Dire Contingency
Copyright© 2025 by Snekguy
Chapter 20
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 20 - 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 – PETROVA
“Get off the street,” Petrova warned, waving her friends into an alley. She kept her captured XMR raised, clutching it in her prosthetic hands, covering them as they hurried past her.
They had finally made it back to Fran’s prefab, and the battle seemed to be dying down. The exchanges of gunfire that rang out across the city were less frequent, and the streets had become all but deserted, the protesters and insurgents alike retreating to cover. Whatever Barbosa had done, it seemed to have worked, but at what cost?
Fran hurried up the metal steps to her front door, scanning her phone on the reader to unlock it.
“Hurry, hurry!” she hissed as she guided Sam and Carl to safety. Petrova moved to join them, but Fran blocked her path, standing at the top of the steps. It wasn’t difficult to guess what she was thinking.
“Fran,” Petrova began, lowering the weapon. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t know what would go down at the protest, or I would never have allowed you to go.”
“Coming here to occupy Hades is one thing,” Fran replied sternly. She sounded like a mother scolding her child, Petrova feeling herself shrink away reflexively. “All of the people who have died, the rationing, the repression – that’s another. I thought you were my friend, but it was just an act the whole time. You lied to me in my own house, you lied to my friends, and you made a mockery of our trust. You almost got the people I care about killed. I’m not going to let you make us pawns in some spy ring.”
“I...” Petrova hesitated, struggling to find the right words. It was so easy to lie – so easy to detach herself and play the part, but Fran wasn’t addressing Val. She was addressing Petrova. “I didn’t pretend to be your friend,” she continued, looking over Fran’s shoulder to see Sam and Carl peering out at her. “I didn’t mean to ... that wasn’t part of my assignment. Yes, I made contact at the bar because I was looking for information, and I needed to embed myself within the local population.”
“You describe it with all the grace of a tick,” Fran grumbled.
“I just ... those are the terms we use,” Petrova stammered as she quickly moved on. “My point is – nobody made me be friends with you. I liked you guys. I enjoyed spending time with you. I protected you from the PDF, didn’t I?”
“We would be pretty dead without her,” Sam conceded.
Fran’s stern features began to soften a little, but they were interrupted by a blast, an overpressure wave sweeping across the city and blowing a wall of displaced dust with it. Fran had to grip the guard rail of her steps, and Petrova ducked, her cochlear implants dampening the following thundercrack to protect her ears. Her training kicking in, she spun her weapon in the direction of the sound, lowering the barrel when she saw a shower of streaking stars falling towards the planet. They impacted one by one, throwing up great torrents of ash and dust, forming dark pillars of black smoke that rose into the stratosphere.
“What the hell’s happening now!?” Carl demanded, leaning out of the door to peer at the horizon. Sam did the same, his jaw hanging agape.
“The carrier,” Petrova began, still wrestling with what she was seeing. “Blyat, those have to be one-kilo sabots. What are they doing?”
The four of them watched – transfixed, until the barrage finally ceased and the ground stopped shaking. The mushroom clouds were drifting now, creeping across the sky, blown by the winds of the encroaching storm.
“I think you’ve done enough damage for one day,” Fran finally said, tearing her eyes from the morbid sight. “I’d like you to leave.”
Petrova looked past Fran’s stony face, her gaze drawn to the warm glow of the prefab behind her. Val wasn’t a real person, and this wasn’t part of her mission, but she found herself pining for the way things had been before. Fran’s silly obsession with flowers, their visits to the bar, Carl and Sam arguing about politics while Fran mediated – it all felt so distant now. All she had to go back to was her lonely, sterile prefab – devoid of any of that warmth.
She looked to Sam and Carl, searching for any signs of sympathy, but they wouldn’t countermand Fran.
