Jason couldn't help but feel a little wounded by the fact that she didn't hesitate. Not even a little. He wasn't even entirely sure he'd actually finished speaking.

"Was this because you trusted me or because you wanted to shoot me?" he asked as he gingerly touched the spot on his chest where the beam of invisible energy had assumedly hit him.

"As your Commanding Officer, it would hurt my ability to command if I confirmed which." Cleff dumped her weapon on the table. “So, aside from providing me with a much needed opportunity for stress relief, what was this little exercise in aid of?”

Jason paused for a moment before he remembered exactly why he’d asked his commanding officer to shoot him. He reached over, picking up his helmet and pulling it partially over his head so that he could see the HUD within.

“Right, uh, K’lik Kla Herk.” He read, before paling as he read yet more gibberish.

That was bad, given that he’d been planning on his latest innovation working correctly as a means of avoiding Cleff’s wrath for refusing to follow his orders.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered as he plopped the device off his head. “I, uh, might need a few moments to debug-”

“No, you don’t.” Cleff interrupted, eying him strangely. “You just said what I typed into your little device here. A little phrase from back home that effectively translates to… well… given your recent success, no longer feel the need to elaborate on my threat.”

Jason felt a small bead of sweat run down his neck at the casual promise of discipline averted, as Cleff looked down at the gun on his desk. “So, you’ve made a tool that lets you speak in text via our weapon system?”

Jason nodded quickly. “Yeah, it uses our suit’s ability to register laser impacts to receive data. Specifically, the weapon you’re holding translates whatever you type into it into morse code. Then that code is conveyed by a series of pulsing shots through the gun barrel.”

“Morse code?” Cleff asked.

Jason paused, before remembering that he was talking to an alien. “It’s a simple telecommunication method that utilizes different sequences of signal duration to ‘speak’.”

“A bit like binary?”

Jason nodded. “Effectively.”

“Clever.” The moth-woman grinned, hand running slowly across the weapon in front of her. “Very clever.”

Jason shrugged, feeling more than a little awkward at what he felt was unfounded praise. “It was easy enough to do.”

Really, the hardest part had been creating a new morse code ‘alphabet’, given that he sure as shit didn’t know what the original was. From there he‘d shoved it into his omni-pad’s pre-installed chat software, and then hooked that up to the Roach weapons firing switch.

“Given that you asked me to shoot you in your chest, I assume that this communication method won’t compromise suit integrity?” Cleff asked, glancing up at him, as if to check that no grey splotches had bloomed across his chest in the time since she’d shot him.

“Not at all,” Jason said. “The beam strength is barely more than a laser pointer.”

Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t that weak. It wouldn’t do anything to standard Imperial armor, but a shot from the weapon could give someone a nasty instant sunburn if it hit bare flesh.

Across from him, Jason could almost see gears whirring in his Commanding Officer’s mind as she considered just how this new weapon might change the dynamic of any upcoming engagement. Which made sense, given that he’d just, in effect, made long range communication viable again for the regiment.

Which was why he was utterly unsurprised by her next question. “What’s the effective distance?”

He shrugged. “Theoretically? The horizon. Our weapons already have built-in range finders. The gun will calculate that and then output as much juice as needed to ping a suit’s impact sensors.

Cleff cocked her head. “Our weapons don’t travel that far.”

Jason resisted the urge to snort. “They can and do, the beams just don’t do much beyond a certain range. After all, there’s a world of difference between the little ‘taps’ my comm lasers are putting out and a generic shot that’s expected to be able to melt through armor.”

“You don’t say?” the moth-woman said, that strange look in her eyes once more as she regarded him. “I’m surprised no one’s attempted this before. An effectively ‘silent’ mean of communication like this… well, it would have had applications even before our recent comm trouble.”

“I couldn’t comment on that, ma’am.” Jason shrugged again, absently rubbing his arm.

The whole system had seemed simple enough to him. Hell, it wasn’t like he’d come up with entirely by himself. He’d gotten the idea from a half remembered bit of something he’d read about ships talking to each other via laser.

