SSBHM, Science Fiction, Explicit ~Gay ~Sex -Two men discover each other while fighting to survive a war that seems impossible to win
The searing pain coming from my eyes jolted me awake. I could close them, but the painful burning that filled my vision did not cease, it only grew in intensity when I tried in vain to shut it out. I couldn't help myself, I let out a scream into the quiet sterility of the recovery room on the space station. The bio monitors detected my state and automatically administered a dose of sedative into my bloodstream. It did little to calm my panic. I continued to yell and thrash around in my restraints.
A large hand came to rest upon my arm. It imparted warmth I could feel through the synthetic muscle replacements and my hardwired nervous system. I opened my eyes to see a very large man on the adjacent bed. He had long dark brown hair, save for a small shaved patch over his left ear where a stainless steel data jack was mounted.
"Relax, they don't want you clawing out your own eyes." The large man said, his deep voice seeming to soothe some of my pain. He leaned over and cast his gaze at my bio monitor. "They are using the wrong sedative anyway, and not even at the right dosage either!" He commented, raising his voice. This caught the attention of the med tech working the recovery room.
As I glanced at him, my newly installed visual scanners overlaid information over my field of view. Pain washed over my eyes as I was forced to view the data. I could determine from this that the man before me was human, had minor cyber enhancements, weighed approximately 171kg, was 179cm in height, and was IFF'd as a Friendly, Organic Systems Engineer. A doctor. This explained his comments about the sedative.
"They gave you a sensor package. By now you should be able to tell I'm a OSE, have a non-invasive datalink implant, and am a prime candidate for deep placement." The big man added. He had soft brown eyes, but when you looked into them, he had an intellect that just burned.
Deep placement wasn't an easy choice, if it was his choice at all. When I sold myself into service I opted for full cybernetic enhancement. It was the only way to get enough money for my family to be safe from conscription themselves. My parents understood. I had two younger brothers that I did not want to see blown into a fine mist by some robot's guns.
Deep placement recruits were even more sought after. Conscripts of very large body size were the only ones capable of deep placement within bot territory. They received implants capable of converting their body fat to electron flow. Together with CO2 recycling implants, this allowed them to function on enemy occupied worlds for months with no food, water, or air. Only an atmosphere with suitable pressure was required. It was considered a one way trip, and recruiters paid a fortune for it.
"Don't worry, I'm not here for deep placement implants, just the dataport." He said reassuringly, as though he knew what I was thinking.
“I signed up for the whole package.” I admitted. The pain from the sensors was beginning to subside a bit.
“Family back home?” He asked.
“Yeah. You?” I replied. My situation was not unusual at all.
“No family, I just wanted to help somehow. I don’t really need the money, so I signed up for support here far behind the lines, nothing as drastic as deep placement. I guess you could say I was bored.”
I was hearing his words, but I could feel something else as well. Everyone assumes the same thing I did. He’s a big fat guy, so his only use is deep placement. Men and women that big were not seen as people, but as long range saboteurs or spies. Many fat people thought that way themselves too. They could finally be seen as ‘heroes’. The thing was, virtually all of them were never seen again.
“Here is where you can do the most good. I... I didn’t mean to imply that you should go for deep placement.” I said, apologizing for what went unsaid.
“Don’t worry about it. I was curious as well. I wanted to see first hand how the war was going. We never get much in the way of news Earthside anymore.”
“Recruits are being paid a fortune, which means we’re needed for SOME reason. They are thinking Tac Ops for me, so I’ll get all the tactical data downloads, but very little strategic data, so I won’t know much about the big picture either.” I replied.
I knew as much about the war as anyone else. Nobody knows where the robots came from. Most theorized that the bots were alien in origin. This would explain why they first showed up on the fringe colonies. Dropships would come down from orbit and dump hundreds of the hunter-killer types on the colony. Once everyone and everything that consumed resources was dead the droids would set up factories and build all the machines they could. These new robots were variations particularly suited to whatever world they happened to be on. They preferred planets with fuels and atmospheres that would support combustion, and metals to build with. Just like we did.
