Terra-33 Ep. 07

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*****

Terra-33

Episode 0.7

"What did you think was gonna happen?" Trix asked the medic after they reached the exam room which contained six of the Med-eVac hot dogs. She was currently perched on top of one, the step at the base of the unit making for a nice footrest. The comfortable weight of a gun belt around her waist with a pistol on one side and a couple of reloads on the other made her feel much more physically secure. She had forced Carol to stop by the lockers, refusing to go with her without arming herself from her storage cube.

"That Thor would find a new target."

"That is one of his jobs, finding targets..." Trix decided to play dumb for now.

"You know what I mean," Carol said, flipping her hand in an exasperated gesture.

Trix raised her eyebrows and shrugged, wanting to see where Carol would go next.

"You," Carol said the word explosively. "You are his new target. He wants to hurt you, probably rape you, but he wants you in pain. That's what he likes, I think, girls in pain."

Trix watched the doctor shiver almost imperceptibly, but it was there. Carol turned away from her and began pacing. Trix wasn't sure what to say, so she just stayed quiet, watching and waiting. It was obvious that Carol had something to get off her chest. Her hand was throbbing but she didn't want to bring that up just now.

"Thor... 'Fucker' is an apt descriptor," Carol was still pacing and gave another fling of her arm. "But he's the boss here, his words hold a lot of sway with the Earth mercs. He uses that to get to you, knows that you won't find any sympathy there..."

Trix thought she knew what was going to come next. Carol looked a lot like her, very slender and almost fragile. Trix knew she was tough and strong for her size but she also knew her physical limitations. Carol's hair was blonde and short and she was darker in color but there was a general resemblance. The woman finally stopped pacing and looked up at her before speaking. Her eyes were hard and Trix saw pain warring with determination.

"Until you showed up, I was his target," Carol revealed, confirming Trix's suspicions. "I appreciate being delivered from his attentions but I don't want you to be hurt by him. Beatrix, we need to come up with a plan here."

"First, don't call me that," Trix said quickly.

Carol waited for a moment then leaned forward and shrugged, shaking her head in confusion. "What should I call you then?"

"I was hoping you'd ask!" Trix jumped down from her perch. "I'm Trix."

Carol shook her hand slowly, still a little put out with her behavior. Trix knew she was annoying the doctor and probably shouldn't because the woman obviously cared enough about her to approach her with this. It was hard to resist though.

"What kind of plan did you have in mind?"

"I poisoned him," Carol let the words hang for a moment. "It was a while ago now. That's one reason he leaves me alone, mostly."

"Let's just do that again, then no more problem," Trix thought about what she had just said. "Wait, why is Thor still alive if you poisoned him?"

"It wasn't a fatal dose, enough to put him down long enough to get him in my exam room. When he was on that bed," Carol pointed, "and very out of sorts, I threatened him with a scalpel. In a very specific place."

"He's scared of you then? Why does he let you stay?"

"I'm the best field surgeon on Terra-33."

"And so modest," Trix grinned at the doctor's expression.

"Statistically speaking, there is no better field surgeon."

"I didn't argue the point..."

Carol sighed, exasperated again. Trix was thinking that it must be a regular emotional state for her. "He hasn't tried to rape me again, but I think it would hurt his pride too much to just fire me. Also, Philip would protest and possibly quit. Then he'd be without a medical staff."

"Why do you stay?"

"The money. Someone I care very much about is very sick. The treatment is expensive and this is one of the best paying jobs in the medical field without highly specialized training."

"I thought all doctors made tons of creds wherever they were," Trix said suspiciously.

Carol laughed abruptly, then realized that her patient was serious. "No, they don't. Hazard pay for being on a colony alone adds percentages. Then there is the fact that I'm attached to a combat team which adds more. You get the idea. Give me your hand."

Trix extended her arm and let the doctor grasp her palm and rub along the bones of her hand with her thumb. She paused for a while at the small finger and wrist, feeling around more carefully when Trix winced. Carol rummaged around in a cabinet and removed a syringe, filling it from a little vial.