Or perhaps that was sci-fi? He pondered.

“How many more can you make?” The Colonel asked, drawing him back to the present.

“Uh, like this?” He asked, gesturing to the bastardized Roach weapon. “A bunch, but we really don’t need to.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he patted his own weapon. “It’s software more than hardware. I just used a Roach gun so I didn’t accidentally wreck my own if I fucked up.”

“What about the omni-pad?” Cleff pointed out.

“Well, our wrist-pads make for a decent substitute,” Jason said, raising his own. “It’s a bit more barebones, but it’s got the same text-chat function. And it’s already tied to both a Marine’s suit and their weapon system.”

“How long would it take you to adapt it?”

Jason tapped a few keys on his wrist-pad. “Done.”

“That fast?” Cleff sounded impressed.

He shrugged for what felt like the tenth time since the conversation began. “Imperial programming software is pretty modular. What works on one thing tends to work on everything else.”

A bit like Apple products back home, he thought.

“Upload the program to my suit now.” Cleff said without preamble, pulling out the small data-cord that in her wrist that normally slotted into her gun. “Then I want you to spread this system to absolutely everyone.”

Jason did as she asked.

Once the program was uploaded, Cleff stepped back, a wide grin on her face. “Alright then, in light of this little innovation of yours, I have to have yet another meeting with my people.” She turned to leave, before stopping at the door. “And Champion?”

Jason paused in the act of planning out how he was going to upload a program to nearly four thousand people in anything approaching a timely manner. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Good work.” Then she was gone.

Jason stood frozen as he stared at where the woman had just been standing.

…Am I going crazy, or was she making bedroom eyes at me just then? He thought after a few stunned moments.

-----------------

In the end he’d decided that the simplest method was just to give the software to a few people and then tell them to give the software update to everyone they met while telling them to do the same. An act which made a task that could possibly have taken days, something that was achieved in barely a few hours.

More to the point, it allowed Jason to engage in a bare minimum of interaction with his fellow Marines.

But not none.

Because as much as he was sure his program would be disseminated across the entire regiment using his method of letting it spread like a virus, he did actually have to confirm that it did so.

Which involved a lot of walking around to different areas of the mining nexus and talking to people when he’d rather be doing something more useful than what he’d mentally dubbed as ‘grunt work’.

A feeling that seemed to be reciprocated by many of the people he’d come across, who viewed his arrival in much the same manner a beleaguered office worker might when the boss started making the rounds to see who had filled out their TPS reports.

Never mind the fact that my new communication method is quite literally invaluable for our regiment given our current lack of conventional comms, he thought as he trudged through the rain to the next security checkpoint on his list of stops.

Not that he blamed anyone for being less than enthused by his visitations. Everyone was busy and he was an interruption.

More to the point, most only knew that the laser comms were a new form of communication that had recently been disseminated by command as a result of the recent blackout. The fact that he was the one to come up with said system wasn’t really known - nor was he so starved for praise that he saw the need to point it out to anyone he came across. He was perfectly happy to let the average Marine think the program had been pulled out from an old operation manual in much the same way an old cold war era strategy might have been unearthed in the modern day due to a nuclear exchange back on Earth.

“Sergeant!” he called out. “Have you-”

“We’ve got it Champ,” the Shil’vati woman he’d been shouting to shouted back, visibly tapping her weapon for emphasis. All around her, the alien’s Human underlings did likewise from their positions behind the recently stacked sandbags they were using for cover. Or seating.

Jason paused, a little at the brisk response, before shrugging. It beat being asked for the hundredth time if he knew anything about… anything that was going on. So instead, he mentally ticked the place off his list of spots he needed to check and set off toward his next destination.

Though he barely made it five steps before he heard a commotion at the barricade behind him.

“Incoming, Sarge. Scout vehicle. Imperial. Moving fast.”

“Does the IFF…” The Sergeant paused before visibly cursing under her breath. “Get them on the rad- shit. Alright, Paulo, fire off a warning shot.”

