Turn 6 Fresh Meat

[Morse]

The ride in the dropship had been quiet, at least for Morse. He constantly wound up going through events of the past in his mind, seeing whole incidents over and over again. Not quite the ‘war stories’ that other soldiers bragged on seeing. Morse saw things that got him to where he was. Injuries he sustained or reprimand hearings. Thinking on how he perhaps could have said something differently to wind up with a different outcome.

There was no changing the past, and in a realistic sense there was very little Morse could do the change his future. Sure he might be able to get back up to Corporal in a matter of time, but any designs of him becoming a Sergeant before age 35 were unlikely.

In many ways Morse did not care anymore. He had virtually nothing in terms of assets, and his financial situation was such that he could probably keep himself drunk in outer colony bars till the day he did. All he had to do was decide whether or not he would let the contract run out.

Presently he was caught up in what was almost like a prison term, though ironically he’d committed no guilty crime until he joined the USCM. From then he’d been put into so many bad positions where the politics of a mission dictated one response, but the human obligation dictated another.

Save your friend and kill a dozen people, or lose the friend and get captured? Enforce a corden while civilians get caught in crossfire, or open up cordon and risk losing a battle? Open fire on high risk personnel, or risk letting them get close and kill you?

The latter was what left Morse in the predicament he was presently in, though it was more then just a few people that had been killed in that incident, and his decision during it didn’t seem to matter much.

He did not see the universe as though it was against him, but he certainly did not think most of it was on his side.

The story of what they were looking at he did not believe at all, but he was not going to question it either. He knew his new place on the totem pole.

Under his helmet and with his stubbled face he knew Dirk, Sam, and Colson would all know him… but he also knew that they would not have forgotten what he’d done to get himself where he was. If there were any regrets he may have had in life, it was fitting himself into a position like the one he was in right there in that moment, seeing good marines still on the job and rising through the ranks, and he one step away from dishonorable discharge.

Morse coughed up a bit of lubricant in his throat and spit on the deck when it was over, moving to his squad assignment, rifle in hand, but with his usual overload of equipment that was begging to be the signing blow to his career.

< Tag Anyone

[- JR -]

Sara squinted at the screen. Having resisted the urge to decompress after the incident, she'd instead spent almost two hours working on the computers. She rubbed her large, weird eyes, which were beginning to strain from the tiny, unfriendly text and darkened camera views.

"Alright, folks, I've got a little to report, here," she said, finally. She rolled her chair back a bit and pulled up one of the camera views on her monitor. She waited until she had a bit of an audience before continuing. "Well everything's on kind of a spectrum, right? This is what we see." The screen looked dark. There were some vague shapes, a dark, nondescript hallway. "Some kinda natural camouflage, right? I can only see it 'cause I know where it's at."

She hit a key on the keyboard. The coloration changed a bit. "That's ultraviolet. Same story. Maybe even a little worse."

She hit the key again. The screen went dark. "Infrared. Nothing. Invisible. They're the exact same temperature as the room around 'em, apparently. Maybe if they were movin' about real fast, there'd be friction or somethin'? Anyhow, not helpful."

"But here's our winner." She hit the key one more time, and a little golden cloud appeared in a corner of the screen. "Colonists must've used this to watch for electrical storms, or trouble in the wiring? Anyway, that's its... I don't know if I'd call it a brain. Maybe a brain. But that's where it keeps its electricity. Its thinker. Maybe its talker, too? Look at all that activity..." She toggled back and forth between the electromagnetic scanner and the standard view, pointing at the place where the creature lay in wait.

[Dirk Pitt]

Under his helmet and with his stubbled face he knew Dirk, Sam, and Colson would all know him… but he also knew that they would not have forgotten what he’d done to get himself where he was. If there were any regrets he may have had in life, it was fitting himself into a position like the one he was in right there in that moment, seeing good marines still on the job and rising through the ranks, and he one step away from dishonorable discharge.

Morse coughed up a bit of lubricant in his throat and spit on the deck when it was over, moving to his squad assignment, rifle in hand, but with his usual overload of equipment that was begging to be the signing blow to his career.

