A large transport ship streaked from deep space into the orbit of Teldura, and instantly began to enter the planet's atmosphere, before finally landing in a large field a few dozen clicks from the outpost. After a few minutes the cargo bay doors opened and two dozen soldiers marched out of the ship, accompanied by three officers, while the rest of the flight crew remained onboard.
General Wyse was leading the platoon of soldiers they had enlisted from Outpost 2039, and alongside him was the Commander of the outpost, Briar Pickman, a bookish, stoic man who didn't seem comfortable at all with being here. The other with him was his most trusted lieutenant, Lily Murasaki, a short, lithe Asian woman whose icy cold gaze could turn the most hardened enemy combatant into molten wax.
They stopped a few meters outside the cargo doors and General Vyse turned to address the rest of the soldiers.
"I trust that you have reviewed the intelligence provided to you on the way here?"
Nobody dissented in the negatory.
"Then you know the drill: We hoof it all the way to the outpost; me and half of the platoon will enter waving a white flag. The rest of you will fill into the positions indicated in the outpost's schematics and start marking your targets as they show up. When I give the signal, start dispatching the sons of bitches as quickly and efficiently as you can. The ones you can't get, we'll deal with from our end. Any questions?"
"What if we get separated between here and there?" A tall brunette woman asked.
"I highly suggest that you don't, but if you do, and you can't reach the outpost, do your due diligence to return to the transport, but if you can't make it, don't expect us to remain here to recover you. Any other questions?"
Silence.
"Then move out, it's still early dawn, and we have a lot of ground to cover, let's go!"
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Captain Renfro of the CSS transport Amorosa, a tall, bald man, watched from the viewport as the platoon began marching off briskly into the wilderness, leaving him and his five crewmates to linger and wonder what in the hell was going on.
"I don't like this." His first mate, Mara Corvino, a nervous, reticent blonde-haired woman muttered out.
"Why not?" Renfro snorted, "We get our leave cancelled, have to transport a bunch of soldiers being led by Sergeant Slaughter to an outpost for reasons they won't tell us. And we don't land AT THE DAMN OUTPOST. And we're ordered not to leave the ground until they're all back. Yeah, not damned weird at all."
"And what's worse is that we're stuck on this strange moss-covered rock..." Mara said as she bit her lip, a nervous tick of hers she indulged in when something was bothering her. "I got that feeling again."
"I know." They'd come to this planet several times to ferry people to and from it, along with supplies. The environment seemed docile enough, but it gave them the creeps to look at for any protracted period of time, and everybody agreed that it felt as though something was staring back at them. Renfro hit a button and a blast shield sealed over the viewport and then the two of them walked off to the galley to join the others while they waited for the soldiers to come back.
-----
The sun was still rising, and Flight Navigator Reg Pulaski was leaning against the starboard viewport looking at the weird world outside while talking to Chief Engineer Ortiz.
"God damn I can't believe our leave was cancelled!" Ortiz spat out, babbling some of it in Spanish that Reg had picked up on over the past year he'd been assigned to this ship. Aside from his bad habit of not speaking English with the rest of the crew when off duty, he wasn't a bad guy, and Reg couldn't fault the guy's foul mood, because it was all he could do not to join him in pitching a fit. Last he checked Jennings and Brenner were drowning their sorrows out in the galley by taking turns with a bottle of Jim Beam.
"Fucking prick General has a stick up his ass, and some nerve disrespecting the Captain like he did when they drafted us into this shit!" Ortiz said, finally losing some of his vitriol.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Reg said stifling a sigh. "you get a load of that 'chica' that was with him though?"
Ortiz began to grin leerily at the thought of that tight Nippon that had come in with the General. "If I could get a piece of that it'd almost make this fucking detour worth it. Almost."
"Something tells me asking her out wouldn't be a good idea."
"No shit, the bitch snubbed Jennings when he welcomed her aboard the ship. Mara is even more perturbed than usual now."
"Mara is always perturbed, how long you think it's been since she's been laid?" Reg said.
"I think she needs a LOT more than just pipe laid to help with her issues, more like-what the FUCK?" Ortiz motioned Reg over to his side of the viewport and pointed at something standing in the grass. Daybreak was casting a bright shroud over the "grass" below their ship, and the grass seemed to refract some of the light, making everything look dreamlike and surreal, and hard to see. But then he saw it: what looked like a naked black woman standing outside the ship waving her arms in a flagdown gesture to get their attention. Even from the distance from the viewport they could see she had huge natural tits that flopped around as she waved her arms.
"Holy shit, is that Valerie?" Reg said.
"You know that chica?"
Reg pressed his face closer to the viewport and strained his eyes against the weird light show outside. "My last assignment was on another transport ship and she was first mate. What the fuck is she doing here..." He hissed as he slammed his fist against the viewport in frustration as the light grew brighter and obstructed his vision more. He keyed in his commlink, "This is Reg, I need everyone on C Deck, Starboard corridor, NOW. Me and Ortiz see someone outside and it's not one of ours!"
The Captain and Mara arrived first, from above deck, while Jennings and Brenner stumbled in from the aft, cheeks red, and the shorter, diminutive Brenner was slightly wobbly as she struggled to tie back her long red hair.
Reg moved aside so Renfro could look out the viewport, and he squinted his eyes as he tried to see what was out there. "I can make something out...vaguely. I see movement. It looks like a person..."
"It looks like someone I served with on the Amantia!"
"What?!" Renfro said turning to Reg. "Who?"
"Valerie Germaine."
"How could you tell?" Jennings barely slurred out.
Reg paused.
"The bitch was black, naked and had huge fucking knockers." Ortiz answered instead, exaggerating his arms out over his chest as he said it.
"Naked?" Renfro cocked an eyebrow.
"You sure you haven't had too much to drink?" Brenner giggled in her southern drawl before hiccuping.
"It wasn't as bright out there as it is now, I swear to god, sir, it looked like her."
Refro said nothing for a moment and looked outside again. "I can see something. Reg and me are going out there. Everyone else standby in the cargo bay while we go out there."
"Captain, are you serious?" Mara said following the rest of them down to the cargo area.
"I read a report recently that the Amantia had been lost in orbit above this planet, but that the crew had survived. They could still be here and that could be her out there."
"Naked?" Jennings slurred out.
"Who the hell knows what's going on here. Maybe the soldiers are being sent in to rescue them or something else is going on, either way, I want some fucking answers." The captain said as they entered the cargo hold. They made their way to the back, past some of the troop carrier supplies that had been brought in before they shipped out.
As Mara opened the personnel bay access Reg and Renfro went to the bulkhead and opened a locker and pulled a couple of shotguns out of it, loaded them, and then before heading down the stairs looked back at Mara and said, "There's radio interference so we can't maintain a live link, so if we're not back in thirty minutes, and if you can't see us outside, or we're down, dust off into orbit and call in some backup and transit out of the system if you have to."
"And if General Wyse-" Mara tried to ask before Renfro cut her off.