Bonus Story 2 – Savri – The Nameless Village

Now - Three days into the girls' stay in Dan-Hem

‘Incoming!’ Serge shouted.

Savri instinctively dove to the ground and made herself as small as possible behind the wall she was using for cover. A series of deafening explosions sounded a few dozen metres away and shrapnel flew through the air, followed by the horrifying noise of planes zooming high above them.

Cluster bombs, she realised.

The bugs really loved them.

Carefully, she peeked from behind the rock and saw a series of small craters in the place where a squad of Hegemony Marines had just stood.

Shit!

Savri met some of them, and they seemed to be good people. There would be time to mourn them later, though. They had a village to finish taking, but that brief moment of suppression was when the bugs decided to beset them. Back then, on Omicron Draconis, they managed to fight their way through them. In her nightmares though… Sav never died exactly the same way. Sometimes she would get shot, the other times it would be the claws or acid. The only common theme was death.

This time around it was quick. One of the big mantis-like bastards beheaded her with a swipe of one of its scythes.

As usual, when she dreamt of old battles, Sav woke up drenched in sweat, and this time it was no different. It took her a moment to calm down and remember she was now safe.

She and her squad were deployed on Omicron Draconis III a few months after she ended up in Paul’s world. It was Savri’s first combat mission as part of the Fourth SOC Tactical Unit Keter and, by the gods, she thought she was ready for it. As it turned out, there was fairly little overlap between dungeon delving and actual warfare.

But that was then… and now… she would have other battles to fight.

‘You okay, babe?’ Nyx asked and placed her hand on Sav’s shoulder.

Savri still wasn’t sure why she took up Nyxie on her companionship offer, but she didn't regret it, as the nights together were very enjoyable.

Divine even.

She turned towards the goddess and nuzzled against her.

‘It’s fine,’ she murmured. ‘Just a visit from an old nightmare.’

‘A soldier’s souvenir?’ Nyx escaped in a serious tone.

‘One of many,’ Sav sighed.

‘Want to talk about it?’

And to her own surprise, Savri did.

Then - 23.07.2847

It all happened during a brief war simply called “The Prince’s Incursion”. A nice, almost pleasant, name for one of the worst experiences in Savri's life, though, with wry amusement, she had to note that sentient beings were the same throughout existence. The best the eggheads from Seventh SOC could figure out was that his buggy highness Prince Nah-Kemar of the Black Hill Polity saw Omicron Draconis III, a planet so unremarkable that no one bothered to name it, as a worthy addition to his realm. Or maybe his new seat. The definite answer to that ended up on the floor of his chamber after his brain exited his skull.

The chief theory was that some of the more abundant soil types on Oh-Dee-Three, while utterly useless for humans, were very valuable for the bugs, that's how all soldiers called the Avadians, for farming and/or building purposes. So... instead of arranging a trade deal or a settlement, Prince Nah-Kemar did what every reasonable being would do - he and his forces invaded the planet, slaughtered the small Hegemony colony there and began to set up his own base.

Another question they never got an answer to was why the prince assumed this would not be met with a military response. Oh-Dee-Three might have been a worthless ball of dirt, but it was a human-owned worthless ball of dirt so a lack of response could lead to future incidents.

And so, the Hegemony dispatched their rapid response task force and called for their allies to do the same. The Directorate, the government Savri was the soldier of, honoured the defence treatment, leading to Sav and her squad, back then it was just her, Paul, Anika and Serge, suddenly finding themselves attached to a unit of Hegemony Marine Drop Recon. Officially, they were part of the Directorate's equivalent formation - Naval Assault Infantry, but Sav was never quite sure whether they sold that one convincingly enough, as, despite their best efforts, they didn’t carry themselves the way their brothers in arms did. Savri and Anika were especially big outliers, as before getting conscripted into the Fourth SOC, neither of them served in the human armed forces. While the demoness at least had some military and combat experience from her days in the Legions, a formation so radically different from the Directorate’s military that there were very few transferable skills, and dungeon delving, Anika was a civvie. By the gods, Sav still caught herself saluting by placing her fist on her chest when she wasn’t thinking.

She also had an added bonus of her horns, tail, orange eyes and pink hair, causing quite a commotion, but all questions were easily waved off by the standard phrase "cosmetic modifications". Sav didn't think it was actually possible for anyone to mod themselves to look like her, but those procedures were exorbitantly expensive, so only a minuscule number of people knew the subject well enough to dispute the claim, and, luckily, none were on board the Iskander.

After spending a week in transit the combined Hegemony-Directorate task force emerged from Exospace between the orbits of the fourth and fifth planets and began racing towards Omicron Draconis III. Savri never quite managed to get a hang of the physics, but this was a fairly risky manoeuvre called “combat jump”. Usually, the procedure was to drop on the outskirts of the system to avoid any potential large objects, like planets, and their gravitational fields. But in cases like this, you wanted to give the enemy as little time to prepare as possible, because the light from the finished jump would get to them long before you did. An ideal situation would have been to exit the Exospace between the third and fourth planet, but there was an asteroid belt there, so it was a no-go.

