Irken Voices from the Vortian War
"NBK"
Kez, Infantry
"You ever wondered where the phrase, 'Natural Born Killers' came from? Well, it was entirely literal. We were the last generation of natural born Irkens to go to war. The generation after us, our children, were the last natural born Irkens in the conventional sense. As you may know, from history, the children of the Vortian war veterans were sterilized and their DNA harvested into the Genome-Cultivation Program. The GCP was a concept that turned us from a universal superpower to a near galactic one.
A war is best fought on unlimited manpower. When we first partook in the occupation of Vort, we had erroneously thought it would be a conventional war. Even the Trillen did not give us so much trouble. A lot of them lashed out, but they were pacifists. Pacifists! Can you imagine that? They honestly believed that passive defense was somehow preferable to being 'barbaric'. It was not a matter of development, they were entirely capable of fighting back, but we simply broke their spirits the minute we landed.
As always, us Irkens start every war with a false treaty. The Trillen, truly and sincerely, believed that we had extended our benevolence toward them and offered to enkindle them with certain necessary economic stimulation. It was a peace-pact and a trade deal. Nothing that would be invasive to their native flora or anything. We wanted some soil and some of their rare-minerals.
It was all because we were developing some very new, high tech things that required a lot of these rare resources. PAKs had just become mandatory for every Irken citizen. And before the Genome project had engineered Irken DNA to consistently reach symbiosis with this prosthetic-augment, the original PAKs had very sophisticated hardware that was purpose made not to be rejected by our bodies. Anyone who remembers the first trial runs, knows that most of those boys became walking puss-bags.
The mass produced alloys had infected us, they literally made us sick. First issue PAKs were hostile to our own physiology. Once again, this was before the mass-genemodding of our species. The heavy metals inside the PAK circuitboards and plasma-filters caused everything from subdural hematomas in the brain to just… making some people's cardiovasculars explode.
When the Trillens tasted Irken might, we were back to full production and mandatory inclusion of the PAK augments. We completely raped their planet, bent it over and broke its back in the process. The terrible child it had birthed was now a new era for Irken Imperialism. The Irken Dark Age ended with the plundering of a whole other civilization. And to think, we almost let the Planet Jackers get to it first!
But it didn't end there. The Vortians were hardly allies, but we had a mutual-defense pact with them that said we were. They, too, were afraid of the Planet Jackers. We put our best scientists together and found that the Vortians were actually decades ahead of us.
We were embarrassed, humiliated. It wasn't that we were behind, it was that we were behind the Vortians in particular. Of course, one's species always comes into play in these things.
It was easy to justify everything we did with the ever looming threat of our planets being thrown into the sun. We even fed the Trillen that propaganda, that they should be thankful that we, the Irken Empire, had liberated them from the inevitable fate of a far more spontaneous genocide. When I was a younger man, I genuinely thought they should have thanked us for taking them on as a 'client race'.
Such a cute name, 'client race', as if we were great enkindlers. Everyone with a brain and PAK knows that war is about money, territory power and sex. The Trillen had not the hearts or bodies for wartime manpower nor staffing positions in industry. The Vortians, however, were hardy and intellectually at a development level beyond ourselves. With Trillen resources, Vortian science, we had a perfect system that would allow our people, our Irkens of the future, to live indulgent, free and readily available for military mobilization.
I was a logistic liaison originally on Vort, originally. We had a steady outpost in what was deemed the "Irken-Vortian Autonomous Operation Zone" (I-VAOZ). It was a weapons lab for countering Planet Jacker ships. We were developing some pretty heavy handed hardware there. The Imperials were the minds behind the concepts, but the Vortians brought them to life. The Horned Ones truly and honestly were under the impression that these were tools for mutual-defense.
It must have blown their minds, seeing their industry develop weapons of mass war and colonization, literally being used against their creators. Before their very eyes, they understood the full picture finally for the first and last time. And in the madness that only intellectuals can truly enjoy, many had jumped to their feet and sung praises for their own work!
For every Horned One who was adamant on protecting his own people, there was a monster who wished to create something terrible and life-changing. Even if that creation would one day scrape his own carrion off of its steel-capped feet.
I went from a clerk at the I-VAOZ to a frontlines soldier within three weeks. When the war had begun, they told us that it was already won in six hours.
Yes, across the entire planet, the Vortian Defense Force capitulated within 6 hours to Irken might. Orbital bombardments had destroyed every port and non-essential city. Rurality was sent ablaze with atmosphere-altering rod-drops from low orbit and some parts of the planet were effectively reverse-terraformed by the munitions we dropped. We had to fix that later and boy, it was expensive.
Incredible to think. This was actually Vort-9. Vortians had run through 8 'homeworlds' prior to this. All of their intellect and development meant that they drained their own planets of resources. With this amount of carelessness, we assumed they wouldn't mind if we had cracked Vort-9 for more or less the same reason.
After all, Irk was not a real planet. It was a fueling station that had turned into an Empire. The planet is a port, a giant concession stand that sells images of our greatness. Those who lead and serve the Empire are a part of the Armada. We are a nomadic people, we see and conquer and take whatever is ours, as we see fit. And everything that exists outside of our perception has a lot of audacity to exist without our explicit permission.
Our old home planet was destroyed in our first great war of ascension. From there, we flew away and took more and more planets. We cared not who lived on them, this land belonged to Irkens now. And when we were not conquering, we were mercenaries.
A nomadic fleet of war hungry, sneering imperialists! You'd think that the other empires like the T'et and the Th'ut would have known better than to make us rich, fighting their wars! We came back with the Armada, the Fleet they had unknowingly funded and we put those cat-eared bastards into the deepest coffins with weapons purpose-built for smashing them!