Jason watched as one of the Marines fired. Which might have seemed a little pointless given her weapon produced no visible beam or any sound worth mentioning. It wasn’t though, as Jason heard more than saw the explosion of steam that was created by the beam hitting a puddle.

“It’s coming to a stop,” the earlier voice reported, a hint of relief in his voice.

Jason momentarily considered shifting position so that he could get a better view, before deciding against it. In the unlikely event this turned violent, he didn’t want to be in the way. Though whether that was of the Marines or just the violence in general, well, he was undecided.

“I can see that, Awais.” The Sergeant said dryly. “Take Reese and go check it out. Confirm they’re friendlies before bringing them in.” She turned to the woman who had taken the warning shot. “Paulo, inform command.”

Still, he couldn’t resist the small sensation of pride that bloomed in his chest as one of the Marines raised her weapon in the direction of the ‘command’ building. A building that looked decidedly off, what with the half dozen crucified figures positioned on the roof. Of course, they weren’t actually people. Just a bunch of spare suits stretched across some hastily welded poles. Troops on the ground need only shoot the suits with his program to convey messages to command.

And there’s probably some poor sharpshooters sitting on the roof that Cleff is using to ‘convey’ messages back to the troops on the ground, he thought.

A pretty unenviable position given the constant rain, wind and lightning that bracketed the planet.

Jason’s attention returned back to the barricades as the rogue vehicle finally arrived, the low thrum of its thrusters announcing its presence.

It was, as the Marine said, a scout vehicle. Specifically, a Skiff. Which wasn’t so much the designation as much as the type. Which was undoubtedly a long series of boring digits that he couldn’t care to recall right now – even if he definitely knew them.

The vehicle in question hovered about a meter off the ground as it gradually slowed to a stop at the barricade, using a combination of anti-grav and small thrusters to keep itself aloft. The slim angular vehicle wasn’t actually weightless when its anti-grav drive was online- the drive wasn’t nearly powerful enough for that. Instead, it was merely light. So light that the small thrusters dotted across the underside of the hull needed only keep up a small continuous burn to keep it off the ground.

Not unlike a hovercraft, Jason thought as he admired the vehicle's sleek boat-like design. Covered in mottled camo, the thing looked like the bastard offspring of a two-person canoe and a dune buggy, if one ignored the two massive engines strapped to each side of the stern.

And the presence of the heavy repeating laser cannon mounted in the rear cupola, he thought as he took in the slumped form of the Shil woman who occupied the gunner’s seat.

Despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help the small smile that crept over his features as the sight of the sci-fi looking vehicle reminded him of days when he’d complained that Imperial busses didn’t hover.

Simpler times, relative though that definition was.

Which was why his smile soured slightly as his eyes alighted on a number of score marks running across the vehicles side.

The scout vehicle across from him had seen combat. Recent combat.

Which is as good as confirmation really, he sighed. The blackout wasn’t a coincidence.

-----------

The command staff of the Terran 1st watched events unfold on the screen in front of them with a kind of detached horror.

Taken from the helmet-cam of the skiff pilot that had so recently arrived at their gates, the video showed the Imperial 198th Imperial Mechanized being cut to pieces.

Caught between the Roach position they’d been advancing on just minutes before and the new force that had pincered them from the rear, the regiment had fallen into complete disarray. Even from the fleeting shaky camera movements of the Skiff-pilot as she cursed and darted around incoming fire, Cleff could see that there was no real unified response from the Imperials.

They had discipline, certainly, but only on a pod level. Each piece of the regiment moving individually, rather than as one cohesive whole.

And even then, sluggishly, she thought as she spotted a pod remain in place rather than take advantage of fire from a nearby IFV to move to better cover.

A move that proved fatal for both pod and vehicle as an unknown but all-too familiar exo dove in to eliminate them both with a stream of plasma fire.

