Red Letter Days/Chapter Two

Chapter Two: CATFU


 * ''Epsilon Indi System
 * ''UN colony: Second Base
 * ''Pvt. 1st class Michael Schaeffer
 * ''En route to Garmed, capital of Second Base

As the laughter died down, Schaeffer only looked around again. Everyone was looking at either him or Vilenen, who looked absolutely furious at him; there was the occasional chuckle or canned laughter but for the most part the pelican went silent. Gradually, people started talking to each other; a slender dark skinned marine with glasses, asked him where he was from.

"Uh... I..." he paused glancing around, surprised by the sudden lack of attention; the man simply raised an eyebrow at this. "Skopje. I am from Skopje," muttered Schaeffer, gathering his courage but still afraid of a burst of laughter at any moment.

"I once knew a guy from Skopje," a tall and sinewy man in the back casually declared, "he was an asshole." This received chuckles across the pelican, Schaeffer gulped and adjusted his collar.

"I- I don't think I am an ass," he commented, not realizing how pathetic the words sounded until after he said it. Vilenen just raised an eyebrow, some one in the front laughed hysterically.

"We know you like ass holes Miller," responded the marine with glasses. A few more people erupted into laughter, Miller smiled and sat back in his seat; closing his eyes for a rest.

"So new guy, you got a name?" The man asked, Schaeffer glanced around again before answering.

"Schaeffer. It's Schaeffer."

"That's a boring name, you're Newbie now."

"Newbie?"

"The one and only." The same marine who had been laughing hysterically in the back barely canned his laughter at this. Schaeffer only sighed, he was Newbie now apparently.

"ETA is three minutes, get ready to move on drop," observed the pilot over the radio; the marines all got ready to leave the pelican. Some men put books or other things into their backpacks, others did last minute gun inspections; the dark skinned man spoke up again.

"Alright newbie, my name is Monroe, your fire team later is Smike." Vilenen looked over and shot a glare again, Monroe laughed and continued, "the other members are Miller and Mackenzie. Miller is that tall gay guy down the pelican," Miller flashed the middle finger from the back, "and finally, Mackenzie is the man with the ugly mug to your right.

"Pleasure is all mine," murmured Mackenzie, his voice as smooth as silk.

The pelican shook, and then he felt the bird slowly begin its descent down to the ground. The doors slowly opened as they hit twenty feet, light pouring in from outside; and finally he felt the landing gear connect and the whole vehicle shake. A light on the ceiling turned green and the marines all unbuckled and made their way out.

The LZ was in the middle of a plaza in the capital city, the area was full of evacuated civilians and he saw marines moving barbed wire across streets along with sandbags and concrete road blocks. Police vehicles were everywhere, along with police officers.

"Second squad! On me!" Shouted a man who Schaeffer assumed was Atterson, he stumbled a bit as he left the pelican but followed him through the confused crowd of lost civilians, officers and military members. The rest of his fire-team and the squad proper followed close behind, their weapons carried casually in their arms.

"The LT just got off the radio, gave me the whole briefing and our orders," barked the sergeant, an older and more gruff man who stopped walking once he made it out of the crowd. The squad slowly began to form a circle around him.

"Right, it appears as if the innies have been calling in some out of town all star terrorist talent to help them out here. We don't know why they are hitting us but we should expect medium resistance." The marines all nodded, Schaeffer gulped; he didn't like fighting. "We are going to move up main street where the bombing occurred until we get to the site of the blast proper, the Garmed city bank. Us and fourth will be humping it, first and third squad are going to be bringing up some hogs on the road as we move in case those hornets take flight again."

The team all nodded, someone blared something over the sergeants radio which he responded to in the affirmative. He looked at them all one last time and added, "SWAT teams are positioned and ready to move, they will be providing us with sniper fire from the rooftops. They will be set up by the time we reach the bank. Watch out for civilians too, cops said they cleared the place out but there might be some stragglers. Let's go men, the convoy is already leaving."

They all jogged until they got to the main road and formed two columns on either side of the convoy of warthogs. There were about seven vehicles between the formation, six with machine gun turrets mounted on top and the last one held several passengers in the back.

He was the third one in the formation, walking between the first two hogs as they slowly made their way up the street to keep pace with the infantrymen.

The two men in front of him were casually chatting as the column advanced uphill on the street, with nothing better to do; he listened in on their conversation.

