First Contact

Chapter 969: The Shadows of Twilight

In the depths of an organization that doesn't exist, rumbles begin that one of the Don's named men arrived in the theater, some big guy from the time-fuck who could skate like a chief, fight like a ranger, drink like a fish, and who's record had more long black bars in it than Joe's mama. - Warning found written between two pictures of dicks in the motorpool latrine.

The Day Room smelled of tired and hot enlisted. The windows were open, bringing in a slight breeze, but the computer still insisted it was the end of winter, so the heat was on despite what anyone tried to convince the VI of.

Bit.nek sat listening to Staff Sergeant R'Kalkrik, the Kilo Company Training NCOIC, as the Staff Sergeant went from the threats of the other military (Bit.nek forgot what they were called aside from Old Dressians or something like that) could put out to the next part.

"We'll be defending a Terran Tomb world in the Biological Artificial Sentience Systems," the SSG said.

Bit.nek yawned and got up, moving to the side of the room to stand at parade rest, joining a handful of others who were having trouble staying awake. There was no repercussions for doing so, it was considered the acceptable way to avoid falling asleep.

"Aside from any remaining BASS population, there are two main threats that we need to be aware of," the SSG said. He flicked the baton and a low-rez picture of a dead Terran appeared, its eyes amber, its mouth open and drooling black fluid, its skin bluish color.

"Shamblers. Reanimated Terran corpses. They are highly aggressive and come in several types. These were initially present after the Lanaktallan biocracking attack at the opening of the Confederacy/Council Conflict," the SSG said. "Shade Night seemed to revitalize a lot of them. A data point to consider is that while this world wasn't biocracked by the Lanaktallan, it still had shamblers prior to the Shade Attack. Nobody is sure why."

Bit.nek nodded.

"Massive tissue loss can work, but unless the brain is damaged or destroyed, it's still an effective combatant," the SSG said.

"Yeah, but we'll be in armor," one of the Privates said.

"Even if we aren't in power armor, we'll be in standard hard plate. What's it going to do, chew on our armor?" another added.

"Even barring that, we've got the sweat-plate," another said, referring to the nanite emergency armor.josei

"Won't help you," Bit.nek interjected.

Everyone turned and looked at him. Bit.nek flushed slightly, his ears going rigid with embarrassment.

"Nevermind," he said, ducking his head.

Someone snorted as they all turned back to the lesson.

"The majority are uncoordinated, slow, and clumsy," SSG R'Kalkrik said. "A small percentage are highly aggressive, run, and quickly enter some kind of frenzy. The last can show limited problem solving and limited tool use."

"They're all the same type," Bit.nek put in.

Again, everyone turned to look at him.

"It depends on the circumstances, but a shambler can turn into a sprinter can turn into a lurker real quick, as well as back and forth. There's no real way to tell any difference until they start to move," Bit.nek said. He looked at everyone. "Uh..."

"No, go on," SSG R'Kalkrik said. He motioned. "Come on up here, private. You can by my assistant. What did you mean that our armor wouldn't help?"

Bit.nek, still flushing, moved to the front. "These things can bite through battlesteel armor, tear off battlesteel armor from a limo. They can twist and bite through warsteel like its taffy," he said. He tapped next to the jaws. "I've seen these things bite through the armored forearm of a suit of Rigellian heavy assault power armor, getting all the way down to the kinetic shock sleeve in a single bite, while their fingers punctured the armor and their grip deformed it."

"Pfft, no way, that's gotta be wrong," Sergeant Hal'krikit scoffed.

"You get four or five of these on you, they can rip your arms and legs off," Bit.nek insisted. "Detainee's shaved muffin, I've seen guys torn in half by these things."

There was some murmurs of disbelief.

"If you end up doing CQC with them, don't bother with your pistol. When you stick your arm out to fire, one will lunge forward, grab your arm, bite clean through your armor," Bit.nek said. He closed his eyes and took a breath. "Cutting bar and CQC manuevers. Keep them off of you, they will pull you down," he said when he opened his eyes. "The smell gets through your armor, even if you're running on canned air."

He tapped the image with the wand, highlighting the hands and mouth. "If you look with a phasic filter, the jaws and hands of one engaged in fighting or that's seen a target go immediately to whitish-purple, more phasic energy than an Atrekna attack or a Mantid Warrior caste or Speaker caste bladearm."

There was dead silence.

