Three of us- out of the troop of ten who left the New Haven City proper this morning- three of us got pinned down in the dust, the winding guts of dirt and blast craters infested with KG bots that made up the old part of town. None of us thought about this, or the old industrial section, and the Precursors know, the port- as Haven anymore. Hell, we barely thought of the upright-standing and almost still functional shining new section with the Freedom League headquarters and bright shops and expensive housing as Haven City anymore. The port had somehow held off, but everything from here to there belonged to the Metal Heads and the KG. And the canal streets nearest the shantytown neighborhood- if you could still call it that, nobody lives there anymore- were starting to sport more red armor than blue.
So three of us, with seven corpses blasted to nothing behind us, were out doing our duty, defending Precursors-know-what from getting eaten up by the Metal Heads and KG. I didn't know these guys that well, but that's how it is now, you don't know your fellow soldiers anymore 'cause they just cobble together new platoons every morning from whatever dregs managed to crawl home the night before. Nobody's unit designations match anymore, and nobody cares. Organization's got no meaning when everybody's running blind, just firing like crazy to try to be one that crawls home.
The guy on my left- I don't know his name- signaled us to make a corner, and immediately took a blast to the chestplate that sent him stumbling backwards. He tripped into a crater- there's more of them than street- and I stopped looking at him, firing forward instead, hoping he'd get back up on his own. He did, and the three of us took out two of the KG bots before a third rolled up, two of the little spider bots crawling up behind it.
The soldier to my right pitched forward, his armor smoking, shot by one of the fliers. He started to stand but fell again as a Metal Head stinger stabbed him in the back of the leg. I shot it and he rolled over in place, firing at the lumbering monster that had come up behind it.
Then he showed up. He whipped out some kind of weapon, I'd never seen one before, and lobbed off a charge that blew the approaching Metal Head to eco vapor. He spun in place, the orange ottsel- look like rats to me, but what do I know about animals, I don't have the luxury of having pets- clinging to his shoulder, changing weapons as he moved. Now he let off some kind of hovering arsenal that blasted away at the KG bots, hammering them until there was nothing left.
I'd heard of him, never met him, and I gotta say, I wasn't impressed- he was short, sour, and distinctly unfriendly. He was armed like a whole army, now pulling out a rapid-fire rifle that zipped a hundred rounds into an approaching pair of bots in a matter of seconds before they could get off more than a couple of shots at us. He took a hit himself in his fancy Precursor armor, grunted, and kept shooting.
The hovering thing clattered to the dirt.
I looked around. I was the only one left.
I know I'm just a grunt, and cannon fodder, and I'm gonna die in this not-a-war (we already won the war, does everyone remember that?), but it seems to me that if the powers that be wanted our side to have a shot at winning, they'd have been armoring us like that, giving us weapons that could drop these monsters in just a few shots. Not that Praxis's eco-freak shouldn't have some fire power too, but seems like the regulars could do more good with that kind of violence. Just saying.
He "commandeered" the nearest bike and took off toward the new city. Didn't say a word to me or about the two of my fellow soldiers he didn't save.
I put my head down and kept firing.
