Someone once told me that Ardevis is one of the most beautiful worlds in the sector.
It was hard to see that now, as our flyer cut over the scarce tree tops peppering the landscape. Operation Banehammer was a long, arduous war, and it had left its mark on the environment. Large pockmarks littered the ground where artillery rounds had chewed up the earth, with muddy trenches snaked through the longer engagements of the war. Most of the trees of the old warzones had been toppled over for various reasons and now only a few remained as a silent reminder of the beauty this world once held.
We were a long way from the front lines, but even from here you could see the pillars of smoke rising up into the horizon, making the sun a dim yellow blob carelessly painted on a gray canvas. Sometimes you could see a faint flash as one of the superweapons fired its guns, but at this distance, it was only a silent movie. To get a better show, you really had to watch it at night.
Trust me, I had spent many a night watching the front lines from the relative safety of Gauntin City.
Captain Tarvin didn’t even bother to look in its direction. Being the only human in the company, it was widely believed that Tarvin had done something terribly wrong during the course of the war to end up leading an S company. Most senior officers compared leading it to babysitting, and it was usually reserved for officers who were new to the art of command. Tarvin was an experienced veteran though, having led a company since the first invasion of Ardevis.
The captain caught me staring at him, and he gave me a deep frown. “What?”
“I uh… nothing sir.”
“You’re wondering how I ended up with the Synthetics, aren’t you?” His eyes narrowed slightly.
The question caught me off guard, but I shook my head, “None of my business, sir.”
“Damn right it isn’t.” Tarvin growled, “Been fighting this war for eight years now, notched eight victories as a direct result of my company’s action, I’ve personally accounted for four hundred forty seven enemy K-I-As, I’ve killed six tanks and four walkers, and one UIW supertank.” He stared at me, as if daring me to contradict him.
“That’s appropriately badass, sir.”
“Damn right!” Tarvin motioned to the distant front lines, “I should be up there, not taking care of a bunch of tin men!”
I flinched at the derogatory slang. We were lucky that no one else could hear us over the flyer’s engine. “Sir, as your adjutant, I want to advise you against using that kind of language—“
“You easily offended?”
“No sir, but a lot of the men are sensitive to that kind of talk. You’re not with your buddies anymore. We’re all droids here, and you’d be off to a bad start if they heard you talking about us like we’re scrap.”
Tarvin nodded and seemed to contemplate my words. It was a pretty well-known fact that abusive, bigot commanders had a tendency to die badly. Never in ways that would lead it back to those under his command. They were always overrun, left for dead, an order unheard or a wild shot would clip them, not enough to kill, but enough for the enemy to take advantage of the wound.
“My apologies, Sergeant, I spoke in out of turn. Heat of the moment.”
“I understand, sir.”
2: CAPTAIN TAVINThe various S companies connected to different regiments were always the black sheep of the outfit. We were treated differently, often shipped out on different transports or assigned to unflattering duties. The only reason we existed at all was because of the Grueler Act, which required every regiment to have at least one S company. The military officially called us “Synthetic” companies, but the common soldier much preferred to call us scrap companies.
We were used to the ridicule and the disdainful looks. But during the three weeks after making planetfall on Ardevis, life was basically a living hell for everyone in the company. While most of us were used to being treated as second class soldiers by our military, it was different to be on a planet that didn’t want us at all. Ardevis was part of the “Old Way”, men and women who had lived a hard life without synthetic help, and as such, developed a kind of racism that’s relatively unique in this day and age.
People openly shunned us, they threw rocks and called us soulless monsters, we were turned away from shops and entertainment. Throughout the city signs were hung up that read “HUMANS ONLY”. Even with a war on its doorstep, the people of Gauntin took time out of their day to hate us.
It was about a week before we got deployment orders when I received an emergency signal from a trooper named Hiden. His comm was down, which meant I found myself sprinting down the narrow alleyways of the city to get to him.
When I found him, five of his assailants were laying into him with aluminum bats. I could hear the deep empty sound of metal bouncing off metal. Hiden was crouched down with his hands over across his abdomen, protecting his valuable core. With his head down, he could have been taking a nap, if not for the bats pinging off his neck and shoulders.
I drew my sidearm, “Terran Military! Drop your weapons and back away!”
The pistol was only for show. Local laws forced locks on any weapon what wasn’t in the hands of law enforcement or military officers. I hoped that none of these thugs knew that though. Fortunately, it had the mostly desired effect.
Three of Hiden’s attacks fled into the streets, disappearing into the night, but two of them weren’t as smart, electing to shift their attention and come at me with bats in hand. I could only assume they knew I couldn’t fire my pistol even if I wanted to. I pulled the trigger as a reflex, only to have it resist my touch. Then a bat knocked it from my hand.
The man who had struck was briefly distracted as it skittered across the cobblestone, and I took advantage of the minute opening, striking him under the arm, dislocating it from the socket. He dropped the bat and started to howl, but I ended his cries of pain with punch against his throat.
As the first assailant fell to the ground, gasping and choking for air, the second had managed to circle around behind me, and I felt hard aluminum strike my back. Millions of sensors fired alarms to my central core, alerting me to the impact. My skin had toughened at the beginning of the engagement, and I easily deflected the bat, but I turned on my heels to face my attacker, deflecting a second blow with my arm.
I pushed the makeshift weapon away and threw a punch at the man’s face. He dodged easily and struck me on the side. The impact made me stumble, and he came in for another strike. I ducked under the wild swing and grabbed the bat, pulling it from his hands. The action made him stumble to his hands and knees.
He was old. Not incredibly so, but he was at least in his fifties by Earth standards. His face was leathery and wrinkled. He was wearing old green military fatigues under his torn jacket, and I briefly wondered if he was a veteran of this old war. I moved in to restrain him as he attempted to get to his feet.
It was then he pulled the gun on me. Dark, battered, and heavy, one second the old man was on his hands and knees, and the next I had a barrel pointed in my face. He had me dead to rights.
“Fucking try it, tin man.” He snarled, slowly rising to stand.
I took a step back, calculating my chances of disarming him. “That gun is locked. You know that.”
He fired a shot at my feet. Cobblestone shattered between my legs, and the sound was impossibly loud in the narrow alleyway. "It’s from my own personal collection.”
I cursed under my breath, and then asked, “What do you want?”
“I want you fucking robots to get off my planet.”
“I’m just here with the rest of the 501st, we’re trying to liberate you.”
“Bullshit!” The old man snarled. “I’ve been here since the beginning. You assholes don’t want anything ‘cept to replace us all with your machine breathren! I know the Terran council is nothing but a bunch of robots trying to run us! You just want the mines here, so you can build more of your kind.”
I began a rebuke, but paused, knowing it was futile. The man was a raving lunatic, convinced synthetics were inherently evil. It was an old story but I rarely had to hear it with a gun pointed in my face. The old man’s hand was trembling. He knew that threatening military personnel was the kind of thing people got hung for, synthetic or not.
I knew that he would shoot me. He would turn on Hiden and shoot him as well.
I ran nanosecond calculations, predicting my success rate. I had a fifty-three percent chance of success, but a twenty-four percent chance of surviving the encounter. My core told me there was a ninety percent chance I’d require major repair, even if I overclocked my system take down the assailant. One strike is all I needed though, and if Hiden survived, I would be okay with death.
I could feel the old man’s finger tightening on the trigger, and I whirled up my systems, moving to take him down, synthetic muscles tightening, servos spinning at max speeds, macro-processors firing, my core hot in my chest. My hands curled into fists, wrecking balls coming up to strike—
But they never met a target.