“Alright,” Petrova replied, lowering her head and turning away. She raised her rifle, shifting her mind to the task at hand as she left Fran behind, heading deeper into the maze of prefabs. If Val was no longer wanted, she would just have to be Petrova instead. There was much to do. She had to get in contact with Barbosa and find out whether his plan to crush the insurgency had succeeded, and she needed to pick up the Rask’s trail again. He was a survivor, and her instincts told her that he was still out there somewhere. If she hadn’t wasted so much time evacuating the civilians, perhaps she would have been able to track him down during the chaos. The Rask was all that mattered now – he was all she had.
She knew what protocol demanded. When she got back to her prefab, she would inform Song that her identity had been revealed, and he would send a team of operatives to black bag her friends. They would be disappeared – sent into the bowels of some prison somewhere, or perhaps even quietly disposed of. She knew what she had to do, so why couldn’t she bring herself to do it? Why was Val’s rejection – a fictional person – making her cry?
Petrova paused to lean against the wall of a prefab, hearing her own hitching breath echo through the empty alley.
DAY 37 – HADES ORBIT – BARBOSA
“I’m having a wonderful time!” Barbosa declared, spreading the arms of his PCE in triumph. “I’ve always wanted to fire the main battery of a jump carrier!”
He watched through his myriad of feeds as the mushroom cloud from the orbital bombardment drifted across the city, casting its dark shadow on the streets below. The battle for Hades was all but won. The rioters had been corralled and broken by the PDF, the remnants of the scattered insurgency were being mopped up by SWAR teams, and their base was now a smoldering ruin.
“Good effect on target,” Song replied dispassionately. “Damage to the populated areas of the city is negligible.”
“We usually use those yields for close support and collapsing shallow Bug tunnels,” Barbosa mused as he watched the readout. The mouth of the old mine that had housed the insurgent base had once been surrounded by a small industrial park, the abandoned property scattered with derelict buildings and rusted pieces of machinery. From the air, it would have been impossible to guess that it was occupied, and it was only one of many derelicts left out in the wasteland to rot by ExoCorp. Now, it was a field of craters, rendered as pocked and sterile as the surface of an asteroid. If anyone had managed to hide from the kill teams that had swept through its tunnels, they wouldn’t have survived what came after...
“Crow,” he began, opening a line to the operative. “How are things going on your end? I trust that your foray into the base was a success?”
“Mission accomplished, Commander,” Crow replied, sounding just as chipper. “We’re on our way back to Garrison One. The hunting was very good today.”
“Glad to hear it,” Barbosa said with a hearty chuckle. “I hope you put those PCEs through their paces. I’m sure Song will want to examine your combat data when you get back. Speaking of which, what were you able to recover?”
“We came away with a few choice prisoners, along with the entire contents of their server cluster,” Crow replied. “That should give Song something to pore over while he’s forwarding phone calls up there. Everything they had is now ours. We didn’t leave anyone alive, and if someone was hiding in a side tunnel somewhere, that barrage of yours will finish the job. Some may still be hiding in the larger tunnel network – it probably runs beneath the whole colony – but we’ll track them down in time. Without support or supplies, they won’t last long.”
“I wish I could be down there with you like in the old days,” Barbosa sighed. “Sounds like you pulled off one hell of an operation.”
“How are things going topside, Commander?” Crow asked.
“The enemy is routed, and the city is back under control,” Barbosa replied, puffing out his chest proudly within his suit. “As I had hoped, the riots exposed the most committed dissidents, and the PDF have taken most of them into custody. I’ve arrested all of the union leadership, too. There won’t be any more strikes or protests. We can finally put this whole affair behind us and get back on track. We still have around five months until the UNN is scheduled to arrive, so there’s time to enact the plan.”
“I have to commend them,” Crow added. “They gave us the runaround for a while there. I wasn’t expecting to see so much action so soon, but they kept things interesting.”
“This short-lived rebellion of theirs only benefits us in the long term,” Barbosa confirmed. “We now know a lot more about this colony, its people, and its infrastructure. Our teams and the PDF have both gained valuable experience, and while we’ve suffered some painful losses, I think we’re all the stronger for it. Sharpening a blade requires removing material, after all.”
“Right you are, Commander.”
“Head back to base and get that data uploaded to the carrier,” Barbosa replied. “I’ll let Song know. I’m sure it’ll make his day. You’ll have to excuse me for now – I’m getting another call.”
