Birthday - Part 7

    The sea water that filled the cave entrance was warm. It seemed to soak into every inch and every crevice and gave Couglin the distinct feeling of wading through hot sludge.
    At its deepest, it came up to her waist.
    She was just about to call it off, to write the cave off as a misstep in judgement, when she heard it: the echoing 'poppop' of a service pistol.
    The sound rang through the cave and seemed to galvanize the remaining members of her squad.
    Bullock traded a quick glance with her and she nodded in silent agreement.
    Within a few minutes, they were through the thickest part of their watery trudge. And, while the tunnel was still unpleasantly humid and much of the rock was actively wet and slick, it was nice not to be wading through it.
    Even better, the cave was widening out, allowing for something more than single file.
    "Alright." Coughlin said in a hard whisper, surprised at how loud she had to speak to be heard over a constant trickle and splash of water. "Fire teams, form up. Alpha. You've got point."
    Automatically, the groups fell into a double-diamond shape that always reminded Coughlin of an hourglass. Bullock took the front with Brick and Mikhailov on either flank and Greer just about at Coughlin's side. Bravo team took up a similar stand behind her.
    "We get anything through this rock?" she shot back at Kuroba who was following tightly at her heel.
    "Negative. Any telemetry we might get isn't going through the rock. We're blind."
    "But not deaf." she said, reminding Bravo leader of the shots they'd just heard.
    "Not at all. At least we know there's something down here that wants us dead." Ludwig sarcastically complained.
    "Sounds fine to me." Dixon said in an oddly even tone."
    Coughlin glanced back at Ludwig in annoyance and was about to say something when the wall next to the Rifleman exploded.
    The man didn't even have time to react as the rocky wall gave way to a single, massive clawed hand that punched through his shoulder and side and tore the entire limb clean off. Simultaneously, the private let out a gut-wrenching scream and squeezed the trigger in shock, his pulse rifle firing directly into the mass of his fellow soldiers.
    Greer hadn't even turned around when the back of her helmet exploded.
    "6 O'Clock!" Coughlin bellowed only moments before fire from six other rifles joined her own and ripped the beast that was only now crawling from the wall into a fine mist.
    But it wasn't alone.
    Emerging from the waters they had just come through, from the opposing wall, and from below the path they had just walked, several others emerged.
    They were all the same in appearance. None of them were like the hulking centaur like they had seen before, but instead a vicious, humanoid creature with long claws, chitinous armor, mottled flesh, and occasionally slender lashing tentacles. Some seemed to wear shreds of cloth and others had hollow white eyes but all were intent to kill.
    And all met a firestorm of rifle rounds.
    Twice more a wall gave way but each time the now alert squad greeted the emerging monster with a roar of death that ripped it to bloody chunks. Pieces sprayed everywhere in the close quarters and the earlier warning of a "biological contagion" flashed through her mind as she saw Brick step forward with grenade launcher in hand.
    The man was painted red and brown with pieces of the beasts.
    "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he bellowed and launched a grenade that would definitely be against several rules of close quarters combat.
    The resulting explosion nearly knocked them all on their asses as several of the recently created tunnels collapsed in on itself.
    The air swirling in the dark, smoky tunnel, the squad swiveled in every direction as they waited for the next attack.
    But none came.
    "Form back up and check your weapons, people." Coughlin said, grinding her teeth. "No more accidents."
    She felt sick to her stomach. She had just lost two of her own in a matter of seconds. Ludwig, one of the youngest and arguably one of the more annoying, had still served under her for a full year. Greer for three. She would have to contact both of their families now. To talk to Greer's husband...
    Coughlin shook her head, telling herself that this was something for another time.
    She caught sight of Dixon who hadn't moved yet.
    He was staring back down the tunnel.
    "Dixon."
    He didn't respond."
    "Soldier."
    Dixon glanced at her but said nothing. And then back. He simply stared back down the tunnel. Back towards Ludwig. His expression unreadable.
    "Yes, Sarge."
    And then he was back in formation.
    They moved unassaulted for another five minutes.
    During that time, Coughlin noted two minor injuries and three potentially noteworthy encounters. Brick, who was painted red, was not only covered in the creatures' blood but also had a nice slash cut out of his left arm; clean through the battle armor. Gorman was equally covered in gore. Quinn was bleeding from the forehead after having been bashed against the rockface. And Xi had was covered in SOMEONE'S blood but Coughlin wasn't sure if it was from the monsters or the quick patch job on Brick's arm.
    No matter what, she knew they'd all be in quarantine for weeks after this.
    She was just picturing the barren, empty cells and the doctors in white coats hiding behind glass when the tunnel opened up to a massive antechamber.
    And there, hanging on the wall, was Charlie team. Along with a hundred others.
    Cocooned.

