FLASH FICTION FRIDAY

Good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm weathered in and I'm not flying. The good news is I've got a Flash Fiction story up, on time and on target. More of my flash fiction here.

I hope you enjoy.

In Service To Empire: Candie

Sometimes we called her Candie.

But we never called her that to her face. To her face it was always "yes, Sgt-Commander" or "no Sgt-Commander".

Her standard line name and number, if you need to know the thing, was Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero and she was my Squad Commander.

Sgt-Commander Candidate Hero was the best Squad Commander I ever knew; they should have never given her that Medal.

Now, a Grunt Command Squad has twenty-one dudes assigned. There's the Sgt-Commander and two Sgt-Leaders. I was one of the Sgt-Leaders; my Upper Half Squad had me and nine other Grunts standard compliment; I had a medic, a weaponeer, one lawfare expert, a fabricator and five line Grunts. My backup skill identifier was Political, Social and Economic Manipulation. The Lower Half Squad had more weaponeers, a grenadier-- basically, the Lower Half brought the firepower a Squad would need. We were a mixed bunch.

But we was all Imperial Grunts, first and last.

We got it through Official Rumor Channels that Candie used to be in the Imperial Circus, which was flat out odd. Most times, Grunts retired and went to the Circus; it was rare if not unheard of for someone to go from the Circus to Grunt Command.

But there she was. I guess that explains why she always out thought and out shot us standard issue Grunts, most times.

They should have never gave her that medal.

We got the word to conduct a named operation; Onyx Dawn something or other. It was going to be a quick smash and grab on one of those damn Thousand Islands that lay off the south of eurasia. Candie briefed we were going to do a show of force, snatch some dead enders and move out. Didn't make sense to me; if it was just a matter of some dead enders, why not send in the Circus Clowns to assassinate them? I never figured that out and no one ever told me.

We prefer to come at night and from orbit.

A Squad can get anywhere on wally's world in about a half hour; it's just a matter of good thrust on one end and damn good braking on the other. The Orbitals track our drop capsule from launch and then they are supposed to insert a bot drop package (really a tube filled with all kind of nasty crawlers) to follow our firing solution down.

Well, this time the Orbitals kind of screwed the pooch. The bot package came in odd and burnt up somewhere over the Pacific. By the time our drop capsule punched into the ground and Candie rallied the squad, we were well and truly screwed; we just had the luxury of not knowing it at the time.

Now, Onyx Dawn VII happened early on in the Brushfire Wars. I mean, even way before anyone had even heard of the Committee for Intelligent Design. Evidently, some barbarian chieftain was infringing on some Imperial Patents; the Empire was only dicking around at the quantum level then, but you know how dangerous that could be if done wrong. Someone on Earth had to police the physics; that's what we Imperial Grunts did.

We were supposed to grab the barbarian chieftain, this Grand Master Flash, and bring him back to the Capital so the politicos could march him through in a Triumph, "pour encourager les autres".

We hit ground right outside Grand Master Flash's palace. The palace was standard barbarian crap; it was designed to over awe the masses, I guess. Our plan was to ignore the warm meat Civilians and go straight through his palace guard, like a hot knife through butter.

See, this is when those bots would have come in handy.

Instead of a standard population package, Grand Master Flash had modded his peeps into biobots. Damn illegal, even by the loose standards of the Agreed Framework.

As we breached the palace wall, Grunt Sidewell, in the Lower Half Squad sounded the alarm: first dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of biobots were massing behind us. Candie quickly got our lines arrayed; I took my Upper Half forward into the courtyard and started laying fire down into the palace. Candie moved back to direct the Lower Half and clear our rear areas.

It was then that all the weaponeers reported negative contact with the bot package.

Numbers. A Grunt Squad, pound for pound, can take down any barbarian tribe. If properly equipped. Without our bots package, we were fighting blind and had only the firepower we carried in with us. I directed my Upper Half, kept up a sustained rate of fire and hacked the barbarian Network. Standard crap you'd expect: "defend the Grand Master", "the Empire is here to steal", "they will rape your wives and daughters". I dropped a couple of meme bombs into their data flow and logged out. When you are getting shot at from 360 degrees, then Political, Social and Economic Manipulation is not going to pull your chestnuts out of the fire.

We could not go forward and we couldn't go back; the drop capsule was doing a good job of defending itself, but from our position to the capsule was thousands of pissed offed, illegally modded humans. Eventually, they would get us. A Grunt could not repeal the laws of physics; only a Circus Ringmaster was allowed to do that.

That was our position when Candie just started cursing across the Squad channels. She ordered the Lower Half Squad to close in on my position and told us, flat out, to glass the palace. We started chipping away at the building and brought out the big guns to knock beautiful chunks of faux masonry off the thing. I looked back to see what Candie was doing and what I saw made me damn near loose it.

Candie [CENSORED] the biobots coming towards our rear; she [CENSORED] them good. I had never seen that before. I don't even know, to this day, how the hell she did [CENSORED] them. All I know was our way to the drop capsule was clear.

Candie screamed at us to rally on the drop capsule; we were going to do a hot extract. We bounded by Grunt back; I went last, continuing to pour fire into the melting palace.

Candie was already at the capsule, adding her firepower to the capsule's. She kicked, punched and pushed the Grunts into the capsule as they arrived. I yelled "Upper Half Clear" as she crowded in behind me and slammed the hatch shut.

When we blasted up, the lasers from the Orbitals lanced down. Anything within four feet of the surface was going to get cooked. For solid measure, the Orbitals would probably drop a clean nuke. Standard Operating Procedures on a hot extract.

When we got debriefed at Grunt Command, there was no hiding what Candie did. We knew it; the Orbitals recorded it and the Grunt Commanders acted.

First, they gave Candie a Medal. They always give you a Medal for doing a good job.

Then they executed her. Rules violation.

It's always like that in the Grunt Command.

First, they give you a medal...

Comments

[Maxwell]

In truth; hand on heart, I don’t know what I am saying. Not that this is particularly important. Indeed, it’s as unimportant as the time, or the time before I started this text. So, I close the gate and bolt it; set the aperture, adjust the shutter speed and impose the image. What it will reveal is unknown. What value it will carry is equally hard to understand. Perhaps a silver mountain cloven in half? The vinegary smell of the developer seems to bother everyone except Lao Tzu, who appears like a plume of smoke with his index finger between his lips, his eyes serene.