And of course, we were feudalists for a long time. A union of clans. Red Eye. Purple Eye. Green Eye, even. I was Blue Eyes, of course. The most noble of them all.
But I tell you, I was raised on the Heroes of the Unification War! And I thought, there on planet Vort, I was going to be just like them!
Yet, with the conventional war over within hours, this war, the one that waited for me, had no formal frontlines, no open battlefields. Nothing could be trained for or premeditated. The Vortian army folded quickly, by the Vortian partisans took an entire genocide to wipe out! The Resisty of today, was not the Resisty of yester-year. They were a different breed.
I fought the Horned Ones for only two years. When I was able to go home, I was relieved. But now, honestly, the more time I put between the past, the more I realize how much I don't recognize the boy I was back then.
The boy I was before is even more dead to me.
I'm a student of history and yet, I have nothing to say about the war. I can tell you the before, the after, but during it? It is all a blaze. A dream that I couldn't wake up from.
Speaking of dreams, I have one that I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how many PAK updates I get. Even got gene-therapy to fix some of the electro-chemistry in my brain, but the dream remains. I have this terrible dream that I am loaded up in a silver coffin and I am alive, I am scratching to get out! I am banging up, down, left, right! I am screaming, "I'm alive! I'm alive dammit! Let me out!"
But the silver coffin is welded shut."
"BAT17"
Gika, Nurse
"Yep, yep, I was there. Which is insane to think about now, because so many now claim they were, when they were not. You can look an Irken in the eye and compare it to the colour of the PAK, from there you can tell if they are Natural Born or not. Not many know this, but the casualties we took during the Occupation of Vort was actually the reason we completely filled in the manpower losses with cloning.
I remember, after the war, I was in the Genome-Cultivation Program. I had no idea that myself and my sons would be the last of the Old Empire, as I come to say it. I was raised in the Irken Dark Age. Before PAKs. We were a ferocious species of fighters, but fighting was all that we could do. And even then, Vort was a nightmare for those who had to stay after the initial war.
Yes, it is true the initial capitulation was, what was it, six hours? I always remembered it as four. In fact, I was among the forces that dropped into Skletz city and opened the first field hospital for our boys. There in Skletz, I heard that the Vortian forces were already offering surrender within hours. But our High Command had refused to negotiate to their terms.
The Horned Ones had a simple solution to everything, that they would become a client state, become a client species. But that Vort would remain a vessel with some degree of autonomy. The Tallest knew better than to accept these negotiations, apparently. The intent was always to crush the Vortian spirit in the war, so hard and so boldly, that there would be no insurgency. This tactic worked on the Trillens especially.
But Vortians are not like Trillens. They are not a colourful people, they are grey, drab and sometimes emotionally dull. But behind their glassy eyes and brutish horns, they have some sort of unspoken national spirit that is hard to shatter. Our turn-coat invasion had instead mobilized them under a single cause better than any conventional government could.
So many of the new clone-era have no idea why we thought it would be so easy. Even with all the propaganda and everything that is talked about now, military academics can recognize that the war against the Vortian insurgency was very nearly a failure. And if we had failed, we would have eaten each other. That is why the Empire had done everything it could win. The concessions to some Vortians will always remain controversial, yep. Yep. I know it.
But these people had impressive weaponry. I was working a field hospital that was the size of an entire third of Skletz city. My ward had 300,000 casualties waiting for treatment. Only half of them made it. Of course, to Irkens these losses felt necessary. After all, taking on an entire planet is not always easy business.
The way we handled Vort, though, is the reason why we have Invaders now to prevent the same mistakes. I love Invaders, because without them, then we'd face far more stiff resistance and insurgencies whenever we take a planet.
Do we need to take these planets? Of course, it's always better that others die for our Empire while we can bask in it.
Yep-yep. Just let me say it. We underestimated the Vortians. We broke the horns but they still rammed us, even during the war. When the Vortian main fleet over Skletz retreated, they actually had some ships suicide-run into the Imperial Marine transports. The ships came crashing down into Skletz center.
I was in the Battalion Seventeen. (BAT17) We went in hard as hell and we pulled what remained of our guys from their transports. Before the Vortian fleet left the space port city, they actually released the entire prison population!
And this, you already know, Vortians have a tendency for criminality. Their governments were very corrupt and they had 10% of their entire population incarcerated at the time. So what do they do? They knew that the war was won by the Irken Empire the minute our ships blotted out their sky, so they gave their most violent citizens guns and told them to go play with us!
Decades later, the Resisty still have some of those hardened bandits that faced us in Skletz. They even stole from the local garrisons and standard, standing Vortian army that was abandoned in the city.
In the end, I honestly think most of the men in my field-ward, which had become a field-city, were among my own in the Battalion Seventeen. We had zinc coffins.
Why zinc? It preserved the bodies. The PAKs were removed, wiped and repurposed if they were not destroyed. I wonder how many of the war's sons walked around, unknowingly, wearing the PAKs of dead Irkens? This apparently caused so many problems and defects.
Everyone called them "silver coffins". Because in the end, they looked silver. At home, the propaganda had fully sold everyone on the idea that our heroic troops were sealed tight in silver, a remarkable flex of our industry and our resources. That we could afford to wrap our dead in such a dignified way! Some armies had medals of silver and gold, no, we use gold as our semi-conductors and our silver wraps our fallen heroes!
Now, being a mother is hard. When I was treating those men, I saw a lot of the same thing. All the features of my boys. Their faces were always young and I knew, at most, most of them were conscripts with just eighteen months of mandatory service. We called it their 'Moral Obligation'.
