The boy saw a light as the run continued, by this time he had heard all the sounds that Renka described. Finally, he saw the main entrance to the camp, something that motivated him to hurry up and finish, it was cold enough that he didn’t sweat at all.
Finally they stopped, and she took back her headphones, “Good work,” she paused for a moment to look at the exhausted Corporal, admiring her work, before speaking again, “Alright, official orders, fuck off.”
His legs felt like liquid as walked through the camp, he was in good spirits believing he made the Captain proud. His memories of training came back to him again as he passed a group of soldiers in purposely messed up and mismatched uniforms. They held a platform cart above their head while chanting, “This is not a toy. This is not a toy” repeatedly. The boy chuckled to himself, his legs muscles were wet plastic bags wrapped around his pelvis and leg bones. He made his way to the main building where a blood red blanket made its way into his view. As he passed her she lifted her eyebrow at him, he spoke in the tone used for a punchline of a joke as he saluted, “She’s gettin on me.” She was equipped and ready for another mission.
He entered the main building to go up to his office. The only occupants were those who were on guard, everyone else had vacated to participate in whatever was going on outside. However there were others, and as he walked up the stairs he passed a floor with none of the lights on. He walked through the hallway to get to the next staircase before a voice cut through the silence.
“Stop!” the man whispered, “What is your name?” and the boy responded, “Charmaine.” The man spoke again, “Where are you going?”
“I’m just headed to my office,” the boy then heard the sound of a sword slamming into its scabbard, the man abruptly picked him up in a fireman's carry, and proceeded to run up the rest of the way, until he got to his office. He then sat him down in his chair before returning downstairs. He wore a full dress uniform with a Brown style belt, and his head was topped with a plain black kepi used by cadets in training. He sat in his chair, thankful that he didn’t need to walk the rest of the way, but the whole experience gave him a strange feeling. He was in no way a stranger to hazing but this just seemed too ritualistic, too planned.
On the other side of the front, a company of mercenaries was gearing up. They stood just on the border of the center of Standing Iron, and clearly inspired by the recent broadcast, most boasted newly acquired manual action rifles with different optics ranging from an adjustable sniper scope on a precision squirel gun, to a pistol sight, hoseclamped to someone's old hunting rifle. They dumped amunition into bottles and cans not 50 feet away from them, complementing each other on their “skill”. The Major watched them from his office window through a pair of binoculars, “Rediculous” he muttered, “almost sad,” he continued.
“Where are they heading Sir?” The Corporal asked. “I didn’t ask, they aren’t mine.” he responded.
The mercs all wore the same patch, however it differed greatly in its placement, some had them on their shoulders, some on their helmets, and some on the front or back of their vests. They acted like they were a proven and proud unit, woven together through an unbreakable, iron bond, in reality they didn’t even know each other's names, and would serve largely to soak up ammunition. “I did gut this however Sir,” The corporal said as set a jar down that looked to contain a thick blood red and see-through liquid. “Its honey, apparently a special kind produced by carnivorous bees in Vales territory, its supposed to help you sleep, but it's also psychedelic.”
The Major chuckled, “You're bringing me drugs, Corporal?” The Corporal looked downward to hide his laugh, “It ain’t regulated no different then your smokes–Sir,” the Major picked up the jar and examined it, inquiring more about the substance. “From what I understood, theirs a species of mushroom that grows in Vacuo, and the local wildlife eat the mushrooms, and then eventually get eaten by a predator. Then the predator dies and is left to the bees and the mushrooms toxins carry over into their honey.”
“Interesting,” the Major said as he put down the jar.
A whistle sounded, and the march was on, the company cheered as they marched, the mercenaries carried themselves like children on their way to a park. They marched on to a battlefield they knew very little about, and did so with the ignorance largely reserved for the people that were read about in ancient wars. The village left their view, and the company was greeted with a frozen forest, and naturally entered the trail that the road led to. The crunch of snow could be heard as the mercs moved, the trail hadn’t been used for some time and for good reason. They told stories of their experience, clearly trying to outdo one another, their attention was torn from the woods, and their counter surveillance remained unused.