"What is that?"

"Corticosteroid and a local anesthetic, want to see?" Carol held out the vial which Trix took and read the unknown medications listed. "It will reduce the pain and swelling and provide a little pain relief tonight. You didn't break anything but your hand is going to become hard to use for a few days without treatment."

Trix handed back the vial and presented her left hand again, closing her eyes as the needle came arcing down. The puncture was brief and mostly painless and when she opened her eyes again, Carol was dropping the needle from the syringe into a container.

"What are we going to do about Thor?" the doctor asked without turning.

"I wasn't going to do anything for now. I'm going to stick to Remi and Ida so he can never corner me alone like that again. If he tries something, I'm just gonna shoot him in the dick," Trix removed her pistol from the holster and brandished it for effect. "With this."

"That won't work, most likely."

"What do you know about guns?"

"I know that it has a remote trigger lock," Carol indicated the Safe-T logo on the small addition to Trix's backup weapon. "You think he won't turn your guns off before he tries something?"

"There's a manual override," Trix said doubtfully.

Carol just raised her eyebrows in response and turned back to her cabinets. As Trix looked down at the gun, wondering if Thor had somehow sabotaged the weapon fully, Carol came back with a little scanner. She began running it up and down Trix's body, pausing here and there while looking at a display on her side of the unit. Trix waited semi-patiently, tapping her foot against the floor. When Carol paused at the crotch of her priming suit and raised an eyebrow, Trix just smiled, wondering how much the doctor knew.

"You seem alright except for the hand. There is some tissue bruising here and there but nothing serious. Do you know how to operate one of these?" Carol asked as she handed Trix a silver cylinder about the size of her index finger.

She stared at the tube for a moment, seeing a hinged cap and a button on the other end. "Nope, never seen one of these."

"If you need to, flip the cap away. There is a flat surface which you will press against the target. Try for full contact with flesh, an area like the arm or leg is best. Depress the button there once contact is made and a spray will inject the target. It works very quickly, entering through the pores and penetrating the bloodstream. In a few heartbeats, he will be asleep for at least an hour."

"He being Thor?"

"I can't think of any other target here, can you?" Carol snapped.

"No, none of the other mercenaries seem to be interested," Trix said with a wistful sigh. The doctor frowned at her and motioned for the door. "Hey doc, what is your last name? Don't you MD types like to go by doctor so-and-so?"

"Dr. Myers."

"Ok, Carol, thanks for the meds," Trix said, hefting the spray injector in her much more comfortable left hand. The syringe that the doctor had shot her up with was already making her feel a lot better. "See ya!"

Trix didn't let the slim doctor get another word in, but skipped out of the room and down the main passage of the ship. A few people glanced her way but most of the mercenaries were asleep and the ones who weren't didn't seem interested in talking to her. She sprinted across the scrubby grass, dodging the occasional sharp-looking rock. In her right hand was the pistol in its holster and in her left was the injector. Her head snapped back and forth but she hadn't seen another person by the time she reached their quarters. Slipping in, she barred the door again and snuggled into bed next to Remi. He and Ida both groaned and shifted but neither woke. As soon as she laid down and got comfortable, Trix realized she needed to pee.

§

The next day, under the bright glare of the dual suns, Trix felt much more secure in herself and the world. The uneasy feeling that came over her the previous night had faded and meeting a new friend helped. The spray injector that she had tucked into a waist pouch of her armor also made her feel secure. Even if Thor was able to remotely disable her triggers, she would be armed and would have Remi and Ida as well.

The mercenaries were deployed in a long line, led by buggies with one of the large command APCs on either side of the headquarters vehicle. Thor assumed that if the slumpers attacked, they would be better served to be well spread instead of clustered. The order had come down early in the morning and Trix had been happy to jump up into the machinegun nest and hunker down to sleep more. Even with the rough ground, Ida's driving skills allowed her to sleep with only the occasional jolting scare. Now that it was mid-morning and they'd been rolling for a couple of hours, she was alert and munching on some travel rations Remi handed up through the hole in the roof of the buggy. She could barely make out the command vehicle in the dust of their passage, far behind them.

