Supply Lines

By Psion

Part of the Hearth Star setting

A few hours after the events of "Cold Steel"

Lieutenant Jerky watched as the last of their supplies were moved from one hiding space to another. Losing their one connection to the Galactic Republic changed things and the stout elephant space marine wasn't sure how he was going to explain it to the others. If they had only known that the smuggler the IPA had coerced into helping them get aboard the Hearth Star was supporting an underground resistance movement.... Well, not a lot that could be done about that now.

With the loss of Boom Boom's ship, the eight of them were cut off from any hope of communicating with or getting supplied from the Republic. There were back-up plans of course but they would take time to get into position and likely none of them took into account the army of furless humans trying to wrestle control of the Hearth Star from their jailers. Given that the sprawling world ship can and had shrugged off the very worst the Republic's heaviest capital ships could throw at it, having the humans on board could only work out in the Republic's favor. For the more immediate future however, there were other objectives that had to be achieved.

The first objective was setting up a base of operations aboard the Star that could be eventually turned into a beachhead to wrestle control away from the Wuffs. Having the lower levels turn out to be inhabited by a race of furless survivors meant that the best locations were already taken by refugees that weren't entirely inclined to share. On the positive, the humans did manage to point out a large security outpost that they had wrestled away from the Wuffs recently. Large, with easy access to the enemy-controlled sections of the ship and within a short walking distance of several settlements, it had more then enough space for Jerky and Cayenne's purposes and it was easy to see why the humans and the Republic civvies hiding out with them were eager to give it to someone like the Star Corps. Jerky and the three Star Corps troopers with him had more then enough ammunition to hold the outpost down for a few months... which mentally brought him to the next matter.

Ammunition was not a problem for the Star Corps squad or the IPA officers traveling with them. Other supplies might start to run out in a week or two... for the IPA ladies at least, Jerky was confident that thanks to S.T.O.U.T., his Star Corps marines could easily eat rocks or vermin for nourishment if it came down to it. Still, would be more helpful if they could find a way to keep it from coming to that... well, from eating rocks at least. Eating vermin would probably be a good way to keep the local Wuff population down. Twisted gluttony fantasies aside, there really wasn't any other way to look at it, when they were done setting up they were going to have to meet the neighbors and see about negotiating a deal to secure supplies...

Jerky had to admit he was a bit surprised by how large the security outpost actually was when he finished helping the others carry their equipment to their new base for the foreseeable future. Armory and equipment room, sleeping quarters for all eight of them plus twenty more, functional sickbay, and a common room with a fully functional kitchen. The elephant space marine had been stationed at planetside postings smaller then this... then again most starships weren't the size of a large moon.

Combat Mechanic Chunky and IPA Tech Officer Sage busied themselves with setting up defenses around the lift to the Wuff-controlled sections of the ship. The IPA beaver built improvised barricades out of the cargo crates the expedition brought with them, sitting on her broad bottom as she finished welding sheets of duralloy together. Meanwhile Chunky set up the sentry turrets he came aboard with, both automated guns pointed towards the heavy lift and configured to come alive the instant the sensors picked up Wuff DNA. They were as safe as they could be for the moment, time to finish getting settled in and call it a night so they could get an early start on tomorrow...

The next morning after a quick breakfast, Jerky took his Star Corps troopers and did some quick scouting of their surroundings to see how accurate the humans' map was. His superiors in the Star Corps had issued him one before taking off on this mission but it was a map in only the general sense, useful for navigating the ship as a whole but not the individual decks. The digital map Jonathan Freeman had handed to the big-bellied elephant marine looked... like a collaborative effort between several different cartographers with radically different artistic styles. Utilitarian, grid-based drawings merged seamlessly with more artistically drawn maps complete with cutesy space monsters dwelling outside of the Hearth's hull and "here there be dragons." Still, apparently there was some guiding authority behind it all; all of the different mapmakers used the same symbols for marking human settlements, Guilder enclaves, elevators, tram stations, and a lot of crossed bones and what looked like human skulls marking places the locals avoided.

