Chapter 22: Chapter 14: Hold the Line!

“We’re coming out now.” I alerted my marines as we exited the compound. The Commander of the Garrison came out with us, giving orders to their men as well. 

The first of our shuttles already landed on the open space in front of us, ready to start evacuating the local populace. 

“Me and four of my men will stay behind until the last shuttle.” The Commander said to me. They guided a couple of people to the shuttle, and I ordered two of the marines to join them. Since these folks were pretty big and our shuttles weren’t really designed for it, we could only take a couple of them with us at the same time. 

“Commander, the bugs are doing something!” One of my platoon Sergeants contacted me. It was Sergeant Koskinen, who’d taken position on the top of the compound with a squad of snipers. 

“What are you seeing?” 

“It looks like they are changing tactics. A lot less are starting to stream in towards us.” 

“That’s concerning.” 

“What’s wrong?” The alien Commander asked as the first shuttle with two of his men lifted off into the air.

“Bugs are changing tactics.” I quickly shared the information I’d just received. 

“They must notice you are getting us out.” 

“Is that a good or a bad thing?” 

“They want to capture your ships to make them their own.” The Commander stated. 

“Okay, that’s a bad thing.”

“They are starting to circle around, Commander.” Sergeant Koskinen notified me. 

“Alright, I want more people on that roof!” I commanded, and immediately my squads started to divert soldiers so we could strengthen our firepower all around us. 

In the meantime, the second shuttle had landed and started to load more locals. 

“Do you have easy access to the top of your compound?” 

“There is an access ladder inside.”  The garrison Commander commented. “Okay, I want you to send all your people there. We are going to use the roof of the building as an evac point.” I had opened a channel to my shuttle pilots as well. “Did you all copy that?”

“Yes, Commander!” They replied. 

I kept commanding my troops around, slowly but surely pulling back our perimeter to the roof of the building, getting all of my forces away from the ground. That’s when our local Commander came to me again. 

“Commander, would you want to leave a goodbye present for the enemy?” 

“What are you proposing?” Of course I wanted to make our leave as memorable as possible. 

“The last fuel cell.” The Commander let two of his men bring out a blue glowing tube, the size of three buckets stacked on top of each other. “We don’t have explosives to detonate it ourselves, but we’ve heard of other locations doing this to take as many bugs with them as possible.” 

“I do like that idea…” I looked around. “Gunny, do you have some C6?” 

“Always, Commander.” He said, not looking up from the battlefield below. He was constantly unleashing his heavy machine gun into the crowd of bugs that'd already closed in to where our initial positions were. 

I just walked over to him and took the C6 explosives, together with a detonator, from his exo-skelleton and walked it back over to the glowing fuel cell. I started rigging them together, which luckily didn’t take very long. 

“That should make some nice fireworks.” I rubbed my hands as I stood back up. 

“What are fireworks?” One of the locals asked. 

“Uh, just some fancy explosives. We watch them for fun back on our planet.” 

The locals looked at each other for a second and then back at me.

“That’s a strange custom.” The Commander commented. 

“Well… I guess it is, isn’t it? I’ll show you a video once we get on board our ship.” 

 

Shuttles kept flying in to gradually take our troops out. Evac was going smoothly, but because of this our firepower had also diminished quite substantially, to the point where some bugs were getting terribly close. 

“Commander.” It was Luna’s voice that came over the radio this time. “The last shuttles are on their way.” 

“Thanks, XO.” I replied. “How are things going up there? How are the evacuees doing?” 

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“Doctor Winter is checking them out, she’s trying to figure out if they can breathe on board the ship. The translation application is definitely helping out a lot.” 

“Yeah, remind me to thank Ellie for that again once we are back.” Just as I say that, a bug crawls over the top of the roof, but I quickly whip out my sidearm and explode its face off. 

“Are you okay, Commander, that sounded close!?” 

“Well, let’s just say I hope the shuttles get here soon.” 

From our squad it was only me, Gunny and Private Houston who were left, together with the five local men who’d decided to stay behind to go out with the last shuttles. Apart from that, we had three more squads that were constantly laying down fire. 

“I can see the shuttles, Commander!” Houston called out to me and pointed at the dots in the distance. The last four shuttles flew in together, so we could maintain our firepower till the last second. 

“Alright, everyone, it’s time for an explosive carpet.” I commanded.

Gunny and the other exoskeleton gunners immediately knew what they had to do, switching to their explosive weapons to lay down walls of fire around us, to give us just that bit more of a breathing room we all needed to board the shuttles. The rest of us also started throwing out our grenades into the swarms below. 

 

It worked, the sudden onslaught of explosive force rattled the bug’s near-endless swarm. Concussing them for a while, while our shuttles landed.

I quickly pushed the locals into our designated shuttle, getting my hands on the gunner’s position. Gunnery Sergeant Taylor was the last one to jump in. And just like that, all four of our shuttles left the top of the building with all units intact, a couple of seconds before the bugs reached the top. 

Once we were a bit away, the local Commander spoke to me. “We should be far enough away now.” 

I nodded and got my detonator out, flicked the safety cap off it and I held the detonator out towards the Commander. “Here, it should be your honor. Just press the button on top.” 

The Commander hesitantly took the device out of my hand, it looked incredibly small in their gauntlet. “Thank you.” They said as they pressed the button.

A bright white flash lit up the sky and a shockwave traveled past us. A big mushroom cloud in the distance. 

The five locals on board started cheering. “If this is what fireworks are like, then we will definitely love those too.” One of them said, it brought a smile to my face. 

 

The rest of the ride back into orbit went smoother than our ride down so we got back to the ship in no-time. 

When we got out into the hangar bay, people were moving around, re-arming and refueling the other shuttles. Yuki was standing closeby to where our shuttle had landed and greeted us when she saw us. 

“Welcome back, Commander!” She smiled, although her smile looked a little bit forced. She must not be entirely used to our visitors, but who could blame her, neither was I was.

“Thank you, Ensign.” I smiled back. “Good job on the turn-around times of the shuttles. It might have really saved our bacon down there.” 

“We tried our very best.” She nodded. “Was it rough down there?” 

“Nothing we couldn’t handle.” Gunny smiled smugly, he had already taken off his helmet. “Our armor might need some deep cleaning though.” Gunny’s armor had quite a lot of slime splatter going on from chunks of bug that was sent flying. The only part of my armor that got dirty was my right arm from when I had shot that one bug with my side-arm.

“Let’s hope it’s not corrosive.” Ensign Yuigahama inspected Gunny’s armor from up close. 

“Doesn’t look like it.” 

While Gunny and the Ensign continued their conversation the garrison Commander tried to get my attention. 

“Commander, do you know where the rest of my people are?” 

“Probably in the med-bay.” I replied. “Our doctor was trying to figure out if our air is breathable for you. I can guide you there if you want?” 

“That’d be appreciated.” 

I nodded and started walking our guests through the ship. A couple of crewmembers we encountered in the hallway stared at us as we walked by. It was to be expected as this was our first real encounter with another intelligent species. 

“They’ll get used to it soon.” I reassured our guests. “You are the first species we encountered on our trip into the unknown.” 

“We understand.” The leader spoke. “Before those bugs we also thought we were alone. I’m glad you proved us wrong again.”

“I’m just happy we got to you in time.” I nodded. “Ah, my name is Lauren Davis by the way. It might be in our best interest to get to know each other a little bit better.” 

“Jaqzic Jidaqzod is what I was called. Nice to meet you Commander Lauren Davis.”  They replied. 

“Nice to meet you too.” -I’ll have to work on the pronunciation of that name though…- 

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