Dust to Dust

by bloodsword

'Well, fuck!'

He slowly lifted his heavy assault rifle and clipped it onto his back and watched as the massive heavy cruiser pushed through the clouds overhead to continue towards the ground, on fire and shuddering from multiple internal explosions.

'There goes my ride home,' he thought grimly then was forced to crouch as the cruiser slamming into the ground sent a concussive ripple underfoot that nearly knocked him over. A tall, fairly fit fellow with a square jaw, a shock of dark hair, and an easy smile, it took quite a bit to knock him down. Unfortunately a dying starship was more than enough to accomplish that.

A glimpse at his HUD as he slowly straightened back up showed the flashing 'strategic repositioning' alert dominating the whole thing, the alert pasted over top his topographical map of the area.

"Isn't that the Gallant, boss?" a metallic voice asked, echoing slightly even though it sounded like it was inside his armored helmet.

"Yeah, Pike. That was the Gallant," he replied morosely. "Our ride home."

"She's dead, dude," a second metallic voice groaned in dismay.

"What are we going to do now, sarge?" a third voice asked, this one with slightly different cadence and delivery from the first two.

He paused to think that one over. Now that the Gallant was down, there was a good chance that the rest of the fleet had scattered. That, in turn, meant the Protem's operation to retake Alcair Three, the planet they were on and a strategic asset in this sector, had failed.

"Mace, can you get a signal out to one of the sentinel sats?" he asked.

A figure slipped free of the smoke swirling around him to step close. At first glance, the figure appeared alien, with it's strangely shifting face that had no recognizable feature like a mouth or a nose, just empty eye holes and it's uneasily shifting skin. But it was no alien.

"I'm getting static on every channel, sarge," it said, revealing itself as the owner of the third voice, speaking without a mouth directly into his head. "I'd say they're all shot down."

He favored Mace with a long look as he considered it's report. No sentinels confirmed it. The Protem Fleet had, indeed, withdrawn, effectively trapping them down here.

"Okay, I want everybody in," he tautly directed. He needed to make some decisions and he needed all his attention to do so, not split up keeping tabs on his scattered assets.

After seven years spent in the field with them by his side, it felt strange to call them 'assets'. They had saved his life on multiple occasions, acted as sounding boards and confidants in times of stress, and kept him company no matter where he was deployed.

Yet, the seven creatures stepping out of the smoke to join Mace and himself weren't human. Hell, they weren't even alive in the traditional sense. Connected directly into his neo-cortex via a nanite comms hub, the eight beings that now stood in a loose circle around him were some of the most sophisticated A.I.'s currently in use by the Protem military.

Constructed of high-powered nanites embedded in a polymer gel that could take any form he required of them, his companion A.I.'s were called High Efficiency Robotic Defenders or H.E.R.D.. Which, of course, made him a shepherd. It made for some jibes and quips amongst the humans-only companies, as well as the A.I.'s-only crews but he'd take the barbs and the stingers anytime to keep his personal bodyguards close.

Today the H.E.R.D. was in humanoid configuration, as befitting a combat situation, tall and robust enough to wear partial armor and carry assault rifles. Of course, the amount of armor and how robust they were depended on the task he had assigned them. That translated into each A.I. looking slightly different from each other, giving the impression that he was surrounded by real soldiers, not vast collections of gel-embedded, multi-capable nanites.

"So what's the play, Sergeant Thomas?" asked Khan, his tactical A.I., which favored a more formal style of address.

"Yeah, boss," said Pike, his advance scout, which crowded close to Khan. "What are we gonna do?"

Thomas let his eyes slide from Khan to Pike then to the ground as his thoughts churned through his rather limited slate of options. Unfortunately, while the herd gave him phenomenal flexibility and capability, it didn't allow him to operate solo deep behind enemy lines. Which, thanks to the Gallant falling from orbit on fire, he now most definitely was doing.

"What's the nearest Grom base, Pike?" he asked without looking up.

The A.I. paused as it searched it's scouting database for a moment.

"Thirty klicks to the southeast, boss," it replied after a moment. "A defensive installation featuring ground-to-space fighter craft, rocket batteries and beam weapon emplacements."

"We could jack one of those fighters, sarge," Chance, his tech specialist, suggested. "I could easily hack their operating system and gain control."

"Yeah, but we gotta fight all the way through their defenses to get there, Chance." Thomas's assault specialist, Saber, grimly pointed out.

"Child's play, Saber," Blade, his weapons A.I. said with a dismissive wave of it's hand, revealing itself as the second speaker Thomas had listened to as the Gallant crashed. "We can cut in there, no problem, bro. The Grom are pussies."