A quick patrol confirmed the map was accurate at least for the immediate area. The tram station and the junctions that lead back to base were exactly where they were supposed to be. But then that meant there was a skull and bones dangerously close to where they had set up their base. Pointing out the location on their HUD maps, Jerky led the squad towards the latest waypoint. Environmental sensors didn't register anything unusual, no strange sources of radiation or industrial waste, no atmospheric imbalances, nothing that looked like it was dangerous. There was a lot of tiny dung pellets left by small vermin-like creatures to tell them what was there though. And after manually sliding the door open a crack and peering in, he could see why the humans marked the large storeroom as a "do not open" room.

"Verm, a huge nest of them." Jerky replied as he shut the door behind him, too slow to avoid letting one escape into the sprawling metal corridor. Taking his helmet off as the green-furred rodent scampered around his armored boot, he let his trunk unfurl and grabbed the space pest around the waist with his prehensile snout. Popping the squirming Verm into his mouth and swallowing the critter in one swift gulp. "Mmmm, juicy. The Wuffs must have been letting these creatures reproduce for a while." He remarked as the rest of the nest came alive with the scratching sound of dozens of tiny claws scraping against hard metal.

"Looks like we won't have to worry about food once Chunky or Sage get some traps set up." Donut commented idly. "Wuffs really must be dumb if they let something like this get out of control." The heavyweight heavy weapons specialist added with a shake of her head.

"I'm starting to think the Wuffs would have a lot of things going wrong on this ship if they didn't have a whole world's worth of angry hitchhikers picking up the slack." Jerky replied as he motioned for them to head back to base. The tram station would have to be watched; at least until Jerky had a chance to talk to the humans again and find out if they had control of the other way stations. The Verm nest could be a problem if left unchecked, they were a common species of space-born pest, any ship that wasn't completely spotless was prone to getting a small population of them. Fortunately, Verm were also reasonably tasty if cooked properly, a good source of protein for most species. In any case, Jerky knew what he needed to have his troopers do next while he and Cayenne visited the humans...

Leaving the others at base after a late lunch, Jerky and Cayenne slowly made their way to Freeman's Hold. The human settlement was fairly close, easily reached on foot from their base so the two lumbered off through the dark corridors of the sprawling ship. The hallway was massive, even as wide as they were both anthros didn't take up more then half of it, and even on this short stretch the signs of shoddy maintenance were readily apparent. Lights flickered ominously, panels were open with wiring and pipes exposed, and several Verm roamed the metal flooring looking for scraps to nibble on. At least they did until Jerky scooped a pair up with his trunk and stuffed them into his mouth. Cayenne shook her head as the elephant swallowed and turned the devoured pests into a stomach bulge barely visible beneath his olive green armor. "Star Corps really will eat anything will they?" The IPA officer remarked with a sigh.

"Yep." Jerky replied with a belch and a smile as their amblings took them to the perimeter of Freeman's Hold. Crude barricades made out of scrap metal marked the town's border along with a guard cradling a shotgun. The sentry immediately jumped to attention, weapon raised and eyes wide as he spotted the two waddling anthros turn the corner.

"Who are... are you the ones Freeman brought by yesterday?" He asked, Jerky realized he didn't recognize this guard from the day before.

"Yes, he told us to come back today if we wanted to speak with him about the rest of the ship. Is he busy?" Cayenne interjected, used to tense situations.

"He's in a meeting with the leaders of the other settlements but I'm sure they'll all like to meet you." The guard replied, giving them rough directions to the conference room where the group was meeting...

