Starship Troopers: Chronicles of a Mobile Infanterist

Chapter 4.1

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
- old military saying

This event was happening while we were heading towards the battle at lightspeed and we Troopers were getting ready for the mission. On this day noone had seen Crimso yet and there were only two hours left until deployment. It wasn't that unusual. Crimson often prepared for the battle alone. But this time that didn't make sense because her armour wasn't checked through and even her weapon was still at its place next to her power suit. Since time was running out, the Lt sent me to get Crimson( I was the newest and that's why the job was mine to do). I didn't have my armour on me and neither my weapon because I didn't think I'd be needing it. When I entered the corridor in which the womens quarters were situated I already got a strange feeling but I blamed it on the pre-mission nervousness. I had just opened the door to our quarter where I saw Crimson standing completely silent her back facing me. I called out towards her:
"Hey, goddamnit Crimson. Why are you still here? You know we have deployment in about one and a half hours, right?"
Then she turned around and I got the probably biggest shock of my life. The face which turned towards me wasn't even human. Instead of two, there were four eyes, insectlike and her jaw split into four insectoid looking mandibles and bore a sight to a row of ugly, sharp teeth within her mouth. Before I had even realized what I had just seen, it already was upon me and pushed me to the ground.
I screamed as loud as I could:
"BUGS! THERE IS A BUG! WE HAVE AN ARACHNID IN THE QUARTERS!"
Then she pounded my head against the floor. And while she punched me over and over again the table with the box containing our private weapons fell over and I grabbed a handgun, I honestly don't remember what model that was and put the entire magazine into the things body. The first bullet hit the arm, the second in the upper Thorax and the third hit its head. The monster fell over with a gurgling sound and landed on the floor. I made a run to the door and locked it tightly behind me. I sealed it tight. Still full of Adrenaline I leaned to the door and thought about what I had just seen. I had already heard about this Infiltrator-Bug that nests in the brain and then starts to control the body to, as the name suggests, infiltrate the federation. But this didn't fit the characteristics, because those bugs didn't change the bodies of their hosts, so it must be a new kind of Arachnid, i thought. I could not think of any other solution. Chesa was the first who came running since we had been talking over our private Comm-channel the entire time. She held her Battle-Rifle at the ready and was in full battle gear.
"What happened?" she asked me. I was still too exhausted to answer so I just pointed through the glass-pane in the door.
"Holy Hell!" she cursed just to then look me up and down like a mother would her own child.
"I'm fine Chesa. Stop worrying about me." I said about twenty times in just two minutes. Then the others appeared.
"What happened?" asked one of them and another asked: "Where is the damn insect?"
Before I could answer Chesa took over for me. I believe because she saw that I was still sweating buckets.
"It seems like Crimson was the insect. She attacked Henri but Henri eliminated. And then I arrived."
"And why is she standing back up then?" Bercow asked me.
I turned around and saw how Crimsons insect grimace rose back up from the ground and looked at us directly. I just screamed:
"CLEAR THE DOOR!"
And then there was a supressed thump as she ran into the door face-first. Her incoherent screaming at least changed to something which one could interpret human words.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?" the voice of the Lt echoed through the hall. He also was in full combat gear. All pointed towards the hatch. The Lt closed in on the hatch and saw the changed Crimson. Without saying a word about Crimson he called the Bridge and reported:
"Bridge, this is Lt. Verhokveen; we have a confirmed bug infestation in the womens quarters of the Killjoy-unit. Requesting a quarantine-team down here. I'll be putting my unit under quarantine until it can be confirmed that there is no further infestation in our unit."
We couldn't hear what Captain Ibanez answered but ten minutes later there was a fully armoured unit of Infanterists in the quarters who opened the sealed hatch, stunned her and took her away. Nobody asked but everyone knew where she was being brought to. It didn't take very long after that for federation doctors to arrive in the quarters and check us for similar infestation. While the doctors took Blood samples, Urine samples and tissue samples the space battle was still going on. In the end we won the battle but lost two cruisers to enemy ships.
Directly after the battle we headed to federation base Embryo. There the Bio-Analysts of the federation analysed new threats and create effective countermeasures against them.
As we soon learned there were more similar cases. Since they weren't that surprised when we brought them Crimson. After our tests all came back as negative we were clear for duty. Except for me. I was to stay. Apparently because I was the first person with which Crimson interacted. Yeah. At that time I could really still feel the aftermath of our "interaction".
Afterward they told me all kinds of stuff, I'll condense it down for you:
Firstly they told me that the affected still kept all of their memories and still have human desires.
Secondly, that my try to kill Crimson was futile since they can only be killed by fire that means Napalm or flamethrowers.
And thirdly that when they are seperated from their formar friends for too long they will get increasingly agressive and stronger as well as becoming "wild and unpredictable".
That's why the guy to visit Crimson from time to time to ask her about different aspects of her transformation. When they'd got all the informations they needed Crimson would be given back into our custody aboard the John A. Warden. Although it sounded pretty shady it made sense. And so I went to Crimsons cell with a board of chess. The cell in of itself was rather luxurious, and better decorated than our quarters. When she saw me she looked relieved. There was nothing of the cold warrior I previously knew. The doctors let me into her cell and so I sat down at the table and began building up the chess board.
"You smell like Cedarwood and apple." were the first words to come out of her mouth.
"Good smell.", I answered, "Come sit down. Lets play a game."
She sat down. Even though she was showing no signs of agression I was sweating.
"So I guess they are reloading the Napalmthrowers outside." she said and pointed towards the blackened window.
I gestured them to stand down and they deactivated the flamethrowers. Crimson beat me at six out of six chess matches( no surprise I am a terrible chess player), but I still learned quite a few interesting things.
Aside from the things we already knew it was now possible to pinpoint the incubation time to about a month. Another thing which I found more shocking was that these Hybrids do not belong to the Bug-Collective. It appears they have a queen of their own which has yet to be created or found. Relating to that I immediately asked Crimson to what species she feels more attached. She was almost offended, but she told me that she still thinks that she belongs to humanity and that she still feels herself as part of the federal military. With this knowledge they gave her back into our custody and I accompanied her under heavy guard, with my full combat gear on, back to the John A. Warden. She had one more request, that we clean her armour and take care of it. And of course I did it. Because me, Corporal Graham and Chesa were the only ones to visit her. The others either were afraid or had something better to do like picking all the little fly legs one by one from the walls  of the ship.