CHAPTER 20
CANNON FODDER
I opened my eyes groggily. The temptation to surrender to sleep and curl up under the covers again was very strong, but my SAI continued undeterred to spur my awakening.
I cursed several times begging for an update of the alarm clock software: I was naked and it was very cold in my quarters.
I got up and ran hunting in the dark for my clothes scattered here and there around the room. I turned on the light dazzling my eyes, then ran to the bathroom. Sophia was gone, leaving her scent in the air and on my skin.
I thought I would change as a person after losing my virginity. Instead, nothing had changed at all. The same person from the night before, with his doubts and fears was facing the same problems. Getting laid is not enough to be called a man.
Once all the morning formalities were done (if morning could be called among the lunar craters) I carefully donned my combat uniform, then left the room intending to go to the mess hall and from there to the briefing room for any final details.
"Attention - alarm level 2 - perimeter breach - alarm level 2 - perimeter breach - to all civilian personnel - return to their quarters".
The alarm kept monotonously repeating with artificial voice the same thing over and over again, reiterated between sirens. I took to staring at the speaker, wondering if I was part of the military or civilian personnel.
I turned to my SAI to open a channel with someone on staff, but the net was dead. I ruled myself out to avoid hacking actions and decided that the only wise thing to do was to try to track down Burris, so I set off at a breakneck pace down the corridors in the direction of his office.
I didn’t travel too far that I immediately heard the first bullets whistling over my head.
"Freeze! To the ground and put your hands behind your head!", yelled a male voice behind me. I had no intention of getting caught, not now that I was so close to my target, so I kept running while ducking slightly. Suddenly, an electric shock went through me from my calf to the tip of my hair, causing me great pain and stunning me until I almost lost consciousness.
I fell limp and it wasn't long before the cop grabbed me forcefully and put a pair of handcuffs and an AIQ on me.
We had been discovered. It was over.
"Is he alive?", asked a female, authoritative voice.
"Yes ma’am", replied the cop who had caught me.
"Rally point at the basin, take him there. You two, with me", said the female officer commanding the SpecOps. Someone had unleashed the Service troops: they were in special gear, equipment almost equal to what I wore in the days of training missions like the one where I met Deena months earlier. Of course, I never expected one day to be the one playing the criminal.
I was lifted off the ground violently by the soldier who had grabbed me, who in an aggressive tone enjoined me to move.
"That's good, by the book", I told him sarcastically, "don't be a blowhard, I don't cause trouble".
"Shut the fuck up", he said, slapping me on the neck and pressing the tip of his rifle on my back.
"Yo mate, secure the weapon, I only need two holes", I continued.
"Move!".
"Oh c’mon, you shot me with an electric bullet! Don't bother me, you're lucky you didn't have to carry me on your back."
"I said move!", he shouted again.
"First page of the manual", I said again. I was swift, with a kick unleashed by rotating on myself I disarmed him, then taking advantage of the accumulated inertia and the lower gravity I unleashed another flying kick directed at his helmeted head. I really hurt myself badly by hitting the guard, however the blow was enough to stun him just enough for me to have time to finish the job with a smashing kick right on the sternum. "Never feel like you have the upper hand".
I bent over him and with my mouth reached for the keys to the handcuffs. I worried as I couldn't find them but then looking to see what kind of shackles I had on, I discovered that they were electronic opening controlled by his SAI.
"Do you mind?", I asked pointing the barrel of the rifle at his cock and highlighting the shackles. The irons snapped immediately, I got rid of them and began to think about what to do with him.
The speakers resumed speaking. “This is Dean Burris, base commander. Surrender without resistance to the regular forces, I repeat, surrender at once. The order applies to everyone. Everyone, Lester!”.
I laughed upon hearing the clarification but it was no joke. I apologized to my colleague and handed the weapon back to him, spontaneously accepting the handcuffs. "Sorry, nothing personal", I told him shrugging. He shook his head and I let him escort me to the collection point, which was one of the base's entrance hangars, where a customs police shuttle had docked, occupying half of the huge dock.
They had already cleared half the installation, but it's easy when the bad guys surrender without resistance and don't even try to escape. I sat next to some soldiers in handcuffs looking rather dejected and waited to be boarded with the rest of the prisoners on the shuttle.