One spoke of his time as a security guard for a factory, another spoke of when he was in his highschools “JR soldier” program, but one of them, a tall broad shouldered figure with a hood on, and a bug-eyed look, he stated quiet.
The enemy, the defenders had had a change in consciousness towards the new men that were appearing on the battlefield, mercenaries were not allowed according to the rules of war, and as such they turned their assortment of anti material weapons on them as a quick solution. Although originally meant to cripple tanks and missile systems, the revered “meat chopper” machine guns would be sure to paint the snow red if the mercs weren’t careful, and they weren’t.
One merc near the front had a personal camera mounted to his helmet, and another next to him was blasting music from a wireless speaker. They marched on through powder snow and rock alike, and couldn’t even hear the click as they trudged onward. They kept walking until a small pop was heard, and a small cylinder about the size of a pint barrel jumped to about waist height.
The explosion decimated the first two squads, and sent the next few crawling backwards. The rest of the formation bunched up or scattered on the sides of the trail, and all faced forward, unable to see snow covered tarp be thrown behind the soldiers it concealed. They sent bullets thicker than a human thumb into the back of the formation, and many tried to escape, with some slipping on the snow. A particular group tried to help their comrade up, and were targeted by the machine gun squad as they presented them with a high concentration of targets, a severed hand flew out of the resulting red mist. The weapon then turned to the rest of the formation of enfilade troops. Near the end of the chaos the gunner finally took his finger off the trigger. Only a handful of soldiers were even able to cycle their weapons to attempt to shoot back.
The very bones their mismatched armor was meant to protect were ripped out, thrown with the same velocity of shrapnel as their bodies were gored by the choppers. They never stood a chance in the conflict, and as the defending forces redoubled their efforts, the red menace appeared, spotting a dying boy laying against a tree. He gargled and snorted to spit out the blood, as someone else's shattered pelvic bone had been embedded into his neck, denying him even the ability to mutter a prayer in his dying breath, a prayer that has its origins on a separate continent in another time-zone. A home he would have been better off staying at, the desire to prove oneself had led him into the fray, and he had doubled down on a dead man's hand. He closed his eyes, his last sight was the shattered moon, no fear, no pain, just nothing. In a way, him and his acquaintances were truly… one with each other.
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“Serves him right,” one of the soldiers said, “should have stayed home boy!” Ruby spoke,
“No,” she started, “He’s a victim. He was–pushed by his culture to be a real man.” The soldier shot her a concerned glance, “I had a teacher who spoke only of his accomplishments, he gave us the same stories that he likely grew up on. Poor thing, he probably never thought he would go out like this, or even at all.” The soldier didn’t speak, he only hung his head as Ruby continued, “I remember a short poem about a dying soldier that we studied at beacon,” she said as she approached the boy, placing his rifle in his cold white hands. She spoke again “Here lies the soldier of the grand army, who died in a land not of his own. Far from the vineyards of sunny grass, beneath foreign stars alone.”
The soldier watching her was quite put off by the act, having never seen someone, especially an officer, dwell so much on a dead foot soldier, and an enemy one at that.
The defending forces fell back to a nearby village, stopping to let the soldiers buy food and drink, and to rest up before retreating to headquarters. Ruby walked into a bar were she met her soldiers who stood at attention to her presence. She told them to return to their drinks, and a young boy served the men pushed forward a coffee that had a red sprinkle scythe on it, “its on the house Ma’am.” As she sat down the crackle of the radio filled the room, as a man spoke through the slightly distorted sound quality.
“First she hunts grim, now she hunts mercs, the red menace delivered a crippling blow to the northernmost Atlas operations. We have just received the latest news concerning this terrible and unjust conflict, in a subterfuge operation concerning a mere teenager, 7 of the mercenary invaders and a high ranking officer were taken off the field by the former huntress Ruby rose. The white menace has been delivered a clear message, that from now on the only way for them is back, that they would pay so dearly for each and every step they take in what was meant to be their neighbors' soil. This mission and similar operations have been taken up over the last several months, and a classified document recently released to us speaks of a certain “red fever” that has inspired soldiers and mercenaries alike to throw down their weapon and abandon their post as the terror continues to penetrate the enemy ranks. She has the patience of a huntress, she has the patience of the Vacuen people. A perfectionist no doubt in the snipers war, she has now taken out her eighth field grade officer.” She stepped out of the bar and into the street, unable to hear anymore. Her eyes fell on a young girl, surrounded by soldiers who sat on barrels or settled for the ground as she spoke in a foreign language. She joined the spectators. The girl stood on a wooden crate.
