(A/N) This is the surprise. Yup, a new story! It is a one shot type diary thing. You will see once you read it. I am going to warn you right now. This story isn't for the faint at heart. It has no fluffy bits, or much happiness in it. If you dislike sad stories, there are plenty of happy ended stories on this site. It also has nothing at all related to my other stories.
You Have been warned.
February 12th, 2032.
War, It's a funny thing. Its basically a fight, with more people in it. I guess it is a part of human nature. It was with us at the beginning, and it is something we will take with us to our extinction.
My life is not one of the normal. You know that. You know of me. What I am like, how I act, how I fight. I am the warrior. Thats what my friends always told me. I see why. My temper, my heritage, this stupid brace I wear. It seemed to all fit. Was I the only one who saw what I really was?
A freak. That's what I was, that's what I am now. I burdened the lacking of normality my whole life. Since I was small. I mean, come on. I was the only person in my elementary school who wrote poetry. I was ashamed of myself. Not because I said so, but because of my peers. It wasn't until highschool that I realized my potential of what I could become. You already know what went down in New Olympia Highschool. Seven teenagers, destined by ancestry to defeat the meglomaniac known, as Cronus.
That was a war in itself really. Us, versus him. In reality, it was Jay versus Cronus. We were his followers, willing to fight to the death for him. Cronus had his Giants, which was what eventually won us the war. if you ask me. The only reason that we won, was fate. All Cronus' plans failed, because he was destined to lose. Not because we were better than him. Eventually, we did defeat him and jailed him up in Tartarus. How and why, doesn't matter any more.
It was over it seemed. We graduated from the school and began going our separate ways. Jay went into business, Theresa, went into teaching, Herry joined the Fire department, Odie went to Harvard, Neil went into Hollywood and modelling and Atlanta, my dear Atlanta became an Athlete.
What happened to me? I didn't have really anywhere else to go. I wouldn't be able to live off of my poems, and I wasn't smart or helpful like the others. I chose the option, that seemed to be my only one.
I joined the military.
I remembered the controversy it caused in the brownstone when I announced it. They thought I was mad. I probably was. But then again. Someone has got to do it. Why not me? I began training that summer. How it works, the military breaks you down and builds you up the way they want you. The mud, the dirt, that was the least of your worries. The drill sergeant yelling at you and insulting your mother and things. I performed quite well. Six months later, they told me I was going into a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus as of June 5th.
I bade my farewells to my team, who had returned to the brownstone to say goodbye. Atlanta, the strongest willed girl I knew, was crying. I loved her. I still do. We had spent the last six months together as much as we could when she wasn't practicing for the Olympics or if I wasn't in boot camp. Looking back, they were the best times of my life. We would go to concerts, to parties. She would always tell me how much the army had changed me already. She was as fit and lively as ever. The way I fell in love with her.
I watched my friends wave goodbye to me as I entered the plane in my military gear. Neil said I looked good in uniform. I took that as a compliment. As the plane took off, you cannot help but wonder what lies in the future. I just hoped that the future would be bright for my friends. With or without me. I wanted them to be happy. They earned it.
Cyprus was my first time in action as a soldier. It started out peaceful, but then the two factions began employing child soldiers, dealing with arms, it got ugly very quickly. I was stationed mostly in a military outpost with my squad, the Badgers of the 26th battalion. Our outpost was right on the border between the two factions. Mostly to keep them from killing each other. June, turned to July, July turned to August. I was going to be sent back home in September. Time went by slowly in our little outpost. I was with many soldiers who had been in the Afghanistan war. Many of them had horrifying stories and scars to show.
When I wasn't on watch duty or on patrol, you could easily find me writing poems. I wrote about many things. I wrote about my past, the world, the war, but most of it was about Atlanta. I always wrote when I was alone. It let me soak in my feelings, which you tend to hide being a soldier. It was a getaway from reality for me. It kept me sane. I also started writing this journal. The army encourgaed that we logged what happened each day. I got into quite the habit of it. I still use this thing.
The situation got bad in Cyprus in late August. Our outpost was attacked by one of the factions in an effort to get at the other faction. We held them off for two days. I remembered when they pushed closer to the entrance, I was ordered to fire at will. I killed many men that day. The attack halted eventually as reinforcements arrived. We held out the position, but there were at least 100 bodies around the outpost. Many were killed by my trigger finger. I came across this one body. I remembered shooting this one person. He was just a boy. Not much older than I was when I became a part of the Olympus team. He had several bullets in his body, still oozing blood onto the hot ground. The kid was too young to die, and I was the one who killed him.
Why do they speak so highly of war? People say it is glorious and exciting. What is glorious and exciting about killing people? They say that to make it sound that war is good. They only say it because it is profitable. That fight in the outpost, was my first true experience in war.