Birthday - Part 6

    The ride felt like an eternity. The dropship rocketed towards Charlie's last known coordinates with and the radio constantly chirped with sounds of combat and chaos broken only by the sporadic explosions of gunfire.
    "THERE! THERE!"
    "Get over here!"
    "Reloading!"
    "FUCK!"
    A minute in, the radio signal for Charlie went dark in a burst of static that petered out to a soft, unending hiss.
    Two minutes later, the dropship touched down and Coughlin with Alpha team in tow stepped down into a salty muck. It might have once been like the rest of the marsh, a serene pool of sea water and mangrove trees, but not anymore.
    They were standing in waist deep water filled with churning mud and far too much blood.
    Bravo arrived seconds later, slipping through a small thicket of trees a dozen yards away.
    "What've we got?" Kuroba whispered quietly as his squad rejoined theirs.
    Coughlin looked around and considered.
    The marsh was an absolute mess. Along with the churning stew of mud and blood, the surrounding area had been torn apart. Piles of trees and foliage had been blown apart by small arms fire or torn apart by some unknown force. There were massive, gaping holes carved out of what little solid ground there was and those were quickly filling in with sea water. Chunks of flesh and viscera were thrown this way and that but there were no obvious bodies from either sat of combatants.
    And, probably about fifty yards away, there raised a wide cave opening jutting only barely out of a patch of solid ground. The sight of it made Coughlin think of a giant, gaping mouth.
    "Well," she began, "at the very least we should be in the right spot. We've got Quinn's cave he mentioned over there."
    She nodded towards the gaping maw set into the ground.
    "As for what happened: based on what I heard and what I'm seeing, it looks like these things pulled their way out of the ground." she continued, motioning towards the quickly filling sinkholes. "After that though..."
    The two fireteams watched her expectantly. All except for Dixon. He had his rifle butt to his shoulder and was slowly scanning the area, his eye to the scope.
    Coughlin appreciated it.
    "Alright, we can't presume anything, but dirty guess is that with these things coming out of the ground, maybe they're a fan of being under it. Everyone fan out, see what you can find, and then we're going to check out that cave. I'm not seeing any bodies so maybe our boys are just down there waiting for the cavalry to roll in."
    "Sir." a few of them responded sharply.
    Eight of the soldiers fanned out in different directions, their eyes downward as they searched the ground and the muck to try and find any signs of what they were facing. All except Dixon. He remained planted in place, slowly turning this way and that like he were some kind of automated turret.
    Again, Coughlin was alright with it.
    It didn't take the soldiers very long to find something though.
    As it turned out, the reason that there were no obvious bodies had more to do with the nature of their environment then anything else.
    "Got something." Brick called.
    The massive man, waist deep in the marsh, strained as he grabbed something beneath the water. His face turned red and he snarled as he moved slowly towards the gathering marines. With a huff and heave, he pulled out the largest, ugliest son of a bitch Coughlin had ever laid eyes on.
    "Jesus christ!" Ludwig exclaimed.
    The monster was large. Even without pulling it completely out of the water, they could tell it could probably take on a Land-Master rover head-on and win. The ugly bastard was covered in natural, chitinous armor with a huge mouthful of teeth. Further inspection revealed large scythe like limbs and a lower torso that reminded Coughlin of the old stories of centaurs.
    Despite its ferocious appearance, the thing was riddling with holes. Charlie wasn't caught with their pants down.
    Dixon gave it a half an eye before focusing back on his scope. 
    "Least we know what we're looking for." he said quietly. "But if you like that, you're gonna love this one."
    Coughlin glanced at Dixon and followed his line of sight and gasped in surprise that they had missed it.
    There, mostly buried in a downed thicket of trees, was another corpse. However unlike the huge creature before them, this one was notably smaller and disturbingly human in appearance. While still monstrous in nature and covered in sharp edges and armor, there was no doubt that this was a humanoid.
    "That one's different." Dixon observed.
    "No shit." Coughlin agreed. "Alright, I want one more sweep before we hit the cave. Anything else, shout out; but more importantly I wanna make sure we're not following ghosts into the dark."
    There was a grim nod. They knew what she meant. If Charlie team was dead and submerged in water like the big thing was, they'd rather not be going into the cave to rescue those that didn't need rescuing.
    If Charlie was dead, Coughlin would have no apprehension to calling in some bigger guns to clear the tunnels.
    The squad spent another few minutes searching, but didn't find anything substantial. Plenty of blood and one more of the dead humanoid monsters in one of the gaping holes, but no bodies from her squad.
    Charlie was still alive.
    And, as they made their way into the gaping maw of the cave system and stepped into the water in the humid, dark rock tunnel, that was the driving thought that pushed Coughlin forward.
    Charlie was still alive.
    And she'll be damned if she wasn't going to save them.

