Second Lieutenant Caesoia Seveso was in charge of a 44 bird platoon that was to land with the second wave of General Arterius's army upon the planet. Currently, she only had her 1st squad of 10 was here. as the rest would come after the LZ was secure. Caesoia was a freshly trained officer, she hadn't had a deployment before this one, so this would be her first time leading the platoon in a non-training mission.
Over the comms she had heard that the first landing group was encountering heavy resistance on the ground with multiple red zones being declared in LZ's almost as soon as the dropships land. While she hadn't heard specifics she thought that things must be bad on the ground if the first wave is dealing with that much resistance.
She steeled her nerves and assembled her platoon. "Alright people, listen up, we're going into a highly dangerous landing zone, so when we land there will likely be mass accelerators fire already on us."
A private raised his hand "Is there no where safer to land?
"Not from what I'm hearing. It's either mass accelerators or SAMs and command would rather risk mass accelerators." She replied, "Now, when we get out I want one fire team of seven to provide cover from the drop ship while the other team of seven gets out of it, when that team is out, they provide cover fire for the one at the dropship to move up. Understood?"
"Yes Ma'am!" 1st Squad saluted as they replied.
"Landing in 15 seconds." The dropship pilot said over the intercom
"Alright, you heard the LT, check your mass barriers and let's give em hell!" said Staff Sergeant Luctius Badros
The Squad split itself in half, Caesoia took the side that would be first out.
"Dropping in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1-" came over the intercom
"Move, move, move!" Said Sergeant Camter Calatius.
Caesoia ran out, her mass barrier instantly took hits as the fireteam left. She got behind a sturdy looking rock while another 6 birds of her fire team proned into raised parts of the ground or joined her behind the rock.
She poked back out of her cover to scope down one of the Savages, she saw it aiming to fire at one of her comrades, she let out a burst from her Phaeston Rifle that broke the creatures barrier and punched bloody chunks in the creatures chest.
Aim, shoot, aim, shoot, adjust, aim shoot. Mass accelerators didn't produce as much recoil as old bullet guns so you didn't have to adjust as often, but they still had recoil.
"Fire at will!" Caesoia commanded as she pulled back out of her cover once again. Her rifle fired as she fired into the wave of attackers until her heat sink popped.
The wave of savages came at them quickly, depsite her soldiers efforts in taking down a good 7-10, there was at least 15 more behind them. If they couldn't get backup, they were going to lose this LZ.
"Lieutenant Seveso, Squadron XV here, enemy air defenses have been breached in your sector so we can provide support. Paint us a target." Caesoia tightened her jaw and used her omnitool to lay down a marker about 20 meters ahead.
"Copy, firing."
The screech of engines drown out the zip of accelerator fire, thousands of rounds ripped apart the advancing tide of enemies, buying her squad significant breathing room.
The sound of accelerator fire near her ended, but the heavier constant stream of zips she could still hear far away.
"Head count! Who's alive?" She called out.
"Aye" The Staff Sergeant popped up
"Aye" A corporal and 4 privates popped up from their cover
"Aye" The 3 privates next to her chimed in.
That meant the one dead was the other Corporal.
Oh, oh no. She just got somebody killed. Oh, spirits, how was she going to write to the family? How could she lead her platoon forward if she couldn't keep one whole squad alive?
"Lieutenant, come check it out!" A private kicked the corpse of one of the primitives.
Caesoia let the curiosity supress the guilt and doubt for a second and walked up to the body, it was, different, but familiar.
It was kinda like an Asari, but grey instead of blue, and without the head crests or hair that some species had.
The creatures hardsuit was all black and grey, while it's blood was red. It also had flecks of green on its skin.
"Run a vital, make sure it's dead."
The private did as instructed and reported, "Well, it's heart has stopped, so I'm pretty sure it's dead."
Staff Sergeant Luctius walked over. "Is it just me or is the green on its skin growing?"
What?
Caesoia looked at it again, and, yeah, the grey was slowly being replaced by green. Huh.
