Nails

The fogbreak hung like a thick gray wall ten meters in front of us. Ten meters is really only about thirty feet, but it made telling the difference between a six foot man and an eight foot ape nearly impossible. Not helping our situation was the fact that the fog was thick enough to render our laser ammunition useless; lasers are really just highly juiced up light, and atmospherics like fog or heavy rain cause excessive beam refraction. Like I said, this didn’t help,as it takes a lot of powdered ammo to bring a Cygni down.

A little background on El Dorado:

El Dorado is more of a moon than a planet.Approximately the size of Luna, it boasts a thin atmosphere(just breathable with augmentation),blood red soil, a climate not unlike the Amazon in July, and extremely mountainous topology, covered almost entirely by nearly petrified vegetation. It’s an eighty -one day FTL trip from Solace Forward, and would be ignored completely if not for Carter’s Milk. The Milk, found exclusively on El Dorado, is the only naturally occurring cure for heart disease known to science. It takes a lot of rocktrees to harvest a meaningful quantity,and that usually means mounting a large harvester operation. Since El Dorado lies deep in Cygni space, most do not come back.

Which is why we’re here.

Taking cover between the few remaining rocktree stumps left standing, three of us were laying down suppressing fire,buying time for the survivors of second and third squads. Sergeant Merritt and Specialist Chen had my left and right. Up ahead, we could hear more than see sporadic gunfire- staccato bursts from the supervelocity automatics the apes use mixed with the steady chiff chiff of our light sluggers-and we were hearing to much of the former and not enough of the latter for my liking. All of it getting closer by the second.

It was Chen that noticed them first. Three forms huffing towards us through the fogbreak, screaming. As one, we sighted in on them, and I think Chen would have lit them up if Merritt hadn’t shouted "Hold your fire, they’re ours!" first. The men-I recognized Emery, Ward, and Winer, all third squad-broke through the fog, wide eyed and sprinting through the mud. Winer spun as he cleared the fog , emptying his rifle into it before rejoining what was left of his squad. Ward and Emery never stopped; they ran right through us, stumbling up the hill to our defensive perimeter. As Winer passed, I shot a foot between his ankles.

" Goddammit troop, get down!", I screamed as he skidded into the mud. I yanked him up by his load bearing harness,pulling him face to face so hard our helmets banged.

" What happened, sergeant? Where is your squad!"

The look he gave me-stark terror with some desperation thrown in-told me that his training and previous combat experience had deserted him. Completely.

"We found Third,sir! We fuckin’ found third,sir!", he screeched in my face, "and the monkeys are eatin’ em the fuck up! Eatin’ em all the fuck up and...." that’s when I pushed him away on his ass into the mud.

A low, unearthly howling from up ahead raised the hair on my neck. No more chiff chiff.

" Sir, we gotta fall back," said Merritt,eyes scanning ahead for more of ours, and something else. "Apes are getting closer." He looked at me. "We gotta fall back now."

I looked into the fog, then over my shoulder , up the hill.

"Shit." I looked at Winer. "Get your ass up. You cover us up the hill. Chen, let ‘em know we’re coming up."

" First squad, First platoon!", shouted Merritt, as Chen’s radio relayed my orders up the hill, "fall back to the hilltop! Bounding overwatch! Go!"

The men and women of first squad-so far, intact-rose from behind whatever cover they had found and began a hasty but controlled retreat up the hill. As Merritt ,Chen,Winer and I were the closest to the base, we brought up the rear.