THE FISHERMEN'S DEATH MARCH

Most of us, we're shell fishermen, simple people, struggling to lead simple lives, tending the flow and raising our families. But on Bosqure that's simply not enough. There are three things guaranteed in life on our little planet: death, taxes, and twenty-eight days a year, racked in a nano-battle jacket, standing on a sea ridge, fending off waves of Red Cloud. Twenty-eight of the bloodiest days a body will ever see. With guarantees like that one might wonder why we stay.

We're shell fishermen, yes, but we're all we've got. Our little waterlogged planet doesn't rate a helping hand from The Planetary Congress, they will not be sending in the star troops. So when the Red Cloud virus attacks our sustenance, our livelihood, it's on us and we hit back, even if it means getting down on its level.

"I'm in." I can see my head drooping, drool trickling from the corner of my mouth. I hope one of the techs will fix that but they're all too busy. Battle ready has a way of doing that.

"Roger team leader, I'm showing all systems go."

"Confirm all systems go, Central."

I'll never get use to the feeling of leaving my body on the rack, no matter how many times I do it.  The first few seconds are a monster, shedding the residuals of the human form and adjusting to the jacket. These nano-battle jackets are the worst.  It's one thing to rack one of the deep water trawlers or the floating harvesters we use in the flow every day. They're like a second skin and big- I know, size doesn't matter, but really, it does. There's just something about squeezing all of me into this, beyond tiny, tin can that just creeps me out.

I try moving around a bit.  Six legs, two giant pincers and a brace of low impact, Serum-7 tactical nukes that rise from my armor- ok, shell- yeah, it takes a bit of getting use to. Besides, I'm nervous as a first time john creeping into a low end brothel on a busy Friday night. It's not the residuals of my recent tour on the sea ridge. Those ghosts don't haunt me anymore. It's my team's mindset. Our tour ended twelve hours ago. The last of the reservists to come home. After twenty-eight days of living life in a nano-battle jacket on the bottom of the ocean, fighting for our lives, we literally got to put on our own skin again. Unfortunately, our time in true form was brief but it was enough to cause the change, we think, we plan, we dream, we're alive again. You can't just shut that shit down on the fly. 

"Maybe the Collective got it right this time Major. You're looking good in that new jacket."

"Damn well better. I just hope they work as good as they look. Good to have you aboard Captain Simms." I have to admit I'm partial to her silky tones. If I've got to schlep out to the nets and possibly death there is no other chair jockey I'd rather have tagging along in my ear. Not only does she have a great set of pipes, she's the best we've got. "The Collective really is pulling out all the stops on this one. Where did they drag you back from?"

"Transport station. Almost made it home. Got off the shuttle and a pair of Rock Marines were waiting for me instead of dear old mom. That's one 'welcome home' I could do without."

"Well, according to the write up on these new jackets this is gonna be a breeze. You'll be hugging your mother in no time."

You'll have to forgive my sarcastic tone. It's these new Heckler & Koch Bio-Gen jackets. Some genius decided to give us these shiny new toys to save the planet, and I get it, I do. The problem is we've never played with them before. I prefer the, go with what you know strategy in times like this. There's too much at stake to be guessing at what buttons to push and when. But then again, I'm just a bottom feeder, what the hell do I know?

Under normal circumstances these new jackets would have busted the collective's yearly budget, but dealing with dark market pirates has busted the budgets for generations to come. What else could the collective do? Necessity can be an expensive mistress and reality a straight up bitch. Truth is, as much as we'd like to kill the Red Cloud virus, we can't. Not a wholesale killing anyway, and not that we didn't considered it. It's a virus that originates on the ocean floor in a series of black water canyons, three quarters of the world around, deep, dark, and mighty cold. No place I ever want to go again. The collective wanted to carpet-bomb the whole damn region with an earlier version of the serum 7 I'm packing now, but the sci-freaks came back crying of ecological imbalances and prophesying the death of our planet. And so the search for alternatives began. We've tried everything from toxins to vaccines with no lasting effect. The Red Cloud virus is blooming, our mollusk fields are dyeing, and our numbers are dwindling. So, until we find that silver bullet, we simply try to keep the clouds at bay, taking it to them mano-a-mano. These new Bio-Gen jackets are supposed to be the answer to our prayers.