Author Topic: Comstar Declassified: Murder of Crows  (Read 2398 times)

ringringlingling

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Comstar Declassified: Murder of Crows
« on: 26 June 2017, 18:13:57 »
Prologue
System: Alberta, central HPG uplink
Date: 3039

Sparrow had pulled garrison duty for yet another week in a row.  He figured he’d lost count.  If he didn’t get some more time in the simulator, he there was a slim chance going to wash out in combat practice next week.  He thought about how absurd that was, he’d probably seen more action than some of his instructors, but this was a primo posting, and Comstar had something special they were trying to recruit for, but they were trying very hard to keep it a secret, and he wanted that post.  Something, anything to get him off that dustball of planet his father had staked his claim to.  “No way am I going to die on that rock,” he thought.  “Just play it cool and follow the rules.. for now.”
He yawned as he glanced over at the nav beacon where the slight radar contact had been reported.  Outside his cockpit there was nothing but black sand blowing in the wind, raining against his cockpit with gale force winds. “It was probably nothing,” he thought.  He was just sent to report back anything he finds, but he was feeling a bit leery after having traveled four hours with no radio contact.  The ferrous particles in the sand interfered with their communications equipment, if he found anything out there, he would have to report back manually.
He was piloting the Locust, it was very fast but the ride was jarring.  “What is that?”  underneath the bluff near the main road there was an encampment.  He zoomed in on the tents in the distance.  There, on the road, was parked an entire armored company of tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, lined up in a single column.
“Holy shit!  I’ve gotta report back to base before..”  he spotted some people moving from the tent on his thermals, and saw that there were men, hundreds of them, sleeping inside the tents.  A few techs sat around hopelessly trying to keep the sand and grit out of the treads and gears, but it was no use.  The entire column had stopped dead in its tracks, unable to move forward due to the grit and and sand getting caught in their treads and engines and gumming up the works.
“They must have made camp until the storm clears.  The storm must have covered their dropship landing.”  He scratched his helmet.  “But that means..”  If he left, the storm would clear by the time they got back.  He assumed their goal was to capture the HPG uplink.  If he let them go, the blood of his comrades would be on his hands.  “If I attack them now, while they are vulnerable, I might stand a chance of forcing them to rout before they can even get back into their vehicles.”
He thought about how much fun he’d had training here, about whatever secret force his sponsor was thinking about recruiting him into.  He thought about what it might mean to lose Herb or Brooke, to have them lose their mechs and their titles.  He moved the throttle on his mech forward, and the Locust started to run. 


Picking up speed, a soldier posted at the rear guard of the armored column, manning the firing turret, was busy smoking a cigarette and chatting with his friend, who was reading a magazine and joking while sitting on top of the vehicle.  The man squatting on the hull turned his head towards the soft, “chung-chung-chung-”  then turned back to face his friend, laughing at one of his jokes. 
His friend said, “Wait..listen! You hear that?”
“Hear what?”  They both turned as he heard it again.  “chung-chung-chung-chung”
They both looked at each other in astonishment, one soldier dropping down inside the APC and the other leaping off the vehicle and running towards the camp.
“CHUNGA CHUNGA CHUNGA- CLANG!!!”
The soldier inside felt the hull lurch as the kick from the Lucost sent it sprawling on over onto its side.  From inside he could hear the machine gun fire as Sparrow set his auto-tracking to work.  The soldiers, sleeping helpless in their beds, were taken by storm as it carved a line of dust, grit and heat across his thermals.  He turned and fired a quick pass at the second tent, but not before switching to manual and killing to runner who had pivoted once he saw the first tent had collapsed and was in chaos.
   Somebody sounded the alarm as the siren wailed into the night, and Sparrow set about stomping on the infantry caught underneath the tarp and mopping up a gaggle of stragglers who’d made it out from underneath and were scattering to the winds.  He turned towards the first tent again, the six machine guns tracking and firing separately as a half a dozen units managed to regroup and return fire.  The lasers blew out one of his machine guns and scraped across his flank, but he was too focused on returning fire to even feel it as the ammo linkages went off like fireworks and the ammo feed on the gun exploded.
   He saw the weapon had been destroyed and the ammo jettisoned, and thought, “Damn it, that was close.”  The remaining infantry had routed, by the looks of it two full platoons of laser infantry.  A few of the soldiers near the officer tents had used the distraction to head for one of the heavier tanks, but he turned in time to gun them down while they clambored ontop of the vehicle trying to get access.  The lead vehicle had started to take off, but he concentrated his fire on the external fuel tanks and they exploded.
   Sparrow was lost in a haze, chasing the little white blips on his infrared and gunning them down as they ran in all four directions.  It was only when he saw one of the indinstinct shapes get on his knees, had he started to hear the communications chatter. 
They had been trying to surrender for over a minute and a half.  He’d killed an entire platoon in cold blood.  Sparrow looked at the fires around the tent and the dead bodies slowly cooling all around him, felt the wind begin to howl as the sand blasted across his cockpit. 
He shivered.


*

   The debriefing was brutal.  He was in shock while the colonel layed into him.  It was like being home with father all over again, except this time, instead of a beating, he was facing a court martial.  After what seemed like a long, long time, the colonel stopped yelling.  He left and Sparrows sponsor walked in.  Outside the briefing room, the shadow of the Comstar liason showed past the observation window.
   “Jeesus, kid, what a mess.  He played the footage from the mechs cockpit, using normal video scanners instead of thermals.  Some of the men begged, others screamed for their lives.  “This is a disaster.  If anybody were to find out about this, what we are doing here…”
   Sparrow looked straight ahead resolutely.  “I’m sorry, sir!  I didn’t… I didn’t,” his eyes wavered, “I didn’t mean to let let you down, sir!”  He felt his eyes grow moist, but kept a stiff upper lip.  “I never meant for any of this to happen, the thermals..”
   “Yeah, I know kid.  You may have fought in a few border skirmishes, but this is the real thing.  You are… I mean you were.. you were still pretty green.  I might have done the same thing in your position, it could have happened to anyone.” 
   Jenkins sighed and rubbed his face.  “For what its worth you probably saved a lot of lives.  Those bandits were out to take control of the uplink and hold it for ransom, who knows how many would have been killed if they had succeeded.”
   “Does that mean… does that mean you’re letting me go?”
   “Yes son.  We are letting you go from the program.”
   “Wait.. what does that mean?”  He hadn’t thought about that.  He knew he might go to prison, but he hadn’t figured on being kicked out of the comguard.  The thought just hadn’t occurred to him, it upset him more than a couple years of jailtime.  “Wait.. no.. you can’t!”
   “I’m sorry son, but this is whats best for us right now.  You’re going to get an honorable discharge, you’ll receive a medal for valor.”
   Sparrow put his head between his hands and began to sob.  “I’m sorry kid.  You still got a bright future.  For what its worth, your tests show you to be one of the best pilot candidates we’ve ever had.”  He patted him on the back.  “Its just not meant to be.  You’ll be escorted back to your fathers estate on Preemo.”  He left without saying another word.

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ringringlingling

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Re: Comstar Declassified: Murder of Crows
« Reply #1 on: 26 June 2017, 21:21:48 »
« Last Edit: 26 June 2017, 21:24:31 by ringringlingling »
I'm a six Star General!

 

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