I passed the time by watching people peeking out of the doors onto the hangar with their hands up and SpecOps rifles pointed behind them. Sophia had also been taken and was placed in a group not far from mine. We exchanged a glance, smiling relieved at each other's safety. The procession closed with Burris's impassive face, guarded on sight by two swaggering Service officers in their black coats.
As soon as the base was cleared and secured, we were boarded as courteously as one would load a herd of slaughter animals onto a transport. We were thus crammed into a series of compartments equipped much like those on which I had flown to the military prison where I had been incarcerated until a few days before. After a departure, a six-hour journey and a landing not as soft as those that only the Navajo could make, we found ourselves in the sunlight the dear old atmosphere of Terra.
We had ended up in a place with a temperate climate, pleasant after the lunar cold, on a bright day with few clouds. Just outside the shuttle, I looked up at the sky and let the sun's rays warm me. It had been a long time since I had experienced such a feeling. The ecstasy was interrupted by a baton on my butt.
"Where do you think you are? Move it, don't get in the way!", the guard protecting the landing field yelled at me. No SpecOps there, just the well-known asshole guards. I didn't feel like reacting, despite everything I was in a good mood, even if I didn't have to. The mission and its crazy plan had gone up in smoke, but the idea of no longer having to be disassembled and reassembled like a child's construction box appealed to me, despite the consequences that this entailed.
We were led toward a small prison adjacent to a military base. We did not know where we were, but the men spoke English with a strange accent I had never heard before. They sorted us almost at random and ended up filling all the cells in the complex, which from the outside did not look very large.
The interior was quite different from the prison where I had served part of my sentence. It was a very old and recently renovated prison, dating from perhaps the 21st century or perhaps the 22nd, with wide corridors and cells almost twice the size of the one that had previously housed me.
I was placed together with two soldiers and a cleaner. Immediately we did not fool the time by making friends, however, the two soldiers, who knew each other, talked to each other all the time, and since there was nothing better to do, I spent the minutes listening to their concerns. According to one of them, we had ended up in Sining, in a former Chinese concentration camp dating back to WW4 and repurposed by Humanity as a restraining center for military detainees on death row, a nice place where executions by firing squad or lethal injection took place. If this was true, then our treason had already been tried and convicted and we were there to serve our sentence. I admit that this was a little disturbing.
There is not much to say about my stay in Sining. I saw the cell where we slept and ate and did everything else, and I saw it for three days, three very long endless, terribly monotonous and boring days spent without air time lying on the cribs telling each other the story of our lives, stories that in that very still and stressful climate I did not even listen to carefully or even remember.
Finally on the fourth day, around noon, interesting things began to happen. We were called one by one out of the cell, and it didn't take me long, based on the faces I had memorized during the time I was in the base, to realize that they were separating the military from the civilians, and with my usual optimism I thought that finally my time had come.
When my turn came and I stepped out into the light again, this time pale with a cloud-barred sun, I felt partly uplifted. We were lined up as we were during morning musters at the academy, then a tall uniformed officer, a major in the Space Fleet, took to ranting in his usual bumptious officer talk.
"You traitorous sacks of shit", he began, immediately winning the sympathy of the soldiers present, "are the luckiest deserters in the history of Mankind! At first, you were brought here to end your days in a cell. However, you also happen to be elite troops from special corps, decorated regiments and prestigious military academies. Now that makes you, in addition to gold-stamped dirt bags, highly qualified and unfortunately enormously useful personnel in the current shortage situation. Therefore, the Grand Master himself by an emergency decree grants you this one opportunity: either take a new oath to the flag and to Humanity and return to combat with new orders, or else...".
We had all studied history in school, even me who didn't particularly like it, so we all understood the message. Either croak for the Grand Master or croak there rotting. There was a long silence and we all stood resolutely motionless at attention waiting for something indefinite.
"I’ll take this as a yes. Over there is a transport waiting for you. Move move move!", he shouted again. Schematically and with rhythm, those in the first row turned to their left flank running, followed then by the second row and so on until we all hurriedly boarded the transport, a rather capacious armored hovercraft. On the road again, again I did not know what to do.
*
"You're fucking joke!", shouted a familiar figure in the midst of the paraphernalia railing at some sailors in typical blue and white overalls.
"Dunn! What are you doing here?", I asked strangely happy to see him. He was still someone I couldn't trust, but seeing a familiar face in the midst of so much confusion is always reassuring. I descended the steps from the hovercraft to the ground and approached the cadet. The light, after hours spent in the dark belly of that flying behemoth, dazzled me making the whole landscape a formless mass, except for the guy I was talking to.