"If one sees you and screeches, you've been made. That will snap any in hearing range out of torpor and draw them in. Any shambler that's mobile will repeat the shriek and have a high chance of shifting from stumbler to sprinter. The shrieks will be repeated until every damn rotter in the city is now heading toward your position," Bit.nek said. "You have to, no, you need to immediately withdraw or dig in, because you're about to be fighting hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of them."

Bit.nek tapped the image. "Worse, their shrieks wake up any shades in the area, which will immediately head toward the shrieking. That's when it gets down to cutting bars, fists, sweat, and bad breath."

He handed the baton back to SSG R'Kalkrik. "Don't make any mistake, they're extremely dangerous and seem to be able to find any gap in your defenses. Saw some find out that a storm drain that had collapsed a mile away led to the basement of a collapsed building that had a crack in the wall that led to maintenance tunnels that opened up into the main logistics base's barracks basement," he said.

He sat down.

"One minute we were eating, the next they were everywhere and a quarter of the division was down."

That brought silence.

The SSG looked around. "Any questions?"

Everyone shook their head.

"We'll move on to shades, then," he said. He clicked the remote and the image of a shade appeared, done up in crimson.

Bit.nek gave a sigh of relief, then listened to the briefing, several times shaking his head.

"I'd like to hear your input, Private," the Training NCO said.

"Sure, why not?" Bit.nek sighed. He got up and accepted the baton. He tapped the image of the shade, a Terran male with red eyes and a screaming mouth.

"Everything in that was stupid. Whoever put that together has never even seen redacted video footage of these things," Bit.nek said. "First things first. If we're dropping into a Tomb World, you need to disable your picture in picture in your retinal link. If you're smart, you'll go from full color to red monochrome, maybe some silver in it, for your eyes as well as any visuals, from holotanks to armor visor to scopes."

He tapped the shade. "If you see this on the monitor, in full color, he's about to climb out of the monitor and kill everyone in the room. They can jump through imaging. They can jump out of holograms. They can jump out of this..."

He held up his palm emitter and put up a hologram of an angry-face emoji. "He'll jump out of my palm emitter, while I'm laying there dead, jump to each of your picture in picture, meaning he'll climb out of your Daxin cursed eyeball, and he'll jump into your armor with you or climb out of your faceplate while you're in there dead."

He tapped the image again. "Not one jumping in between. He multiplies across them. Now, instead of one annoying and aggravating shade, we've got," he counted the platoon real quick. "Forty-two of him, all mad as hell and looking for someone to kill."

Bit.nek turned and stared at the image. "Just one can wipe out a city in hours," he said softly. He turned back to the class.

"Artillery, close air support, mines, crew served weapons, none of them effect that Shades," he said. "Iron, iron-oxide, sodium chloride crystals, dog-boi howls, and sheer rage is all that works," he told them. "They can't cross the color red, but only a specific RGB code, the rest they can get through if they want it bad enough," he tapped the image. "And believe me, he wants you bad."

"Shotguns work. Magac, rifles, shard guns, they don't. Standard old Terran saloon broom works if it's packed with iron and salt. Swords, knives, cutting bars with salt crystals on it or iron teeth," he chuckled. "We loaded the auto-replacement chain with an iron one and just hot-swapped if we had to. Everyone's cutting bar's blade was painted red. Hell, our underwear was dyed red."

He looked back. "Dogboi howls can cause them to flee on one howl, disrupt on two, kill on the third," he said. "BUT, it has to be live or recorded on finely ground iron-oxide on mylar recording strips, played back analog. Digital doesn't even phase them," he tapped his thigh pocket. "I keep a mini-player in my pocket with a cassette of a bunch of dogboi troopers from 19th Special Tasks howling."

He tapped it again. "They move at variable rates, but some have been clocked by phasic scanners as moving up to fourty miles an hour. Those ones are usually the most phasic flush," he said. He shook his head. "Phasic snappers don't do anything, neither does chronotron poppers. Anti-matter, even iron atom, doesn't do anything. Lasers, masers, plasma, grasers, gravers, nothing."

He stared at them. "Rock sodium chloride crystal, iron oxide and iron are it. No grav or mag propellant," he gave a chuckle. "Standard chemical is your best. We figured mag and grav made it go too fast."

He tapped it again. "Center mass or head shots work. Up close and personal, just start hacking. You've gotta be mad. Fear and they'll reach past your guard and rip your guts out. Think about the time your Sergeant jumped up your ass for nothing, or how your girl cheated on you in Basic, or how the LT is too stupid to live and that's why you're fighting for your life against a bunch of dead Terrans," he said. "Rage is the key. Anger. The angrier, the better. Direct it straight at the shades if you can. Violent anger, not impotent. Take your rage out with every shot, every swing," he said.

