This is another chapter of my untitled sci-fi novel. It is a flashback sequence from one of the main characters, Areya.
833 days before arrival on Earth
The memory was as vivid and clear as Lictor’s face had been only minutes before. In this distasteful recollection, Areya, the young recruit merely five Varsolothian orbits old, stood in line amongst an eager yet firm battalion of green-skinned troops.
The leader of the battalion, Force Commander Ackron, shouted out various names to the ensemble for roll call.
“Septis, shock; Meegan, vanguard; Vicero, shock; Civilin, shock; Rhegon, scout; Necro, vanguard; Areya,” the commander recited. Time had seemed to stop as Areya’s name had been finally been called. “Scout.”
Areya grimaced, gritting her teeth as she reluctantly saluted to the Force Commander Archon. “Scout duty…for her?!” she had thought at the time. She, like any trainee, knew full well that the shock and vanguard troops always had the up-close-and-personal blunt of the action while scouts were generally reduced to spotting targets and shooting out enemies from afar.
Foolish spawn of an Orug! I am the most efficient combatant in this entire band of witless recruits and here I am being limited to killing Terestroicans from a thousand yards away…like a coward?! I want to go charging in with blade swinging and pistol blazing! I want to see the fear seep out of my enemies just before my blade meets their throat! I want those cowards, in their last moments, to know that they’ve just been slain by Areya, daughter of Veger, faithful servant of Varsoloth!
After her battalion had been given their frontline duties for the coming battle, Ackron stood at the front of the battle-ready Varsolothian horde. In perfect unison, the unit clicked their heels together and gave the traditional military salute of crossing their right arm to their left shoulder-blade. The tall, muscled, green-skinned officer with a collage of battle ribbons pinned to his black armor plating began to speak to his loyal underlings.
“Clan battalion!” Ackron’s booming voice barked to the crowd.
In response the still-saluting mass of soldiers stamped their feet in perfect synchronization.
“Males and females of his high exalted one, the Grand Clanmaster Varsoloth. We stand upon the precipice of change, of elevation! Varsoloth, the clanmaster of all clans, the father of all children, the ruler of all lands and the god of all races, seeks to assert his divine right over all those inferior to him! We, his chosen ones, his worthy disciples, stand ready to make his aspirations a reality!”
At once, the battalion of zealous soldiers again stamped their feet, looking up at Ackron with stoic, unwavering expressions. Ackron pointed off into the grey, barren wasteland behind him.
“This backwater planet is one such territory that our grand clanmaster seeks to expand his divine reach to. But these savage locals, these Terestroicans, in all their foolish pride seeks to subvert our grand clanmaster’s right to rule over them! Like vermin filth they congregate in their primitive settlements, freely practicing their heresies with complete disregard for the ways of our race! The cowards even stoop so low as to preach pacifism!”
The once silent, attentive battalion suddenly began to erupt into a frenzied mob of protest and ferocious anger, each soldier individually belching obscenities and words of hatred toward their enemies.
“Defectives, all of them!” shouted one.
“Skin the foolish aliens alive! They openly spit in the face of our clanmaster!” shouted another.
“They deny the gift of ascendency that we would bestow on them!”
“Destroy them all down to the last youngling! They will not weaken our resolve!” shouted the soldier adjacent to Areya.
Ackron raised his hands up to the mob of enraged underlings and they instantly fell silent again.
“These Terestroicans are weak, misguided rabble. Such open disregard for our ways must not go unpunished! These fools must be put down and their heresies put to rest at once! This day, we will together paint these fields with their blood! Their heretical leader will be skinned alive and his flesh shall adorn the halls of Varsoloth’s grand chamber back home! The weak defectives that refuse our ways will be put under the knife one by one until they plague the purity of our great race no longer!” Ackron howled with a raised fist.
The battalion immediately launched into a raucous storm of howls and victory chants. Areya herself took part in these cheers as well, raising a fist and her blade into the air and shrieking like a madwoman.
After the battalion of eager recruits settled down, Force Commander Ackron’s booming voice echoed across the crowd one last time.
“Battalion, form ranks for equipment check! Moments from now, we will instill pure terror into the hearts of this heretical species on the other side of this field! Today, my brothers and sisters, we make the great Varsoloth proud!”
