by M. J Kreyzer
Chapter 10
The soldiers marched down the canyon in standard formation. The basic Legionnaire infantry, the Knights, lead the squad in front and interspersed themselves throughout the group. To every Knight there was one specialty soldier, be it a Demolitionist, a Berserker, a Phantom, or the newly reinstated Skirmishers. Monoliths, Helldogs, and Nightwolves were normally reserved for situations where a violent encounter was an inevitable truth. But this was a simple supply train and the closest Darks were hundreds of miles away in Praemon. On the broad scale of things that was fairly close, however seeing as how Darks never ventured far beyond the borders of Praemon and the battlecruiser armadas held a tight perimeter it wasn’t much of a concern.
The soldiers held their guns loosely in front of them; there weren’t any dangers of which they were particularly concerned. The most dangerous wildlife in the area were Styklers and those never attacked anything that wasn’t biological. The tanks and armored vehicles scared them what with their metal exteriors and their mechanical noises.
The soldiers marched in squares that surrounded each vehicle, each square connecting to the next one and each side of each square consisted of three soldiers. That was thirty soldiers in all.
The brown canyon walls rose up high all around them. The trees leaned over the cliff as though intending to fall down on top of them at any given moment and barely allowed sight of the blue cloudy sky above. It was narrow, too; the Forge tank only allowed a few feet on each side for the soldiers to march.
Inside the Forge tank sat three operators and a Lieutenant, who sat back and tossed commands around at his men with an attitude that suggested complete apathy.
“Check for movement in the surrounding area and cross check it with all known Dark encampments.” He’d say lazily. “Keep thermals up and running and I want the particle cannons set at fifty percent power, selecting and destroying all targets between five feet and ten feet in height and a core body temperature between ninety five degrees and one hundred and one degrees. And make sure that… just forget it. You know what to do.”
The inside of the tank was dark, save for the bluish glow of the holographic touchscreens . There were no windows; all visuals of the outside world were visible through the fifteen cameras scattered across the exterior of the tank, those images projected on the glowing screens which concealed the better portion of the tank’s interior walls. Their faces blue beneath the glow of the screens the operators would respond with ‘affirmatives’ and ‘copy that’s and go about the mundane task of checking for dangerous things that weren’t there. The Lieutenant pulled out his hand radio and thumbed the transmit button.
“Sergeant I want you to run a routine check of the platoons ammo levels and make sure that their carrying a full loadout.”
There was a groan that was purposefully exaggerated. The voice was the deep grumble of a Berserker. “You kiddin’ me, Sarge? We been marchin’ ere for a good fo’ hours an’ you wan’ me to check the ammo levels? We aint even fired at nothin’ yet!”
The Lieutenant gave a bored sigh and replied. “We’ll do it around the next checkpoint. Just… just do what you normally do.”
The Berserker gave a quick ‘yessir’.
The Lieutenant tapped his hand on a nearby surface and sighed again. It seemed like the only think he could do for entertainment was sigh. He shook his head in surprise; he was so bored he actually thought that a slow release of air from his lungs would entertain him. He had to get out of this tank bad.
“Wait…” Said the operator sitting in front of the radar screen. “Wait… sir!”
The Lieutenant muttered a reply. “What.”
“Movement, sir. Just outside the exit of the canyon.”
The Lieutenant waved his hand. “Wildlife, Yansin. Probably some Stykler, Nandril or… or something. It couldn’t be-“
“It’s a man, sir.” The Operator interrupted.
The Lieutenant got to his feet and walked up behind the radar operator to peer over his shoulder at the screen. “Do we have a visual on him yet?” He said to the tank pilot.
“Not yet, sir. Initial scans show that he’s stopped at the exit of the canyon.”
The Lieutenant thought to himself and scratched his chin at which point he asked again, “Is there a possibility that there are others?”
The navigator shook his head. “Not a chance. I’m running a perimeter scan with a thirty mile radius. There isn’t another major life form in sight.”
