1 year after the Armistice

POV: Sjulzulp, Free Znosian Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)

Five Whiskers Sjulzulp no longer carried his standard issue Dominion Model-183 rifle. The supply division had gotten their paws on a new shipment of predator-made carbines. Technically, the weapons were not actually new, as evidenced by their well-worn exterior, but he had few complaints. They were a little heavier, sure, but nothing that the heavy-duty motors in his new exo-armor couldn't deal with. In exchange for the extra mass, they were deadlier, and they worked seamlessly with all kinds of other equipment that the predators poured into the former Dominion.

The C-109 rifle he held in his paw in particular apparently had a long history. Embedded in its lightweight polymer stock were a series of alien letterings. He knew from his translator that it said "Property of the District 280 Police Department", but the last few words had been hastily scratched over, the words "Children of Saturn" carved beneath it.

Whatever that means.

He liked them, but Sjulzulp wasn't one of those younger kits in his Free Znosian unit who worshipped everything made by the predators; he knew just enough to do his jobs.

There were some whispers that the predators would restart their war with the Dominion. Some younger kits fantasized in hopeful voices about getting reinforcements. About massive transports full of predator Marines joining their ranks. About Great Predator ships that could crack planets and extinguish stars.

But no such thing happened. The schism went on, thousands of fronts on hundreds of planets at war, and the predators stood by and watched, as if poised hesitantly above a maelstrom, scared to jump back in.

Mostly watched.

They helped a bit with their supplies. It was never quite enough, but it was better than nothing. At least the Free Znosian Marines hadn't lost yet. The supplies were just enough to keep things going.

Of the supplies they got from the predators, there were two major classes of shipments.

The first was official: the predators gave them standard gear: helmets, body armor, rations, rifles, and sometimes heavier anti-armor or anti-air launchers. They replaced most of the Free Znosian Marines' older equipment, alleviating shortages where their sources in the Dominion dried out. These transports would come in directly through the nearest spaceport, with clear chains of responsibility recorded from top to bottom. Every large bore shell that was fired was recorded. Every spent tube that was retrievable was returned for inspection. That didn't bother anyone; despite being schismatics, the concepts of responsibility and proper paperwork were still familiar to most Free Znosian Marines.

The second was… more peculiar. If they came in by spaceport, it'd be done at night, with the spaceport cleared of unauthorized officers. More often, they were simply dropped near combat units in unmarked deorbiting pods, and the nearest units would be given coordinates and ordered to go retrieve them. And the unspoken-but-well-understood rule was that there was absolutely not to be any mentions of these shipments anywhere on the official reports.

"And remember, this is a jackpod," the briefer had said on the radio. That was the codename they used for these types of weapon shipments on the radio. Everyone knew what that meant, even the Loyalist Marines who would sometimes — rarely — manage to snatch one of them up if they landed in the wrong place.

This one turned out to be a shipment of mortar shells. They barely got back to their base camp before his unit's attached mortar team pounced on them.

"Have at it," he gestured at them, grinning widely.

"Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to get us a few crates of mortar shells," the mortar team officer said as her Marines began enthusiastically unloading them into their inventory. "What's so special about these?"

"No idea. I'm in charge of scouts. Knowing about different shells is your job, not mine," Sjulzulp replied.

"Hm… that's a new one," the officer said, pointing at the unloaders.

"Yeah?" Sjulzulp said, tracing her claw to one of the open wooden boxes, revealing stacks of 60mm shells, neatly lined up head-to-tail.

"Yeah, yellow tails, it looks like."

He squinted. "Yellow tails?"

Each of the shell had a pale yellow ring around their dark-green base.

"Yeah, the predators use different colors to signify the purpose of the shells."

"And what does the yellow tail mean?" Sjulzulp asked after a moment.

"I have no clue. Never seen one of those before. Extra high explosives, maybe?"

"Maybe one of the crates will include usage instructions," he said hopefully.

"Or we just fire them at the Loyalists, see what happens. Much easier."

Sjulzulp said after a while, "Maybe it's like the new shells that the Loyalists are using."

The mortar officer's face darkened. "The chlorine shells?"