Birthday - Part 5

    The dropship tore over the fog-shrouded wetlands. The twin engines roared loudly and scattered small creatures from their hideaways; their departure illuminated by the powerful floodlights that sliced through the darkness.
    The ship had stealth options, of course. A means of making them run quieter in exchange for minor loss in capabilities. But Coughlin had no interest in that now.
    If she could scare her quarry into the open, whatever the organism was, it would make it all the more easier to deal with it. Blowing something away from the sky while it was out in the open would be much easier than trying to stalk it through the salt marshes.
    Still...
    "Anything yet?" she asked.
    "Nothing." Bullock confirmed.
    The five of them all had their eyes glued to their respective monitors. Video feeds from the hull cameras showed the darkened landscape lit up by the floodlights as water and trees rushed by. They could see lizards large and small as well as jakdus, the strange deerlike creature that inhabited the small continent, but nothing else showed its face.
    Nothing that appeared particularly dangerous and definitely nothing they didn't immediately recognize.
    "It'd be nice if we knew what we were looking for." Greer commented.
    "But ve wouldn't be marines then. Ve'd be qualified exterminators." Mikhailov remarked as she flipped through the cameras.
    They all chuckled a little bit at that but said nothing further. After another extended period of staring at the landscape rolling by, a tone chirped in her headset.
    "Talk to me."
    "We're approaching Calenburg again, sir." the pilot reported.
    She stared down at the screen. It was the fifth time they'd approached the little town and so far their patrols had been totally fruitless.
    "Alright. We're going to be making one more round and then rejoin Bravo and Charlie."
    "Yes, sir."
    Coughlin closed the channel and scanned the monitors again. She tapped the mic again.
    "Bravo. How are you guys looking?"
    "Quiet so far." Kuroba answered shortly, the sound of sloshing in the background and someone, probably Ludwig, speaking indistinctly.
    "Charlie."
    "Not sure, Staff Sergeant" Quinn said. "Found some tracks. Might be nothing, some kind of large pachyderm maybe, but we've got a bit of blood too so we're going to check it out."
    "Blood?" 
    "Yea. We think it is blood anyway. Seems to lead to some sort of low cave structure in the marshes. We'll keep you in the loop."
    "Be careful, Quinn. And keep us informed if you find anything."
    "Yes, sir." 
    The mic went dead and Coughlin felt the dropship lurching to the side as they made their pass over the town. That was when Bullock spoke up.
    "Hey Mik, have you looked at Calenburg the last couple passes."
    "Da. Why?"
    Bullock remained silent, seemingly staring hard at his screen.
    "I'm not sure." he finally said.
    Mikhailov glanced at Brick and Greer who both shrugged. But Coughlin was the one to ask the question.
    "Sergeant." she said flatly; her request for more obvious in her tone.
    "I'm not sure, sir." he said again, answering the unasked query. "It might be nothing, it just seems like something's weird."
    "Care to elaborate?"
    "Can't, sir. Something's grabbing me about the images and I'm not sure why."
    Coughlin gave him the stink eye but said nothing further. Instead, she deactivated the live monitoring and started rolling through the recorded vids from their passes over the town. It was pretty easy to find their Calenburg passes just by how well lit the video was compared to the rest of the dingy media.
    She cued it up and watched it carefully.
    The first video didn't seem that interesting. Just the town. Bright lights, plastisteel buildings, civilian vehicles...
    Nothing outstanding.
    The second video was very much the same.
    So was the third.
    Actually, it was exactly the same.
    "Nothing's moving?"
    "Yea." Bullock confirmed. "That's definitely it. I knew I noticed something but I couldn't put my finger on it."
    "At the very least on this side of the town." Mikhailov added.
    "Small town. Quiet night." Brick suggested.
    Coughlin studied the monitor. There was logic to the statement and with a town of only ten thousand or so, one couldn't expect a lot of nighttime activity. This wasn't some dense urban area and it wasn't uncouth to expect the majority of the population to be asleep at night.
    But at the same time...
    "No. Bullock's right. We don't know what we're dealing with and we don't take chances. We need to investigate any possible leads. We'll make one more sweep and then set down a~"
    "ZZZT~AGING! ENGAGING! HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
    The sound of Quinn's panicked voice exploded over her headset and she nearly jumped in surprise. She could hear the jackhammer sounds of pulse rifles rattling off over his yelling and could indistinctly pick up the other soldiers in the background.
    She slapped the mic in response.
    "Quinn? What the hell is happening?"
    "They're coming out of the swamp!" he screamed, barely audible over the crashing roar of gunfire. "There! And there! GORMAN! Behind you!"
    Another explosion of gunfire.
    "Quinn? Corporal?"
    More static broken by screams and gunfire.
    "ZZZT~ Hands are full right now, Sarge!" was his only response before the line went dead.
    "Bravo?" Coughlin demanded quickly.
    "I heard it." Kuroba confirmed over the radio. "We're zeroing in on their location now. Sending the coordinates back your way. We should be to Charlie in five minutes."
    "Make it two. We're en route."
    "Roger." 
    A moment later, Coughlin felt the ship shudder as the afterburners kicked in and she sunk back into the seat as the dropship. They tore away from the silent town, the question of why it was so motionless slipping from her mind as she steeled herself from the coming combat.

