"I do not expect you to attack, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places." - Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal
The sun of Alpha Integrity kiss the torn and battered skin of the lost inner colony called Hope. Ethereal rays of light dance on its surface, illuminating the tumultuous dark grey skies, and shedding light on the horror of the modern day battlefield; a battle-scarred city whose name was lost long ago. Finally the sun kisses the rotting corpses of third platoon who take shelter in the hollow shells of former apartment buildings and businesses. The suns warm kiss is just a friendly reminder that they awake to another day in hell. At first glance it is hard to believe that the handful of battered zombies were once young boys. Once upon a time these warriors were called children. Once these children were young and innocent until one day they were rounded up and like dirty pigs, they were led to the slaughterhouse. The government had expertly ensnared the poor boys into a trap with a mouth-watering meal full of false promises of adventure, honor, and glory. A meal that none of the naive boys would dare to pass up. The boys of third platoon and the millions of others like them are ushered into a war they do not fully understand and forced to fight against an enemy that has never known defeat in its entire history. The proud boys that their parents once knew became a simple cog in the machine, a faceless, replaceable, statistic fighting a never-ending war.
Today, on the first of March, the living dead of third platoon are no longer the bright and youthful boys their loved ones once knew. The Great War that has wracked the galaxy for a brutal twenty years had reduced these young soldiers into nothing more than deformed husks, covered in battle scars, bathed in the blood of friend and foe, and reborn in the womb of chaos and destruction. The Marines become primitive grim reapers, intent on mastering the art of the kill and carry out the act without hesitation, remorse or emotion, just like the Drill Sergeants taught them. During the day they dance and play among a ruined city of rotting corpses and teeming with parasites, incurable diseases, deadly explosive ordnance, and the ghosts of dead comrades. They beat back wave after wave of man-eating beasts until the mesmerizing suns of Alpha Integrity unlatch themselves from view. At night the survivors of the daily meal of violence cuddle together for warmth, crying themselves to a deep slumber while others keep their sunken emotionless eyes across the ruined cityscape, searching for any sign of the enemy...as one Marine puts it: not knowing where they are…that's the worst thing. In comparison the boys of First Platoon are no different from the lost souls at the Somme, the fields of Verdun or the mud-choked hell of Passchendaele. Victory for the warriors of third platoon is measured in mere inches. Inches are gained in days; days only mean more young men lost to the horrors of war.
When the suns over Hope shrink into non-existence, life on the damned colony devolves into a new and more random terrifying nightmare. This nightmare is haunted by the ghosts of the dead, strange apparitions and shadows that dance through the streets. Every night Private Robert Auld fights his own private war. Private Auld fights a war against himself, he is worn and tired, he fights against the Covenant for hour's non-stop during the day, and watches helplessly as his friends are killed in front of him. Their screams as they died echo wherever Robert goes. The Marine battles against his body not to give in, he tries desperately not to succumb to the thoughts of suicide that plague him at night. He fights to hang on to the hope of returning home once again. This war as gone on for so long he can't remember his home anymore, when he tries to think back to the beautiful days of his childhood, he is only rewarded with the brutal memories of boot camp.
A nightly monsoon batters his stoic form, washing his body with a gusty wind chock full of rain. Even though the Marine takes shelter in the remnants of an apartment building the cold winds show him no mercy. His freezing body is firmly curled into a shivering ball, his only best friend, his MA5 rifle, is locked and loaded and pressed firmly against his chest. Tonight Robert is on night watch. While the other Marines of his unit are sound asleep, crumbled together in a massive heap or staring blankly into some unseen universe, Private Auld watches vigilantly for the enemy. The job of watching the dimly lit urban jungle through his small window is extraneous and boring. From the Marines elevated position he can witness the twin moons of Hope that are high in the sky tonight casting the decaying city in a supernatural glow to the effect that even the smallest details that are a part of this hellish background can be seen. Robert spots the black shadows of scavenging alley cats and evil rats that danced among a moonlit white sea of rubble and concrete searching for another delicate corpse to feast upon. In the background he can see the gargantuan matte black skyscrapers that reside in the center of the city, another shiver courses through Robert, he knows that deep inside the massive depths of the large pinnacles dwell perhaps thousands of Covenant troops. Robert knows that one day, he and so many other poor souls would have to clear the massive skyscrapers, one by one, room by room, floor by floor.