“C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière, accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons,” she sipped her coffee as she listened, another poem. She wondered what she was saying.
“D'argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière, Luit : c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons. Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue, et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu, dort ; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue, pale dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.” She spoke with a rehearsed tone, as she had memorised the poem by heart. Ruby thought of the videos and articles she had seen and read. Her thoughts lie on one man who had killed a prisoner by the order of a superior; he had hanged himself after writing a note to the Command Sergeant Major, forcing a massive scandal and reform within the corps. She thought of the boys that were lured out into the killing fields, and how even if they survive the war, they would be affected by the same ailments.
“Les pieds dans les gla?euls, il dort. Souriant comme. Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme: Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid.” The girl rehearsed, and Ruby’s thoughts veered to a time where she and another sniper were trained on an enemy officer, she remembered his face, he was concerned and agitated, not knowing what to tell his men. He was young, and she could see his Atlas Academy ring on his hand as he spoke, panicked, through a radio. He was a fresh Lieutenant, and the tension was interrupted by a radio call, telling them to pull back. She remembered the other snipers slamming his fist into the ground, cursing, almost as if he needed to kill the man. She remembered judging him, but later during the war she knew what he felt like, all that emotion, contemplating, wasted.
“Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ; Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au c?té droit." The girl stayed silent, and the soldiers clapped as they heard the end of the poem. She thought of the Commandant from when she first met Charmaine, questioning herself, did that kill do so much to change the outcome of the war?
She then thought of the boy from earlier, in different circumstances, they could have been friends at Beacon. Instead, they all lay dead, victim to a land they have no connection to.
The girls mother accompanied the girl back into their house.
Ruby stopped talking to herself, if another boy did die, if another father wouldn’t see their family, it was because they were less important than that girl. It was a morbid thought, but war was a morbid thing, but she had the ability to save innocent lives. What he could do, she must do, and what she must do, she would.
Her thoughts were interrupted by two of her soldiers guiding a man down the street, he had a large frame, and bug eyes.
The Major sat at his desk cleaning the octagonal cylinder of his revolver. A Colonel barged into his room, and closed the door. “Another merc platoon has just been lost, what the fuck are you doing out here?” The Major had met her type before, and looked at her right breast pocket, towards the ribbons.
“I am doing my best with the tools I was given,” the Major said rather unbothered. “Your best is not enough, you have a duty to produce results, and so far have not completed your mission or advanced our standing on this front.” She reassembled his pistol, and slide it across the table. Being the inheritor to the mission, the Major knew exactly what she was thinking, and was displeased with such an attitude from an officer. His eyes fell on a particular ribbon, accounting overseer, given to the top percent of the financial division.
He picked up the pistol in one hand, and a bullet in the other, “I have been fighting since my dad was decapitated for owning an illegal rifle. I’ve had to pull off the boot of a soldier's severed leg to get the dog tags, he had strung a wedding ring on the chain.” His voice trampled as he placed the bullet in its cylinder, “Another time I pulled the kevlar helmet of a corpse, the fibers had expanded after he got shot, it pulled half of his brains out with it, it looked like a bloody towel.” He continued, sniffling while closing the hinged action, slowly spinning the chamber to get the shot were he wanted it to be, “and I will be Goddamned if I take an order by an accountant that wears my uniform like a fucking costume.” A click was heard as the hammer was pulled back, and he aimed for the nasal bridge. He saw her expression change as she realized that her implied order would not be followed.
The Corporal barged into the room, and sighed with relief, he had silently prayed that the Major would take no such order, being subject to the same treatment by the same people. He collected her pistol, her Brown belt, and began to pull the corpse from the room. “Looks like were setting sale again, Corporal. I imagine that the company didn’t fare too well, and a thermal scan revealed activity around a supposedly decommissioned nuclear silo. I think whoever disappeared that entire company, the ones with the strange caliber, they might be hiding there.”
