Dire Contingency
Copyright© 2025 by Snekguy
Chapter 18
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 18 - A disillusioned special forces group stages a violent insurrection, stealing experimental weapons from a Navy black site and using them to take over a remote colony. With help months away, the only person who is in a position to oppose them is Ruza – an old veteran of the Kerguela war. The planet is plunged into a brutal conflict, with local resistance groups hellbent on breaking the occupation.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Heterosexual Fiction Military War Science Fiction Aliens Space Oral Sex Petting Size Politics Slow Violence
DAY 37 – HADES – RUZA
Ruza flattened his ears against the constant din of combat, the incessant gunfire bleeding in from every direction. Without ear protection, he’d probably be facing months of tinnitus before he could get his damned hearing fixed. The walls of the garrison rose up all around him, boxing him within its dusty courtyard, the surrounding buildings now playing host to resistance forces. They were clearing out the compound, marching captured PDF out onto the sand and forcing them to their knees, binding their hands while others kept them under guard. Behind him, the hole they had blasted in the perimeter wall still smoldered, sending a plume of black smoke rising into the air.
The operation was going as planned. Under the cover of the protest, and with the occupiers stretched thin trying to maintain their tenuous grasp over the city, the resistance had found the garrison more poorly defended than Seventeen had been. For Ruza and his complement of fighters, breaching the walls and securing the area had been relatively trivial. Now, the base swarmed with some four dozen Marines and fighters. He watched as a few fallen PDF were dragged away, their surviving comrades looking on with frightened expressions.
“Got him, Doc,” Reed declared. Ruza turned to see him give a PDF trooper a shove, holding the man at gunpoint as he marched him over from one of the outlying prefabs. The trooper was dressed differently from his counterparts, the insignia on his uniform identifying him as the garrison commander, not unlike Omar. Reed was flanked by two more fighters, their XMRs kept at the ready.
“You will open the shelter door,” Ruza snarled, glaring down at the hunched human. “We know that you are in possession of the new codes.”
“Fuck you,” the commander replied, spitting at Ruza’s feet.
Reed kicked him in the back of the leg, gripping the commander’s collar as he forced him to his knees. He let his XMR hang from its sling and drew a long combat knife from his belt, brandishing it so that his captive could see it.
“You only need one finger to work a keypad,” Reed said gleefully. “How many do you think I can feed to my friend here before you have a change of heart?”
Ruza gave him an exasperated look, and Reed mouthed play along silently from behind the commander.
“Open the door,” Ruza growled. “We will not ask a third time.”
Reed suddenly grabbed the man’s wrist, bringing the edge of the knife to his index finger.
“Shall we start with this one?”
“Alright, alright!” the commander conceded. Reed hauled him back to his feet and gave him a shove, marching him over to the sealed shelter. They stopped in front of the reinforced carbcrete mound, the garrison commander reluctantly entering a code into the touchpad as Reed jabbed the barrel of his rifle into his back.
“Go, go!” Reed ordered, waving the fighters through as it slid open. Two teams headed through the opening and began to thunder down the metal steps within. “Take him,” he added, passing the commander off to a couple of the men. “Make sure he gets all those cells open.”
“I do not like you playing into their rumors about me,” Ruza complained as he reloaded his rifle. “I am not a cannibal – you know this.”
“Counterpoint,” Reed began, raising a finger. “It’s really funny.”
“We have a very different understanding of humor.”
“You can say that again, Doc. Don’t worry – we can control your symptoms with medication.”
Ruza lifted a round ear, Reed watching as he turned his head to the sky.
“You got another drone?” Reed asked as Ruza leveled his rifle. A loud crack rang out, and a hovering surveillance drone fell towards the street below, dark smoke pouring from its broken chassis. “Just like skeet shooting. Good eye, Doc.”
“We must be swift,” Ruza said as he lowered his glowing barrel. “The longer we linger here, the greater chance there is of the enemy mounting a coordinated response. Our ruse will not fool them forever.”
He was interrupted as a fighter came hurrying over to him, the man lugging a bulky backpack that was filled with electronics. A spool of cable was crudely mounted to it, trailing across the dusty ground behind him, passing all the way through the breach in the wall. The cable was connected to their underground network of fiber optics, hardening their comms against enemy jamming.
