Prologue - I – II – III – IV – V – VI – VII – VIII – IX – X – XI – XII – XIII – Epilogue
The hold of the dropship held the familiar smell of oiled weaponry, cigarette smoke and sweat. The twelve occupants sat in their accustomed places checking their gear for the operation ahead.
“Right my leetle dustbunnies, this one straight out of tixtbook. We go in, we blow sheet up, we get out. Simples no?”
The speaker was a grizzled man standing in the doorway between the pilot’s compartment and the hold, a sheaf of datapads hung from his hand. The stripes on his arm proclaimed him a sergeant and the scars and missing digits spoke of his veteran status. Not one of them knew where or when Sarge had been born but the rumour was that he was older than god and just as cranky.
“You all have squad objectives in your Neocoms now. Yes?” A series of nods rippled around the room. “Then you know what to do, no?”
A yell burst forth from the assembled troops “GIVE ‘EM HELL, SARGE!”
“Good, Good. Now bossman want a word. You Listen good.”
The sergeant stepped aside and patted his pockets for one of the Rancid cigars he smoked, making way for a slight female figure in combat fatigues.
The men in the hold were silent, as if a goddess had entered the room and struck them dumb.
Satisfied that she had their full attention the woman, affectionately known as Bossman, walked the length of the hold. Their eyes followed her like those of rapt children watching an adored teacher’s every move. Upon reaching the far end, where the hold door would swing down to release its deadly human cargo on the planet below, she stopped and turned to face her men.
“Gentlemen, remember what we are. We are mercenaries.”
As she spoke she started to take pieces of armour and equipment from a rack on the hold wall next to her.
“We fight for no cause, we fight not for vengeance or out of a sense of misplaced duty. What we do we do for fun, profit, and because we’re good at it. There is no shame in enjoying it and being paid well for it.”
Bossman’s slender fingers clipped various plates, pouches and pockets to the webbing of her fatigues with a practiced deftness as she spoke. Various pieces of electronics were slipped into pouches and plugged into each other with rapid movements, whilst she held her audiences gaze and never looked once at what she was doing.
“We bear our adversaries no ill-will, but equally will not show them mercy in combat. They are the same as us. They are warriors and will grant us the same respect as we grant them.”
She took a battered combat rifle from its rack by the wall and checked its magazine and mechanisms, a smile playing across her lips as she stroked its well oiled surface. A pistol was next, and was slid with a visible reverence into a holster on her hip. Finally a sword was unclipped from its place on the rear door of the dropship and strapped, in its scabbard, across Bossman’s back.
” We are given a mission, we execute it. We are shown a target, we eliminate it, and death comes to those who stand in our path. We expect no less from those we meet in battle.”
The helmet was last, a dark green dome of plasteel armour emblazoned with numerals in an ancient script across one side. Hers was the highest number in the platoon and had been for some years now. She had earned that right, and that burden when her predecessor had retired. She cradled the helmet in her hands, feeling the weight of all the lives that it had saved. looking up at her troops, she spoke the final words of a speech they had all learned by heart.
“To honour those who came before, but mostly for the fun and money.” She placed the helmet on her head, and the rest of the men followed suit. A small panel next to the door to the pilot’s compartment lit up with thirteen identical lights, and the grizzled sergeant nodded when Bossman met his gaze. Reaching out to her left she hit a button, and the hold door swung ponderously down to give a view of the world outside.
“WHO ARE WE?” Yelled Bossman over the wind blowing dust into the cabin.
“THE PLATOON!” Came the shouted Reply.
“WHAT ARE WE?” She yelled again.
“UNLUCKY FOR SOME! HOOAH!”
“Control, Platoon Thirteen is oscar mike, over.” Said Bossman into her throat mic.
They Jumped into the wind and dust, just for the fun of it.
I occasionally have a hankering to write some fiction, unrelated to any of my EVE characters and usually playing with an idea that’s been floating about in my brain for a while. This is Dust fiction, as you might have guessed, and may be the seed of more to come. Then again it may not, my muse is a fickle mistress.
M out