I saw so many men completely torn apart. No limbs. Legs, arms, antennae scorched off. Just charred, still breathing torsos. Us nurses were those boys' mothers in their final days. Especially those who had lost all sight and sound. The only sensation they felt was my sterile, white, to the elbow-long gloves against their fileted flesh. Their bony little fingers would always rub softly over my own. Trying to find warmth through the rubber.
"Mama!" They all cried for their moms, the brave, the bold and especially the cowardly. "Mama, I don't want to die here!"
And yep, yep… I remember thinking, if I could, I'd just take a gun to the Vortian side and I would shoot them all down for making our Empire's sons cry like this! And then, I remember during the early days of the occupation, I saw a Vortian mother. She had come to our camp, begging for any of the supplies we could offer.
Technically, we were peers now, fellow citizens. Vort was now Irken. And all Vortians were now just a few classifications below myself. I was a Pink Eyes with some extra height. But I knew if I was an inch or so shorter, I'd be no different than this Vortian woman then.
She begged and begged, the boys, I knew they wanted to just ice her right then and there. For months, we had encountered partisan attacks and bandit raids. There is no frontline in Skletz, every civilian Vortian could be a 'terrorist'. That is what we called them too. They were fighting for something, whatever it was, we'd never know. They lost and couldn't accept it maybe. Was it revenge?
I think about that Vortian lady from time to time now. I realized she must have been a mother, that she must have lost sons and daughters. But the hate still lives within me.
When I first came back, my youngest son asked me about the silver coffins. I asked him, in return, "How do you know about the silver coffins?"
"Tji from the academy! His dad drives Cargo C!"
Cargo C. Silver coffins. Casualty baskets. Whatever you want to call them.
"Tell Tji his dad shouldn't be talking about classified things so openly."
And to think! We were all keeping it a secret, the real condition of what was going on there at Vort, but others were just telling anyone! Including children!
"Mama, mama…" My little boy, my little Kan would ask. The youthful voice of this Smeet, it reminded me too much of the boys in agony at the hospital, calling out, dying, for one last comfort from their distant family… "Why do you use silver coffins?!"
In the end, I had to lie. No child should know that, when we die, we decay. Irkens have remarkable regenerative abilities, but when we truly die, we rot faster than any other species. Irkens are so eager to leave their bleached bones on battlefields as evidence our Empire existed and that it fought, that it was always willing to fight, no matter the sacrifice.
"Because, Kan," I would begin. "Silver keeps monsters away."
"What kind of monsters?"
"The Horned Ones!" After all, in his academy, they were telling him that the Vortians were a brutish, tribal society masquerading on the universal stage with a purely theatrical government.
"The Horned Ones eat the dead?!" Kan had a new conviction born in him, at that moment. "I will fight them for eating us! I promise!"
And for the last years of his smeethood, he marched around, swinging the wrench from the utility closet (that was mandatory in all Irken dwellings at the time) as if it were a sword or aiming it as if it were a rifle. "I'm a soldier! Look, mama!" He'd proclaim. And he would march, march, march, march around as loud as he could, wearing his dad's boots.
I wanted him to get into higher education, at least become an officer, so that he'd avoid any ground fighting. The strongest Irkens I ever met were the boys and ladies of the BAT17 and still, even with complete and utter victory, so many of them were turned into just… husks. Breathing, bleeding torsos… An image that I can never forget, no matter how often I program my PAK to wipe the memory. It is almost like my brain won't let me forget.
Kan did get into higher education! And then, dammit, he volunteered for Vort! They thought he was crazy. They told him, 'You're more a poet! You're more an intellectual. Join the Imperial Political Corps as a Political Officer! Let some uneducated Natural Born fool die! The Empire has already invested so much into you! Look how tall you are!' And he was a tall boy, taller than his dad, my husband.
But no, my Kan was stubborn. When he was born, he was skinny like a girl, more than a boy. I had nightmares about him enlisting. I knew what kind of culture we had in the service there. I was afraid he'd be beaten, for being fragile, for being pretty and kind of heart. He sent me messages that assured me that he was fine, that he got along with everyone.
And I could never imagine my Kan, my little but tall, scrawny Kan, would be shooting people over there. He lied and told me he was a part of the Garrison on Trillia, but my husband was a spice merchant and before he was born, I went to Trillia many times. He'd always get some detail wrong. Back then, Trillia was the only place to get really red pepper flakes.
But on Vort, they have green flakes. And he would always message me, saying that dad would love the green flakes! He almost had me fooled, but I knew he was on Vort. I didn't know until he was killed, that he was just outside Nolit, a really damnable desert terrain that was used originally for Orbital-Bunker-Buster tests during the mutual defense-pact days.
The other mothers and I did not want to believe it. But one day, a dozen or so officers arrived at our home ship. When we saw them, we ran, hid away in our dwellings. We kept telling ourselves that, if we didn't hear it, that maybe we would be safe.
The first time I saw the silver coffin, I was surprised that it wasn't big enough. My boy was tall. Tall enough to get a free education. I knew he was not in there! I asked to open it, but they told me it was welded shut.
"You bastards!" I banged against their chest and all their war medals clanged. "My son is dead and you are alive! Where were you? I was at Skletz! I saw what happened there. I know my son is in pieces in there! But how do I know it is him? The coffin isn't big enough, dammit, I know! You know how many of our boys I scooped up like soup and tossed in those silver coffins?!"
I talked to the other mothers and their stories were all the same.
"I saw the officers and ran!"
"Yes, yes, I got the coffin. My daughter was a big girl. It took five officers to bring it up to my floor!"
"I nearly jumped into the galley from the seventh deck! I wanted to die. I have no one now. First my husband on Trillia, but now my only girl? Who do I have? A pension?"