"Finally! Lester! Look at this! Now I'm taking orders from a damned sailor with that faggoty fucking bonnet on his head! Damn that time I trusted Burris!", he greeted me as soon as he recognized me. "He wouldn't know a rifle hole from the one he fucks every night in his cabin!".
We had landed inside a very large base camp, filled with octagonal green tents that housed five to eight soldiers each. The camp was a huge square, fenced in by a low net topped by a couple of strips of tensioned barbed wire running above a hescobastion wall about ten meters high. There must have been at least a thousand tents arranged neatly in rows.
The base camp was equipped with a spaceport, there was a large field hospital set up inside a large circus tent recolored in green, there was the HQ carved out inside a heavily guarded three-story building, the only concrete building within kilometers, with long strips of yellow and blue chemical toilets alongside. The whole was located on a rise overlooking a gentle, green valley surrounded by rocky mountains. The air was cool thanks to a pleasant north wind but the sun was warm and bright.
"What's going on, what is this place?", I asked.
"This is hell, you redneck, I tell you", he replied with his usual insolence. "They summoned everyone. Every fucking one! And they mixed it all up! There are naval officers commanding armored assault troops, pilots standing in charge of volunteer infantry units, I've seen hovercraft pilots being taught how to drive ET10 tanks!".
"Why the...?".
"Personnel shortage! Regulars have been decimated! A bloodbath! They've even recalled retirees! I'm not talking about soldiers, I'm talking about officers. We are in the midst of an officer shortage".
"I haven't followed the developments of the war much lately", I explained. I was confused. "The latest estimates speak of three hundred thousand fallen", he said then with a more resigned air.
"In just a few months?" I asked shocked.
"Yeah," he resumed. "The Grand Master doesn't know which God pray anymore, as Burris predicted. If you turn around, you'll see why".
I followed his advice, and it was definitely a surprise. Two pale soldiers walked quietly talking to each other amidst the crowd moving like busy ants around the base. They were dressed in a black uniform, wore knee-length brown boots and on their torsos wore a kind of light armor made of dull metal, an armor composed of two metal bars that followed the contours of the torso and one that welded to the other two crossed the torso at sternum level. From the shoulders fell two plates that laterally protected biceps and triceps. The whole appeared to be attached perfectly to the suit in what looked like special TW fabric. Behind the back from where the bars of the armor started had a sort of plastic cover that sheltered the spine and kidneys. Immediately behind their necks was a small tank, perhaps with oxygen useful for breathing underwater or in the presence of toxic gases. On their heads was a black helmet with a mirrored visor covering the eyes and part of the nose.
"What is this?", I asked puzzled as I saw the flag with the three stars on the chest at heart level.
"Yeah, you have been cut off from the world lately", Ryan recalled noting that I still had an
AIQ implanted in my neck. "The Grandmaster agreed to a preliminary treaty for the independence of the outer Domains. This is the first military aid that came in. It took them weeks to get all the way to Terra. Sons of bitches! They got what they wanted and as you see, they are showing off their new flag! These clowns call themselves soldiers of the Republic of Ganymede".
"As the dean mentioned," I resumed. "Unbelievable, John divided Humanity".
My brother did the math perfectly. Politicians had lowered the army budget for years, while the few good soldiers we had were out there patrolling the Domains.
"We have failed. For all we know, we can all croak, they are safe in space anyway. Fucking scammers".
"DGS can travel in space”.
"True, even missiles with nuclear warheads. All that bastard would have to do is put his ass away from populated cities and planetary defense would take care of him!".
"Charon is smart".
"Even too much, for a fucking redneck Irishman".
"Word gets around".
"Burris told us, when we adhered to his initiative. If it got around that you were his brother, you would be in more trouble here than at the front. I'll keep quiet", he reassured.
"And I thank you for that. Well, now that I'm here what do I do? Some special gathering?".
"Negative cadet. Go to the placement office, they will give you uniform, equipment, a tent, and the FMP inspector should take that thing off you", he explained, alluding to the AIQ.
He looked more carefully at my uniform. "Why do you have the rank of lieutenant on you again?".
"Burris gave me my rank back. You would have wanted to give me orders, wouldn't you, Lieutenant Dunn? Where do I have to go anyway?", I smiled smugly.
