The world around me turned red as I pushed 30% of my H-Nan cells into the system, spiking the security protocols with… I had no idea how many I was working with right now. My INAS flared red warning me of imminent death but I pushed it aside. With the last of my will and life power, I broke the barrier to the controls of the infamous Pavlov Guns.
“General Q—n—go,” I sputtered through the blood that had filled up inside my mouth.
The stress of controlling all the nanites immediately stopped as I broke the last firewall, but that didn’t change the fact that I was dying. My mind had been freed, and though I was at the very limits of my capabilities, at the edge of life itself if you will, I felt like I was reborn nevertheless.
The Eres battle horn sounded its thundering boom, and through the eyes of the Pavlov Guns, I saw the golden Second Army move forward in perfect sync. The Aloi beneath the guns braced for the attack. Tetrarchs released swarms of Zealots from their bio-globes, hundreds of Templars unsheathed their weapons, Raintroopers aimed their rifles, and Ravagers started their artillery bombardment.
Eres Bloodrinsers raised the banner of Eres Prime, a white circle within a wider, black circle, and then chanted their terrifying war scream as the army-wide deflection shield covered the entirety of their front line.
“War!” the Bloodrinser screamed.
“War!” Hundreds of thousands of Eres soldiers answered.
“War!” the Bloodrinser’s voice boomed again.
“War!” the golden Second Army thundered as it moved toward the mine.
I could feel the vibrations caused by battle movements reverberate through the whole building and it could probably be felt for miles in all directions. They said the very wind dared not blow when an Eres army was on the march.
Through the eyes of the Pavlov Guns, I saw Aloi Templars talk to each other on the ground as their troops rushed to the front lines readying themselves for impact. If they truly felt fear, something I was ever more certain they did, then this was certainly a moment drenched in that feeling.
When the Second Army got into firing range, their first rows of golden soldiers spread into ever smaller formations with incredible speed. The movement was unnaturally smooth and precise; no wonder, of course, since they had been training for one job only since birth. Each of those soldiers could be anything between thirty to three hundred years old, each spent every single second of their life training and marching with the Second Army.
The Aloi came in hard. There must have been thousands of Zealots skittering toward their front lines with Raintroopers, Ravagers, and Templars right behind them. I had to stand there and wait until they had fully engaged before I could fire the Pavlov’s so the damage was maximized. Every passing second was another second I was closer to dying myself, however.
The Ba’kri raised their giant shields as a single unit, absorbing Zealot explosions and shrugging them off with relative ease. Golden, three-legged mechs sprayed the Aloi troops with what was called a Hellfire Wave, super-heated plasma beams that melted flesh and metal alike. Eres Bloodrinsers spread webs of lightning across the battlefield, incinerating anything weaker than a Ravager.
The Ba’kri front line suddenly opened like an ocean being divided, and through the middle, Gara’kri soldiers sprinted toward the Aloi. They were specially-trained Eres murder machines who fought with two swords and moved through the battlefield like shadows, leaping from one enemy only to appear behind another to behead it. One of their biggest strengths was the permanent cloaking power that wouldn’t let anything lesser than an Overmind or a very old Tertrach or Templar sense them.
The Aloi were far from helpless though, as their Templars engaged the Ba’kri and Gara’kri, sowing chaos and death among them. A sensation crept up deep within my gut and I knew it was finally time to fire the Pavlov Guns.
The majestic gun emplacements started moving, targeting the major Aloi concentrations along with special targets. Three were pointed at Tetrarchs who continuously produced more Zealots and the swarms around them, while the fourth was pointed at a spot with over a dozen of Templars. I fired.
The rail gun projectiles, super heavy pekta-metal bars, penetrated the Tetrarchs like they were made of butter and then hit the ground with such velocity that the kinetic energy released killed everything in a sixty-yard radius.
The Aloi seemed to not even be aware of what had happened to them as they kept charging. Their movement continued forward toward the Eres army as if their brethren hadn’t just been slaughtered. I reloaded the Pavlov Guns and fired another round, seeking targets where the density of Aloi soldiers was thickest. I fired again. And again. And again.