Gunfire tore the old man apart. He tipped sideways, knocked off his feet as slugs ripped into his body. He fell unceremoniously, face smashing into the brick wall, leaving a bloody smear as he slumped into a lifeless pile. The gun in his hand fell to the ground and came to rest near mine.
The one who have saved us materialized from seemingly nowhere. To my surprise, he was a human, grizzled and unshaven, scars running across his face like ugly lightning. He wore military fatigues, and had a captain’s patch on his shoulder. I could just barely see the tattoo on his neck, a hand of playing cards with sevens on them.
The Ocea Seventh Infantry. The Lucky Sevens.
“You must be First Sergeant Callon.” He said, his voice a slow deep growl like a tiger yawning.
“I am.” I replied. “I appreciate the help. I’m sure Private Hiden appreciates it as well. Who are you?”
“York Tavin. Captain. I’m also the sorry bastard who’s running your outfit now.”
3: TOUCHDOWN AT GAMMAI surveyed our area of operation as the flyer circled around to come in for a landing. It was an old outpost, snuggled down between two cliff walls, a natural chokepoint in the massive canyon system. There was little to look at besides brown canyon walls. Only scarce vegetation dared to cling to life in this dry climate, and twisted, leafless trees formed into precarious shapes at odd intervals.
The outpost itself was a precarious combination. Old leftover structures still stood about, dusty and forgotten with time, left behind when its inhabitants moved to the more hospitable inlands. Reports told me that the outpost was one of the landing sites of the first colonists. It was an ancient place, and if not for the war and its strategic value, it would have been a protected site, to be studied by archeologists.
The rest of the outpost was a stark reminder that none of Ardevis was untouched by the war. Hastily erected buildings stood in neat lines, gleaming proudly in the sunlight. Dishes and gadgets pointed to the sky, as rows of landers settled in a small clearing behind the outpost. Those already on the ground shuffled back and forth on various tasks.
Our flyer had to stay low, as hard winds coming off the oceans to the north kept most low flying aircraft from crossing across this area. We still rocked in our combat armor as the lander was buffeted by the wind, and I could hear the pilot cussing up a storm even through the hatch.
In fact, it was because of this wind that this outpost had been rated Secondary Gamma, making it only slightly more important than a mud hut in the middle of the desert. Since it was nearly impossible to pass over the outpost due to the winds—and the anti-aircraft weaponry dotting the landscape—an army would be forced to pass through the canyon if it expected to get anywhere close to Gauntin City. This meant getting past the chokepoint where the outpost comfortably sat. It would cost a massive amount of resources to take the area.
No one had attempted to take “Gauntin City’s back door” for nearly two centuries, when rebels tried to overthrow the independent government. The attack was so unsuccessful and the cost so high that most historians believe it’s the biggest reason the rebellion ended up failing.
Outpost Gamma. Home sweet home.
“I don’t get it.” I mused aloud, “If this outpost is so important, why is Command just now staffing it?”
“They’re not,” Tarvin replied, after a particularly nasty jostle sent him into a string of curses, “The last company sent here went AWOL last night.”
“The whole company?”
“Well, the last of them.” Tarvin shrugged, “The canyon screws up communications, but we’ve gotten scattered reports about units going MIA since they’ve been here. Something spooking people, or they’re getting so bored that they’re leaving. I don’t know. Even with the war, the price of desertion is pretty low. Some people just up and walk away sometimes.”
The flyer drifted down into Outpost Gamma and landed in the designated zone, and the platoon grabbed their kits. Loader teams grabbed extra gear stored on the flyer and tossed it onto a pallet, where a forklift lazily wandered up and grabbed it before making its way down to a row of supply sheds.
The other platoons spilled out of the other landers, milling about with spark-sticks or talking to each other. Lieutenants and sergeants snaked their way through the crowd to move their soldiers along, and a slow trickle of bodies made their way to the long barrack buildings to unpack their gear.
“It makes sense that they would send an S company here then.” I said.
“I don’t follow your logic,” the captain replied.
“I mean, we androids don’t really suffer from the effects of boredom and idling about. I mean, you can look at the statistics. Synthetic companies have significantly lower reports of AWOL troops than our human counterparts.” I shrugged.
“If you say so,” said Tarvin, before turning to some men. “Lieutenant! Uh, Mitch! Get a couple of squads up on the wall, no time to play around yet.”
The wall the captain was referring to was erected on the east side of the camp. It was sturdy but old, built out of stone and reinforced with some type of old alloy, smoothed down with time. A large door had been cut into the front, but at the moment it was barred over. Recent modifications by engineers made the wall a defensive position rather than just an obstruction. Platforms clung to the side of the wall, and gun slots had been cut into the wall to give shooters a clear line of sight to the canyon. The wall ran up a good eighty meters, and with the sun beginning to set in the east, half of the camp was plunged into cool shadows.
“Either way,” Tarvin turned back to me as he went on, “Our primary mission is to protect the outpost, but we’re supposed to find out what happened to the last company as well.” He paused, then added, “I don’t expect much in the ways of results.”
4: THE LAST COMPANYThe first night found me wandering through the camp around three a.m. local time. My artificial eyes saw through the night as clear as day, and I simply walked exploring the ancient colony we were occupying. It was quiet beyond the whistle of the wind above us. I saw the silhouette of troopers standing vigilant on the wall, motionless besides the occasional flicker of light as they activated their spark-sticks.
The barrack houses were dark at this time of night, most of the androids electing to use this time for their maintenance cycle. While synthetics didn’t actually need to sleep, it was recommended that most take two to three hours of our days to “clean-up” our systems. Compressing files, defragmenting, cleaning up data streams and so on. The complexity of our systems meant that it was easy to get overwhelmed by “bloated” data stores. Nano-seconds became micro-seconds, and one error could be the difference between life and death, so most of us took it seriously.
I wandered a distance from the camp, lost in thought, and found myself before a strange structure. Unlike the other ancient buildings that had elected for solid, utilitarian designs, great care had been taken into designing it. The walls were slanted upwards on both sides, coming to a peak. Ancient designs were etched into the slanted peaks, and I ran my fingertips across them, wondering what they meant. They seemed to be some kind of ancient language, probably something dead from the first colonists, but I hardly had the tools to decipher these runes.
Instead I walked around to the double doors leading into the building. They too had been carefully carved into ancient, heavy stone that seemed more foreboding than inviting. Still, my curiosity was piqued, having an interest in human history. I pushed lightly on the door, but it didn’t give. A little more force caused the door to groan as it slid back. I started as something snapped behind the door, heavy and wooden by the sound of it.
There was just enough room for me to squeeze through, and the interior was hidden in absolute darkness. I ducked under the splintered wooden bar that gave under my touch, and I turned up the gain on my night vision. A shadowy world appeared before me.
It was a temple of some kind, with benches fashioned from the twisted trees surrounding the outpost. The benches itself were irregular as a result, and I mused that it would be arduous and uncomfortable to sit on for any length of time. That was probably the point though.
The walls were covered in the same kinds of runes as the outside of the temple, though smaller and it greater numbers. Different tools had been used at various times throughout the years, some scratched in with a knife and others etched in with some cutting tool. Some appeared old and were worn down, others were fresher and had to only been a few hundred years old, if that. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. No one had been down here in years. Every step I took in left footsteps on the stone floor.