The med tech came over to my bunk and adjusted the bio monitor to administer the proper sedative.
“Looks like you’ll be able to get some sleep now.” The large man said softly. “The name is Browers by the way. Yours?”
“Chives.” I said. “Not to be confused with parsley, or scallions.” I added, as I usually did to head off the inevitable jokes. First names were usually not exchanged offworld. Only family and married couples used first names. You were more likely to be sleeping with someone than know their first name. Nobody even remembers why this came about anymore, that’s just the way it is out here.
The sedative worked quite quickly. I didn’t have time to tell if he was laughing at my name or not. As I slipped under I could still feel the warmth of his hand holding mine.
I’m not sure how much time had passed before I woke up again. Most of the pain was gone, but not the feeling that my consciousness was being invaded. The med tech returned to my bedside.
“Things seem to be working okay.” She commented, almost uninterested. “We’ll be ready for the next stage soon.” She added ominously.
“Browers get stationed already?” I asked.
“You’ll be seeing a lot more of him.” The med tech commented. “The OSE on this station got called up, so Browers will be assigned here for a while.” She swaggered off to attend to the rest of the floor. She was slender, tall, and brunette, but didn’t seem to spark any interest for me. Just like the rest of the women I’ve tried dating. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with them, they just didn’t do much for me. Sellis came close, but not quite. She was five inches taller than me and built like a hovertank. I felt oddly safe and comforted by her, but there was still no excitement.
The surgeries continued over the next few days. As soon as I recovered from one procedure, they went on to something even more invasive. My digestive tract and respiratory system had been augmented to function on electron exchange, much like deep placement candidates, but at least I could still eat and breathe normally. Unlike them I would need an external power source to survive for long without food, water, or air. Weapon, vehicle, and data interfaces were installed and configured, all that remained was to load my internal memory with the needed tactical data to actually fight the robots. This is when I really started to get scared. Browers checked in on me when he could, but he was very busy being the only doc on the station.
It wasn’t unusual for restraints to be used on cyber enhanced soldiers. We have artificial muscles and and wired reflexes, any malfunction could be catastrophic. I did not understand why it was necessary for a mere data upload though. At least not until it actually started. It wasn’t the data upload itself that came as such a shock. It was as I expected. Specs on various robots and what variations they might adapt depending on planetary conditions, security codes for programming the few automated drones we used, vehicle piloting routines, etc. What was overwhelming was the sheer futility of it all. The robots were slightly faster. It took a lot more damage to take them out of the action than our best equipped cyber soldiers. They were much more numerous than anyone back home had been led to believe. There was no way to stand up to an army of these things and win.
I felt like ripping the plugs and jacks out of my flesh. I pulled against the restraints with all my cyber-enhanced might. Alarms rang out as I thrashed about. The med tech overseeing the upload jammed a button on my bio monitor to dispense sedatives, but they did no good. Browers bounded over to my side and tried to hold me still. He leaned over me, pinning my arms down underneath his bulk. I began to calm down, and the effect of the sedatives brought welcome blackness.
When I awoke once more I was on the bed in my quarters. I sat up and tried to objectively sift through the data. Along with it came CI, or Combat Imperatives. These were hard and fast rules that could override my normal thought patterns in combat and force me to take certain courses of action. These could offset the speed advantage of the enemy somewhat by acting in a reflexive manner. Not only were we fighting robots, we were being forced to think like robots.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I huddled there naked on the corner of my bed and held my arms around me knees, just rocking back and forth. If my eyes didn’t have artificial lubricants that didn’t react to atmospheric conditions I would have cried, but no tears came. I could no longer think clearly about anything else. Only when and where I was going to buy it. I kept seeing scenes of my family being blasted into bloody bits because we couldn’t stop the machines. It seemed like I was there for over an hour when Browers came into my room.