“Rivera is on the line,” he said, extending a receiver to Ruza that was joined to the pack via another coil of cable. Ruza took it and lifted it to his ear, hearing the Marine’s voice on the other end.
“Ruza!” he yelled, the sound of gunfire in the background making him hard to understand. “Our garrison has come under heavy counter-attack by both PDF and SWAR forces! We got into the armory, and we’ve bolstered our numbers with freed prisoners, but we’re pinned down here!”
“We are not far from your position, Rivera,” Ruza began. “We will be able to reinforce you shortly. Hold fast – we are coming.”
“Negative!” Rivera replied, a sudden pause suggesting that he was firing his weapon. “We’re gonna try to make a fighting retreat! They’re onto us – there’s no way this is by chance, which means they’re about to hit you as well! Retreat while you can and shore up the base! We’re going to need a fortified position to fall back to, or this is all over!”
“Rivera – I cannot leave you to your fate!” Ruza argued as Reed looked on with concern. “We are but a short distance away – we can retreat together!”
“For once, do what I fucking tell you!” Rivera growled as he fired his weapon again. “Get back to the base – that’s an order!”
He shut off the connection, leaving Ruza standing there holding the receiver. He passed it back to the human with the backpack, then glanced down at Reed.
“I know that look,” Reed began warily. “Bergmann put Rivera in charge, Ruza. We’re supposed to follow his orders. If he says there’s an attack coming, we’d better do as he says and get the hell out of here while we still can.”
“I cannot abandon Rivera and his men to die,” Ruza replied. “I must try.”
“That’s a noble sentiment, but there’s more at stake here than just Rivera’s group.”
“You may do as you please,” Ruza continued. “If you wish to follow orders and return to the base, I will not stop you. I am leaving with Rivera, or not at all.”
“Damn it,” Reed hissed. “Take some of the best fighters with you, and I’ll make sure the prisoners get back home safely. They’re why we’re here, after all.”
They waited another few minutes for the fighters to return from the shelter, a procession of freed Marines following behind them. The men were dressed in their Navy uniforms, and they looked a little worse for wear after their captivity, but their eyes were bright and alert. This kind of jailbreak must have been exactly what they had been dreaming of for weeks. They glanced at Ruza as they poured into the courtyard, his alien presence standing out, and he counted at least a hundred of them. The garrison commander reemerged under the guard of two fighters, Reed gesturing to them frantically.
“Crack the armory open, and let’s get these guys some guns!” he ordered. “Pick up the pace, people – we gotta get out of here pronto! The Borgs are on their way!”
The two fighters dragged the commander over to another carbcrete structure, this one housing the garrison’s store of arms. There should be enough guns and ammo to give the prisoners a fighting chance.
“Welcome to Hades!” Reed declared, standing on a stack of sandbags to put himself above the crowd as he addressed the newcomers. “My name is Reed, but my friends call me Reed. I’ll be your designated revolutionary this evening. The city is currently going to hell, to use the technical term, so we’re going to make a fighting retreat back to a safe position in the tunnels below the city. We’re under orders from Staff Sergeant Rivera – your commanding officer. Please line up by the armory to receive your complimentary XMR, and don’t shoot anyone wearing high-vis – those are our guys. One at a time, now!”
The Marines seemed disoriented by the ongoing battle and their recent change of scenery, but they did as he asked, moving over to the armory as the door slid open. Ruza waded through them, shoving the garrison commander out of his path as he ducked through the doorway, finding himself in a cramped storage area. The armory was little more than a gray cube filled with racks of weapons and equipment lockers. Rows of stowed rifles lined the walls, and crates of ammunition stacked in haphazard piles occupied much of the floor space.
