Untitled
Chapter 1: Destruction
It was a beautiful afternoon. The headmaster of the university was standing in front of his pedestal, ready to make his speech. The thousand or so students that had made it all the way through the training were standing at attention. Most of them had a satisfactory smile on their faces. Silence was made when the old master started talking.
‒ I am now very happy to tell you that you have all passed the final tests and that you have been accepted into the United Nations’ Elite Strike Force. You must remember that this is no small honour, you will have the opportunity to fight our enemies, decimate them and claim victory. At the end of the day, you will be issued a real uniform, your real weapons and you will be shipped to the UN’s headquarters to be assigned a position somewhere in our world. Our enemies, the Nighters, shall not be spared by our unyielding force, they will…
He was cut short by gunfire coming from outside the University’s wall. The gigantic turrets around the building fired in all directions, but no one seemed to know what was going on.
‒ Let us not be interrupted, said the headmaster, our defences are way too strong for any intruder to come in here…
He could not say the last word of his sentence as his head was suddenly and violently ripped off his body. Blood pissed all over the place. It seemed to stick to something behind the floating head. All of a sudden, a weird creature appeared right behind the dead body, screaming in victory as he threw the head down on the ground. Blood dripped down his chest. All the students moved at the same time, all going for a nearby weapon. It seemed like outside the walls, there was a million of them as the walls shook under the walking of so many Nighters. Enemy ships came from the east, covering the whole sky, hiding the sun under their majesty. In between the running and riot was one woman that knew where she really had to go. It was straight in hell, where the enemies had come from, the east, the weapons depot. This is where the new technologies were stacked and she had to get her hands on it to have a chance of survival. As she exited the institution’s main building, she saw something she could had never imagined. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Nighters were there. She could see the Drones in front of the running enemies, the little bastards were ready to blow themselves up to take anyone with them. Behind them were the Hoches. They were as tall as two humans, as powerful as twenty men and as fierce as tigers. There were so many of them she could not see the horizon. Right behind the bipedal creatures were the gigantic Heftigs. Those huge quadruped creatures stood about fourteen metres tall while they took 12 metres of width. They had six gigantic sharpened tusks that could move and cut anything that came in range. They always followed the Hoches, mowing down anything that got in the way. All of them were running towards the university like raging animals. It seems nothing could stop them as she saw soldiers getting engulfed under the running riot. But she could only see this, paying attention would mean a loss of time. And time was of the essence, she had only one goal: the new technology department, where she could find something to assure her survival. She ran straight past a company of soldiers fighting for their lives against the many Hoches that had gotten close to the buildings.
She rammed the door open and stopped, looked around and spotted the big crates that were labelled as new. She pried the top open and got geared. She cursed under her heavy breath as she tried to fit too many weapons on her ceremonial suit. Apparently, they had not thought about combat when they gave her this. A small top with a short skirt under a long half‒dress. She still managed to find a gear belt onto which she strapped a couple of self‒sticking energy grenades and an energy‒sword’s handle. She had no idea what it was. But that was how it was labelled in the crate. She thought it would most probably come in handy later. On her upper legs, she harnessed two charging pistols with enhanced energy compression. She slung a high‒energy sniper rifle and a low‒recoil automatic rifle. She picked an energy shotgun as her weapon of choice. She’d need the large impact to get through the mass of Nighters. She then closed her eyes and wished for luck.
It was hell outside. Dozens of Drones made it past the automated turrets and blew themselves up on the walls and sometimes on bunkers, where helpless soldiers died, leaving only charred corpses. There were a couple of spots where task forces had established a small perimeter of security and kept the enemies at bay, having survivors coming in to help them once in a while. They were even starting to push the Nighters back, many made courageous moves to gain some terrain, but it all went downhill when the Zeugs flew in. Those weird, organic, fleshy flying beasts had the power to turn the battle over. They zoomed over the battlefield dropping bombs on anything that didn’t look like it was on their side. Squads were blown to smithereens, buildings crumbled to the ground in seconds as the tide of battle turned against the soldiers of the university. The woman watched calmly, flattened against the inner wall of the weapons depot, waiting for an opening. She took in a deep breath, exhaled slowly and ran out of hiding. The ground shook under the heavy weight of the army of Nighters. The horizon was hidden behind the Heftigs and the sky was blackened by the Zeugs. She screamed a war cry to heighten her strength and ran straight towards them, unleashing her energy through her shotgun.
They were running as fast as possible but it never felt like it was fast enough. When you have a hundred Hoches behind you, you never run fast enough. When you left someone down in the middle of hell, you never run away from you conscience. But it had to be done. He knew it, she knew it, everybody knew it. His sergeant was the first to reach the top of the hill, he jumped over it and yelled into the communication link.
‒ As soon as you hit the floor, hit the switch blue‒three, understand me?
‒ Yes, sir, replied blue‒three.
But he was thinking way too much to do it immediately, she was still down there, he had been ordered to leave her. She told him to leave. He had done it, but he wish he had stayed there.
‒ Tell me we’ll see each other again, he said on a private link to blue‒five. Say it to me.
‒ We will, now, you better hit the switch, she responded.
‒ I will. Good bye.
He arrived at the top of the hill and dove straight down the other side of the hill.
‒ Do it soldier! he heard as he flew in the air.
He hit the switch and a resounding thunder echoed over the mountain and light filled everything. The bomb had blown and everything in the valley on the other side was dead, along with his conscience.
The soldier rolled down the hill, making sure he got at the bottom without hurt. As soon as he hit flat ground, he raised his automatic rifle up, pointing at the top of the hill, waiting to see if there were any survivors coming. But there weren’t. Nothing nor nobody came.
‒ Let’s get back to base people, on the double, yelled the sergeant.