"Hey Hooch," asked the lanky marine who was taking point.

"Yeah Wilson?" Replied the marine directly in front of Schaeffer, a slightly shorter and stockier marine with a scarf round around his lower face to fend off the chill air.

"Why does this part of the colonies get so fucked up all the time?"

"I dunno Wilson I just work here." The marines went silent for a bit, before Wilson continued.

"These buildings are cleared out right?"

"Yeah Wilson, cops said they cleared them out. Why?"

"Mighty good place for an ambush is all..." they walked in silence again, the place was eerily quiet. Smoke was rising from a skyscraper up the hill, there were a few vehicles parked to the side of the street but otherwise the place was void of activity. The only sound besides the two marines talking was a couple of men in the last warthog and the distant sounds of the city. The only thing visible beyond the skyscrapers was the space elevator in the distance.

"Hey uh... Hooch."

"What Wilson."

"You said the cops cleared these buildings, right?"

"Yeah Wilson."

"Than who are those guys on the balcony over there?" Asked Wislon, pointing at a balcony on the fifth floor of a building down the road.

"What the hell are you talking about Wils- OH SHIT GET THE HELL DOWN!" Screamed Hooch, stumbling slightly to his side. Wilson stepped back in confusion as he realized something was going on, the lead warthog slammed to a stop as the gunner tried to rev up the machine gun but nearly fell off as the warthog behind them slammed into the back of the vehicle.

A rocket flew out from the balcony and hit slightly to the right of the warthog. There was screaming all around as the hog slammed sideways and slowly started to tip over. Schaeffer's eyes widened as the metal connected to his side and sent him sprawling towards the hard concrete of the sidewalk. He hardly at time to crawl out of the way of the tipping vehicle. Another rocket flew but was too high and destroyed the second floor corner of the building behind him.

There was chaos all around him as the world spun in a blur, the warthogs had all crashed into each other and couldn't move. The gunners were beginning to fire the machine guns and drivers and passengers were trying to get out of the vehicles and into cover. Bullets were pinging off the armored plates of the vehicles or chipping concrete off of buildings and a few impacted a marine or two from across the formation.

Some one screamed there was a sniper, but Schaeffer could hardly hear anything as the pinging in his ear was so loud and constant. The machine gunner of the second warthogs helmet popped off of his head in a gory mist his scalp exploding and then his head splitting into two. The mans body took a step back before going limp and falling onto the hood of the vehicle behind it.

A corpsman sprinted over and slid on his knees once he saw Schaeffer's body huddled up against the wall of the alley, he slapped him once and he snapped back into reality at the sudden contact; only now noticing the jagged piece of concrete sticking out of his shoulder. He gasped and cried out in shock, but the corpsman told him to shut up and got a firm grip of the rock.

"B-b-b-b-ut arteries!" He screamed out, remembering something he once read in a book; the corpsman ignored him and ripped the concrete out before casually throwing it to his side. Schaeffer screamed and tried his best not to black out from the pain, the corpsman slid a biofoam canister from his medical bag and stuck it into the open wound before allowing the foam to fill the cut and expand. Schaeffer screamed even louder as he swore he felt thousands of knives cutting into his wound.

The pain was only there for a moment before his shoulder went nearly completely numb. The corpsman slid Schaeffer's helmet off, Schaeffer sitting dumbfounded as he saw a huge piece of shrapnel sticking out from a large crack in the top and thanking god he had remembered to wear it. The man grabbed Schaeffer's assault rifle from the ground before handing it to him and running off.

Schaeffer slowly crawled behind the crashed warthog, various weapons were being fired from down the street. Most of the marines were huddled in cover, the warthog gunners having abandoned their vehicles after they saw the fate of their fellow machine gunner; each squad had wounded or dead from the sounds of it.

"THIS SHIT IS COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY F-ED UP!" He heard as he leaned over to fire a burst from his MA5B, as he did so he gasped in surprise; seeing Wilson pinned under the broken warthog. There was bis of metal across the ground and Wilson was unconscious or dead, his skin worryingly pale.

Hooch crawled over from down the alley to his left and took cover behind the wall of the building next to the warthog. When he leaned out to shoot he saw Wilson as well.