He closed the feed with Crow and opened up a second, seeing an image of the Governor standing beside his office window. Beyond the glass, he could make out a grainy view of the square, its ornamental monolith still surrounded by groups of PDF riot police. In the distance, the mushroom cloud loomed over the skyline.
“Governor,” Barbosa began. “I trust that our security forces were able to keep your building secure during the riots? I’m pleased to inform you that order has finally been restored. The dissidents have been arrested, and our raid on the insurgent base has been carried out with resounding success. They won’t be troubling us anymore.”
“What have you done, Barbosa?” the Governor asked as he turned to glare at the camera. For someone with such a generous figure, he looked strangely gaunt – his eyes ringed by dark circles and his cheeks sallow. “Why are you shelling my colony?”
“Relax, Governor,” Barbosa continued. “It was just a short one-kilo barrage from our ventral battery. They’re low-yield sabots designed for just this kind of work. We were very careful to avoid damage to any populated areas. The insurgent base was located in an old abandoned mine outside the city limits, and it’s presently a smoldering crater. Their forces were repelled, and any survivors have now lost their only place of refuge. Their options now are the wasteland or surrender. Once we’ve had some time to analyze the information we dumped from their servers, I’d like you to release an address promising amnesty for anyone who turns themselves in to the authorities. Many are able-bodied workers, and there’s no reason we should let that manpower go to waste now that the threat has passed. I’m sure many of them will see reason, especially with such unenviable alternatives.”
“My city is on fire,” the Governor pressed, clearly unswayed. “This is worse than the fight to oust the Syndicate. We haven’t even counted how many citizens have been injured or killed at this stage, but it’s probably in the hundreds, and that’s a conservative estimate.”
“You can thank the insurgents for using the protest as a cover for their terrorism,” Barbosa grumbled. “We restored order to the city and conducted a surgical strike to eliminate the insurgent base. It was as clean and as painless as I could make it. You should be thanking me – I lost several SWAR teams during the fighting, along with another PCE and three dropships. Those men gave their lives to restore order to your colony.”
“I’m getting reports from my contacts that all of the union leadership has been arrested,” the Governor continued. “The same goes for many protesters involved in the strikes. You do realize that my relationship with the unions was the only thing holding this colony together and giving you any leverage over its population? I don’t think you understand how negative the reactions to this could be. It might inspire a whole new wave of resistance.”
“And we’ll deal with that in the same way.”
“When you remove all legal means of resistance, you leave people no avenue but the illegal,” the Governor pressed. “You could push law-abiding people to violence.”
“I think that our showing today should act as a suitable deterrent for those considering breaking the law.”
“What about the insurgent leaders?” the Governor added. “Did you eliminate them?”
“Not as such,” Barbosa replied, his mood souring somewhat. “I know that Rivera and his pet Rask weren’t present at the base during the shelling. I’d put credits on those greasy little bastards worming their way out of danger once again, but there’s nowhere for them to run now. They have no support, no supplies, and no way off the planet. The same goes for any surviving Marines. I control the anchor. I control the food supply. They can starve in the tunnels, languish in the industrial parks, or die of exposure in the wasteland – their choice. Besides, I still have trusted people on the job. They’ll find them.”
“Can we please resume talks about the food situation now?” the Governor asked with a tired exhalation.
“All in due time,” Barbosa replied, closing the call. “Song, stand by for a large data dump. Roach and Crow are bringing you back a present.”
DAY 37 – HADES WASTELAND – RUZA
Ruza trudged through the dunes, his wide paws helping to keep him from sinking, his protective leather clothing whipping in the wind. The storm was upon them, the airborne sand hammering his protective goggles, the wall of encroaching dust darkening the sky. It would be dangerous to remain exposed for too long – even their thick garments and protective gear wouldn’t stave off the worst of it – but they had no choice other than to move under its cover. The drones could not fly in these conditions, and neither could the carrier’s sensors see through them.