The battalion cheered once again loud enough to be heard throughout the entire valley, their fierce devotion to their clanmaster echoing across the field. Afterward, the soldiers separated into their respective squads to be armed and equipped for the impending battle.
Areya approached her squad leader along with the rest of her scout squad. The taller scout commander handed her a scoped pulse rifle along with a pack of cold fusion ammo bandoliers. The sniper rifle was almost the entire size of Areya herself but she slung it over her shoulder and managed its weight effortlessly. With the barrel resting on her shoulder, she slapped in one of the clips of ammo into the gun with a fiendish grin.
“Nothing elaborate today, scouts. Simply line up those Terestroicans in your sights and kill as many of them as you can. Be sure to dispose of the ones that attempt to retreat back to their camps,” the scout commander instructed them.
The scout leader and his squad began to pat down their black armor plating and assemble their weapons and gear. As Areya had been loading her bolter pistol with ammo, she had been religiously reciting her motivation for the coming battle.
Agath, Bosvoth, Voor, Deros, Gamara
These were the five names that she whispered to herself through clenched teeth. These were the names of Areya’s five older brothers that had fought and died in bloody combat with the other clans. They all had their time; they had fought their fair share of battles and won their own glory. But now, she thought, now was her time to win the glory that she had spent half of her life preparing for. And eventually, she too would die honorably on the battlefield as they all did.
After Areya had assembled everything that was needed for battle, she hoisted the sniper rifle over her shoulder and dashed up to the waiting formation of clan soldiers ahead of her. The battalion comprising about four hundred deadly-efficient Varsolothians stood lined up before the expansive grey waste before them. In the distance, the Terestroican encampment could be scarcely seen. The enemy soldiers were quickly scrambling about in disarray as their more numerous and better-equipped enemies loomed on the horizon.
The Ackron stood up at the front of the Varsolothian horde, looking out at the Terestroican encampment through a pair of thermal-lens binoculars. “Deficient strength, poorly-equipped, no artillery, no armor,” he mused to two cohorts standing on either side of him. “And to think that I may have actually overestimated their capabilities,” he snorted.
Within the unit formation, Areya brandished her pulse sniper rifle, her chest rising and falling in deep, eager breaths. One of her fellow scouts, Rhegon, nudged Areya in the arm to get her attention.
“Exhilarating isn’t it, Areya?” he said to her. “All the training simulations and drills have led us all here to this moment. Those peace-loving savages will wish that they never defied Varsoloth after we finish with them today.”
Areya nodded, her eyes fixated on the desolate field before her. “For my entire life, my devotion to Varsoloth and my combat efficiency have been at question by my kin. But I’m here now…ready for my first foray into the great battlefield. This is a tribute to what I’m capable of, and proof that I can do everything that my brothers accomplished and more,” she replied.
“Your mother and father were foolish to mistake you for a defective. Of all the recruits, none craves the fight more than you,” said Rhegon.
Areya firmly said through clenched teeth, “When I return home to our planet doused in Terestroican blood, no one will ever question my resolve again.”
Rhegon smirked at this proud statement, his eyes scanning over Areya as she stood motionless before the barren plain. The bellowing of a heavy masculine voice suddenly grabbed their attention and directed their focus to the front-center of the formation.
“Clansmen, we’ve given the meddlesome gnats enough time to prepare defenses against us, but now the time to attack has come! Show these weak witted fools the resolve of clan Varsoloth! Strike with righteous fury and bury the cowards into the dirt! Attack, for Clanmaster Varsoloth!” Ackron howled, drawing his omniblade and raising it into the air.
The entire formation took up his battle cry and began to howl along with him, swinging their omniblades and pulse rifles into the air like a horde of primitive barbarians. With that, Commander Ackron dove over the ditch before him and charged the grey field, sprinting at full speed and bellowing a guttural war cry. The shock troops followed swiftly behind him, armed with omniblades and pulse pistols in hand, they dove over the ditch and charged the field, covering it like a swarm of hornets. The vanguard followed shortly after; the burly green-skinned behemoths hefting their massive Gatling pulse guns. Finally, the scouts armed with scoped pulse rifles jumped into the charge on the far left and right flanks of the formation.