He sat down on the edge of my bunk and pulled me closer to him, cradling me. He pulled me up onto him. I sat there in his lap, his left arm behind my back. I was sitting on top of his soft thighs, his belly flopped partially over my own, his bulk defying the buttons on his lab coat. He unbuttoned it and brushed it aside. I felt comfortable, like I could fall asleep in his lap. Then it started. I felt nervous, like I was anxious for something to happen, but what, I did not know.
Then it happened. I was just looking up into his eyes when tilted his head down and kissed me. I thought for a brief moment that I should just pull away, but I didn’t. I just closed my eyes. Before this I figured some other guy sticking his tongue in my mouth would feel like I was choking on a slug, but that isn’t what it was like. After a moment I jammed my own tongue further in, as though I was desperate to reach whatever lie beyond, but never quite able to get there.
Brower took my left hand and put it up on his right shoulder. I used it to pull myself closer in to him. He moved his hand down my chest and brushed it back and forth over my stiff nipples, while continuing to explore my mouth with his. I could feel him hard and pressing at me from underneath. I started to feel a bit afraid of what might happen next, but that was soon abated.
His right hand dropped from my chest for a moment and I heard a rustling from behind him. He slapped his hand around my hard member. It was slathered in a slightly thick slippery liquid, which I guessed was medical grade lubricant he obtained from his med tech pack behind us. I tried to utter a short grunt of surprise, but I was still locked in the kiss. It wasn’t an objection, it was more of my body’s expression of gratitude, as though it knew all along that something was about to happen that it was waiting my whole life for. Brower began to work his hand around and around, while still cradling me in his other arm and exploring my mouth with his tongue.
As I sat there on him, a feeling of warmth spread from wherever his flesh touched mine. I pressed myself forcibly even further into his grasp. My mouth was threatening to swallow him whole. For a moment I thought I should somehow be returning what I was receiving, but I lost myself in the experience. Every so often, I heard a beep and saw a message through my visual implants complaining about neural overload. I tried to ignore these.
I reached climax rather quickly, like it was something that was just waiting for the right circumstance to happen and it didn’t want to wait. Browers switched to squeezing and pulling gently, slowly milking me. I kept my eyes tightly shut, like I had something to hide from the world and I could keep it a secret if I wasn’t looking at anyone. Even when Browers pulled a cloth from his bag and wiped me down with it, I still had not gathered the courage to look at him.
Later that day me and several other newly modified soldiers were gathered for checkups before our only training mission. The brunette med tech plugged a scanner into my dataport.
“You’re fuzzing.” She commented. “Now who can be responsible for THAT?” She added jokingly, glancing over to Browers.
“Fuzzing?” I asked.
“Fuzzing is when your interfaced neurons momentarily overload from excessive random firing. The interface software has to adjust to compensate.” She explained.
“Oh.” I replied. I didn’t ask for elaboration as to what caused it, I could guess from there and didn’t want it discussed.
“Anyone have chives on their breath?” One of the other soldiers blurted out. The room erupted in giggles. One female soldier was giving me a look of disgust. I turned my head away from the rest of the group. I was quite relieved when the examinations ended and everyone moved to the station’s briefing room.
The mission briefing was sheer boredom, but necessary for some. A couple of the soldiers had no transponders or dataports, so they needed an old-fashioned white board and laser pointer presentation. This gave me a chance to just sink into the background and not be noticed for a while. I received a brief wireless upload with the details of the training mission. There was nothing to it really. We were to drop on a nearby asteroid, then locate and engage a few drones programmed with enemy parameters. It was just supposed to be a simple live fire exercise to work out any bugs with. It would turn out to be anything but simple.
