Ross wore O's uniform as a tribute. This was a mistake. When he arrived into the chaos on Staging Station DD2770 the assignments officer mistook him for a returnee and assigned him to Three-Tiger, a veteran platoon. He brought the mistake to the attention of the platoon leader, and the sergeant listened politely, chewed his leather jerky and said "you in Three-Tiger now, son, because I need bodies more'n I need training", and then walked away.
The transport left while they were still stowing their gear, and they were in stasis before Ross had time to introduce himself to his new comrades.
They came out of stasis in orbit, fifteen clicks above the battleground, and Ross barely had time to register the transition before they were suiting up for the drop.
"New kid!" yelled a tough-looking vet, the name BAXTER stencilled on her helmet, and when Ross turned to her she shouted "Don't puke on your visor. Aim downwards! Downwards!" Ross nodded again, and Baxter punched him in the side of the helmet, in what Ross presumed was a gesture of encouragement, but one that left his neck sore and one ear ringing. "You goin' ta combat!" she yelled at him. "You a soldier new-born today!"
And then they dropped.
The landing craft hammered through the outer atmosphere, four platoons on board, a hundred and sixty men and women. Ross puked the whole way down, but he puked downwards, and while his suit filled with the stench of bile, his visor stayed clear.
As the glider pulled out of freefall and skimmed the air, the soldiers around him geared up for the fight. "We're goin' bug-huntin'!" yelled one hard-looking grunt, and Ross realised that whatever they were doing to prepare, he should be doing it too. He racked his weapon, checked the breach. It seemed clear, but he wouldn't have known if it wasn't. He checked the grenades slung on his chest. They were there. Were they safe? He didn't know. He found a switch marked "SAFE" on his rifle, and clicked it off. Baxter reached over and clicked it back on again.
Then they touched down.
The platoon bolted down the ramp and fanned out, weapons at the ready. The wind whipped the coarse sand across Ross's visor, and he followed Baxter, trying to ape her movements. She reached across once again and clicked his safety off.
"We move!" came the sergeant's bark in Ross's earpiece, and he followed Baxter as they sprinted towards a walled settlement at the head of the nearby ravine, the lander rising behind them. "Actors beyond, zero-oh-five!" came the bark, and Ross saw Baxter change direction. She dropped to one knee and took aim, and he did the same. "Mortars!" came the order, and Ross saw a two-man team of sappers with a shoulder-mounted launcher aim high into the ravine.
The first shot went over the walls and far into the hills, but when the explosion came the ground shook so hard it almost knocked Ross from his feet. The team prepared another charge, but even as the shout "Incoming!" came through his earpiece Ross saw the bugs coming over the wall. Fifteen feet tall, he could see why they were called "bugs", even though these killing machines weren't like any bug he'd ever seen. "FIRE!" came the order, but the platoon had already opened up. Although his urge was to blanket the onrushing horde with a sustained volley, Ross saw Baxter pick her targets and squeeze off a burst at a time, dropping a bug with each, and he tried to do the same.
The bugs were torn apart, but they kept coming, the humans heavily outnumbered, and just as the fire-team had readied the next mortar the bugs were on them. Baxter put a burst into the lead bug, but as it fell it knocked the fire-team back, and the mortar discharged straight upwards.
Ross stared upwards. It didn't take experience to know that a mortar round that went straight up would have to come straight down.
When the explosion came he felt like he'd been killed, his family back home had been killed, and the life he'd lived before coming here had been killed too. The blast threw him three hundred feet across the gravel and when he came up against the boulder that stopped him only the strength of his suit saved him from breaking every bone in his body and mashing his heart onto his breastbone.
He came to gagging for breath, and immediately puked on his visor. He dragged himself to his feet, and stood there, unsteady even with the support of the suit's exo-skeleton, and through the streaks he saw the damage done.
The crater was thirty metres across, and it stood between where he'd thought the platoon had stood, right where the bugs had been most concentrated. Three-Tiger was strewn across a good square mile of terrain. He was the only one standing, one or two were moving, but most were motionless, prone. The bugs were spattered all over the place, green gore everywhere, and those that still moved were dying. Except...
Ross turned.
There, not twenty feet from him, was a bug.
It was injured, but it was alive. He raised his weapon. But something stayed his finger on the trigger. The bug looked pitiful. It made a high-pitched metallic scream, a sound Ross had never heard before and never wanted to hear again, but one he knew could only have been a cry of pain. And then it turned towards him. It had many eyes, but Ross could see the plea for mercy in its expression, and he lowered his weapon, and reached his hand out to it.
It moved so fast he barely had time to move backwards, but that two-inch movement was enough to save his life, as the spear-like prong on the bug's great tail came down, gouged a line down his face-plate and buried itself in the ground between his feet. He stumbled backwards, his weapon in one hand, firing wildly, and by the time he'd recovered his composure enough to bring the gun to bear on its target the magazine was empty. But then he noticed that the bug's spike had hooked the belt of grenades from his chest.
But not all of their rings.
The bug raised the spine again, ready to strike, and the grenades exploded.
It screamed again, its main weapon destroyed, and with one leg it reached out towards him, even as he fumbled to replace the mag in his rifle, but then the leg seemed to explode from within, and then the head, and the bug collapsed into itself, dead, and Ross realised that Baxter was beside him, her finger on the trigger of her weapon, putting the bug down forever.
She turned to him, stared into his visor, expressionless. Then she smiled. "Happy birthday, shithead!" she yelled, then walked away, heading for the settlement walls.
Ross watched her go. And he realised he was smiling. "You're alive," he said to himself. "Today is a very good day."
He snicked the magazine home, racked a round into the breach and flicked the safety on. Taking off after Baxter, he marched off into the war.
