Advance Team on Alien World

Alien parasites on another world. They are small less than the size of a dime. They live in the water on the world on which we just arrived. I try to keep them away after discovering that they have 6 inch long microscopic tentacles that seem to be able to make their way through the mesh in our clothing. They sting and then I see the small sack below their tiny legs fill with blood. In a few moments the color changes and they inject one of the soldiers in my command. He becomes ill a few minutes later. The medic treats him and a couple escort him back to the quarantine tube. I command all my support team to get into their environment suits. A couple of soldiers poke the little critters with their bayonets, bad idea. They are filled with an acid that burns clean through the blade, leaving a melted looking puff of metal around a quarter inch ragged hole. We notice that the little critters seem to be very thick in a nearby stream. The beasties are swarming and one cuts its way out of the environment suit of one of my sergeants who'd been cooling her feet in the water earlier. I awake from this dream sweating and nervous.

Almost immediately I fall back into the same dream, only later in the mission. My captain gives me orders to take command of the forward recon group. Although I am a support team LT, not a combat officer, I comply. We head up the river trying to stay out of reach of the little alien bugs. They are unlike any other life form on this planet, and it seems to me that they are out of place here as much as we are. So far there have been only plant life, no insects or animals larger than micro organisms.
We move out and I slowly and gently as possible push the alien critters out of the way. I order my squads to treat them the same way. They are happy to comply as no one wants to see what happens when the alien acid hits the environment suit or flesh. On a hunch I follow the stream up to where it joins a lake. I see that the lake is nowhere wider than about 50 yards, so send two squads up to the top of a nearby ridge and two around the perimeter of the lake, I take the last squad along the lake edge, following one of the aliens, the one that had taken a sample of the sergeant. It looked like it was making its way along the shore towards a cave that over hung the other side of the lake. One of my engineers set up a sonogram and I had everyone stop moving. The sonogram was sensitive enough to pick up people's pulses through their shoes. The engineer slowly filtered everyone out. The device thumped, and the echoes revealed the lake and ridgeline. The lake continued under the nearby hill, and there was an opening into the hill a few yards away, and one on the other side. There were several openings also under the water. I gave to orders to take a hike up to the openings and give me recon information by remote drones into the openings. I heard the distinct sound of a gate opening. It was in a small valley across the lake from our current position. I ordered the engineers to track it and give me the position possibilities for the next several gates. I had a bad feeling when one of the possible gate positions was in the middle of the cave structure under the hill. I remembered our drop coordinator saying we opened a gate just east of where we anticipated. (Apparently gates would only arrive at a exact distance apart in an equilateral triangle shape.) My suspicion was that we were not the first gate opened to this world. I also suspected that our little alien bugs were more than they seemed. I was glad I'd ordered the troops to be gentle with them. I dodged a couple of tendrils from a bug in a gully leading to the lake and gently pushed it back into the lake with the end of my bayonet. The weapon it was attached to had three barrels, a grenade launcher, a laser and a flechette accelerator were the main weapons. The bayonet was also the tip of a taser type device. The Troops from the other side of the ridge reported that giant cats were coming through the gate. I took my squad in the direction of the gate as I had a couple of troopers who spoke the Cat language, and I understood some of it. We arrived on the hill overlooking them, I announced our presence. They were a seek and hold team and determining that they were outnumbered offered to engage in individual combat to determine command rights. I filled them in quickly on the alien bug threat. They offered back that they had encountered them before and showed me images of large spider like things fighting with Cat soldiers. It wasn't pretty. I relayed the offer of individual combat back to my commanding officer, expecting him to send out a combat specialist, instead he just said, "you take care of it."
My troops looked at me. The Cat looked at me. "You're only a Lt in the supply arm!" they all stated at once.
"Well, that's not good." I looked at the Cat champion, a large red Tom with a huge scar across one ear and the top of his head. I looked around. There was a thick branch just over my head. The Cat charged and I dropped my weapon. The Cat looked confused as I raised my arms. I could tell my troops thought I was surrendering. The Cat hesitated long enough for me to grip the branch then lunged. I pulled myself up out of the way of his charge and flipped over in the air, landing square on his back. His charge took him past my sergeant and I used her shoulder to push into the Cats movement. He stumbled and we went down. I drove the Cat's head into the ground and started looking for anything with a pulse near the neck. The cat struggled with me on its back. It couldn't reach me. I drew my hand stunner and set it low and shocked the knife like object. It dropped it with a violent jerk and long hiss as it tried to dislodge me. Its body armor prevented it from reaching anything but my legs, it began to tear apart my environment suit. The ceramic and kevlar actually tearing. Whatever the claws of its armor were made of it was tough. Finally I pressed long and hard on a throbbing, something. I figured at least it had to hurt.
The Cat passed out. The commander of the Cat Unit approached and said I had to kill my opponent to win. I had my sergeant explain that now that they were under my command, I couldn't kill him. We argued a bit and I got up when the Cat quit moving under me. I had one of my troops fill a bucket and dowse the Cat, soaking its head. "Treat this one as dead to you. I turned to it and told it that it was now my aide, and his name was Eric the Red. Because Eric is my favorite name."
That seemed to work for everyone. Eric tried to tell me his real name. "You've died and I've brought you back with his memories, you are now Eric."
He slumped. "Now, pick up our weapons and fall in behind the sergeant."
Again I woke from the dream. This was not as terrifying, but I did feel a little out of breath. I fell right back into the dream, this time I was with a mixed group of humans and Cats.