That earned the A.I. looks from not only Chance, but from Khan and Pike as well.

"Get real, Blade," Pike replied derisively. "You know the Grom bottle their bases up tight. We can't just stroll in there, like it's a Sunday Afternoon walk in the park."

"I keep it real, man," Blade immediately fired back, looking hard in Pike's direction. "I'm the realest dude that plays this fuckin' game, bro."

"Once again, Blade, this isn't a game," Khan stepped in to say, folding it's arms primly across it's chest. "We have been trapped behind enemy lines by circumstance. We need a viable extrication plan. Not some foolhardy suicide mission."

"I could cobble something together that could defeat those defenses, if that's what we're going to do," Lathe, the team's engineer, indicated. "I just need some fiber conduit, a pulse generator, a triple tap battery, and a paper clip ..."

"The defenses are walls and particle shields, McGyver," Saber retorted, looking over at Lathe. "You can't just gimmick your way in there."

"I say we just go up to the front door, knock and ask if we can borrow one of their ships," Mace suggested, bringing the other seven A.I. heads sharply around to stare at it. "Why not? We've already been defeated, right? What would be the point of fighting any more?"

"SHUT UP, MACE!" the other seven said in unison.

Thomas let the banter and bickering fade into the background as he continued staring at his boot tops. After working with the same herd for the last seven years, each of the A.I.'s had taken on an aspect of his personality via the nanite comms hub. So, while they were talking to each other, it was more like pieces of his psyche talking amongst themselves, saying out loud what most people would say to themselves as they reasoned their way through a problem. The banter had come up with hundreds of solutions to almost impossible situations before. He could only hope they had one more solution in them to get them out of this impossible situation.

Unfortunately it seemed like their best bet in getting off the planet in one piece was sneaking onto that base and stealing a ship. Unless ...

"Khan, do you have a catalogue of Protem mobile caches within a single day's march?"

"I do, sergeant," his tactical A.I. replied. "There are no caches within a single day's march."

"Less than helpful, Khan," Saber muttered.

"I was merely answering the query accurately," Khan began to protest somewhat indignantly before Thomas cut it off with a gesture.

He didn't need banter now. He needed options, and quickly. At last report the Grom, a powerful ursine species that dominated this sector by virtue of their unstoppable ground troops, had completely taken the continent they were on. Thomas and the herd were behind enemy lines only hours after his boots hit the ground

Not only was the enemy powerful, they were relentless. If they stumbled upon a Grom patrol, they'd be hunted to ground even if they managed to overcome the ten aliens a Grom patrol was made up of. So they needed to move, and decisively before they were discovered. After that, it was vital to their continued survival to keep moving until they reached their objective.

All that translated into need and speed. Which meant there really was only one option they had a chance with.

"We're hitting the base," Thomas announced. "Pike, find us a clear path there. Saber, Blade, prep for a frontal assault in case Khan, Lathe, and Chance can't figure a non-violent way through those defenses. Mace, Steve, cover the rear." Thomas paused to clear the retreat order from his HUD so he could see his map. That done, he found southeast on the HUD's compass and, pulling his weapon free, he checked the status of his battery pack.

"30 klicks to the southeast," he said out loud. "Let's move out!"

As it was with most planets the Grom targeted, Alcair Three was a densely forested world, high O2, medium available water, and heavy on resources. In short, everything an aggressively-expanding species needed to keep things going. Of course, the Protem Union, a loose alliance of human analogues scattered along the Orion sub arm of the Milky Way, also preferred those kinds of worlds. With Rigel Prime, a founding member of the Union, only 10 light years away, Alcair was both a possible colonization site and a defensive bulwark against invasion along the Rigellian frontier.

Unfortunately it was also a perfect staging point for that same invasion, a fact the Grom realized early in their on-again, off-again war against the Protem. The bear-like humanoids had moved to take the Alcair system within weeks of their first offensive and it had been trading hands ever since.

"Got our original landing site coming up," Pike reported over the subspace comm link. The scout designate was nearly a kilometer ahead of their position, making sure their forward path was clear of enemy troops.

Thomas nodded in acknowledgement, knowing the intent would be carried to Pike via the comm link.

"Steer us around, Pike. It's probably booby-trapped up the ass by now," he directed, a thought sending Mace to the left and Steve to the right to cover their flanks. Another thought increased the vigilance level across the entire herd. They were well short of their objective. To get jumped out here would signal certain doom.