"OH GOD DAMN IT!" He screamed when he saw his comrades limp body, he quickly shouted for him to wake up but failing that he attempted to push the vehicle off.

"NEWBIE, SCHAEFFER, HELP ME OUT HERE!" He yelled at him, Schaeffer glanced out at the building they were taking fire from before gathering the courage to get on a knee and try and help.

"ONE... TWO... THREE... NOW," Schaeffer tried to sturdy his knees and pull upward, his hands gripping the back of the hog. They groaned from the effort but slowly made some progress as they desperately lifted the metal. Schaeffer's entire body was screaming in pain from the effort, and as they got it about a foot up he knew he was at his limit.

"RIPLEY, GET OVER HERE!" Hooch yelled at a marine huddled to the side of the second hog. He glanced at the machine gun, cursed and ran over before sliding into the alley next to them; bullets peppering where he ran.

"NEWBIE! LET RIPLEY HOLD IT UP. GET UNDER THERE AND DRAG WILSON OUT." Schaeffer looked over at Ripley who was firing from a crouched position at the building with his battle rifle. The man was muscular and would be far better for the job than Schaeffer.

Ripley dropped his rifle to the ground and took his place as Schaeffer stumbled into the alley, the fire at them was starting to get more concentrated as the rebels saw the movement of the hog. Schaeffer looked under the warthog at the dying man and briefly wondered what to do.

"HE IS GOING TO DIE GOD DAMN IT. DON'T LET HIM DIE." Schaeffer took a breath and tried to take a breath before lying flat on his stomach and crawling under the vehicle. He tried to ignore the fact that Hooch and Ripley's arms were shaking from the effort of keeping the large vehicle up enough for him to crawl.

Schaeffer pushed the broken remains of the turret aside with some effort and crawled in a bit more, he could see some small amount of breathing coming from Wilson's body and groaned as he realized he would have to help him out since he wasn't dead and then instantly felt guilty at the thought. Bullets were peppering the vehicle constantly at this point and the sounds of the bullets pinging against the armor felt like it would go straight to his brain.

Schaeffer grabbed Wilson's collar and satisfied with his grip, he yanked and then pulled himself back. Slowly, he repeated the motion and dragged the tall marine from beneath the massive vehicle for what felt like hours. Ripley screamed he couldn't hold it anymore as Schaeffer finally found himself outside again. Sweat was pouring down both the faces of Hooch and Ripley as their entire bodies shook from the effort. Wilson's body finally came free just as Ripley and Hooch dropped the vehicle down, sliding to the ground and gasping for air.

Schaeffer got into a half crouch and dragged the wounded Wilson into the alley before he pressed up against the wall itself and began firing at the building again. The corpsman ran over and quickly began to check the dying man as Schaeffer fired off several bursts. The rebel sniper took aim and shot once again and as Schaeffer slid back to reload, he saw the corner he was hiding behind explode as the snipers bullet tore through the concrete.

Schaeffer's heart flew into his throat at this and he suddenly decided that he did not want to lean out anymore.

From down the street came two men, ducking and winding around as the bullets hit the ground around them. Schaeffer saw that one of the men had a rocket launcher over his shoulder and the other was Sergeant Atterson.

The two finally made it to the top of the formation with Schaeffer, Hooch, Wilson and Riley and the sergeant screamed for them to hold fire. The four squads slowly stopped firing, man by man until they were only taking fire. The sounds of men reloading was evident around the road.

"COVERING FIRE!" He screamed as he leaned to the right of the flipped warthog and opened fire, marines all around responded in kind and rifles, light machine guns and marksmen weapons were firing off all in unison at the target. The fire they were receiving died down slightly as the building was peppered with bullets, windows shattering and concrete breaking. The man with the rocket launcher shouted for everyone to get to his side and fired the M19. Flames flew out from the back and the rocket flew forward.

The marines cheered as the weapon connected and slammed onto the balcony. The entire fifth floors windows shattered as concrete and other building materials flew out to all sides. A mans body went flying from the explosion, burning and missing the bottom half of his torso before smashing on the ground in a gory mess. The fire had now stopped.

"Third squad! Load the wounded on the hogs and get the hell out of here! LT's orders!" Schaeffer heard a sergeant shout, all Schaeffer could do was sigh and slump down against the wall. He only had a minute to rest. Over the radio, he heard the SWAT snipers tell them they were ready to fire.