"They tossed what they could find of him inside the coffin, like a bunch of junk! I heard him sloshing inside! I asked how long he had been in there and they all got pissed! I am the one who should be pissed! They all have blood on their hands, Vortian blood, Trillen blood, my boy's blood… Why do they live but I'm the one who has to grieve? No one will remember my hero. But they will pay themselves well and live in luxury lofts in the Fleet!"
"My boy… his coffin wasn't even silver! It was painted silver and some cheap alloy had already dented! Little white worms, maggots poured from it. I managed to open it up and he was just a chunk of meat! He was an Orbital-Shocktrooper for 13 years! And this is how they repay his service!"
And just like that, I find myself hating Vortians again. Sometimes, I see them in public and we have an eye-to-eye. Deep down, I know they lost their kids too. But we both stare at each other, fantasizing about shooting each other.
We both have one thing in common, we see each other as inferior."
"IAH"
Neboi, Conscript
"I hate it here.
But it is my moral obligation to be here. I am trying to get a T-66. Everyone is. It is the classification code for an active service discharge, but under honourable conditions. In other words, it's an injury that isn't terrible enough to be considered a maiming, but enough to go home for good.
If you lose a full limb and you survive, you get brought to the reanimation-ward at a special hospital in the occupation zone. They give you augments, prosthetics, turn you into more of a killing machine than a person. Then you keep fighting Vortian bandits until nothing organic is left of you.
The only way to get a T-66 is to get some blood infections or a head injury. Something that can't be replaced with something better. For many of us, the only way is a STI. And luckily, there are plenty of Trillen whores for sale at every market and military base on Vort. No one dares touch the Horned Ones', we don't know if what they have is survivable. But the Trillen? All the diseases they carry, Irkens gave it to them.
Every night, I hire one of the Trillen ladies and I can't bring myself to fuck them. I want to make myself sick, so I can go home, true. I'm one of the last Natural Born Irkens alive and I have a reputation to uphold, I guess. The clones think all we do is fuck and smoke and drink and fight. But no, we also die a lot easier. I don't want to die.
These Trillen girls look at me with complete sadness in their eyes. I can't bring myself to be aroused by anything. I just feel like a monster.
When I first arrived, I came in a crisp uniform. I was Neboi "the Newboy". The bullying began immediately. My dress uniform was stolen and my combat fatigues were gifted to an "Oldboy". An Oldboy was a late term conscript. You do 18 months of hell on this stupid fucking planet and if you are lucky enough to make it to the end, you go home. With medals and all. But your uniform is often completely torn up. So your boys rob the "Newboys", so the OBs can go home to their friends and family looking sharp, clean.
Us Irkens of Average Height (IAH) are the herd animal of the Empire. We nobly die and fight for the Empire, this is true, but only because we have to. We are the ultimate herd mentality. When I first arrived, they beat and robbed me and now I beat and rob the Newboys. In two months, I will be an Oldboy. I only have six more months here total left.
After the war, I don't know what I will do. We've been occupying Vort for ten years now? Is that right? It's officially over, even the insurgency. Yet, we still are out here dying. There is always something going on here.
When I get out? I am going to Foodcourtia. I have saved a lot of monies. I am going to eat my fill. Here, everything good and decent was stolen from me. As an OB, I can finally steal back for myself from the Newboys. I don't want any of this shit the clones are eating. The Natural Borns have the best food of us all, but none of this is food to me. It's sawdust and plastic, no matter what I eat. I hate it all.
I am going to get a crunchy burrito at Foodcourtia. Extra sour cream, extra nacho cheese, yeah. Just like that. Right. Extra crispy potatoes. Extra crunchy chicken. Some lettuce, too. The lettuce is important.
Or no, maybe I will get a spicy chicken sandwich. Tomato, lettuce, mayo. Yeah. Dip it into a large chili with cheese and onions, with a big Dr Suck on the side.
Can you tell I'm hungry? Out here, just outside Outpost Blurto, we're hungry all the day. Twenty men on a combat patrol share the same five bowls. We sweat so much on our patrols, we are glistening like morning dew back on Trillia. I thought I was going to go to Trillia when I was first mobilized. Even in Basic Training, they lied and said we were going to be a part of the "Imperial Irken Space Border Strengthening Operations".
We landed in Trillia, initially. Then they brought us to the nicest barracks I've ever seen. But already, there was a problem. All I saw were officers. We had a truly grand meal and the officers were all overly nice with us. We were eating so good that day, dammit. I don't think I will ever be happy again until I eat like that again.
Coconut shrimp and spicy beef skewers. Rice, noodles. Pizza! All of these handsome officer men, talking to me? Eating a double-stacked burger? With me? I felt like one hell of a lucky guy. I thought, damn, am I even going to get laid tonight? I wonder what being a barracks-bitch pays for? I heard some lads and ladies on Trillia sell themselves to the officers just as often as the Trillens do. And at the worst, Newboy conscripts end up building summer homes for the officers on Trillia and don't even have to show up for live-fire training on the weekends!
I was caught up in it all, thinking I'd be getting dick by some Tallers for once. Instead, the officer suddenly started feeding us alcohol. I knew this was where it was going to get bad. Apart of it was almost kinky and exciting, I was thinking, "am I going to get taken advantage of? I can fight them off! I can't show I'm too willing-" and then…
They told us we were headed to Vort. They got us. They had softened us up, got us plump on food and then drunk on Imperial Cherry-Brandy, so we couldn't say shit when they gave us these new orders!
You know, before this war, I was a handsome guy. I had guys, girls, all sorts of Irkens on the spectrum. I used to get laid all the time, fight, got scars from both! On my back and face… and now?
I can't even get it up.