The directions turned out to be slightly off, causing the two of them to arrive just as the meeting was wrapping up. It probably shouldn't have surprised Jerky to see a GAS scientist and Guild Master Clover Ironbelly in conference with the humans but it did at first. Yet apparently the two Republic civilians were even more surprised to see Cayenne and himself, both were speechless as Jonathan Freeman handled all the introductions before briefly summarizing what the meeting had been about. Jerky kept his expression neutral but he could see that keeping his base supplied might become a problem. On the plus side, it looked like he was worried about nothing with the tram station which was good as he suddenly had a lot to keep his squad busy with...

Talking with Jonathan and the others allowed the elephant space marine a chance to get a feel for the human factions and their politics. For the most part they seemed to agree with one another but Jerky wondered how quickly they would start to polarize if asked to think about something other then immediate survival. Still, he needed to ensure a regular supply of food for his troopers and reestablish contact with command so reinforcements could be brought in. If the Wuffs can't defeat a bunch of admittedly resourceful pre-stellar primitives armed with chemical propellant weapons then they would be in a world of hurt if a full platoon of Star Corps could be brought aboard. But that was for the future; right now there were other matters to attend to. Speaking of which...

"Mr. Freeman?" Jerky asked when the two of them had a free moment after the meeting had been adjourned. He probably shouldn't be asking about this but still, there was no harm in asking right?

Still seated, the human turned around to find himself staring directly at Jerky's prodigious beer gut before craning his neck to look up at the armored figure standing next to him. "Yes, is there something else you needed?" The human asked politely.

"Well, not so much need as just curious. Is Lockhart around?"

"Claire? No, she went out on another run almost as soon as we came back. That woman never stops really, always roaming around to harass Wuffs or find escapees that have managed to find their way down to this level. Most of us like to think that she has become a ghost story of sort amongst the Wuffs. Do you want me to let her know you were asking about her the next time she stops by?" Jonathan replied, apparently oblivious to the reason why Jerky was asking.

Part of the elephant wanted to say yes, imagining the alien warrior woman curled up and resting her battle-weary body against his big belly. But no, he had responsibilities that demanded his unwavering attention and who knows what she thought of the idea of dating a sapient alien. For that matter, who knew what her species in general thought of the idea of intermingling with alien lifeforms, their first experience with the galaxy at large wasn't exactly positive.

"No, I was just curious if she was part of your town watch. Thank you for your time." He replied, leaving the mayor to his work. Time to head back to the base and get to work on their next assignments.

The walk back to their camp was uneventful save more reminders of how poorly maintained the lower levels were. Once they returned, Cayenne waddled off to check on her teammates while Jerky delayed returning to check on the status of the traps he ordered Chunky to place around the Verm nest. Now there was an unusual trooper if Jerky ever saw one. A spotted black and white furred cheetah morph with an unusual reaction to the S.T.O.U.T. serum injection; Chunky was an exceptionally talented combat mechanic and extremely devoted trooper. The later was probably some kind of mental compensation for how the S.T.O.U.T. somehow went straight to his feline rump. Most males that got injected with the Star Corps serum developed a broad pear shape with a big "low rider" belly; Chunky was the only exception that Jerky knew of where all that gut ended up in his butt.

Either way, it didn't matter to Jerky that the Private was one of the few in the Star Corps to develop a pronounced case of "IPA Butt," his skill in building mobile defenses and other technical tasks was exceptional as obvious by how quickly he had assembled traps and placed them in every vent leading into the nest... almost as exceptional as his appetite, which was currently being sated by spearing Verm with his Omni-Fork and swallowing them whole. The elastic polymers of the feline's motorized BDU stretched as his stomach bulged and drew tight with squirming vermin, clearly he had been picking at the nest for the better part of the morning. The feline had just downed his latest catch with a loud belch when the lieutenant decided to interrupt.

"Pvt. Chunky!" Jerky boomed.

Immediately the feline jumped to attention, Omni-Fork sticking out of his mouth as he turned around to face his superior with a snap salute. Jerky didn't know whether to laugh or gently place his face in the palm of his hand as he continued. "Private, I'm not even going to ask what you thought you were doing. I'm just going to thank you for volunteering yourself to scout the Waste Disposal deck at the bottom of the ship. Go get the rest of your gear and get ready to look for more systems the civvies can bring back online down there." He ordered in a no-nonsense tone.