"Did you get enough sleep last night?" Remi asked. He had looked her over a few times since they decamped and Trix suspected that he suspected something.

"Maybe," she said cautiously. "I had a lot on my mind, plus, I was pretty sore..."

Remi smiled broadly in response, turning away to tap at his little console. Trix made a game of spotting the occasional tree in the scrubland. Now that they had passed the last forested area, the land was a uniform yellowish-brown color. The rare trees looks fairly unhealthy. Jagged cliffs were even more prevalent now that there was nothing to break up the landscape. They rose against the horizon line to the west, menacing the vehicles a little more with each kilometer.

"Water soon," Remi observed. Trix looked down over his shoulder and saw that he had a map on display over most of the screen.

"There," Ida said, pointing her left hand to the east.

Trix looked over the top of the buggy and saw a huge expanse of blue just beginning on the horizon. Geologists had suggested that the desert and the ocean that bordered it shifted regularly based on time-lapse studies they had performed with the current data. As they neared the large equator, the command vehicle would be actively mapping the terrain for the cartographers, geologists and myriad other environmental scientists. Trajectory^Up's mission plan was to travel south until they reached impassible ocean then parallel the mountains as they returned north in search of a defensible site with arable land. Once found, the team's engineer and mechanic would assemble the command vehicle's artillery into stationary units set into the cliffs. Once the site was secure, the team would return and escort volunteer pioneers back to the new city. That was the plan at least.

"It looks like a lot of water," Trix commented absently, half distracted by her own daydreams of injecting Thor with doctor-prescribed roofies and kicking him, a lot.

"Yes, I think we may be turning back faster than anyone anticipated."

"Ida, break off and move southeast, 45 degrees from current heading," Remi said, inputting trajectory commands into his map. The whole thing was linked between all of the vehicles in the convoy and they'd been given free reign for the time being.

It didn't take long for them to reach the coast, and Trix could see that it was in fact a coast, not the edge of a lake. In the distance, blue water faded all the way to the shimmering horizon. She had noticed the air temperature rising in the upper left of her HUD but hadn't really paid attention. Their armor had internal cooling and warming mechanisms and would keep a human body at a tolerable temperature for days if the systems weren't damaged. It was a little disconcerting to be walking around with flammable lithium-ion batteries in various places throughout the armor, but the benefits far outweighed the risks. The suits had been tested and retested, armor reinforced in places where it was needed, and overall, state-of-the-art combat gear would hold up far longer than the body inside of it. You could be dead five times over before a battery burst its fuel cell and lit you on fire. Not as reassuring when you think about it that way, Trix mused.

"It looks like there's nothing but ocean as far south as we can see," Remi said thoughtfully as Ida tracked along the coastline. "Aerial, what's it look like from up there?"

Trix perked up, curious if they had finally reached the turning point.

"Same as you can see, no land for miles, if at all, before the landmass south of the equator. There are some odd rock formations that run straight down into the water. They don't look natural."

"Tech-8, this is Isaac in APC-2, come alongside while we reposition."

"Aerial is deploying automated scouts," the co-pilot's deep voice cut into the comm.

"All ground units, close formation," Thor growled, "Headings uploaded, we're going to get closer to the mountains for the return trip."

"Faster than I expected," Trix commented as Ida spun the wheel to return to the main body. They were still a kilometer away when the first landmine erupted beneath the buggy on the farthest western end of the formation. The comm exploded in orders and chatter, Trix switched immediately to their fireteam channel, not wanting to get distracted. Ida let up on the accelerator and they glided along the tightly packed dirt and sand. When another explosion ripped through the afternoon, Ida braked completely.