Areya sprinted forward with her pulse rifle slung over her shoulder, her fellow scouts doing the same alongside her. As the bulk of the battalion comprised of the shocks and vanguard swooped up the middle of the field toward the Terestroican encampment, the scout squads moved for higher elevated vantage points overlooking the camp from the left and right sides of the field.
She huffed and puffed, maintaining her pace beside Rhegon and the other scouts next to her. From up ahead of her, she began to hear the chaotic exchange of gunfire, indicating that the Terestroicans had undoubtedly seen the bloodthirsty swarm of Varsolothians approaching and were now moving to try to repel them from their perimeter. She and the scouts finally reached a series of hills off to the sides of the field from which they could easily scan the enemy camp and provide fire support.
Areya dove down right in between Rhegon and another of her fellow scouts and crawled up to the top of the hill in that prone position. She set her sniper rifle down, resting it between two rocks in order to keep it braced, and peered through the scope. She saw that Force Commander Ackron and the other frontal troops had reached the camp and were clashing with the weaker Terestroican fortifications. They had set up a series of outer trenches and filled them with the more poorly-equipped Terestroican footmen. From what Areya could tell, the defensive perimeter was actually causing some casualties in the Varsolothian advance; shock troopers in the front wave fell from hailstorms of bullets from the Teretroican trenchline. But the Varsolothians had strength in numbers, weaponry, and resolve; therefore, it was only a matter of time before the horde broke through into the camp.
“Unleash hell on the weaklings; if you can single out any of their leaders, do so without hesitation,” commanded the squad leader several feet to the right of Areya.
Areya immediately slapped a fusion clip into her pulse rifle and took aim. The crosshairs on her scope moved across the Terestroican trenchline and the lanky soldiers firing at her comrades from within it. Toward the center of the trench was a slightly taller male that seemed to be frantically pointing in various directions toward the Varsolothian horde. Presumably, this had to be their leader, she thought.
She hesitated for another moment, taking a deep breath and centering the blue crosshair directly onto the leader’s green forehead. Gently she squeezed the trigger and felt the jolt of the pulse rifle as it kicked back from the shot. A second later, the slug plummeted into the head of the leader, splattering his blue blood onto the wall of the trench behind him. Afterward, he crumpled into a heap within the trench as the soldiers nearest to him took notice of his death, jolting their heads around from place to place in desperation.
Areya expelled the slug casing from her rifle and smirked at the shot’s accuracy and quickly loaded another shot to be fired. The quick and efficient elimination of the frontline commander of the Terestroicans had made Areya proud and hungry for more killing. Loud bursting noises went off on either side of her from her fellow scouts, but these otherwise distracting noises didn’t faze her in the slightest. One by one, she quickly loaded slug after slug, sending deadly accurate shots in every direction along the trench, sending body after blue-skinned body down into the cold dirt from across the field.
Organized movement amongst the Terestroicans suddenly caught Areya’s attention. They had appeared to be frantically climbing out from the trenches and sprinted further into the camp as the Varsolothian footmen moved to pursue them.
Areya’s scout commander took notice of this as well, seeing that the Terestroicans were falling into retreat and thus deprived them of their ability to snipe stationary targets. “The cowards retreat into their camp! Move off to the side to find another vantage point!” he commanded to the scouts.
Areya slammed her fist into the dirt in frustration.
Why waste time scrambling around for another vantage point when they could simply join in on the fight and help run the Terestroicans down?!
She had had enough of sitting back on the sidelines while the shocks and vanguard stole all the glory from this field.
She turned to her two nearest companions on either side of her and whispered to them as the scout commander shouted orders. “Rhegon, Ersus, follow my lead,” she said to them with a grin.
Her two compatriots looked at her incredulously as she discarded her sniper rifle and drew out her holstered bolter pistol and omniblade, looking up at the front of her column to see if the scout commander was watching her. Rhegon then grinned as he saw what she was planning to do. With a nod to Ersus, the two followed her lead and tossed off their sniper rifles, drawing their smaller weapons, better suited for hand to hand combat instead.
