Miles and miles of endless desert passed under his vehicle, with a bored Tal trying his best not to collapse behind the wheel. With no end to their patrol in sight, he was seriously starting to reconsider his life choices again, now for the third time in four weeks.
It wasn’t even Hawken waking him up at 4 in the morning that had pissed him off, nor was it the six hour-long weapons installation process. Installing a weapon, in his case a heavy pulse laser, on his vehicle had actually been a fairly easy task, even though his fellow squadmates hadn’t the slightest clue what to do.
“Hey Tal, I need your help!” one of them had asked, “How do I install this part of the ring mount?” How the hell was he supposed to know? He just drove the damn thing around.
He’d even gotten lucky as Core logistics hadn’t been as kind to some of the other squads, especially now with a severed supply line that wouldn’t facilitate the flow of spare parts or more weapons and ammunition. One particularly unlucky unit had been stuck without heavier weapons, resulting in them having to strap two or three rifles together and onto their issued ring mount.
No, it was the fact that, despite their fearless new leader’s “aggressive” stance on a presumed Corsair presence on the planet, he was doing the exact same stuff, aimlessly combing tracts of desert for any signs of life, just now he had his gunner’s legs in his rear-view mirror.
“Boogeyman 2-1, sitrep!”
He was so sick of Hawken spazzing out on their radio, too, and they hadn’t even been out for an hour.
“Boogeyman 2-1, I say again, sitrep! Please respond, over!”
Her vehicle was directly behind his. What could they have possibly seen that she didn’t? Tal looked over to his right to stare his squadmate in the eye for a few seconds, before the man gave him a quick nod.
It was totally worth it. No matter how long he’d be regulated to cleaning duty at the mess hall, no matter what other punishments Hawken had lined up for his “deviant behavior in the line of duty”, hell, she could do whatever she wanted to him for all he cared at this point: he had already won.
Hearts and minds had been won with only four one-syllable words, a feat that not even humanity’s best and brightest could boast to have accomplished. His delayed, monotone over had only solidified him as a deity of sorts amongst the shipping container-dwelling inhabitants of Forward Operating Base “Nodtvie, a nickname coined by “ass-kisser” Nova Hawken.
Tal swept some more sand out of the mess hall with his broom, coughing as his overpowered strokes sent particles of coarse sand flying every which way. It’d been two years since he’d been forced to clean like this, and it certainly took some getting used to, but he was definitely getting into the groove of things.
While he swept, a blast of cold air hit him from behind, and he was reminded that the mess hall was the only structure on this side of the segregated FOB to have functional environmental control systems. Just a step away from the enterance, sunlight shined brightly onto a path of paved sand, and for a second Tal wondered in what universe that this was considered a punishment. Honestly, he felt bad for his buddies, who were probably being herded around like sheep by Hawken right now.
A mercenary came stomping past Tal while he was busy bathing in his victory, creating large, beige stamps all over where he’d just swept with the fury of a thousand suns. Unfortunately, he was too late to react, and when he turned to find out what all the ruckus was about, the damage had already been done. All he could do now was stare at the man’s back with pure disdain in his eyes. “Prick,” he grumbled, leaning forwards onto his sturdy broom, rubbing against the callouses on his palms that were resurfacing in the presence of manual labor. Whatever, it wasn’t like a little bit of sand was gonna keep him down.
A different mercenary suddenly brushed past him, uttering a quick “sorry” as he continued on to the food lines, leaving a serious of much smaller stamps in his wake. Tal rolled his eyes, refrained from saying anything that would get him into further trouble, and went right back to sweeping at yet another careless man’s bootprints. Once he’d brushed a good majority of the coarse sand grains back outside, he went back to an idle position by the door, leaning on his broomhandle, sighing to himself as he looked outside with much longing.
For a split second, he wished he was aimlessly combing the desert with his buddies, since then they were all able to embrace the poor quality of life on Nauru together.
Tal, who had previously been slumped over the watchtower's single heavy pulse laser whilst staring out at a vast nothingness, looked up and over his right shoulder to find a fellow mercenary drawing a phallic object on the wall with a black marker. While he raised an eyebrow at him, he decided that it would be against his interests to report this "blatant defamation" (whatever the hell that meant) of Core property since snitches got stitches, plus he'd adorned the wall with his own trademark phallus once too.