Rivera and the nine surviving Marines moved along behind him in a loose column. The humans were less suited to such conditions, though their stamina was as impressive as ever, and their training kept them strong. Were he not so accustomed to desert conditions, they might have outpaced him by now.
The geothermal plant was an arduous trek from the city, situated out in the wasteland. ExoCorp had been given no choice but to build the plant wherever the conditions were most suitable. Through the growing haze of sepia, he spotted its shadow ahead – the only artificial structure for miles around. As they neared, he could better make out the surrounding rock formations that cradled it. He knew little about such plants, save that they drew heat from the planet itself, and they had to be located above a suitable reservoir of magma. These low mountains and columns of jutting basalt might be evidence of some tectonic fault line.
Just like the interior of the steel plant, what Ruza was looking at made little sense to his untrained eye. The plant was built into the side of an outcrop that elevated it above the churning ocean of sand dunes below, forming a kind of island, its mess of silver pipes and supports melding with the rock. It was nestled within some taller hills that formed a kind of wind barrier around it, the erosion from millennia of storms leaving their faces stripped bare, a few patches of odd hexagonal columns still visible in places. The structure itself was made up of rows of massive tanks and tall chimneys, all of them joined by networks of smaller pipes and supporting gantries.
Such a remote location required a place where the crew could live and work. Buried beneath it all, like a stone under the spreading roots of a tree, was a more familiar structure with windows that looked out over the desert. He had scouted the building with his snipers, and he knew it to be large and secure enough to house them safely.
He felt a pang of regret at that. The snipers who he had personally trained had been deployed to the cargo loading area to harass the security forces protecting the anchor. If any of them had survived, there would be no way to regain contact. Perhaps they would make their way here too. It was still impossible to estimate how many resistance members had survived, or what had happened inside the base. Amy, Nick, Bill, Ricky, Astrid, Omar, Reed, Bergmann – so many. There was no telling who was still alive.
The surrounding hills provided some much-needed reprieve from the wind, and Ruza led his small party to the base of the outcrop, mounting a set of metal steps that led up its jagged face to an entrance door. When he reached it, he gestured for his companions to stop, kneeling to examine the panel.
“What is it?” Rivera asked as he took a step closer, his voice filtering through his helmet speakers.
“This door has been left ajar,” Ruza explained. “We sealed it during our last visit.”
Rivera gave another signal to his men, and the Marines readied their weapons, stacking up as they prepared to breach. Ruza lifted his AMR, not willing to rule out the possibility that a PCE was waiting for them on the other side. How could the enemy have found this place? He had been so careful...
Rivera pulled open the door panel, the sand that had already started to gunk up the mechanism grinding, and they piled in through the breach. Inside the lobby of the building, the power was out, but the light that made it through the dirty windows was enough to see by. There was a welcome desk, along with some seats that would have once been some kind of waiting area, the ExoCorp sign mounted on the wall above now faded and peeling.
“Footprints,” Ruza whispered, nodding to the floor. The layer of dust had been recently disturbed, leaving the clear outlines of boots.
They crept forward, the Marines clearing side rooms as they proceeded down the main corridor. They passed derelict offices and storage rooms, some of which had never been furnished prior to the building being abandoned.
Ruza knew the way to the staff quarters, and they passed by a fully furnished kitchen area, their surroundings growing less corporate as they went. Suddenly, his sensitive ears picked up a sound, one of them swiveling to track it. It could just be the wind rushing through the structure and causing it to creak, but he knew better. He turned to Rivera, pointing towards a door that led to one of the bedrooms. The Marines took up position behind him, training their weapons on the door as he put an ear to the panel, listening carefully. There was someone on the other side...
He held up three fingers, counting down to zero, then tore open the door. There was a rush of movement, and when he reached inside, he plucked a person from the dingy room. Holding them by the collar, he lifted them off the ground, dragging them into the light. There was a sudden crack, and he recoiled, feeling something heavy whack him on the head.
“What the – Ruza!?”
Ruza blinked down at his captive, seeing Bill staring back at him with wide eyes. He was wielding a metal pipe in his hand that now had a sizable dent in it.