Birthday - Part 4

    A short fifty three minutes later, the dropship touched down hard.
    Simultaneously, thirteen flight harnesses disengaged and men and women whose sole purpose in life was dispatch violence exploded from the rear hatch of the ship. Fire in the bellies and rifles in their hands.
    Fireteam Alpha was first.
    They moved with purpose and conviction. Every step was calculated and four sets of eyes scanned their surroundings as efficiently as any radar could hope to achieve. Bullock and Greer, both armed with their pulse rifles, stayed glued to "Brick" and Mikhailov. Mikhailov brandished a heavy, articulated gauss cannon while "Brick" swept the area with a heavy set, grenade launcher; both of them ready to dispense death to anything that threatened them or the dropship.
    But their reign was not challenged.
    Moments later, the next two fireteams, Bravo and Charlie, emerged from the belly of the dropship. They moved to the left and right of Alpha team, with Staff Sergeant Coughlin taking up a position in the middle of all three.
    But still nothing moved.
    And for that, Coughlin let out a small sigh of relief.
    Having the members of her squad around her was comforting. She wouldn't trade any one of them for a million recruits fresh out of boot. They were her armor and her weapons; her very extension of self. She knew they'd give their lives just as soon as she'd give hers to save them all and she could trust any of them to cover her back just as well as she could cover her own.
    Luckily, there didn't seem to be a need.
    The swampy area where they stood was less than appealing, but given the mention of "dangerous organisms" it was hard not to imagine hulking monsters emerging from the darkness as they landed. Instead, they were greeted by a gentle, almost serene night-time landscape.
    The dropship had touched down on a large, dry area in the swamp that may very well have been some form of atoll. Surrounded by thickets of mangrove trees that jutted out of great pools and lagoons of sea water, her mind wandered briefly to the time she'd visited a similar salt-water swamp on Earth to see the sharks and rays that lived among roots of the strange trees.
    Absently, Coughlin wondered if these pools held similar beasts as the lemon sharks back home.
    She quickly perished the thought; focusing instead on the small lifeboat that was settled quietly in waist deep water a hundred meters away. It nearly blended into the background, shrouded by a thick fog and the heavy darkness provided by the mangrove trees, but the hard metal was difficult to miss once she focused on it.
    Without a word, Coughlin pointed at the ship and all three fireteams moved through the murky surroundings with surprising silence given the wet environment. They formed up around the ship in a triangle that encompassed the little ship.
    "Alpha team." she whispered into the mic. "You're on breaching duty. If it's closed, we don't want anything nasty waiting for us inside."
    "Won't be necessary, sir."
    A moment later, she saw why.
    From their initial landing position, the little lifeboat appeared fine. Unpowered and dark, but no worse for wear short of sitting in a shallow pool of salt water.
    The rear end was another matter.
    The entire rear of the little ship where the rear-hatch should have been was demolished. The metal had been pushed and shredded outwards as if there had been some sort of explosion.
    No. Not an explosion. The edges were too ragged. Too uneven and twisted. And there were bits of flesh and gore splattered across the broken edges of the bent metal.
    "Looks like something ripped its way out." Greer commented; reflecting her own thought process.
    The question was: was it still somewhere inside?
    The ship was by no means large and it was obvious that something had come OUT of the ship, but that didn't mean that it didn't find the ship's interior more suitable than the surrounding swamps. Underestimating whatever these things were could get them all killed.
    For all she knew, it had stepped out, changed its mind, and was hiding just inside the darkness of the downed lifeboat waiting for an unsuspecting marine to bumble their way in.
    "Bravo and Charlie, secure the ramp. Alpha, clear the ship."
    Again, the groups moved seamlessly. Bravo and Charlie appeared on either side of Coughlin at the bottom of the ramp as Alpha moved deliberately up towards the shredded hole in the ship's rear. Four chest-lamps ignited the dark interior and the blood streaked walls and seats. However, with the exception of surprising amount of dried blood and some serious structural damage, the lifeboat was empty.
    There weren't even bodies.
    "Empty, Staff Sergeant." Bullock confirmed.
    "Empty?"
    "Whatever party happened here, we missed it." Brick agreed.
    "B'ylad'..." Mikhailov muttered just loud enough for her mic to pick up.
    Coughlin glanced around, taking in her surroundings once more. The deep, penetrating darkness of the forested night. The thick, winding trunks of the mangrove trees. The heavy fog. The salt water.
    All the hiding places.
    And then, as she stared, she saw a glow. It was hard to see through the fog, but against the dark backdrop, she could make out the faint lights from the nearby town.
    Calenburg.
    Could whatever this creature have been seen those lights and moved towards it? Would it have been attracted to civilization? Or would it have sensed the light and, like a beast fleeing from fire, turned and gone the other way?
    Coughlin looked over her should in the opposite direction. Another thicket of mangrove trees and probably even deeper salt water marshes lay there.
    She really wished she knew what this organism was.
    "Alright guys, let's find this son of a bitch. Calenburg is just a little over a couple miles from here. Myself and Alpha team will take the dropship and skim the area between here and there to see what we can find. In the meantime, Bravo and Charlie, you're to sweep this area for anything that might point us in the right direction."
    "What exactly are we looking for, Staff Sergeant?" Kuroba asked cautiously.
    "Something big, ugly, and mean enough that the brass don't want to tell us what it is."
    A few brows arched as she and Alpha made their way away from the ruined lifeboat and back towards the dropship.
    "And if we find it?" Dixon chimed in.
    "You do what marines do best, Specialist."
    "Ooo-rah." he mouthed with a smirk.

