The Galacticum has found that Terrans are the only species that can safely police other Terrans.
Terran military units are rotated through various Galacticum population centers to be "on call" when events require more than a SWAT team.
This is the story of 4th platoon, 183d Marines.
The brief
"LISTEN UP, FUCKFACES!" Terran Marine Gunnery Sergeant Kriegsbär yelled to his platoon. "This is a police action - not combat! The local government has tracked a large terror cell & suspects that explosives & heavy weapons are present. We're standing by to deploy for a search, clear & tag mission. Our orders are to clear a building full of suspected terrorists and tag every occupant with a stasis collar! NO KILLING unless absolutely necessary! There is no being on this planet that can directly hurt you inside your power armor!"
Gunny Kriegsbär continued: "Set your audio to "MilOnly with operational subfrequencies" and your video to "open transmission" (the powers that be want to let the civvies see what's going on). Set your armor's actuator response system to simulate a 1.5G environment. That oughta slow you goobers down enough so that you can think before following your training (and killing everyone). Remember! This is a police action! No killing!"
FWEEEEET!
"Aww, Pinky, what the fuck? We're all stuck in this transport and you're gonna rip one? Da fuck is wrong with you?" Corporal Smith exclaimed.
Private First Class Séamus "Pinky" O'Laughlin replies "I tried to hold it back! You know last night was Mexican night in the dining facility and I love me some Mexican food!"
"Yeah, you may love Mexican food ya palefaced ginger, but it don't love you . . . Jeez that's rotten" groused PFC Johnson.
"KNOCK IT OFF" Gunny Kriegsbär growls "Get yer heads back in the mission, cuz we're on deck! Get your armor buttoned up and do your final system checks - we're two minutes from 'go time'"
"Squad two, team 2 - you guys pull jetpacks for your armor. I want you guys deployed to the roof so nobody can escape that way!" Four green pips indicating "affirmative" from team 2 showed in Gunny's HUD.
"Squad two, team 3 - you guys will deploy to the 4 corners of the building at ground level and watch for any potential escapees jumping or flying out of upper stories. Team 2 and 3 - add a temporary frequency to coordinate for the most efficient escapee recovery."
"Squad 1 will enter through the front door; squad 3 and team 1 of squad 2 will go in through the back! Sergeant Acks has back door team lead! Got it?" More green acknowledgement bubbles passed across Gunny's HUD.
"All hands! Our mission is simple: Get a stasis collar on every sumbitch inside this building! Remember! A stasis collar isn't needed on a corpse! NO KILLING!"
"Remember - NO KILLING! This is a police action!" Gunny Kriegsbär repeated, hoping that if he said it enough, the potential casualty count might be reduced. Marines are meant to break things, not be "Officer Friendly" he thought to himself.
Kickoff
"Okay, ladies! Let's go! Move it!" Gunny Kriegsbär was first down the ramp of the armored combat transport, and lead the way to the front doors, which he ran through without slowing down. He queued his command set and disabled the platoon's armor outflow filters and punched up their thermal regulation system by a couple of degrees.
"Listen up! I've disabled your out filters & bumped your armor A/C up a couple degrees. I want this place smellin' like a sportsball locker room at midgame when we leave!" Gunny Kriegsbär knew full well that the aromas emitted by a fully active human put quite a few Galactic species into a "submissive" state, whether medical or instinctual. Reducing the opposition by disabling some armor filters was a cheap equalizer.
"Enabling armor stun field" the Gunny radioed. This would allow the Marines to just touch the occupants to subdue them for tagging. The field was active across the entire armor and reactive (it emitted a stun field proportional to the force of any contact)
The power armor in use by the Marines was the Terran military standard "small" size. This was used in urban environments, as it was able to fit into most dwellings without ripping out ceilings & doorways. According to the building plans, each Marine would have to crouch to clear door frames and would have about 3cm clearance 'tween the top of their helmet & the building's ceilings. Each set of power armor weighed just shy of a tonne in standard configuration and was powered by a small fusion pack. Servoactuators allowed the Marine occupant to break almost anything that needed breaking (if they couldn't break it, they'd just blow it up). Terran warsteel plate & warsteel chain mail made this power armor nigh impregnable in the Galacticum. Each armored suit had a combat AI to monitor the suit's sensors and adjust performance as needed.
For this operation, the Marines were not carrying their standard issue combat rifles, and - as this was a "police action" - their sidearms were in a state of "lockout" (present, but unable to be used)
The foyer they'd entered was empty, save for pieces of furniture & decorations that had been knocked away from the door as the Marines had entered.
Double doors across from the main entrance showed fresh weld marks, indicating something had been welded to the inside. Gunny Kriegsbär ordered "Tactical entry plan bravo! Form up!" to the platoon members with him. He made his way back to the main door and turned and confirmed the Marines were in position. He then bent at the waist and took off as fast as he could run toward the welded double doors.