Ruza spotted what he was looking for, its copper glint catching his eye. Leaning up against one of the walls was an AMR – an anti-materiel railgun. It was as long as a human was tall, and far more heavily built than even a large-frame XMR, its extended barrel packed with dense magnetic coils that formed an unbroken tube of copper. On the muzzle was a bulky device designed to contain arc flashes. Unlike the smaller weapon systems, this one had a power source the size of a car battery that connected externally via an insulated cable, plugging into a socket on its receiver. The slugs that it fired were comparable to those used in twenty-millimeter cannons. The weapon was designed to take down heavily armored targets like Betelgeusian Warriors and low-flying aircraft, intended to be operated by a team of two humans using a bipod system. Before retrieving it, he filled his chest carrier with a couple of extra magazines.
It might be the only weapon on the entire planet capable of taking down a PCE.
“Can you even fire that thing?” Reed asked as he watched Ruza emerge with the long rifle in one hand and the battery in the other. Both had carry handles intended to make them more portable, but even in his hands, they were tangibly heavy.
“It will have to be modified for me to fire it comfortably,” he replied, stepping aside as more fighters made their way past him. “But yes, such weapons can be fired by a Rask unaided. They were used by the Royal Guard during the battle of the East Gate.”
He set his pack down on the ground and lifted the battery inside it, closing the zipper only far enough that the trailing cable poked out. Hefting the AMR again – Reed leaning away to avoid its long barrel – Ruza flicked on the power switch. There was an audible hum as the weapon began to charge, its capacitors sucking up power from the battery. It would cause a small delay between shots as they charged up again.
“Sounds like it’s about to fucking explode,” Reed muttered as he eyed the shining barrel. “Didn’t they start putting heat shrouds on those things after people lost all the skin on their hands?”
“It is old stock,” Ruza replied as he inspected the scope that was mounted on its rails. “I am glad that the battery still holds its charge.”
Behind them, the fighters were handing out weapons to the Marines, passing off whatever rigs and helmets were still being stored there. With so many loyal PDF being held captive, there was a fair amount of equipment sitting idle. Reed began to organize everyone, rallying the fighters to hold the compound while the prisoners prepared to leave. For all his talk of dishonorable discharge and butting heads with his superiors, Ruza found Reed to be a capable soldier and a fine leader, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Ruza called over some of the most experienced fighters, assembling a squad of a dozen trusted men made up primarily of Rivera’s Marines. They would certainly not object to rescuing their leader.
“What should we do with him?” one of the fighters asked with a gesture to the garrison commander. His hands were bound behind his back now, his eyes darting about warily.
“He’s being detained,” Reed replied, walking over to the commander and shoving him into the armory. He hit the panel to close the door, sealing the man inside and cutting off the beginning of his protests. There was the sound of cracking glass and fizzling electronics as he smashed the touch panel with the stock of his rifle, sealing the commander inside. “What?” he added with a shrug, the laughter of the nearby prisoners joining Ruza’s disapproving scowl. “They’ll get him out of there ... eventually.”
“We must part ways,” Ruza said, placing a hand on the human’s shoulder. “Get these men to safety and do what you can to reinforce the base until we return. I will meet you there.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Reed replied, giving him an encouraging pat on the forearm. “Well, I guess it’s too late for that. Just don’t get yourself killed, alright?”
Ruza nodded, and Reed turned away, leading the procession of resistance fighters and prisoners back through the breach in the wall. They left the PDF survivors where they lay, having neither the means nor the inclination to take them captive, the troopers sitting in the dust with their hands bound behind their backs.
There was a sudden crack of automatic fire, and the group of Marines began to scatter, leaping for cover behind whatever structure was nearest. Some were already out in the street, sprinting for the cover of the nearest prefabs as something cut a swathe through their ranks. A trail of explosions erupted along the road, turning three or four men to bloody ribbons, tossing up torrents of dirt as they cratered the ground. Ruza lifted his head to see a dropship doing a low pass over the rooftops, the bright blue glow of its engines and the burning orange of its tail gun picking it out against the black smoke that filled the sky.
“Aircraft!” Reed bellowed, taking cover in the rubble of the ruined perimeter wall. “Get down! Get down!”
The craft circled past overhead, shedding speed and banking around to keep its gun aimed at the garrison. It could not fire forward, and so the dropship had to keep its side to the target, the rotary gun barrels peeking out from beneath its overhanging tail. A few of the newly-freed Marines and resistance fighters began to return fire, shooting their rifles into the sky, but what few rounds found their mark simply bounced harmlessly off its armor. The Leadbeater was designed to absorb small-arms fire during a combat drop, and its armor was too heavy for even an XMR to penetrate.
