Speak With Corporal Wilson

Approaching the Corporal at the edge of camp, there’s strange moment of stillness, the sounds of camp, the crackling of the bonfire, the chatter of the marines, they feel so distant in this moment.

The Corporal stares at the craft, every so often a chuck of the debris will fall away, a room will collapse or a portion of the hull will shed like a corpse in the late stages of decomposition.

“We were shot down” states the corporal, as she looks upon the damage, as though fearing that if she tears her eyes away, the wreck will suddenly disappear in its entirety.

“What..?” Sarah steps up next to her, arms crossed with brow furrowed in concern. There shouldn’t have been ANYTHING in the system that could shoot down a Conestoga class light **** ship, no other marine vessels were in the system to Sarah’s understanding and surely there would have been some kind of alert if a foreign ship entered the space especially one fit to take down a USCM ship.

“The damage… it’s too major to be an asteroid… too major to be one of ours too…” she mutters, her lips forming a thin line, her face etched with a deep, barely concealed concern.

“Come on Corporal… you saw how bad the condition of the warden was, surely an asteroid hitting the engines would have been catastrophic… not to mention the fall to planet side.” Replies Sarah attempting to dismiss this theory and dissuade the Corporals fears.

“You ever hear the story of The USS Otago, Sarge..?” In truth Sarah hadn’t, there’s so many stories about so many ships, almost none of them pleasant and so she’s always made efforts to avoid such stories and rumors.

“No, I can’t say I have Corporal…”

“It was a ship stationed near the moon of Lethe, a Andastes class… not too dissimilar to our ship… well.. one day some Wey-Yu space station fucks up and activates something called the Cerberus Protocol, a bunch of defense satellites around the system activate and fire upon the ships in the area, The Otago being one of them…”

“What are you saying…? That we got attacked by someone else? Corporate security..?” While it’s widely believed that the USCM has the shiniest toys in the galaxy, is Sarah’s experience the corp only gets the corporations hand-me-downs and prototypes.

“Let me finish Sarge… …down goes The Otago, crashing right into Lethe just like we did and you know what…? They managed to get it space worthy again in less than a month..! They suffered worse damage than us, and yet they were able to repair the ship enough to escape the system..!”

“What are you saying, Wilson..?” Sarah’s eyes narrow slightly, hands on her hips, if it’s not corporate that shot down the Warden then it have to be something else, something MORE advanced.

“You know… it’s a funny thing… when they got back to command, all those casualties, and with all that damage, you know what they said was responsible for it all…?” Wilson turns her head to look Sarah in the eyes now, her face speaking of the utmost seriousness and confidence.

“…Aliens… hostile biomorphs… some kind of… parasitic infestation that decimated Lethe.” Fucking bugs, she’s blaming the crashing of the ship on little green men.

“God damn it Corporal, you keep that shit to yourself, you hear me? We are knee deep in shit and you wanna start spreading stories about little green men? MAYBE it wasn’t an asteroid that did it, but that doesn’t mean we’re on a bug hunt, do you understand me..?” Moral is at rock bottom, if word of aliens being responsible for this gets out, the situation will tailspin out of control.

In all the years of human history, all the expeditions to find intelligent alien life amongst the stars, nothing has ever been found, and Sarah is damn sure that if there was alien tech to be stolen the corporations would have done it by now.

There might be aliens on this planet, sure, but not the laser shooting, flying saucer kind, these aliens are little more than weird birds and overly large lizards. Strange looking fish and colorful insects.

Her brow is furrowed, lips tight as though meaning to spit out a scathing insult or a series of expletives but ultimately it seems she’s summoned up enough inner strength to restrain herself.

Her eyes fall closed, her head hangs a bit as she gives a deep sigh, the fight presumably having been taken out of her.

“Ma’m yes ma’m…”

“Good… I don’t wanna hear any more talk of this… not until things have cooled down a bit…” says Sarah before she turns and heads back to the group, leaving Corporal Wilson to her silent vigil over the wreckage.