The trouble began on the way out. There was no way to tell if it was a missile, trans-orbital artillery, or what. There was an impact, then our dropship broke orbit, probably to avoid another hit. Ship to ship combat in space was very rare. It just wasn’t practical enough for either side. Missiles and smaller fighter-type ships were usually way too slow and could be shot down by point defense machine guns. Artillery from an opposing orbit was the preferred method, but most of the time you could detect the enemy ships and select an orbit you couldn’t be attacked from. Normally, combat consisted of both sides dropping troops on the surface of a contested body from orbit and engaging in ground battles, with limited air support.
The planet we were orbiting at the time was not our intended destination, but we had little choice but to land there. The dropship was too badly damaged to risk another hit. As it was we were coming in way too hot. We crashed hard into the base of a mountain range.
The soldiers fared pretty well actually. We were quite literally built for it. Some of the command staff were not as fortunate. Nobody from Strategic Operations survived, and I was the only Tactical Operations specialist with the unit. We did have a medic though. Unknown to me before the flight, Browers opted to stay with the dropship instead of returning to base after the jumpship delivered us into orbit. He was strapped down in the medical bay on the ship, which had escaped damage. The ship was outfitted to upgrade and transport Deep Placement operatives and his chair was well protected.
Brower’s services were very much in demand for those who survived the crash. He was able to tend to the wounded in a very efficient manner, despite struggling against the higher gravity of the planet. There was something intriguing about watching his massive body labor against it, especially when he had to hoist one of the soldiers up onto a bed. He would peel them up from the floor, then prop them up against him and hoist them up onto the bed with his legs and belly. Afterwards he would sink to the floor next to the bed to catch his breath. Sweat would slick his brown-black hair onto his forehead and down the back of his neck. I considered helping him, but just knew he would object, even though my own injuries were quite minor and my muscle replacements still fully functional.
After everyone had recovered as much as possible, command fell onto my shoulders, despite the fact I had no experience yet. I began by assessing our situation. The engines were gone. The reactors were also offline, and power was limited to what we had in the capacitors already. There was enough food and water for about two weeks. Ammunition of assorted types was well stocked and the ship’s computer and communications were undamaged. I began sending a tight beam distress call in the last known heading of our jumpship.
I took a couple of the other soldiers with sensory enhancement along with me and we did a quick recon of the area around the crash site. As far as we could tell, there was no immediate threat of attack. That was our first mistake.
We were on our way back to the ship. Our sensors never caught them following us in. The attack started as soon as we returned. The crash site was swarming with bots. The point defense guns on the dropship took out a few, but it didn’t matter. There were still too many.
The one thing that saved us is the fact these were primarily construction bots. They hacked into the hull using saws and arc torches. They might not have had time to build combat variants or produce ammunition.
Everyone made it to the armory before the machines converged on us. Before the fighting began, Browers had taken up a rifle and was prepared to fight as well. Convincing him not to do so took considerable effort.
“If you’re not made as a combatant, they won’t go for you until… until we’re gone.” I stressed, synching my own weapon to my internal targeting.
“We can’t lose ANYONE!” Browers retorted. He began to check his magazine when I snatched the rifle from his hands. He tried to avoid it, but my wired reflexes were far too quick for him to avoid being disarmed.
“We don’t have time to argue this!” I yelled, trying to push him out of the armory and into the medical bay. This was much more difficult than I thought, even with my artificial strength. Browers was as powerful as he was large. I placed my palms squarely against his chest and pushed him back. He fought every inch of the way, but I managed to shove him into the medical bay and secure the door.
The fight didn’t go well. Despite the fact the robots were not armed for combat they adapted frighteningly well. Their construction saws chipped pieces of shrapnel off of anything they could find and hurled it in our direction. The machines skittered and dashed about, avoiding much of our weapons fire. In the end there were only two of us left standing. Blood, smoke, and jagged shards of metal filled the corridor outside the armory. I was bleeding badly from innumerable bits of shrapnel embedded into my flesh. The female soldier that gave me repulsed glances in the examination room earlier was still clinging to life, despite a long shard of grating protruding from her abdomen. Her tag said Myers. I dragged her towards the medical bay door and disarmed the lock. My vision faded to black yet again after we stumbled into the medical bay.
