In light of our poor performance during the initial landing on Kelndethu we were relegated to training. And more training. We spent the next 6 months training. We hated every minute of it. We knew that while we were going through maneuvers our fellow troopers were dying on bug infested hell holes all over the galaxy. Klendethu had been a wash out. We hadn't really anticipated what the bugs were capable of. The Skymarshal had bought the farm and our Lieutenant had bought himself a piece of it too.

But now we had our chance. The bugs had hit Io and hit hard. The devastation at San Francisco had been enough for me to know what the situation would be like when we got to Io.

Turns out I was wrong. What we found was worse. We dropped in early this morning and moved towards New Tegea, the largest population center on Io. Only as we moved about the city there weren't any people. There was evidence of a battle. A couple of buildings were destroyed, most of the others had some bullet holes, wreckage was scattered about and there were very few windows left, but for the most part everything was intact.

The view from the bug side of the river

We moved cautiously towards the river that flowed through the city. The river, as I learned in briefing, divided the city between the industrial and residential sectors. Obviously, the closer you lived to the river the poorer you were.

That's when we heard it. That crunching noise, kind of like a mix between pop corn popping and bacon frying. Our squad was the first to encounter them, Corporal Schroder had jumped ahead and placed detectors. Sherenko and Thomasson had jumped up on a building to get a better view.

That was their first visual, probably 20 bugs moving across the bridge over the river.

Thomasson didn't wait for orders and Sherenko followed his lead. The first thing I saw was the bridge errupt in flames and explosions and bug parts go flying everywhere.

I was on the lookout for the tunnel, the difficulty with fighting the bugs in a built up area is that the buildings make it even easier than normal for them to hide their holes.

The rest of the squad advanced and we could hear them coming but didn't know where the hole was. Corporal Schroder engaged the remaining bugs who had made it over the bridge. A few bursts and it was over but for the twitching.

Carol and I moved to the top of the parking deck and I could just see a swarm of bugs emerge from behind a destroyed building right in front of the sergeant. He opened up with his flamer and his autocannon and the bugs withered under the fire. But more came up. Their shooting was erratic but they managed to tag the Sarge a couple of times. His armour saved him from the worst but I could see him stagger so Carol and I jumped down to add our support.

The bugs were pushed back to the other side of the building and engaged Corporal Schroder but he radioed us to keep moving, that he could handle these.

Marquand and Setzer were on the bounce. While the rest of us were dealing with the bug erruption in our midst they had bounced ahead and were moving over the river.

They radioed that they had seen a large number of bugs moving towards a building and were going in after them. The Sarge yelled for them to be careful but then it was too late. The bugs must have been waiting for them and Marquand went down almost right away under the fire. Setzer was about to return fire when another group of bugs moved in from the side and caught him with enfilading fire. I didn't see Marquand from where I was but I could just make out Setzer being battered sideways before slaming into a support girder and dropping.

The Sarge ordered the building taken out and Carol and I launched everything we had against it. The structure was huge, a massive factory building but it shook under the barrage we unleashed against it. The bugs came pouring out of the building then.

Corporal Schroder turned his attention to the building. From where he was he couldn't see that the bugs had already vacated the premises and the whole thing came tumbling down. Which was good enough because I could see a few bugs get caught by falling debris.

That's when we heard it from Sherenko, "There's a brain bug! I saw him move out the back of the building. I'm on him."

Sherenko and Thomasson couldn't see the brain bug from where they were but they let loose with some missile in his general direction any way. Carol leaped ahead of me to the far side of the river and over a wall. He started blazing away at something I couldn't see.

Suddenly the bugs all started to fall back. We fired a few more missile in their direction to see them off before the Sarge called into command that this sector was secured.

We had killed a lot of bugs and cleared the area but had lost two troopers in the process and if that was a brain bug, command wasn't going to be happy that we didn't capture it. I hope that we aren't going to get sent back for more training.

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