Birthday - Part 3

Film/Image Credit goes to 'Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles'

    Ten minutes later, they were in the air and hurtling at top speed towards that upper atmosphere.
    The sensation of intraplanetary travel always made Coughlin's guts clench.
    Everyone was strapped in to their seats and they were traveling at a hard 40 degree angle as the dropship rocketed upwards. Ignoring the concept of 'the quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line', the path was designed to create a great bell curve that went up and came back down over the small continent known as Han'ei. It cut travel time down by ninety percent and turned what could be a twelve hour flight into a one hour one.
    In exchange, they got to be plastered into their seats in the equivalent of being strapped to an intercontinental missile.
    They got used to it however.
    All around her, Coughlin's squad was busy preparing.
    Most everyone seemed to be doing something. A lot of it was little more than pre-game ritual. Afterall, a lot of the combat gear had been double checked before they even dispatched to the training ground for just such a potentiality. Even then, the team had immediately started field checking the equipment while they'd waited for the dropship.
    Now it was little more than nervous habits.
    "Brick", as everyone referred to Specialist Warfield from Bullocks' team, was counting out boom-tube grenades and muttering to himself. Next to him, Bullock's Rifleman Private Greer was quietly running her combat knife along a whetstone. Across the hall, Specialist Xi was rummaging through her medic's bag.
    Technically all of it was against safety protocol, but Coughlin trusted them enough to not give them shit about it.
    Most of them chattered with each other or went about reading the mission debrief. A few others, namely Specialist Dixon and Private Gorman, had simply laid their heads back against the chairs and passed out due to not having anything to occupy their minds.
    Coughlin, on the other hand, read.
    According to the dossier on the dimly lit screen, they were on their way to the eastern coast of Han'ei where a life pod struck surface a few hours ago. It was one of roughly a dozen ships that came down across the planet. While there was no response to initial hailing, automatic metadata claimed the ship had been dispatched from a science mega-cruiser owned by the Notori Corporation called the 'Icarus'.
    Coughlin couldn't help but scoff at that name. Bad luck to name a ship that.
    She kept reading.
    The metadata also confirmed that some catastrophic event had occurred on board the Icarus of a 'Code 25436'; a proprietary company code that meant nothing to her. This led to an involuntary evacuation of all crew members. After traveling for over a month, it landed on autopilot just outside the coastal town of 'Calenburg'.
    Her squad was to secure the ship, provide aid as necessary, and take any survivors to the closest base for medical care, debriefing, and relocation services.
    In short, it was a cake walk.
    "Yo Staff Sergeant." Private Nunez called. "What's the sitrep?"
    "You didn't hear?" Cooper interjected quickly. "Your mother stopped by. We need full deployment just to move her fat ass."
    A couple of the squad chuckled but Private Greer leaned forward, her features stone in the red light of the dropship.
    "Seriously, Sarge." she said, being one of the only ones that didn't call her by her full title. "What's the deal?"
    Cooper looked like he was about to say something else, but Greer glanced over at Private Mikhailov who promptly placed a hand over his mouth. He didn't fight back; it was all in good fun after all.
    Also, Mikhailov had already proven she had no problem in knocking the wind out of him for being a smart ass.
    "Looks like we're touching down about twenty clicks outside of a little coast town on the small continent. Standard rescue op. Pick up some civvies for a life raft, get em back for cocoa, call it a night."
    Greer shrugged a little, but Bullock, sitting next to the Rifleman, narrowed his eyes a little as if judging Coughlin.
    "You sure about that, Staff Sergeant?"
    "Why wouldn't I be sure?"
    He gave her that same questioning look and it was then that she noticed he had a screen pulled up as well. She reviewed the document before her again but saw nothing to the contrary.
    Except...
    There was a flashing circular arrow in the very bottom right of the screen.
    She updated the document and, lo and behold, there was more information then when the flight began. Except now, the bottom text was bright red and highlighted.
   