I lead them directly into the caves. Almost certain the bugs had gotten there with a gate before us. We arrived under the hill and made our way to their gate. We found a bug with a human embryo in its sack portrayed on the face of their gate. A layer of bugs floated between us and the gate. I held the Cats from firing on the half dozen or more giant spider like things clinging to the ceiling. We held a mere 10 inches from the flotilla, the spiders hanging over the gate. I watched as the embryo grew into a baby. Then I saw one of the frontline privates as the view widened out. She was disarmed but otherwise unharmed. She was only visible when she slept, each sleep period being about two seconds long and getting shorter. I knew we were watching a transmission from the wormhole as the alien ship raced away at near light speed. I knew odd temporal effects could be had by riding the outside of the wormhole beam. The baby was, well, born, and the woman reluctantly took care of the baby, teaching it when the bugs didn't have it. By the time they returned the private was now a middle aged woman, and the baby was in its late teens or twenties, an almost exact duplicate of the woman when she was abducted. The Private was now in a silky copy of her original uniform, she was nervously holding hands with her daughter, but keeping a distance at the same time. Just before they arrived the daughter turned to her mother and kissed her on the cheek. The private closed her eyes and returned the gesture tentatively. They stepped out of the portal.
"Please, listen to what my," the private paused, "daughter, has to say." Several of my troopers took charge of the private. She was very glad to be back with us, even thigh deep in water. The little swimmers made a path for her to wade out to us. I made a comment about making sure she got a promotion and twenty years of back pay. The captain agreed over the radio.
The young woman, beaded dreadlocks clicking in synch with her speech, apologized on behalf of the hive. The soldier bugs jumped back through the portal. The water bugs withdrew their thread like tendrils. She explained that their race was mildly parasitic, but could live in many worlds, where it was obvious that our races were not so fortunate. It would not colonize this world. They would, however, like to keep open relations with us. The young woman turned back to talk to a large bug on the portal screen. I really wanted to know how they did that. I moved closer. We were still sending radio waves through our portal.
The clicking noises were not beads. When the woman turned around I could see that her hair was not really in dreadlocks, she wore a cap made of living bugs, much like the small ones around my legs. They were thousands of tiny hive insects, their nearly microscopic filaments woven into the woman's hair and buried in her scalp.

OK that was a creepy dream moment.

This was one of those dreams where I was really someone else. I had a history, I knew my role as the leader of a support team (Electronics and intel gathering.) My commander had decided, apparently that this was a milk run, nothing but trying to find the noxious plants to stay away from, so he and the "real soldiers" were taking the mission off. Even after the arrival of competitors, he was content that they should take the point on recon on the world, knowing that whatever they found, this world fate would be in the hands of diplomats. It was a little callous to throw me into a deathmatch. I can only assume that he knew that it didn't need to end in death, but still, I would have been made a slave of the Cats! Either that or he was planning on double crossing them and wiping them out after the contest. I don't think he expected me to win. I didn't either, as I told N, I only won because of a dirty rotten Monkey trick. There was also a strange image that I don't recall where it exactly fit in the dream, but at one point the old man (Captain) told me I'd won the crystal, and a couple of his soldiers delivered MREs on crystal china, cups, salad plated, fruit bowl, soup bowl and saucers included, it looked like it was service for at least eight. I think it was just after beating the Cat.