"You know, it's ironic as fuck that Grom can move through the bush as quiet as they do," Chance said. "I mean, just look at those thick bastards. Built like a freight shuttle, yet you won't even hear a fuckin' twig snap when they go through."

"If you admire them so much, bro, why don't you just let one fuck you in the ass. Oh wait ..."

"Shut up, Blade," Chance growled.

"Yeah, shut up, you tool," Saber chimed in to say. "You're supposed to prepping your shit for a frontal assault, not flappin' your gums."

"You're just pissed off that you got called a stupid-looking curved sword instead something cool, Saber."

"Is that right, pocket knife? Take a step this way and I'll show you just how badass a curved sword can be!"

"Whoa, no judging but that sounded super-gay, bro."

"I think somebody has to re-do their sensitivity training," Khan dryly noted.

"Just sayin', tin Khan, that's all," Blade quickly retorted. "I mean, if Saber wants to swallow swords and shit, that's up to it. Whatever team it wants to bat for is cool by me as long as it shoots the bad guys with something other than a wad."

"Considering that we're all asexual constructs assembled from microscopic robots and silly putty, a discussion of any of our orientations seems rather pointless," Lathe pointed out. It paused slightly.

"Just sayin'."

Thomas smiled at the engineering A.I.'s dry wit despite himself. Even though each showed aspects of his personality and were fairly predictable because of that, occasionally one would come up with ...

The sharp, unexpected percussion pulse flipped him off his feet even as it tossed him a good five meters sideways through the underbrush. Then he was dropping hard onto the forest floor, the thick layer of detritus doing little to cushion the impact.

"Sarge!" Mace cried from somewhere to his right. He must've been thrown right over the communication specialist to have it switch positions on him like that. Then rational thought was made impossible by the wave of pain that radiated up from a destroyed right leg.

"Oh shit, sarge," Steve said with a great deal of dismay in it's voice as it skidded to a halt beside it's stricken shepherd. "Your leg is totally jacked up!"

"Do you have the supplemental med kit, Steve?" Mace asked as it dropped down beside Thomas just as the injured soldier began to uneasily rock back and forth from the pain.

"Yeah, yeah, right here." It handed the flattened metal box to the kneeling Mace. Flipping it open, the grim A.I. grabbed a hypo filled with pain suppressant before hammering it into Thomas' leg, just above his mangled knee. The veteran soldier involuntarily cried out as the hypo's physical impact sent a shard of agony slashing up his side.

The pain pulsed through him for a long moment. It only began to fade when the potent cocktail of meds in the hypo dug in and began to take the edge off the ragged, tearing sensation that gnawed at what was left of his leg.

It had gotten to the point where he thought he could speak and he was about to ask how bad it was when Thomas felt a twist of feedback come over the comms feed. A heartbeat later he heard the chatter of weapons fire both up close via the feed and distant with his actual ears. It was automatic to query which of the herd had engaged combat mode.

It was Saber and Chance, the two A.I.'s working hard to elude and defend against an unknown number of assailants. Even as he linked in, they were joined by Blade, which had swung down and around in an attempt to flank their attackers.

"They were brought in by the mine going off," Khan tightly declared, the tactical A.I. somewhere out of sight in the bush off to Thomas's right. He could feel it's readiness, though, weapon up as it scanned through the trees.

"Did they know we were here?" Steve wanted to know.

"Unlikely. This feels more like a patrol passing by and getting diverted to investigate the explosion."

Abruptly Thomas was forced out of the link by Mace leaning in to peer into his face. If the construct had a face, he would've said that it was worried.

"Your leg's still attached, sarge," it said in a low voice. "But you took a lot of damage. Your armor bore the brunt but Grom percussive mines ignore the plating and shred everything inside."

"Yeah, I know, Mace," Thomas managed through clenched teeth. "Rig the smart cast."

"Are you sure, sarge? The damage is pretty extensive ..."

"Pretty sure, Mace." They could hear more weapons fire in the distance and Thomas had to fight off the urge to link in and see what was happening. "We stay here and we'll die."

"The smart cast will just help you move, sarge. It won't stop the bleeding ..."

"Rig it, Mace. Now!"

Flipping the med kit back open, Mace took hold of a large gray cylinder that filled half the space inside. Pulling it free, it gave the rounded end a twist, which sent a shiver of light through the substance within. That done, it tugged the end free and proceeded to pour the contents over Thomas's tattered lower leg.

Almost immediately he could feel a tingling rush as the material came into contact with frayed nerve endings. That was swiftly followed by another flash of light through the gray substance before it molded around his lower leg, taking on the approximate appearance of the tissue he had lost, include nerve bundles and muscle fibers.