NOTICE! CLASSIFIED INFORMATION!

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY NOTORI CORPORATION.

THIS INFORMATION ARE CLASSIFIED AND INTENDED SOLELY FOR DESIGNATED SQUAD LEADER AND IS ONLY TO BE SHARED BY IMPERATIVE IN THE INSTANCE IT EFFECTS THE LIKELIHOOD OF SQUAD SURVIVAL. THIS INFORMATION IS NOT TO BE SHARED, COPIED, OR DISTRIBUTED IN ANY CAPACITY. FAILURE TO ADHERE TO THIS WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION, COURT MARSHALL, AND/OR FIELD EXECUTION.

    Coughlin's eyes widened at that last part.

    She had certainly been on confidential missions before. It was nothing really new for most people in the military and sometimes you were exposed to weird or different shit that wasn't even supposed to exist.

    But she couldn't think of anytime she'd ever seen a document refer to field executions.

    She glanced up wearily at Bullock and could tell he was stonefaced, his focus on the ill-begotten document that he wasn't supposed to be reading. The soldiers all got watered down versions of her own dossier, but Bullock's technical aptitude tended to let him 'look over her shoulder' so to speak in exchange that he got to act as second in command and know that, if he ever shared unnecessary secrets, she'd castrate him with a rusty bayonet.

    She went back to the update.

THE NOTORI CORPORATION HAS IDENTIFIED POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS ORGANISMS MAY BE PRESENT AT THE LANDING SITE. THEY ARE UNKNOWN IN NATURE AND ALIEN IN ORIGIN. COMBAT CAPABILITIES ARE ALSO UNKNOWN HOWEVER CREATURES HAVE A RECOGNIZED AGGRESSIVE NATURE. LARGE POSSIBILITY OF BIOLOGICAL CONTAGION FROM DIRECT CONTACT WITH SPECIMENS. USE ALL CAUTION TO AVOID EXPOSURE TO ALIEN CONTAMINANTS.

    Coughlin let out a long sigh.

    "Well this is gonna be fun." she said flatly as she felt the nose of the ship dip forward into descent back towards the planet's surface.

Birthday - Part 2

Film/Image credit to 'Live, Die, Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow'