His face flush with embarrassment, Chunky responded with an affirmative nod and pocketed his Omni-Fork before quickly waddling off to get the rest of his gear. Jerky shook his head and called for Donut and Vodka as he followed after the dismissed engineer. While the monochromatic cheetah explored the very bottom of the ship, the rest of them needed to recon this biosphere deck the humans kept referring to. Time to see for themselves what the locals had to do to get fed...

PFC Chunky...

The leopard found himself silently grateful that his armor was hermetically sealed and that his helmet filtered out noxious gasses as he slowly lumbered off the lift and down to Waste Disposal, grunting under the weight of his Engineer's Pack. Waste Storage would probably be more accurate, the Combat Mechanic decided as he looked around, using the zoom function on his helmet's visor to occasionally check objects of interest. Mountains of rubbish piled up three stories high and squished against the ceiling while canals of raw sewage flowed in a nausea-inducing river towards a central reservoir somewhere off in the distance.

Cradling his BFR and resting his gauntleted finger against the trigger guard, the round space marine turned in the direction the current was going and started walking. On the way down Jerky had told him that the humans were looking for something that could turn the sewage into fertilizer. Now that he was down here, the task seemed easy enough, just walk along side the canal and follow the current until he found something that looked like a processing station. So easy he wondered why the humans hadn't done it already.

Checking the map they were all given by the local leaders, he quickly realized why. His route was going to take him over the edge of the map, where a number of hazard symbols formed a barrier between the explored and the unknown. Checking the key, they all looked like creature nests, eliciting a low grumble from his stomach. Smiling behind his visor, Chunky gave his still-full gut a guilty rub as it dutifully digested Verm into soft blubber. Stupid to pick at that nest near the camp but still, feline instincts were hard to ignore at times. Oh well, scouting out that border area will be useful and for all he knew there was a way to cross it that the humans hadn't found yet...

Lt. Jerky...

As the elevator deposited the three Star Corps troopers on the Agri-Dome, Jerky was grateful that there was nothing waiting to ambush them as all three of them, even the Kultivar sniper Vodka, were taken aback by what awaited them. The elephant officer could tell that all three of them were expecting something like an industrialized greenhouse with endless rows of plants growing in hydroponic solutions. What they saw instead was...

"Did we just get deposited on a planet somehow?" Donut asked as she waddled forward, blades of grass pressed down by armored boots as the female heavy weapons specialist kept her minigun at the ready.

Jerky was hard pressed to disagree, luscious grassland seemingly spread out in front of them as far as the eye could see... until he turned around and saw the metal bulkhead wall about a kilometer behind them.

"No, this is a arboretum." Vodka replied as he finished scanning their surroundings. "Arguably the most elaborate one I've ever seen but still completely artificial. There are no trees so I doubt the dirt beneath us is that deep, the 'sky' is lined with growth lights that mimic the natural light of a yellow star, and the space looks like it runs about half the length of the ship.

"Explains why the humans were so proud of themselves when they told Cayenne and myself about how they recovered a Kultivar Traktor." Jerky added, pointing to the one that slowly plodded along about a kilometer to their left. "You could easily run a Traktor farm here, they should be plenty of food already."

"No kidding." Donut snorted, gesturing to a herd of enormous Oracs grazing on the abundant plains to their right, the alien bovines munching on grass without a care in the world. "The humans should be fatter then we are."

A flash of movement caught Jerky's eye. "I don't think everything here belongs to the civvies." He observed as Wuffs appeared with robotic herders, the lupine space pirates left the mechanical ranchers to their programming and took off on foot in the general direction of the lone Traktor puttering along through a field of alien grain.

