and falling, until it disappeared in the distance..."
The therapist nodded and started writing something in her journal.
"And then I decided..to reboot my suit. Pressed that damn button..and everything went dark. When I woke up, I found..found myself on a Thargoid base! Thankfully, I was... Like... Invisible for them, or what?.. Doc... Doc, listen... I had to eat their maggots and poop for several months to survive! And then, all of a sudden, someone..or... Something. Just moved... Teleported me back to our camp! And turns out I was out there for just like... Two hours!"
That was... Peculiar. And awesome! And the ending was pretty promising. The last scene was in their camp, in the captain's office. He was talking with someone over the comms. And it was someone important. They didn't show the face, only the voice. That person said something like... "I'm sending another 250 recruits to your camp. They're fresh and green too, but it's all I got. That goddamned Operation Odyssey hit our funding pretty hard. Hold on there."
Ow. I really should watch the sequel.