In the back was an altar of some sort, for worship or whatever the first colonists did when they came here. It was fashioned in the same grey stones as the rest of the building, but it was covered in a black, flaky material. I touched the blackness and some of it came away. The stone beneath it was stained the same color. With a dark feeling, I analyzed the substance.
Blood. Ancient blood.
I brushed it from my hands with a grunt, and it drifted down to the floor like snowflakes. My eyes followed its path down, and saw a slab of stone cut into the floor, more of the mysterious runes cut into it. A series of handles were carved into the stone itself, and I strained to lift it. The thing had to weigh at least 500 pounds. It would most likely take four or more full grown men to move it even minutely. I slide the massive lid aside, and peered into the darkness below. I turned up the gain on my night vision to no avail. The darkness was complete.
Except for a small green light. It flashed at regular intervals, just a few feet into the darkness. With a growing sense of dread, I reached down and grabbed at the green light. My fingers found gain on it, and I lifted the light—and whatever it was attached to—out.
It was a small box, bright orange in the light, that was about the side of a handheld radio. There was an emblem printed on the side: 304th Gardia Rifles, Fifth Company. I was all too familiar with the device.
It was an emergency beacon.
5: CONTACT EAST“Captain, we have contact east.”
The transmission came from Sergeant Fuller, whose squad was managing the wall at the time. The second day had leaked away, full of futile scouting and trying to establish contact with Command. Tarvin had been right about comms being screwed up in Outpost Gamma. The radio operator, Slaton, was lucky to get a sentence in before getting lost in static. Command promised S company some advanced satellite arrays in the brief time we were able to talk.
Two troopers disappeared during the night.
I was turning the emergency beacon over in my hands when the alarm sounded. I grabbed my rifle as I left the barracks, catching up to Tarvin as he came out of the command tent.
“It’s gotta be a false alarm.” Tarvin growled. “No bastard would be crazy enough to be out here.”
“Natives, maybe?” I suggested.
We scrambled up the ladders to the first platform, where Fuller was waiting for us. He didn’t wait to be asked to brief us. “We have a small formation of Union scouts a good two hundred meters from here. They haven’t done anything except watch us, but I have a bad feeling about it. Why would the UIW be all the way out here?”
“You sure they’re not commandos?” I asked. “Could be working behind enemy lines and all that.”
Tarvin pulled his binoculars from his pocket to take a look at the enemy soldiers. “No, those are scouts. Light equipment, reflex camo, long range rifles. It fits the profile.”
“That’s what I concluded as well,” said Fuller.
“If its scouts, then that means we’re going to have some uninvited guests soon,” said Tarvin, “There’s no other way through this canyon except through us. We might be able to buy some time though. Most likely those scouts have the same problem we do and can’t use their long range comms. If that’s the case, we might be able to take them out before they radio any valuable data to their commanders.”
The captain turned to me, “Do you feel like going hunting, Callon?”
6: GOING HUNTINGDespite my protests, Tarvin insisted on coming with Yuri’s squad to engage the Union scouts. I had selected Yuri and his men due to the fact that they were scouts themselves. If anyone knew how to counter these elite troopers, it would be them.
Rather than going through the front door and alerting the enemy position, we elected to scale the southern cliff wall and make our way through a dry riverbed that ran parallel to the canyon. With no inlet into the canyon, we would be forced to scale the wall again. But—granted that we remain undetected—we would end up behind the enemy scouts and get the drop on them.
It was a long journey, running just over three hours. We stopped on multiple occasions to plant mines, in case the Union tried to get clever and flank us using the riverbed. Night fell just as we finished climbing from the dry lake, and we crawled out way to the cliff face, checking the scout’s position. There were eight of them, lying prone behind rocks or under bushes. One had a radio in hand, but by his body language, it was evident that he wasn’t having much luck getting hold of his commanders.
“They have no one watching their backs.” Yuri whispered, “It’s sloppy. They will come to regret this decision.”
Torques and Sierra stayed behind to provide long range sniper cover, while the rest of the squad attached wires and rappelled down the cliff face. As we landed, we spread out to either side of the narrow canyon, using the same techniques the Union scouts were using. Yuri motioned for Lex and Pots to provide cover when things got hot, and motioned for the rest of us to move up with him.
For a human, Captain Tarvin was amazingly quiet. I made a mental note to ask him about his commando training once we were done with this mission. Even without the high-tech reflex camouflage, he blended with the shadows and the landscape as if he was wearing a stealth shield.
We drew our knives as we crept up on the scouts. Dull and black in my hand, I was reminded of the old blood in the temple, and suppressed a shudder. It was no time to get distracted by idle thoughts.
I dispatched the first one quietly, a hand over his mouth and a slice across the throat guaranteed he wouldn’t alert the others to our presence. Tarvin took out a scout to my right, and I spotted Yuri a little ahead of me, his knife plunging down into another. The other two members of Yuri’s squad, Aleck and Bird, dispatched the forth scout together.
I could hear the static buzzing from the radio operator’s device, as he spoke quietly and angrily into it. As I stalked closer, he threw it down with an exasperated huff, and turned to look towards us as he lit up a cigarette.
He blinked, surprised to see us. I was a good five feet from him, too far to strike him before he cried out. I lunged at him. He cried out “Oh shit!” just before I buried my knife in his throat, and he was dead before he hit the ground.
The three remaining scouts turned, raising their weapons to fire. Yuri jumped into the lead scout, knocking the man down and killing him with two surgical strikes from his blade. Tarvin dropped his knife and brought up his favored submachine gun, spraying the last two scouts. They both slumped to the ground.
Yuri said into his comm, “We’re clear. All teams move up.”
Lex and Pots joined us, and we searched the enemy scouts as we waited for the snipers to catch up. Bird tilted his head and frowned. “Do you hear that? Sounds like thunder.”
Tarvin turned and looked back behind us, his eyes narrowing. He started back up. “Run.”
“What?” I asked, trying to follow his line of sight.
“Run!” He yelled, turning and sprinting back towards the wall. Aleck and Yuri, needing no further encouragement, ran past me and after the captain.
I saw a twin pair of headlights, and the sound of thunder grew louder as it approached. It was not a promising sight. I adjusted my night vision. Two figures were running ahead of the headlights. Torques and Sierra were fleeing at full sprint from a light tank.
“We’re screwed,” said Bird, before turning and running after the others.
The term “light” was relative in the case of this tank. While the normal sized or the super tanks wouldn’t have enough room to maneuver, the Rabbit light tank was just small enough to squeeze into the canyon, and its six reinforced wheels kept it fast and maneuverable. It bounced up and down over rock formations and smashed through trees and shrubs. Though it didn’t have the firepower as its larger counterparts, it was certainly enough to do damage.
Especially to a handful of soldiers with light armor and no anti-tank weapons.
The Rabbit’s coaxial machine gun opened up on the two running figures. Torques came apart in several pieces, his machine fluid splattering across the dusty earth. The onslaught missed Sierra, but the engine gunned and with a burst of speed, the tank crushed the android beneath its wheels with a sick and definitive crunch.
I was running with Lex and Pots before Sierra disappeared beneath the Rabbit’s wheels, cranking up all my systems, overclocking my core for a little extra burst of speed. The tank bore down on us eagerly, and slowed just enough to fire its main cannon in our direction. The noise was deafening.
The shell flew past me and erupted ahead, showering me with dirt and chewed up plant life. It was unnerving, but I didn’t slow for a second. Ahead of me, Aleck and Yuri made it to the gate, with Tarvin just behind them. The gate swung open painfully slow and the trio slipped inside. Rifles and machine guns fired on the approaching tank, showing its hull in sparks as bullets ricocheted off it. Undeterred, the tank fired its main gun again.