"Geez. Well, I have nothing better to do anyway", he said and nodded his head.
I followed him in silence looking around. There were many sad sighs overwhelmed by the noise of voices and the incessant movement of personnel. I could see the most unthinkable people for a military camp, cadets on their sixteen or maybe less years old messing around joking with each other and at the same time old ladies in combat uniforms busy loading an assault rifle. I still didn't know what was in store for me soon, but I had a very bad feeling about it.
Following Dunn, I found myself under a large tarp about ten meters long that covered a series of tables, some occupied by officers intent on briefing new arrivals and registering them, others laden with bags of clothing and still others with weapons piled in bulk, rifles, pistols, grenades of various kinds. There was a slow line, composed of tense and serious faces.
My turn soon arrived and the officer at the table hurriedly asked me for my name and serial number. He interfaced with his SAI to the database and after a few seconds the AIQ under my ear made a friendly sound, detaching itself and ending up on the floor. I kicked it scornfully, throwing it far away.
I followed the table and introduced myself to the soldiers in charge of uniforms, who quickly had instructions from the network on what to give me. They gave me the right uniform for my rank, in my size and appropriate for the kind of role I would have. It was contained in a black envelope and I was actually excited. Opening it I would discover the value of Burris's promotion and what I would be now that I was no longer part of a deviant branch of the armed forces.
Still following the line I was given a light assault rifle of the kind issued to infantry volunteers, a standard ERAG 5 recovered from who knows what armory and which I felt needed quite a bit of upgrading.
Putting my weapon on my back and my uniform sack under my arm, with my amphibians in hand I let myself be guided by Dunn, who had asked me to follow him again. A little self-conscious about the material I was carrying, I followed him silently to a tent like so many others. Once inside, I counted six cots, three of them occupied and a fourth ready for me, where I laid rifle and black sack.
"You can stay wherever you want anyway. Here's me, Fowler, your friend Gates and one of my buddies, a guy named Sierra, I don't know if you know".
"Sierra ... one of your ... Duffy Sierra?", I asked, trying to dig through my memory in search of the faces of Dunn's thugs.
"Yeah… him. Don't call him that, he gets nervous if you tease him about his s… and he doesn't like you too much".
"As long as he speaks right I will resist ... but! Fowler? Is Matt here?", I asked happily, raising my voice.
"Sure. Long story, he's on duty at HQ".
"How come we are all here?", I asked, looking at him with a smile. "Are we all back with the good guys now?".
"Hey carrot’s son, keep your feet on the ground! Burris' orders and cadet code of ethics. We all have to stick together".
"Right. We are few though".
"Indeed", he replied bitterly. "Why don't you open your sack?".
It almost seemed as if that distressing situation had somehow managed to make Dunn more like a human. But maybe he was just scared. I turned and grabbed the black sack on my bunk and forcefully broke the tough black plastic that protected the uniform. The smell of the new fabric was pungent and my mood got much worse as I laid the entire jacket and pants on the crib. Made of a lightweight TW, according to the label a TW 20, almost a trivial tear-resistant fabric that only curbed enthusiasm and light rain, in dark camouflage coloring almost useless in the role I was supposed to play.
In addition to the uniform inside was a small lightweight combat jacket in TW 30 with ballistic plates inserted inside the fabric near the heart and on the back. I sighed, by now I had to surrender to becoming a common infantryman. Last, after shaking the bag with the downward opening for a while, fell the rank of major.
"Looks like we're going to be partners in misfortune", Dunn muttered, noting the mediocre equipment he himself had been condemned to use.
"Infantry", I noted aloud. "Damn... I hope at least I don't end up in the first line".
"Today everything will be known. There will be a briefing for senior officers. But... those are the ranks of...".
"Yes, I... I'm afraid I will also be in charge of a company or even...".
"Battalion commander? Hey no kidding! Personal matters aside, you are definitely not ready for something like this!".
"I agree", I admitted truthfully. "Maybe there was a mistake". I quickly turned around and stared into his eyes almost menacingly placing myself inches from his nose. "If there’s none… try not to be a problem. I don't intend to endanger those I’ll have under my command, understand? If you’ll be a problem, I will fucking kill you".
"Aye... sir", he replied through clenched teeth.