The scout commander made a motion for the scouts to follow him along the right ditch in order to find another sniping position. Areya and her two companions however, waited for the other scouts to gather up their gear and move on so that they could stay at the back. After they were alone at the back of the column, Areya wasted no time and dove forward out of her ditch to dash across the open field at remarkable speed.
“For Varsoloth!” she howled loud enough for the rest of the scouts to hear and Rhegon and Ersus followed suit.
The scout commander and the others jolted their heads up to see three of their own disobeying orders to charge head on for the Terestroican camp at the back of the valley. At first they were all stunned at this sight, but then the fellow scouts began to cheer on their boldness…except for the scout commander of course.
“Insubordinate fools! You dare disobey me?!” he shouted out to them.
He slung his own sniper down and took aim at the three trainees and was about to put them down for their actions. However, he stopped as he noted that disobedience began to spread amongst his squad like wildfire. One by one, the scouts threw down their snipers and drew out pistols and blades, charging the field to make battle with their enemies. Eventually, the commander himself cursed and went along with Areya’s ploy as well, charging out onto the field at the very rear of his very own squad. Now, not only were the shock and vanguard troops moving in to meet the Terestroicans head-on, but the scouts were joining the fray as well, with Areya spearheading the charge.
The war chants of her fellow scouts behind her fueled Areya’s energy as she bounded across the field at the head of the squad. In the blink of an eye, Areya, a mere recruit fresh out of training, had become nothing less than the newly elected leader of her squad. The former squad commander trailing fifty feet at the back of his squad was a clear indication of this shift in command.
Areya let out a hiss of delight as she was coming upon the enemy encampment. Beneath her, scattered here and there, were corpses both friend and foe left behind from the first exchange of gunfire from the trenches. Areya jumped over each fallen body indifferently, her eagerness to hack at the camp’s defenders outweighing any concern for fallen comrades.
Directly ahead of her, she came upon the first incarnations of her battalion. A group of burly Varsolothian vanguard had their Gatling pulse guns mounted on tripods and were using them to suppress a group of Terestroican soldiers further off inside the camp. She ran past them right beside their line of fire, Rhegon, Ersus and several other scouts following in line with her. The vanguards poked their heads up from their guns confusedly, seeing scouts that should have otherwise been elsewhere charging straight into the melee foray.
As slugs and ion blasts ricocheted all around her, Areya charged straight through the battle raging through the camp. Shock troops clashed with enemy soldiers all around her and individual confrontations took place at every corner of the encampment; Areya concerned herself with none of it. She wanted to right at the forefront of the melee struggle where she belonged.
Finally, she quickened her pace as straight ahead of her was the bulk of the hand-to-hand combat that she so craved. Commander Ackron was in the center of this chaos, battling two significantly shorter, weaker Terestroicans with omniblade in hand. He howled a war cry debilitating to friend and foe alike as he hacked off the head of one of the assailants before bringing the blade down into the exposed neck of the other. Their blue blood splattered across his armor plating and splashed against his satisfied green face. This was a sight that had instilled such envy within Areya as she had seen it.
Areya swung the omniblade around in her fingers in a gloating fashion, steeling herself for the impending melee confrontation. The nearby shock troops of her own clan began to take notice of Areya and the scouts’ arrival to the frontline with both surprise and admiration. Areya charged straight for the farthest group of melee combatants as fast as she could; Rhegon and Ersus struggled to keep up with their zealous female cohort.
The first foe she encountered; a scrawny, clearly-frightened blue-skinned Terestroican male no older than her, turned and saw the howling female coming at him with omniblade in hand. The male gasped as she fell upon him, swinging his flimsy blade up to try to fend her off. Areya jumped into a dive-roll, easily avoiding the clumsy attack from the enemy soldier. As she exited the roll, her blade swept around in an arc, slicing deep into the male’s left calve. The young male immediately dropped his weapon and shrieked in pain, falling to his knees.
“Pathetic…” Areya growled.
Basking in the sweet afterglow of her first melee kill, Areya hesitated for a moment before gripping the bald humanoid male by the top of his skull and unceremoniously spearing her omniblade through the back of his neck. Before his body could even hit the ground, Areya had already slid her weapon out, its blade coated in fresh blue blood, and was moving on for the nearest adversary.