Lex became a pair of legs, as the rest of him disintegrated into various electronic scrap. His legs ran for a few more paces before tipping over, midstride. Shrapnel from his untimely end peppered me like a shotgun blast, and I stumbled as alarms lit up across my vision.
Pots grabbed me by the arm and hauled me back up. “Come on!” He yelled.
The tank was almost on us. The coaxial gun opened up in a burp of bullets. Pots’ arm was shredded and he stumbled away, clasping his hand to keep synthetic fluids from leaking out. I caught a few bullets in my chest plate, causing more alarms to pop into my vision.
I tried to run but I was hurt, my body wouldn’t take me any further. I turned on the tank, expecting to feel its massive wheels crush me or its hot bullets tear me apart, but instead there was a massive sound, and a slap of superheated air hit me so hard that I was knocked off my feet.
As I pushed myself up on my elbows, the Rabbit burned in front of me. Someone had brought up an anti-tank weapon just in time. Whoever they were, I owed them a drink and a pack of spark-sticks.
Tarvin leaned over me, tube-launcher still in his hand. Heat vented from the back of it into the cold night air. He offered his free hand to me.
“That’s two you owe me, now.”
7: REPAIR BAYI spent two days in the repair bay, not including that first night they dragged my broken carcass back to Outpost Gamma. I underwent serious repairs during the first night, listening to the medical unit, a pair of twin androids named Garis and Eleanor, tsk at me about being reckless. I had to be shut down for almost 6 hours as Garis had to remove pieces of shrapnel that were precariously close to my core. When I was reactivated, light was shining into the repair bay, I sat up on the repair table, ready to get back to my duties, only to have alarm signals flood across my vision. I cursed and called for the repair team.
Garis explained to me that some of my secondary components were damaged in the attack, and as he lacked the few specialized parts needed to repair me completely, I was bed bound until the flyer came with the requested parts.
So I spent my days idling about, itching to get back to my duties. Lacking a decent connection to the global datanet, I was forced to read antique paper books Tarvin loaned me. After finished the first dozen within a couple of hours via flash processing, Tarvin gave me a piece of advice as he loaned me another few books: “Try actually reading it with your eyes, Sergeant.”
Instead of scanning the information into my banks, I took the time to read each word. Finding it a long and boring process, I gave up on the whole exercise and focused my time on minor self-repairs and refining reports to submit to Command later.
The second night left me even antsier. Yuri came by around midnight Standard, smelling of ozone and smoke. He was the last of a steady trickle of troopers who had wandered into the medical unit, getting minor repairs. Yuri had taken a pair of rounds in his chest plate, and he sat down next to me as the auto-doctor whirled to life and pulled bullets from him and filling the damaged plating with quick-alloy.
“Another raid,” said Yuri, a distasteful look on his face.
“A big one?” I asked.
“Adequate,” replied Yuri. “Personally, I would have brought more tanks. Wasteful to only throw a handful of men at a time.”
“They might be planning something. Maybe they need to keep our attention for something else?” I wondered aloud.
“Doubtful. These were not conscripts or old junkyard-worthy vehicles. They were trained men, top of the line equipment. Well, top of the line for UIW, anyways. The Union is all or nothing. They either attack en masse or not at all. Raiding… that is not their tactics. I find this… unsettling.”
“What are you saying, Yuri?”
“I don’t know.” Yuri rose to his feet, getting the multi-armed auto-doctor a friendly pat. “Thanks old friend.” He turned back to me. “I know the Captain feels the same way, though he didn’t mention it to me. I could see it in his eyes. He’s an old warhorse, he knows how the Union acts.
“They may look Union, they may wear the uniform, but believe me when I say we’re not fighting the Union. This is something else.”
8: THE PATROLPatrols were increased due to the Union’s confirmed presence in the area. Wilik’s squad went out during that second night to patrol the western side of the outpost. They never returned.
9: A DIFFERENT KIND OF RAIDThe cargo finally arrived that third day, and with it the parts I needed to finally get out of the repair bay. The android twins did not seem disappointed to see me go.
“I’m just glad I won’t have to hear your constant complaining anymore,” said Garis, as he welded in a core support line, “I was considering removing my audio unit just so I’d have a moment’s silence.”
I smiled, “If you say so, Garis. I know you have to get lonely in here.”
Eleanor snorted, “He has me.”
“You’re almost as bad as he is!” exclaimed the medical android, “One day I’m going to retire from this line of work, and isolate myself on some desert world just so I can get away from your nagging—AGH!”
Eleanor had leaned over and zapped Garis with her micro-weld pen. As I listened to the two bicker as the last of my repairs were made, Tarvin wandered into the bay, a deep frown on his face. It made his scars wrinkle like the canyon around us.
“We have a situation on hand.”
“Another raid?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“Something like that,” Tarvin said wryly, “Along with the ammunition and machine parts, Command sent us a goddam historian.”
“Historian? Like from a museum?” I pulled on my fatigues and began to strap pieces of my kit back on.
“He’s from the Ardevis Council of Cultural Preservation. Apparently he’s here to snap some photos and shit. Take some samples back with him, whatever.” Tarvin snorted, “Goddam war on and these aristocrats are worried about century dead cultures.”
“I suppose it makes sense.” I shrugged, “We’ve destroyed a lot of artifacts in this war. Now they’re trying to scramble and collect every scrap of history just in case we blow it all up.” I chuckled.
“The Union destroyed more Ardevian art and structures in their first year of occupation than we have in the entirety of the war.” Garis chimed in.
“Thank you doctor,” said Tarvin, then motioned me to step outside with him, “Point is, I just wanted to warn you about this guy. He’s… weird. Eccentric is the word, I guess, but I don’t want that asshole anywhere near me. So if you see him coming, you just do what you can to make him go the other way. Got it?”
“Is that an order, sir?”
“Damn straight it is.”
10: THE PROFESSOR (I)The historian and his team had set up in the southern part of the outpost, where the ancient colony buildings were more densely populated. I eyed the temple warily as I approached the handful of dome tents. An older man turned from speaking to the pair accompanying him, and walked towards me, his cane clacking against the hard earth.
He was well dressed in a suit, but had the leathery skin of a man who had spent too much time outside. His hands were stained a dark brown, having spent years sifting through mud and dirt for valuable artifacts. His smile was pleasant enough, but I had a feeling he was annoyed by my presence. His two companions followed slightly behind him.
“Good afternoon, soldier! You must be Callon. Mister York said you would be paying me a visit. Where is the good captain?”
“He’s uh… attending to matters of defense, mister…?”
“I’m Professor Gregory Edgerton. I’m sure York has filled you in as to why I’m here?” Edgerton asked, his smile growing wider. I took a moment to contemplate how white his teeth were.
“He did. I’m here to assist you with anything you might need from our company.”
“A liaison, eh?”
“Something like that.” I shifted uncomfortably, as Edgerton didn’t reply, just looked me over a few times. “Might I ask who you’re companions are, Professor Edgerton?”
“Ah, yes. Well,” Edgerton motioned to the girl at his side, “This is my assistant, Eleanor Hampton.”
Edgerton’s assistant was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen by Terran standards. She also had the look of an off-worlder. The Ardevians were tall and stocky, tempered by years of hard labor. She was neither of those, a short and slender girl with nearly flawless features. My guess was that she was a student of sorts.