THOOM THOOM THOOM his footsteps echoed as he approached his target.
CRASH BOOM BOOM BOOM Gunny hit the doors at speed and all hell broke loose. The suspects had apparently set up antipersonnel ordnance around the door. When Gunny Kriegsbär hit the door with a tonne of servomech enhanced power armor, most of those explosives were "kinetically rearranged", subsequently fragging many of the suspects instead of their expected targets. Despite being centered in the midst of most of the exploding ordnance, Gunny Kriegsbär was unfazed inside his power armor.
On the other hand, Gunny Kriegsbär had such momentum when he blew through the doors, he ended up crashing halfway through the far wall, looking at the team entering the back door. As the Gunny was pushing himself out of the wall, he let out a big belch. Immediately the wall sections nearest his outflow filters caught fire, and the fire suppression systems in Gunny's suit automatically squirted fire retardant on the small fires. "Damned leftover Mexican for breakfast" Gunny groused to no one in particular.
"OKAY ladies! Move in and collar anything big enough to get a collar around! These dumb sumbitches did a number on themselves! Sergeant Acks! Take your team and move to the next floor! Clear & collar!" Sgt. Acks' icon blinked green in Gunny's HUD.
"Where's my engineer? Get in here and throw up some repulsor bracing where these walls have been blown out! We don't need the building falling down and making a mess!"
Gunny barked "Roof team! SITREP!" The senior Marine on the roof responded "Gunny, nothing to see here. The media's been trying to fly their drones up our asses, but our suit's ECM is keeping them away and distorting the view any longer range civvy cameras may get." Gunny's icon blinked acknowledgement in the Marine's HUD.
"Okay boys! Up to the third floor!" Gunny queued his radio; "Leapfrogging you now, Sergeant Acks." A green HUD icon flashed acknowledgement.
Gunny Kriegsbär & Sergeant Acks continued to leapfrog each other toward the top of the building, and Gunny Kriegsbär had just reached the 37th floor landing when he heard "We got a runner! NW corner! 42nd floor!" from one of the ground spotters.
On the 42nd floor, a transpariplas window had been breached from the interior and an avian had jumped out and was gliding away. The Marine on the northwest roof corner leaned over the edge, raised a long tube to his shoulder and took aim. BLOOP An ovoid flew toward the avian, and when it got close, BLAP it emitted a self-adjusting nanomaterial net that immediately fouled the escapee's flight. As soon as downward motion was detected, the ovoid (still attached to the net) deployed an origami nanomaterial "tail" of such a design that it caught enough air to slow the captured avian enough for a rough (but not life-threatening) landing. The Marine on the ground was waiting with a stasis collar, and after its application the Marine keyed a code into the ovoid's interior keypad. Both net & windsail retracted into the interior and a red number started blinking on its exterior, indicating the time until its atmospheric actuators were rearmed. The Marine tucked the ovoid into a utility pouch and resumed his post.
Final landing
Pinky was heading upwards from the pentultimate floor and saw a suspect enter the final landing and head to the roof, so he put on some speed to cut the distance between them. As Pinky got to the bottom of the last set of stair below the roof door, he could see the suspect pull what looked like a remote detonator from a pocket.
Time slowed for Pinky, as he instinctively reached for his sidearm, getting a "bzzt" & a blinking red handgun icon in his HUD indicating "unavailable". Pinky knew he had to stop the suspect from pressing the trigger, so he decided to tackle the suspect with 1 tonne of good ol' Terran warsteel.
Pinky crouched down to queue his boot's rocket assist. A HUD emblem lit green to show "active", then flipped to amber to show "armed", and then . . .
Ground level observation area
WHOOMP
The sharp crack of an explosion shook the gathered police & media. They could see a dust cloud billowing up from the roof of the target building & clustered up nervously as emergency shield generators kicked on to protect them from high speed debris.
Gunny Kriegsbär immediately started cycling through the roof team's video feeds. They showed the wind dispersing a dust cloud from over the top of a 5 meter hole in the roof. Another rooftop Marine's video showed a Marine stuck in the roof - the ID bug was marked [Pinky]. "Roof team! Sitrep!" ordered Gunny.
"Gunny, the stairwell opened up and a guy stepped out with something in his hand, and then the whole fucking stairwell access shack just fucking disintegrated. Pinky fucking fell out of the sky and cratered into the roof here (the video pans over to Pinky). I got no fucking clue what happened, Gunny."
Gunny Kriegsbär had no fucking clue what had happened, either, and command wanted him to give a briefing to the waiting media / local police.
Dog & pony show
Gunny Kriegsbär subvocalized "Disable fire suppression" and his suit's AI did as requested.
Gunny Kriegsbär walked out away from the building and called his three squad leaders over. "Flame on, gents - I need a field decontam". The three NCOs assumed a triangular formation around the Gunny and commenced to hosing him with their suit's built-in flame throwers. With his suit's fire suppression systems disabled, the sticky flammable turned Gunny into a "burning man".