Trix watched as fire engulfed two of the technicals in the distance. They were fairly close to the unnatural rock formations, and now she saw what the pilot had been referring to. Each rock was spaced about two hundred meters apart and they were fairly uniform in size and shape. They sliced up through the horizon like miniature Washington monuments, obelisk-like in appearance. Suddenly, as if following a coordinated order, the bases of the nearest ten pillars slid up. Ejecting from each, fast-moving land vehicles swarmed around each other before revving toward the human convoy.

"Shit!" Remi cursed, readying his grenade launcher.

"Aerial, come around and strafe them, now! All technicals free, fall back with command team. Form up and prepare anti-vehicle armaments," Thor bellowed on the comm override channel, his voice reaching every helmet that was still active.

Trix checked her magazine and cleared the bolt, just in case. She quickly swapped out her Sharps for Drills, hoping that she had enough armor-penetrating ammo to deal with this many vehicles. They had primarily loaded Sharp and Burn, thinking their main enemy would be infantry. Previous encounters with the aliens hadn't indicated that they had any advanced mobility options. The vehicles screaming toward them were small and sleek, a main shaft with curving arms on either side. She wasn't sure how they were propelled, but it looked as if something like jets gave them lift, with a main propulsion flaming behind each. They streaked along only a meter or so from the ground, forming into little clusters of four or five. When they engaged the trailing APC, Trix saw larger versions of the ground weapons they had already utilized.

As Ida creeped up to rendezvous with Isaac's APC, Trix saw four of the slumpers loose weapons on the other armored carrier. Three of them fired chunky kinetics, the reports thumping over the growl of engines. The other stopped in midair and an array of tubes extended before popping mortar rounds into the sky. The APC's automated defenses snapped into action, little red lasers streaking into the air to intercept the mortar shells before they could land. Trix was distracted by a series of airborne explosions like fireworks as they connected. The APC and technical nearest it had engaged with their own weapons and two of the slumper vehicles took huge swathes of machinegun fire across their main cylinder. The kinetic weapons they had fired rocked the APC in quick succession. Trix could see that they hadn't penetrated the armor when the dust settled, but they had to have done some damage. The hit slumper vehicles wobbled out of the air, slamming down in the dust.

She barely had time to process the implications of that brief encounter when a cluster of little ships streaked into range. Trix held down the trigger and let her compensators absorb the recoil as she led the nearest one, finding her range and then her target. While the slumper she hit went nose first into the dirt, the others scattered, spinning in different directions with hugely superior mobility. Ida was in full defensive mode now, accelerating to at least sixty kilometers per hour and making random movements to avoid incoming fire. Trix hadn't heard any weapons reports from their attackers yet, but it had to be coming. She heard Remi's grenade launcher burping below her as he peppered the ground with proximity charges. A slumper vehicle unlucky enough to try to get behind them ran over one and then went up into the air in two pieces as the grenade split it in half.

The comms were oddly quiet and Trix was lost in her own world of cracking machinegun fire, explosions, and the roar of engines. She rotated the turret to the right and tracked another airborne enemy, letting a stream of heavy rounds loose in its path. It ate most of them, flipping end over end as some critical lift component failed.

"Ida," Remi yelled, "It looks like they are the same type of design as old, Earth fighter planes, weapons only deployable from the front or above. I bet they can't hit us accurately with mortars if we keep moving like this, try not to let any get a clean angle on us though!"

As he spoke, Trix watched another slumper vehicle slide into place directly behind their buggy. Her HUD beeped as Ida spun a sharp 90 degree turn. Trix's aim was fouled and she let up on the trigger, her muzzle searching for another target.

"Mortars!" Ida warned, braking completely.

As the buggy skidded around, anti-lock brakes trying to get traction on the dirt, Trix hunkered down. A roaring series of explosions slammed her around like a ragdoll but no debris or shrapnel hit her, and their technical seemed functional. When she looked up, a series of craters dotted the ground only meters in front of them. Trix found the offending slumper quickly, its tubes still deployed as it hovered near the coast. Right as she loosed a burst, she heard Remi's launcher burp and clenched her eyes shut at the result. When she looked again, the vehicle was slagged debris, flames igniting auxiliary explosions as the vehicle's own munitions burst.