“One person going out by themselves…” The Lieutenant said to himself. “Out here… How long until we can have a…”
The end of the canyon came into view. The Lieutenant tapped the pilot’s shoulder and pointed towards the figure on the screen. “Zoom and enhance. I want to know this guy.”
The man didn’t move. He just stood there. The Lieutenant got close to the screen and examined every detail of the man’s appearance.
He was a warrior; that much was certain. But by the looks of things he wasn’t a Dark. Dark armor, though ragtag and motley, possessed a very certain characteristic that couldn’t be mistaken. This man didn’t have that. He had a pure white sleeveless Razorback skin long coat that reached down to his lower calves and multi-buckle armored combat boots that rose almost to his knees. He had rough steel plated elbow guards that extended down into his leather forearm guards which tied in to his armored gauntlets. His shoulder pads were massive; the first piece of the shoulder pad made a gradual curve on each side of his head for neck protection and sloped down into a separate piece of the shoulder pad which was slightly smaller and finally one last piece of the shoulder pad which closed the end off. Each one connected to the previous piece by a rotating rivet which provided maximum range of motion. He had a thick leather belt which looked like a spinal support belt that connected all the main-body pieces of armor with leather straps that kept them in place. And behind his back the Lieutenant could see the point of a sword extending above the man’s left shoulder and its long hilt coming out from his lower right side. The Lieutenant was perplexed and apprehensive. There was no mistaking that this man was built for war. He pulled out his radio and contacted his Sergeant again.
“Sergeant, take two knights and two berserkers ahead with you. We seem to have a visitor.”
“You got it boss.” He replied.
The Lieutenant screwed up his eyes as he analyzed the figure. “Unless he’s some Dark that’s decided to buck the trend then… he couldn’t be. He looks so familiar though... That’s not Dark armor or Legionnaire armor. That’s entirely customized… And that sword has a handle built into the back of the upper blade… Used to put more leverage on the blade no doubt. Could he be one of the Enforcers? No… he couldn’t be. They’ve never been seen outside of the western hemisphere. Could just be a Nomad… but… Yansin, put in a call to command and send in a description of that man. I want to know what we’re looking at here.”
“Yessir.”
The Lieutenant watched as the Sergeant, two Knights and two Berserkers jogged ahead clad in their heavy white battle armor. Yansin was busy speaking to command, describing the man onscreen as he appeared exactly. The Lieutenant watched with interest as the Sergeant and his men surrounded the figure and stood there as the Sergeant spoke to him. The Lieutenant sighed as there seemed to be no immediate danger. He wasn’t pulling anything quick or fast. Probably just some nomad living in a cave somewhere nearby and was just assuring his claim over the territory. Not like it was his anyhow.
Yansin’s description was cut short by another voice that didn’t belong to the command operator. It was a stern, urgent voice. The voice of the commanding officer.
“Lieutenant, get into attack positions and surround that man. Take every necessary precau-“
“Wait, wait, wait!” The Lieutenant replied loudly, the sudden urgency catching him off guard. “Tell me what I’m dealing with here!”
“Get your every man you have and surround him at once!”
“YOU
TELL ME FIRST WHAT I’M DEALING WITH!”
No sooner did the Lieutenant scream that statement that he realized why the figure looked so familiar. The commanding officer confirmed his fears as his eyes went broad and white.
“It’s Luke Semprys!” The man yelled. “The man in the white long coat is Luke Semprys!”
The Lieutenant’s breath was pulled by icy hands from his chest. A tide of panic swept him up and he set his radio to transmit on all frequencies. “All units attack the man at the head of the canyon! I repeat, all men attack the…”
The Sergeant was dead, gutted from neck to naval and resting with a bloody gaping chest on the ground. Both Knights lay soaking in crimson puddles. The headless body of one Berserker lay twitching while Luke, his foot holding the head of the other Berserker in place, pulled his sword free from the top of the Berserkers’ head which had been cleft from forehead to chin. He rested his sword across his shoulders and walked calmly towards the tank. The Lieutenant scrambled for a weapon and screamed into his radio.
“ALL UNITS ATTACK! I REPEAT, ALL UNITS ATTACK!”
