CASE - A Fluffy Lesbian Science Fiction

While my girlfriend kept staring daggers at me I asked my marines for volunteers to go down to the planet surface to set up a communication uplink together with some sensors. It was surprisingly easy although I should have expected my troops to volunteer themselves for these kinds of missions.

Out of the volunteers I mostly picked those who had prior experience in conflict zones together with a couple of tech-savvy younger marines to help with setting up the equipment.

All in all we had a small group of six people who would be going down to the planet below to a destination that Ellie had determined based on visual scans of the surface. She had picked a tall-standing ruin in a city that didn't look very active.

We waited patiently on the bridge as the shuttle descended in stealth mode, our cameras all pointed in their direction. Our bridge crew was ready to jump into action and provide at least a modicum of ground support if need be, although we would rather not as the effectiveness would be diminished thanks to the atmospheric circumstances of the planet.

I had my arms crossed tightly in front of my chest as the shuttle ducked behind some clouds. I could feel my heart beating in my throat.

"Pfff…" I sighed. "I don't like this."

Luna leant into me for a moment while she also looked at the screens. "Me neither, but I'm already glad that you decided against going down."

"Hmmm…" I grumbled softly. "I just don't like risking the lives of my people while sitting high and dry."

"Maybe you should have stayed a NCO then." My girlfriend retorted.

"That's true…" I nodded and then continued to focus on the imagery of our ground team. "Are their suits holding up, Ellie?"

"From the bits of data that have come through, yes, Commander. Your combat suits are more than up for the task to deal with these levels of radiation."

"Thank you, human warfare, for preparing us for nuclear fallout…" I said sarcastically. Although I actually was pretty happy about our preparedness in this case.

Five minutes of intense waiting passed before Lieutenant Zu finally raised her hand. "I've got a signal!" She stated. "It's weak but I can tune into it."

"Ellie, broadcast to the bridge channel once Zu got it, okay?"

"Yes, Commander."

A couple of moments later a crackle through the bridge intercom announced the establishing of a communications uplink.

"UFS Roald Amundsen, do you copy?" I recognized the voice of Sergeant De Smet.

"We copy you loud and clear, Sergeant. How is the situation there?"

"Smooth ride down but we have spotted quite a few bogies. Looks like they didn't spot us though. We will start deploying the small recon drones for nuke hunting as soon as possible. I think we will get them up in five minutes or so."

"Good luck, Sergeant. Keep us posted in case you need backup."

"Will do, Commander." The line went silent afterwards but Zu confirmed that the connection was still strong. Through this line the small stealthy recon drones could transmit their data safely to the ship so we could, relatively quickly, scan the planet surface for nuclear weapons. According to Ellie's calculations, without too many unexpected issues, that would take about a day or two. Just to make sure that, if we would land in a more large-scale operation, that there wasn't going to be a nuke dropped on top of our heads. After all, rule 1 in nuclear warfare is: don't get nuked.

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I was a lot more at ease now that we could contact our ground team somewhat freely but it did start a period of time with not a lot of sleep. We were all on high alert in case anything would happen, so our shifts were all extended to provide the highest operational capacity at any time.

It brought back some memories of the wartime days, with the big difference that we did have hot and pretty swell coffee à volonté now. Neither were we, at the moment, being bombarded by shells that could take out an entire squad in an instant.

A second wave of relief came when Ellie notified us two days later that her little drones hadn't found any active nuclear weapons. Although she did let us know there were some nuclear weapons still out there in a couple of bunkers, but in their current state, they were not deployable.

Aside from this good news, Ellie also provided us with some new information about the current situation. All of those pieces of information together had me calling a general briefing the day afterwards in preparation of a larger ground operation.

I walked into the big briefing room near the armory and took a look at the marines assembled in attention front of me. They didn't look nervous although I could feel a certain edge in the air. It's a feeling that I recognized from during the war too but it was hard to describe. Somewhere between being scared, excited, hopeful and distressed, all at the same time.

As I reached the stool in front of the briefing screen I ordered my troops to be at ease and be seated. "Alright, there's no point in delaying so I will get straight to the point." The slides automatically followed my speech thanks to Ellie's help. "Our drone's recon missions have shown that the mechanoids, as we have chosen to call them, have one fatal flaw that we will try to exploit during the upcoming ground operation." The slide switched to the view of one the larger compounds on the planet surface. "This compound houses the central mainframe which controls the entire population of mechanoids on this planet. If we manage to introduce a virus into this system, we will be able to shut down every single automaton within the day."

The slide then showed a more zoomed-out view of the surrounding area. "The bad news however is that this is also incredibly well-defended. The compound itself houses a couple of anti-air weapons, while rudimentary, they still pose a considerable risk to our drop-ships and attacking these weapons from orbit is simply not an option either thanks to the reinforced structure in which they are housed. This compound is then surrounded by three concentric rings of fortifications with similar anti-air weapons."

Ellie then showed an even more zoomed out version of the map with blue arrows approaching from the west of the compound. "Our plan is to land 5 kilometers to the West of the outer ring with the majority of our ground forces, supported by a couple of units of heavy armor, and break through towards this first ring of fortifications. Once we have claimed the first ring we will use the tower-like structure of the gate to set up a railgun system to take out the anti-air systems on the entire western hemisphere of the fortification network. This will allow our shuttles to come down and provide air support while we make our way through to the core of the central compound." To put some strength behind my words, Ellie used her genius AI skills to add a couple explosions to the map together with some other special effects. Not necessarily very professional but I could see that the marines enjoyed it and morale is important too.

One of the Gunnery Sergeants raised their hand, of course I immediately let them speak their mind. "Is it certain we will be able to get a shot off from the top of that tower?"

I nodded. "It's the only location that will give us a clear shot on every single anti-air weapon on the western hemisphere, with the exception being the weapon that is housed in that ring itself. We need to take that one out with regular explosives. That does mean it is adamant we take that position. If not, then air support will not be possible without risking heavy losses."

"What about the weapons of the enemy foot soldiers, Commander?" The same Gunnery Sergeant asked.

"Conventional ballistic weapons." I replied. "Our scout teams have reported that the mechanoids are in various degrees of disrepair. This does mean some of them will be using defective weaponry, but let's not start underestimating our enemy. Furthermore, the enemy has been taking way better care of equipment in and around the aforementioned compound. It's safe to assume the enemy weapons will also be of higher quality."

"That doesn't sound too bad. We are talking about heavy machine guns at a maximum?"

"It's true that our body armors can take quite a beating, but let's not forget that we are going into an extremely irradiated environment. Breaching your armor, unknowingly or not, will have serious consequences if not patched in time. Having an irradiated bullet enter your body is even worse. There's a reason why irradiated bullet bans were one of the only bans that stayed in place during the Unification War. We have heavy armor with us, use it."