"Who?" he had replied, to a man who was obviously a bit to absorbed in his vandalism.
"The purple spandex-wearing space ninja-woman."
"Oh, her! Yeah, what about her?"
"I overheard Hawken talking about how she left the Core."
Tal returned to leaning on the weapon emplacement, letting out a long sigh and taking a few seconds to process that information. Then, he realized something.
"Does that mean I get to go home?" he had asked, with a single bead of sweat irritating him as it slowly dripped down his cheek. His stomach growled incredibly loudly in the ensuing silence, most likely from the dodgy synth-gel he just consumed a few minutes ago.
"...No."
"Then why should I care?"
The mercenary lowered his marker for a second, looking around aimlessly while having a good, long thought about what Tal had just said. "Good point" was all he could stammer out before he decided to bury his face back into the mural of signatures, phrases, and unsightly artwork that surrounded them while they were on post. Tal simply rolled his eyes and sighed, moving both of his arms into a crossed position atop the box-like weapon so that he could comfortably rest his head and hopefully catch some Zs.
Tal shoveled another spoonful of turkey-flavored synth gel into his mouth, having decided to take part in an impromptu Thanksgiving celebration with all of his favorite nameless, faceless comrades. To be fair, it was about as good as a Thanksgiving celebration could get this far out in the sticks, minus the lingering taste of depression and homesickness.
They had Paladin Nova Hawken to thank for the fact that none of them were currently at home with their families. Perhaps she was bitter that she didn't have anybody to go home to, or perhaps somebody had gone and pissed in her coffee, but all Boogieman 2 knew was that all of their leave requests had been collectively denied. Even poor old Tal had filed for Thanksgiving leave, lacking a family or any known relatives to go home to but still seeking respite from all the sand that sought to enter everything imaginable. They'd tried so hard, and got so far, but alas, in the end, it didn't even matter.
"Deal with it," Hawken had remarked during an earlier meeting.
At least they were all dealing with it together.
"Hey, what are you thankful for, Ryan?"
Tal looked up from his colorless bowl of silly putty to find that somebody had tried to stir up conversation two tables away, to which the entire room gradually began to open up. Suddenly, he felt a sharp jab in his side, and he looked over to find that the guy sitting next to him had just elbowed him in the side.
"What are you thankful for, Tal?" he had asked, with an oddly happy smile on his face.
He looked back down into the bowl of translucent goop for a few seconds, stirring it around aimlessly with his brown plastic spoon as if it were going to make his meal any more appealing to the eye. Meanwhile, "I don't know" was all that he could utter in response, eliciting a blank look from the mercenary who started to turn back around to talk to somebody who was probably a bit more interesting than Tal "Might as well be a brick" Ravis.
"What are you thankful for?" he had managed to say, captivating the attention of his squadmate by actually saying something. The man proceeded to stop and think for a bit, placing his finger and thumb in the shape of an L and resting his chin on the curve, although it was clear that he was just putting on a show at this point.
"Hmmm...I'd have to say tits. Definitely tits."
Tal had expected as much, suddenly remembering why he didn't talk to people around these parts.
Tal had purposefully set his holowatch to a timezone of a planet half a galaxy away in order to keep track of things back home, even if it meant that he'd accidentally read off the wrong time to his superior officers. And misread his watch he did, on two separate occasions in fact, both of which ended in him looking like an idiot in front of his men with a side dish of public scolding by Hawken.
None of that meant that this little stunt wasn't totally worth it, however, and a feeling that was probably happiness washed over him for a few seconds, before a gust of wind and a cloud of sand blew all of it away. Whatever, he thought, before picking his carbine up out of the sand and signaling for his dismounted team to return to the convoy.
A single white light shone into a dark cavern, revealing nothing but an infestation of stalagmites and stalactites amongst rows of plastic tables. Gradually, the unnaturally bright light became more focused, as our kevlar-clad protagonist slowly began to step out from his unexposed position in a small, rocky corridor. First around the corner came the birdcage-style flash suppressor of his trusty service rifle, suddenly snapping up at a 45 degree angle and then slowly sweeping around in a wide arc so that he could scan the ceiling for any lurking attackers with a rail-mounted flashlight. Upon realization that surely nobody else was in the room, he crept in, rifle raised and ready to fire. Before he knew it, he was standing in the middle of a large, circular room of some strange alien ruin that he'd been dispatched to.