“The stabilizer, sir!” The pilot yelled as he calibrated the Forge tank for close range. “We need the stabilizer up front!”
“GET THE STABILIZER UP THERE N… NO! MOVE THE-“
A large glowing ball of energy flew towards them. The Forge tank took a violent explosive impact that knocked out all external visuals. The Lieutenant shrieked as the tank rocked jarringly backwards. “THE CAMERAS! THE CAMERAS! WHAT JUST HIT US!”
“An Elemental charger, sir!” The Navigator said. “We need that stabilizer!”
“I KNOW WHAT TO DO!” Yelled the Lieutenant. “DRIVE! DRIVE!”
“WE CANT!” The pilot replied with unrestrained fright. “THE DRIVETRAIN HAS GONE OFFLINE!”
The Lieutenant cursed and tried to calm his breathing. He was, after all, a commander in the First Legionnaire, the most respected and feared fighting force in the world.
The inside of the tank was quiet and dark. The Lieutenants credentials did nothing to comfort. They could hear only the faint sounds of battle outside. Dozens of high-powered weapons were being unloaded without discretion in a blazing chain of destruction. The yells of the soldiers outside were frenzied and hysterical. The Lieutenant could only imagine what hell was being unleashed outside. He had heard stories of Luke Semprys but Semprys was never known to be brutal or needlessly violent. The Lieutenant’s hard breaths turned to whimpers as less and less guns fired. Less men screamed. Then, quiet.
No sounds, no gunfire, but silence.
Only his hollow breaths, and the sharpened breaths of his operators, could be heard in the hollow metallic shell of the Forge Tank.
There was a resounding thud that impacted against the outside of the tank that caused all people in the tank to jump. There was a skittering, haphazard clambering of frightened hands and feet up the side of the tank. Two massive hands began pounding on the upper hatch. Everybody looked up in the darkness at where they knew the hatch to be. There was screaming.
“LET ME IN!” the voice cracked. “PLEASE! THEY’RE ALL DEAD! I DON’T… no… no, no, NO! PLEASE! STAY BACK! I DON’T WANT TO… NO! NO NO NO NO-“
The soldier screamed. The Lieutenant covered his mouth to keep himself from crying as he heard the man’s armor pried apart. There were wet tearing sounds as the man continued to scream in a high-pitched squeal, his arms and legs kicking and flopping against the outside of the tank in struggle.
“STOP! STOP!” He screamed.
There were thudding sounds all around the tank’s outer body as different objects were tossed away. They weren’t metallic though. They were the sounds of something softer.
“NO! PLEASE, NO!...NO… don’t…”
The screams faded to quiet pleading and soon, with the screams still echoing through the tank, they stopped and everything became quiet once more.
They were frozen where they were. The Lieutenant looked around the cockpit and back at the hatch. He tried to say something but words didn’t come out. He placed a fiercely shaking hand on a nearby surface to steady himself on his powerless legs. Slowly he began to regain composure. He took countless short, hyperventilated breaths and spoke back to his operator.
“Yansin.” He said with a squeak. He took another deep breath. “Yansin, send out a distress call to command. They can be on site within the hour with air support. And he can’t get through the outside shell of this tank.” The Lieutenant pointed a shaking finger towards the hatch. “The Forge tank body is reinforced with over five inches of solid-“
The hatch was ripped from its hinges and light flooded the cockpit. The Lieutenant screamed shrilly and cowered to the back corner of the tank. The operators huddled together and shivered. A shadow appeared in the center of the light and a man jumped through the hole on the beam of light, his white long coat floating in the rush of air and resting as he landed on the tank’s metal floor. He stood up, raised his enormous sword to rest it across his shoulders and looked around the cockpit through his black, circular glasses.
“Welcome to Slaughter Canyon.”