Eventually, I did come home. I was welcomed as a hero, even though I was anything but. I remembered Atlanta's face when she saw me. I missed her so much when I was in Cyprus. I spent as much time as i could with her before they shipped me off again.
I remember, when I returned home from my second mission, Ares was waiting for me in Atlanta's and my apartment. He told me how proud of me he was. He was like a father to me. More so than my real father, who got himself killed driving drunk with the rest of my bloody family in the car. Ares, arrogant and goddish as he was, was more of a father to me than anyone else in my life.
And so life went on. I moved my way up the ranks, becoming an even bigger killing machine as I went. Then the technological boom of the 2015-2022 era happened. The army was finding itself building spacestations with weapons on them and massive battleships capable of soaring the skies and beyond. People began settling on mars and the moon. Weapons became deadlier, more efficient, as did the suits that protected us from them.
By April, 30th, 2017, I was a captain of one of the most elite squadrons in the military, the badgers. The military assigned our squad to a special program called ASPP (Advanced Soldier Placement Program). It was there where we were taught by the best trainers in the world, we were made customized suits of high tech armor and were exposed to new types of weaponry. I was in that program for a year as they basically taught us to become super soldiers. When we had finished the year of training, we had been taught to use any form of weapon, how to fly planes, drive boats and cruisers, and how to work efficiently as a team of the best soldiers in the world.
Life seemed to be doing well for humanity. The environment was beginning to recover and people were happy as ever. Then it happened. July 8th, 2017. Every living being despises that day. It was the day that a UFO crashed in the middle of New York City, with a surviving passenger.
We learned this alien was from a planet several light years away. The alien was welcomed here. The species looked remarkably like humans, exept that they were completely hairless and had longer heads, closer to the body. It learned our languages as we did it's. It seemed to be a good thing, that we had connected with extra terrestrials.
Yet here were me and my friends, baffled at the existence of these aliens. We knew that Greek Gods existed like they did in the old stories. What were these creatures and where did the history books go wrong? I remember how nervous Jay was about the whole thing. He knew something didn't seem right. He wasn't the only one. Millions of skeptics were ranting and freaking out that the alien was going to bring along the rest of its race for an invasion.
And for once, the skeptics were right.
Four years later on May 7th, 2021. Where the war began. It was an average day. I was off duty and spending the day with Atlanta. I was planning on giving her a small present that day. A ring with a diamond surrounded by tiny blue and red gems. Yeah, I was going to propose to her. We had been together for a long time, and I felt that maybe the time was right to take the relationship further.
At around lunchtime, all the TVs in the world gave off the emergency siren. I was immediately called to base where my team was waiting. I got there in record time. We were all breifed on the situation. A massive fleet of the alien speices now know as Verigons (At least that was what it sounded like in our language). They had swarmed with spaceships three times the size of our own ones. They had attacked Bejing. The report stated that they used high enery beams to glass the entire city. As far as we knew, there were no survivors. Millions people were dead within seconds. The invasion began in Asia and began working overseas towards America and West towards Europe and Africa. The war for human survival had begun.
Our enemies were powerful, fast and efficient. The Chinese, Korean, and Japanese armies couldn't hold them off. People started looking to the UN for answers. It was hard to beleive what they did. It was like something from a movie. They unified all nations together to create the UNAF. (United Nations armed Forces) it was all the militaries of the world combined to defeat this new enemy. Guess where the badgers ended up?
We were given secret sabotage missions, trying to destroy the masive battleships or at least learning their weaknesses. The intel we gathered was not enough to stop the invasion. Two weeks after Bejing, over 2 Billion people were dead. Asia was nothing but an empty, burned wasteland. And so the aliens began moving toward America. We were more prepared than Asia, but Europe was not faring very well. We began using nuclear weapons. It worked. An astounding half of the enemy fleet was destroyed before they reached Canadian and American soil.
It didn't stop them. They did reach the shores eventually, we refused to use nukes on our own ground so it was up to us. The soldiers on the ground. From our base, near Olympia, we were sent as reinforcements to aid the city. We knew what to do. We had experience fighting these mole rats, as we liked to call them. We were too late. The city had been glassed and the enemy had vanished.
I was surrounded by the smouldering ruins of my city, my home. It was mmy team, and the burnt bodies of civillians and soldiers. Without hesitation, I rushed to the shelter, where most of the people were being kept. None of them survived either. But unfortunately, I found what I had been looking for.
I found the bodies of my friends. They died defending the shelter from the mole rats. Their bodies, burned and smouldering. Jay was still gripping his Xiphos, which was now little more than ash. All of their faces were but black ash. And there she was. The girl I loved, burnt beyond repair before my eyes. Her crossbow was still on her wrist and she appeared to have a chunk of her torso missing. Burnt off by the mole rats small arms weapons: plasma.