“Ah, a pleasure, Miss Hampton. The medic who works the repair bay is also named Eleanor.” I said, trying to be pleasant.
“I don’t get why robots have names,” Eleanor replied, “You’re all just machines anyways. That’s like calling a vending machine Jack or something, right?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, you could just call us by our serial numbers then,” I said, “I’m two-one-five-dash-nine-eight-two-dash-three-four-one-dash-seven-seven-eight-three.”
Eleanor stiffened up, “I’ll uh… I’ll stick with the names. Sorry. What’s your name?”
“Callon. You can call me ‘First Sergeant Callon.’”
“Okay, Call—“
“First Sergeant Callon. ‘Sir’ is a viable alternative.”
Eleanor’s face turned red, and after a moment of silence she turned and stormed away, disappearing into her dome tent.
“Mm, sorry about that,” Edgerton said with a laugh, “She’s young, comes from New Terra. They’re used to synthetics being subservient on their world. She’ll get used to you though. She’s a fine lass.”
“I’m used to it. So, who’s this?” I asked, giving a pointed look at Edgerton’s second companion.
“Tank Ordello.” The man rumbled, holding out his hand. He was massive, even by Ardevian standards. Twice my width and at least seven feet tall, “Tank” definitely fulfilled his namesake. He was soft spoken though, with an accent that suggested he came from wealth. His size and bulk suggested extended gene therapy. It was a common practice among Ardevians, where size and strength mattered, for wealthy families to use gene therapy to create bulky men despite a life of easy living and little hardship.
“Tank here is my acting as my bodyguard. Isn’t that right, Tank?” asked Edgerton.
“I’m hoping to open up a private security firm one day,” Tank said smugly, folding his massive arms across his chest.
“That’s nice.” I replied, “Have you seen any action?”
“I uh…” Tank stammered.
“Nevermind.” I shook my head. Obviously Edgerton was relying on Tank being more a deterrent than providing any actual protection. Yuri’s words from the other night echoed in my head:
​They will come to regret this decision.
11: COMBAT READY“Incoming Union formation. Platoon strength, with two Rabbit tanks. Prepare for attack.”
The voice was calm in our ears, as if he was reciting the weather, but units began to scramble around the camp, preparing for battle. Third platoon was on the wall, and the squads ran to reinforce their comrades already stationed there. I grabbed my rifle to help with the defense.
“You sure you’re ready to get back into the fight, Sarge?” asked Tarvin.
“Yes sir, it’s a perfect opportunity to get back up to optimal fighting capacity. I need to tweek my settings anyways and the best way to do that is in combat.” I replied.
“Very well, carry on, first sergeant.” Tarvin went back to his quarters.
“You’re not coming, Captain?” I asked, as I slipped a magazine into my rifle.
“I have something planned with Yuri. You’ll know it when you see it.” He said.
I climbed to the highest platform on the wall, a lip which overlooked the wall directly. We were protected by a jigsaw pattern of masonry, but it also gave me the best view of the field. I was joined by third platoon’s snipers, and they began to set up, flipping open bipods and sighting in scopes. They seemed unfazed by the strong winds.
I used my optics to zoom in. The Union forces were moving quickly, firing shoulder mounted rockets and throwing smoke grenades to cover their advance. Behind them were the Rabbits, firing their main guns. Every shot that landed on the wall shook the whole structure, but the wall took only minor surface damage, thanks mostly to the alloy plates covering the wall.
The snipers began to pick off targets, taking down the significantly more dangerous rocket-wielding troopers. The Union seemed undeterred though, and continued their relentless forward run into our gunfire. Rockets shot out from the gun slots lower on the wall, tracking the Rabbits and making short work of them. As they exploded, the soldiers around them were scorched and shredded to pieces.
The enemy soldiers seemed unconcerned with self-preservation. As their numbers dwindled and their Rabbits were destroyed, they still pushed forward, firing as they went. One managed to get close enough to use his under slung grenade launcher, and landed a lucky shot on one of the gun slots. The troopers on that platform cried out as the explosion blasted them off. I flinched as they hit the ground with solid thuds. Corporal Hilt was on fire, and scrambled around until a team with extinguishers sprayed him with cold exhaust. He fell to the ground, his inner machinery exposed and sparking.
The others got up relatively unharmed, but Private Tigris remained down. I watched as a couple of the others approached him and knelt down.
“You okay buddy?” A voice drifted up.
“ENNNZZZZKKKSSSKAAAAH ERRORERROR” was the downed trooper’s reply. He twitched spastically. His squad mates opened up his fatigues, then stepped back. Tigris’s chest was glowing red hot, so hot that his chest plate was beginning to melt and ooze off him.
“Core overload! Oh shit!” His squad mates got up to run. However, they were not fast enough. Tigris’s core ruptured and blew up, swallowing up the two troopers. Their remains were flung outward. Ultin’s arm smashed through a storage shed, and most of Jump’s torso smashed into a forklift and knocked it over. The rest of them came to rest in various places.
One of the snipers next to me, an android name Cat, shook her head, “Well, that’s a shame. We’re lucky the others didn’t blow up too.”
I nodded, “Tigris’s failsafe must have been disabled. He’s lucky he’s dead or he’d be facing court martial.”
“That’s not funny.” Cat replied.
“It wasn’t supposed to be.” I said. Most synthetics had failsafes on our cores that made us go inert the moment we ceased to function. This meant that we didn’t explode if something happened to damage our core during our demise. It also meant undamaged cores could be recovered and placed in a new unit. In rare occasions, if the memory unit was also intact, you could rebuild the “dead” synthetic.
These safeties are required by galactic law to be active at all times in case of injury or death. Unfortunately, it’s a widely held belief that these safety features reduce power output, thus making you slower, if only by a tiny amount. Some androids opt to get black market modifications that remove these restrictors.
“Hey, is that the Captain?” said Cat, bringing me out of my thoughts.
I zoomed in to take a look. Sure enough, Tarvin and Yuri’s squad were rappelling down the southern cliff face just as we had done a few nights ago. They landed behind the burning wreckage of the Rabbits, and came up behind the remaining Union troopers.
I expected them to dispatch the enemy, but instead they tackled them to the ground, restraining the five remaining UIW soldiers. As they began to drag them to the wall, Tarvin’s voice buzzed in my ear: “Get some help out here so we can bring these bastards in. Double time!”
12: PRISONERS OF WARThe shed was small, windowless, and dirty. It was exactly where Tarvin wanted to keep his prisoners. Their hands and feet were double bound with cuffs, and they knelt in a single row, backs against the wall. There was a sack over each of their heads, so they could only hear their captors. Kits had been stripped from them, leaving only their fatigues, with the pockets ripped off.
It was stifling hot in the shed, which made me glad I wasn’t affected by temperature. Tarvin was sweating, and each of the prisoners was dripping already, dark patches of sweat growing under their arms and down their back.
The captain grabbed the right most prisoner and threw them to the ground. “Talk!”
The prisoner spoke fast and frantically in Union’s standard tongue, Kaiserian. I quickly translated for the captain. “He says he doesn’t even know how he got here, and he’s just a private, he doesn’t know anything… according to him.”
Tarvin pulled out his sidearm and shot the prisoner through the head. The others screamed. One began to weep softly. Blood turned the brown sack red.
“Shit!” I cried out. “These are POWs! We can’t just shoot them! The Ulran Convention says-”
“The Ulran Convention can suck my dick,” snarled Tarvin, “There’s something going on here and I want to know what. I’ll shoot all these assholes if I have to. They know what they signed up for. Now you tell them if they don’t cooperate then I’ll put a hole through each one of them, starting from the rightmost.”