The searing pain coming from my eyes jolted me awake. I could close them, but the painful burning that filled my vision did not cease, it only grew in intensity when I tried in vain to shut it out. I couldn't help myself, I let out a scream into the quiet sterility of the recovery room on the space station. The bio monitors detected my state and automatically administered a dose of sedative into my bloodstream. It did little to calm my panic. I continued to yell and thrash around in my restraints.
A large hand came to rest upon my arm. It imparted warmth I could feel through the synthetic muscle replacements and my hardwired nervous system. I opened my eyes to see a very large man on the adjacent bed. He had long dark brown hair, save for a small shaved patch over his left ear where a stainless steel data jack was mounted.
"Relax, they don't want you clawing out your own eyes." The large man said, his deep voice seeming to soothe some of my pain. He leaned over and cast his gaze at my bio monitor. "They are using the wrong sedative anyway, and not even at the right dosage either!" He commented, raising his voice. This caught the attention of the med tech working the recovery room.
As I glanced at him, my newly installed visual scanners overlaid information over my field of view. Pain washed over my eyes as I was forced to view the data. I could determine from this that the man before me was human, had minor cyber enhancements, weighed approximately 171kg, was 179cm in height, and was IFF'd as a Friendly, Organic Systems Engineer. A doctor. This explained his comments about the sedative.
"They gave you a sensor package. By now you should be able to tell I'm a OSE, have a non-invasive datalink implant, and am a prime candidate for deep placement." The big man added. He had soft brown eyes, but when you looked into them, he had an intellect that just burned.
Deep placement wasn't an easy choice, if it was his choice at all. When I sold myself into service I opted for full cybernetic enhancement. It was the only way to get enough money for my family to be safe from conscription themselves. My parents understood. I had two younger brothers that I did not want to see blown into a fine mist by some robot's guns.
Deep placement recruits were even more sought after. Conscripts of very large body size were the only ones capable of deep placement within bot territory. They received implants capable of converting their body fat to electron flow. Together with CO2 recycling implants, this allowed them to function on enemy occupied worlds for months with no food, water, or air. Only an atmosphere with suitable pressure was required. It was considered a one way trip, and recruiters paid a fortune for it.
"Don't worry, I'm not here for deep placement implants, just the dataport." He said reassuringly, as though he knew what I was thinking.
“I signed up for the whole package.” I admitted. The pain from the sensors was beginning to subside a bit.
“Family back home?” He asked.
“Yeah. You?” I replied. My situation was not unusual at all.
“No family, I just wanted to help somehow. I don’t really need the money, so I signed up for support here far behind the lines, nothing as drastic as deep placement. I guess you could say I was bored.”
I was hearing his words, but I could feel something else as well. Everyone assumes the same thing I did. He’s a big fat guy, so his only use is deep placement. Men and women that big were not seen as people, but as long range saboteurs or spies. Many fat people thought that way themselves too. They could finally be seen as ‘heroes’. The thing was, virtually all of them were never seen again.
“Here is where you can do the most good. I... I didn’t mean to imply that you should go for deep placement.” I said, apologizing for what went unsaid.
“Don’t worry about it. I was curious as well. I wanted to see first hand how the war was going. We never get much in the way of news Earthside anymore.”
“Recruits are being paid a fortune, which means we’re needed for SOME reason. They are thinking Tac Ops for me, so I’ll get all the tactical data downloads, but very little strategic data, so I won’t know much about the big picture either.” I replied.
I knew as much about the war as anyone else. Nobody knows where the robots came from. Most theorized that the bots were alien in origin. This would explain why they first showed up on the fringe colonies. Dropships would come down from orbit and dump hundreds of the hunter-killer types on the colony. Once everyone and everything that consumed resources was dead the droids would set up factories and build all the machines they could. These new robots were variations particularly suited to whatever world they happened to be on. They preferred planets with fuels and atmospheres that would support combustion, and metals to build with. Just like we did.
