The seat was about two inches under my rear as I floated against the straps of my seat. I’d never flown in space before, and it was an experience that made you think… To say the least. My train of thought was quickly interrupted by my new Platoon Sergeant. He grabbed the rails on the ceiling, moving himself to the middle of the ship.
“Listen up, rookies…” He said, his face already turning the classic Drill Instructor shade of red, “This is your trial-by-fire! As soon as we hit Moria you’re going to exit the vehicle and take whatever cover you can! We don’t have any SCV’s to set up bunkers in this sector, so your best bet is to duck behind your dead buddies. Believe you me, there’s going to be a few hundred of ‘em by the time you’re in position!”
No bunkers? What was I doing there?
“Private Grunt, what the hell are you looking at!?” Shouted the Sergeant.
Startled, I came up with the death-sentence response, “Sir, nothing! Sir!”
The Sergeant gave me a malicious, out-for-my-blood look. “Private Grunt will be the first man to exit when we hit Moria!” He floated over to the gun rack and took my Gauss Rifle off, “He will then stand there while the rest of his platoon exits! He will not receive his weapon until after the entire platoon including its sergeant have exited the dropship! Do I make myself clear, jack ass?”
“Yes, sir!” I replied.
I was dead. Most of the men probably wouldn’t get a legitimate kill before finding cover, and I was expected to stand under a dropship. There was one veteran in our group, and he said it’s common tactics to have a platoon dedicated entirely to either killing transports… Or killing as many men as possible in the platoon exiting the transport. As the Sergeant returned to his seat, I began to pray silently to myself. To nothing. I just did. I feared death.
The ship rocked violently and I was actually sitting in my seat again, my body leaning a little bit to the left. We had reached the battle against the Kel-Morian Combine. With a huge jolt, the ship landed and our straps were pulled behind us. I got up, and the sergeant ordered me off the ship.
It seemed like an hour as I walked from my seat to the ramp. The sounds of war echoed through my ear drums as thousands of Gauss Rifles fired across the front, and soon I heard an extremely loud clinking sound. Our dropship was being fired on.
“Assholes and elbows, Private! Move it on out!” Shouted the Sergeant.
I ran down the ramp, and for the first time I knew what it felt like to be shot at. The worst fear I’d ever felt in my life! I could feel ever hypersonic spikes being flung at me, from exiting the barrel to hitting the ramp. Even if I’d had a gun, my first reaction would have been to hide.
“Get out of the way!”, my mind told me. Get the hell out of their line of sight so you can live! You don’t want to be hurt! You shouldn’t be here! Just get out of the way!
Just as time seemed to stop, I felt something in my hands. “Here is your weapon, pri-!” The sergeant said, as sparks flew out the side of his helmet. I gained back my senses and fell back under the ramp, joining about four of my unharmed fellow marines and two dead ones.
“Grunt? Holy Hell! Sergeant got shot and Grunt lived! Nice job!” Said one private.
The veteran crept over to me, “How you doin’, little buddy? Damn lucky to be alive, now let’s make you useful! The dropship is going to lift off in ten seconds! Balm and Kenny here are going to hold and lay down a cover fire so the rest of us can join the front line! Don’t worry about what’s shooting at us, just stay focused on joining the front!”
Balm and Kenny were going to die. A lot of us were. Why the hell were we doing this?
“Move, move, move!” Shouted the veteran, and we ran like terrified children. The dropship lifted off, and the sound of the engine suddenly flaming into the sky was deafening.
It felt like I was flying, and I heard a loud “ugh!” and a thump behind me. Another one. Finally, a private and I had joined a half-alive platoon, using its dead buddies as cover. One of them shouted something at me, but I couldn’t hear anything he said! There were two battle cruisers from each side overhead, and the sound of their engines managed to drown out even the Gauss Rifles.
I got into prone position at the edge of the stack of bodies and put down my visor. A bright red dot appeared in front of me as I aimed my rifle, and just as soon as I saw other people on the opposite end of what seemed to be a river of dead bodies, I pulled the trigger.