“Take cover!” Ruza roared, throwing himself behind the nearby shelter entrance. Another stream of fire harried the courtyard, showering Ruza with fragments of shattered carbcrete as the shelter absorbed the slugs. Some of the nearby fighters weren’t so lucky. Ruza caught a glimpse of one of them practically evaporating as he took a direct hit, the heat and kinetic energy reducing his body to a vapor. One of the bound PDF was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the trail of rounds heading his way as they punched craters in the dusty ground, bisecting him at the waist.
“Ruza – the AMR!” Reed yelled over the din. “We can’t scratch that thing!”
Ruza hooked his claw behind the trigger – his finger was too large to make it through the guard. He didn’t even know if the scope was properly zeroed or if he could handle its recoil, but the weapon was loaded and charged. Hopefully, it had been properly maintained, or it might simply detonate in his hands like a grenade.
“It’s coming around again!” a nearby fighter shouted, leaning out from behind the armory and gesturing. “West, Doc! West!”
Ruza heard yells and screams as the circling dropship fired another burst, but he braced the massive rifle against his shoulder, gripping it just behind the exposed coils of its long barrel. Following the drone of the craft’s engines with his sensitive ears, he swung the weapon out of cover, spotting the dark shape as it drifted across the sky. It was far enough away to be the size of a toy.
He braced himself and exhaled a breath, putting the crosshair over the craft’s center mass, slowly tracking it as it moved across the horizon. It would have been a difficult shot even under ideal conditions, but he calmed his racing heart and steadied his hands, using his claw to squeeze the trigger with the delicacy of a surgeon suturing a wound.
The recoil hit him like a kick to the shoulder, even the telescoping stock and thick padding failing to mitigate it, the force making him stumble back. The shockwave created by the heavy round leaving the barrel kicked up a perfectly circular cloud of dust around him, blowing his hair and clothing like a strong gust of wind, the heat that the slug carried with it forming a wispy trail of molten tungsten in its wake.
The zero had indeed been off, but not enough for him to miss, and there was no reason to lead the target when the projectile was traveling so quickly. The round crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, punching clean through the hull left of center mass, impacting the base of the craft’s tail. The dropship shuddered under the impact, a shower of molten metal erupting like sparks as the slug exited the other side, the slagged metal and twisted armor plating raining down towards the rooftops below. The blue glow from its main engines flickered out, then there was a secondary explosion as the hydrogen fuel lines went up, the blast tearing the tail from the hull.
Its stabilization removed, the craft began to list, its burning tail section falling out of sight. The dropship hadn’t been traveling fast enough for its stubby wings to provide much lift, relying instead on the thrusters that lined its belly, the jets of blue flame flaring now as they struggled to keep it aloft. It was in a flat spin, spiraling down towards the ground, Ruza’s eyes widening as he realized that it was heading his way. Leaving a swirling trail of dark smoke in its wake, it half fell and half floated down towards the garrison, smashing through the perimeter wall and sending great chunks of carbcrete scattering across the courtyard.
Ruza dove around the far side of the shelter, small fragments of debris hammering his cover, another wave of disturbed sand washing over him. When he peered out again, he could just make out the burning wreck through the dust and smoke, the hull remaining remarkably intact. Leadbeaters were made of stern stuff.
There was movement – a dark figure stumbling into view through the rubble. At first, Ruza’s mind conjured the image of a man so badly burned that he was little more than a blackened skeleton, but the shape soon resolved into a SWAR operative with prosthetic limbs. He was indeed burned, but not so badly that he couldn’t raise a rifle. Before Ruza could bring his AMR to bear again, the unfortunate operative was unceremoniously cut apart by a hail of return fire from the nearby Marines and fighters.
“Looks like the fucking gun works!” he heard Reed yell from across the compound.
The freed prisoners continued to filter out of the garrison, while Ruza and his handpicked team headed out through the main gate, keeping the tether to their right as they began their journey South. He had studied the map and knew well where Rivera and his men were making their stand – only one garrison over. His squad separated into two fireteams of six, sticking to the prefabs on either side of the street. Ruza carried his AMR by its handle, drawing the sidearm that Rivera and Reed had fashioned for him, able to hold it in a single hand. His XMR was slung across his back out of the way.
