November 6, 2017

It was a peaceful dream. The music playing softly in the background, the wind blowing through the open window. It was not to last. "Somebody, help me!" I registered that before I was fully awake, the hurried shouting echoing in the annihilated landscape around me. "Ah!"

I stood, not hearing and hearing at the same time. A hostile soldier rushed towards me, his weapon raised. Drawing my knife, I stabbed him in the side, then, when he bent down, in his back.

A shovel smashed into a Separatist soldier, the clone then punching him in the face. As the screams and roars of pain and defiance continued I found myself snarling in the face of certain defeat. Grabbing my mini-gun, I stood up straight.

CT-089-233 (His POV):

"We're surrounded," my sergeant shouted, "we have to hold this line!" Walking forward towards a mostly destroyed building, I set up my LMG upon where a window must've been. A tank rolled forward, then exploded as soon as it stopped. "Open fire!" he shouted. I squeezed the trigger down and let my baby sing.

The thirty-round magazine was soon emptied, and I turned away into cover. 'There are more coming. What can I, no, what should I do?' I thought. I turned back out into open ground. Running forward, I opened fire and let loose a roar of defiance.

Boom.

"We thought this war would be our rite of passage, our great adventure. Let me tell you—it was no adventure."

CT-985-5339 (His POV):

"Incoming!" Racing to my machine gun, I quickly manned it. "Let 'er sing! Shoot them down!" Aiming in, I let my machine gun sing, firing out plasma as the hostiles rushed into the open from the trenches. I saw an artillery shell slam into a squad's position inside a wrecked house, one being thrown into a wall.

"Dreadnought! Someone get on an AA gun and shoot that big bastard down!" I registered that, but continued firing into the trench. "More coming in on the right!" I shouted, swiveling my machine gun to fire into that trench line.

Artillery fire landed near my position, one landing atop my strategic MG position, knocking me down, and destroying it. "Seps made it through! Rally at the church, we have to hold there!" Turner shouted.

Standing up and grabbing my shotgun, I shot a standard B1 battle droid down, another taking its place. "Flame trooper!" Gunny shouted. As more and more entered our territory, I found myself reloading quickly, often shooting off the five rounds.

"Dreadnought coming down!" Gunny shouted. Another flame trooper entered the church and the droid's wex ignited a squadmate. I ran at the flame trooper, shooting it all the while. An explosion of flames ended my life.

"New machines of war, like the tank, changed the shape of the war overnight. Luckily they were mostly on our side...mostly"

CT-8599-6060 (His POV):

Clambering into the tank, I got into the left gunner side position. "The clones in the church are overrun, we need to push through! The GAR is counting on us!" Driver said. The jerky movement I always associated with tanks started.

"Use that Emma Gee, sweep the church!" Driver shouted and I complied with the hasty order, mowing down a flame trooper. "They're moving in from the trenches! Use that machine gun, mow them down!" Our tank commander ordered. Firing into the trench, multiple droids fell to the intense fire.

"We've got them on the run! Push on!" Commander shouted, another order following afterwards: "Move up with the rest of the amour!" I fired my machine gun into the hostile soldiers, many not getting back up.

"Forward! For the Republic!" I shouted. We stopped, and I watched another tank move up and fire at a field gun, before the tank exploded. "Field gun took her apart! We're just a big fat target for that thing!" I shouted. "Move driver, go around!" Commander shouted, following up with an order for me. "You get a shot on that blasted field gun you take it!" I replied with a "Yes sir," as we trundled along.

"Hold on! We're pushing through!" Commander shouted. When the building had been shoved apart, I saw a golden opportunity and I fired at the field gun, killing the gunner instantly. I quickly switched to my MG and fired, again, into the crowd of soldiers.

The tank continued to roll and the right side gunner, I hadn't bothered to learn his name, shouted, "We're gonna make it!" I heard the scream of artillery shells and Driver cursed. "Shit! Incoming!" Our commander shouted. The tank exploded, and I fell out, a piece of shrapnel killing me.

CT-6606-53 (His Perspective):

"Charge!" Commander ordered, his voice loud and strong. We pushed forward, shooting at the enemy the entire time. "Another flame trooper! Let's cut the droid down!" I shouted to my squad-mates. Concentrating our fire onto the droid, I got hit once, twice, three times before I died. My only pleasure was seeing the droid explode.

Unknown Soldier (His Perspective): "Move it, move it!" I shouted, my shotgun roaring. It was close-quarters combat, the true fight. Droids fired at me from left, right, and center. I took a few shots to the chest but still roared a last defiance. I got shot once more and fell to the ground.

CT-3067-306 (His Perspective):

"Come on, let's go!" I shouted, my voice loud, the heat of the fight making my trigger finger itch. I aimed in and held the trigger down as more hostiles poured in. Artillery fire rained down, sending friendlies flying in the gruesome splay of death. I went down in a hail of fire.

Commander (His Perspective): Everything was slow. I felt myself raising my Z-6 mini-gun and opening fire. Blue bolt after blue bolt fired slowly—probably a lot faster in real time. I heard a scream and turned to my right: only to see a hostile soldier wearing a gas mask smack me in the face with a shovel.

I fell to the damaged ground, mud splattering over my armour. The soldier raised the shovel-likely to kill me but then I heard the scream of Republic artillery shells. "Artillery! Get down!" I screamed before an artillery shell landed close to me. I passed out.

When I woke up, everyone else was gone—only a single company left out of an entire regiment, and I screamed in anger, pain, and loss. I heard groaning to my right—and saw a hostile soldier just beginning to stand up. I aimed my scavenged deecee-15s at him and he aimed at me. I couldn't shoot him. He couldn't shoot me. Within our time unconscious, we'd realized something: no sense in adding ourselves to the carnage, death, and destruction.

I lowered mine in frustration and he pointed his upwards. I breathed in and out. The fight was over, and we were going to rebuild. Sure it may be slow and time-consuming, but over that time, life would creep back into these lands, into homes that had been destroyed by senseless fighting.

"They push. We push. Every once in a while, we push hard enough that the light breaks through the clouds, so the world beyond the war glimmers...just out of reach. The War is the Galaxy. And the Galaxy is the war. But behind every gunsight, is a living person. We are those people. We are the Jaded. We are the Naive. We are the Honorable, and the Criminal. We are the Bound for Legend, and the Lost to History. We are the Knights of the Sky, the Ghosts in the Desert, and the Rats in the !ud. These are our stories."

So this is a story heavily based off of Battlefield 1's Storm of Steel, where you play as members of the 369th Infantry Regiment, A.K.A. the Harlem Hellfighters. Even though some of the event in Battlefield 1 are completely fictional (The lasted stand of the Harlem Hellfighters), keep in mind that in this story, the war has last for four years, and is just beginning to show signs of exhaustion. The reason why I didn't name the commander is because, in a sense, he is the narrator after the war. He's telling people that the war not only left its scars on him, it left its scars everywhere, not just the contested worlds. Even though the land will heal itself, the scars might never fade. A few patches of covered battlefield could reveal the final resting place of a soldier who breathed his or her last there.

The reason why the soldier in the tank says that he's associated the jerky movement of tanks is because, in my headcanon, the pilot doesn't control the guns, rather, gunners inside control the guns, excluding the top one on the AT-TE, which has its own gunner.