    "Nice shot." Coughlin complimented Dixon. "Hurts like a fuckin' bitch."
    Dixon chuckled and took her hand, pulling her to her feet.
    "Just lucky, Staff Sergeant."
    "How modest." She said, wiping off her uniform. "But before you let your ego inflate however, care to explain why the fuck you were away from your fireteam?"
    "I wanted to make sure my target was eliminated." he responded calmly.
    Coughlin's eyes narrowed.
    "In exchange for their lives? You understand all three were taken out before you 'eliminated your target' right?"
    Dixon shrugged but she could see a tightening in his expression that suggested she was getting to him. No sane soldier wished his squad dead even if they considered them to be extra baggage.
    Good.
    His lips curled back into a smirk as he tried to rebuild his armor.
    "It's not a real op. And I think you're just mad I got you this time."
    She grabbed him by the front of the armor and pulled him so close she could smell the S.O.S on his breath from mess.
    "Get this through your thick fucking head, soldier. You are part of a fireteam. You are not team lead. You are part of my squad. You are not squad leader. You're a damn good marksman but if keep up with this horseshit the only thing you'll be in the brig for insubordination."
    "This isn't boot camp, you little shit." she continued, yanking him hard again. "I'm not going to threaten to make you clean the latrine with your tongue or some outlandish crap like that. If your cowboy bullshit gets one of my soldiers killed, I will bust you down myself and you won't see anything but the inside of a hard-work camp til hell freezes over. Get me?"
    His expression hardened and his smirk faded.
    "Sir." he responded sharply.
    "Good. Now I'm going to say it again. Do you get me?"
    "Sir. Yes, sir."
    She smiled at the man's submission and backed off. Looking around, she realized the entire squad was standing nearby, watching the interaction. All eleven other soldiers remained silent but attentive to the ass chewing.
    Sensing the tension, she decided to use it.
    "The same goes for the rest of you." she said loud enough for everyone to hear plainly.
    Several of the men and women grimaced.
    "You're the best goddamn unit the Corps has ever seen. A group of one hundred percent human badasses made with one purpose. To Kick. Ass. But if you're as sloppy as you were today, I'm going to be mailing flags back to your mamas with notes saying 'Dumbass couldn't figure out who her fireteam leader was', Xi or 'Decided to be a cowboy with another deadman', Ludwig."
    The group gave each other a few terse glances and Coughlin could tell be the flush red dominating Xi's cheeks that the comment had hit home.
    "Still...dumbasses that you all are, you're the best. And, as much as I might want to kick Dixon's ass for it..." she said, allowing herself a smile and smacking Dixon's armor playfully. "You did beat me."
    The group chuckled softly and let out a few small whoops.
    "That means you're buying the beer, right?" Kuroba yelled playfully.
    "Man, it's her birthday!" shouted Bullock. "Y'all should be buying her a beer."
    Coughlin laughed again as the group converged together, no longer a competing set of teams but as a single unit. A single body of brothers and sisters acting together in perfect unison.
    Well, almost perfect.
    "Tell you what Kuroba: I'll buy you all a beer but you get to buy my beers."
    "Don't do it Sarge!" Dixon shouted at his fireteam leader. "Don't forget what happened on Christmas."
    "I'm pretty sure that's above your paygrade." Quinn agreed.
    The squad all laughed together and started to make their way through the dingy, abandoned alleyways they had used for training and back towards the APC.
    "How about this:" Kuroba offered. "Can I waive the alcohol-fee in exchange for a cake?"
    "Depends." Coughlin commented. "Where'd you get a cake?"
    "Don't ask. Don't tell." Cooper said with a smirk and a wink.
    The group burst into laughter again as they exited the alley and found themselves in the large open field outside of the training facility. The large, boxy APC was parked right where they left it, encased by a shroud of heavy fog that drifted through the darkness.
    But there was something else.
    Two, heavy duty spotlights shone down from a dropship as it tore across the open field towards the training facility. It was moving at a steady click low to the ground. The beams sliced through the darkness as it sped towards them.
    "The hell is that?" Dixon asked with a suspicious tone.
    "Ain't no other teams out tonight, are there?" Bullock asked.
    Seemingly in response, Coughlin's mic buzzed in her ear. She tapped it and the gravely voice of Lieutenant Freeport growled in her ear.
    "Staff Sergeant Coughlin?"
    "Sir." she confirmed.
    "I know your squad just got done with a training op, but I'm sending a dropship your way to pick you all up. There's an op I need you for on the east coast of the small continent."
    Quinn grimaced, listening in on the conversation, but said nothing.
    "Sir, is there a reason one of the other squads is unavailable?"
    "All squads are in deployment and we needs yours too. We've had a number of lifeboats crash land on the planet and we need immediate response to save as many lives as we can."
    Coughlin let out a long, controlled sigh but quickly said, "I understand, Sir."
    "SitRep will be on the dropship. Over and out."
    Short and sweet. she thought to herself.
    The squad looked at her expectantly, but they all knew what was coming. They didn't know where they were going or why they were going, but they knew based on what they had heard that they weren't getting back to base right away.
    "So, you think dragging us on an Op is going to get you out of your beer duties, Staff Sergeant?" Kuroba asked playfully, trying to lighten the quickly tensing mood.
    "Yea, probably. But you still owe me cake when we get back."