All around him was evidence of the battle currently taking place. The entire city had been engulfed in conflict, the blue sky choked with dark smoke from dozens of raging fires that rose up from every direction, the sound of gunfire from dozens of engagements echoing across the colony. The last time he had taken part in a war of this scale, he had been evacuating civilians from a ruined Kerguelan city under the fire of a great Betelgeusian war host. Had they done the right thing on Hades? Was this chaos a worthy price to pay for freedom, or was the cost becoming too steep?
As they navigated the narrow streets, his team was alerted to a nearby column of smoke that was in their path, Ruza sticking close to the men as they advanced towards it cautiously. One team covered the other as they rounded a bend in the road, coming upon a grisly sight.
There had been a firefight here, leaving the street littered with bodies, the smoke rising from a burning APC that must have been damaged by explosives. It had crashed into a prefab, breaking the outriggers and causing it to slump to the ground, its wall split open like a tin can. Fortunately, it seemed that nobody had been inside the structure at the time. The rear doors of the vehicle hung open, the silver craters left in the camouflaged paintwork suggesting that the occupants had been fired on during their escape. Several bodies lay still on the ground nearby, more of them slumped behind sandbags on the left side of the road. To the right were an equal number of resistance fighters, easily identifiable by their armbands.
As his team fanned out to secure the area, he checked the downed fighters, finding none alive. They had taken fire from XMRs, and the weapons were devastating, leaving little chance of survival on a hit to the torso or the head.
He lurched suddenly, the scent of burning metal and blood dredging up a vivid memory.
Ruza was back in the ruins of the Crawler, the desert dunes crashing against its massive hull like waves, piling against monstrous treads the size of buildings. It was so long that it vanished into the sandstorm’s haze, and it rose some fifteen meters from the ground, casting a black shadow beneath its belly. It was a mobile fortress – its flat deck covered with prefab structures that served as barracks and garages, its flanks lined with suspended gantries. One of the defensive CIWS guns with its pale radome was visible from his vantage point below, its optics package glinting.
The great vehicle had been felled by artillery fire, split open and dashed against the ground like a wounded creature, listing as its mechanical guts spilled out onto the sand below. Even from a distance, he could tell that it would never move again. What had once seemed impervious to damage now lay broken and ruined – humbled.
His pack was advancing alongside him, making their way through a wound in its side, sifting through the scattered wreckage. They headed deeper, climbing through collapsed hallways and over piles of twisted scrap, cooled slag running along the deck like silver blood. Every precarious footstep created a creak or a groan, the flashlights mounted on their weapons sweeping across the warped environment, the low visibility only making it feel more like a nightmare. They occasionally came across bodies, but they had been rendered almost unrecognizable. There were burnt pieces of the crew scattered here and there – a charred arm disconcertingly softer than the metal grates beneath his feet.
He was in the engineering section now, its corridors broken and crooked, as if melted by some incredible heat. Complex machinery whose purpose he could not guess at had been rent apart just like the crew, spools of loose cable hanging from the bowed ceiling, some kind of coolant spewing from a broken pipe.
The reactor core stood before him. Its shielding was cracked open, its maw agape, the blue glow that emanated from within reflecting off its surroundings like the shimmering water of a serene oasis. He tasted iron on his tongue.
A cry snapped Ruza back to the present, and he spun his head to follow the sound, his breath coming in ragged bursts. One of the men had found a survivor and was aiming his rifle behind the sandbags, Ruza hearing another shrill wail of fear. Willing his panicked heart to calm, he tore himself from the waking dream, hurrying over to the scene.
Placing a hand on the fighter’s shoulder to ease him aside, Ruza found a PDF trooper taking refuge behind the haphazard fortifications. He was lying amidst the dead, pushing one of the bodies aside as he crawled away frantically, his camouflaged uniform stained with blood that likely was not his own. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and he was missing his helmet, his eyes wide with a terror that bordered on madness. He didn’t seem to be armed, and before he could crawl beneath the nearest prefab like a desert mouse fleeing to its burrow, Ruza extended a hand to stay him.