All of that meant that Savri was in for several hours of dread as their task force sped towards the planet followed by minutes of absolute panic as their ships engaged those of the bugs.

Luckily, Sav didn't have to think about it for too long because their cue to board the dropships arrived. Her hands shook badly as she tried to secure herself to her seat. Eventually, one of the drop troops took pity on her and helped her. He was fairly plain looking, with watery brown eyes and blonde hair, but at that moment he was the most beautiful person she had seen that day.

‘Don't worry,’ the man, whose name Sav thought was Jacques, said. ‘The first drop is always the worst.’

‘Have you done many?’ she asked carefully as her English still wasn't the best.

‘It’s my second,’ Jacques smiled weakly. ‘And the first one wasn't in an active warzone.’

He sat in a seat next to her, and to pass the time, he told her about the first drop. Apparently, his first deployment was a boarding op on an orbital defence platform taken over by some terrorists. Still terrifying, but not as Oh-Dee-Three would likely be.

His story was interrupted mid-sentence when the dropship engines whirred to life and completely drowned out his voice. He sighed and started checking his gear, likely for the umpteenth time.

Savri was about to do the same when her wrist computer buzzed. She looked at it and saw there was an icon for an incoming message on it. She fumbled with the touch screen a bit, she had no idea how humans could use those bloody contraptions so dexterously and opened the messaging app. It was from Anika.

A. Anderson: Making friends, Adzhenair? :)

Savri frowned at the glyph at the end. It took her a moment to register that it was a smiling face.

I’ll never figure this out.

She typed out a message back.

S. Adzhenair: Hes nice.

A. Anderson: Glad to hear that. We all need friends in this line of work.

S. Adzhenair: Arnt yu scard?

A. Anderson: I puked 3 times in the past 2 hours.

Savri looked at her squadmate. The girl indeed looked a little green.

S. Adzhenair: Surprizd yu could eat. I couldnt.

A. Anderson: Probably for the best. You won't go into the fight tasting your own vomit.

Savri began to type out a response but then the dropship lurched and began rising into the air. Then they left the artificial gravity on the Iskander and Savri felt really appreciative of going into this on an empty stomach. Some of the Hegemony soldiers who held out until that point ended up returning their breakfasts at that time resulting in tiny stinking globules of half-digested food to float through the air.

I swear to the gods if any of that ends up in my hair…

It was a pointless worry, more out of habit than anything else, as Savri was used to having long hair, but due to the regulations and, more importantly, comfort, she cut it down to fit under her helmet.

A few of the globules got dangerously close to her, but then they reached the atmosphere and the vomit splattered the back of the dropships along with the few unfortunates sitting by the exit ramp.

Savri couldn't feel much in terms of schadenfreude, however, as the g-forces, shaking and sounds as if something pinged off the hull almost made her piss herself.

Savri looked at her squadmates. Anika’s shade of green deepened to that of fresh grass. Paul looked relatively normal. It was hard to tell, but it seemed that the Lieutenant was slightly paler than usual and there was nervousness in his violet eyes. Serge though.. The red-haired giant of a gunner seemed to be having the time of his life, if anything else. He was hooting and shouting something. Sav caught the words “hell” and “L-vator”.

Then they were through and the dropship began rushing towards the landing zone. They were part of the second wave, so technically SEAD should have done, which is why the dropship having to engage in evasive manoeuvres was an unwelcome surprise, but the flares did their job, and with another lurch, the ship decelerated and set down on the ground. Savri checked the time on the HUD. To her surprise, only ten minutes had passed.

That was the easy part.

Almost in sync, the soldiers began to unsecure themselves from their seats and get up. This time around, Savri didn't have too many issues and with a deathgrip on her carbine, began descending down the ramp when her turn came.

Omicron Draconis III was not much to look at. They landed on a plain of greyish mud and rocks. In the distance, she could see burning wrecks of less-lucky dropships. Just then a fireball bloomed in the sky as another landing craft was hit by a missile.

We got lucky.

‘Keter squad,’ she heard Paul’s voice on their secure squad comms,’ group on me after disembark. ’

After they regrouped, Paul sent a map of the area to their wrist computers. Sav noted they were about a click away from a village. There was a large red dot next to it.

‘This is our objective,’ Paul explained. ‘This used to be a village called… something or other. The bugs took it over and fortified We will be helping the normies get it back and search for any human survivors. Do not take unnecessary risks. Our real job will come later and I need all of you to be alive for it. Understood?’

They all nodded.

‘Good. Move out!’

A total three hundred hundred of them set out and they were met with heavy resistance almost immediately. Sniper nests, machine gun emplacements and trenches. The bug commanders, likely smarter than their leader, suspected an attack could come and prepared accordingly. Their advance slowed down to a crawl.

Whenever she was in cover, Sav tried to locate Jacques but it was almost impossible to do so in the sea of dark green armour-clad soldiers.

‘Stop worrying about your new boyfriend, Adzhenair,’ she heard Paul bark after a while.