“Bill!?” Ruza stammered. “You are alive!?”
He dropped his AMR, drawing his friend into a tight hug, hearing him exhale as the air was squeezed out of him. Rivera and his Marines stood down, watching the reunion with amusement.
“Ruza!”
Another figure came rushing out of the darkness, Amy throwing all of her weight into him and almost sending him toppling over, her arms wrapping as far around his waist as they could reach. Ruza knelt to bring himself closer to them, setting Bill down beside a tearful Amy, returning their embrace.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Ricky said, emerging from the shadows. Even he couldn’t suppress a smile at the sight.
“Oh, Ruza!” Amy began, her voice starting to crack. “They hit the base – we didn’t know where to go or what to do. We didn’t even know if you were still alive!”
“You are safe, and that is all that matters,” he replied.
When he managed to pry Amy away, he looked past her to see half a dozen more people standing in the room with Ricky. He didn’t recognize them, but they must have been refugees from the base.
“Is this all of you?” he asked hesitantly, rising to his feet again. “Did no others survive the attack?”
“We got a couple of hundred people out,” Ricky replied. “Not everyone, though. The Borgs attacked the base, killing everyone as they went. It was a slaughterhouse. We hid, but Nick came to find us and got us to the infirmary. We were able to hold out and get most of the civilians and the injured to the surface through one of the smuggling tunnels, but a lot of people stayed behind to cover us.”
“That was a little while before they bombed the base,” Bill explained. “After that, we had a choice to either give up and go back to the city, or try to meet up with you here. A lot of people either couldn’t make the journey or didn’t want to try. This is everyone who still wants to fight.”
“And ... where is Nick?” Ruza asked, already dreading the answer that he knew in his heart was coming. His friends suddenly looked forlorn, Amy starting to tear up again as she shook her head.
“He got out with us, but he went back to help the people who stayed behind,” Ricky explained. “That idiot. I told him not to go...”
“The others?” Ruza pressed. “Omar, Astrid, Bergmann? Have you seen Reed since the attack? Did he and his men make it back?”
“This is everyone,” Amy replied solemnly. “There was no time – the attack happened so fast. The storm was already beginning by the time we got to the edge of the city, and we couldn’t wait any longer, or we wouldn’t have made it here.”
“I am sorry,” Ruza began, hanging his head in shame. “I bear responsibility for this outcome. I was ordered to return to the base and help secure it, but I disobeyed. I did not wish to leave anyone behind, and had I heeded Rivera’s words, I might have been there to protect you all. I was not there for you when you needed me the most...”
“Ruza,” Amy began, reaching out to take his furry hand in hers. It was so large in comparison that she could do little more than grip his finger like a kitten. “Nobody knew that this would happen. Even if you had made it back to the base before the attack, you couldn’t have fought off an army on your own.”
“I might have made a difference. I might have been able to protect Nick.”
Bill and Ricky didn’t say anything. Perhaps they were considering whether he was right. After a few moments of awkward silence, Rivera stepped in to take charge.
“What happened, happened,” he began as he stowed his rifle on its sling. “We can’t change that now, so we have to keep moving forward. Our numbers, our resources, and our mobility have been drastically diminished, but we’re still here.” He turned to address his Marines. “We lost the battle, but this war isn’t over. We’re Marines, and Marines never surrender!” His squad replied with a battle cry, pounding their chests. “We need to take inventory, get a head count, and figure out a game plan. The first order of business should be reestablishing contact with survivors in the city. We went into battle with hundreds of fighters, and we freed hundreds more. There’s no way Barbosa has killed or captured all of them. The majority will have scattered and gone to ground.”
“What game plan?” Ricky scoffed, Rivera turning to look at him. “Look around you. We lost. Everyone is either dead or missing, the base has been demolished, and we have no supplies. There’s like twenty people here – what do you want us to do, march up to the anchor and demand a duel with Barbosa?”
“Rick, why are you even here if you’re gonna be like that?” Bill demanded.
