Eve Berg

Location: CWS Hoplite, Rogue Island System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“On the count of three: one…two…three…HEAVE!”

Hoplite was a big ship. She was a few decades newer than Valkyrie, and had more railguns and missile launchers. It was a mix of that and good luck that she’d survived when Valkyrie bought the farm. Survived was the key word because she was not unharmed. Several large holes had been blown into the mighty battleship and there was something wrong just about everywhere. The damage control crews were doing the best that they could, but somethings only a shipyard and time could fix. The crew’s mission at the moment was to get the ship to the yards, and for that to occur they needed to reestablish power and get the Alcubierre Drives back online.

Eve and SGM Queen were making that happen with good old-fashioned sweat and elbow grease.

“Damn she’s a fat bitch.” The marine standing next to Eve got a chuckle from the Ranger.

A dozen of the strongest people on the ship were putting their shoulder into a giant support beam that had collapsed when the ship took a haymaker from an anti-matter missile. The beam’s collapse had taken out power conduits and a multitude of other primary system relays. It needed to be moved before serious repairs could be started.

“AHHHH!” Eve’s prolonged grunt intensified as centimeter by centimeter the beam started to move.

“Come on you worthless piece of shit!” SGM Queen added his own motivational chant as the duro-steel beam weighing tens of thousands of kilograms moved toward their goal.

They’d set up multiple jacks to get the beam back into place as much as possible. Welding and nanites programmed to fuse the metal back together would hopefully hold it. If Hoplite just cruised back to the yards then it should hold just fine, but if they got in another fight they would be in serious trouble.

“Almost there.” An engineering officer was supervising the whole process. He had a giant tube of the nanites just waiting to go. “And…stop. Hold tight for me.”

People swarmed the beam. Eve and the SGM felt the weight literally get taken off of their shoulders as the jacks went into place. One by one the regular grunts started to step away until finally it was just Eve and the SGM.

“Keep it in place just a little longer.” The engineer was fussing over the end where black liquid was swirling around the previously broken connection.

“How’s it going, Berg?” The SGM’s voice was conversational as they shouldered the last few thousand kilograms.

“My armor is at twenty-four percent power, my Buss is sitting uselessly against the wall, and my lower back is killing me. This is not what I signed up for.”

The SGM laughed, but didn’t rebuke her. He and Eve had been going nonstop since Hoplite fell out of Alcubierre. Their suits could get places the regular marines and spacers couldn’t, and their strength was sorely needed. They’d only gotten a few breaks in the last few days, and that was primarily for the armor to recharge. Even at only a half charge they’d been sent back to work.

Eve told herself that first day before the backbreaking work. Now it was,

“We’re good.” The engineer finally waved them away. There was a groan as the duro-steel settled, but the jacks held and the welding nanites were hard at work. “That’ll be secure in another two hours and we can move onto our next structural break.”

Eve stepped aside as spacers rushed into the area with coils of replacement cables.

She could see cleanly cut lines hanging in the space they’d just moved the beam from, and if the officers were to be believed then replacing those should get primary power back up and running.

That was another place Eve and the SGM had spent a lot of time talking over TACCOM with more engineers. The amount of radiation in the room made it impossible for people to be in there for long periods of time without protection, and there were only so many protective suits that hadn’t been damaged in the battle. They’d been working on cleaning it out since the beginning, and hopefully they were just about done.

It was all basically a colossal clusterfuck.

Eve was prompting her LACS to give her a sip of water – and pondering what she was going to have to do next – when an ear-splitting screech echoed down the corridor. Her armor immediately cut out the sound to save her hearing, but then STRATNET started to go crazy. Dozens of channels were lighting up with distress calls, and a check of vitals showed half a dozen crewmembers go from green or yellow to black.

“What the hell is…?” Eve turned to the SGM and nearly dropped the Buss he threw at her.