Four more Pavlov projectiles struck the ground and exploded, sending both a blastwave and shrapnel flying in all directions. Small, fist-sized chunks of steel flew with ease up to one hundred yards, penetrating anything they struck and devastated a flank of the Aloi forces. This time they noticed. I guess none of them ever expected their own defenses to be used against their own soldiers.
The Eres Second Army advanced with vigor knowing that the battle was almost a sure win. I fired several more rounds at the now panicking Aloi army, causing utter destruction among their ranks. If there was a hell for killing an Aloi, I would be getting my own VIP room, that was for sure.
With the realization that we were winning the battle came the dreaded moment when my body went limp. With my last remaining willpower, I set the Pavlov Guns on autopilot to target chunks of Aloi forces that hadn’t engaged Qualt’s army yet. Although their usefulness was declining by the second anyway, every Eres life saved was worth hundreds of our own.
As the Second Army advanced and the Aloi army retreated, the spiders and reptiles moved just under the Pavlov Guns where I couldn’t reach them anyway. Qualt would finish them off without my help and hopefully be in time to help out my people.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Leo with a face covered in blood and dirt that was about to erupt into tears.
“Shit, just look at yourself! Your skin is all torn! What the hell did you do to yourself?”
“Thanks, kid,” I whispered, glad his face would be the last I’d get to see. “What’s the… situation?”
“The bastards ran away after the Pavlov Guns started firing!”
“Layla?”
“She’s… Uhm… She killed the Tetrarch so—”
“She what?”
“I mean, not alone, but she was the one who climbed its back and gave the final blow so everyone is now celebrating her outside.”
“That woman’s going places,” I chuckled and tried to speak more but I couldn’t, at least not until his last H-Nan injection was used up on me. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t spoken to Leo directly but rather through my INAS, although he was right in front of me. I didn’t have the strength to speak. Never in my life had I been so exhausted and in pain.
“How many dead?” I managed to utter as sleep rushed to take over. Leo was working hard on my wounds, sending in nanites with Rejuvenation.
“Almost thirty, sir,” he replied and looked away as if packing his cells back. I knew that he was on the verge of losing it as well, so I let him. Not much I could have done anyway.
“Techies?”
I realized the answer would be horrendous just by the look on Leo’s face, but I still needed to hear it.
“Only eight made it, sir.”
Shivers ran up and down my spine, and I burst into tears like a child. I checked my INAS to see the names and relaxed for a fraction of a second when I saw Birch was still alive but hanging by a thread. No, shit! I tensed all over again as I saw Neumann hadn’t made it. He was a kid, one I killed with my own hands. And he was by no means the only one.
Leo put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head weakly.
“It’s not your fault, Sarge. That’s what they signed up for. You know that, so please don’t do that to yourself. I beg you.”
I said nothing. My plan had worked and
the Sardok Mine was ours. It was only a matter of time before the Second Army took the whole region and the Aloi retreated to whatever shithole they came from. I did it, and yet I felt emptier than ever.
“Fuck... this war,” I whispered barely audible. I didn’t know if he heard it, but even if he had, Leo didn’t say anything about it.
“Sir, I think General Qualt wants to hear from you.”
I looked up at Leo for a few silent seconds. He survived. He did it by the skin of his teeth, but he survived, and Layla survived. We were soldiers who died every day. I tried to comfort myself, but the dead body of Paul Neumann was right in front of me and more than ever I felt responsible, for I’d known they’d die after injecting all their O-Nans.
“I need a moment,” I replied weakly as I tried to get up, but my shaky legs wouldn’t listen.
“I don’t think Qualt wants to wait, sir. With all due respect, he waits for nobody.”
Just as I pushed myself up, I allowed myself to drop back into the chair.
“I don’t care what Qualt wants,” I finally said and then turned on my INAS to platoon-wide. “If any one of you lucky fucks has a cigarette or a drink, I sure would appreciate one.”