"Nanites have synchronized," Mace reported, holding a long-fingered hand over the pulsing gray mass. "You're at 82% restored. Clock is ticking, though." It then pulled it's hand back to show it smeared with blood. "And you're still leaking."

Ignoring Mace's hand, Thomas carefully climbed back to his feet and tested the repair. Good: it was holding. A quick look around located his rifle, a bit battered but still serviceable. He took a step towards it, only to pull up short when Khan opened up on something moving towards them, it's rifle sending stabs of deadly light stitching between the tree trunks.

"They pushed right through us, sarge," Saber reported over the link. There was a hitch in it's voice that suggested it was laboring. "We dropped a couple but there were just too many."

Again Thomas had to fight the urge to link in. With his blood loss making him light headed, he was in no shape to tolerate the disorientation that went along with getting his senses yanked to one or more remote locations.

"What's your status, Saber?"

"I've taken damage, but I'm still operational," the assault A.I. reported.

"How about Blade and Chance?"

Instead of asking him why he wasn't linking in to find out the answer more directly, Saber told him what it knew.

"I lost sight of Chance shortly after the initial rush, and Blade shortly after," it replied. "Neither are answering standard stealth hails."

Thomas fell silent to let Khan and Lathe fire several short bursts into the trees, visibly tracking to their left. Gritting his teeth against the storm of sensation that he knew would accompany a link in, he activated the nanite hub buried in his brain close to the hippocampus.

"Everybody ..." He paused just long enough to flip up his helmet's visor and vomit out his lunch. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he dropped the visor back down to keep going.

"Everybody, vector to target at best speed." He took a step forward onto his injured leg and grimaced when it nearly buckled.

Damnit, he wasn't going anywhere soon in his current shape. He needed a jump, a kickstart, anything to push him over the threshold and get him moving.

He needed Dust.

"Mace," he said, his voice coming a little strangled just as Steve stepped into view, the lean A.I. firing back along it's path.

"We need to go, boss," Steve said without stopping, pausing only to drop a battery pack and slam a new one in. "We need to go now!"

"Mace!" Thomas repeated a little louder and his communications specialist twisted enough to look over at him without stopping it's own firing. Seeing that he had it's attention, he pointed to the back of his helmet.

"I need you to toggle the Dust release."

"Dust, sarge? But that's last resort. Only those that won't make it ... "

"Really? You're questioning my decision again, Mace?" He grimaced as his head swam with a shift in his footing. "If I don't bite the Dust, we're all goners. Toggle the release!"

Slinging it's rifle, Mace took a couple steps to where Thomas was now leaning against a tree and slapped the release, set between the shoulder blades where no soldier in full battle armor could reach on their own. It was supposed to stop casual abuse of the potent stim pack that had the biochemical power to breathe life back into a dying soldier. A potent blend of synthetic endorphins and industrial-strength epinephrine, the Dust supercharged every bodily system.

It was the type of drug every soldier wanted to use in battle, as it made them stronger, faster, and immune to most kinds of pain. At the same time, however, it also over-clocked those systems, burning out a healthy adult in about ten minutes after which the user toppled over dead, their heart ruptured from the strain. Which was the reason why Protem command made it a tool of last resort.

To choose to 'bite the Dust' wasn't much of a choice. One didn't use, and then died from their wounds. Or they did use, and the Dust killed them. Either way, they were taking a dirt nap. One just had a bit more control over how they died with the Dust.

A pressure against his cheek drew Thomas's attention to it. A shiver of anticipation went through the wounded soldier to see it was a dark gray lozenge. Further detail was impossible with it being so close. But it didn't matter. Thomas knew exactly what it was.

"Attention," a quiet, sexless voice announced in his ear. "You are about to take the Direct Ultra-Stimulating Tablet. To activate, bite firmly down and hold the resulting material in mouth for maximum absorption."

Hearing Grom weapons firing close by, filling the space around them with terrible motion and sound, Thomas sucked in a quick steadying breath and bit down hard on the pinky-sized lozenge.

Instantly the world around him exploded into a maelstrom of fire as first his head, then his entire body was swept up in a sirocco of the senses that threatened to overwhelm him with it's storm surge. Yet, as abruptly as the storm had descended, it was gone, leaving a lingering echo reverberating through him. That and a returning sense of strength and capability.

"Toss me your spare shin guard, Steve," Thomas said, snapping his rifle up to his shoulder to hammer several rounds at the massive shadows he could see moving through the trees towards them.