Those deadly gas shells had made their way into Dominion inventory a few months ago. In response, most of the anti-Loyalist factions had started manufacturing and deploying those almost immediately. They weren't exactly difficult to make, and the very same sprawling chemical industry that ran the extermination camps quickly became repurposed for the battlefield. More than a few pristine Znosian worlds had been thoroughly poisoned as the scourge ran through and turned productive farmland into toxic wastelands. Thousands of villages and cities, streets and mass graves lined with the victims of increasingly lethal formulations.

Ironically, they were far more effective against everyone else except the combatants on each side. For troops, it sucked to deal with them, especially on stalemated fronts where most had to fight in static positions, but they had protective suits. A vast majority of the victims of this increasingly grotesque form of war were the noncombatants. Ultimately, they just weren't a game changer in a war fought on six hundred planets.

Sjulzulp shrugged. "When they started using those, our division commander secured us a shipment of rubber suits and gas masks. The next logical step would be—"

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"I don't think so," she replied, shaking her head. "I've requested for gas shells too through their logistics request system; everyone in fire support has. There is a rumor they have these nerve agents that can paralyze entire armies without detection… But anything like that just gets denied automatically and immediately. I think either they don't actually have stocks of those, or they aren't willing to give them out."

"Pity."

"Yes, too bad." The mortar officer stared into the distance. "Maybe this war will be over when they decide we should win."

Sjulzulp shrugged. "Hey, what they've sent — it's better than nothing."

"Need quite a bit more than nothing if we want to make some progress on this Prophecy-forsaken planet."

"Bah. I'm sure the Loyalists are ready to give up any day now."

"Just one more push? That what they tell you?"

"Just one more push. Then we'll be in Znos by this time next year."

She raised her canteen at him. "To next year in Znos."

"Next year in Znos."

The ammo cache turned out to be an old ration distribution center in a rural area. Old rations were another thing the cooperation with the predators had made near-obsolete for the Free Znosian Marines. Instead of soggy gruel, they were importing massive quantities of decent, edible food, along with an improved recipe. Even some Loyalist units were beginning to smuggle them in or trading captured packets at a high value.

This part of the front was far more porous than most, and the unit Sjulzulp was with had become familiar with the terrain. They managed to slip through one of the less guarded forests, and the maps supplied by some of the locals had been helpful.

The ration center was guarded by what appeared to be a not-so-elite squad of mindless Loyalist Marines. They weren't slacking off or anything — Dominion standards hadn't fallen off quite that far, but they clearly weren't expecting any trouble tonight.

That was about to change.

"We've got direct eyes on target," Sjulzulp whispered into his radio.

"Intel was good?"

"Always."

"Good one. Hilarious… How much ammo do they have, Five Whiskers?"

Sjulzulp looked through his rangefinder again. "Hard to see everything in the warehouse, but looks like mostly small-arms. Maybe some anti-armor in there?" he speculated.

"How much anti-armor, exactly?"

"I think I see a couple of tubes."

"That's… not much."

"Might be spent tubes too. The guards outside are using old Dominion Model-152s, and I saw their squad leader pacing around with the bulky radios."

"Nothing worth the extra effort of capturing, then?"

He triple-checked with his optics, then agreed, "Probably not."

"Alright, I'll connect you with the fire support."

There was a brief moment of silence and the familiar, cheery voice of the mortar team officer came out of his radio. "How's it going down there, Five Whiskers?"

"A mild infestation. The structure looks… barely fortified."

"How mild?" she asked.

"I count twelve Loyalists, maybe up to two dozen."

"Coordinates?"

He read off the six-digit number into his radio.

"Ok," she replied after a moment. "I see it on our maps. We're going to do a barrage of three rounds. Take cover."

He scratched his whiskers. "Only three?! The precision strike drones? That seems a little expensive for—"

"No, that yellow tailed stuff we got last week."

"Wait," he protested as loudly as he could while still whispering. He was still decently far from the inattentive enemy, but it'd be dumb to give away his position like this. "We haven't tested those yet!"

"Actually, we did a test launch last night. I think you'll like it."

"What is it?"

"You'll see… Oh, yeah, hm… how far are you from the coordinates you just gave me?"

"We're about… four hundred meters away, I think. That's danger close, and even if I trust your people's aim…"

"Nah, that's fine. My people have good aim… But yeah, I would back up a little more if I were you."