He walked back and forth, pacing, in front of the platoon.

"We're going into a Tomb World. If Space Force has its shit together, first thing they'll do is check the ansible. A lot of these quikwipe systems, their ansible is still up and connected to ShadeNet. That means it's haunted," he gave a bitter laugh, still pacing. "They've gotta take down the hypercom and needlecast too, they're haunted. Then, they take out the system communication infrastructure, then the planetary orbital commo network. Then orbital strikes on the uplink farms," he said. "Then they drop us," he flicked to a new image. Grassy field on one side, city on the other. "They're supposed to drop you away from population centers, but some dipshit always launches a brigade or so into a city. If you end up the poor bastard in the city, you dig in and you dig in fast. Sodium chloride crystal rings, a double-pounder salt box. Make sure everything is the correct shade of red," he said.

He stopped tapping the image of the city. "If you're here, you're probably more fucked than a Conex joyboy on payday. You need to dig in and fast, because they're on their way."

"It doesn't matter if Space Force doesn't see any. They're invisible when they're torpid. The shamblers look like corpses and you can't pick them up on thermal or phasic," he shook his head. "The whole world can be killed by one idiot."

He tapped the city again. "Some dipshit finds a video file of a shade attack and plays it. The shades jump out. That makes the panic button go off in the house. Their security company checks the monitors, copies of the shades pop out of the monitors, jump into other houses on other monitors. They flood the street, the lawsec cams pick them up, copies jump out into the lawsec overwatch. Next thing you know, the whole planet is covered."

He sighed. "From a single shade on a dataslate to millions and a dead world happens in days, weeks at the most. There's always survivors though. Life is tough and it finds a way."

He turned and looked at the grassy field, tapping it with the pointer. "The Warfa... uh, the Colonel would always check for survivors and link up. They'll have data relevant to that theater," he tapped his sleeve and his adaptive camouflage went red. "This should be your standard. However," he tapped it again and to most of the troops it looked the same. To a few others, including the dogboi in the back, it looked slightly different. "Three hue points. Standard armor red would allow their fingertips through and then you're hurting."

He turned back to the image. "The MI guys and the eggheads, they say that the shades rip out your phasic energy, others mumble about bio-electricity, but we all know what we saw."

He turned and looked at the class. "What they rip out? It's screaming while they eat it. It's your soul they're pulling out, and it hurts while they're eating you."

He heaved a sigh. "So, crimson, iron oxide, iron, sodium chloride, rage," he said. "The eggheads and the docs and the goldies and MI all mumble about why it works, but I've been on the ground, I know why it works."

He looked over the class. "Anyone wanna guess why?"

Nobody said anything.

Bit.nek nodded. "Blood. Terran blood. It's red, it's full of salt, and it's full of iron. It's full of wrath and rage."

He handed the pointer back and moved over against the wall, going to parade rest.

"Good talk," he said.

The Training NCO shook his head, concealing a smile.

"Any questions?"

-----

Lieutenant Colonel Ssalressk turned off the survelliance video and looked at Major Tut'el.

"Anything you'd like to add, Major?" the Colonel asked.

"No, sir," Tut'el said. "Bit.nek's Bit.nek, but he knows his stuff."

The Colonel nodded. "You two served together?"

Tut'el nodded. "Yes, sir. Eighteen Shade Drops. Man's a war fighter. In garrison, well, he's Bit.nek, but war fighters don't do good in garrison."

The Colonel looked at the Sergeant Major. "Have the other Training NCO's look over that lecture. Have them go over Tut'el's notes," he looked at Tut'el. "We'll use your training plan with the PFC's addendums."

He looked at the phone. "I'll tell Brigade and Division we need to chuck the TRADOC training and use that."

The Colonel looked at Major Tut'el.

"I'll take metal meets the meat experience over TRADOC any day," he said. He sighed. "We'll be loading up for deployment in two days."

"Cryo or live transport?" Tut'el asked.

"Cryo," the Colonel said. "They changed it yesterday."

"Safest bet. Red light in the hallways, on the hull, whole red yard," Tut'el said.

"Space Force said they'll be running with red rather than white hulls," the Colonel said. He looked at Tut'el. "I want you right next to me the whole time. If I'm screwing up, or about to get my men killed, you countermand me right there," he said. "That's the Job of the XO."

The Colonel leaned forward slightly. "You worry about our men's lives, not my feelings, understand, Major?"

Tut'el just nodded.