The med tech came over to my bunk and adjusted the bio monitor to administer the proper sedative.
“Looks like you’ll be able to get some sleep now.” The large man said softly. “The name is Browers by the way. Yours?”
“Chives.” I said. “Not to be confused with parsley, or scallions.” I added, as I usually did to head off the inevitable jokes. First names were usually not exchanged offworld. Only family and married couples used first names. You were more likely to be sleeping with someone than know their first name. Nobody even remembers why this came about anymore, that’s just the way it is out here.
The sedative worked quite quickly. I didn’t have time to tell if he was laughing at my name or not. As I slipped under I could still feel the warmth of his hand holding mine.
I’m not sure how much time had passed before I woke up again. Most of the pain was gone, but not the feeling that my consciousness was being invaded. The med tech returned to my bedside.
“Things seem to be working okay.” She commented, almost uninterested. “We’ll be ready for the next stage soon.” She added ominously.
“Browers get stationed already?” I asked.
“You’ll be seeing a lot more of him.” The med tech commented. “The OSE on this station got called up, so Browers will be assigned here for a while.” She swaggered off to attend to the rest of the floor. She was slender, tall, and brunette, but didn’t seem to spark any interest for me. Just like the rest of the women I’ve tried dating. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with them, they just didn’t do much for me. Sellis came close, but not quite. She was five inches taller than me and built like a hovertank. I felt oddly safe and comforted by her, but there was still no excitement.
The surgeries continued over the next few days. As soon as I recovered from one procedure, they went on to something even more invasive. My digestive tract and respiratory system had been augmented to function on electron exchange, much like deep placement candidates, but at least I could still eat and breathe normally. Unlike them I would need an external power source to survive for long without food, water, or air. Weapon, vehicle, and data interfaces were installed and configured, all that remained was to load my internal memory with the needed tactical data to actually fight the robots. This is when I really started to get scared. Browers checked in on me when he could, but he was very busy being the only doc on the station.
It wasn’t unusual for restraints to be used on cyber enhanced soldiers. We have artificial muscles and and wired reflexes, any malfunction could be catastrophic. I did not understand why it was necessary for a mere data upload though. At least not until it actually started. It wasn’t the data upload itself that came as such a shock. It was as I expected. Specs on various robots and what variations they might adapt depending on planetary conditions, security codes for programming the few automated drones we used, vehicle piloting routines, etc. What was overwhelming was the sheer futility of it all. The robots were slightly faster. It took a lot more damage to take them out of the action than our best equipped cyber soldiers. They were much more numerous than anyone back home had been led to believe. There was no way to stand up to an army of these things and win.
I felt like ripping the plugs and jacks out of my flesh. I pulled against the restraints with all my cyber-enhanced might. Alarms rang out as I thrashed about. The med tech overseeing the upload jammed a button on my bio monitor to dispense sedatives, but they did no good. Browers bounded over to my side and tried to hold me still. He leaned over me, pinning my arms down underneath his bulk. I began to calm down, and the effect of the sedatives brought welcome blackness.
When I awoke once more I was on the bed in my quarters. I sat up and tried to objectively sift through the data. Along with it came CI, or Combat Imperatives. These were hard and fast rules that could override my normal thought patterns in combat and force me to take certain courses of action. These could offset the speed advantage of the enemy somewhat by acting in a reflexive manner. Not only were we fighting robots, we were being forced to think like robots.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I huddled there naked on the corner of my bed and held my arms around me knees, just rocking back and forth. If my eyes didn’t have artificial lubricants that didn’t react to atmospheric conditions I would have cried, but no tears came. I could no longer think clearly about anything else. Only when and where I was going to buy it. I kept seeing scenes of my family being blasted into bloody bits because we couldn’t stop the machines. It seemed like I was there for over an hour when Browers came into my room.