Gunny signaled the NCOs to halt the decontamination procedure and began walking toward the media area - still ablaze.
As Gunny closes to 10m from the interview podium, he re-enabled his fire suppression systems, immediately causing him to momentarily disappear inside a cloud of fire retardant. Gunny never paused and thus he dramatically emerged from the white cloud, his non-reflective black warsteel armor making for a stark contrast.
"Engage interview mode." The adaptive camouflage capabilities of Kriegsbar's warhelm activated and made the helmet appear to unfold around the Gunny's head, leaving a bare human head sticking out of the battle armor's torso (the helmet never actually went anywhere)
"I am Gunnery Sergeant Kriegsbär" he spoke to the gathered individuals "and I am here to brief you on this civil operation."
"Mr. Gunnery-" "Sergeant Creaksber-" "Gunny-" various reporters started interjecting. Gunny Kriegsbär held his hands up until there was silence and continued "Galacticum military command has assigned us to this sector to assist local law enforcement with any high risk assignments they may have. Today's task was to enter a building suspected to be harboring a terrorist cell and effect the arrest of all inhabitants. As Terran Marines, our primary occupation is killing, so for this mission we had no offensive or defensive weapons. Just power armor, stun fields and stasis collars. The involved Marine's power armor were also adjusted in an effort to reduce lethality."
Gunny paused to allow the newsies to assimilate this info and went on to say "We entered the building and met minimal resistance. You may have heard some explosions and those were set up by the suspects apparently as a defensive measure against local law enforcement. The Marines involved were unaffected."
"We finished the operation about an hour ago with over three dozen suspects arrested, a dozen suspect casualties and no Marine casualties."
"Gunny! What happened on the roof?" "Sergeant, that roof explosion shook us all the way out here - what happened?" the newsies all had the same question in mind.
"I'm afraid that's still under investigation, but after reviewing available footage I can offer a possibility: I believe it was a malfunction in a Marine's power armor systems. To wit" Gunny Kriegsbär held his armored hand out, palm up and a hologram of Pinky's footage appeared above it. "As you can see, this Marine identified a serious threat and acted according to his training, first by going for his sidearm. Unfortunately, this had been disabled for this operation, as you can see from the HUD indicators. When he realized his sidearm was not available, he decided he needed to tackle the suspect as quickly as possible, and to this end he activated his power armor jet boots" Gunny Kriegsbär indicated the appropriate icons in the hologram field "but - as you can see from the different icon colors - cough cough it seems the Marine double primed his jet boots. This caused the jet fuel from the first prime to be expelled from the system as a gas cough cough, and consequently provided the fuel for a fuel-air explosive that was touched off when the jet boots activated. Again, this is not official, but just a personal theory."
"Whether by accident or design, this Marine saved a lot of lives today, as we've found the building's foundation was rigged up with enough remotely detonated explosives to create a sizeable crater, potentially bringing down nearby buildings."
Gunny Kriegsbär queued his helmet's external surface to return to its normal flat black appearance and said "That's all, gentlebeings. Good day!" as he turned and walked back to his Marines.
After action review - Pinky
"Honest, gunny! I was doing good holding it all in, but when I saw that guy pull the remote detonator, I musta reached for my sidearm but got a null code in my HUD. So I decided to tackle him with a jet assist. I had no idea that was the moment I was gonna let loose . . ."
"No more Mexican (or Indian, or Thai or any other spicy food) while we're on call for Civilian Liason duty, you hear me?" Gunny Kriegsbär growled at Pinky. "I'll have the mess hall change the menu to blander stuff until we rotate out of this duty slot."
TERMILSCICOM ADDENDUM
EVENT 9eaa3c41-de8b-4567-8759-1e3eec043922
DISSEMINATION: TERMIL GALMILCOM
CLASSFICATION: TOP SECRET AZURE CLEARANCE
After months of study the Terran Science Command has found that no one is at fault in the unexpected demolition of the upper section of the target building and death of a suspected criminal.
Taking into account the following major factors:
Private First Class Séamus "Pinky" O'Laughlin's physiological distinctiveness
The organic construction & digestive state of the recent meal O'Laughlin had consumed (From event records: "Mexican night in the dining facility")
The effect that human biology has on Galacticum worlds, particularly the world upon which this civilian liaison duty assignment took place.
The decision of the NCOIC to disable his unit's power armor outflow filters (allowing active human particulates to flow freely)
PFC O'Laughlin's unexpected use of his boot's jumpjets
The major events listed all contributed to PFC O'Laughlin producing a natural fuel-air explosive that detonated in the quarter-kiloton range.
To reiterate - this was a statistically unforeseeable event, and no involved Marines should be considered for punishment.
END TERMILSCICOM TRANSMISSION