We spent the afternoon in a tent near the HQ, where we were briefed on the various news, plans of attack, and were assigned to the units to be commanded and coordinated. The objective of all that huge deployment of about fifty thousand men and aircraft was to defend with teeth and nails the "Werner Karl Heisenberg" cold fusion power plant on German soil, which was now supplying power to all the essential European facilities, such as hospitals and communication routes, as well as military bases and buildings containing perishable supplies. Without power, Europe would run dry and Charon would get another dose of the energy he needed.
Among the novelties and strategies that were proposed and imposed, there was one rather annoying one. Indeed, it seemed that the demi-humans, when they charged, did not mind their own lives at all. Their strength lay in numbers but also in that particular behavior.
There was no way to stop their advance. They had no fear, they felt no pain, they went forward, to the last. Moreover, at short distances the demi-humans used bladed weapons, long saber-like knives, with which they carried out great slaughter in entrenchments.
"This little item here", the briefing officer explained, "is called a shockblade and is a derivative weapon similar to the peacekeeper".
He held a thin, straight sword about seventy centimeters or so long or less, with the plastic handle long enough to hold it with two hands. He waved it around making the air vibrate, and the sight of that unfamiliar weapon seemed to make the officers quite nervous. "It is a light sword with a special feature. Inside the handle is a very high DC voltage generator, which will be a great support for you in the melee".
One officer, sitting on the floor like everyone else, raised his hand, and the exhibitor agreed that he should express himself. "Sir, the direct current does not cause pain, how would it help us? Also, what scrum are you talking about?".
"Sit down major, I'll explain now", said the man, and the officer sat down. "Demi-humans feel no pain. Direct current at high regimes causes electrolysis of the blood. A nice gaseous embolus will kill the demi-human that comes in contact with the blade of your shockblade in no time. It may even be instantaneous, with luck. Second, the demi-humans, once they enter the trench, engage in a melee to the death. Be quick and strike from top to bottom; the trenches are narrow and leave little room for fighting. The action will be defensive, your aim is to hold the position, forbid retreat. Reinforcements will be sent to the front line until told to fall back. Those who fall back without permission will be shot down from the rear".
'Really', I thought. I was reminded of the games with toy soldiers played against John. He loved those kinds of situations. The demi-humans would cause panic among the defending troops, and the only way to keep us in our place was to make us feel between a hammer and an anvil.
I did not return to the tent until about six o'clock in the evening. I found Dunn modifying my rifle sitting on his bunk. At first glance, in addition to having installed a telescopic sight on top, he had mounted a mount to secure an additional magazine to the side of the weapon. He had also attached picatinny rails around the barrel and was mounting a grenade launcher to one of them. He looked away for a moment and stared at me first indifferent then puzzled. "The fuck are you looking at?".
"How nice of you to fix my rifle. Will we also go out together when the war is over?".
"I’m into blondes", he replied. He stared at me curiously.
"What?", I asked.
"What are... those things...?", he asked, referring to the two swords I was holding, safe in their thin, black scabbards.
"The answer to the demi-humans hatched by the lofty minds of the General Staff, the shockblades", I explained sarcastically. "They've practically sharpened riot sticks. In jail I got one in the face, they hurt I can confirm".
"They could have tried harder".
"They had a few weeks. It will be enough to kill the demi-humans. I also got my orders".
"So?".
I went in and laid the blades on my bunk, then sat down beside it. I exhaled deeply, hoping to expel some of the tension out of my body.
"I have been entrusted with the command of a unit. We will be Alpha grouping, front line trench three, operational members two hundred. My understanding is that the professional core is from the 185th Light Infantry Regiment Livorno, those who survived. Three medics, one lieutenant in command, 12 platoons, one sergeant per platoon in command, a few corporals here and there, four 25.6mm machine guns, a dozen 12.7mm machine guns, piece-trained personnel thankfully plus stormtroopers with standard ERAG 5 rifles, all or most conscripted. A few mortars should arrive early in the morning. This will be my unit. Our unit", I slowly explained. I waited for Dunn's annoyed expression to dissipate. "You will be my second. I have divided it into three companies, you will lead the First, their lieutenant the Second and I with Gates will watch closely the Third. Tonight, you will help me train them, especially for the swords part".
"I've never seen them before", he said.
"It's not difficult, you turn them on when you need to, don't touch the blade when it's active, and the pointy part is what kills, the end. I never took fencing lessons, did you?".
"I knew about scrums in the trenches, however, I am not prepared. I have not been trained to... fight with a knife. It's a... medieval thing!".
