Corporal Kopan was dead. He knew it. He felt nothing, saw nothing, and could hear nothing. Then reality rushed back into his senses and he was back in that damned forest. Another mortar round struck close by and sprayed him with soil, blood and water. He grabbed his bolt-action rifle and aimed at nothing. The rain was pouring down in sheets and fog gave him zero visibility. The sorghum-oak stock felt strange in his hands and he looked down to find that two of the four remaining fingers on his right hand had been dislocated. He couldn't remember how that happened or where his index finger had gone but he had to focus on finding the enemy.
He scanned the area ahead of him but couldn't see anything but the brown and turquoise outline of the forest. Las snapped a sapling in half two meters from his side and another mortar shell landed in the branches above, cutting down Guardsmen with a spray of shrapnel. He looked over the branch again. Red lights strobed through the fog like a small electrical storm in the forest. Still he could see nothing.
'Rebels shouldn't be this well equipped' he thought to himself.
He shot at a shape he thought had moved and went to rack in the next round when a las-bolt struck his left forearm. He jerked back in reaction as the las-bolt seared his nerve endings.
'Can't feel a thing, now' he thought to himself as he examined the cauterized hole in his arm and tried to move his left hand.
He looked to his left just as a las-bolt entered and exited out of a Guardsman's face, leaving a smoking hole and molten flesh behind. The man stood in shock as he dabbed around the hole that used to be his left eye. His remaining eye rolled back into his head as he crumpled to the ground in death spasms.
Kopan jumped over the fallen log he had taken cover behind and crawled to a rock outcropping that afforded more cover. He peeked over the edge and came face to face with Private Lotre, his eyes wide and mouth gaping. The boy had just joined the Guard. He thought he would make a difference, thought he would be great. He had died scared and insignificant. Kopan looked away and hugged the rock as a mortar landed meters from his first cover. He took a pot shot around the outcropping and cursed the day he enlisted.
He saw two more guardsmen behind him try to run. They hadn't even reached five steps when a mortar flung them apart like rag dolls. One landed on the burning wreckage of an off-roader, the other flew into the dense tree branches and hung there limply, one leg dangling with the other two remaining limbs caught up on branches.
And as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Kopan waited fifty breaths before he chanced a look around the edge again. Lotre's eyes met Kopan again as he dragged his body off the rock and stared into the forest. Silence. No moans, no screams, no warcries. Complete silence.
Kopan slumped down to the dirt and pulled a tabac stick out of his trench coat and lit it with his right hand, trying hard to keep it out of the rain. He took a long drag and let his tension go with the smoke. He grabbed the vox-caster off of Lotre's back and voxed his position. He took another drag on the tabac stick and cursed his enlistment again. He wrapped his trench coat closer around his body and got ready for the long wait of reinforcements. He never even saw the arrow that lodged itself in his right eye. He was dead before the tabac stick fell out of his hand.
