Getting The Dregs
“Get down!” The Sergeant screamed as another salvo came whistling in. The Dreggers had been hard at it since dawn broke, trying to force the troops out of position and back into the hills. Luckily, only five of guys had been caught out by their attacks, and the plan was still a go to rush their position once the sun got high enough to allow movement across the planet's surface without full cold-shielding.
War was hell, or so the saying went, but Lt. Chance Guston was coming to realize that hell had literally frozen over; Phi Alpha VI was a terrible little world, but from what their intelligence indicated, was the Dregger stronghold in this sector.
He grit his teeth as the bombs fell. The Glassteel shield above his head would protect him from anything the Dreggers could throw at him, but they had taken to spacing out their barrages in such a way that guys felt comfortable they were over, stood up, and then took a Glowbomb full in the chest. They all did the same thing when that happened: ran around screaming for the ten seconds they had left and then lit up like a torch and collapsed inward. The best minds in the fleet had been trying to figure out how the damn things worked since the war started with no success.
The attacks were coming faster now as the Dreggers started to realize that the advance couldn't be stopped. Guston was proud of his men; they'd fought well over the last three months planet-side, and the entire company, along with the twelve others on the surface, was starting to make real strides toward the Dregger capital. Scans hadn't given them much of what it looked like, but it didn't really matter; they had enough men grounded that they should be able to take down anything that got in their way.
“Release!” The Sergeant bellowed and the men stood up. They'd tried loudhailers and PA's , but Sergeant Griff Tannen was louder than any electronic system they could find, and managed to give commands a sense of urgency that other methods just couldn't convey. So long as he didn't take a one-off Glower to the chest, they'd be fine no matter what the Dreggers sent their way.
Dreggers. Glowbombs. Phi Alpha – whatever. Guston had been on countless planets over the course of the war, something he'd never signed up for when he joined the core. Earth always had its share of squabbles, and he figured that at worst he'd be up along the Red Line dealing with the Martians and their ilk, but even the Earth's little sister had been relatively quiet over the last two decades.
It was an unprovoked attack by Dreggers that had sent Guston and his men blasting further into space, heading to a small moon two solar systems over. That was the first time he had ever seen a Dregger, and he still had no idea what they looked like under all their tech gear. Each one was six or seven feet tall, covered in overlapping metal plates with pulsing electronic connections, and he had never seen beings that could move so fast or strike so hard. They hadn't been prepared for such ferocity, and out of fifty good men, twenty-five died to the three Dreggers that occupied what looked like a forward recon station. Guston was furious; he hadn't been told anything about the enemy's capabilities, and he hated losing men for reasons that were easily avoidable.
Inquiries with Command were met with stoic silence, and Guston came to realize that they knew as little about their enemy as he did. The boys in Command had a way of ignoring things, like the first manned expo mission they sent out that never came back or their disastrous attempt to colonize Neptune. If things went their way, the faces of one of the generals would be all over the VisiScreens, but if something didn't go as planned, it was a struggle get them to admit they'd done anything in the first place. The Dreggers were an unknown, and so Command kept their mouths shut, and good men died.
Shouldering his rifle, Guston took a moment to re-focus. Good men always died in war, and this Command was not so different from any other that had been in power. It was the men and women in the field that did the learning and the suffered the pain – and it was Command that took the credit.
“Back inside!” He screamed, and the men moved toward the bunker they'd erected. He didn't have the voice of the Sergeant, but so long as Glowbombs weren't dropping, it was good enough. They still had three hours before the temperature would make movement safe on the surface, so there was nothing to do but wait and hope that the Dreggers held off.
A commotion near the gate set him running, and once he saw its focus he was throwing men aside, bellowing for them to let their commander through.
It was small for its kind, its red helmet dented and worn, and its armored plating in a poor state compared to the others that Guston had seen. Dreggers didn't usually come alone, and they'd come in firing, not send some half-pint to do their work for them.
Kneeling down beside it, Guston cleared his sidearm and set it against the thing's chest. At close range, the armor was no good against even a conventional bullet.
“Why did they send you?”
The thing made a whirring sound in response, a keening sort of wail that set most of the men back a step. He had heard Dreggers speak before, but getting used to it took time.
They could be seeking a parley, but that seemed unlikely given their track record. Looking the creature over, he could see marks and scars far older than anything his men could have inflicted, and he realized that the thing was injured.
What would the Dreggers do with an injured man?
He slapped the trigger down, hammering bullet after bullet into the body. The men, stunned by his pure rage, took another step back.
“It's hurt. Living bomb, I'm guessing. Strip that armor. We need intel.” He stood up and sheathed his pistol, but a collective gasp turned him around.
There was no mistaking it; sure, there were subtle differences between what he'd consider “normal” and this, but the head under the helmet of their dead Dregger was that of a fifteen year-old human boy.
- D
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