It is hard not to succumb to sleep. The Marine hasn't slept in hours perhaps days; he is so tired he hasn't even bothered counting. Yet he knows that amidst the ruined cityscape filled with decaying corpses and buildings, discarded weaponry, diseases, and the all-too-familiar feeling of death, resides the elusive and deadly enemy known simply as the Brute. The evil man-eating beast stalks through the urban jungle butchering poor boys in their sleep, and when the sunrises the Brutes attack once again, charging them relentlessly, their primitive bloodlust gives birth to a never-ending cycle of violence and bringing unnecessary causalities to the Marines of third platoon. Among the horde of innumerable Brutes are the even more cunning and agile Jackal, a species of master marksmen and mercenaries of war.
Robert spots movement, a flicker of black about eight feet tall (coincidently the same height as the average Brute), an unnatural blur amidst the ruined landscape. The blur of black suddenly scrambles behind a pile of rubble across the street, the Marines senses heighten and his muscles tense up. His mind immediately goes into alert mode. His rifle snaps up to his shoulder, the safety already off. The Marines training echoes in his mind, he hears the intimidating voice of his old Drill Sergeant who the recruits simply called Father. A steady drum beats in his head: Kill, Kill, Kill! An evil grin spreads on his face; weeks of close combat transformed him into what Father had taught every last one of his recruits to be, a sophisticated emotionless tool of war. The Brute steps out behind the pile and walks triumphantly towards him, Robert can see the beast clearly now. He can see its shaggy fur and golden armor, the matted pitch black fur is stained with the blood of hundreds of people and the armor is adorned with spikes, upon each of the spikes is a severed human head. Robert can see the creatures fearless sanguine red eyes, the evil pupils locked onto the Marine. The Brute suddenly opens its maw revealing rows of bloody razor sharp teeth. An ear-splitting roar bellows from the depths of the creatures black soul, shaking the apartment and shattering the dead silence of the night. Robert holds back his tears of fear, steeling himself he prepares to ends the creatures life.
However just as he is about to pull the trigger, the demonic beast is swept away into non-existence, the Brute becoming nothing more than a pile of dust swept away in the cold rainy monsoon. Robert can only look in disbelief. The Brute was all in Robert's head, it was just another hallucination. Weeks of fighting have taken their toll on the young Marine. He is plagued by random spouts of black outs, and hallucinations, he swears he can see the dead. Robert has begged a hundred times to the apathetic doctors in the rear echelon units to send him away from this hellhole, maybe even give him a ticket home. The doctors simply look the crazed boy in the face and say what they have said to so many other poor Marines like him: the only way you're getting out of the Shit is in a body bag or on a stretcher. The other older troopers (older is actually an understatement, the oldest Marine in the platoon is twenty-two) in the platoon have been fighting since battle for the colony started seven weeks ago, maybe to them the hallucinations are a normal way of life?
Roberts's thoughts linger back to one unfortunate afternoon on the frontline. Private Auld remembers how clear the sky was that morning; it was very rare for the clear angelic blue sky to be seen during the usually rainy month of March. It was his third day assigned to third platoon had been tasked with pushing into a sector of the city infamously known for numerous ambushes against UNSC convoys passing through the supposedly secure sector. The platoon had been bolstered by contingent new replacements three days ago which included Private Auld. The Marines rolled down the street supported by several scorpion tanks and it was not long before the Covenant attacked. An hour of intense fighting passed after the Marines managed to fight their way through the streets by utilizing the buildings on that flanked the street on both sides. The Marines fought hard, purging the Covenant presence with hand grenades and automatic shotguns and concentrated rifle and tank fire.
