Moze knew it was going to be like this. She was not the kind of person to grow old and retire. It had been years and years, and while her power had been something that remained as a portion of her training. Over all the missions she had to deal with, there had been certain moments when the lifers, the people who had been in the life of the trenches, the blood and the gore. They just get used to everything going on around them and sleep better with the gun and explosions in the background than in their own homes. Where silence often brought the nightmares held back by years of rough living and hard fights from the Ursa court to the vault, the battles, and more through the carnage and the second corporate wars. She had a lot of blood on her ledger, and it had been something she had needed to deal with ever since her first mission.
Some things made her feel better, and unfortunately, it had come in the usual escapes for bloodthirsty soldiers in booze and even more blood. When she was younger, she had found it tiresome and wanted to escape from it all, and especially the things the blood and carnage brought. Vladof had been a good gun maker but a lousy leader in battle because they often had the same rules for both. Throw enough things at your opponent, and soon they will not be there. Great with bullets, but it had some problems attached when it came to people. Like telling the families or hearing people break down that the dumb greenie who didn't see the armor on their Ursa getting cracked and then get hit by a corrosive rocket. She didn't even hear the scream. Instead, she saw the half-eaten tank and the pool of liquid in the cockpit that was once the pilot.
When she knew it had bothered her, she now knew to laugh because, in her words, it would be better than crying, and there is no crying allowed when war is involved. She had gotten through some bad times and done things she did not even expect when she met with Iron Bear. Then, she was young, impressionable, and wanted to get through the day, but now she was well past her Vladof days and had been working in Atlas for Rhys and helping to establish their own mobile tank division. They did not have the model Vladof did, but they had learned quickly from her own input to get something close enough that she could train the newbies how to get in their tanks and fire on the enemy without pissing on themselves.
For a while, though, she was happy. The regiment style had made sure she was never late, and she had been in a position where she could look out for her troops. She had mellowed a little bit, but her training still had kept her in top physical form with really the only change was the slightest of crow's feet and her hair going from chestnut brown to snow white with only a few tufts being seen from under her helmet. Love had not been something that was in her life much. She had her tank, her job, and her career, and despite others saying it, she truly had been happy.
Then the blood began to flow, often started by people who had no idea what they were starting to leave the lives they had invested in their goals. Then the second round of the corporate wars had come. There had been something about training soldiers, and there had been a lot of bad feelings coming up when the news came down. They had to get moved out. No matter who the leader was at Atlas was well known that they cared about those having to be on the front line banned. A few of them even stepped back in as field officers. She had done her best yelling at her troops, showing the little tricks in and out of the tank to make it in battle, and trying day and night to hammer in their soft little skulls how to be hard on the battlefield.
When she heard the first skirmish results, she nearly threw up. Sitting at her desk in the fort and hearing on the command radio the casualties, she wanted to go to the next one and take the pound of flesh for each one as best she could. It had been when she was looking past the radio out the window, remembering some of the soldiers she had trained now lost to make sure she could be the fear of her enemies once again. Iron Bear had been an older unit by this point, but after some retrofits and some new weapons, it was ready to make friends like the pair used to.
Looking through the window in the drop ship, no less than thirty mechs were under her control. She had to fight through and defend an area so they could make a bigger foothold before trying to move into the city. She had heard through the scuttle that there was going to help to come, but it would take some time and that they would be on their own. Feeling her footsteps under the path to her mech and seeing the panic in some people's eyes, she tightened her helmet and turned around. A new gun company had been trying to make some headway, and while a couple of new companies had made their mark, this one had been some of the slimiest people and fighters she had ever seen. Going so far to do anything to get an advantage, the city below had been not so friendly to the invading company forces, and they had a nasty habit of making body armor out of living bodies to feed on the guilt of the pilots. It was something that she had seen on video, and upon seeing it, she had made her decision and steeled it to an edge.
No words were needed for rousing her own ire, but for the rest of the men and women in their suits, there had to be something to be said. Opening the video for all to see in their cockpits, she had made them see the tactics they would be going into.
"This is our enemy, so disgusting they think the innocent makes a great addition to their own mech and vehicles. Do what you can to target cockpits but every one of these will try to kill you, and they will stop at nothing to do it." Not a single word was said in response as the clip played.
It had been all that was needed, the silence almost deafening paired with the blood rushing to her ears.
Whenever she would be working through her pre-drop checklist set, she felt a deep calm surrounded by the display and switches and a deep calm that felt foreboding and a silent warning to any spirits watching that she would be one to make those supporting her enemy cry. She wanted nothing more as her hands reached out to grasp the steering handles. One for each leg, she ran her thumb against her pointer fingertip, flicking at it and opening her eyes after taking a single deep breath, ready to become the legend of bloodshed on every enemy's lips.
A soft tap on the door was returned before she sat back in her seat, knowing it was going to signal the drop coming, and after a minute of waiting, the screen lit up with a picture of the planet before the red x came up of where she and the rest of them were going to land and the path the computers calculated before the whir of engines begin to fill her ears. Soon the magnetic locks disengaged, and she, along with the rest of her units, had been sent in where she would be in free fall for the better part of three minutes where she would just be on life support and letting the weightlessness had been pleasant.
She loved the moments where she would just float and for all the times being in space the times she had been bound by artificial gravity. Right until the momentum had been enough to push her back into the seat and all the wonder she had was gone, ready to be the soldier in action and the head bitch that she knew she had to be. There was no mercy on the battlefield and there would be very little chance where she needed to use it save for those she would find attached to the vehicles. When the familiar slam of the metal against the ground came, she had been ready, letting it jar through her loosely and then being stiff. That was how people got injured, and there was a good chance some of the newer soldiers were sore because of it. No matter how much some were told, they needed the experience to get it through their head.