22
Detera was a planet in constant flux. Nothing but the great city of Instormia was a permanent fixture, not even the massive Sardok Mine above whose coveted detrium drill the Commonwealth Federation orbital platform Runeheart now hung, throwing a giant shadow over the devastated landscape.
I watched as armies of worker drones that humans called raw-rats streamed from the Runeheart toward the mine and made their way to the ruined facilities. The raw-rats came in from the orbital platform in the thousands, bringing in new materials and equipment while taking away corpses and spare gear that might be recycled. I couldn’t peel my eyes away as they carried away Neumann’s dead body. It would be transported from the orbital platform to a carrier which would load up into an arc ship and then traverse a thousand lightyears to… I realized I didn’t even know where Neumann was from and if they would bother reviving him.
Leo had given me a sip of rakka, that pipe cleaning shit the guys from Hos IV brewed. It tasted like lead and fire, but it shook me awake somewhat. He patched me up as well as he could and dragged me out of that damned chair from the basement. Qualt wanted to see me, no surprise there. The bigger surprise was that Winters hadn’t contacted me yet.
A great part of Qualt’s army stood in formation below the Pavlov Guns. I guess he was confident the Aloi wouldn’t launch a counter-offensive now that they’d been beaten so badly. I didn’t know where he found this assurance, but he was the military genius, not me.
His soldiers never spared us a glance as we passed their golden rows. They stood like statues, immutable, unmoving, and in my opinion, sadly unchanging. Layla and Leo couldn’t get their eyes off them. When Mavis wanted to warn the two, I stopped him. The Eres loved the admiring gaze of other races. Sometimes I wondered if that was their main motivation in life to be adored and worshipped by lower species.
In truth, there was much to gaze at. An Eres in full golden power armor was a sight to behold. Each soldier carried the armor and weapons of their forefather. Their armors told the stories of their families. They were inscribed with names, places, holy words, and faces of enemies of note they had slaughtered. Faces of Aloi, of other Eres soldiers, but most of the space on their golden plates was taken by Frias’ visages, the beasts of their original homeworld. An Eres was a killer, despite their gallant, even knightly appearance. They were killers and their armors were their trophy rooms.
I had never seen General Qualt, whose full name and title were Qualt Harod’kri Supreme Archon of the Eres Utopia, in flesh but I had known very well where in the hierarchy of the Commonwealth Federation he was: at the very top, just below the Imminy themselves.
It was no wonder then that when I saw him for the first time, I had almost lost my ability to speak. The Commonwealth Federation sported all kinds of political systems headed by all kinds of political leaders. You could have something as simple as an Orros warlord ruling over hundreds of unified tribes to something as complex as a Shia Neurocracy which was a ruling body comprised of a species-wide brainwave pattern that spread through every Shia in the vicinity and changed along with the personalities of each individual Shia. I never got to learn more about it, but they had always used it as an example of how restrictive human political systems truly were.
To become Supreme Archon, or in our terms general within the Eres race, you didn’t wait for elections, but you didn’t just simply inherit the title either. Instead, you and everyone who was deemed a possible leader, would be dropped to Vulris. It was a vile planet where Frias beasts, the Eres’ ancient predator, ruled the continents and survived for decades. Just to make it clear how unbelievably difficult it was: one Frias beast could take on a Templar. An Archon was a political figure who had to be more capable than any other soldier; a Supreme Archon, however, had to put any other Archon to absolute shame. I read plenty about the Eres. They always fascinated me and to meet Qualt was an honor I never thought I’d have.
He sat on his throne surrounded by hundreds of Bak’ri soldiers. The scene reminded me of paintings of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. Of course, if Augustus had been seven feet tall, blue, and carrying 250 pounds of armor. The general acknowledged me with a nod, but with the second, both Layla and Leo were removed from Qualt’s presence. Six Bak’ri escorted the two in a different direction, but I knew nothing would happen to them.