"Well old John used to say that all the time, didn't he?", I said with a sad smile.
"The old tricks are always the best. It was almost his mantra", Dunn recalled. "Our unit sucks, you know that, right? Light infantry, with no mechanized support and made up mostly of conscripted, untethered, trained personnel".
"They should have provided a center composed of exoskeleton assault regiments, shouldn't they, Ryan?".
"If there were any, Lester", he sighed. "The few assault regiments on Terra are deployed on cities to try keep them quiet. They say they instill fear so they are more deterrent even in smaller numbers".
"He got us precisely where he wanted us", I observed, agreeing with Ryan. "John sabotaged our forces and then confronted us head-on, the way he likes it. I have little faith that tomorrow will be any different than before. That's why Burris risked it all with the operation on Luna. However, they also put Duffy with us. He's your pal, you take him".
"They put everyone from Seattle together in short. How I would love to smash the face of that son of a bitch who put us on the first line!".
"Hello beautiful people! What's the mood in the mud?", Matt's nerve entered like a blaze of heat inside an igloo. We, weighed down by doubts and fears, he with his usual dragonfly-like lightness. I found him irritating, even though the poor guy had done nothing to me and I hadn't seen him in a long time.
"Whoa look at your facers... hi Daith! You got the swords I see".
"Matt. How did you end up here?", I asked without real interest.
"Easy. When the tip went out that you were being discovered, I knew nothing about it. You were being arrested and I thought, here on Terra, that everything was regular. At the agreed time I sit quietly in the HQ, begin to operate as planned and as soon as the time decided upon by us precisely arrives, I begin to transmit to Mom".
"Mom?", I asked.
"Our moon base. Calling Mom before the battle meant that", Dunn explained.
"Anyway, I start transmitting battlefield data as agreed. At one point a SpecOps appears, taps me on the shoulder and goes «sir you are no longer authorized to operate at this location» and so another boy scout replaces me, then they take me away and leaving out some of the details, I ended up working at this HQ. They have no staff and that saved my skin."
"We are all together", I said, "and moreover on the first line".
"I already know that," he replied.
"Do you already know?", I asked. "Did you hear it at HQ in advance?".
"No, I was the one who put you together. Happy?".
Dunn first turned milky white, then gradually blushed, and not from shame. He slowly approached Matt, then, without the slightest intention of stopping him, stood by and watched complicitly. Dunn hit him so hard that immediately poor Matt lost consciousness before he even realized he had received a blow. He was not a man of action, and there was no comparison to Ryan or me in terms of field skill and physical strength.
He returned fifteen minutes later as Dunn and I explained to the team how the swords worked and where to get them. After five minutes of hurried explanation, we dismissed the troop and returned to the tent. Matt had gone to get ice and was sticking it to his face. Sierra had also returned and stood listlessly at attention as soon as he saw me, out of sheer formalism.
"Bastard why?", asked Matt annoyed.
"And you ask?", answered I for Dunn, who instead of speaking would have raged further. "How could you do this to us? How could you put us on the first line?".
"I didn’t! I just brought you Seattle people together! I was making the teams, not deciding the deployment of forces! For those, thank dean Karlsson, you idiot!", he excused himself. He was a victim of circumstances and our stress.
Dunn seemed there and then embarrassed, then nonetheless said chuckling, "Well, then that was for putting me under the hillbilly's orders".
"For that thank Burris", I interjected.
"I’ll do that, Lester".
"Well", I continued, "don't people ever eat around here?".
"Come with me", Matt intervened as he got up from the bunk where we had laid him down, "I’ll get more ice, you’ll get some food".
*
Dawn brought with it many things. Light, some warmth after a cold night, a fresh wind from the south, the imposing Flying Fortress of Charon from the southeast still shrouded in clouds.
The general alarm sounded. I opened my eyes in panic. I jumped down from my bunk, slipped on my amphibians and bulletproofs in seconds, hung my sword on my belt and reached for my rifle.
"Here it is, Major", said Dunn's voice behind me.
"Did you... stay up all night?", I asked worried by his black circles under his eyes.
"It's okay now", he said as he got up from the bunk and handed me the assault rifle. It hardly looked like the same weapon. "Come on redneck. Let's show them who we are".