He sat down on the edge of my bunk and pulled me closer to him, cradling me. He pulled me up onto him. I sat there in his lap, his left arm behind my back. I was sitting on top of his soft thighs, his belly flopped partially over my own, his bulk defying the buttons on his lab coat. He unbuttoned it and brushed it aside. I felt comfortable, like I could fall asleep in his lap. Then it started. I felt nervous, like I was anxious for something to happen, but what, I did not know.
Then it happened. I was just looking up into his eyes when tilted his head down and kissed me. I thought for a brief moment that I should just pull away, but I didn’t. I just closed my eyes. Before this I figured some other guy sticking his tongue in my mouth would feel like I was choking on a slug, but that isn’t what it was like. After a moment I jammed my own tongue further in, as though I was desperate to reach whatever lie beyond, but never quite able to get there.
Brower took my left hand and put it up on his right shoulder. I used it to pull myself closer in to him. He moved his hand down my chest and brushed it back and forth over my stiff nipples, while continuing to explore my mouth with his. I could feel him hard and pressing at me from underneath. I started to feel a bit afraid of what might happen next, but that was soon abated.
His right hand dropped from my chest for a moment and I heard a rustling from behind him. He slapped his hand around my hard member. It was slathered in a slightly thick slippery liquid, which I guessed was medical grade lubricant he obtained from his med tech pack behind us. I tried to utter a short grunt of surprise, but I was still locked in the kiss. It wasn’t an objection, it was more of my body’s expression of gratitude, as though it knew all along that something was about to happen that it was waiting my whole life for. Brower began to work his hand around and around, while still cradling me in his other arm and exploring my mouth with his tongue.
As I sat there on him, a feeling of warmth spread from wherever his flesh touched mine. I pressed myself forcibly even further into his grasp. My mouth was threatening to swallow him whole. For a moment I thought I should somehow be returning what I was receiving, but I lost myself in the experience. Every so often, I heard a beep and saw a message through my visual implants complaining about neural overload. I tried to ignore these.
I reached climax rather quickly, like it was something that was just waiting for the right circumstance to happen and it didn’t want to wait. Browers switched to squeezing and pulling gently, slowly milking me. I kept my eyes tightly shut, like I had something to hide from the world and I could keep it a secret if I wasn’t looking at anyone. Even when Browers pulled a cloth from his bag and wiped me down with it, I still had not gathered the courage to look at him.
Later that day me and several other newly modified soldiers were gathered for checkups before our only training mission. The brunette med tech plugged a scanner into my dataport.
“You’re fuzzing.” She commented. “Now who can be responsible for THAT?” She added jokingly, glancing over to Browers.
“Fuzzing?” I asked.
“Fuzzing is when your interfaced neurons momentarily overload from excessive random firing. The interface software has to adjust to compensate.” She explained.
“Oh.” I replied. I didn’t ask for elaboration as to what caused it, I could guess from there and didn’t want it discussed.
“Anyone have chives on their breath?” One of the other soldiers blurted out. The room erupted in giggles. One female soldier was giving me a look of disgust. I turned my head away from the rest of the group. I was quite relieved when the examinations ended and everyone moved to the station’s briefing room.
The mission briefing was sheer boredom, but necessary for some. A couple of the soldiers had no transponders or dataports, so they needed an old-fashioned white board and laser pointer presentation. This gave me a chance to just sink into the background and not be noticed for a while. I received a brief wireless upload with the details of the training mission. There was nothing to it really. We were to drop on a nearby asteroid, then locate and engage a few drones programmed with enemy parameters. It was just supposed to be a simple live fire exercise to work out any bugs with. It would turn out to be anything but simple.
The trouble began on the way out. There was no way to tell if it was a missile, trans-orbital artillery, or what. There was an impact, then our dropship broke orbit, probably to avoid another hit. Ship to ship combat in space was very rare. It just wasn’t practical enough for either side. Missiles and smaller fighter-type ships were usually way too slow and could be shot down by point defense machine guns. Artillery from an opposing orbit was the preferred method, but most of the time you could detect the enemy ships and select an orbit you couldn’t be attacked from. Normally, combat consisted of both sides dropping troops on the surface of a contested body from orbit and engaging in ground battles, with limited air support.