But as soon as the Marines let their guard down to bask in the glory of victory, fate struck. There was a loud whistle then suddenly one of the new replacements, was blown apart right before Roberts's eyes.
The poor Marine didn't even have a chance to scream as her body was torn apart by a massive blast of flame and flying metal fragments. Her legs and her entire right side were non-existent, in a millisecond the Marine had become a mound of burning flesh. Robert had talked with the fresh seventeen-year old Marine a moment before the battle for the sector had started. The replacement was a beautiful brunette, one of the most beautiful women Robert had ever seen. They had talked about home; both troopers were from Harvest, their parents were both refugees, their parents also happened to be next door neighbors. The intriguing conversation between the two warriors had been rudely halted by the Covenant attacking their armored column. Now the replacement lay broken and mangled in the middle of the street, blown apart by an artillery shell from the Marines own unit. No one had told the artillery jockeys that were sitting comfortably behind their hell raising artillery pieces that third platoon was going to clear the sector of Covenant forces. So as usual, the handful of oblivious artilleryman woke up and shelled the Covenant-occupied sector and the entirety of third platoon.
For a moment there was dead silence then came the rest of the intense barrage, the scorpion tanks scurried out of the sector as fast they could however three of the armored coffins were obliterated by a series direct impacts courtesy of the Two-Hundredth Marine Artillery Regiment. The Marines not protected by the vulnerable-yet-decent shelter that the numerous buildings in the sector provided threw themselves flat against the pavement, praying to God they wouldn't get hit. Robert happened to be one of those poor souls stuck in the open; he curled into a ball and waited for the final round to end his life. It didn't come. As quick as the random artillery bombardment came, it dissipated into non-existence. Roberts's eyes lingered on the charred and bisected body of the replacement he once knew.
By some unfortunate miracle, the replacement was still alive; her mangled chest rose and fell as her heart struggled to keep the woman alive. Robert rushed to the wounded woman's side, screaming for help but his voice fell upon deaf ears. Auld remembered the look on the other Marines faces. Their hollow eyes and bloodied faces surrounded the Marine; he could see the platoon corpsman among them staring blankly at him with the same apathetic expression the entire veteran platoon shared. They simply didn't care about the dying Marine. To the veterans off third platoon, the maimed body that lay in the street was nothing more than another faceless number. The older Marines didn't bother getting to know any new guys; they had become hard and emotionless and replacements didn't last long. The replacement died seconds later, another victim of friendly fire. Private Auld will always remember what one of the veterans said when the grave registration units arrived to pick up the pieces of the unfortunate replacement. "At least it wasn't me." Robert hadn't even learned the beautiful woman's name.
On the rainy night of March the First, Private Robert Edward Auld decided he was done with war. He wasn't going to become an emotionless tool of destruction like the veterans. He was clinging to his humanity by a thread, he could feel himself slipping. Private Auld had seen things that would make a mass murderer die of fright. He had seen his friends killed before him, he had seen a young orphan abandoned by his parents and fed to Jackals. He had seen so much and he was tired…so tired. So Private Auld took matters into his own hands.
His shaking hands find the cold steel of his magnum handgun that comfortably lies in his holster at his waist. The night suddenly goes quiet, a final moment of peace before a soul is freed from its mortal coil. Another cold wind brushes through the building embracing the young Marine, it whispers in his ear. Finally he remembers. He remembers his childhood, the warm hugs and kisses of his father and mother, the days that he sat on the beach and watched the sunrise, his first kiss and the last day before he went to basic training. He draws his handgun and rests the cold barrel against his temple. Private Robert Auld takes once last breathe then he pulls the trigger.
Private Robert Edward Auld committed suicide on the night the First of March, Twenty-Five-Fifty-Three.
Two days before the end of the Great War.
He was only seventeen.
The next day as the boys of third platoon awake to the cold corpse of Private Robert Auld, moments later another poor soul is sent to replace him.
After all the Marines of third platoon are just statistics.