I hear others bang Trillens next door in the barracks, but the moans, cries and yelps remind me of the things you hear after a skirmish beyond the wire.
I'm an IAH. We all literally got fucked by life, from the jump, by just a few inches of difference. My brother is a full inch taller and he's a damned Orbital-Drop instructor! How fair is that?
That being said, I do love my friends here. I can't bear seeing them sick, seeing them die. Back home, our girls and boys are all getting laid without us. But it's fine, we're all cheating here too, it seems. There is no dignity or loyalty anymore once you are on this planet.
I hate it here. I'm hungry. And just the other day, we were aboard a soft-drop cruiser with the Air Cavalry. We were going to help them do a raid on a high-rise complex called the Spire.
The Spire was revealed to be an operational center for a bunch of Horned Ones. These bandits never give up. It was actually a rogue-radio-broadcast station built into the old high rise apartments. They were lofts for the Vortian elite, the very same political commissars that were putting many of their own kind in cells hundreds of meters below the cities. Down there was a hive of counter-civilization that had risen up to fight the new oppressor, us Irkens.
They crawled from their little prisons and now were at the top of life, living in the very same lofts of their oppressors. And what do they do? How do they thank us Irkens for liberating them? By playing whatever nonsense, 'Voice of the Revolution' shit they spew on those pirate-channels!
We splattered most of the occupants on the top floors with fire from our transports. They even opened up the hull hatch and let us engage freely with our rifles.
I'm like an evil spirit, conjured from a lamp. In the civilian world back on Irk, you could rub me the right way and I'd do whatever you wanted. But here? I am a genie enslaved to the Irken Imperial Army and they give me the order to shoot - of course, I do! What else am I to do?
I have three wishes of my own, however!
One, to never have to see another fellow Irken die!
Two, to kill another dozen Horned Ones before I die!
Three, to find something good to eat once it's all over.
That was what was going through my mind as I was laying down accurate fire in the dwellings of my sworn enemy. If the Horned Ones had just accepted their lot in life, appreciated our liberation, then we wouldn't be in their fucking country, on their shitty home, blowing them to pieces!
The scum fought back and even managed to shoot one of our transports down. We withdrew briefly, only to whip around and more or less, crash land our asses right into one of the luxury lofts. Our ship's front had destroyed everything in the room but a single mirror.
When I dismounted the aircraft and scanned the room for hostiles, I spotted myself in the mirror. Who the hell was this guy staring back at me? With this steel-plate across my mouth, this combat helmet that was too tight and hurt my antennae, with these large gauntlets on my arms with grenade-projectors and integrated flamethrowers?
I didn't recognize myself at all. The way I held my rifle, the way I tucked it close. The distance in my eyes said a fortune about how wealthy in spirit I was, and brother, I was really fucking poor.
Had I programmed my PAK to erase who I was before? I think so. Everything that made me unique and myself was gone. My moral obligation, my service in the Irken Imperial Army, had robbed me of my soul. My personality, my unique looks, all gone. Now everyone had scars, everyone knew how to get laid and got it often, everyone had my vices of drinking and smoking… but we also all lost all joy for living.
Room by room, we flipped the Spire inside out. Shot so many people that day. They shot us first, the bastards! Sure, we barged in and blew the shit out of them, but they were here and they were enemies! They incriminated themselves. We were always told that if we did not fight the Horned Ones at their home, we would be fighting them at our own home. Irk had so many Resisty attacks ongoing when I grew up, I didn't even realize I hated them until I got here.
But now? I enter a loft and there is a Horned One with his wife. Both are nude in bed. Dazed. They barely know what is going on. I am aiming at the man and telling him to just stay there. We weren't there to end all of their lives. We knew that some of these people were sound engineers being held against their will to operate the guerilla broadcast.
And what does he do? The idiot reaches for a pistol at his bedside! To think, I was close to giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I iced him immediately. And as parts of the skull, horns and all, hit the wall, his wife shrieks.
And she is screaming, covered in his blood and I realize… I am in their home, in their room and I just shot a man defending his woman. What kind of man am I? I don't know anymore.
But then, the bitch grabbed for the same pistol, leaning over her bloodied, dead husband and then I cleaved her head off too! With my rifle, of course. I don't have the heart to chop off heads or horns like the other guys.
I walked out with a sad ass look on my face. So pale, I must have looked blue. So much blood had splattered me, specced me. I looked like I was the victim. The other guys are going around, sawing off the horns. Trophies. They'll make them into ornaments or drinking cups.
These operations always end like this. Every day for the last year.
Someone hands me a grilled cheese sandwich. They just made it in one of the loft kitchens. I look around the rooms and realize, no matter how much money I made after the war, I will never have anything half as good as this.
I bite into the sandwich and it's good.
When I get out of here, I'm going to Foodcourtia. I promise you that!
"AO"
Yikarlak, Pilot
"I didn't serve during the occupation. I was a relic from the Old Empire by the time I volunteered for Vort. I consider myself a veteran of the original Six Hour War. (SHW)
Vortians bury themselves in an interesting way. And by that, I mean that Irkens bury them the wrong way, that is how I know. The Horned Ones mark their graves with their own horns. The more long-lived a Vortian was, the better their final resting place. The first time I saw a Vortian cemetery was when I was once their allies.
During the mutual defense pact, they had a lot of casualties, partaking in experimental combat-craft runs that often resulted in less than satisfactory results. The combat crafts were too fast and often, the pilots would pass out and crash. From there, they experimented with adrenaline and even drugs like 'awareness-boosters' to keep them awake, only most of them would overdose or die from their hearts exploding.
Irken pilots refused to test what would become the Spittle Runner. Which is now the smallest, most accessible and mass produced ship the Empire produces. Invaders have made it famous.
