Chapter 1

Prologue

Altis descended into despotism, the world descended into war and anarchy, Sergeant Kerry descended into… who the hell knows? Then one day he caught a glint of long hair, reflected in the firelight of a bandit camp. In a moment of weakness he sprung into action. What good can one man even do in the face of a broken world?

Altis 2035

Corporal Papadopoulos

"Hey!"

Corporal 'Papa' Papadopoulos was jolted from his revelry by a man shouting English from outside the small church. He felt his knee disconnect from the ancient tile.

The rain misted itself against the stained glass, obscuring his view outside. He grabbed his forty-five.

Papa'd felt uncomfortable taking a weapon into a church at first, it'd felt… wrong somehow. The first FIA ambushes had ended that, and a bishop had gone on national television to make his position on the matter clear.

He ran his fingers over his forty-five, giving a longing look over to his rifle, which was leaning up against a pillar just outside the door. He took cover against a pew before responding.

"What the FUCK are you doing here American! Stratis not enough for you?"

The voice responded, it was a young man, mid-twenties.

"You and I have a different idea what happened at Stratis, considering I was there, I'm going to believe mine." The man was clearly doing his best to keep his tone light; trying and failing.

Papa let out a breath before he spoke again.

"Answer the fucking question! And where are Iliadis and Vlachauo?"

Nothing, for at least a full five seconds, and then…

"Come on man… you know where they are."

God fucking damn it!

"Oh."

"It was quick, if that makes you feel better."

The fucking gall!

"Fuck you yankee!"

"I'm not that happy about it either-"

"You have no fucking idea how not-happy I am right now cocksucker."

"Listen man… can you at least hear me out? Please?"

Papa forced in a deep breath, wiping off the sweat that poured down his brow. It splashed onto the brown tile. The American's voice was just to the right of the church entrance, he'd known Papa was in because he'd seen the rifle leaning against the column. If Papa rushed the rifle, he'd likely get some new air-holes drilled into him.

"What the fuck is it?"

"I've still got a job to do. You guys just got real unlucky. I'd have got you earlier, but you're in a church. What's your name?"

"Corporal Papadopoulos, my friends call… they called me 'Papa'." Papa risked a peek from around the pew, still nothing but brown grass.

"So you're a Corporal too? Cool. Listen Papa, I don't want to be a war criminal. You understand that? I don't wanna kill a man in a church. If I'd known you didn't hear the shots earlier I wouldn't have even bothered you. But I need to move on now, and the only safe path has me putting my back to the entrance. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"You dropped in out of fucking nowhere, killed my friends, and now you just want to walk away?"

"I don't want to do this Papa. Please don't make me do this."

The goddamned audacity.

"Go fuck yourself yankee, you're going nowhere!"

There was a sigh from outside the door.

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Corporal Ben Kerry

Fifteen minutes prior

Kerry had not been having a good month, he'd been blown-up, shot, and nearly drowned. He could feel his life-expectancy dropping every second he was on this fucking rock.

The NATO peacekeeping mission on Altis had not gone to plan. The local strongman had absolutely no compunction about leveling or depopulating entire towns and villages that were found harboring rebels.

The New Government's corruption and brutality meant there was no shortage of rebels.

NATO had done nothing about the coup in one of its member states, nothing about the massacres, and nothing about the broken ceasefire. The cheats prospered. The entire mission had been a massive waste of time and energy.

Then Stratis had happened, and the "Altis Armed Forces" had turned from hosts to hostiles in all of thirty seconds. They had led an obviously coordinated attack on every NATO base on the island. NATO had gone from a major player to guerrilla movement over the course on minutes.

Kerry's life from that moment onwards had been spent in alternating moments of terror and anticipation of the next bit of said terror.

Eventually they'd been hunted off of Stratis and met up with the rebels on Altis proper.

Kerry was now on day twenty-six of this bullshit.

Every muscle ached, his feet were made of bloody blisters. He hadn't even questioned being driven by an ATV in broad daylight to get him close to his mission area. He was just glad to get off his feet for awhile. All good things had to come to an end though, and as his driver pulled off the road, Kerry had stepped off the vehicle and back onto his boots.

The smell and sound of the surf greeted him, they had stopped off in an old resort-town. The empty chairs and upturned umbrellas told him nobody on Altis had gone on vacation in awhile. The plastics had all long been bleached by the sun.

He pulled out his map and checked it again. From the look of things the road ran north-northeast, a green square told him there was an AAF checkpoint nestled on it between two hills. The east side of the road offered a clearer path, good concealment from the road, and a straight shot up a hill. He would even be passing a church, imagine that.

He pressed his way along the road. At times throwing himself into the fine sand as headlights blazed down the pavement. The wet sand stuck to his uniform, but his six-point-five caseless wasn't going to do jack against an armored car, maybe he'd pop a tire or scratch the paint before the belt-fed tore him in half. That's assuming it wasn't a grenade launcher.