“We are not here to hurt you,” he said in the most soothing voice that a Rask could muster. “Your battle is over.”
It didn’t seem to have the intended effect, but the trooper froze up – more out of fear than compliance. As Ruza’s keen eyes examined the subject more closely, he saw that the human had taken a hit to the lower leg – likely a ricochet from a slug. It had done damage, and he certainly couldn’t walk to safety, but it was not a mortal wound.
“Let me treat it,” Ruza insisted. He reached down with a long arm, hesitating when the trooper let out another panicked yell. “I will not hurt you.”
With the fighter still training his weapon on the boy, he had no choice, his wild eyes following the Rask. Ruza set down his weapons and drew a tourniquet from a pouch on his belt, leaning over the sandbags and gently lifting the trooper’s injured leg. His patient flinched, but didn’t pull away, allowing him to secure the device around the limb below the knee. Ruza gave the mechanism a few turns, then withdrew, backing away cautiously as he might when faced with a cornered razorback. The human seemed just as confused as he was terrified now, staring up at Ruza, his expression begging a question that did not need to be spoken aloud.
“Time to go, Doc,” the fighter prompted. “The Staff Sergeant can’t hold out forever.”
“Remain here,” Ruza told the trooper as he stooped to retrieve his AMR. “Someone will come for you.”
He moved along with his team, leaving the confused trooper behind.
“You alright, Doc?” the Marine asked as they rounded another corner. It was Delgado – one of Rivera’s best men. “You kind of spaced out back there for a moment.”
“The clamor of battle is bringing back memories I thought forgotten,” Ruza grumbled. “An unwelcome experience, to be sure.”
It wasn’t long before that clamor grew louder, the sound of gunfire emanating from the nearby garrison where Rivera and his men were fighting. Ruza’s squad stuck to the back alleys, knowing that they were likely approaching a large enemy host, keeping a low profile as they slunk through the shadows.
“We’ve got no comms with the Staff Sergeant,” one of the Marines said as they stalked between the prefabs. “There’s no way to warn him that we’re coming or for us to get any intel about his situation.”
“From the sound of things, they must be dug in,” another added.
They crept forward, stopping at a vantage point where they could see the garrison, taking cover behind an abandoned checkpoint made of sandbags and barriers. The base’s four walls rose above the surrounding prefabs, smoke billowing from within, the source of the fire likely related to the explosives used to breach the perimeter. Surrounding the garrison were wide streets that separated it from the populated homes, creating a kind of dry moat that would prevent anyone from approaching unseen. The road was littered with bodies – all of them PDF. It seemed that one or more large attacks had already been repelled.
The prefabs beyond played host to the enemy, Ruza able to pick out dozens of PDF troopers when he chanced a look over the concrete barrier that he was crouched behind. They were sticking to cover, hunkered down below crescents of sandbags and hiding behind the prefabs, most of them concentrated in front of the breach.
The wall that Rivera’s group had blown open was facing East, while Ruza and his squad were positioned to the garrison’s North, the angle only just allowing him to make out the breach. The jagged hole was surrounded by rubble and twisted rebar, much of it still smoking, and there were plenty more bodies amidst the debris – more than in the street. Some of them were resistance fighters who had died holding the position, while more were PDF who had been cut down during what must have been desperate assaults across open ground. The garrison was doing its job – acting as an impenetrable bastion, its choke points holding fast.
As Ruza watched, there was another exchange of gunfire. Several of the attackers opened fire from the cover of the prefabs, the molten trails from their XMRs bridging the street, biting out more chunks of carbrete and sparking off the exposed structural supports. From within came harrying return fire, the fighters emerging from cover to shoot before quickly ducking back to safety.
“The Borgs can’t get in, but Rivera’s crew can’t get out,” one of the Marines muttered.
“Until Barbosa decides to send in a dropship or a PCE,” Delgado added. “Without anti-air, a Leadbeater could put down right inside the compound.”
“Then it is fortunate that we are here,” Ruza replied, feeling the comforting weight of the AMR in his hand.
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