“Stay quiet and don’t do anything stupid,” I said over the INAS before they even made ten steps.
It was shameful for a Supreme Archon to be in the presence of simple soldiers. Even our sergeant’s ranks wouldn’t have been enough if it hadn’t been for my stunt with the Pavlov Guns.
Just as I was about to step before the general, Colonel Winters appeared seemingly out of nowhere and pushed himself before me. He turned his head toward me and hissed barely audibly.
“Don’t fuck this up for me, boy.” The “or else” didn’t need to be said as we both knew who the one with the connections was.
He turned back around and approached Qualt while bowing his head and spreading his arms.
“Yes, sir,” I muttered so only I could hear it. “Damn bastard leech.”
“My good General, I bring before you Sergeant Stavos, our secret weapon that led to the victorious day we all now enjoy.”
“Secret weapon, huh?” I whispered again. “Damn bastard.” If anyone had heard me, no one said or did anything, which was good. I didn’t need to be reprimanded right now, but it was so hard not to say anything to a leech such as Winters.
“It is with great joy that humans and Eres can celebrate a joint military endeavor.” I tuned out of the next several sentences as I couldn’t promise myself that I wouldn’t jump and strangle him. His speech must have been prepared by real professionals back in the base. The last sentence somehow caught my attention as it was slightly different than the ones before. “What happiness filled me when I realized humankind was saving…”
Oh no! You just didn’t do that, you damn asshole! You didn’t just say that an inferior race saved the Eres!
Not a single Eres moved or said anything. They were trained all too well to let their emotion get the better of them, and yet it felt like a volcano was readying itself to erupt and reduce the world to ashes.
When Qualt spoke, it felt like the heavens would open and angels would bow their heads to his mere presence.
“Colonel Winters, your words sour our victory,” he said with a voice that felt like a giant was grinding a temple beneath his feet to specks of dust. “It is only by the deeds of Richard Stavos that you still breathe. Now remove yourself from my presence before I have someone do it for me!”
“General, but I…”
Qualt said no more and Winters realized he was on very thin ice, especially when their eyes met one last time. Yet, he stormed away drama
tically pushing away Bak’ri soldiers who only moved after being ordered to do so by Qualt. I can’t say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy that moment, but I also knew that somewhere down the line, Winters would get back at me. One way or another.
“Sergeant Stavos of the human forces,” Qualt began. “You have the thanks of the Eres.”
He didn’t seem to be a man, or in this case Eres, of many words. A single sentence was enough to move mountains and planets, and yet there I was in his presence. When I realized he wasn’t saying anything else, I decided that I had to say something in turn if I remembered the last few short convos we had over the last day.
I was way out of my league, though. I had no tongue for political niceties as I was a soldier, so I said what a soldier said when someone thanked them.
“No problem, sir. Anytime.” Qualt peeled his red eyes and leaned his head slightly to the left, the universal sign of curiosity. “I mean, I’m glad I could help, General. It was an honor to serve under you.”
Good, I thought. Say something about honor, they like that.
“You are honorable, Stavos of the human forces. I can sense great power in you. Great possibilities. As long as you remain honorable, you will always be a Rak’kri to the Eres.” The color from my face vanished. A Rak’kri! Me!
“What does—” but before I could ask the question, he spoke again.
“Give him the mark!”
I was speechless as two Eres Bloodrinsers approached me. One of them carried a censer, one of those pretty brass things used for spreading incense in church, and the other carried a thin, golden spear. Before I realized what was about to happen, the Bloodrinser thrust his spear through my stomach and I immediately spat out blood. Ginsk, who stood behind me, screamed and pulled out his axes, but before he could do any harm two Bak’ri soldiers subdued him.
As the Bloodrinser pulled the spear out, the one carrying the censer opened it and grabbed a handful of burning… it smelled like detrium, but I had no idea what it really was, and pressed it against my wound. I screamed in agony, but the pain disappeared within seconds.
Starblood: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 1) Page 28