The planet we were orbiting at the time was not our intended destination, but we had little choice but to land there. The dropship was too badly damaged to risk another hit. As it was we were coming in way too hot. We crashed hard into the base of a mountain range.
The soldiers fared pretty well actually. We were quite literally built for it. Some of the command staff were not as fortunate. Nobody from Strategic Operations survived, and I was the only Tactical Operations specialist with the unit. We did have a medic though. Unknown to me before the flight, Browers opted to stay with the dropship instead of returning to base after the jumpship delivered us into orbit. He was strapped down in the medical bay on the ship, which had escaped damage. The ship was outfitted to upgrade and transport Deep Placement operatives and his chair was well protected.
Brower’s services were very much in demand for those who survived the crash. He was able to tend to the wounded in a very efficient manner, despite struggling against the higher gravity of the planet. There was something intriguing about watching his massive body labor against it, especially when he had to hoist one of the soldiers up onto a bed. He would peel them up from the floor, then prop them up against him and hoist them up onto the bed with his legs and belly. Afterwards he would sink to the floor next to the bed to catch his breath. Sweat would slick his brown-black hair onto his forehead and down the back of his neck. I considered helping him, but just knew he would object, even though my own injuries were quite minor and my muscle replacements still fully functional.
After everyone had recovered as much as possible, command fell onto my shoulders, despite the fact I had no experience yet. I began by assessing our situation. The engines were gone. The reactors were also offline, and power was limited to what we had in the capacitors already. There was enough food and water for about two weeks. Ammunition of assorted types was well stocked and the ship’s computer and communications were undamaged. I began sending a tight beam distress call in the last known heading of our jumpship.
I took a couple of the other soldiers with sensory enhancement along with me and we did a quick recon of the area around the crash site. As far as we could tell, there was no immediate threat of attack. That was our first mistake.
We were on our way back to the ship. Our sensors never caught them following us in. The attack started as soon as we returned. The crash site was swarming with bots. The point defense guns on the dropship took out a few, but it didn’t matter. There were still too many.
The one thing that saved us is the fact these were primarily construction bots. They hacked into the hull using saws and arc torches. They might not have had time to build combat variants or produce ammunition.
Everyone made it to the armory before the machines converged on us. Before the fighting began, Browers had taken up a rifle and was prepared to fight as well. Convincing him not to do so took considerable effort.
“If you’re not made as a combatant, they won’t go for you until… until we’re gone.” I stressed, synching my own weapon to my internal targeting.
“We can’t lose ANYONE!” Browers retorted. He began to check his magazine when I snatched the rifle from his hands. He tried to avoid it, but my wired reflexes were far too quick for him to avoid being disarmed.
“We don’t have time to argue this!” I yelled, trying to push him out of the armory and into the medical bay. This was much more difficult than I thought, even with my artificial strength. Browers was as powerful as he was large. I placed my palms squarely against his chest and pushed him back. He fought every inch of the way, but I managed to shove him into the medical bay and secure the door.
The fight didn’t go well. Despite the fact the robots were not armed for combat they adapted frighteningly well. Their construction saws chipped pieces of shrapnel off of anything they could find and hurled it in our direction. The machines skittered and dashed about, avoiding much of our weapons fire. In the end there were only two of us left standing. Blood, smoke, and jagged shards of metal filled the corridor outside the armory. I was bleeding badly from innumerable bits of shrapnel embedded into my flesh. The female soldier that gave me repulsed glances in the examination room earlier was still clinging to life, despite a long shard of grating protruding from her abdomen. Her tag said Myers. I dragged her towards the medical bay door and disarmed the lock. My vision faded to black yet again after we stumbled into the medical bay.
