[b]New Concordia - Day One[/b]

The summer heat pressed down like a steaming wet blanket. Clouds of tiny barely visible insects swarmed around the sweating, shirtless men. The pinhead sized bugs were native to New Concorida’s Earthlike biosphere and were not sufficiently interested in human biochemistry to bite or sting. They were feasting on the microscopic algae the men were disturbing as the labored in the muddy field a feast unlooked for in the usually placid surface of the rice paddy. The lack of malice made them no less annoying.

Rene Quentain straightened having finally managed to get the synthetic strap secured beneath the komo. The big beast, a reptilian equivalent of a draft horse on as many planets as their were humans, hissed in distressed confusion. The komo had trod on one of the local rock snakes and the resulting bite had sent it into a panicked bolt. Unfortunately for it, and its owner, that had landed it sunk waist deep in the boggy rice field.

“Alright, spin her up! Slowly for the Stars sake,” Rene yelled. He wiped a mud slickd hand across his brow in a forlorn effort to mop away sweat. The action succeeded only in replacing the sweat with a broad streak of brackish mud. Rene was of slightly more than average height and of a somewhat rangy build. Four years in the Imperial Marine Corp had clothed his spare frame with a sheath of wiry muscle though he lacked the bulk of the dedicated gym rats. His face, lacking its current adornment of river mud, was a handsome one in a lean and aristocratic caste. The slightly angular planes of his face might have made another man look grim but his lively green eyes recovered his features remarkable. 

An electric winch began to whine from the solid embankment a few meters away. The rice paddies were arrayed in loose rid patterns which followed the curve of a low walled river valley. The southern lowlands of New Concordia’s single continent were largely given over to agriculture of various types but it was low tech local production, at the ‘komo level’ for the most part. Fortunately this particular field was close to the shoulder of the valley and the roadway embankment which served as its border was solid enough to permit a rescue attempt.

The braided wire tow cabled drew tight, pulling the improvised harness Rene and his partner had spent most of the morning fashioning and fighting snug against the beasts underside. Fitting the damn thing had been the real problem, passing the cloth support straps beneath the stranded beast with nothing but an entrenching tool had been a hell of a job. Rene’s eyes followed the cable up to the improvised derrick of high pressure plumbing tubing. From there it ran back to a massive gnarled oak which squatted readily along the bank of the paddy, eagerly drinking from the abundant water for untold generations. Beyond that and as out of place here as a formal dinner, sat a dusty marine patrol vehicle.

Beside the air cushioned jeep stood Konrad Bowie, shirtless with combat pants and boots, and one hand on the manual control lever for the winch. Bowie was a five year veteran who would have been a sergeant by now if he could watch his mouth for more than a minute, a skill which seemed as far beyond Bowie as piloting a starship most days. His skin as dark copper in contrast to the paler Rene but it had the virtue of being mostly mud free at the moment. Bowie was a wise assed, bragart who found trouble for himself and anyone near him at every opportunity. Rene had liked him immediately.

“You know this aint gonna fucking hold Galahad! I can’t imagine why they didn’t send you to the engineers,” the other maine called, gently backing the throttle from the which as the motor began to whine.

“Yeah well if not you told me so,” Rene shouted back. Beside Bowie a small sun darkened farmer in a broad brimmed hat of woven reeds and a shapeless smock rocked back and forth in a mixture of fear and hope. Rene could understand his concern, the komo probably represented a good portion of the fellows survival margin. Still he would have had no chance of ever getting the thing out if Rene and Bowie hadn’t come pasted on their afternoon patrol. Rescuing animals was no job of the Marine Corp but it was a job and Rene wasn’t the sort to let something go undone simply because no one explicitly required him to do it. Bowie on the other hand had objected loudly and continually to the proposal despite the fact that Rene was handling the dirtiest most unpleasant elements. Bowie would complain if the Emperor himself arrived and offered him a palace on Capella and his daughter's hand in marriage but despite the continuous stream of complaints he hadn’t made a serious effort to derail the plan. Obligatory bitching aside service on New Concordia as boring. Days and months of the same patrols, the same sweeps of routine maintenance, the same faces and the same places, could drive a man insane. Without relief from routine a man could go crazy. Turn to booze, put a gun in his mouth or simply run off into the torrential monsoons in the strange seasonal madness which loomed so large in Neo Concordite folklore. Rene’s scheme at least promised diversion in a life which sorely lacked anything to differentiate one day from another.  

The mud around the animals six legs began to bubble as the winch took up the weight. Rene spared a concerned glance for the pressurised tubing and then leaned his weight against the komo, feeling is scaly skin rough against his shoulder. He began to rock back and forth, trying to create air pockets to break the suction.