Birthday - Part 1

    With a scream, Ludwig' legs gave out from beneath him and dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
    His arms were locked and his jaw was spasming against the electric current that was arcing through his body, setting his nerves on fire. However, the pain wasn't severe, just restrictive.
    Ludwig's scream was more of defiance than anything else.
    Staff Sergeant Coughlin smirked and gave the downed private a swift kick in the ass. Not hard, but enough to get his attention through the haze of the zapper.
    "What the hell did I tell you about checking your corners?" she said with a disciplinary tone. "That's the third time this month."
    Ludwig growled in response, but given his locked jaw, she doubted he'd be able to say anything intelligible.
    She moved on.
    Coughlin crossed an alley and ducked under an over hang. She could hear the patrol moving slowly and carefully. That was good. But it did annoy her that she could hear them at all. She'd have to chew them out for that.
    Slithering under the low cover of old supply crates, she creeped to the edge and saw an entire fireteam.
    Gorman, Xi, Nunez, and Quinn were all in the alley not twenty meters away. Quinn and Xi were quietly bickering over something...that was hardly new. Corporal Quinn was fireteam leader, but that didn't stop Xi from trying to interject her will and be an all around pain in the ass.
    The flip side was that Gorman and Nunez were waiting quietly, guns trained on the empty alley. Their eyes were scanning the gloomy fog like hungry raptors.
    But the bitching had them distracted.
    She'd have to talk to them about that too.
    Pulling the shock grenade, she yanked the pin hard, but held on to it. Cooking the fuse inside for an extra second or two. And, once she felt the timing was right, she slid the grenade along the wet stone floor right between the four of them.
    She was already disappearing into the darkness when Nunez frantically scream "GRENADE!"
    Of course, they didn't have time to react. The cooked grenade went off before they had so much as twitched.
    All four hit the ground with shouts of anger and shock promptly followed by the clatter of armor on stone.
    Coughlin was tempted to give them all a quick kick like she had with Ludwig, but restrained herself. There was still one man unaccounted for and she'll be damned if he wasn't the biggest threat.
    Dixon.
    Sergeant Bullock's fireteam had been dealt with pretty easily, although they at least put up more of a fight than Corporal Quinn's had. They had been ready and focused and had gotten a few pot shots off before she zapped them.
    Kuroba's team on the other hand...
    She had found Kuroba and Cooper stalking the alleys with Cooper bitching about 'just letting them go'. After quickly disabling both of them, she realized that Ludwig and Dixon were unaccounted for.
    It wasn't the first time it had happened. Neither of them played well with others and Ludwig had been taken out just as easily as Kuroba, but Dixon was another story.
    Sliding from the cover, her eyes scanned the foggy rooftops.
    Nothing. Just darkness.
    For the first time in the drill, she felt her heart rate increase. Her squad was good and they all knew the reason she put them through these exercises was to make them even better. No. To make them the best. But there was something about Dixon that always stood out.
    Something predatory.
    Something frightening.
    The Designated Marksman had risen through the ranks faster than any other soldier she had commanded. He'd been put through sniper school immediately after boot due to his aptitude and passed with colors not shortly after. While he'd been on his own sniper team, he'd been busted down and reassigned to Coughlin for 'classified reasons'. She'd raised holy hell about not being told why, but was still quickly satisfied with the results he provided.
    Coughlin glanced down on the readout for her zapper-rifle, confirmed, and started slowly moving through the alleys; keeping to as much cover as she could find.
    The man was a hunter through and through. While he had a bad tendency of breaking off from his fireteam, often with Ludwig going along to act as his unofficial spotter, she couldn't argue with the results. Honestly, they were a little scary sometimes.
    But he got the job done.
    And so, for the sixth time in the last second, her eyes scanned the rooftops and the windows.
    Little did she know that her own knowledge of the DM was working against her. She was so focused above that she failed to think of her own trick being used against her. Down the alley, a good fifty meters out, a single rifle barrel was extended through a large pile of garbage.
    She'd passed by it earlier, literally meters away, when she'd felled Ludwig.
    He just hadn't been ready to strike yet.
    And so, as she stalked, and as she hunted, Dixon held the rifle steady. He had walls on all sides, appropriate camouflage, and, in this environment, only a single target.
    He squeezed the second trigger.
    Coughlin only saw the glint of the barrel a split second before the gunshot.
    She hit the ground screaming in fury as the electricity arced through her body.
    A few moments later, her nerves shot and her body smoking, the dark-skinned sniper appeared over her; his rifle slung over his shoulder, his eyes malicious.
    "Happy Birthday, Staff Sergeant." Dixon said condescendingly with an outstretched hand to help her up.