Heh I'm not finished
in fact here is that promised chapter:
This chapter is rated PG-13 due to graphic violence and language (mainly violence) I recomend you not read this chapter if you do not wish to read a very visceral story of the Icaran ground war.
2419.6
Blood and death on hill 529
Mestra 2 fell swiftly before the advance of the 1st Icara regiment, 3,000 Phong had died in the defense of their world or because they got mixed up into the crossfire and were killed by accident, either way the Admiralty did not overly care about how many Phong died as long as the planet fell and all resistance was ended. The Icaran army regiment guarded the world for a week before an SS brigade took over the task and allowed the troopers to get back to their job.
That was two weeks ago now and Mestra I was proving a much tougher nut to crack, the initial landing alone killed ten Icarans when their dropship was blown out of the sky by a Phong RPS (Rocket propelled stab*) and the damned Phong had dug themselves in so deep that the Icaran tanks had to bLast at entire mountain sides just to hit a single cluster of resistance.
It was the job of Section 025 red (better known as the Razor Claws by the Icaran 1st) to capture such a position known as Hill 529 to local intel, a force of some 500 Phong warriors in the Charlie sector were being led from the bunker that now lay before the Icaran troopers.
“Alright Ladies, let’s get this job done, Brekenridge, Canowsky keep those Wolfhounds** on patrol, make sure we don’t get snuck up on while we’re dealing with the yellow bastards inside.” Lieutenant Kemper whispered into his com as he slinked forward along the mountainside with the rest of his section.
It was well into this world’s “night” cycle if one could call a red sky “night” and it was Kemper’s hope that most of the Phong would be asleep, or at the very least not fully combat ready, in the darkness two Wolfhound armed buggies raced away from the infantry and began circling the area.
After what seemed an eternity of crawling on his belly Kemper and his section arrived at the armored door to the bunker, it looked like rock but ground penetrating scans showed it for what it really was, a 2 meter thick battlesteel door to a Phong command center that had to be neutralized. Kemper grinned to himself, to make matters worse his section had been dropped off with orders to capture the Phong leadership intact and alive!
“Lieutenant the charge set, we’re ready.” Sgt Hailey jabbed her shoulder into the Lieutenant to get his attention, when he turned around she pointed at the door where two engineers had just finished placing a compressed “one ton” nuke.
“Alright, assault squad stand by for entry, squad two and three follow us in, squad four I want you to stay outside and cover our collective ***.” Kemper said as he pulled a small silver pad out of his hard suit’s breast pocket, after a moment to make sure everyone was clear he pressed the green button and silently count down in his head (5.….4.….3.….2.….1.….there!) a brilliant flash and a shockwave that rattled Kemper’s teeth signaled the detonation of the compressed nuke***.
“Go go go! Assault!” Kemper shouted as he stood up with the rest of the assault squad and ran into the breach they had just created, his “eye-piece” showed no life signs in the airlock they had just broken into but Kemper knew better then to take that as a sign of light defenses.
A scream from just ahead of him made the Lieutenant drop to the deck, and just in time a mono-molecular beam sliced along the wall and decapitated the man behind Kemper, another Icaran trooper shot out the generation point before the beam killed anyone else, but the beam had done it’s job, the trooper in front of Kemper was relatively short as Icarans went and the beam did not decapitate her as it did the man behind Kemper, instead it sliced off the top of her head only and left her in shock, twitching and seizing, a medic raced over but after only seconds he looked back at Kemper and shook his head.
Already two of his troopers had died, but that was no excuse for rash behavior, Kemper slowly advanced his section in a leap frog pattern, throwing shockwave grenades to make sure the corridors were clear of traps before advancing. So far no one had resisted and that made Kemper more uneasy and nervous then if he had to face down hundreds of Phong,, but there were no Phong waiting, corridor after corridor met them with only silence and the occasional booby trap that was disarmed by the Shockwave grenades.
Nearly twenty minutes had gone bye and the three assaulting Squads had reached a vast chamber near the heart of the base and still no resistance had met them, Just as Kemper was about to order his unit forward again a noise boomed into the room from unseen speakers, a noise the Icarans did not recognize at first, it was like crackling paper or a fireplace with a roaring fire. Suddenly comprehension dawned on Kemper, it was Phong laughter!
“AMBUSH! Fireteams cover your backs AMBUSH!” just as he shouted dozens of pulser darts tore through the Icarans, blood sprayed from torn arteries like some nightmarish geyser, the screaming of the wounded and dying filled the corridors, the stunned Icarans returned fire and succeeded in killing many Phong, but they were totally outnumbered and had been hit completely off guard, within moments all 36 Icarans were on the deck.
The Phong advanced from their hiding places and walked forward to inspect the bodies of the fallen Icarans, bayoneting the downed Icarans at the edge of the Icaran formation, just to be sure they were dead.
A Phong warrior walked over to Kemper and kicked him in the ribs with an armored boot, a grunt startled the Phong, who whirled his rifle around, too late to save his life however as an Icaran combat knife drove into it’s groin, cutting open the Phong’s main arteries in his legs.
A second Phong stood stunned behind Kemper as the Lieutenant whirled around with his assault rifle.
“Hey baby, you miss me?” Kemper sneered at the Phong warrior and depressed the firing stud on his rifle, the AP beam tore the Phong warrior in half and Kemper whirled around to look over his shattered formation.