I hesitated for a moment, and then passed on the Captain’s words in Kaiserian. There was a heavy silence as no one spoke. Tarvin sighed heavily and stepped up to the next captive, the man who was openly sobbing into his sack. The sound made me sick.
“Tell me where my men are disappearing to. How are you getting ahold of them? Where are you taking them?” He asked softly. I translated. The only reply was silence.
“You people have no sense of camaraderie,” Tarvin said flatly. He shot the man.
“Captain, this is…” I began.
“It’s war, and it’s either us or them.” Tarvin replied with a blank expression. He stepped up to the next prisoner, a woman. She flinched away from his gun. “How many of you are there? Where are you coming from?” I translated his words.
“I do not know.” The woman said with a thick accent, “I speak little Standard, you not shoot me? Yes?” She tilted her head back as if to look at Tarvin. I imagined her look was a pleading one.
Tarvin lowered his gun, “Depends what you know.”
“My name Kisha Lojan. I know there are many, but I do not know how much.” She said, “I am sniper on front line. I hear things then am waking up here.”
“What kind of things?”
“Voices, words. It is… hard to say.” Kisha Lojan paused before saying something in Kaiserian.
“What did she say?” Tarvin asked.
“She said, uh, I’m not sure how to translate it to Standard but she basically said ‘words that make cloudy pictures in your mind.’”
“That’s vague.”
I shrugged.
“Kisha,” said Tarvin, “You were attacking our outpost when we captured you, do you remember that?”
“Uh… a little? It is like dream.” She said softly, “I only remember little things. I do not know what is real and what is not.
“I see. Okay, you did good. You’re still our prisoner, but I’m going to make sure you’re treated right. The medics are going to check you out, and then take you to your cell. You’ll get three meals a day and a cot to sleep on. That sounds good?”
Kisha Lojan burst into tears, bowing her head. “Thank you for not shooting me!”
I pulled the woman to her feet and banged on the door. Yuri and Hiden were standing guard outside. Hiden peeked in and I told him: “Take her to see the doc, then she goes to the hold. Don’t take your eyes off her. Got it?”
“Yes sir,” replied the private, taking the prisoner by the arm. “Come on, Uni.” Yuri latched the door closed.
I turned back as Tarvin moved to the last two prisoners. “Alright son, are you going to talk?” He asked. “I want to know what you saw before you came here.”
As I began to translate the captain’s question, the captive began to convulse, his limbs thrashing against his bindings. He made a thick, gurgling sound, and blood began to seep into the sack on his head, Tarvin stepped back, appalled. “What the hell?” He asked, tugging the bag off the prisoner.
The man’s face was beginning to melt, the top layers of skin sleuthing off like a snake shedding. Bloody patches began to drop off him, making wet splats against the floor, his eyes were blood boils, oozing dark red streams down his face, as his mouth tried to make noises, spitting out globs of red matter. I saw something white bounce off the floor and realized with mounting horror that it was his teeth. The man was trying to scream, but he was drowning on his own fluids.
At the same time, the remaining prisoner began to chant, rocking back and forth, also twitching in his restrains, and as I drew closer the muttering became words I could understand.
“The All-King is coming for us, his reign cannot be stopped, we are the sustenance to feed his return, his flesh is our flesh, we stand ready to receive his terrible love, our eyes shall bleed at his visage, our tongues will bloat as we speak his name, our ears…”
I drew my pistol and aimed it at the prisoner’s head as I pulled the sack off his head, taking a step back as I cried out in alarm.
His face was crushed in, bones cutting through flesh as his face contorted in terrible and unnatural ways. His mouth grew impossibly wide, his lips pulled apart into bloody ribbons, and his voice grew louder as his mouth expanded. His teeth feel out, and were replaced with jagged bits of bone, and still the voice carried on. This transforming nightmare, its eyes squinted until the eyeballs turned to jelly. Slowly, disturbingly slow, the thing reached up and pulled at its ears until they began to tear from its head.
It began to scream.
I pulled the trigger, again and again until the clip ran dry. The thing that was once human squirmed and slumped as I pumped rounds into it, twitching and finally laying still. Its features began to drift back into something resembling a man, but its eyes were still hollow, its ears still torn from its skull, its teeth still sitting in its lap.
Tarvin put the poor melting thing out of its misery, and turned to me, visibly shaken by the encounter. “Is this a dream?”
“No… no sir. Synthetics don’t dream.”
Tarvin looked down at his sidearm. “…Shit. I was afraid you were going to say that.”
13: SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PLACEAt some point during the night, the entirety of forth platoon disappeared.
So at the break of dawn, Captain Tarvin and I found ourselves staring at Fourth platoon’s empty bunks. Most of their kit was gone, except personal items. Trinkets, pictures, charms, they were all left behind, discarded like trash.
“A soldier who’s going AWOL isn’t going to grab his rifle and leave his lucky charm behind,” said Tarvin, holding a rabbit’s foot in his hand. “There’s something wrong with this place.”
“I… I don’t know, sir.” I replied.
“You know I’m right. You may be synthetic, but I know you feel like there’s something wrong with this place. I’ve felt that way ever since we came here. I just chalked it up to an old soldier’s superstitions. All the big, empty buildings, the place feels like a burial ground, not some place people just left ‘cause they found something better.”
I touched the emergency beacon in my pocket. I had forgotten it was even there. “Sir, I uhm… I meant to show you this several days ago, but with everything going on it slipped my mind.” I pulled the beacon from my pocket and held it out. The light still flashed rhythmically.
“An emergency beacon?” Tarvin took it from me and turned it over in his hands. “This is… holy shit, where’d you find this?”
“In the abandoned temple on the south side of the outpost. It was under some kind of trap door, or tomb, whatever you want to call it.” I said sheepishly.
“And you’re just now getting around to showing me this?” Tarvin’s eyes narrowed.
“With the raids and getting shot up, I had kind of forgotten about it, sir. I… apologize.”
Tarvin nodded and looked down at the beacon, “Well, damn. I guess we know what happened to the last company, eh?” He thought for a moment, “Look, I’ve got to get on the horn about this mess. We need people equipped to deal with this shit. We’re soldiers, not fucking exorcists.”
“I agree. So what do you want me to do?”
“You find Edgerton and ask him about that temple. I have a feeling it’s related to all this mess, I just don’t know how. Got it?”
“Yes sir.”
Tarvin tossed the beacon back to me. “Good, now get to it. And God help us both.”
14: THE PROFESSOR (II)I found Tank milling around the temple, a distraught look on his face.
“Something wrong?”
Tank rubbed the back of his neck, “I don’t know but… the professor is acting very strange right now. He’s been in that temple for hours. Eleanor went in there earlier and I haven’t seen her come back out either. I was told not to come in unless paged to do so, but it all makes me kind of uncomfortable.”
“Well, I need to talk to Mister Edgerton anyways, so I don’t think it’d hurt for you to tag along.”
“That’d be great!” Tank exclaimed, then cleared his throat, “I mean, okay, whatever works.”
I motioned for him to follow me and pushed the double doors of the temple open. The wooden bar had been removed, and I walked in, looking around. “Professor? Mister Edgerton?”
The team had set up a multitude of devices through the temple, some for taking pictures, others for carbon dating and a handful of which I had no idea of their function. Flood lights had been set up facing things of particular interest, and it cast eerie shadows about the temple. I kept one hand on my pistol. Tank saw me do this and tensed up.