“Give her a bit more!” Rene shouted at his fellow Marine. Dutifully Bowie pulled back on the lever and the motor increased its power with a rising wine. The komo hissed like a steam line as the cloth straps bit into its underside and then, with a suddenness that shocked all three onlookers the paddy gave up its hold on the animal. With a wet pop the seal broke and the winch lifted the animal free. The beast screethed in panic and kicked Rene hard in the chest, sending im sprawling face first into the muck.			


“You are three hours late because you got lost?” Lieutenant Van Heck’s voice was dangerously pleasant. Van Heck was a small neat man with a  neatly manicured mustache. His blue eyes bored into Rene and Bowie as the two marines stood at attention before his desk. Van Heck’s office as a small room constructed of used supply boxes and furnished sparsely with a simple desk, a small holo projector and a number of printed flimsies marked with watch and patrol assignments. A single large filing cabinet stood in a lonely corner, it had not been opened in the three years Rene had spent rotting in this backwater.

“Yes sir,” Rene and Bowie responded in unison to precise to have been rehearsed. Rene couldn’t actually hear the Lieutenants teeth grinding but his ruddy skin turned a noticeable shade darker. With a visible effort he picked up a faded flimsy and made a show of studying it.

“You got lost on a patrol route that both of you have been driving twice a week for three years?”

“Yes sir, no excuse sir!” Bowie snapped. Both Marines kept their eyes focused on the wall behind the officer, refusing to make eye contact in a technique which had existed as long as there had been soldiers. It hung there for a moment. There was no way Van Heck could prove anything so long as their story hung together, which Van Heck had enough experience to know it would. Rene doubted the officer was primarily angry at them, they just provided a convenient outlet for his frustrations. People didn’t get posted to a black hole like New Concordia if their carers were going well. Isolated bases like this were dumping grounds for the chronically insubordinate like Bowie and the politically embarrassing like Rene. As the throbbing vein in the officers temple slowed, Rene wondered what sin had bought Van Heck to this Star’s forsaken place. 

As the officer opened his mouth to decree the punishment for their tardiness, the chain link gate began to squeal on its oil starved track. All three man instinctively glanced from the single window. A column of men in green on green mottled fatigues were marching into the camp. They carried assault rifles, slug throwers rather than the more powerful plasma rifles the Marines used, but were otherwise lightly equipped. Only their officers wore any armor at all and they only had ceramic chest plates hinged open against the oppressive heat. Behind them an armored fighting vehicle, a locally constructed light tank by the looks, chuffed along on what smelled like a diesel engine.

“What are the damn Gids doing here?” Van Heck wondered, his pique momentarily forgotten, “Its early in the year for them to be exercising.”

Gid was  catch all and uncomplimentary term used to describe locally raised soldiers. Allegedly it derived from General Indigenous, a force organisation term from local soldiers outside the Imperial hierarchy but Rene had heard several other less flattering etymologies.  The Empire consisted of many thousands of worlds and maintaining an Imperial organization that spanned such a reach of space and cultures was a practical impossibility. The solution, for this as most other problems was delegation, local nobles were entrusted with raising, training and equipping forces for their, and in theory, the Empire’s, needs. In return the Imperial bureaucracy paid a portion of the raising costs.  The practice was a predictable focus of corruption, any fool could create paper soldiers who ate no rations, and received no training but nonetheless were paid for. So long as it didn’t get too out of hand, the Imperial government was content to let it slide.	

Of course some Imperial forces were required to maintain Imperial power. The Marines and the Imperial Navy were outside of the chains of command of local magnates and tended to more direct Imperial needs. Regional nobles were theoretically barred from operating warships but the ban was laxly enforced both because it was impossible to regulate armed merchantmen and because a certain amount of anti piracy activity was necessarily a local affair. Relations between Gids and Imperial forces were seldom good, but it tended to run towards bar fights rather than battles.

“Are we dismissed sir?” Rene asked with courtly politeness. It as the wrong thing to say, Van Heck whirled on the pair with a malicious gleam in his eyes.

“Why yes corporal, why don’t you take the private here and clime the southern sensor mast, the receiving head needs replacing and maybe the exercise can help you to get the lay of the land straight in your lofty aristocratic head yes?” Rene though the venom reserved for aristocrats in the officers voice might hold some clue as to why Van Heck as exiled here but it wasn’t the time for speculation.

“Yes sir!” both Marines chimed in sing song perfection but the Lieutenant was already waving a hand and punching buttons on his holo terminal doubtless looking for the movement orders of the recently arrived Gid detachment.