But yeah, the first runs were all done on Vortian time, budget and blood. They would bury their men up straight. As if, in death, they were still in a position of attention. Their horns were more identifiable than any name. By the end of the tests, I saw every variation of horn a Vortian could possibly have.
After the Six Hour War, I saw nothing but mass graves. Vortians were stacked horizontally in tight trenches and buried, often without their horns. Monies were useless during the occupation era, apparently, soon after. Vortian horns were the only currency worth bartering. Everyone back home wanted a Horned Ones' Horns. As if we hadn't looted them enough.
The war itself, I put a lot of notches on my ship. Really, I did. I thought I was too old to keep up with those damn near genius Vortian aviators. In the end, their military had already collapsed long before we were fighting them.
The defense-pact was a necessity for the Vortians. They had the hardware and software to fight the Planet Jackers, but the government of Vort was wildly unpopular. They had no manpower as a result, for it was a volunteer army and conscription would be met without right coup, revolt and mayhem. We all have to remember that some Horned Ones actually collaborated with us from the beginning, as if we were truly liberators from the regime that had put their own people into the 'basement-prisons' beneath cities. Civilization built on a literal slave force of prisoners. Vortians were more alike to us than we'd ever begin to realize.
In return for sharing the technological advancements, we'd provide sizable garrisons and we'd fly with them. They had amazing pilots, but all they knew were formations. Us Irkens had a seemingly unlimited supply of space-battle and low-orbit veteraned Named Aces.
But I was a Ground-Support Aviator with the moniker of 'Flipass'. Why? Because I did everything backwards. If you told me to escort a bomber to an enemy city, I'd have wiped out all the combatants in the city from above just to escort the bomber out of the Area of Operation. (AO)
I had a very wide berth for the operation during the Six Hour War. They told me to not just neutralize ground assets and anti-air emplacements, but to 'bring the war to the people'. Normally, I never ask too many questions about orders. But my flight-commander reiterated it more clearly as 'let those that flee suffer'.
In my AO, everyone was an enemy combatant. Was it true? Not likely, I knew the Horned Ones well and while many of them had a fight in them, they were fairly conservative people. Family before nation, that sort of thing. Their government tried to enforce the nation before the family, but it didn't work.
Most of the Vortian fleet above Skletz bugged out and completely abandoned their own people to die. But they also took down a lot of our transports. We don't ever talk about it openly, but it was single handedly one of our largest combat losses in the entire war.
And to this day, Skletz is nothing but endless banditry. But back then, there was so much chaos, because the Horned Ones opened the underground cages! And left behind entire depots! Vortian criminals, the hardest of the hard, flooded the streets and were pillaging and raping their own people. I remember thinking, 'are they so selfish, they rather ravage their own home before we do? Do they really think we want their home in that way too?'
I erroneously thought that no Irken would touch any of the Horned Ones, as it was considered fraternization with the enemy populace. I knew, as an officer, Trillia was basically a resort planet built on fornication and smuggling, but here? Nowadays, I know some other retirees married to Horned Ones. I will never get it. But, alas, my tastes were always for Trillen.
We were told that Vort was a necessary ally, but one day they would be a great enemy. This entire war was a preliminary strike. At the top, the Imperial Irken High Command claimed to have intel that fingered the Horned Ones as traitors. In turn for amnesty from the Planet Jackers, they would ambush our barracks in the night before our Unification Day parade. Our most sacred holiday of heroes.
So we were hitting them first. It was as simple as that. Of course it wasn't the truth, but frankly, I think nowadays and especially then, Irkens care more about pride than the truth.
Convoys in the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, were fleeing what was happening in Skletz. Among them, the remnant Vortian Defense Force were orchestrating the entire effort. It was impossible for those guys, who had just lost their supply hubs, logistics centers and air support, orbital support… to even fight back, but they were trying to evacuate an entire city. The fourth largest on Vort.
Everyone in the AO was considered an enemy. And when I am flying my AO, I choose who I engage and who I don't. I decided to engage everyone. I would bring Vort liberation from their oppressors, I would chase down and fly above the graves of those who abandoned their own in Skletz, but for now, Skletz would be the sacrifice that ends the war.
It was called the Skletz Blitz for a reason.
My co-pilot at the time was Flitsel. He said it best. "One third of the city is our quick-reaction field hospital. Another third are all combatants. And the final third are all fleeing civies!"
"What do you think?" I asked.
"I think this will be too easy! Poor bastards!"
We had orders not to hit the infrastructure too hard. When you create a city of rubble and scrap, it actually provides a lot of cover and concealment to insurgents. We, somehow, even then knew that the Vortians were going to be fighting us for years to come, just not conventionally.
So we were spitting down heavy fire, sometimes literally, upon all the transport vehicles and we shot down every civilian craft taking off with refugees we spotted. The Vortian Defense Force assets had no adequate AA left to shoot us down and much of their combat vehicles had been rendered inoperational by drones, that flew above Skletz, that rained down air-bursts of armour-shredding shrapnel.
Of all things I expected, I did not expect to be engaged. I saw, of all things, experimental Spittle Runners flying at us! These were the pilots I was overseeing, former allies just weeks ago, now taking to the skies to fight us and to try and assist the evac! What a wild thought, I hadn't gotten a chance to fight a near-peer in a long time. Trillens didn't have an air force, after all.
Flitsel was completely elated. "We got 'em! Keep maneuvering, let's see how far they can push those crafts before they pass out!"
We knew of the fatal flaw in their aviation equipment, we just needed to coerce them into failure. That was all we were doing here. Vort was doomed to fail anyways, we were just forcing the inevitable upon them for a faster rebuilding effort later. 'Pro-Active Re-Development'.
