This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Mr_Noh on 2024-10-29 06:10:39+00:00.
[Something that came into my head the other day. Just a one-off, not in any particular story setting. I know it's not exactly a new concept, but whatever. :P ]
The lieutenant looked around at the ragtag, composite batallion of soldiers under her command. She didn't weep only from iron discipline, knowing the effect on morale it will have.
Not that morale mattered much in this case, but every bit helps.
She saw the torn bodies that were left of a once great army, gathered together from pieces of shattered units. Limbs abruptly shortened, charred flesh and fur from the enemy's horrific plasma casters, some with bandages covering the hole where an eye used to be, uniforms torn by claws that could pierce the finest armor, the wearer surviving only by pure dumb luck.
Ultimately she knew that they would not survive the onslaught of the seemingly endless hordes of insectoid warriors approaching their last lines of defense, but out sheer obnoxious stubbornness she refused to give in to despair. Maybe some from the city behind her would make it to the escape craft and past the blockading fleet, surviving to revive her devastated homeland in some distant future that she and those gathered under her makeshift command would never see. But by all that was holy the enemy would damn well know they've been in a fight! "Rear echelon useless slunt" my tail, she thought with a bitterness kept hidden behind a determined expression.
"Lieutenant, the last of the outer delaying forces has been overrun. The city command center is still up, but it's not telling us what we don't already know: We're screwed, and not in a pleasant way." That way was known to both the communications officer and his commander, but other than a passing thought about how damage has given her uniform an oddly attractive "disaster chic" look from fiction productions he set that aside.
"Here they come!" some unknown voice shouts from the front lines, bringing her attention to the chittering masses approaching their position.
"Long shooters, stand by. Artillery units, open fire." Her voice is rock solid, concealing her inner qualms about the pathetic state of the sole artillery company they could scrape together, firing museum pieces and various cast-offs of now-dead units salvaged from a repair depot in the capital.
She turns sharply to the comm operator when she hears burst forth from his comm unit "Hide fast" in some loud, oddly mechanical alien voice. "Who is that?! Tell them to either be useful or get off the net!"
Just as her comms operator is about to respond, a shout from the troops makes her look up to the sky. Distant flashes suddenly light the clouds. That signal got out! she realizes suddenly. "Take cover! Incoming!" she yells, and like those around her she drops to the torn ground, trying to become one with the dirt as streaks of light slash down from the heavens.
After a moment she disobeys her own order and lifts her head above the makeshift defensive berms, watching the blazing wave of destruction cut through the attacking hordes with an effortless ease that made the enemy's own overpowering of her world's military look the work of halfhearted dilettantes.
After an unknown amount of time, seemingly forever but probably only a small handful of minutes, the enemy forces are just gone. Flashes of coherent light fade as their saviors work their way outward, save for one towering bipedal figure encased in powered armor that approaches her front lines. Its battle rifle, easily the size of some of her smaller artillery pieces, is slung over a shoulder, hands raised in the nearly universal signal of peace. "Hold your fire!" she orders as some on the forward edges of her unit bring up their arms to face the potential new threat. "Let them approach."
She rises off of the ground, taking a moment to self-consciously wipe the dirt off her uniform - such as it is - then steps forward to meet the visitor. Recognizing the subdued markings on the left shoulder, now visible with the suit's concealment functions deactivated, she snaps off a salute.
After returning the salute, the armored figure surprises her, dropping to a knee to reduce the height disparity between them, reaching up to unseal and remove the helmet to reveal a surprisingly young human woman's head, hair shorn almost to the scalp.
The human still towers over her, but the lieutenant appreciates the gesture nonetheless. "Lieutenant Second Class Arealai, commander of this unit."
The clad human nods her head, seemingly unsurprised that the vaguely murine officer before her speaks Terran Standard fairly well within physiological constraints. "Colonel Rebecca D'Antonio, Terran Expeditionary Force. Other units are cleaning up the infestations elsewhere. Sorry we didn't get here sooner, but we had to gather distant forces for this operation, and there was apparently more difficulty than expected with the blockading fleet."
"'Better late than never' is the phrase you use, I believe. And right now if it wouldn't be a horrible breach of discipline I'd be making you take me to bed!" For a moment, with the joyful laugh the youthful recent graduate of the military academy, eyes aglow with anticipation, peeks through the grizzled appearance.
D'Antonio suppresses a laugh at the thought of the diminutive alien making a human Marine in powered armor do anything the Marine didn't want. Looking around at the forces the lieutenant had gathered in the face of what seemed to be certain doom, gathered from units that had been ground under the invading force's onslaught and whose morale was probably nonexistent, size or strength disparities would be unlikely to stop Arealai. "Unfortunately for you, I don't swing that way," she notes with amusement. "But the sentiment is appreciated. And after what you've done here, I doubt there will be a single person on this world who would refuse you under other circumstances."
The lieutenant snorts. "I didn't need fighting off an alien invasion for that. There were plenty who wanted to bed a 'plucky young lieutenant', thinking that flashing a winning smile would make me melt into their arms." A brief moment later she adds, "and by the way, your translators suck giant donkey dong. 'Hide fast'?" She laughs again.
"You're telling me, sister. Sometimes I think those pieces of trash cause more conflicts than they defuse." She waves towards the sole tent in the encampment, the comm system antennae rising behind it marking it as the command center. "Let's continue this conversation elsewhere, shall we?" she suggests. "There's still a lot to do here."
Arealai nods, and leads the colonel to the command post.