The rotund star troopers had barely raised their weapons when out of the tall grass a troop of camouflaged humans stood up and opened fire. Homemade rifles and shotguns roared to life, the Wuffs barely made ten meters before they were attacked by a band of heavily armed humans bearing the armband of Freeman's Rangers. As the piratical masters of the ship turned to face their new targets, Jerky and his unit saw their opportunity to join in. Donut's weapon roared to life with the whine of an electrical motor as high-velocity bullets tore through the densely packed mass of black fur and rainbow colored hairstyles. Jerky joined in with a burst of semi-automatic fire from his BFR and Vodka slipped off to the side to carefully snipe at targets that were getting too close to either the Star Corps squad or the humans.

In a minute it was over, the robotic ranchers had herded the Oracs away from the erupting gun battle and the field was littered with dead Wuffs staining the ground crimson red. Freeman's Rangers waved their thanks and paused long enough to loot the corpses of their fallen enemies before heading back home on the lower decks, leaving the three space marines alone again. "Well then, I think this answers why improving crop yields is a big concern. We better go find Chunky and see if he found anything yet."

Chunky...

The "hazard barrier" was a giant Verm nest, thousands of the creatures making their home in a massive pile of decomposing leftovers and kitchen scraps tossed down from Mead Halls and residential areas. The amount of food that looked like it was outright wasted brought a scowling grimace to the cheetah's face. Still, this was a good find, one that hopefully made up for his gluttonous indiscretions earlier. Though one look at the pests gathered to hiss at the well-rounded trooper made it clear why the humans didn't try to explore past this point. Where the ones above him in the rest of the underdecks were about the size of Chunky's hammy fist, the ones in this nest were fat, mean things bigger then his head. Tasty looking creatures but one look at how they snarled at him told him plenty.

Looking around and studying the latticework of overflow canals, he shook his helmeted head; there wasn't a single route that didn't take him through the nesting grounds past the Verm. The only way to get through was to thin their numbers, looks like he was going to have to build a lot more traps and maybe something to vacuum up these blasted Verms and pump them directly into his stomach or something.

A flicker of movement towards the hull of the ship caught his eye as Jerky called him over their communicators. Something was inside a recycling station that the humans had yet to bring online. "Chunky here." The cheetah replied as he shouldered his rifle and watched the squat building carefully.

"What's your status Private?"

"Still in Waste Processing sir, at the border of the map, towards the aft of the ship. There's a big nest here, a lot of Verm have made a home for themselves in the table scraps coming down from the Mead Hall. It's maybe five to six times the size of the nest that's right outside of our camp and the average Verm is about twice as big due to all the foraging here. Still no sign of what you sent me down here to find but I found one of the centers the humans use to collect materials. Think I saw some movement there but it doesn't appear to be operational." Chunky reported back just as the sound of a struggle erupted out of the small collection facility. Humans began shouting at one another in one of their own languages as a handful of them ran out of the building towards the armored feline, a familiar brown-haired female bringing up the rear and Wuffs somehow at their heels. "Sorry sir, looks like I'm going to have to talk to you later." Chunky signed off, taking aim and firing short bursts at the Wuff pirates.

The metal floor echoed with the reverberating booms of heavy Star Corps combat boots as the rest of the squad joined up with Chunky and Claire Lockhart turned to face her surviving attackers. Bullets flew and overpowered the Wuffs' shield belts, casting the black-furred space wolves in a fizzling blue aura before they were gunned down.

After the battle drew to a close, Claire turned to address Jerky and his space troopers. "We really have to stop meeting like this. People might talk." She commented jokingly with a slight smile as she stepped over the corpse of a dead Wuff.

Jerky couldn't help but return her smile from behind his helmet. Not the most productive day he ever had but certainly better then this morning. Looks like getting a stable supply of food was going to take a little more work then it may have looked on paper. Perhaps he should consider asking if the humans knew any good recipes for Verm while they continued working on these long-term projects....