We managed to shoot them all down, except for one. Someone who had swooped in from high altitude, a Spittle Runner with orange markings. He blasted through my canopy and completely toasted Flitsel.
"I don't feel so good, man!" Were his last words. His cockpit filled with fire and the more oxygen that fed into it from the top breach just turned him to ash in minutes. My own altitude stalled on my retreat and… now I just started to fall.
I glanced back and the orange Spittle Runner had crashed into one of the nearest buildings. Some high-rise for the Horned Ones' rich, so they could look down on the poor, literally and figuratively. I laughed! No doubt, the pilot had passed out at terminal speed and he crashed.
But now, I was the one soon to crash. And I did. My Sky-Slicer now tore up the steel-plated street just a few blocks away from where our transport ships had crashed. By some miraculous miracle, my S-S didn't explode, but the fuelant had sparked inside the engine compartment and it was soon to blow up if I didn't get out of it quick enough.
My bubble canopy opened and I was sure to grab my crash-landing survival kit before I started to fang it toward some sturdy architecture. Some of these Horned One homes were so absurd to look at, I couldn't tell if they were homes or toilets. Regardless, my Sky-Slicer proudly announced my presence to the local hostiles by finally exploding. Shrapnel peppered the building next to me and knocked out all the windows. Spare munitions, which now roasted in the fiery husk of steel, began to pop off in random directions.
My survival kit had a small, close-quarters submachine gun and a few hand grenades. What a joke. I had two full mags and three whole impact-grenades. And worse yet, the locals had come to finally greet me.
I had plenty of training for this very scenario, but the idea I'd ever actually be in it? Ludicrous. Well, everything changes in war. And rather than a heroic last stand, I had this screaming desire to live.
I stepped into the streets and saw all sorts of organic litter. The body of the Horned Ones' were a dreaded sight. So many were shredded by the shrapnel-drones' airburst attacks. Strips and strips of flesh scattered over the ground and destroyed appliance stores. Stores that would be looted bare once the rest of the Irken forces arrived. Horned Ones had a very impressive consumer market and it was all going to be ours.
With some partisans literally tracing a direct path to me from my boot prints, coated in various fluids from the corpse-carrion I trotted through but also various fuels from my Sky-Slicer, which practically urinated it out from its many hull-breaches before it all caught fire and exploded… I had no choice but to scare them off from an advantageous position.
I hopped into a clothing store. What remained of one. Some bodies, all young girls, mothers and daughters, no doubt – were huddled behind a counter. The shrapnel got them all. And now, among their corpses, I hid beneath walls of horn-jewelry and ornaments. Glass was everywhere, eager to bite into any flesh of mine that was exposed through the numerous holes in my pilot uniform and gloves.
Us Pilots, we wear a visor over our eyes that transmit real-time feedback via thousands of optical cameras on the outside of the headset itself. As a result, you can't see our eyes and I often forgot I wore it. With some blood on my teeth, I must have looked like a fierce beast of war. The whole time, I had clenched my teeth and gripped my gun. Ignored the shrapnel shard of hull-steel that pierced my side.
The Horned Ones, they were actually following my blood the entire time. If they did not know the difference between Vortian and Irken blood before, they did now. And I had led them straight to me. X marks the spot. They would have been able to find me even on a paper map.
There was only a party of five. I peeked from cover and started to engage them. Expert tugs of the trigger allowed me to fire in some controlled bursts at them. The noise alone made two flee, but I caught one in the chest. He didn't even know he was dead before he hit the ground.
The remaining two pushed into the shop, stumbled over the corpses and all the glass, they did. Horned Ones have strong legs, so them kicking everything over was no exaggeration. I bet they could have kicked the walls down and had the roof collapse on my head, if it wouldn't have crushed them too.
I fumbled trying to insert a new magazine into the gun. My gloved hands were slick with my own blood and I was panting, cursing, all through clenched teeth somehow. Spit and blood ran past my lip.
That is when I just gave up and grasped a grenade. With these types, all you had to do was grasp the cylinder base and twist it once or twice. An audible click from inside proved that it was prepared for detonation upon impact. I got out of cover just long enough to throw it square at one of their chests.
It was a dud. It just hit him in the torso and fell to the ground with a thud! It scared the shit out of the two of them, because they ran out of the store so quickly, they scraped their horns on the mangled door-frame on the way out!
This was why Irkens needed Vortian equipment, dammit! I thought at first. But I inspected my grenades and realized that I had stuffed my own survival kit with a real gun, but dummy grenades for training! This is what happens when you get too used to the peace-times!
I wanted to beat my own head in for the stupid mistake, but the two partisans had fled. No doubt, they met with the other two who had the sense to run and they were wiped out in the sweeping operation by the Elite soon after I had exfilled. The very same Elites that would pull me out of the AO. An hour before Vort surrendered unconditionally.
But as I prepared to leave the shop, I spotted one of the bodies from earlier moving. A young Vortian girl. She sat up and looked up at me rather pathetically. For some reason, she thought I was already gone. For a moment, I was invisible to her. Maybe she was just shocked? In a daze? War does something odd to the youthful civilians. An Irken would be able to tolerate, but the Horned Ones? They were not as ferocious as the propaganda had painted them to be.
Her horns were broken and her left arm was just hanging on by a strip of flesh. Shredded by shrapnel from the Skletz Blitz itself. By the time I had fully assessed the extent of her injuries, she had spotted me. And her eyes widened. But she remained quiet.
And she just stared and stared. I wondered if her skin was always this unnaturally white. It was like snow, even beneath the grim of ordinance-dust and hellfire and bloody abrasions from our terrible weapons.