Soldiers try to hide their pains. Make them look tough, but this was beyond the point of hiding. I screamed, I yelled. My team could hear me. They let unleash my emotions, careful not to disturb me. My cries turned to roars of anger. If any mole rat was still in the city, they would have heard me and run in fear. My friends, the heroes who defeated cronus, were slaughtered by Aliens. They were favoured by the gods themselves. What happened? Where were the gods who owe so much to us? I saw that now. The gods had abandoned us. They abandoned their people, and their saviours.
The war went on. The West fell city by city. I fought. I fought with my team. I led them. You don't truly value something until it is gone. I realized how much I had learned from my team mates back in the days of defeating Cronus. Theresa, she taught me how to use my head when I fought, rather than just going crazy and unleashing my anger. Odie taught me how to assemble a computer, take it apart and how to use all its bits and pieces. Herry taught me how to wrestle. The moves he taught me saved me in several occasions. I even learned from Neil. He taught me how different types of hair gel work and that blue is a good colour for me. Jay taught me how to lead. It sounds crazy, but its true. By example, he taught us all how to take responsibility of others into your hands and how to think under pressure. I now see why he always seemed so serious. As a leader, you have to be a role model. Your followers look up to you. If you were weak, they would not have faith in you. I used what i learned from Jay on my team. What he taught me made them loyal soldiers as good friends as my old friends themselves. And Atlanta. Sure, she taught me to hunt, to conserve energy and things, but the most crucial thing she taught me, was how to feel emotion. Before all this crazy Cronus stuff, I was a bit of a bore. I didn't feel much emotion, didn't get concerned about other's feelings. Atlanta changed all of that. I loved her so much. I still do.
So what is it like to live in an apocalyptic world? Well, as the war pressed on, we got pushed back further and further South, into South America. Humanity seemed doomed. We were outnumbered, outgunned, outwitted. The fact we were losing was obvious. But we hadn't lost. Not yet.
My team, tired from war, began to dismantle. One by one, the team was killed in action. Once again, I was the last one left. I fought on. The enemy knew my name. I became a feared enemy, I became a legend. The people called me a hero.
I'm not a hero. All this time, I have been doing what seemed to be my profession, killing things. I'm no hero. I'm a monster. There are days when I think I should be put on a leash I'm so dangerous. Even though my team was gone, people still look up to me. The militia, whats left of the UNAF, they see me as a role model.
They often ask me why I fight. I tell them I fight for revenge and what is right. That isn't really true. I fight because that is what I do. It is what i have always done. I fight because I don't fear death. In fact, I look forward to the day that I join my friends, my family, my team, and my fallen enemies. I lost everything I had up here. I am always ready to enter the underworld. There have been times, where I was close to entering at my own will. I have been as close as pointing the gun to my head, or placing the pills in the glass. But everytime, I stop myself. My life is a hopeless cause, but the lives of the people I am fighting for are not. The mole rats have pushed us down to Argentina. The rest of the world has been claimed by the aliens. Less than 20 million people still live. I am one of them. They call me humaity's last hope because I can single handedly take down a full sized enemy cruiser. I do what I have to do.
The colonies on the moon were destroyed, but the ones on mars have remained unseen and unnoticed by the mole rat fleet. The invasion force has been down a quarter of it's strength. The mother ship lies in orbit around our planet. As far as we know, it is the HQ of this Alien species. If we destroy the other ship, we may force the remaining ships to return home. That ship is what blocks our way out.
The remnants of our species have planned something. Three nukes. That is all we have left. The plan is to place the nukes on board the mother ship and blow it up. Once the mothership is out of the sky, our civilian transports will sneak their way to mars. There, they will be safe until the earth recovers and rebuilds.
I am the one who will be getting the nuke to the most dangerous place on the ship. The engines. The thing is, the nukes will have to be fired manually. That means it is a one way trip for me. Like I said, I'm not afraid of death. Maybe that is why I kill so well. I have nothing left to fear. I don't fear losing my fiends, because they are already dead.
I'm all used up. My joints ache from overuse and the trauma of fighting has left me tired and quiet. I have to keep going. Like they say, I am humanity's last hope. If I don't get that nuke aboard, our extermination is all but complete. The engines are the source of all the power for the ship. It is the most crucial explosive to place. As long as this one goes boom, the mothership is history.
I am gearing up, preparing for my final fight. A man earlier told me that this could be the end of the war. I just laughed. I laughed and I said.
"War never ends, it just sleeps."
Now, it is time for action. The shuttle takes off in five minutes. farewell.
War. It's a funny thing.
This is the last journal entry of Archie Brook, the Warrior. Last member of badger squadron of the 26th Battalion of UNAF. Humanity's last hope.