Areya darted off from her first victim and moved for the nearest one several feet away. This one, a young female, had not even the luxury of fending off Areya’s attack. As soon as the flustered Terestroican spun around in Areya’s direction, she was immediately met with her final sight: Areya’s shining omniblade cleaving downward toward her face. She recovered her weapon once again as her second unfortunate enemy fell by her hand, the female soldier’s body slumping back and falling into a nearby ditch.
Like a tornado sweeping victims up into its fell winds, she darted from foe to foe, eagerly and proficiently cutting down enemies twice her height. Each of her victims appeared to either be so debilitated from their previous duels or demoralized by the fighting in general. They were merely fighting for their lives out of desperation and fear, not zeal. Therefore, Areya, the young, blood-drunk Varsolothian recruit met little resistance to her own merciless onslaught.
By now, the bulk of the melee fighting had progressed into the central complex of the Teretroican camp. Despite their best efforts to mount a defense against their better-numbered, better-equipped and better-prepared adversaries, the Terestoricans knew now that it was all for naught. As the fighting and chaos raged at every corner of the encampment and the Varsolothians cut, shot and hacked their way through their alien foes, the Terestroicans began to do what any wise sentient life-form would do: flee. Without delusions of honor and devotion to constrain them, the nearly catatonic Terestroican soldiers one by one broke out of their individual confrontations and fled out of the camp in various directions.
Areya stared down her latest victim; a hefty male whom had fallen to his knees and pleaded for mercy from her. Not at all indulging his request, Areya sent her omniblade downward in one smooth, effortless stroke, ending the living nightmare for yet another frightened Terestroican.
As she was recovering her weapon and wiping a bead of sweat from her brow, Areya saw with a hazy glance the beaten and broken masses of Terestroican soldiers fleeing the camp across the southern field. Her eyes widened and her thin green fingers clenched, balling into fists.
She snapped a glance to the ensuing chaos near her. Amid the nearby clashes still occurring between the two battling groups of soldiers, she noted the form of Rhegon writhing around in the dirt with another enemy soldier. As she looked on, Rhegon’s muscles were clenching so much that the outline of his purple veins were bulging out on his neck. He had his omniblade drawn and was using all his strength to try to force the weapon downward into the enemy soldier’s throat beneath him.
The enemy soldier was frantically kicking his legs and trying to roll Rhegon off of his him while using his arm to prevent his blade from piercing his throat. Despite Rhegon’s superior strength, the enemy soldier’s will to survive outweighed that, preventing him from winning this tense tug-of-war. As Areya continued to look intently, she saw that Rhegon and his enemy beneath him continued to writhe and roll around the trench like two coupling maggots, their frenzied limbs kicking up mounds of grey dirt as they went.
Areya dashed toward the tangled opponents, roughly gripping Rhegon by the collarbone and throwing him to the side. The scrawny, flustered soldier that he’d been battling looked up at her with a startled expression, and one that showed hope that he might actually be spared the dire fate that he was anticipating. This glimmer of hope was put to rest when Areya drove her blade downward clean through his chest, cutting off the muffled cry that had barely been uttered.
Areya unceremoniously brought the blood-stained blade up and re-sheathed it. Ignoring the defeated Terestroican spitting and coughing blood beneath her, Areya turned back toward Rhegon still lying in the dirt near her. She grabbed him by the scruff of his armor hefted him up onto his feet with a frustrated grunt.
“Enough bothering with theatrics, bagarosh! Just kill them and be done with it!” Areya berated. “Look!” she yelled, pointing to all the demoralized Terestroican soldiers fleeing the field. “The cowards fall into retreat!”
Rhegon’s adrenaline was still flowing from the melee confrontation he’d just been locked in. His eyes darted around confusedly as Areya had already spun and around and began to sprint through the camp toward the outer field where their rivals were fleeing. His eyes then lit up and he scrambled along behind her.
“Areya, what are you doing?!” he shouted after her as the blurry form of black and green that was Areya sprinted across the field.