“Over here!” called Eleanor. We moved past the flood lights to the small assistant. She was standing with her arms folded across her chest, watching the professor scurry back and forth near the altar area, scribbling frantically on a data pad.
“I figured it was you,” Eleanor said snidely, before tossing a smile Tank’s way, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, smiling back.
I left them behind and stepped up to Edgerton, he didn’t even seem to notice I was there until he walked directly into me. The old man blinked, coming out of his daze, his stylus slowing to a crawl. “Yes?”
“Professor Edgerton, I need to talk to you, we’ve been having strange occurrences going on around the camp, and we think it might be related to this temple. Is there anything you can tell me that might be useful?” I asked.
Edgerton raised an eyebrow, then stepped around me, “I don’t have time for this! There’s so much to record. I have to do so before the All-King comes.”
“What did you say?” I stepped towards him.
“I said I have to record everything before the flyer comes. I’ve been told it’s about to get very busy around here.” Edgerton said, turning his back to me.
“Told by whom?”
“By… friends.” Edgerton stared at me. “Why do you ask?”
“Communications have been spotty all week, I was just wondering how you got through.”
“Oh, yes well, communication equipment isn’t quite my specialty, I just use it.” Edgerton waved dismissively, “You should ask that fellow Slaton about it. Strange chap, always muttering to himself.”
“Muttering?” I frowned, a black feeling creeping into my mind, “About what?”
Edgerton turned to look at me, and his eyes found mine. They were distant and glassy, “The return of the All-King.”
15: SLATONSlaton had set up communications in a tiny shed on the northwest side of the camp, a little ways away from the rest of the outpost. A pair of satellite dishes pointed deftly at the sky. Unlike the rest of the military camp, Slaton had elected to set up in one of the native buildings. I was trying not to run, to panic the troops, but I walked as fast as I could, until I was trotting towards the shed, hand on my sidearm.
I tried to open the door, but it was shut up tight. A swift kick smashed the frail wooden frame apart and it splintered off.
Beyond it, Tarvin was wrestling with a deranged Slaton. The android had his pistol out, and fired it randomly into the air as Tarvin grappled with him, but Slaton was stronger and the pistol kept drifting across the captain. It was only luck that he would manage to push the gun away before it fired, but it was a losing battle.
I lined up on Slaton and fired a shot. The first slug smacked him in the jaw and tore it off, but he was relentless in his assault. I fired another shot, and it smashed into his head, throwing him aside. Tarvin threw the insane android to the ground. He drew his pistol, breathing heavily.
Slaton stared up at me as I approached.
“ERROR The All-King. Is. Immortal. BZZT ERROR”
“Get out of here.” I waved Tarvin out, “Go! His core is going to rupture!”
The captain and I fled from the shed, and we were only a handful of step away when Slaton blew up. The blast threw us forward, but besides some scraps, we were fine. I rose to my feet, and stumbled over to Tarvin, offering him a hand.
“Looks like I’ve paid you back.”
Tarvin grunted as he got to his feet, rubbing his back, “You still owe me one, First Sarge.”
“Roger that.”
“What did Edgerton say?” Tarvin asked. Others had begun to trickle over to see what had happened, and we drifted away as the fire brigade moved in with extinguishers.
“Nothing much. I’m pretty sure he’s losing his cool too. He was muttering about the All-King and trying to change his story when I pressed him about it. He also said something about things getting really busy around here.”
“That doesn’t bode well,” said Tarvin.
“No, it doesn’t. What should we do?” I asked, letting out a tired sigh.
“I say we go back to the temple and talk to the professor again. We’re going to get answers. Then we’re going to find out where that tunnel under the temple leads.” Tarvin started heading to the south side of the outpost.
“How do you know it’s a tunnel? It was too dark to see.”
“What else would it be?” ask Tarvin.
I didn’t want to say, but I had my ideas. Crazy, superstitious ideas, the kind of things that would probably end up in me getting a memory wipe, but it was so dark, and that emergency beacon…
I shuddered. Tarvin watched me out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t comment.
16: THE PROFESSOR (III)“I left those kids in there with him.” I said softly, as we came up to the temple doors. They were still ajar. Tarvin drew his sidearm, and so did I. We slipped into the darkness.
The flood lights were extinguished, so I turned on my night vision. Tarvin flipped down his visor to activate night vision as well. We crept further into the temple. As the altar came into view, I saw a figure slumped over it, covered in dark splotches of blood. As I approached, I cursed under my breath.
It was the girl, Eleanor. She wasn’t just covered in blood, her chest had been ripped open, and her organs pulled out, leaving her ribs poking up like the diseased teeth of a deranged animal. In the throes of dying, she had a smile on her face, calm and angelic, blood smeared across her mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, so I turned away.
The captain was kneeled next to another body. I could tell by the massive form that it was Tank. Though he had fallen on his stomach, his neck had been wretched around in such a way that he was gazing up at the ceiling. Tarvin shook his head.
“This is no way to die,” said Tarvin, rising to his feet. “We need to find Edgerton.”
But the good professor found us first. He climb out of the darkness in the floor and calmly slid the lid back over the tunnel, pushing it down to make sure it was snugly fit. Then he turned to us.
“I have done terrible things.” He whispered.
Tarvin stepped forward, his pistol leveled at the professor. “Edgerton, did you kill those kids?”
“I did…” Edgerton hung his head, “I did. I thought if I made a sacrifice to the All-King, he would spare me in the night hour. It is what the first colonists did. They killed their own so that they may live. But it is a futile gesture. He has slumbered too long. His thirst is unquenchable, and his hunger knaws at him. He will take what is his, and no meager sacrifice will sate him.”
I felt like my limbs were filled with ice. I was cold, impossibly cold. Edgerton began to change. His limbs became impossibly long, his skin tearing as his bones stretched and snapped and regrew. He whispered, “I’m sorry,” before his head ripped from his jaw, dangling back on a meager slice of skin. His tongue waggled uselessly in the air, before it split and split again. It grew and divided and grew again, until it was a tree of flesh, swaying gently as Edgerton’s body rocked back and forth, knuckles resting on the floor. He started towards us.
“You sure this isn’t a nightmare?” asked Tarvin, as he backed away, pulling a pair of grenades from his belt.
“Relatively sure, yes sir.” I replied, pulling my own grenades out.
“Just making sure. Okay, let’s go. Three, two, one, throw!” Four grenades bounced to the monster’s feet. We ran, and jumped behind a bench in the back of the temple. The grenades exploded with such force that the first pair of benches were smashed against the temple’s walls. Shrapnel peppered the entire structure like deadly rain.
However, when we rose to our feet, the monster was dead, blown into an uncountable number of pieces. Tarvin looked at me and opened his mouth to say something, when our comms went off.
“Holy shit, contact east, contact east! Oh my God, they’re everywhere!”
17: THE LAST STANDAs we climbed the wall, the direness of the situation hit home. It seemed like the entire Union army was on the other side of the wall. There were at least three battalions worth of soldiers, filling the canyon like a river, with Rabbit light tanks at variable intervals. The wall shook as rockets hit it and the Rabbits fired their munitions.
We were firing almost straight down as the Union flooded up, pushing with futility against the massive wall. Bodies were falling into a massive pile, and yet the troopers simply climbed over their dead comrades and banged on the wall, or fired into gun slots, causing our troopers to scatter and jump off the platform.