His boots passed over the firm concrete of a dock, it was better that walking on the sand, which slipped and irritated his blistered feet. He craned his head up, letting the rain pass under the brim of his patrol cap and strike him in the chin as he laid eyes on the hill. There were some parts of the East Coast that would call it a mountain, but he'd seen actual mountains. This was a hill.

The only problem was the church built about halfway up it, an armored car parked next to it. From his closer angle he could see a pair of AAF troopers, their dark-green digital camo very distinct against the brown, grassy hillside.

So his odds were two-on-one or fighting whatever heavy guns they'd set-up at that checkpoint. The choice was clear.

Sorry guys, but it's you or me.

At his first step off the concrete and onto the soil he felt a pop, and a warmth pooling in his socks near his toes. Yet another popped blister. He rolled his eyes and made his way up the hill.

He pressed closer to them, keeping himself low and slow in the tall grass. His camo was a better fit for this terrain than theirs was, unforgivable, considering it was their country. The money for proper uniforms had probably been spent on whatever hard drugs they'd been doing when they'd pissed off Uncle Sam.

These men were never going to see that shoe drop though. He lined up his reticle just under the first man's neck. Shots tended to jump up at close range.

The red chevron made contact with the trooper's collar. Kerry squeezed, transferred targets, then squeezed again. Two thumps, two crumpling corpses. He'd not been infantry, but he'd found a talent all the same.

The massive suppressor on the end of his weapon kept the noise down, but only one of the men had any opportunity to hear the round smash though him.

One of them had taken it through the neck, not the head. Kerry could see the hole just over the spine, he put another one into the trooper's head anyway.

Professional courtesy. He did his best to ignore the sound of breath escaping out afterwards. He moved past the bodies to check out the vehicle.

There was a rifle leaning up against a column in front of the church, both of the one's he'd shot had been holding theirs. He wasn't done yet.

NOW

Corporal Kerry

"I was afraid you'd say that."

Kerry loosened his off-hand. The spoons of the two RGN hand-grenades he'd been holding sprang off in unison. Each one was roughly the size of the miniature tangerines his mother had given him for lunch as a child.

Each one bounced off the wall of the ancient structure and into the pews.

The RGN program had started as an American venture roughly ten years ago. The Army had wanted a lightweight grenade that could reliably clear a room, without sending shrapnel though the walls. Eventually the project had nearly been abandoned, then NATO had picked it up and started trimming features.

The variable yield and non-lethal setting hadn't made the cut, but what had survived was a thesis in munitions development.

The impact-fuses had initiated as soon as the grenades struck the wall. The electric timers within waited for the grenades to align their weighted bottoms to the ground, then they each shot up to about waist-height. The springs inside finally executing their one task in life as they separated the explosive body from it's counterweight. Simple Newtonian physics, the rest was chemistry.

RGN's carried a lot less explosives than normal grenades, there were several reasons for this. The first was that the grenade was supposed to be smaller in the first place, the second was that part of the body was taken up by the counterweight mechanism.

The third was that the fragments produced were themselves explosive, at least when hurled at ballistic velocities.

The reactive metal fragments tore their way into the walls of a building that was older than the nations represented by the men now fighting for it. In the case of Kerry, the church was at least four-hundred years older than the founding of the United States.

The fragments detonated, the stained-glass shattered, 'Papa' said not a word.

Kerry stepped inside to view his handiwork. The suppressor at the end of the MCX swept the corners of the room.

'Papa' was a bearded man, late twenties. His forty-five was now metallic fragments about three feet from what was left of his hand. The trigger-finger was still inside the guard.

Beneath him was the shattered remnant of a leg, the fragments had done their job. A jut of jagged femur extended past the shredded meat. Besides the initial spatter, which painted a grim line on the shattered tile, no blood poured from the limbs.

'Papa' was in shock.

Kerry raised his gaze, looking over Papa's soon-to-be corpse was a statue of Christ on the Cross. The cross itself was wooden, the statue some sort of light stone. Both were totally unmarred. There was a jolt of anger.

"Of fucking course you're all right! Couldn't let a bomb scratch your face could we?"

The statue gave no response, Christ's face was still staring down at the dying man. The tears carved lovingly into his cheeks by some unknown craftsman half a millennia ago.

Kerry gave a look to Papa, he could tell that his heart was still beating. His chest still rose and fell steadily in his plate carrier. Kerry's eyes fell to where the ceramic dust was leaking out of a rent in the sides, but a swipe of his hand confirmed the plate had done its job.

"Fine. You win."

Kerry knelt and grabbed Papa's field aid kit. Tourniquets went onto his limbs first, all of them. Plastic rods twisted fabric taught. When Kerry ran out of Papa's, he used his own.

He could scavenge some more off of Papa's old friends later.

Next came morphine, Kerry assumed it would be helpful. A one-use ampule wasn't going to kill a guy who's been through that kind of trauma. Then it was time to leave.

As he left the church, he turned to the man on the cross again.

"You happy now, Old Man?"

The stone said nothing, Kerry walked away. Cursing his own stupidity all the while.