“NOW!” The shout echoed along the walls and everywhere in the formation Icarans came to life and began killing the startled Phong warriors.
Kemper heard the satisfying whine of Anti-proton fire and the equally satisfying scream of dying Phong as if they were in a distant background, his focus fell onto Phong troopers that were attempting to fall back and reform their ranks, they all died swiftly as his beams swept across them.
A third of the Icarans was all that remained after the devastating ambush but Kemper was unwilling to give up here, and he could not call in the other squad outside or he would risk leaving his only way out open to enemy attack.
The advance continued until finally the sole remaining squad reached the massive armored doors at the heart of the facility, it took two compressed nukes to breakdown the door and admit the Icaran assault. The troopers rushed into the room weapons at the ready and stopped in stunned silence.
The sounds of sobbing brought the advancing Icarans to a halt, the room was no military command center, it was filled with Phong females and children, not even a single weapon was detected in their midst, several of the younger Phong ran towards the soldiers and began chittering relentlessly in their alien language.
“HALT! Stay where you are!” the Icarans shouted as the youngsters continued to run towards them.
“Damn it STOP!” Sergeant Hailey shouted at the top of her lungs but the aliens did not seem to understand.
“Get me a GA’DAMNED TRANSLATOR TO TELL THEM TO STOP!” Kemper shouted as he lowered his rifle, one of the Icarans raced forward, a translator unit strapped to his hip.
“Stop where you are!” he yelled in Icaran and the machine chattered out an equally loud shout in Phong.
The youngsters continued to run at the Icarans even after they had been told to stop twice by the translator, they were almost in hand to hand range and Kemper made the most terrifying decision of his life.
“Firing line! Cripple them if you can FIRE!” his order was met with the silent obedience of Icaran discipline and the entire squad fired into the advancing youths, three of the ones in front were cut to pieces as more then one trooper had focused their weapon on them by accident, several of the youths in the back stopped running forward and hit the dirt, others had limbs severed by the sweeping beams.
“CEASE FIRE!” Kemper’s order was echoed by Sgt Hailey and as suddenly as it had begun the Icaran fire ceased.
“Oh my God” a trooper behind Kemper said stunned, another trooper vomited into his helmet, the noise of the self cleaning unit covering the noise.
“Medic up front NOW, Lois cover him, get moving damn it!” Hailey shouted, she shoved the medic forward, Kemper forced himself back to reality and looked around the room, there were still a LOT of females and children hutted in fear, some of the more scared young ones tried to stand up and run away from the Icarans, but they were jerked down by their parents or other adults who had just witnessed the massacre.
The five youths of the group that had not been wounded or killed in the Icaran volley hugged the limp bodies of the dead or chittered into the “ears” of the wounded in attempts to comfort them. The Icaran mdic gently moved them aside and began running scans on the wounded while PFC Lois covered him.
“Why did they keep running at us sir?” Hailey whispered as she came closer to Kemper, she too looked pale and sick, but her voice remained calm and cold.
“Sir, I may be able to answer that.” The translator stepped forward after talking to several of the Phong in the room.
“The soldiers that ambushed us in the corridor were not just soldiers, several of them were command officials for this region, and sir, those youngsters are their children, when they saw us they knew we must have killed their parents and so they declared a sort of blood oath, similar to our custom of debt of blood except that instead of service provided by future generations, their blood oath requires the offender be bled.” The translator paused and looked sick for a moment, Kemper cleared his throat in a sign of impatience.
“Sir, they would have tried to bleed us, not kill us, a cut or bight would suffice by their tradition since they are the losing force here.” The trooper shook visibly.
Kemper looked at the stunned faces of his soldiers, they had all just become baby killers, even Phong did not deserve what had just been done to them, not this up close and personal, not over some stupid tradition!
The Lieutenant slammed his fist against a nearby wall and cursed silently to himself that fortune should put HIS unit in this position, they had failed their mission when they slaughtered the ambush force that had included the command staff of their region and NOW they had killed four orphaned children and left another seven with horrible injuries ranging from severed limbs to opened guts.
Kemper forced those thoughts from his mind and remembered the original Haden base with it’s millions of people, including children that had been destroyed by the Phong, so a few enemy children had been stupid enough to try and attack an Icaran firing line, so what he had ordered them cut down, they had become combatants the second they refused to comply with his orders and he made sure everyone of his soldiers knew it.
Less then a week later Lieutenant Kemper and the survivors of the Razor Teeth were awarded the Icaran sunburst medal for heroism above and beyond the call of duty, two days after that Mestra 1 had fallen to Icaran forces and the 1st regiment began occupation duty until an SS brigade could arrive.
*[Rocket propelled stab]A "stab" is a weapon that breaks apart into several metal disks when reaching a certain altitude, these disks travel at super sonic speeds and can slice apart any dropship or fighter in service.
**[Wolfhounds]: A wolfhound is a three person armored buggie with either a gatling style Anti-proton gun or a surface to surface rocket launcher.
*** [Compressed Nuke]: A compressed Nuke is a weapon that focuses the entire nuclear reaction into a "bottle" similar to how a traditional shaped charge focuses it's explosive energy. The radiation is sucked into the bLast area by the preasure of the "shaped" nuclear bLast and leaves only a small area radioactive,and even that radioactive area is harmless to anyone wearing a heardsuit or vac suit.