‘He’s not my…’ she tried to protest, but the Lieutenant cut her off.

‘Regardless, worry about your own tailed ass first. He’s a soldier and he has his own job to do. We have ours.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she responded.

Paul was right. Her commanders in the Legion would have flayed her for her lack of concentration.

Finally, they made it past the no-man’s land and into the enemy trenches. Sav jumped down and immediately came face-to-face with an Avadian soldier. It was her first chance to see the enemy up close and they were more horrifying than she expected them to be.

The creature, she was later told it was one of the basic members of the bug warrior caste, was maybe two-metres tall and vaguely humanoid. It had multiple-segmented body with two arms and brown chitin carapace. Its large thorax was supported by four blade-like limbs.

Savri watched entranced as the avadian turned its bulbous head and focused their multi-faceted eyes on her. Spittle flew out of its mandibles and the two antennae it had twitched, as it raised the gnarled purple rifle it held and...

The warrior bug danced as it was riddled by high-calibre rounds. Some of the yellowish substance that was probably its blood splattered on her face, which broke Savri out of her trance. She looked at her saviour and saw it was Serge, his LMG still smoking from the barrel. His dark blue combat jacket was caked in mud and bug ichor.

'T-thank you,' she stammered.

'Don't mention it,' the large man smiled. 'Next beer is on you, though.'

The bugs did not give the trenches up without a fight. They fought mandible-and-claw for every nook and cranny. Once they realised holding the fortifications was untenable they began shelling them, not particularly caring for their own, likely assuming those soldiers would be dead soon anyway. More than once, Savri saw a soldier blown apart by a direct hit from an avadian shell. But... eventually they were done and it was time to move on to the village.

By then, their entire team was utterly exhausted. but luckily uninjured. Not even Paul knew about her being able to use magic and preferably, she would keep it that way. She didn't want to become a lab rat.

All entrances to the village were heavily fortified, but by then enough of their forces were brought down to the surface that they could get some proper fire support.

Paul's wrist computer beeped and he shouted:

'Back into the trenches!'

They barely made it. Then several somethings zoomed above them and massive explosions rocked the area. Based on the size of the fireballs and ashclouds, for a moment, Savri thought that Zekuthran came to retrieve her. Unfortunately, those proved to be something called "Heavy Flamethrowers".

'So much for looking for survivors,' Anika muttered after they all regained their hearing and leaned out of the trench to survey the situation.

Most of the houses at the outskirts of the village have been turned into ash and ruins. There were no bugs in sight, though, so carefully the combined task force began to make their way inside of the bounds of the settlement. Sav and her squad did her best to hide behind the walls surrounding various houses, eyes around their heads, as the Hegemony Drop troops secured the village square and that was when the cluster bombardment took place and the bugs burst out of a hidden tunnel network they dug beneath the village.

Most of the force was composed of the smaller brood warriors, but they were supported by minivan-sized mantis-like creatures that could easily cut a man in half. Savri drew the collapsible combat blade from her gauntlet and jumped in the fray. Thanks to her superior Dwynveian training she was probably the best melee fighter on the field, easily carving a bloody path through the enemy ranks. At one point her sword broke, so she rolled away and grabbed another from a corpse of a Directorate infantryman. To that day, Savri did not know how many Avadians she fell that day, she lost the count around twenty, but when the bugs finally sounded the retreat, she was covered in ichor and gore.

Panting, Sav looked around. Out of their initial three hundred, maybe half remained. And... she could not see Jacques anywhere. After confirming that her squad made it through, Serge sustained a bad wound on his arm but a field medic was already taking care of that, she started looking for the Hegemony Marine.

And she found him. Jacques was sitting against the wall, his instestines spilt from his open stomach and a severed mantis scythe lodged in his lung. He was barely holding on to life, but it was clear to her the man did not have much time left and beyond help of both human medicine and magic.

Sav knelt next to him and took his hand into hers.

'Y... you're alive,' Jacques suddenly croaked. 'Th-thank you f-for-being here.'

Pink foam was coming out of his mouth.

Sav instinctively wanted to tell him to conserve his strength, but what difference that would make?

'No man should die alone,' she whispered to him.

'It- it hurts...' he moaned.

This was something Sav could help him with. She looked around, tears streaming from her eyes. No one was looking her way. Good. She cast [Soothe Pain] on him, followed by [Sleep].

'Sleep now,' she said. 'You will wake up in a place with no pain.'

Sav held Jacques until the Dread Queen, or the local equivalent, took him into their embrace.

Now

‘... and that’s how I lost one of my first… I wouldn’t call Jacques a friend, but… one of the first people nice to me in that world.’ Savri finished. ‘He wouldn’t be the last one either.’

Nyx seemed lost in thought. They stayed silent for a bit.

‘Thank you for telling me this,’ the goddess said finally and hugged Sav tightly. ‘I can tell there is more to this story, but… you set the pace here.’

‘Thank you,’ Sav sniffled and reciprocated the hug. ‘Now how about you make me forget this stuff for a moment?’

Nyx smiled.