“Everyone take cover!” The SGM yelled as the other marines ran to grab their own weapons. “Marines give me a firing line in front of the jacks, NOW!” The authority in his voice had the grunts immediately obeying.

“Sergeant Major what the hell is going on?” Even not knowing what was happening Eve was moving to join the firing line.

“Scavenger bots. The Blockies launched fucking scavenger bots in their missiles.”

Eve’s face paled inside her armor. She’d heard of scavenger bots briefly in Basic and again in Ranger School. Cumulatively, she’d probably only gotten about thirty minutes of instruction on the parasitic nanites. Now that she was facing them, she wanted to find Gunney Cunningham and knee her in the ovaries for not telling her more.

Scavenger bots had been a part of naval warfare for the last three decades. They were considered to be a dirty, dishonorable way to fight. It was the equivalent of kicking a person while they were down. They were often transported in can-opener missiles. When the missiles exploded and peppered holes in a ship the nanites would enter as well. Once they identified they were on an enemy vessel – which wasn’t difficult when they started picking up enemy TACCOM and STRATNET transmissions – their programming would initiate a consolidation subroutine. It pooled them together until they reached a threshold. Once that threshold was reached the new golf ball-sized parasites would begin to wreak havoc on any organic or inorganic matter they could find. The picture Eve had seen in Ranger School looked like small metal balls covered in razor blades.

Scavenger bots were the Fleet’s version of a virus. They used them to infect the host and weaken resistance so they were easier to overcome. It wasn’t the best strategy to take an enemy warship with their critical systems intact, but it was a good way to disorganize any resistance before it could even form.

“Energy beam, Berg.” The SGM’s voice was tense as they both rotated the barrels of their Buss’. “We only need a low blast to end these little shits.”

Eve dialed her Buss so the beam would fire in a wide cone instead of a tight beam. The main weakness of the scavenger bots was they were fairly fragile. A low-charge energy beam would take them out. The designers made them maneuverable and harder to hit, but one hit would do it. The problem with that and the marines’ current configuration was that they were all sporting M3s.

It was much harder to hit one of the small bots with a fletchette than with an energy beam.

“Steady.” The SGM projected calm as the screeching grew louder. “Fire on full auto. Fill the corridor with lead.”

It was ever marine’s wet dream to just unload like that, and the SGM didn’t have to tell them twice.

“Berg, you fire low and I’ll fire high. Don’t let any get through or those boys are in for a bad day.”

Eve and the SGM’s armor were better suited to protect them. They had pouches of nanites that would actively fight the scavenger bots if they attached to the V3 LACS, but the regular grunts had no such protection. If the bots got on the marines they would have to crush them with their gauntlets, which would take seconds those marines didn’t have.

“Here they come.” The screeching reached a fever-pitch as a swarm of metallic objects shot around the corner. “FIRE!” The SGM’s command was lost in the roar of gunfire.

The M3 rounds tore up the corridors polished floors and walls. The bots shattered on impact with the 1mm fletchettes, but far too few were being destroyed. There wasn’t even a squad of marines firing, and despite the lead they were putting downrange there was still a lot of open space. That, and the bots programmed evasion protocols weren’t helping.

“Don’t let them get into the vents!” the SGM ordered as a few marines chased groups of bots that were trying the get into the ventilation. Once in there they could come out anywhere.

“Wait for it, Berg.” The two Rangers held their fire as the bots drew closer. “Wait for it.”

Eve’s finger desperately wanted to pull the trigger. The bots were so close now her optics could pick up the swirling blades on the bots surface. Given enough time those blades would eat through metal. Bone wasn’t a problem for them.

“FIRE!”

The corridor erupted in light as the rangers fired their energy beams. The laser wave smashed into the bots and ninety-five percent of them fell to the floor with scorch covered bodies. The remaining five percent launched themselves at the kneeling marines.

“Fuck! It’s on me!”

“Get it off…get it off!”

“Just shoot it!”

