III

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

It took me a couple of days to piece my, "Dream," together; most of it is still only sensations and blurs of light I will never be able to understand. Most of what I know about the operation comes from the stories and facts given to me by my comrades, and the information released by INTEL, however valid that may be. But from what I felt, I felt like I'd been watching someone control my suit: third-person view, disembodied, fake.

Out of our platoon, we had lost four of our sixteen. Three had been on covering fire for the rest of us when we had been pushed back into the basin. I hadn't seen them, but Lopey told me they were ripped, literally, into pieces. I thought he was playing a sick joke, until I tried accessing his aud-vid recorders, which were supposed to be released to all platoon personnel after a firefight; they had been locked and kept from the rest of us. Lopey must have had the best view. I didn't question his integrity after that. The last casualty was friendly. It was chaos, people's brains were shutting down, she side-stepped into another unit's L.O.F. She never felt anything. Debber carried her to extraction.

Not to say I hadn't been affected by the mess. There were always flashbacks. Sometimes it was something as simple as suiting up that brought panic rushing back. During the weeks following the operation, I didn't take advantage of the sack breaks offered during in-suit field exercises. There had been a subconscious fear that my life-saving suit could turn into my sarcophagus. Many of us found ourselves waking up to from horrors that had passed weeks before. But they felt as real and chilling as any battle that we would ever face. Units from our platoon were mistaking the brush of blankets against their skin for the hairs that covered those filthy bastards; many were crated before we even ported back at the junction house. Sure, we had four dead, but we had close to eleven, "Casualties." Reinforcement practically gave birth to an entirely new platoon. Fresh meat for the grinder I supposed.

they really fucked us up.

It had been chaos. While under the phrase, things seemed unbelievably calm, orderly. L.T. was God, and was not to be questioned. He got us out alive, after all. But in piecing the fragments of information together, I could see how fucked things really got. I heard that there were more "Ants" flanking us than we had originally pushed into the basin, over twice the amount. Between the three platoons, we had lost a third of the entire company. It didn't seem real. I only remember seeing people taking hits and going down. But they seemed only like minor injuries, especially with the armored suits, as though they should have been able to spring back up and keep going. And yet, the sick-bay was a ghost town; those in for injuries during the operation were there for things caused by malfunctions and human error, not because of animal maulings. Much like ants, these things were grimly effecient. Whoever they tagged was dead, they left no wounded. And remember, eleven casualties.

Although the Sentinel Operation was a disaster, in the eyes of those who actually participated, INTEL was feeding the higher-ups the fact that we were able to learn from our new "Bug" friends. From specimens taken during the operation, we found they were a sort of insectoid species, carbon based, organic. The ones we were so lucky to run into were the, "Ants," in the eloquent words of the biologists. Called such not only for simplicity's sake, but because they had six legs, a head, thorax, carapaced abdomen, remarkable dexterity, and strength. They were mega-versions of the ants found all over earth, yet the scientists also believed that there were more types. There were probably genetic variations of the same species; there were no indications that the ants had reproductive capability. They were all found without sexual organs, or even zygotes. The ants were sterile. There had to be more, somewhere.

I had been right in saying that they behaved like dogs. Satellite imagery taken before the air strike was able to pick up on movement patterns among the ants. Our movement had obviously been chaotic and sloppy, but they moved in such cohesion, in packs. It was eerie to see. They were bleeding machines, moving without will, but with purpose.

None of us grunts expected anything like this. INTEL assured us that, "Although the casualties we suffered were unfortunate, everything had proceeded as expected. The operation had its intended effect." I could already see the censored video feeds being played for the blissfully ignorant patrons back home.

sick.

INTEL had obviously been aware of the bugs for some time. One could venture to say they knew as far back as the induction of the Stellar Fleet. But even up until the first operation against the bugs (which was ours), very few people had even know about the existence of them. INTEL was intent on controlling the human perception of the bugs. There would be no dissension among humans, no ethicists or "creatures' rights"; that would have been the obliteration of our species. We had been left in the dark for a purpose. To fight this war, INTEL needed to make sure that there would be no shadow of doubt as to whether or not the bugs were worth fighting.

did they want us to fail? to die?

This war had been started, without the consent of the governed, But INTEL was using its position to make sure humans saw it as something they would have wanted themselves, regardless of the actions taken by INTEL. In this case, it wasn't a matter of who was right. We weren't taking any chances.