Page 2 of Fated in A Time of War
I lag a bit behind, scanning the jagged skyline. The comms crackle. Interference. No surprise. Static’s heavy, makes every noise feel distant and underwater. Still, I’m not worried. The area’s dead. Intel says the nearest Ataxian unit was sighted three clicks north, and even that was two days ago. We’re here to poke around, maybe draw some fire, prove that there’s still something worth bombing.
It’s routine.
It's boring.
So I crack another joke, just to fill the silence. “Hey Tovak, bet you fifty creds I find a liquor stash before you do.”
“You’re on,” he calls back.
All of a sudden, the world ends.
A scream of light. A detonation that rips the sky in half. I don't even hear the blast, justfeelit—like my organs are trying to crawl out of my throat. The ground heaves. A shockwave punches through the street like a tidal wave. My HUD explodes with red. All channels light up—screaming, feedback, static.
Someone shouts a warning. I spin.
That’s when I see it.
A towering mech—ten meters tall, bristling with artillery and painted in Kru colors—rises from behind a shattered building. Its main cannon is already smoking.
My squad is gone.
Just like that.
Fire engulfs the street.
And I’m airborne.
I slam into the ground hard enough to knock the air out of me. My vision blinks white-hot. For a second, I don’t know which way is up. The crater I land in saves my life—deep enough to shield me from the worst of it, but shallow enough I still feel the heat from the blast chew the air like it's starving.
My ears ring. No, not ring—scream.High-pitched, brain-splitting. My HUD’s fuzzed out, a stuttering mess of corrupted data and broken feed. Static hisses like angry serpents in both ears. It takes a second for me to realize that the screams I’m hearing… they’re not just in my head.
They're real.
I push up on shaky arms, my gauntlets scraping across hot, jagged ferrocrete. My mouth tastes like blood and carbon. I spit, then instantly regret it—my lips are dry, cracked, and now burning.
I peek over the crater's edge.
Tanuki’s gone.
Where there was a formation—my formation—is just ash and cratered streets now. Charred limbs and scattered gear, some still smoldering. The mech stands like a goddamn reaper in the smoke, twelve meters tall, matte-black plating disrupted by streaks of red glowing heat from overworked joints. Its cannons still drip fire from the last salvo. It rotates, slow and deliberate, looking for stragglers. A loose panel on its right leg sparks—nothing else wrong with it. It's fine. Unstoppable.
My HUD flickers. One by one, squad vitals blink out. Tovak. Daxx. Gherin. One after the next. Gone.
I swallow the bile threatening to choke me and slide back into the hole, pressing flat, armor scraping stone. My breath comes short and fast. I’m a good soldier—better than most. But right now? I’m just another bastard trying not to die.
Then I hear it.
A wet, gurgling cough.
I raise my head.
Twenty meters across the street, someone’s dragging themselves forward—slow, deliberate, painful.
It’s Lakka.
Or what’sleftof him.
I scramble out of the crater before I even register the movement. My boots skid on debris. I crash hard beside him and instantly wish I hadn’t. My stomach lurches at the sight. His lower half is gone—just gone. From the ribs down, it’s all ruin and shrapnel and a smear of blood-soaked ash. His armor is cracked open like a tin can under pressure. I can see the twitch of organs inside. He’s trying to say something, but it comes out in a wheeze, a string of consonants that go nowhere.