< Tag Anyone

Dirk watched the new guys exit the dropship, one after the other. Fresh faces to replace the ones that no longer were alive. That’s how the Corps had been from the beginning though. You take the new ones and plug them in. The old ones, the ones that were gone? They took their places in your dreams if you were lucky. Your nightmares if you weren’t.

Then one he recognized came out. The haggard, hang dog look and the casual way of walking left little doubt. Morse. It had been a while, and the man had had his troubles. But Dirk was glad to see the Marine. He was one of the very few people tha he trusted with his life. Almost all the rest were already here funny enough.

“Look what the cat dragged in. They finally let you out and you come here?” He said with a half grin. “How have you been Morse?”
<Tag Morse>

[Corporal Hicks]

Lieutenant Sykes patted Private Wang on the shoulder. "Good job. Priest, can we get an electromagnetic scanner down here from the ship? Maybe you can watch us on the cameras and call out hostiles."
<tag Priest>

"Alright, marines. We can't waste any more time. Wang tell the dropships to pick us up at the rendezvous point. We're going to drop in from the air and take our APCs as far as we can."
<Tag Wang/anybody>

[Dirk Pitt]

"Alright, marines. We can't waste any more time. Wang tell the dropships to pick us up at the rendezvous point. We're going to drop in from the air and take our APCs as far as we can."
<Tag Wang/anybody>

Dirk nodded in approval. They need to get their CO back from those damn things, and before they shoved whatever the spider things had down his throat. Turning to the Marines he spat out his cigaret.

“You heard the man. Gear up Marines. I want you locked, loaded and combat ready in five. First squad, second squad. Report to your squad leaders for equipment. Hit the ready line and get ready to load up in the APC. Move it!” He barked, already knowing they would make his deadline with time to spare.
<Tag first and second squad>

[Morse]

Looking around Morse was not terribly excited from the state of things. It appeared that they would be reinforcing simply for the sake of reinforcing, and that the command team did not have so much as a set plan as much as an improvisation for how they could continue the mission and not let it be a failure. Morse had been on plenty of failed missions though and a lot of them started just that same way.

Dirk starting off was a good place for him to be, though really he wasn’t supposed to be addressing the NCO first, particularly since he was no longer one himself. It was likely that Dirk was only aware of the incident that Morse had, and not so much on the details in between since he had not filled in anyone much on the legal proceedings of the issue.

”Choices weren’t exactly offered.” Morse admitted flatly. ”Prolly shoulda requested the cell though… more room to move there then in the cryotube.”

He checked his M41A ammo counter, saw it read 93 as he liked to keep it, and then back to Dirk.

<Tag Dirk

He still had the scarring though. They could strip him of rank, but that just made him a highly decorated and experienced private, which would probably scare off any NCO that wanted to wave seniority in his face. As long as he was pointed in the right direction he’d be willing to get a job done.

At the call to prepare, Morse was already there. He had mentally prepared himself for the fact that Colson “Coleslaw”, a Marine that had his first mission under Morse as squad leader, was now the head of his squad. Things were so rapidly changed that he did not care much. He was just going to keep going because that’s all he knew.

His equipment was well prepared prior to even exiting the dropship. He was awash of smoke and frag grenades as well as magazines of ammunition. Should something go wrong he was more then trained and experienced to take on any other role, but for the meantime he’d stay in his lane and wait for whatever needed to be done.

< Tag Anyone

[Dirk Pitt]

Looking around Morse was not terribly excited from the state of things. It appeared that they would be reinforcing simply for the sake of reinforcing, and that the command team did not have so much as a set plan as much as an improvisation for how they could continue the mission and not let it be a failure. Morse had been on plenty of failed missions though and a lot of them started just that same way.

Dirk starting off was a good place for him to be, though really he wasn’t supposed to be addressing the NCO first, particularly since he was no longer one himself. It was likely that Dirk was only aware of the incident that Morse had, and not so much on the details in between since he had not filled in anyone much on the legal proceedings of the issue.

”Choices weren’t exactly offered.” Morse admitted flatly. ”Prolly shoulda requested the cell though… more room to move there then in the cryotube.”