An act that was being repeated in acts both large and small across the battlefield. Everywhere the unknown foe struck, resistance quickly disintegrated, as Imperial forces were cut down with ruthless precision. What had started as semi-organized resistance quickly turned into an all out route. Not that it did the hapless Imperial regiment any good, as it seemed no matter which direction they turned, they quickly ran into a withering hail of fire from concealed infantry or a perfectly timed stream of plasma from a swooping exo.

Finally the Skiff pilot broke away from the fight, using her craft’s incredible maneuverability – and not a little luck – to flee from the killing fields at max speed.

Something Cleff blamed the woman for not at all. Not least of all because her decision to abandon an impossible fight had led to her own regiment being forewarned of their new enemy.

Or old enemy, she corrected.

“The Alliance is on Raknos-Three,” she said without preamble, turning off the video feed with one arm. “And from all indications, they’ve been here since before we arrived.”

The words seemed to snap the rest of her officers out of the bout of silent horror that seemed to have gripped them all – with the notable exception of Dobry, who while not unbothered by the display, didn’t seem quite as affected as Cleff’s fellow Imperials.

Then again, given that the man had lived to see his homeworld conquered, she imagined this wasn’t the first time the man had seen an entire regiment of his allies wiped out by an entirely unexpected attack by an unknown force.

Food for thought, she supposed before turning her mind to the task at hand as one of her subordinates made to speak.

“I’m sorry, what?” Friska asked. “You see an entire Imperial Regiment getting wiped out by Alliance troops that shouldn’t even be here, and your first thought is that they were always here?”

Cleff felt her antennae twitch at the woman’s tone. Given what had happened, a small outburst was forgivable.

Once.

So instead, she turned to her most reliable subordinate. “Puta, I assume you noted the insignias.”

“Guppies,” the woman spat.

Cleff nodded. The Guppies. An Alliance based ‘merc’ group that just about everyone knew was merely a paper-thin front for the more illicit actions of the Alliance Special Warfare Group.

Which was important, because being that the Alliance Special Warfare Group was the only ‘true’ military unit that existed specifically for the Alliance’s use - devoid of any affiliation with any one member group - it comprised a multitude of races.

Yet when she’d watched that video just now…

“Yet, did you see any race other than the Edixi present in that attack?” she asked.

The Rakiri woman shook her head, even as Cleff saw the proverbial lightbulb light up in the minds of most of the people present. With the notable exception of Dobry, but the man seemed content to wait to be illuminated.

“They were hiding in the ocean!” Gremp growled. “Even with our comm trouble, the fleet would have found some way to inform us if they were attacked in orbit, even if that just meant dropping some warning shots nearby. So the Guppies must have been sitting in the ocean this entire time to get the drop on us like this.”

Puta frowned at the interruption to a question that had been aimed at her, but nodded. What Friska said made sense. The Edixi were an aquatic species by nature. They’d have little trouble hiding out in the ocean for a month or two waiting for the Imperial regiments to be in perfect position for an ambush.

“Why though?” Friska asked. “This isn’t a little bit of harassment by a few clandestine operatives on some border world. They just destroyed an entire Imperial regiment. The Empress won’t let that go unanswered. Unaffiliated or not, the Alliance has to know this is an act of war.” She gestured to the window. “And for what? A shitty little mining world in the ass end of nowhere?”

Cleff shrugged. She had her suspicions, but she didn’t think it wise to voice them now. It would only hurt morale.

No, instead she needed to get her people focused on the task at hand. "It doesn’t matter. I’m raising the regiment to Readiness-One. Prepare your companies for imminent combat. Once that is complete, report back to the command center, dismissed."

The Colonel remained behind after her officers vacated the room, arms crossed against her chest. It didn’t take long for her to hear the distinctive blare of the alarm sirens that would bring her regiment to full readiness.

She glanced at a nearby display.

Barely thirty seconds, she smirked, privately pleased with how quickly her troops responded to the new threat level. Satisfied, she watched out the window as a pod of exos rocketed past, either to heading to their rally point or a pre-designated overwatch position.

“Well, this is it,” she murmured to herself. “Death or glory.”

She knew which she’d be aiming for.