"Alright, give us a minute to reposition—"

Thonk. Thonk. Thonk.

Sjulzulp could hear the coughs of the mortar tubes far in the distance even as he was attempting to register his protests.

"Rounds complete," the mortar officer said cheerily. "You've got about forty-five seconds."

"Crap!" he loudly whispered to his team. "Rounds incoming! Get into cover! Now!"

They weren't amateurs. They'd dug waist-high trenches as they were waiting all night. Ranger graves, as the manuals called them for… whatever reason.

Now they huddled into them. In their fighting positions, they could see the Loyalist Marines getting agitated. They, too, had heard the mortar launches, and it didn't take them too long to figure out that they were pretty much the only thing worth hitting within audible range of that mortar. They shouted at each other as they took cover in their own defensive hardpoints, their voices barely carrying over the far distance in the cold night air.

Exactly forty seconds later, Sjulzulp tracked one of the projectiles coming in, a faint, blinking silhouette, only noticeable as it obscured a couple of stars in the night sky. It sliced through the air, whistling as it fell until about a hundred meters above the ground.

That was when it detonated.

Pffffffttzzzzzzz.

No thunderous explosion shattered the night. No shards of shrapnel tore through the defenses. Instead, the shell fragmented into what seemed like a thousand glowing ribbons of light. They unfurled with eerie grace, cascading downward in molten streams of bright color.

What in the—

The sky was on fire. That was the only way he could describe it.

In seconds, the ribbons fluttered to the ground. They ignited everything they touched. Fire blossomed along the enemy trench lines, devouring everything from wooden earthworks to armored plating to—

Boom. Boom.

A secondary explosion of ammunition followed another in the enemy trenches, throwing dirt into the air, flames from the detonated munitions illuminating the night sky, now nearly as bright as day. The loud screams of the burning enemies reached Sjulzulp about the same time as a blast of warm air from yet another secondary. The ammunition in the warehouse went off like a bundle of signal rockets being lit all at once. And the air filled with an acrid, chemical stench.

As he switched off the night vision and thermal filters on his rangefinder, he could see a burning Loyalist Marine hopping wildly with abandon. Another attempted to put out the uncontrollable flames on her comrade's fur but only managed to set herself on fire too.

Then, the second shell arrived.

Pffffffttzzzzzzz.

His radio beeped. "Hello? Scout team, are you still there? Did it work?"

Sjulzulp pressed his claw to his radio, saying nothing for a few seconds even as he watched the remaining enemies burn to death, mesmerized by the unexpected beauty of the grotesque violence. Finally, he managed to squeak out into his radio, "One and two, good effect on target. Targets neutralized."

"Good. But don't go anywhere; we've got a third one still inbound."

"Understood…" Sjulzulp paused as another explosion rocked the former munition warehouse. He wasn't an expert on structures, but he'd become somewhat of an expert on watching them blow or burn up; there wouldn't be much left of this facility after this.

Pffffffttzzzzzzz.

After a few seconds, he transmitted into his radio, "We are definitely going to need to request more of those shells."

Sjulzulp couldn't get the smell of roasted flesh out of his fur for days. A few days later, he got a message from their other suppliers, the more official one. The exchange went more or less like this:

Hey Sjulzulp, sorry to bother you on a Friday afternoon, but one of our programs flagged an anomalous payload. As part of our investigation of their trade records, we know that a SRN-affiliate under an arms embargo sent one of the combat units near you a munitions pod about eight cycles ago. Mortar shells, 60 millimeters in diameter, pale yellow rings around the base. Highly volatile and dangerous. Have you got anything like that?

Let me check with my mortar team.

It's urgent. You need to let us know if you're in possession of those.

Ok. Will do.

Sjulzulp, it's been two hours. Can we get an update? This is a pressing matter. The case is being escalated to my superiors, and I've got a legal intelligence breathing down my neck. Have you seen these? Picture attached of a sample.

Calm down, predator. I was just looking through our stocks. And yes, we've seen those.

You have? Great! Please take pictures of the serial numbers at the base. We will send a representative to your location to repossess them shortly.

Don't bother.

Huh?

We've used them all. They worked very well. Can you please send more?

They did not send more of those shells. They did continue sending the other equipment though. The predators were odd like that.

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