I waited for Sierra and Gates to finish dressing, then we all ran to the rally point prearranged earlier, where a hovercraft would take us to the bottom of the valley, where the power plant was located. My heart was in my throat, my hands were shaking and to hear Matt tell it, I was definitely pale. I could feel the tension of battle and the tension of command. I had never led anyone in combat; I had always been ill-advised to be a leader. My first task was to make sure everyone was there and they were not, many arrived late and some had deserted during the night. The officers I had met the night before were ill-disposed toward me, and there was no shortage of protests at having to obey an 18-year-old cadet major with no battlefield experience.
I shared their misgivings and admitted it publicly. However, there was no way even on my part to change the situation. Burris was unavailable, and Karlsson merely pointed out that those were the orders.
The hovercraft took off with a yank and in about two minutes we were off the field. For the first time, I saw it.
Towering and cruel, the huge flying fortress was as high from end to end as a mountain of about a thousand meters. The central body of the structure consisted of two conical parts that merged by pooling their base. From the point of fusion of the two solids emerged at a 90-degree angle to each other four twisted arms that united the central body with the outer ring, a kind of circular doughnut that counted at its highest point as much as two kilometers in diameter. The entire monstrous silvery construction shone with millions of green reflections, as if it were coated with a layer of emerald. It had no openings of any kind and looked almost like one immense block, crudely cast despite its perfect symmetries.
"It is not of this world", whispered Andrea Gates, who, under my advice, never lost sight of me. "How did they build it? It doesn't look assembled, it looks almost... grown up. Am I crazy?".
I was speechless, I couldn't answer him. The battle, the command, the front line, the fortress, my brother, Deena, the fear, the anger, Sophia... I was about to explode and I really wanted to scream. I was not ready for everything that was happening to me. No one was.
Between jerks, we flew through a fir forest down the valley in flocks with hundreds of other hovercrafts. I descended first and at a run followed by the rest of the companies went to trench three on the front line. Having crossed all thirteen trenches, placed four hundred meters from each other, we arrived panting and tired at our post. The less prepared volunteers arrived almost half an hour late, devastated by the rush to which they were not trained. There was not a single pit in the front line, but three separate ones about fifty meters from each other, and they were dug in such a way as to close and fortify the narrow mouth of the valley.
Charon's base stood right in front of us, about five kilometers away. Soon, waves of demi-humans would begin to assault us.
DGS proceeded slowly, calmly and theatrically. Charon was in no hurry and no fear; that slowness was actually part of the psychological warfare waged against us.
We mounted the machine guns, tested the rifles, set up the crates with ammunition and the sandbags prepared the days before, which in some places compensated for the shallowness of the trench, which was almost always about two meters deep. Some people were praying, especially among the volunteers, with a gold necklace in their hands or with their hands folded.
Then, having finished our preparations, we stood, silently, waiting. I breathed deeply of the cool, calm air, almost trying to absorb its inner peace. The valley, though relatively narrow, opened up into a series of slightly undulating pastures devoid of almost no trees, filled with grass that swayed delicately at every whim of the breeze. I looked Gates in the eyes, catching the same fear I felt. The same fear I found reflected in the eyes of almost everyone.
There was a sudden flash of light. Every single molecule in my body vibrated for an instant that seemed like an eternity. The light was followed by a sonic boom that made everyone lose their hearing, anticipating what it feels like after a long gunfight without earplugs. A wave of air shocked us by hitting us from behind and raising dust, branches, grass and leaves forcing us to duck down the trench to avoid being blown away by the wind.
That sudden terrible chaos left as it came, and spontaneously we turned to look behind us.
Anything that stood a couple of meters above ground level, whether it was a wagon a bunker or a piece of artillery was overturned, blown to pieces, blown away. Something had caught fire and was burning wrapped in flames a few dozen meters behind us.
- What the fuck was that? -, Dunn asked via the net.
"I have no idea," I admitted. - Was it from the Fortress? -. I turned to watch DGS approach without noticing any recognizable signs of the employment of a weapon.
A roar from above us made us orient ourselves this time with our noses in the air. We all looked up and saw flocks and flocks of fighters flying dispatched to attack Diĝir-ga-šum, all in perfect arrowhead attack formation. The roar of our aviation engines heartened us and gave us strength and courage. For a moment my mind lingered on Sophia, however the sudden shaking of the earth immediately brought me back to reality. In the distance, explosions could be heard, flashes of light could be seen, planes could be heard falling. And finally, from the horizon line, we saw them emerge.