As soon as it was clear that Luke Semprys was acting alone and focusing his efforts on targeting members of the First Legionnaire, the Commune organized and unleashed an entire taskforce devoted to the bringing about of Luke’s death. Only an hour after the Legionnaire Command had lost contact with the supply train they deployed two full armadas made up of five battle cruisers each with a support group of twenty five Strikers and fifty Machbikes. Following the cruisers were several Legionnaire gunships and a swarm of Battlecrafts. Once the Cruisers had set up ridiculously fortified defense grid, the Battlecrafts set down at the head of the canyon and opened their side hatches. First Legionnaires of every type, Knights, Berserkers, Demolitionists, Helldogs, Monoliths, and Nightwolves, poured out en masse, each of the squads equipped with a stabilizer. Soldiers piloted Raze armor, carrying massive assault cannons even bigger than those of most Monoliths and running ground scans of the area. The soldiers approached the canyon but found that their comrades had stopped at its entrance. It didn’t take long for the soldiers to realize why nobody dared go inside.
On each side of the canyon the trees had been sharpened to a point, those points stained brown with the dried blood of the Berserkers that had been impaled upon them, the roughly hewn stakes running up through the smalls of their backs and emerging through their dislocated mouths. Beyond them strewn across the canyon floor and spattered across its walls were the dismembered and disemboweled Legionnaires that had comprised the rest of the convoy; twisted, mangled, bloody piles of flesh only recognizable due to the stained white armor that they wore. The Lieutenant’s head was set upon an antenna on the top of the smoldering Forge tank in an agonized expression. Written crudely in blood on the canyon wall were the words ‘The Dark Will Get You.”
For the first time that any of them had known, those soldiers of the First Legionnaire faltered.
Voices of their commanders echoed through their helmets, ordering them by threat of court martial to move ahead and investigate. They were apprehensive at first. Slowly, though, they began to file into the canyon, not speaking. They looked nervously around them, at the blood splashed walls, the twisted armor, the decimated Forge tank, and all looked on in awesome fear as they all saw what was once thought invincible reduced to such a disturbing and gory ruin. Those in Raze armor picked up pieces of vehicles in search of survivors and useful intelligence while the soldiers secured the area. They lined the tops of the canyon, swept the entire area and set up a grid of one Legionnaire for every hundred square feet. They ran thorough scans inside and out of the entire area in search of Luke. But he was nowhere to be found.
Luke had gotten all the information he needed. From the Forge Tank’s onboard computers he was able to get all the geographical information he could ask for. He knew where every Legionnaire camp in the hemisphere was located. He had long since abandoned the area that every friend and
ally of the Commune would refer fearfully to as Slaughter Canyon.
Entire companies of the First Legionnaire began to disappear without word, the only details of their demise being the mutilated and disfigured corpses of their members. Legionnaire outposts would be strong and functional in the night only to reappear as ashes the next morning. Production of stabilizers was increased many times over and it got to the point where almost every soldier in the region was equipped with a miniaturized personal stabilizer. When the missing squads were found or the shredded camps were combed the Legionnaires would find their comrades piled in crusty, maggoty heaps with a stack of stabilizers lying next to them. It was after those instances, the times when even their most effective tactics amounted to nothing, that the legend began to spread.
Tales of the man they had come to call ‘The Meat Grinder’, shortened by man to ‘The Grinder’ multiplied like a spawning virus; not everybody knew the name of Luke Semprys. In mess halls, in barracks, even in formation, the Legionnaire would relay the stories of the latest disappearances or the most recent slaughters, that constant retelling elevating Luke to levels he hadn’t anticipated. The idea of The Grinder was no longer that of a man; it was one of a demon, a spirit. And every time there was another death or another disappearance linked with The Grinder it would fuel the legend. President Lynch wrote numerous letters to the First Legionnaire command to reinforce the fact that The Grinder was still human. When those words of encouragement ended up doing next to nothing President Lynch knew that he had to eliminate the things that were fueling the idea of Luke’s invincibility. He made it known that the enemy’s name was not ‘The Grinder’ but that it was Luke Semprys and that he was very much a man. Then he ordered that any incidents related to Luke Semprys were refigured and alternate explanations were fabricated so that new stories detailing the nightmarish exploits of The Grinder withered and died. But the damage was already done.