Honor

"I repeat, this is R.S.S. Hampton. We are declaring an emergency. Impact with the planet imminent," the speaker in my helmet said again, followed by an ETA, likely coordinates of impact, and estimated detonation yield. That didn't matter, though, since none of us were getting off this rock now or ever. The collision of armored starship and planetary body would create not only a kinetic force that would likely wipe out all life within a hundred miles, the containment fields on the reactor cores would rupture, adding their own antimatter radiation to the energy that would be released. This hemisphere would likely be uninhabitable in a matter of hours from the radiation, firestorms, dust plumes and shock waves that would result.

I clapped Jensen on the back of the helmet, signaling his launcher was reloaded as I cued a command on my HUD to cycle the load-out bot to his location ASAP. He was running low on the hyper velocity, anti-armor rounds that were all that was keeping this sector from being overrun by the enemy and their heavy bot forces. Around Jensen the squad provided cover fire from the regular troops, harassing them with auto turret and cover fire. Henricks, Jensen, Gupta, Donaldson, Jessup, and Mays were the last of our fifteen man company, while a couple of snipers from 5th platoon provided cover fire from well behind the lines. The fifth had been wiped clean in a failed raid two days before, leaving Alejandro and Beckett floating, so I combat reassigned them to my platoon for the duration of hostilities. Looked like that was coming sooner than anticipated.

My sensors alerted me to a sudden movement on our flank, suddenly left unguarded when 2nd platoon lost another of their unit. I hadn't even noticed our soldier drop, and barely had time to turn and lift my weapon before I saw the head of the enemy soldier rock forward violently then jerk backwards as their chin bounced off their chest, the body falling to the ground limply. I turned to the back, giving a thumbs up and continued to my second, Henricks, who was holding the center with his squad assault cannon. Normally he wouldn't be manning the heavy weapon at all, but the weapon's crew had died four hours ago from a plasma strike that cooked them in their armor and detonated all the ammo in the firing pit. Good thing Henricks knew his weapons and carried spares, he got the cannon patched up and took up the trigger for cover.

Diving into the pit, I checked his ammo stores, giving him and the smoking weapon a quick inspection. He was efficient, I had to admit. No wonder he'd made Sargent so quickly. Before him, lying on a heat shielded blanket, the kind we usually used to hide our weapon's heat signatures from enemy sensors, were three barrels for the cannon, all of them iridescent and shining from the glazing the heat was putting on them. You could tell how cool they were, he'd once told me, by how dark the rainbow sheen became, but I could never tell.

"Henricks, you'll have to hold the line. I've got to go get them," I said over the direct comms so the platoon wouldn't hear. They knew what I was doing, so distracting them with my departure would be stupid. I felt horrid knowing I was leaving my men behind, even though it was a good reason. Even though I would be back, Murphy and Kesler willing.

I heard a grunt from Henricks, which didn't indicate much besides effort, until he spoke softly and with an anger I only heard from him once before, "Get 'em and bring 'em back. It ain't right they don't see this through to the end like the rest of us." Though his tone was level, sounding almost calm to anyone that didn't know him, his speech was clipped and guttural, very nearly the bark of a large dog.

"Will do," I said, shuffling back and out of the fire pit before I rushed to cover well behind the firing line and made my way back into the ruins of the city we had spent the last three weeks spilling blood and bodies to claim. Our unit, the 1550th, was just another unit deployed to take control of another dirt ball for the expansion of the Grand Republic. We were detailed as the Fifteen-Fifties, but we all just called ourselves the Double F's. Our unit was a mock-up of several collapsed units from previous conflicts in other combat arenas, not like the units surrounding us on the front lines, and that included the officers. Cock-ups, every one, and only good for rations, as Jessup would say.