The sun was high, the flag of Humanity flew proudly on a pole set behind the trench, weapons clicked deprived of the safety. So many small dark dots were running toward us. Here came the demi-humans, John's orcs in his revised and corrected version.
"How did they get down from up there?", I asked Gates who did not have an answer. DGS had not landed anything and there were no openings in its lower part.
I radioed and transmitted over the net at the same time. - All companies free fire for departmental weapons -, I ordered.
The heavy weapons at our disposal were only those four 25.8x200mm-caliber machine guns controlled by an operator who operated them through an electronic console and a dozen 12.7x99mm machine guns on a tripod, loaded with APCBC (Armor Piercing Capped Ballistic Cap) tungsten bullets.
Mimicked by the other two trenches, the heavy pieces began to fire, pouring enormous destructive power on the front ranks of those beasts. Demi-humans exploded pierced and mowed down, maimed, decapitated, disemboweled, falling to the ground by the hundreds. The noise of the pieces was deafening, their effect devastating and apparently effective. The noise of the air battle had ceased, and Charon's immense base was advancing more and more toward us.
- First Company, heavy weapons loading in progress -, Dunn warned me. I saw the servants from afar running to bring new ammunition. The tide of demi-humans showed no sign of abating as the corpses increased. Impassively, by the thousands, they continued to advance.
- Commander our heavy one is jammed -, the lieutenant commanding the second company informed me. - I have already contacted an armorer -.
Our fire diminished, ammunition ran out, and weapons began to overheat and get dirty. There was nothing that as commander I could really do. I realized I was like a boy king, a mere puppet on a plastic throne. There we were, doomed to immobility. My officers did not respect me; I had no orders but to resist. Those bastards had only put me there to kill me.
Meanwhile, the First Company resumed firing and more death rained down on the demihumans. If before they were advancing by walking, now they had begun to run, heedless of their own lives and the lives of others. They were advancing. I could not believe my eyes; they seemed endless. Where was Charon keeping all those monsters?
"Mow them down with the Brownings! FIRE! FIRE!", I shouted at the top of my lungs. The situation was getting out of hand, but I had to keep looking calm, I had to do it for the others. "Don't stop bringing ammunition!" - Dunn! -, I called to him over the net. - What is this silence? -
- The heavy is dead, here we have to disassemble everything and we are not equipped! -, he explained.
- Make all the ammunition move, give it to the Second -, I ordered.
"Major! Demihumans in range for stormtroopers!", informed me Gates.
"Negative!" - All riflemen, wait for the signal, save your ammo -, I ordered. Not a single shot went off. It was simply absurd, they never seemed to run out. They were two hundred meters from the trench, I couldn't wait any longer.
"ERAG 5, aim!" I commanded. - Stand by! -. The order was on the tip of my tongue, the air was filled with smoke and noise as the trench filled with golden shells.
The black and red tide, it stopped. Suddenly, beyond the demihumans appeared the blue sky. The last line was mowed down. Perhaps the deployment of forces had paid off. We had resisted and no one had died, not a single shot had come. All the guns fell silent. Screams of joy rose from the trenches to the back of the line of defense, and all seemed to have ended in sound defeat for Charon. How wrong we were.
HQ contacted me via network. - Second wave coming, we are sending supplies and stretcher bearers to remove the fallen -.
- No fallen HQ, one 25 failure piece is all. We need ammunition and water -.
- Received we send supplies. Please be advised that supporting fire from ground artillery is now available. Howitzers with incendiary shells ready on your order major -.
"Calm down! People calm down!", I said, trying to calm the joyful spirits. "It could go on, be ready! Don't worry, we've done well, we're holding out and we'll hold out! Come on everyone to your posts!".
Silence slowly returned to reign but faces were now smiling, relaxed, some focused but masters of themselves again and not slaves to terror. I made the best choice and let the Livorno officer with the appropriate experience direct and command the artillery fire we finally had available.
Gates, with his binoculars in hand, warned me as before. "Visual contact with the second wave. Daith, they are… they are armed with… shields".
I stuck my eye in the sights of my rifle and activated the zoom to see as far as I could. Coming out of the grass at the same pace as before was a long line of stocky, cruel, and fearless creatures, and as the good Gates had announced, this time they were wielding wide rectangular shields that covered the entirety of the demi-human wielding them. They advanced, creating a jerking wall of metal that kept getting closer and closer, until the rest of the soldiers saw them sharply as well.
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