It certainly wouldn't be the strangest situation that he'd been in, remembering when a cheeky experiment-gone-wrong had decided to hijack his ship, but he definitely questioned just exactly why he was doing this as he made his way over to a table and grabbed hold of a nearly-transparent crystal-rock formation of some kind. Alien by design, no doubt, but why would the Core care about a bunch of dumb rocks?
As he proceeded to toss the little rock back onto it's respective table with impunity, his eyes caught wind of small light, shining intensely from a small crack in a rather unnatural-looking rock formation. He cocked an eyebrow, squinting in the darkness through his sunglasses to try and see the source of this light since it obviously wasn't his, until he just gave up and started walking towards it. Upon even closer examination, without taking his sunglasses off, he swore he saw something on the other side, just a little glimpse of what looked like an even deeper extension to the ruins. "Curiosity may have killed the cat," he thought, grabbing his rifle by the long, ribbed, circular handguard and raising it high, "but I'll bet good money that the cat didn't have an M16."
One swift strike with the butt of his rifle knocked a few pebbles loose, the second cracked his polymer stock, and the third made the entire pile of rocks give way to reveal a small opening in the wall, and he guessed it, a large expansion to the cavern. He positioned himself to peer through, rifle ready for any jumpscares that would ensue, although it seemed devoid of any life (he wished a motherf***** would've, though). Lining the cavern walls were manmade light sources, however, and upon closer examination through the scope of his rifle (and at a back-breakingly awkward angle, too), he found them to be torches.
So, there he was, discovering a previously walled-off portion of these ruins. Now, should he report it to the Core, or would he rather come back later and reap the unknown rewards of this cave?
"Hawken to Ravis, come in, have you found anything, over?" came through his vest-mounted short-range radio.
Who was he kidding, he was gonna leave this for his own exploitation.
"Ravis here, I, uh, ain't got nothing, over," he responded whilst staring down "something" in the face.
"Copy that, we're leaving in five. Hawken out."
Tal lowered his rifle and stood back up, trying to think of a way to cover this cavern up so that nobody else would find it. His eyes scanned his surroundings until eventually, he found a particularly alluring plastic table and proceeded to pounce on it. Whatever work that the Zoner archeology team was doing was tossed aside as Tal manhandled the table, flipping it onto it's side and barely giving it a chance to say "no" before slamming it's legs into the closed position. That done, he lightly jogged over to the gaping hole in the wall and planted it directly in front of the opening, making it as tightly sealed as he could.
Once satisfied with the results, he turned tail and proceeded to make his retreat.
Seven lightly-armored transports made their way over an old desert highway, the same one that he was posted up on six moinths ago, arranged tightly in a column formation as they raced down the road towards a triple-sunset. Cool breeze filled Tal's vehicle, as their bulletproofed windows had been rolled down in preparation for this final journey. Honestly, he would've forgotten about all of his Nauru woes, had it not been for the smell of fecal matter that wafted through his truck as well.
"A gathering of angels appeared above my head..."
The lyric was whispered by a certain Daniel Wheeler, who had normally been fairly quiet ever since their fateful conversation about female preferences. Without a doubt, the Bretonian had hummed the line under the naive assumption that nobody could hear him over the deafening roar of wind, but unfortunately for him, someone else had caught on and was now singing in unison. Not that anyone minded, of course, since they were all so caught up in the moment.
"They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said!"
Bah, whatever, thought Tal, A little singing never hurt nobody anyhow.
"They said, come sail away!"
All four occupants of the vehicle burst out into song, with anybody listening to the radio getting an earful of mixed tones and general off-tune loudness.
"Come sail away! Come sail away with meeee! Come sail away, come sail away! Come saaaaaaaaaaail awaaaaaaaaay with meeeeeeeeee!"
And so, the valiant mercenaries of Boogieman 2-1 rode off into the sunset, eager to resume their normal lives far, far away from this hellhole of a planet.