But he is already off, running to the shields. A few others are doing the same. Peter drops the bloody cord, perplexed. Why are they fleeing? There is no valor, no glory in it. The rear Humvees swoop around them as if directing cattle while the officers and Party Reps yell. One fleeing man is charged by a Humvee and run over. “No cowards and deserters!” says a Commissar, it’s Herus over a microphone. “Those humans in the city need you! Earth needs you!”
Dirt flies about from the shelling, and Peter squints hard to try and find Ray through the obstruction. As the smoke and dirt clear for a moment Peter watches as Herus aims his revolver from the top of a command Humvee at Ray. Ray runs with his arms thrown in the air. Herus fires, the slug torpedoes straight through Ray exiting out his back. Ray collapses against the ground, his legs bending over him. The events are concealed again by landing Herculean shells, and Peter moves quickly back to where his cover was.
A coward’s way out nonetheless. He deserved it.
Peter makes it back to the ruined Goliath, and is greeted by his company and a few other marines. They listen as their artillery fires back at the Herculeans.
“What are we supposed to fucking do!” says Isaac. His voice is angry. Angry that they are stuck here when they would rather go out and fight.
“I don’t know. It’s pissing me off!” says Vance. “Let me out of here so I can get back at them!”
Confusion takes over.
“What do we do?” says Peter.
“Going out, we will surely die,” mentions a marine not of their outfit. “But staying here feels wrong. I want to fight!”
“Kill them all!” say the marines in agreement.
The salvos obliterate their sanity, making them unbearably anxious. When will they be able to leave and kill again? One of the marines goes hysterical, and chooses to crawl out of the hole, to only be flung back in mutilated from a landing shell.
“Jesus!” says Peter.
“We can wait a little longer,” says Isaac.
Another marine slides into the Goliath covered in black smut and dried blood. It is Blake. “We are creating a smoke screen then advancing through it at the city,” he says. They look at him dazed, and before anyone can reply he is already out of the hole.
“Could have used his earpiece,” says Peter.
The earthshaking shelling continues, and the group moans with boredom and angst. “How are we supposed to see the smoke with all these explosions and shit?” says Vance.
“Advance!” says a very loud voice, projected via microphone that echoes over the field. “We have taken out most of their defenses. Free the city boys!”
“That’s how,” says Isaac.
Vance peeks out of their shelter. “The smoke screen is up,” he says relieved.
They eagerly exit the crater, and form up with the moving lines. The field is covered in hundreds of comrades that crawl and scream for help. They grab on to each other, some raising their arms into the air to signal they are still alive.
“Leave them brothers!” says a Party Rep. “They have served their purpose, now finish serving yours. Onto the breach! Onto the city!”
“C’mon marines! On me!” says the familiar voice of Blake. Peter’s group redirects themselves, and moves to catch up.
Peter has to invest caution into each step as they go, for he has to doge and leap over the endless dead and dying. They form into circles of twitching limbs begging that someone would stop. That someone would aid them. Again and again, the Commissars order them to drop the casualties. These injured brothers have finished their duty, but they still had theirs. Their mission is to liberate the city, and the thousands of people in there being oppressed by the Herculeans.
Peter pauses before one injured marine, confused at the situation. His face is horribly mutilated and he’s trying to kill himself with a knife. The marine grabs onto his leg cuff, the knife shaking in his other hand. Isaac tugs on Peter, then pulls harder till he is free and they move on once more. Peter glances back over his shoulder; the marine looks up with arms raised at a Party Rep towering over. The Rep aims a pistol at his head. The scene disappears as more soldiers charge with the advance.
“But surely the Party knows better,” mutters Peter to himself.
Absolutely, they do.
X
Herculean shelling recommences but in lighter volumes. Blake has disappeared in the new push, but Peter and his company know where to meet from the continued shouting of nearby Party Reps. “We’re forming up at a trench on the outskirts of the city brothers, where we will conquer it!” shouts a microphone.
Herus roars another Creed chant with fellow Party Reps and Peter joins in vigorously with his brothers. Their voices precede their boots as they move across the field of the brave dead warriors that blazed the trail before them.
The rear howitzers and Fleet orbital strikes continue to pommel the cityscape. The smoke screen is massive, and the additional artillery fire helps add cover to it by displacing earth that rises and intertwines with the smoke. Herculean plasma zips randomly though the white wall at the gathering forces, but is nowhere near as accurate as it was when they had full visibility earlier.
“Look out!” says a soldier, breaking the most recent chant they were singing. A shell whistles over Peter and instinctively he drops to hit the dirt, but actually ends up tripping. The explosion erupts nearby shaking his body. Peter struggles to get up for he has—
I can’t see!
He tries lifting his head but it won’t budge. The helmet strap is stuck on something. Trying harder he is able to elevate himself somewhat out of the object he face-planted. He moves his hand into the gap he created to help wipe the visor clear.
What the fuck is on my face? That smell.
Peter’s head raises a little higher, his helmet buckle still stuck—
FUCK!
“Fuck! Fuck me! Help!” Raising his head with all the force he can muster, his helmet flies off and lands to the side of the corpse. He can now fully see the fallen marine in front of him that he face-planted. His eyes are bulged open and his tongue oozes blood from the mouth. A huge red gash runs across from his shoulder to his hip, where meshed up organs protrude out of his open cavity. His arms bend in a bizarre ninety degree angle and his hands twitch sporadically despite being dead.
“Shit man!” Vance is by his side.
Peter gags, and then throws up on the corpse, the vomit splattering down his chin and neck. “What the hell!” says Vance, “Why would you do that?” He looks away, burping, and spitting something out as well. Vance wipes his mouth, “Come on, get your shit and let’s go.”
Peter grabs his XM, rises to his knees, but falls again.
They’re all around me! Boots, endless boots running pass me. Go away! Just go away. Leave me alone.
Peter crawls forward away from the corpse, staring at the disfigured and burnt bodies around him. Their sacrifice to—
Stop it all, end it now! Stop the images. Stop the shouting. The explosions. The dying. They’re everywhere! Their bodies lie ripped and mutilated from the ordinance, burnt from plasma, limbs amputated from the blasts, legs and arms here, chunks of torsos there. Piled over each other with their ugly wounds that took their lives. Their flesh bruised into unnatural yellows and purples around the burns that have cauterized and formed into leathery looking rotting holes.
The injured, they crawl about searching for fleeting life, the unexpected appalling ferocity in their cries of agony and pain—I can’t block it out even if I ripped my ears off. They cover the landscape, dead and dying, some trying to hold their intestines in with their hands while others still attempt to reconnect limbs to where they were severed off, and the red streams, the red streams that trickle past my fingertips towards the craters where the blood collects into reservoirs of lost life. Why? Why!