Everything around her faded into nothingness as the fleeing cowards were locked in her sights. There was nothing she despised more than a surrendering or retreating enemy; no greater dishonor to her than to abandon the field of battle. Even as Rhegon and several of her other comrades sprinted after her, Areya’s only priority was putting an end to the spineless whelps that had turned their backs on the fight with Varsoloth’s noble sons and daughters.
Areya soon came upon the outer boundary of the camp which gave way to the open field that an entire horde of Terestroican soldiers fled across. She ran forward to where one of her slain comrades, a huge vanguard, was slumped over the tripod of his massive bolter. She shoved the hefty corpse off of his tripod and took her place at it.
Areya loaded her massive weapon and took aim at the fleeing alien soldiers with mischievous glee dotting her green, blood-streaked face. With steady hands and merciless conviction, she squeezed the trigger and felt the weapon kick and heard it rumble as it began firing in the direction of the fleeing horde of enemies.
A terrible hailstorm of blazing incendiary bolts ripped across the field from her heavy gun, mowing down in a smooth arc across the field. Even after the first bodies fell from her first accurate burst, she continued to hold the trigger down, feeding more ammo into her gun as it was expelled across the field with devastating results.
Rhegon appeared beside her, struggling to catch his breath and wipe sweat from his brow. He then looked up and his mouth almost immediately drew open in a stunned expression as he witnessed the single-handed massacre taking place before his eyes.
Across the field, body after body fell into the dirt one by one. Sons, daughters, fathers, mothers and the like fell in bloodied heaps upon the fields of their homeworld, ignorant to the fact that their deaths were at the hands of a mere young recruit wielding one gun.
Rhegon turned his green face and looked with slack-jawed admiration at his female companion whose unwavering expression was focused only on every enemy soldier that her juggernaut weapon sent to the ground. Other Varsolothians appeared on either side of her tripod as well, all of them beholding the dazzling spectacle of a mere recruit cutting down enemy soldiers with such regularity that the enemy bodies were literally piling up on the other side of the adjacent field. Some of the other vanguard set up their mounted bolters and began to unload on the routed enemy horde while others merely watched the scene with fascination.
On the other side of the field, a dazzling firestorm suddenly erupted as one of the massive Varsolothian gunships passed by overheard, dropping bombs down onto the fleeing enemies. The subsequent inferno from the gunship’s incendiary bombs effectively cut off the retreating soldiers’ escape path while many of the soldiers themselves were consumed by the flames in a slow, gruesome demise.
With a sea of flames in front of them and a hailstorm of enemy guns erupting behind them, the Terestroicans could only stand in the middle of the field as open targets. Some of them fell to their knees and pleading to their deities in their own tongue as the slugs and bolts cascaded around them.
Areya led the immense display of firepower with a continuous, never-ending burst of expended ammo which hit nearly every enemy it was pointed at. And the firing didn’t stop either; even when a cloud of smoke surfaced over the field, the veteran soldiers and recruits alike continued to fire their weapons.
The thunderous bellow of Commander Ackron boomed over the storm of blazing weapons.
“Enough! We are finished here!” he ordered.
All at once, the subservient underlings stopped firing their weapons and allowed the haze of smoke to clear. Silence fell upon the barren field as the green-skinned soldiers saw only mounds of blue-skinned bodies piled up and scattered. Many of the corpses of the alien humanoid soldiers were deformed, scarred and missing limbs from the onslaught that they’d just endured. Not a single Terestroican was standing when the dust finally settled.
The victorious force of Varsolothians erupted into victory chants, raising their guns into the air and firing off random rounds into the air to coincide with their cheers. Recruits charged out onto the field and began to take trophies from their fallen foes. Some of them used their knives and omniblades to cut off fingers and ears from their fallen foes, flaunting them to their fellow comrades with fiendish grins.
Areya, whose chest was rising and falling in deep breaths as she surveyed the scene, slumped down and propped her chin down on the tripod. She watched her fellow soldiers take trophies and defile the bodies of the alien force that they’d slaughtered as the last of her adrenaline evaporated from her system.
Areya’s green head and silver eyes looked up into the blood-red sky that loomed over Terestroica. Her thoughts dwelled on each and every life that she’d taken that day. Every life that she’d snuffed out for the sake of her grand clanmaster’s conquest of a once-free planet.
Victory.
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