Chapter 1
Welcome to Hell
Beep… Beep… Beep..…. 3… 2… 1… The bolts to the hatch of my pod begin to spin rapidly and loosen. Air hisses subtly as my suit pressurizes to the atmosphere outside. The bolts stop. "Prepare to breach on my mark" I announce over the radio. "Breach!" The hatch explodes off of my pod and all hell breaks loose.
The moment of peace inside my drop pod ends abruptly as high energy plasma bolts stream by all around me. Instinctively and without hesitation, I grab my weapon and throw myself into the firestorm. The ground shakes furiously, like an earthquake as artillery rounds and grenades explode all around me. A sniper's round passes by inches from head as I dash forward towards a small rock formation. A lucky miss for me, but not so for several of the men behind me. I dive forward into the dirt and drag myself up to the rock. My back against it, I look back to see men and laser going head to head, almost as if they were running into each other on purpose. The super-heated plasma-based weapons used to by the Holy Collective of Morick easily melt through the armor suits of many soldiers as they all frantically search for cover. The sparsely placed rocks and boulders in this desert valley make finding cover for my soldiers difficult, and several fall victim to attrition before they even get a chance to fight back. Things are going very wrong, very quickly. We weren't supposed to be dropped in the middle of a choke point, our drop site was sighted 300 meters forward of here.
Of the 47 other soldiers I dropped with, only 32 make it behind cover. A soldier drops down beside me. "Alpha Squad's already lost 6 of its guys" he yells. "Bravo, Charlie, and Delta are scattered all over the damn place!"
"We need to move up this hill out of the choke and spread out!" I yell back. "We're too damned clumped up, we stay here and we're dead." The deafening roar of explosions muffles my voice. I key into the platoon radio and announce a movement order. "All squads move up on my mark. Run from cover to cover up this hill, stay low and spread the fuck out!"
I peak over the rock to get a view of the battlefield ahead to find the best time to move. Not a second later, a plasma bolt smashes into the rock just in front of my face. The extreme heat and light from the impact burns my eyes and face through my visor, and I fall back into the dirt. My head throbbing painfully, I pull myself up into a crouch for a second try. I take a quick look, but I take enough time to survey the battlefield ahead. The sun setting in the background silhouettes the enemy outpost ahead, and the many soldiers defending it. I saw soldiers running out of the outpost and begin to make their way down to our positions. A few anti-infantry turrets line the outer walls. With no support and dwindling numbers, this is going to be one challenging offensive.
"Follow me!" I shout into the radio. At that moment, every remaining soldiers under my command fearlessly ran out from behind cover, and back into the fray. Before any of them can even make a push forward, another two men fall as the firestorm intensifies. I vault over the rock formation and quickly dash behind another rock a few meters ahead as quick as I can. I look to my left as I run to a soldier who has just broken cover and has blindly run into open ground. He frantically searches for cover, but it is mere seconds before a mortar round impacts directly next to him. The blast rips one of his legs off, and his body is sent tumbling through the air. "No need to check his vitals" I think to myself. "We all know he he's gone.."