Rene stepped out of the office and into the cooling afternoon with a sigh. Outpost Romeo Tango Two Six, or the Rat Trap as it as known to its inmates, was not prepossessing.  The firebase was located on a small bald which rose from the highlands which bordered the river valley. It essentially consisted of a hundred square meters of bulldozed hilltop. The waste earth had been scraped into a low defensie berm which had been treated with an industrial plasticizing agent to stabilize it. A few extra feet were gained with a crown of sandbags and razor wire. Several large cargo containers and command trailers were laid out to provide housing, storage and command and control. In the summer it was hot, in the winter it was cold and in all seasons it swamed with insects of all types.

“Galahad, remind me to punch you in the mouth the next time you open it will you?” Bowie asked morosely as he pulled a tab stick from he pocket and tapped the contact ignitor against a dirt stained fingernail. Rene nodded solemnly and made a motion of zipping his lips. Replacing the sensor head meant climbing the thirty meters to the top of the antennae and then laboriously disconnecting and replacing the old unit. It was two hours work even in full daylight and that was failing quickly.

“Whats the good word Gid!” Bowie called around the tab stick to one of the local soldiers. The boy, he couldn’t have been twenty, turned and looked at the two Marines with an expression of abject terror. Rene cocked an eyebrow at the reaction but the man as already turning and hurrying away towards his fellows.

“What is his problem?” Rene asked as they strode towards the antennae at the southern end of the compound. Bowie puffed smoke out of his mouth and shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

“What am I the fucking Gid whisperer now?” the veteran demanded. They reached the bottom of the antennae, a triangular ladder like structure three meters to a side and with a heavy sensor box suspended from the top. Rene shrugged himself into a canas climbing harness and began to climb the metal superstructure. He had just set the first safety clip, clamping his line to the metal structure of the antennae when grinding of metallic gears sounded across the camp. Rene looked out from his elevated position and frowned. Most of the Rat Traps thirty two Marines were outside. Some were heating ration packs on chemical stoves, others were just taking the opportunity to relive their boredom by watching the Gids. Rene saws Lieutenant Van Heck speaking to one of the Gid officers. The grinding was the tank, it appeared to be backing up as though intending to turn and exit the camp. Gid soldiers were spreading out throughout the camp though Rene doubted that as obvious to anyone without the advantage of his elevated view point. 

A sudden cold chill flashed through Rene as his mind collated the various inputs he was receiving. It seemed impossible to contemplate but there was no arguing with the stark logic of the situation.

“Bowie get-” he started to scream a heartbeat before the Gid officer drew a pistol and shot Van Heck in the chest. The fussy little Lieutenant staggered back with a look of comic shock on his face before a second round sent him spinning to the dirt. The camp exploded in chaos as Gid riflemen unslung their weapons and opened fire on the unsuspecting marines. They weren’t crack troops, but they were trained, they were close and they had modern automatic weapons. Rene saw a half dozen marines go down around a cook stove, one of the rounds striking the propellant tank and spraying the screaming wounded with burning kerosene. Grenades sailed through open doorways and windows blowing storms of glass and smoke from every opening as they detonated with hollow booming crumps. Below him Bowie unslung his plasma rifle, a marine never went without a weapon, and sent two terrified looking Gids toppling to the ground, their combat webbing blazing where the plasma bolts spent their energy in blasts of heat and light.

“Get the fuck down here!” Bowie screamed as he scanned for a target, rifle to his shoulder. Rene tried to jump but his webbing as still attached to the safety line and snubbed him up with a chest crushing jolt. He screamed in frustration and grabbed for his belt knife, not trusting himself to find the release catches in time. The tank fired with a world ending crash, the recoil of its heavy electrochemical canon rocking it back on its poorly maintained suspension. Bowie seemed to leap sideways as the base of the antennae erupted in fire and smoke. The shockwave drove Rene upwards but his climbing harness again caught him like a fish on a line, biting white agony into his shoulders as it arrested his motion. The world spun drunkenly and steel screamed like all the butchered animals in the universe as the antennae began to topple. Amazingly Rene still had his knife in his hand. Frantically he hacked at the climbing harness as the multi ton array began to topple with the peculiar grace of the truly catastrophic. One of the canvas straps parted a omnt before the antennae hit the berm. The final jolt snapped the mutilated harness and Rene flopped to the ground, gasping desperately but unable to suck in any air to clench the fire in his chest.	 He had just enough time to look up and see the shattered remains of the sandbag wall tumbling down the berm towards him. He made a single feeble attempt to rise but his muscles refused to do anything more than desperately suck at the air. A moment later the world disappeared in an avalanche of sandbags and razor wire. Pressure. Air. Darkness.