It was very disorienting to fire a rifle of the speed and caliber of the Gauss, all while sparks fly in front of you that you know are enemies from far off who can see you and are trying to kill you. The rifle gyrated violently in my hands, and I soon realized why strength training at the boot camp was so vigorous.
A few shots got a little too close for comfort and I reacted by rolling to the side and putting my head in the dirt… My visor was soon immersed in a small pool of blood. I quickly lifted my head off the ground, and for a moment just stared at the dead cells sitting in front of me. This was a man. He might not have even gotten a kill before dying, he just lived his criminal life, somehow got into the marines, and now he’s just casualty number who-knows-what.
I wiped the blood off my visor and rolled back into prone position. I held the barrel of my gun as steady as I could with my left arm, but this made aiming harder. Who the hell designed these things?
Occasionally, soldiers on both sides would go berserk and charge across the front, guns blazing. They died quickly, but some even managed to get kills. It was disorienting to be staying in one place, shooting in one direction, when suddenly someone gets up and starts maneuvering around, firing with deadly accuracy. I had heard rumors of men heavily drugging themselves to accomplish this feat.
After a few minutes, though they seemed like hours, of fighting, the ground lit up and between the two fronts fell the front half of a Confederate battle cruiser.
Many sergeants ordered retreat, and I could soon see why even these hard-asses thought it was hopeless: The Combine troops cheered and violently raked the life out of any surviving crew members exiting the vessel. The cheering turned into war-cries as the entire Combine front ran at us! One man from every platoon stayed back and bore the brunt of the assault, while the rest of us stood up and walked backwards, firing our weapons. A lot of the men falling back were killed, and a lot of people were turning around and going into a full retreat.
Sergeants shouted at retreating men, but the paid to heed. Men were shot in the back because they couldn’t handle combat… They hadn’t grown a pair of balls after being shot at. Yeah, I thought, I can understand why a hardened veteran would want to shoot these men who hadn’t the morale for combat.
I soon noticed as I backed away that the half-platoon had been whittled down to nothing, and it looked like a new platoon had joined up with us and also died. The pile of bodies serving as cover seemed taller than when I got there.
As I walked backwards, for the first time I began to notice the terrain. Asphalt. No doubt if I lived to repair my armor I’d be picking out shrapnel for days!
In front of us, the waves of enemy troops fought as though they were invincible. Some had taken position on top of the wreckage of the battle cruiser, using its sturdy hull as a firing platform. What were we falling back to? I didn’t dare turn around; the sergeants were still executing retreating soldiers. Your only decisions were to either hold or fall back, but the enemy was advancing and unless there were ready dropships behind us, all of our deaths were inevitable. I looked up to see the two Kel-Morian cruisers against our one Confederate ship. The hulls of all three were flaming, charred and black. Demons, charred by slow roasting in the fires of Hell. Like gods of war they roared in the sky, their wings spread and their mouths hurling fire at each other. If any of them survived this battle, I doubted they would fly into space ever again.
About a minute had passed and it became clear that no dropships were waiting to take us back to the safety of an orbital medical station. My eyes returned to the Confederate cruiser; it had risen to an altitude above one of the Combine cruisers and with all of its remaining strength, dived head-first into the hull of its enemy. There was a massive explosion and the hammer-head of the destroyed enemy ship, the entire flaming, blackened head of the once shiny-new silver vessel fell onto the remains of our own long-dead cruiser. The ensuing explosion would have probably blinded me if not for my visor, and the ground shook violently. Many Kel-Morian troops fell forward in their desperate sprint, and the sergeants saw the opportunity. They saw the light.
The firing of the Combine marines had settled for a few seconds while men struggled to stand back up, and we ran forward, guns a-blazing. I don’t know what it was, maybe combat-high, maybe insanity, but I pulled my visor up and screamed at the top of my lungs. The sound echoed off the asphalt, the hypersonic shells, the broken hulls of two cruisers… and through the ears of the men in my dropship. I stopped, and looked around…
“Halberd, you horses-ass! You were supposed to keep the Sarge' awake!” Said one of my privates.