"I think we should back away from it, never know what kind of diseases it might have." Caesoia pointed her accelerator at it as she backed away.
"Sounds fair enough, we don't really know what it might hav-"
The corpse stood up. It's grey skin entirely replaced by a sickly green. It's jaw opened and seemingly tore itself apart extending as wide as possible, Caesoia forgot to fire in her shock.
The thing lunged at the poor private that had yet to move away, it's jaw completely engulfed the private's head, he barely had time to scream before it crunched, and bit his whole head off, hardsuit included.
Caesoia unloaded into the creature's body, blasting apart it's chest, but it just kept going! It lunged at the Staff Sergeant, but unlike the private Luctius brought up his omniblade directly into the thing's head. It dropped back to the ground dead.
The sound of accelerator fire refilled her ears, she looked around, and the corpses were rising again. How!? Why her?!
She fired wildly as the savages bodies starting walking again, and the LZ lit up once more in accelerator fire.
Desolas looked at the graphic images presented to him by a survivor of the 1st wave and a Turian xenobiologist.
"What the hell am I looking at?" Was all Desolas could word out at the images he was seeing.
The xenobiologist looked at something on her omnitool before answering "I have no idea. Based on the reports I've received, it seems the new species possesses the ability to just, revive themselves after death."
Desolas didn't even know how to respond to that.
The Sergeant took his chance to speak after her,
"The commonality between when these, reanimates, were encountered is when we didn't completely blow apart the Savage warriors. Those they were reduced to paste or even just separated limb from limb didn't get up. Those with just lethal gun shot wounds did get up."
"Are you suggesting I order complete evisceration of bodies after death?" Desolas asked, he wasn't really opposed to it.
"Yes." The Sergeant responded.
Desolas nodded, then asked "What has happened to those wounded by these, reanimates?"
The xenobiologist sighed and said "Nothing to report. We have them under 24/7 watch and medical testing, but we haven't found anything foreign in their systems. That however, hasn't stopped some units from executing their wounded in fear." She seemed more angry at the last part, and he was inclined to agree, a wasteful loss of life. What part of Turian Honor hadn't been sullied by these, animals?
"Tell the commanders they have my full permission to burn or destroy the dead of the enemy. Furthermore, I will discuss with Admiral Tulius about orbital bombardment on Savage positions and increasing the amount of deployed troops at a time. We will do what we must to win." Desolas growled out the last sentence.
"Understood General. Courage and Honor! Glory to the Hierarchy!"
"Glory to the Hierarchy!"
From: Agent-Commander 076
Report: Agents and Reanimates unable to prevent hostile landing.
Dr. While projects that were requested to be secured by other Directors and Dr's have been secured, like the Tyrant and the Combatiforms, initial landings by invading enemy force have repulsed our attempts to force them back off world. Depsite the shock and awe of the sudden reanimation of Agents, it was not enough to break their positions.
However, they have not begun an offensive as predicted the analytics predicted they would. It appears shock and awe was at least sucessful in stopping them for now. However, this unit requests unrestricted deployment of Agent J-22 against enemy positions to give agents and advantage on the ground.
To: Dr Benning
From: Dr Benning
Directive: Authorization for use of J-22, ALL1, TKBs, Project Einstein and Project No.22
Commander, I understand your reasoning, and I agree. I have been given full authorization for the use of all available assets to deny Shanxi to the aliens. As such, your request for Agent J-22 has been approved, the gas masks and cannisters are being shipped currently.
In addition, the usage of ALL1 Enhancers as approved as well, it's encouraged to only give one per agent. Projects Einstein and TKB have also been approved for field use against alien targets. Finally, Project 22 units will be used to slow the alien advance. Use your advantages well Commander.
To: Agent-Commander 076
The TKB-059 is a real-life project that was suspended for impracticality, here, that's not really a concern.
Let's just say that this is only the first of many surprises for General Desolas as the campaign for Shanxi continues.