He checked his M41A ammo counter, saw it read 93 as he liked to keep it, and then back to Dirk.

<Tag Dirk>

< Tag Anyone

Dirk grinned at the comment. It was good to have the surly Marine back where he belonged. It always seemed to him that Marines like Morse, himself and the rest of them were best in the field, not much anywhere else though.

Lighting another cigarette he looked over at Morse.”I’ll remember to get you a larger one when we get back”
<Tag Morse>

[Corporal Hicks]

Danny glanced at Morse, wondering what he was talking about. He had heard of Morse of course, rather famous and infamous among the marine corps.

"What did you do?" he asked.
<Tag Morse>

[Medic Guy]

Clint listened to the conversation between Morse, the experienced veteran of the reinforcing squad, and the brevet commanders of the squad. He hadn't used up much ammo and had grabbed replacement ammo from the cheyenne dropship when the new guys arrived. All of his supplies topped off as much as possible he went over to examine the schematics that Wang had pulled up of the facility and the atmosphere processing site. A bad feeling continued to sit in the pit of his stomach but he pushed it aside and considered any other alternative methods to find the Lieutenant in an alive and not infected with an ugly angry snake alien. His new squadmate didn't seem to be very talkative.

[Joel]

As the rest of his squad rushed to finish their final battle preparations, Private Noah Farmer applied another thick coat of metal polish to the giant hunk of ceramic lined steel in front of his gun. As far as he was concerned, that steel wrapped smart-gun was the only thing keeping himself and his depleated uranium packed bullets from becoming another human caddle, ripe for the slaughter. Ironically, private farmer came from a long line of... well... farmers, So he knew a thing or two about slaughtering as well. "So once we kill one of these things.. do we plan on bringing it back? Because i just want to get ahead of this and say *not it* on carrying one of those acid sacs back home with us... i like my hands the way they are". It was clear by now that Private farmer had a nasty habbit of rambeling nonsense when he gets nervous.

[Apachetear]

"Sarge, Jacob, i agree. They will come after us, because we are ... hmm ... lifestock for them. As they overran the colony, they must have taken the coloniest for breeding. They stood no chance against them with their equipment."

... he spat out in disgust. Families, little ones, women, but those creatures did not care about such things ...

"The explosion of the fusion reactor may have taken out a lot of 'em, but i wonder, against how many of them are we up? What do ya think? Anyway, such a dangerous species cannot be allowed to escape this planet."
<Tag Pitt, Honeysett>

Jacob thought about this. It was true they were a new encounter, but the universe was a big place. who was to say that this colony was unique?

"That is if they aren't already off planet somewhere? We don't know how they got here, or anything about that aspect of them." He paused to finish his cigarette. "It would be the luck of...well...us to find these bastards elsewhere"

<Tag Perez>

[JuanPerez]

<Location: Hadley's Hope Landing Pad>

"That is if they aren't already off planet somewhere? We don't know how they got here, or anything about that aspect of them." He paused to finish his cigarette. "It would be the luck of...well...us to find these bastards elsewhere"

Perez thought about Honeysett's reply for quite a while, because he brought up two interesting subjects. First, how did they got here?

As far as he remembered the briefing papers, LV-426 was a shitpile of a rock without any indigenious life-forms and nothing else. Clearly that kind of rock, waiting to be terraformed by a greedy mega-corporation. Maybe the whole show was a "set-up"? It would be not the first time and certainly not the last, that profit-maximizing companies make use of their multi-million dollar investments, like Hadley's Hope, to camouflage their clandestine activities, for example top-secret biological weapons research.

On the other hand, would WY dare to sacrifice the life of round about 150 coloniests? Hmm, it was not to hard to assess the value of those creatures for bioweapons research purposes. They must be invaluable and compared to that, what is worth a colonist's life? Quite an easy conclusion to be made, at least from an WY executive's point of view. At this level, the stakes are sky-high and people in this positions tend to treat sacrifices as part of the game in order to rake up the gross-margin.

