WOLFPAC INCORPORATED

WOLFPACK INCORPORATED
CITY OF HEADSTONES

EPILOGUE

Kisamuki was beginning to think that this going to be a pretty easy day today. Part of a marine task force assigned to the carrier group currently in orbit above this planetoid, his mission was that of intelligence, electronic warfare specifically. Walking alongside a seargeant moon from the security detail, Kisamuki was inspecting the setup of the satellite dish array that would allow him to use the network that had been launched into orbit about an hour ago. Watching the hurried but uninterrupted work going on all about him, he decided that it would probably be alright if he and the sergeant made a stop at the officers mess to get some lunch.
"Moon, if your going to be assigned to my detail, i'm going to have to know what it is that you are to do while you are here. I don't like having men assigned to me and then being told that they are not to be troubled, it disrupts things, worries the men.", which was true, they had been whispering that Moon was a spy from internal affairs, though why he was here in his section was beyond kisamuki.
Sergeant Moon, on the other hand, didn't give a whore's promise about what the men whispered, so long as they cooperated with his investigation into the leaks that had been monitored coming from this set of satellite equipment. He let Kisamuki know this, and, to his credit, he didn't immediately start abusing the hell out of Moon.
That happened five minutes later.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, "THERE IS A SPY IN YOUR SECTION"!!! I'VE SERVED WITH EVERY ONE OF THEM FOR AT LEAST THREE YEARS AND I TRUST THEM ALL. I OUGHT TO SHOOT YOU NOW FOR YOUR INSOLENCE!"
Suddenly there was a crescendo of thunderclaps all around the sky above them, and everyone around them started running for bunkers and foxholes and whatever cover they could scrape themselves into to escape the armageddon about to be perpetrated on them.
For armageddon it was.
Your average orbital artillery delivery missile is about the width of your everyday shipping container and about three times the length. Instead of t-shirts or preserved fruits though, this thing delivers about a thousand high explosive, anti-personnel incendiaries the size of your regulation basketball into an area spread over the size of a square kilometer.
In basic laymans terms, this means it will really fuck up your day.
Just like it did to Kisamuki's.
When those shells hit the ground, they all burrowed to a depth of about one meter, except for the one which were designated to airburst at twenty meters above the ground, which turned the air all around Kisamuki into a lethal whirlwind of sharp, burning lead. All over, men were being shredded to ribbons by the shrapnel, on one side a man had the top of his head clipped off, spilling his now liquefied brains all over the ground, only to be completely dismembered in a second blast, while on another side the mess tent caught the full brunt of three blasts, leaving it a tattered remnant filled with broken, bleeding, screaming bodies that were more bits and pieces than complete specimens.
Sergeant Moon had gotten himself sliced in half by a particularly large piece of flying metal. Lying on the ground, he had a particularly good view of the dropships that were cutting through the clouds. They were large ships, actually classified as "landing frigates", they carried a full battalion of mechanised infantry, which amounted to six hundred fully armed assault troops complete with tanks, APC's and artillery and air support.
If that wasn't bad enough, there dozens of them flying away in all directions, with two flying straight towards him. reaching for his comlink, he found that all he could touch was thin air. Looking down, he saw that the lower half of his body missing.
Specifically, it was lying three meters above his head. rather surprised, he figured that it was probably the combat meds that had been pumped through his body by the nanomed implants.
If he survived this he was writing a testamonial.
Shadows flashed overhead, fighters and corvettes shrieking past to try and intercept the frigates before they could land and disgorge their cargo. they made it within firing range, and let loose with a barrage of missiles that swarmed towards the frigates, only to have them mostly be deflected by the shields that popped up moments before impact, sending spinning away from their intended targets to explode harmlessly. the one s that did get through did no more damage than, say, destroying a gun turret or sensors cluster, though a salvo did slash through a frigate's bridge, sending it into a slow spiral, to dive nose first into a canyon and break in three flaming segments. In response the frigates opened up with wave after wave of chaingun fire and point defense missiles.
It was one almighty bitchslap in the face of all those pilots, seeing the tracers rush towards them, tearing holes in the craft beside them, rocket trails curving through their formation to strike and explode in splashes of fire and metal.
The ones that survived the onslaught figured that it was in their best interest to give up for the day.
And turn.
And run away.
Very fast.
Moon saw all of this, while reaching for his legs, and started yelling at the fleeing ship for being outright cowardly cheese eating surrender monkey's with no sense of honour or duty or obligation or decency or anything that could be described as normal human behaviour.
The orbital artillery that had burrowed itself into the ground about ten minutes ago decided, then and there, to detonate.
the bunkers that had been set up for this eventuality were the first to go, having had basketball shaped explosives driventhrough their three meter thick permacrete protection. They were enveloped in a firestorm that compressed the room and everything in it onto absolute nothingness.
They didn't blow up.
They erupted.
Geysers of rock and glass and jellied soldier shot from the ground while a wave of fire washed across the camp, throwing men and equipment into the air like so much burning confetti, to come crushing down on those who had miracuosly momentarily escaped the holocaust, only to look up and scream.
When it was over, out of the three thousand men that had been manning the satellite installation, only a hundred had been left relatively unscathed, due mainly to that strange luck on the battlefield that some people have. There was some wounded here and there, but the injuries they had suffered were far too horrific for them to survive long.
Moon and Kisamuki were part of those who had survived, with Kisamuki frantically clawing at where the satellite dish he had been in charge of used to be, mad with terror, trying desperately to dig a hole in which he could scurry into to hide from the next barrage which he was deathly sure was coming at any moment. Moon was clutching his legs to him, rocking back and forth as the combat meds slowly leeched out of his body along with his blood, wondering why he couldn't have had more time.
A particularly large shadow crept over the demolished camp causing everyone not dying or in too much pain to look up. Moon was one of those that did, and, noticing the emblem on the underside of the landing frigate, wondered what they had done to deserve a visit from these guys.
"Not those fucking mercenaries."
And with that, he curled up and died.
WOLFPAC had come out to play.