Catching sight of the piece of armor flying towards him out of the corner of his eye, the veteran soldier turned just enough to catch it one-handed. He paused just long enough to strap it over the smart cast before straightening to snap off a handful of additional shots.

"Steve, Khan, Mace, Lathe, strategic repositioning. Pike, you still out there?"

"Whoa, boss!" the scout's voice replied, clearly astonished. "You're back on your feet?"

"Only because I bit the Dust," Thomas grimly replied.

"Ah." The tone in Pike's conveyed the A.I.'s understanding of the situation.

"We are repositioning under duress. Where are you?"

"One and a half klicks due north of your current position and closing," the scout replied.

Thomas grimaced even as he sent the four members of his herd running hard to the southeast.

"Resume your initial. We're on the move. " He hammered nearly a full battery off at the looming Grom before he too turned to run hard through the bush.

For the next half hour Thomas and the four A.I.'s with him, played hide-and-seek with their aggressively pursuers. Only when they cut through a rocky defile and gained a little space did the wounded soldier hold up.

Thomas grimaced at the blood that liberally painted his gloved hand. Soaked through, the smart cast, a much more simplified version of the A.I.'s themselves, was getting saturated. With it's suspended components requiring a certain balance to maintain integrity, the cast was starting to breakdown because of all the blood.

Thankfully the Dust was still propelling him forward, allowing Thomas to ignore both the pain and the blood loss. But he also knew he was now past the point of no return. As soon as the effects faded, he'd drop dead.

Wiping the blood off with a convulsive swipe, Thomas checked his battery status. A third of a charge: enough to see him through an encounter or two. He could only hope it didn't come to that.

"Pike, where the hell is that damn base?"

"I'm looking at it, boss," the scout replied. "Another klick on your current path and you'll be on top of it."

"Copy that. Hold your position. We're on our way!"

Pike was a wraith hugging a rocky outcrop overlooking a massive landing field, festooned with lines of stubby winged fighter craft, several camouflaged towers and a number of defensive batteries. The scout turned to look at them as they approached and Thomas could feel it's attention touching his damaged leg. Then it was looking back at the base.

"Without Saber or Blade, we're not fighting our way in," it grimly noted.

"We could still send Steve," Lathe suggested, earning itself an indignant "Hey!" from the offended A.I..

"Why me?" Steve demanded to know.

"Because you're the only one of us without a specialization," Khan pointed out. "We don't actually need you. You're extra."

"Yeah, Steve, you're our expendable red shirt," Mace added.

"Fantastic," Steve darkly muttered.

"Not sure this is going to work anyway," Lathe indicated. "Without Chance we can't hack a ship's OS to take control."

"We might not need to," Mace said. When they all looked at in question, it mutely pointed into the base. Following it's gesture, Thomas found himself looking at the battered but recognizable shape of a Protem cargo transport, along with a number of other apparently captured non-profit craft.

"They must've captured it during the drawback," Khan reasoned.

Abruptly the base exploded into activity with thick-shouldered Grom exploding out the support buildings to run towards the fighter craft.

"Think word of our presence has them spooked?" Steve asked.

As if in answer to it's question several muscular, swept-wing fighters dropped out of the sky with howling thrusters to take out a number of the defensive emplacements with well-placed missile strokes. That done, they stood on their tails and clawed their way up and out of sight.

"Those were Rigellian Silverhawks!" Khan exclaimed. "The alliance may have given up on Altair 3, but the Rigellians can't afford to."

"Never mind that," Thomas growled. "Let's use the distraction to get onto that transport!"

With Lathe rerouting the access pad opening a side door, followed by a brief but deadly firefight with the guards watching it, the small company found themselves inside just as the Silverhawks returned. They then used the second attack run as a distraction to sneak onto the captured freighter.

"Oh yeah, I can fly this," Steve confidentially said before looking back into the cargo bay where the rest of their company crouched. "Who's extra now, hey?"

"Shut up, Steve," Thomas directed. "Just get us ..."

He hit the deck hard as the Dust faded without warning.

"Boss!" he heard Pike shout. Then her hands were carefully picking him up and moving him to the transport's small but effective medical bay.

"Put him into hibernation," Khan directed. "That'll keep him alive until we can get him back to Rigel Prime."

'Sonofabitch,' Thomas thought as the hiber-meds made their frozen way into his failing body. 'These A.I. bastards saved me again, even with the Dust!' Then he drifted into unconsciousness, knowing that, against every conceivable odd, they had actually made it.