“Because I have nowhere else to go!” he snapped, raising his voice. “They know my face – they came to arrest me at work. I don’t have the luxury of giving up and going home because you guys got me involved in this shit!”
“That’s not fair, Ricky,” Amy added with a scowl. “None of this is our fault. Anyone who thinks they can just sit this out and wait for it to pass is deluding themselves. The war would have come to your doorstep one way or another eventually.”
“I’m not some revolutionary,” Ricky sighed, seeming more tired than angry now. “I just want to go home. I want to go back to the bar and argue about pointless shit that doesn’t matter. I want to complain about long shifts and overtime pay. I want things to be the way they were before.”
“If you want that life back, you have to take it,” Rivera replied. “They won’t give it to you willingly.”
“Rivera is our leader now that Bergmann is missing,” Ruza said, turning to him. “We will look to him for guidance. Come, Amy. Let us take inventory of our supplies. I shall show you where we hid the caches.”
He set down his weapons, and they left the group of survivors, heading deeper into the building. They passed by empty rooms and spartan corridors, the colored lines painted on the walls that had once served to guide the inhabitants now peeling and faded.
“For a while there, I thought you might not come back,” Amy began once they were out of earshot. “I don’t know what we’d do if you died. You’re the glue that holds us all together.”
“I lost you once already,” he replied. “I promised that I would never let that happen again – that I would protect you all, and I broke that vow. Nick’s fate is my responsibility.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that,” she chided. “For goodness’ sake, Ruza. You have enough angst already without adding that complex to the heap. It’s like Ricky said – Nick made it out. He came to find us, he got us to safety, and he went back into the tunnels to help other people. Nobody made him do that – it was his choice. He gave me a message to pass along before he left.”
“What was it?” Ruza asked.
“He said that your talk helped. He said that you’d know what it meant.”
“Then, he was brave at the end,” Ruza muttered. “Had I the skills, I would weave him such a tapestry...”
“We’d be dead without him,” Amy said. “I just wish he hadn’t gone back in. He’d be here with us now. You know, I’m really getting tired of not knowing which of my friends are alive or dead.”
She stopped in the hallway, balling her fists, the curtain of blonde hair that fell over her face failing to conceal the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. Ruza turned around, taking her in his arms and sitting against the wall, holding her close for a minute or two as she sobbed into his leather jacket.
“Sorry,” she finally mumbled, sniffing and wiping her eyes. “I’m alright. Guess I just needed to get it all out. It’s been a long day.”
“I will tell you what I told Nick,” Ruza replied, loosening his grip so that she could sit beside him. “There is no shame in being frightened or upset. These are normal, healthy responses to your situation. What matters is whether you allow your emotions to rule you. I cannot imagine what you went through during your escape, but you put others before yourself, and you helped get everyone to safety. I would wager that it was your idea to come here.”
“Maybe,” she replied with a shaky chuckle.
“The Marines found the journey arduous, yet here you are. You could have gone back to the city, but you chose to keep fighting, which is more than I can say for some of the people we came across during our escape. You told me that I am the glue holding us together, but I believe it is you who we rally around.”
“I hope you’re not just saying that to cheer me up,” she joked, giving him a jab with her elbow. “So ... what happens now?” she asked, her tone becoming more serious. “I really want to believe Rivera, but as much as I hate to admit it, Ricky makes a good point. I think we’ve lost about as hard as we can lose without all of us being dead. How do we come back from this?”
“This is not the first time that I have taken part in a desperate evacuation,” he replied. “When I deployed to Kerguela, my team and I were tasked with moving hundreds of survivors off-world. Among them were children, the elderly, and the sick. There was an insect war host poised to destroy them – one so large that we had no hope of prevailing in open combat. It was a desperate situation, but we succeeded with the help of our allies and some creative tactics. When I peered into that Crawler’s exposed reactor and my very cells were turned against me, my death was assured, but the Coalition restored me with technology that seemed like magic. Many a time, I have been in situations that seemed unwinnable, yet here I stand. It is our unity that Barbosa fears.”
“What do you mean?” Amy asked, looking up at him.
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