Vortians have some advanced technology, but their war-equipment was precise. Despite the Horned Ones' almost artistic distaste for the rights of their own people, they did create weapons to minimize unnecessary casualties. When they moved planet to planet, renaming each one Vort this, Vort that. Seven, eight, nine, whatever… they always sought ones without populations.
They were not an Empire. So we didn't think of them as a peer or a threat. They merely existed. But we did appreciate that they were not like the Planet Jackers, who sacrificed entire worlds to their dying sun. I had the smallest appreciation for the Horned Ones, that no amount of indoctrination could tear away from me.
But now, this girl before me, she was about to scream. I could just feel it. I knew it. I told her to shush, that I wasn't going to hurt her. Even though I had likely been one of the many pilots that severely punished the civilian populace for trying to flee the city without a fight, for not standing their ground. But I really, truly, was not going to hurt her.
And when I stepped back, she only heard the sound of my boot against the glass. She shrieked. And then, I had no choice. This time, I found it all too easy to insert a new magazine into my gun and I shot her with a single round. Between the horns, right through the head. And it is not like the war-flicks of the Unification War, where they just limply fall over and die.
No, she chased her brain for a few steps as the rest of her skull fell apart. And from the back room, more, even younger Horned Ones emerged. I didn't have the heart to shoot them, because they were being quiet. So quiet.
They observed with a sort of ignorance and curiosity that I only had when I was a Smeet. They knew nothing of death and tried to scoop their sister's brains back into the opened basket that was her head, as if she was still alive.
After the war, I gave my report on my personal experience with the Spittle Runner prototype. Flitsel's father, a Fleet Admiral named Nakat, did not even ask about his son or his last words. All he asked was, "It engaged you? It shot you down?"
"Absolutely yes, sir, that is what happened."
"And it crashed?"
"The Horned One passed out, just like during the tests, I assumed."
"Well then, our PAKs will ensure it doesn't happen to our pilots."
And that was the end of that. Fleet Admiral Nakat ensured that the Spittle Runner would be the primary small-combat and recon aviation vessel of the Irken Armada. Years later, he brainstormed the Invader program. Interestingly, the confidential codename for the project was named after Flitsel."
"OG"
Yeni, Elite
"The cloned generation doesn't know anything. They have so many privileges now. Genetic augments, born and immediate PAK'd. They have no sense of loss or duty. All they do is stuff themselves full and rely on the Invaders. Back in my time, we fought the wars with our hands, our own hearts. Everything the new generation? We paid for their privileges in blood.
They have the audacity to ask me when I first got my PAK, as if it was any of their business. My unit in the Elites were among the first to get fully PAK'd. We always joked that we were 100% Irkens but our PAKs had enough Trillen rare elements that we effectively held the entire colony on our backs.
That burden became literal with Vort, having to carry an entire colony on your back. I am still in the Elites to this day, the Orange and Greens. I'm an OG in many ways. I fought in the Six Hour War too. Claimed many heads that day and we lost a lot of our lads too.
I was always a tall lady. I could have been anything and anyone. I could have been in the political sector, the agricultural sector, logistics even – but I wanted to do something worthy of boasting. I was well read growing up, so I guess that I was influenced by a patriotic upbringing from my parents but also what they let me read.
The clones today are just born into it. Their helmets read "Cloned to Kill", scribbled in marker on the side and somehow, it is true. But I have an inheritance that was earned. They can't take that away from me.
I was in the occupation forces too, we raided bandit operations from our little tactical operation center in the middle of Ukan. The whole region had one of the most violent rebel groups the Horned Ones ever had. The Resisty were nothing compared to the Ukan Bandits. We called them Ghosts for a reason.
How do you fight an army that is invisible? Mystical, even? We had trouble finding intel that wasn't just pure modern folklore and legend. Whenever we did encounter the Ukan, we made sure they went away limping with losses. But they got us good a few times.
They are devoted to the idea of Vortian independence. They even have fighters on Trillia, knowing that Trillia is a large depot for our supplies when transferring freshbloods to Vort. I fought them for a decade and I don't think I will ever be the same. They say the occupation is over and we are downsizing our presence here, that we are being moved to garrison-reserves. Is it really all over? I don't believe it, I don't want to believe it.
In the last ten years, I only took leave once, for a period of one month. When I came back, my mother said I looked so skinny, that I was gaunt. I told her it was because we are always running, always training. We are eating well, but when you fight, the weight just falls right off.
I spent most of my time in my room, looking at a framed picture. My dad died in combat-action under unknown circumstances in the Frudelant System, on the Outer Rim, just when I was a Smeet still. He was an Elite. I don't even know who we have out there, that we are fighting? For all I know, he fell into a river during terrain-training and was washed away.
No, please erase that. Let the dead have their legends and let the living have their glory.
Growing up, I couldn't do anything without my dad. My mother would have to retrieve the photo from the wall and I would play with my little soldier toys around it. It was at the end of our table when we ate. When I graduated from the academy, dad was there in his formal uniform, staring with those eyes with no light behind them. I am sure he loved me, however. All I know is that my best memory of him, that wasn't this framed photo, was of a silver coffin.
Clones don't have mothers or fathers, what do they know? What do they have to lose? I don't belong in society around them. We couldn't be more different. We are nothing alike.
I wonder if they will really send me home soon. I don't know if I can take it, honestly. Fighting for years on end is terrible, but I know who my friends are here. Back home, no one will spare a ration ticket. What kind of friends are these? Civilians and clones are the worst scum of all.
I don't want to go home. This war is my home. Without it, you might as well just seal me up in a silver coffin. Tell my mother that, that is the only way I will come home, just like dad! In a silver coffin!