Second, did they get off planet yet?
Possible, but if so, someone must have done it on purpose. Maybe WY? Impossible to answer up to now.

"Let's pray, that they are not already off this damned rock yet. I dare not to imagine, what those creatures would do to a fully colonized planet. But one thing after the other, first, we have to deal with them here and now."
<Tag Honeysett>

But there was no time for kitty-talkin, because suddenly things started rolling ...

“You heard the man. Gear up Marines. I want you locked, loaded and combat ready in five. First squad, second squad. Report to your squad leaders for equipment. Hit the ready line and get ready to load up in the APC. Move it!”

barked out the Sarge.

Perez nodded approvingly ....

"Second Squad, you heard the Sarge. Honeysett, Wang, Leach check your equipment and gear up. See you at the ready-line. Let's take 'em out, boys"
<Tag Second Squad>

Perez run a functional check of the smartgun system, checked the mechanical parts of the smartgun as well, got the ammo for his baby, and moved to the ready-line. He noticed one of the guys of the reserve, a fellow smartgunner. He failed to remember the name, maybe "Farmer" or something like that. Did he mumbled about bringing one of this things back?

"Hey, Farmer was the name, right? I tell you what, if you shoot one of those fuckers with your M56, there is nothing left for "bringing back". The big ones explode like pumpkin and spray deadly acid all around by doing so. The small ones will try to kiss you after hatching out of their shells. Anyway, don't let em get too close."
<Tag Farmer>

[Morse]

Morse followed Dirk’s comment with a mixed enthusiasm. There was virtually nothing that anyone could do to get Morse beyond what his present fate was. He essentially needed to wait till his current contract was up and then see what life waited for him beyond.

At the status he was at, it was going to be very difficult for him to even return to Earth with any legal status since most places there were highly regulated. He might be able to squeeze freedom in on a colony, but with his ever present hatred of what the Colonies were, represented, and had done to him and other Marines in the name of their own misguided, selfish, and extremist ideas he had strong reservations about that.

”Well I’m not sure my card’ll let me get reintegrated back to Earth.” Morse said bitterly. ”So if I can’t find a good neighborhood ‘round here to live, you might do me a favor and let me off near Alexandria.” Morse commented, though anyone that knew him knew he had a particular hatred of Alexandria and his implication might have been less then legal intent towards the colony itself.

< Tag Dirk

When the current platoon leader, someone who Morse didn’t recognize, ask him what he did Morse did not exactly consider it a time for a joke… but he did not take it entirely seriously either which was an ever present challenge for him.

”Honestly, sir. Don’t much remember, lettin’ alone which incident your referrin’ to.” Morse was actually honest on both a those. ”But the main was somethin’ regardin’ a… lack of clarification and rules of engagement… and an M56…”

< Tag Sykes

Would Morse acknowledge his alcoholic tendencies? No. Would Morse recognize that he had severely overstepped on personal bias? No. Would Morse admit that people were nearly killed and he had mostly gotten away due to circumstance and the unfortunate nature that “war is hell?” No.

To admit such things would be to admit that he had a problem, and the sheer lack of such acceptance was what had dragged him down so low, but it was also who he was. Thirty years old, and over a decade in the USCM, and back to square one. It was all he knew, and he did exactly what he was trained as far as he was concerned, and the day was not fast approaching when he would turn over a new leaf.

As for the target… he’d kill what he saw. He did not necessarily believe it, but colonies were horrible and not meant for humans so things stopped surprising him about them.

[Joel]

"Hey, Farmer was the name, right? I tell you what, if you shoot one of those fuckers with your M56, there is nothing left for "bringing back". The big ones explode like pumpkin and spray deadly acid all around by doing so. The small ones will try to kiss you after hatching out of their shells. Anyway, don't let em get too close."

"Well lets hope we got some range on those bastards if push comes to shove then!... although a little trophy to show the girls back home woulda been nice..."

[JuanPerez]

"Well lets hope we got some range on those bastards if push comes to shove then!... although a little trophy to show the girls back home woulda been nice..."

"Aah, i see, a true hunter. Glad to have you here ... on our side. You are the replacment for Caleija, aren't you?"