I break from cover again. An HCM soldier fires his weapon in my direction, but I dive to the ground before I'm hit, and begin dragging myself towards a large boulder under heavy fire. The intense storm of plasma fire only grows as I move closer, lasers whizzing by overhead at every moment. My armor suit is heavy, but I know that I must not stop or I will die. I strenuously push with my left leg, and pull with my right arm as my armor suit weighs me down. Now push with my right leg and pull with my left arm. Over and over again I repeat this, but it is still several meters to the boulder. Left.. Right…. Left.. Right…. Left.. Right…. Never stopping, never slowing down. I've made it through so many much heartache since I started fighting in this war, too much to let myself die now, I have to keep going. Left.. Right… Left.. Right…. Left.. Right…... I finally reach the boulder, and get back into a crouch. I am winded and out of breath, but I look over the boulder to get another look of what's ahead. The soldier who fired at me is now running down to my position. I hear his footsteps as he sprints and vaults over everything in his way to get to me. Anticipating him coming around the corner, I swing my rifle and catch him directly in the face. The impact breaks the orange visor of his helmet and mashes his face, knocking him out. Just to be sure he won't get back up, I fire a few rounds from my gauss rifle into his chest. Soon after another HCM soldier comes around the other side of the boulder to attack me. Before he can take aim, I throw myself at him and tackle him to the ground. We wrestle around violently for several seconds. Neither of us have the upper hand; He has both of my arms locked, and is struggling to kick me. But I break free of his grip with my right arm, pull out my knife and try to stab him in the throat. He blocks it, so I try again. Again he blocks it but now he has the upper hand. He flips me over onto my back, but exposes his throat as he does. I take advantage of this and slash my knife against his throat. Blood pours out all over my helmet before I throw his limp body off of me. I leave him to struggle and gasp for air as he slowly bleeds out on the ground, and pull myself to my feet. Soon after, yet another soldier charges at me, knife in hand. He lunges at me but I catch his arm and use his momentum to throw him back over me into the open, where he is instantly torn apart by rifle fire. I see one more soldier who is unaware of me and throw my knife into the back of his neck, and kill him instantly. Their assault against me pauses for a moment, and I finally have a moment to catch my breath and scan the battlefield again. I pick up my rifle and take another look over the boulder. We still have so much ground to cover before we reach the outpost gates, but at the rate my men are dying I doubt we will have enough manpower to overtake it as our mission intended. But I have to try. There is no option to quit once you're already on the battlefield. We may all die by the time we reach the gates, but we will have died fighting the enemy with honor rather than running and hiding like cowards. I key into the command radio and desperately call for reinforcements. There is no response. I key again and wait several seconds for a friendly voice to break the radio static, but it never does. I only hear blank radio feed as my hopes sink down deeper and deeper into a pit of fear, fear of the thought that we might fail because of my leadership. The only explanation for the lack of response is that the enemy is jamming our communication, leaving us stranded and cut off from our command. In a final desperate attempt to make contact, I look around for another squad leader to see if he can't patch through. While doing so I notice my platoon has made it much further up the battlefield than I had thought. My hope is brought back slowly as I see them fighting courageously against the incredible odds stacked against them. They all seem so ready, but so unwilling to die after we've made it so far up this hill. They will try anything they can to move forward as far as they can. But unfortunately, I am the forward-most element in the platoon, and we still have a long ways to go.
I need to get an idea of the remaining strength of my platoon, so I order all the squad leaders over the radio to sounds off with a head count. They respond in sequence. "This is Alpha Squad Actual, I am slant 4 out of 12." "This is Bravo Second in command - Bravo Squad Actual is dead, I'm down to 7 soldiers." "This is Charlie Squad Actual, slant 8 out of 12" "This is Delta Squad Actual, we are slant 5 of 12 at this time."
25 out of 48 soldiers including myself are all that remain, but that's not enough to take an objective of this size. I try to key into Command once more, but again I'm greeted only by blank static. The jammer must be somewhere near the outside of the outpost, where the HCM usually place them so there are no walls in the way to hinder their maximum effect. Our priority now must be to destroy the jammer and get back in contact with Command. This is the first time I've ever felt so alone on the battlefield. I've always had some sort of way to call out to Command, but not this time. This time we are completely cut off, and success or failure of this mission solely depend on my skills as a leader and as a tactician. And with as few soldiers as I have still standing, I see no course of action I can make that will bring us all back home.
Suddenly another HCM soldier armed with a plasma shotgun rounds the corner. He manages to fire at me just as I notice him. I immediately try to dive for cover, but the wide spread-shot from the shotgun is too much for me to avoid entirely. One plasma slug hits me in the left thigh. I can feel it burning through my muscle and bone as it slowly and agonizingly melts deeper into my leg. I fall to the ground face first, and before I can roll over onto my back and pull out my sidearm, the soldier is already on top of me. He kicks me in the side and knocks the wind out of me. He kick again, and I feel a rib snap in two. I am then grabbed by the collar and thrown punishingly back down onto my back. The buttstock of his shotgun is thrust into my visor, shattering it completely and exposing my face. The soldier takes aim. He points the shotgun at my face point blank, and I get a good view down the gunbarrel. My heart is pounding, my breath short, I slap it out of my face and try with all my might to scramble away, but he stomps hard onto my chest, pauses for a moment and pulls the trigger.