Unbuckling from her seat, the tank began to digistruct away until it was needed leaving her and her gun to make the difference until they had the need of it again. The air smelled of blood and metal already despite the landscape showing no major damage from the battle within her eyesight, but they knew the map, and they would not need to go far before the ground and walkways were painted red with blood and blue with bot energy fluid leaving the smell of carnage floated more than the quarter-mile until the group had been fully assembled and their tanks digistructed away.
Walking in front of everyone, she was the one they would see first if enemies caught them, and that was how she wanted it as her footsteps went from soft grass and dirt to the harder tops of metal and cement to see nothing. All that had been around them had been stains without bodies and the need for everyone to grab their weapon and be on alert while they scanned the buildings. The few plumes of smoke had been enough to make the soldiers weary, and they had been right to be. All the intel had been right as they walked, remembering almost on cue as the city had been right, the drop had been right, but the number of people in the city had been well off as they had expected to be going into a war zone. There had not been one bullet firing over their heads and splitting her group off to secure the street. It had been something where she was expecting someone to pop out from the buildings, except when they had begun to move their unit through, it had been a shock that there had not even been a trap waiting for them.
She could hear a couple of the students shaking. It was something known by every person in her unit they needed several seconds to get in the tanks, and those in had to cover the rest with their shields making it much more difficult to be the first than the last because there was often no protection to do so. Coming around the corner had been a heavy technical something not bound to Ellie's catch a ride system as when her husband had heard about it was being used, the company had barred from using the network, making them need to create their own that often could be seen in their camps. It meant they had to travel for their assaults or have a camp close to the action, and because they had to arrive, Moze figured they had been planned to defend in that way.
A heavy technical with a large mounted gun had been enough to start sending the soldiers behind her scrambling for cover, but it had been what had been on it that made her want to start giving them hell.
Bound by their hands and feet around the front of the panels had been bodies of women and children, not of the soldiering kind of women, but of the type that wanted to keep their families as far away from the action as possible. She could feel the Iron bear coming to life behind her. All she had to do was line up the sights and let the bullet fly through what was once the head of the gunner, leaving the driver and his living armor. Watching the head fly out with the rest of the body from the recoil made her smile before hopping back and turning on the dome shield to allow her charges to do the same.
Her flame thrower was going to be rough to kill the driver but opening the cockpit and seeing through the shield. She realized she could set up her shot as the driver began to hit the gas-only for him to putter out when a single gunshot had been put through the glass and his own helmet from some fifty yards away. The technical ran headfirst into a partition before stopping halfway between the corner and the soldiers, and for all the gods those soldiers prayed to, there had been no deaths of those that had been fitted as the bloody armor. It had been something where they could keep a couple behind to keep them safe, but the majority of the forces had to continue on.
Around the corner, the bodies that had been missing from the bloodstains when they came into the city were found as they began to move down one of the main streets. There had been some major carnage. Enough for some of them to vomit around the corner away from them, and Moze had been surprised herself at the sheer amount of blood and smoke that had been laid before them. The road had been filled with people who had been caught by the attackers, and the smell of copper and gunpowder filled the air, and at the far end of the whole thing had been a glint of vehicles and armor. Soon the gunshots were flying, and a half dozen, and soon the battle had begun, and they had to make their way down the long street to the enemy position underneath the bridge, and each shot reminded them how this time, there was no way to come back. The military conflict had made it necessary that both sides would try to sabotage the other making it impossible for those in the field to be returned to base.
That had meant everyone had to carry units for the gear to be digistructed in through data units often held at their hip attached to their belt. If it was hit, then they had to work with whatever they had out and would need to scrounge on the battlefields for weapons, often from whatever could be found. It had been an older way of war, but now it was something they all had to keep in mind because moving down, even in tanks, the amount of manpower against them seemed to skyrocket with every shot sent downrange.
Getting into cover, they had been able to hold ground long enough before being able to get to the tanks again and continue moving forward, but it meant the whole group had to move up very slowly against a growing amount of gunfire. Trying to lay down some cover fire, one of them had moved too high out of cover, and she had tried to pull him back before his body went limp. There had been eight left, and they had to move their way up no matter what.
Another three had been hit and downed before they could actually get to the bulk of the fighting, and she had been ready to take the pound of flesh as the six mechs, five of her soldiers, and herself, ready to march in the firing from the fuel guns and heavy artillery causing the standing positions to be filled with the heaviest rounds their machines could fire off. It had felt good to get something back on the deaths of her soldiers, but it had been something that had been good. What had been good, though, had been only for a moment as the orders had begun to come in, and when they had to defend, there was so much to find safety in.
The land had been something that had not been built on, letting the grass and dirt be all that could save. Each of the mechs had needed time to recharge from usage, and it had left a set of three recharging while the others were in their machines, leaving the three to try and build some defensive structures only for the ability.
It had been bad when the rest of them fell. It had been worse when the numbers had nearly overcome them. Moze had started a message when she had been in iron bear, knowing it was going to be her end with another vehicle covered in the blood armor of innocent lives, and sent it out to everyone she knew, hoping someone would send more help against the disgusting group of warriors letting the final moments be seen while she explained and leaving the iron bear she had done well to take her sidearm and try to limb the vehicle trying to save one more group of people sending them down the road they had cleared. While the vehicle had been removed, the people that had steered were the last thing she saw before getting the people to run away where a soldier had been waiting.
Her body hit the dirt, letting the video be sent automatically to everyone because for all that knew that battlefield, the Atlas Corp had been the ones running away until the drop ship could pick up civilians and the soldiers left from her team. What they did not know was that video had been enough to get the support needed to rout their foes. After all the bloodshed, as a tribute to the old pilot and soldier, they had a statue erected in the small area that was now a park, and the company that had ended her had become nothing more but history.