The marines’ Dragonscale armor went haywire as the bots attached themselves to it and started to feast. Their design to deflect moving projectiles was a hindrance in this case. It was like opening the door for the bot to burrow deeper into the armor.

It was pretty obvious they hadn’t been trained in this type of threat.

“Lock it in place!” Eve yelled as she grabbed a marine who had three bots on his chest. She pulled him off his feet, threw him on his back, and started to punch him repeatedly in the chest.

She crushed the first one in the process of knocking the wind out of the broad marine. She swiped the second one and crushed it in her fist, but by then the third one had squeezed between the scales and was tearing into the underlying circuitry.

“Take it off!” Eve yelled as the marine’s hand scrapped against his armor.

He didn’t move fast enough.

Eve was in the process of trying to wrench the marine out of his armor when the bot hit flesh. The man’s panicked yells transformed into screams of pain. He went limp just before she pulled the armor over his head, and she saw the hole over his heart.

“Kill it, Berg!” The SGM was ripping the armor off another marine while the rest were busy punching each other in a life or death game of whack-a-mole.

To anyone not knowing what was happening, it looked like the marines were in the weirdest fight ever.

“Don’t just sit there, kill it!” The SGM screamed again, and Eve got his meaning.

The bot might have chewed through the marine’s chest, but it was still active.

She grimaced as she plunged her hand into the gaping chest wound, caught the bot trying to chew through his spine, and crushed it.

She yanked out the mass of blood, circuitry, and chewed up internal organs that covered her hand and shook it off as best she could. The SGM and the rest of the marines seemed to have everything under control. Only one other marine failed to destroy the bots before it burrowed into them.

“Shit! Private, you…” A marine yelled at her just as a bot fell off her back. It was twitching like it was having an electronic seizure, until Eve planted her boot on it and crushed it into a dozen smaller pieces.

A swarm of smaller nanites flowed over the back of her LACS, onto the front, and into an external pouch. They’d done their job. Eve just wished she was a second faster in doing hers.

“Clear.” The SGM called out.

“Clear.” The marines responded.

“Get to the armory. They’re handing out the reserve energy weapons to deal with the threat.” The SGM ordered. “Berg, get to sick bay and secure the wounded. I’m headed to engineering.” The big Ranger didn’t even wait for confirmation before he took off running.

“Take care of the dead.” Other marines outranked Eve, but she wore the battle armor, so they listened.

She headed in the opposite direction as the SGM. Sick bay wasn’t far and she reached it in less than a minute. A smaller swarm of scavengers was eating away at the door when she arrived. There were two bodies in the hallway. Both were in smartcloth CMUs and never stood a chance.

Eve didn’t even slow down. She fired three successive bursts from her Buss as she drew nearer. Each time she narrowed her beam to bring more power to bear on the little machines. They dropped liked flies as the energy blasts washed over them, but half a dozen still remained when she reached them.

She tossed her Buss in the air, flipped it around, and used it like a baseball bat to crush two of them. As far as countermeasures went it was a stupid move, but it was effective. The remaining four bots attached themselves to her. Her own armor responded as multiple pouches opened to spew her own nanites. The battle was short and sweet. Her nanites were victorious, and she made sure to stomp on the four twitching machines before knocking on the sick bay door.

A friendly face answered. “Berg, what the fuck took you so long?” Gunney Cunningham looked paler than usual, but Eve chalked that up to her injuries not fear.

“No excuse, Gunney.” Eve replied promptly as she got a count of the people in the infirmary and radioed a SITREP into the SGM and the marine officers.

“You can make up for it by getting me a weapon and some armor.”

Eve gave the other Ranger a once over. She was still a bit wobbly on her feet, and lacking a healthy flush in her skin, but her eyes were determined, and her expression said she wasn’t asking. She was telling.

“Follow me, Gunney.” Eve got her new orders and would drop the older woman at the armory along the way.

“Lead the way.” The two women took off to secure the rest of the embattled battleship.