Gaza Chronicles: The Untold Past of Legaia

-=Chapter 3: The Second Day=-

The sounds of artillery fire woke me up. It was still dark out. My eyes took a few minutes to focus before I could grab my armor off the floor. Jaku stirred in his cot to my left.

"Dude, what time is it?" Jaku questioned.

I picked the counting machine up off the floor to my right and held it into the small amount of light coming from the lamp. "Uh," I stumbled, "It's 3 in the morning."

Jaku sat up and reached for his jacket and sword. The Seru on his arm was pulsating, apparently it just woke up. I took a second and looked at my Seru. It was brown and had yellow "eyes". The Emperor gave it to me when I took command of the High Guard. It was apparently very special. I think the Emperor called it, Palma.

Anyways, I strapped on my armor, and attached my sword to the sheath on my back. I had a feeling battle was approaching.

"Sir," a soldier then said, bursting into my tent, "The Conkramians, they're counter attacking the Artillery are holding them off, but barely. What do we do?"

"What can we do?" Jaku then mumbled.

I thought to myself for a moment, it was a longshot, but we needed to try something. "Listen, we need to face them in battle," I explained, "Even with the Artillery providing cover fire. We need to drive them off in hand to hand combat. I guarantee that they're not prepared for it. In fact, I bet they only have long-distance Seru."

"Go assessment Sir." The soldier agreed, "I'll go tell the other Corporals."

Yes men. I hate those.

-=-

I trod out onto the battlefield, feeling a little dizzy from the night before. The Artillery men were blasting away in the distance, while the return fire made craters in the field ahead of us. They weren't hitting us on purpose, they were trying to give us shell shock. However, our Artillery must be doing the same effect, unless--

"They have the high ground!" I yelled out. It made perfect sense, we should be hitting them, instead we haven't stopped a single round of Artillery since they began firing. "Aim up more!" A distant corporal yelled to our men.

The Artillery Seru changed position and fired fifty feet higher than before. The sound of distant explosions echoed from far mountain range. "We hit them!" An Artillery soldier gleefully cried out. I smiled for a moment.

"Incoming!" Another voice cried out, this time, in fear.

A couple of Artillery soldiers exploded right in front of me. I fell back. The enemy must have adjusted their Artillery. I turned and ran for the tents. Craters starting blasting all around me. The soldiers jumped back and went into retreat.

We hid under an overhang in the cliff face behind us, by about fifty feet.

"Dammit!" I yelled. It was so frustrating, we lost our entire position in a span of fifteen minutes.

"Listen," I said, turning to the men, "Our only chance is out there. We need to all rush across No Man's Land and under the mountain where their firing from. It's our only chance. Jaku put his hand on my shoulder, "I'm with you all the way man. All for Sol and Sol for All!"

The man began to cheer for me, it was corny, but touching. "All for Sol, Sol for All!"

:NIGHTFALL

I sat there, waiting, watching, thinking. Sooner or later, the Conkramians would assume we're either dead or we retreated. A few minutes later, miraculously, the fire stopped. The men almost cheered, but I shushed them, in case the Conkramians could hear us. With a wave of my hand, we all grabbed out equipment and slowly filed, one by one, towards the enemy postion.

An hour we were a couple hundred feet from the mountain. I assumed the Conkramians would soon hear us. As such, I instructed everyone to make a mad dash for the mountain. At Jaku's count of three we rushed for the peak. Artillery fire began again, but we were too close, and they could not touch us.

Everyone caught their breath as we leaned against the rock wall, that if followed, lead up to the enemy position. "Listen," I said, turning to my men. I just noticed that many did not make it out of the 620 that we started with, only 80 or so remained. "Here's what we'll do. 39, with Jaku, will go to the east and up the peak. I'll take the other 39, and we'll go up the west. We'll flank the two, and hopefully meet them at the top.

"Sounds good," Jaku said with his normal grin. Gods I hated that grin, I really did. I spaced out for a moment and looked at the stars, two bright blue ones hung above the Moon, it reminded me of Arna, and her bright blue eyes. I wonder if she was looking at the same stars...

"Okay," I then said, shaking my head, "Let's take care of business." The men chanted our new war chat "All for Sol, Sol for All" and headed into their respective squads. Hastily we dashed up our respective paths.

I wonder if we would ever see each other again.