It was a desperate battle but we were winning. The Union forces—or whatever was controlling the Union forces—it was throwing everything it had to use but the ancient colony wall held against the onslaught. Runners climbed up and down the ladders with bags full of ammo or fresh tubes to launch at the Rabbits. The platforms were filled nearly to capacity, and still others waited in reserve, guns at the ready.
Discipline would let us prevail.
I was at the top of the wall with Tarvin as we surveyed the battle, and the Captain called down orders as needed. I saw odd figures making their way through the jostling crowds of troopers, and I zoomed in on one. My heart sank.
It was one of the missing troopers from S company. I looked at the other odd figures and confirmed the same thing. They were all moving towards the gate at full sprint, weaponless, but makeshift shields in hand, protecting themselves from the gunfire that rained down on them. Most distressing was the fact that each of them had a chest plate that was glowing red from the heat within.
“Captain…” I began.
“What?” He asked, turning to me. I could only point. He looked through his binoculars, and cursed under his breath. After a moment’s pause, he activated his comms: “Sniper teams, I want you to concentrate fire on the… the synthetic troops down there.”
“But those are ours!” Cat cried, lowering her rifle. Other snipers on the wall refused to shoot their own, especially when it was ordered by a human.
“They’re not anymore you idiots!” I yelled, “They’re going to blast their way through the door.” I grabbed Cat’s rifle, since she was the closest to me.
“Hey! Let go you asshole!” She snarled. I punched her in the face, knocking her from the platform. She landed with a heavy thud, and I felt a momentary pang of guilt.
The scope came up to my eye, and I sighted in on the android closest to the wall. I fired and hit him in the chest, rupturing his core. He blew up in a spectacular explosion, taking Union soldiers with him. I lined up on another one, taking the shot and missing. The second one hit him dead on, and he exploded like the first.
“No no no…” I whispered. Even as I blew a third android apart, shooting by myself was impossible. There were just too many, and already my clip was running low. I fired until I was empty, then dropped the rifle at my feet, and watched as the remaining synthetics threw themselves at the wall, unopposed besides some halfhearted gunfire.
I grabbed my rifle and hopped down off the wall, throwing myself into cover as I waited for the doors to blow open. The first blast ruptured ineffectively against the doors. The second one made the wall creak but the doors held. The third blast made the doors groan, the fourth made the doors bulge inward.
Several of the converted synthetics threw themselves at the doors at once, and the force of the explosion made the doors literally fly off its hinges and into second platoon, who were waiting in reserve. Several androids were smashed under the massive metal plate, and others were decapitated as the doors simply kept moving. I saw Castle swept off his feet, ripped from his legs that stood ineffectually on their own.
The Union poured in, screaming an unholy war cry. I fired on full auto on those who ran in, and they toppled easily, but there were so many behind them that they were on us like a furious tsunami. Reserve troops moved up to help, but they too were wrapped up in the melee.
I smashed a trooper in the face with the butt of my rifle, then dropped it, having spent the ammo already. I drew my knife and my sidearm, firing and stabbing my way through the flood. My fellow synthetics were taken down one by one. I saw Hiden personally strike down ten troopers with only his knife before someone blew his head off with a high powered rifle at close range. Bird was gutted by a bayonet, his core smashed with the tip of the blade. He dropped in a lifeless heap.
I saved Pots, who gave me a little salute with his new arm, only to have him decapitated by a Union officer’s power sword. I shot the killer through the face, then picked up his blade, slashing furiously at any humans who had the misfortune to get close enough. Blood splattered across my body, and within seconds I was drenched in it.
In the frenzy of the battle, I almost struck down my commanding officer. The sizzling blade stopped an inch from his face, and he smiled wryly, “Nice toy. Come on, let’s kill some Uni.”
We were a whirlwind of destruction. Troopers fell at our feet, not always in one piece and not always dead, but always bloodied. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to hope for victory. The enemy troopers seemed to be thinning out, pulling away from us.
They were not getting out of our way though, nor were they fleeing. A shadow fell across us, something impossibly tall and nightmarish. A thing that might have been a man once, but it was so twisted and elongated that it no longer resembled anything close to that. I recognized it though. Tank, or whatever was left of Tank, his body had been taken and transformed. His limbs were too long, his body too wide. Dead muscles creaked and split as it moved. His head was still wretched around and looking the wrong way.
S company was shocked and appalled by this monstrosity. The Union soldiers seemed unfazed, and used this momentary horror to press the attack, striking down the androids with fervor. The monster seemed only interested in one though, and it snatched him up as he went for his submachine gun.
Tarvin unloaded the clip of his submachine gun into the monster’s face, even as it crushed him to death. “Go back to Hell!” He gurgled. Bone fragments flew in various directions until its brain was exposed. Tarvin turned it into a fine paste.
Tank was finally dead, and it fell to the ground with a massive, earth-shaking thud. I ran to Tarvin and dropped to my knees next to him. The monster released its grip on Tarvin in its death throes, and I looked away from the captain’s mutilated body.
Instead I found his eyes. There were no tearful goodbyes, no meaningful last words. His eyes were already glassed over, staring into another world.
The captain was gone.
18: SO COMES THE ALL-KINGSomeone pulled me to my feet. There was still a battle raging around me.
“Sir, you have to get out of here!” Yuri yelled, firing over my shoulder as a Union soldier approached, blade in hand. “You’re in a charge now! So go! We’ll cover you!” Yuri and the remaining scouts made a semi-circle, firing in all direction, fighting back the Union horde.
I stumbled away in a daze, with no plan in mind, no direction to go. I simply drifted away from the battle. The sound of bodies clashing was distant and muffled as I wandered south. A small part of me noticed the repair bay was burning, and I saw the medic Eleanor cut in two, trying to wield herself back together again. I wondered where Garis was, and decided I was better off not knowing.
I wandered past the dome tents the historical team had used, thinking that they didn’t have much use for those anymore. The temple loomed up before me, and I simply drifted inside. I closed the door and pushed the splintered bar back into place, knowing the Union would eventually come for me. I sat down on one of the benches still standing, and stared at the sealed over pit.
You came back… Something whispered in my mind, making me start and come out of my daze. Fists and rifle butts began to pound on the door outside, the bar groaned and crackled under the onslaught.
“Who are you?” I asked the empty temple.
I am the All-King. Embrace me.
“You’re a monster,” I snarled, then let my head drop so my chin rested on my chest.
Some may call me that. Perhaps I am. But I am no worse than you, with your petty war-games and your juvenile hatred for one another. But you have your uses.
“We’re not things for you to use!” I shouted. My voice echoed in the temple, the banging on the door was stronger, louder. The bar cracked some more. “You can’t consume us!”
No, not you, metal creature. I have no taste for artificial flesh. It is man who I crave. You and your brothers have done a wonderful job luring them here. The last ones who came were but a taste, enough for me to extend my reach, to cast my net further… and now they have come, eager for war. So many bodies. So much flesh.
“I’ll destroy you.” I whispered, pulling my sidearm from its holster.
You cannot. I am a nightmare, a terror-thing for you to behold. If you look upon me, you will turn your weapon upon yourself to escape the pain.
The stone plate began to shift.
Shrrrrk…
Shrrrrk…
Shrrrrk…
I can smell your fear. It makes me eager.
Shrrrrk…
Shrrrrk….
Shrrrrrrrrrrk…..
The stone plate fell aside, beyond it was only darkness. As the wood bar splintered and came apart, as the eager faces of Union soldiers spilled in, the All-King rose up.
And as the All-King consumed, I screamed.
Comments must contain at least 3 words