WIDOW’S HARBOR

2185.05.13

“I think the Illuminate Victory Parties are a little badly timed!” Alpha yelled over the sounds of gunfire as he crouched behind a rock, sheltering himself from the rain of plasma bolts he had attracted.

“Focus, Alpha! I hope I don’t have to remind you of the stakes of your mission here!” Adamas’s voice came through their headset. Alpha lived for these moments: he’s addicted to the excitement. So much so, in fact, that regular Helldiver missions, already reserved for Super Earth’s finest, felt routine and downright boring to him. It was his primary reason to become the head of a small Elite Recon Unit under Adamas, alongside his excellent tactical awareness and ability to defeat Automaton Hulks in bot-to-stun-lance combat. But sadly, his stun lance was left on his Super Destroyer this time: he had little idea what the supposed new squid units have, and for once, he didn’t want to take the chance.

“Hey Ghostie! How’s it going down there?” Alpha had now gathered the attention of every Illuminate around the city block, and chunks of rock and concrete that got blasted off by Overseer plasma were bouncing onto his helmet as he spoke into his comms channel.

The “Ghostie” in question was not under Adamas’s command, or indeed a Kai’s Commando at all. Alpha didn’t even know his real name. All he knew was, the Helldiver he was assigned to work with belonged to an elusive group called the Ghostdivers, known not for their frontal combat capabilities, but for their heavy employment of stealth tactics, extremely efficient clearing of mission objectives, and supporting their teammates from the shadows of cover and barriers of smoke grenades.

Not exactly his type of Helldiver.

The comms channel stayed silent. Just when Alpha was starting to get worried, a few lines of text popped up over his helmet’s HUD.

In stealth, can’t talk. I have visual on the package, moving towards marked location.

Alpha chuckled, briefly considered screaming at the top of his lungs into the comms channel to troll Ghostie, and decided against it. Sure, these guys may be a bunch of sneaky bastards, but at least they’re a bunch of Democratic sneaky bastards that, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, gets the job done rather efficiently. He pulled his attention back to the squids at hand.

Pulling out his plasma accelerator rifle, he held down the trigger and, as the sleek white body of the gun purred with charging energy, nonchalantly pointed it at the head of the nearest Overseer. Three short bursts of white-hot energy ensued. The first burst cracked the squid’s helmet wide open like a Lovecraftian boiled egg, the second slammed straight into its exposed face, and the third simply dug clean through its skull and exploded the entire head. The headless body of the Overseer froze in its menacing pose for a brief second, staff in outstretched hand, then quickly toppled to the ground in a motionless heap.

Alpha wiped the purple gunk off of his helmet and cape. He was very glad the air filtration system in his suit still worked. Squid brains in large concentrations like this weren't the best for human olfactory systems. The gatling sentry he placed down thirty seconds ago finally finished its half-circle turn and found its target. The triple barrels whirled as fierce, strobing muzzle flashes illuminated Alpha and the squids against the dark night sky. He didn’t bother looking up at the floating Overseers drop like dead flies under the hail of lead, but instead unsheathed his saber. He almost felt pity towards the small group of Voteless stumbling after him. He knew that they all used to be respectable citizens, blessed with liberty and the right to vote, each of them as equal a member of the Super Earth Federation as himself… And now, nothing was left of their minds, washed to blind instinct by the Illuminate, and their bodies transformed into these shambling monstrosities. Killing them was a mercy.

The cold steel glinted in the starlight for a moment, then plunged through the chest of a Voteless, then sliced across another’s neck. It was all over in a few quick flashes of metal. The dead, and soon-to-be dead Voteless littered the ground around him, letting out their last agonized groans.

Alpha watched as drops of blue dripped from his saber, itself slick with a sheen that only belonged to blades that tasted blood. He felt a tug on his ankle. Looking down, he saw the last Voteless, sliced straight in half through the waist, crawling all the way to his feet with its arms, and now attempting to maul him.

He sighed, turned the tip of his blade straight down, and with all his might, stabbed the Voteless through its skull. The clawing at his ankle ceased immediately. He felt no joy as he wiped the viscera off his armor and weapons. Who knew what other monstrosities the squids have in store, and what horrible things they did to his fellow citizens.

Package acquired. On my way out. What are those things around our crashed drone?

The stream of text in Alpha’s HUD stopped as suddenly as it started. Then, the radio silence broke. “I’m compromised, these… creatures, they saw me on my way out! They have eyes everywhere! The package is with me, but I need some reinforcement over here! I can’t disengage!”

As if on cue, flashes of plasma and gunfire lit up the distant colony town. Alpha listened through the comms channel. Overseer roars. Voteless mumbles. The sound of jetpacks from the Elevated Overseers, and the short burst of Ghostie’s own jump pack. The hum of Illuminate plasma weaponry, and the restrained retort of the Diligence Counter-sniper.

Alpha wasn’t about to let a fellow Helldiver’s call of help go unanswered.

“Lunar! Grab a resupply I dropped on your southwest - our Ghostdiver friend seems to be in trouble and he’ll need your chaff clear support! Choko, come with me and help set up on that cliffside, I will provide overwatch for Lunar and Ghostie and you watch my back! Go!”

The other two Commandos, previously busy spreading out with their own engagements taking down Illuminate encampments and activating an abandoned LIDAR station, immediately sprung into action. Alpha climbed the steep hillside, Choko just one step behind him, their Torcher billowing flames angrily and turning the occasional Voteless into charred corpses. Lunar, the youngest yet not one bit less daring, quickly loaded himself with ammo and stims, then sprinted towards where the gunfire seemed the densest.

