Doing The Good Work

Posted on Mon Dec 10th, 2018 @ 1:08am by The Narrator
Edited on on Tue Mar 12th, 2019 @ 12:44pm

Mission: S1E2: A Temple To New Gods
Location: Eg-M4-S02, Backstop System
Timeline: MD2-1600-Engineering Module Hull

12 Hours After Return From Radio Source

Corporal Marley Tomes looked down at the wrist computer strapped to the forearm of his Marine combat armour and tapped at the environmental controls again. No matter what he tried the vacuum rated armour hard shell was at its maximum setting for coolness according to the life support pack. But he still felt hot, like his skin was steaming off. Made thinking a chore.

"Corporal? You okay?"

Marley snapped out of his headspace, sending little orbs of sweat canon balling around his helmet. The mag boots kept him attached to the hull, and part of him had begun to forget why he was out there. In front of him was Private Jennings, who even through the tinted armour visor of the suit had the same parlour and sweat-soaked look to him that Marley did.

"Yeah, yeah I'm good," he said with a thumbs up. "Just trying to get this cheap pile of tin to turn the fans on. Or Starfleet's gonna get roasted ham instead of Marine when we get back inside."

"I hear you, Corporal," Jenning's grinned weakly and returned to the work they had been assigned. It was pretty simple all things considered, a trio of tubes with support struts at that top that extended out to secure it in an upright position. All Jenning's and Marley had to do was bolt it into place on the hull, which they'd nearly completed.

He stomped over to look over the Private's work, which wasn't half bad all truth be told. The scanner's had told them this patch of hull plating was clear of anything mission critical, so punching holes in it with a bolt gun wasn't going to blow them all to kingdom come.

"Nice..." Marley said, walking around the now secured tubes and unspooling the hard data connection from the wrist computer and plugging it into the tube's data socket. Diagnostic text scrolled across his visor for a second as the two machines talked to each other. "And...yup, all green. You do good work for a grunt."

"Pity we can't set firing control to the central computer. Then we'd not have to man this thing in sauna suits," Jenning's said.

"Yeah, well the mutineer's put the nix on that plan when they tried to kill the Colonel. We do this old school, that way they can't turn our gear against us. Its why we're using battery packs and not the main reactor, because that ass hole Axon wrecked the command codes," Marley said with true anger in his voice. Axon was a starfighter jock, and Marley had been in enough ground-based missions where close air support had saved his bacon not to have respect for the Gryphon jockeys.

But Axon had gone against the Colonel, and more importantly, he had gone against The Angel. Marley couldn't even consider doing that, and even thinking about how was making him feel sick to his stomach. Or maybe it was the fever? He shook his head again, plastering some more sweat orbs on the visor.

"Should have killed the lot of them when we got back," Jenning's said, a hard edge entering the young man's voice. "They didn't go down there, they weren't chosen like us."

"Yeah, but the Colonel wanted to give folks a chance to listen to what he had to say. And the rest of the Platoon got the message, along with those environment techs. We kill everyone who doesn't know what we know, we'll be surrounded by bodies. The Colonel was right to try and talk'em into seeing things his way," Marley said soothingly. "At least now we know there are people on our side, the righteous side. And then there are those who are against us."

Like Corpsman Philbrick. He'd been the Platoon medic for Gamma Platoon, left behind on the Engineering Module when the Colonel led the ground recon mission. And whilst everyone else had been...convinced to see things the Colonel's way when they returned, Philbrick hadn't. He'd tried to convince the Colonel he was sick, that they were all sick.

The Colonel had very calmly told Philbrick he was wrong, and upon further discussion buried the monofilament edged combat knife into the medic's throat. Which was okay, because Philbrick hadn't been with Them. He'd been against Them.

The Angel had told them so.

=/\="Tail Pipe 3, this is TacOps. Report status."=/\=

"TacOps, Tail Pipe 3," Marley said into his comm set. "We're all set on this side, green across the board with no mission crits."

=/\="Glad to hear it Tail Pipe 3. You have customer's incoming. Some of the mutineers raided an arms locker and got through perimeter security and into the small boat bay in your area. We think they're trying to use one of the maintenance skiff's to escape to the Support Module."=/\=

"Copy TacOp's, we'll be ready. Tail Pipe 3 out." Marley said, making a thumbs-up gesture to Jenning's with one hand as the Private stepped aside.

Clamped to the hull as they were, up and down and above and below lost meaning. The overall spherical shape of the Engineering Module turned vaguely cylindrical at the connection point that would see it lock onto the Support Modules base. But just beneath it was a set of shuttle and small craft bays. And Tail Pipe 3, and the 4 other fire teams set up on the hull had been spaced around to give them a line of sight on anything that came out. The Colonel was a smart one, Marley would have to give him that.

Still plugged into the data socket, he used the suit's iris scanner to blink his way through various menu's projected onto his visor. He found the one marked MANPADS-TRIDENT. Into the menu he went and toggled all of the safeties off.

ARMED.

"Remember to disable the IFF tracker. The thing won't lock onto a Starfleet bird if it thinks its a friendly," Jenning's added. Marley nodded, that was a good thing to remember. They had a limited stock of ordinance and the Man-Portable Air Defence System called a Trident would be a costly error if the missile left the tube and failed to lock on.

As if on cue a large amount of fast-moving scaffold left the open maw of the shuttle bay just around the curve of the Module. The engineering Skiff was little more than a control cabin pressurised for short sleeve work, manipulator arms and work lights. No impulse drive, but enough thrusters to get the job done. And those thrusters were burning brightly, jetting the Skiff off into open space.

=/\="Mayday, mayday! This is Ensign Tobar Smith from the Engineering Section to any and all Starfleet personnel in the system! Some sort of outbreak has infected the Marines on board the Engineering Module, their killing everyone! Or infecting them!"=/\= The Marine hard shell picked up the comm's broadcast from the Skiff, distracting Marley from the work of killing the missile launchers ability to tell friend from foe.

The Trident launcher flashed an amber warning message that its IFF tracker was offline, and Marley smiled.

=/\="I have eight engineering personnel on board, we are not infected! I repeat we are not infected!"=/\=

Well like the Colonel said, that was a damn shame.

The launchers expeller charge shot the slender missile up and away from the launcher. Small thrusters stuttered on either end of the meter long device, tipping it to one side as its sensor head picked out the fast-moving Skiff that was already beyond visual range. Then the impulse motor kicked in, and it was like the missile had never been there in the first place.

A second passed...and then a brief burst of light and debris off in the distance.

"That is a beautiful sight," Jenning's said.

"Just another day in the Corp," Marley said, wishing he could make the heat go away. "Doing the Angel's good work. Now reload, we might have more customer's today."