When Grotto Corporation took over the planet, the resource giant had bought out the fishing leases and installed a number of pipeline hubs on the scattered islands. These pipeline hubs drew raw water from the oceans, filtered out the rocks, sediment, and marine life from the water and stored it in massive containers. The containers would be loaded onto cargo haulers that would move back and forth between the hubs and the truly gargantuan deep space transport ships for which Grotto was famous. The transports would then move the water throughout Grotto space to feed the various needs of the company.
With corporations engaging in business across such vast tracts of mapped space there were billions of thirsty citizens, hydro-electric plants, and various other industrial efforts that required staggering amounts of the precious liquid.
Grotto Corporation, which had a well-deserved reputation as a voracious destroyer of worlds, cared little for engaging in sustainable environmental practices. In as few as ninety two years the entire planet’s oceans were sucked dry and as much as ninety five percent of the planet’s water had been harvested and taken off-world. The rapid change in the planet’s mass had altered its gravitational and magnetic properties. What had once been a planet with a relative fifty percent sunlight and fifty percent darkness relationship with its triple sun swiftly tilted on its axis. The new orbital pattern bathed the majority of the planet in the scorching light of at least one of the three suns at all times, leaving a small portion of the planet in perpetual freezing darkness. With the marine life extinct, no standing water beyond a few frozen lakes on the dark side of the planet, and nothing else left to take, Grotto had abandoned the planet.
The speeder came to a stop at the mouth of the ravine to wait for the rest of the column to enter the ravine and muster at the mouth. The engines of the speeders caused too much vibration for more than one to go through the ravine without causing seismic signatures that could be read by the security sensors likely being used by the enemy to defend their newly seized prize.
Samuel looked down at the center of the valley and took in the sight of the colony. The name of the colony was unknown to him beyond the designation RLC5611, which stood for “Red Listed Colony”, this one being the five thousand six hundred and eleventh recorded by Grotto. Samuel doubted that many of those recorded colonies still stood since it was the standard policy for Reapers to forcibly remove them from salvage sites.
Though he had participated in driving out a number of squatter communities from valuable salvage sites during his time with Hive Fleet 822, many more were recorded that later disappeared into the void or were taken by pirates.
Red List ships and settlements were notoriously difficult to keep track of, especially since few in the corporate world cared much about their presence, unless, as was the case on Tetra Prime, those Red Listers were squatting on something of value.
According to the brief, the people of RLC5611 had settled on the planet for reasons unknown, but in the process of establishing their colony, had discovered micro-deposits of nefadrite ore in the scorched silt dunes that now covered the planet.
The colony had been positioned in this particular valley due to the prevailing wind patterns. With a series of massive turbines they churned through the wind to separate the nefadrite ore from the rest of the silt. When nefadrite began to appear on the black market several companies took interest, and investigators went to work tracking the ore back to its source.
A Helion investigator had found the link between the purchase of the turbines to the Red Listed colonists. Helion, much like Grotto, was a galaxy spanning mega-corporation with interests across the universe and the relationship between Helion and Grotto was somewhat poor at present.
Though every company in the universe was engaged in some manner of trade war with one or more opponents, most military engagements were clandestine and only rarely would formal war be declared. In fact, the last formal wars had been fought between Grotto, Aegis, and the now defunct Wageri corporations nearly a century prior.
In those hard years, entire cities were drawn into the conflict. Many administrators and educators insisted that now, war was a more civilized affair and violence only occurred on actual work sites and resource locations.
It was a convenient narrative to spin for the masses, thought Samuel as he looked down on the colony, some of its buildings still smoking from the Helion occupation.
When Helion battle forces stormed the settlement Samuel imagined that the colonists would disagree with the official corporate historians. According to available intelligence a sizeable Helion battle force had entered Grotto space and seized the colony roughly seventy-two hours prior.
Grotto Corporation had become aware of the nefadrite deposits and turbine colony thanks only to the invasion causing the Grotto investigators to finally put two and two together. The corporation was engaged in several mining and gas harvesting operations on other planets and moons in the Tetra Prime system and it was deemed an Alpha Priority to drive out the Helion invaders. Not just to push them out of a Grotto system in general, but also to protect the existing infrastructure of the colony so that once under Grotto control the nefadrite extraction could continue.
The rest of Squad Taggart was strapped into seats alongside Samuel. The new marine was Bianca Kade, and though she’d been with the squad for the last three years, having replaced the marine lost back on the space hulk, Samuel couldn’t help but think of her as Aaron’s replacement.
Aaron Baen had died back on M5597, sitting against a wall and forgotten by his comrades during the furious firefight. Samuel had always felt it was his fault that Aaron had been allowed to bleed out.
Plenty of other marines had insisted to Samuel that these sorts of things happened on the battlefield, that while Aaron lay bleeding Samuel was fighting for his own life.
Samuel knew this to be true, but he had not been able to shake that feeling of responsibility and guilt for years. Aaron was his first medic patient and the first casualty of Squad Taggart since the founding on Baen 6. Samuel had figured that was why he had so much trouble learning the names of Aaron’s replacements. It wasn’t until Bianca joined the squad that he’d finally gotten over it. Granted, Samuel had to admit to himself, that was likely also, in part, to he and Bianca having taken to each other’s bed several times over the last few years.
The marine carried a great deal of guilt about his multiple infidelities since joining the Reapers. He knew that one day he had to come clean with Sura. He wondered how he could possibly communicate to her the raw need for human contact that rose up within him, within most all of the marines, when they survived a particularly harrowing engagement.
Samuel’s first time had been with Jada after the fight with the monsters on M5597. As for Bianca, she’d come to him for comfort after the two of them had spent nearly an hour pinned down and exchanging sniper fire with a mob of armed squatters who refused to leave a decommissioned refinery during the Hive Fleet 822 campaign.
Samuel knew about plenty of other relationships and trysts within Tango Platoon and with other platoons. It was next to impossible to keep secrets on board the Reaper tug, and most people didn’t even attempt to hide anything.
Each marine carried with them the burdens of their debts, some the responsibility for their families, and all of them the knowledge that each mission could be their last.
Only a small handful of marines in the Reaper ranks were without some family connection planetside, like Boss Marsters, so even in their infidelity, there was a common bond between the marines and their comrades.