”Oh, thank Liberty you’re here, get me outta here, there are so many of these disgusting blobs of meat chasing me!” Alpha listened to Lunar and Ghostie exchange a brief greeting as he lay on his stomach, peering through the scope of his anti-materiel rifle. He quickly found the pair, hiding around a corner, Ghostie with his Stalwart light machine gun still smoking from a long burst of firing, Lunar with his RL-77 airburst rocket launcher held on his shoulder. Looking ahead, Alpha quickly identified a way out. Doubt that Ghostie will like this one, he smiled to himself.

Up, right, right. Ghostie quickly typed on his left arm, then lightly tossed the active stratagem beacon onto the street in front. The Voteless slowly turned around to investigate the noise, just as an Eagle fighter descended from the clouds with a powerful shriek, front-mounted rotary cannon already blazing. The Voteless was shredded into a blue mist, the Overseers in pieces scattered on the ground, and gaping holes were punched straight onto the concrete. The Eagle soared away with a whoosh, quickly becoming just a white dot on the sky.

“Harvester!” Ghostie yelled, alarmed, as a towering biomechanical tripod stepped out from behind a building, its sole blue eye shining with what could only be described as cold malice. Seeing the two Helldivers, the horn above its eye sparked, and a bubble of transparent blue energy was instantly conjured around it. Locking its gaze on Lunar, the eye suddenly glowed blindingly bright. “Death beam! Dive!” Ghostie screamed at Lunar, who threw himself sideways onto the ground just a split second before a thick beam of scorching energy shot out from the eye, right where Lunar’s head was, and dragged across the street. The two Helldivers scrambled to avoid contact, as stray Voteless around them were instantly vaporized as they touched the beam.

“Break its shield, I’ll handle this stupid tripod.” Alpha’s voice rang. Ghostie cranked his Stalwart to the highest fire rate - 1150 RPM - and let loose on the energy shield.

It was interesting to note that the Illuminate, never too great at the art of war, primarily used shields constructed out of pure energy to protect themselves, assuming that the enemy, just like them, will be primarily relying on energy weapons, which these shields would heavily resist. However, humans, one of whom quite literally wrote the Art of War, decided that the best solution to that was their solution to most problems in war throughout every stage in their history: a lot of small rocks, thrown really, really fast.

The gunfire was so dense that the noise of the individual shots were blended together into a buzz. Each bullet, as it hit the shield, created a small ripple across the entire bubble, threatening to punch through. The shield turned purple, then wavered and thinned, then finally broke into floating fragments.

“Shield’s down, blast that damned thing, Alpha!”

Alpha tracked his crosshairs onto the weakly armored joints of one of the Harvester’s legs. The AMR opened fire, a deep, solid boom ringing out as its gigantic bullet dug itself into the leg joint at hypersonic velocities. Sparks flew out as the Harvester staggered, its eye laser fizzling out as it tried to look for the source of the attack. Alpha didn’t give it time. With his weight on the gun expertly taming the recoil, he quickly dumped the whole magazine straight into the leg joint. With a loud metallic groan, the Harvester’s leg snapped off, and it quickly teetered and collapsed, reducing what used to be the town’s most popular cafe into a pile of rubble on its way.

“Lunar, find a way past that colony wall due east; Ghostie, I detect an FRV signal in your vicinity, should make your getaway with the hard drive easier, go find it and pick Lunar up on the way!”

Soon, the distant roar of the vehicle was heard, Ghostie at its wheel, skidding across the half-destroyed asphalt and approaching Lunar and the designated wall. In just a few seconds, the car screeched to a halt and Lunar hopped on in one fluid motion.

“What about the wall? Did you find an exit anywh- oh.” Ghostie’s question was cut short by the unmistakable shriek of an Eagle, the thump of something immensely heavy - at least half a ton - dropping right beside the wall, and –

The explosion of the 500-kg bomb sent the FRV, even with handbrakes fully engaged, back a solid two meters, leaving blackened skid-marks on the road. Lunar, being the one who called in the bomb, of course, had expected all of this to happen. Ghostie, however, had banged his helmet on the wheel, got flashbanged by the light of the explosion, and now had a disorienting ring in his ears. Lunar jabbed a stim into his neck apologetically.

Alpha and Choko watched as the FRV leapt over what’s left of the destroyed wall. By now, every Illuminate unit in the colony, even the stumbling Voteless, had deduced (correctly) that there were a few very dangerous enemies in their area, and (incorrectly) that they should give chase. Every intersection swarmed with flying Overseers, panicked Watchers, seas of Voteless and a couple of Harvesters. Warp ships whirred above the commotion, sending down even more reinforcements with flashes of blue light. It was not looking good for the pair.

Choko smiled. Somewhere on their Super Destroyer was the solution to all their problems at hand. Right right down, left right up. A stratagem code they’ve typed thousands of times before.

A red beacon soared over the cliff and landed squarely in the middle of the crowd of squids. Then, as the telltale booms echoed high above, the sky started raining flaming napalm. After all these millennia, the most reliable weapon that humans have, thought Choko, grinning as they watched their confirmed kill counts soar, is still fire.

The team finally reunited near the extraction beacon. The FRV, now covered in scorch marks and smoking slightly, coughed as it stopped, then as the two Helldivers dismantled, promptly gave up on existence and burst into flames.

“Still got the hard drive?” Alpha asked.

“...Yes, yes I do.” Ghostie’s voice was somewhat hoarse from all the screaming he just did. He’d just given Lunar, who had been cackling maniacally beside him all this time, fifty super credits to not speak a word of it.

“Great. Zero casualties, lots of dead squids, and a completed objective. The Pelican is on its way.” Alpha glanced at the burnt edges of Ghostie’s cape.

“Good job, Toastie.”

Toastie simply muted his comms.