Earth,
Korean Peninsula - 4th
Quarter, 2407
She
lies prone in the humid jungle, mud soaking into her fatigues, her
rifle braced against her shoulder. Young. Smaller. Flesh and bone,
not plated steel. Her breathing is steady. Her heartbeat calm. Beside
her, partner 168
lies in position, whispering corrections.
“Shift
left. Quarter mil. Wind’s picking up.”
She
adjusts the scope, finger hovering over the trigger.
Birds
chirp overhead. Insects buzz. Somewhere in the distance, mortar fire
thumps like a slow heartbeat.
“Got
him,” she whispers.
“Good,”
168 murmurs. “On my mark—” He never finishes. “MOVE!”
Then
the world begins to whistle. She knows that sound, everyone in the
war learns that sound.
Her
body reacts before thought does. She twists, shoving off the ground….
The RPG hits the ridge they’re lying on.
The
explosion devours everything.
Heat.
Light. Pressure that feels like the fist of God. A sound so loud it
becomes silence.
When
she wakes, she’s on her back several meters downslope. The jungle
canopy above her has been turned into a burning wound in the sky.
Leaves drift like ash. The air tastes like copper.
She
tries to breathe and chokes on it. Pain floods in next, searing,
bone-deep, blinding. She rolls, instinctively trying to push herself
onto elbows and finds only one.
Her
right arm is gone. Not mangled. Not wounded. Gone.
Torn
from her body at the shoulder, stump a raw fountain of blood pouring
into the mud.
Her
eyes widen, but her mouth opens first.
A
scream claws out of her throat, raw and high and animal. The kind
that tears the vocal cords on the way up.
Her
skin, everywhere along her right side, is blackened, blistered,
shredded. Her ribs shift wrong when she breathes. Her helmet is gone,
and the whole right side of her face feels like someone has flayed it
alive.
Cold
air hits exposed flesh and agony flares white and absolute.
She
tries to crawl. She barely moves an inch. Another scream rips out of
her, hoarse, broken.
She
hears voices then, shouts in another language, growing closer. Boots
crashing through underbrush. Metal clinking. Rifles being chambered.
And the dogs. War K9s, trained on blood and wounded prey. Their
snarls echo between the trees.
Spartan
tries to pull herself up again with her left arm, but she collapses
instantly, forehead hitting the dirt. Blood pours down her cheek. Her
vision flickers. She cries, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing
it, hot tears mixing with blood and dirt as the barking grows louder
and closer.
And
all she can do is scream into the burning jungle as death closes in
on every side.
Northwestern
Battlefield – Present Time
Spartan
comes to in fragments. Her name, her name, is being shouted
again and again, but it’s like someone yelling through water.
Muffled. Wrong. Not hers. Not anymore.
Everything
is black. Her right side screams with that old, impossible pain, the
jungle, the scorched earth, the missing limb that isn’t missing but
is, the right side of her face caved in and burning, the wet
sound of her own breath rattling against blood. She can’t tell
where the memory ends and the present begins. Maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe she’s still on that ridge. Maybe she never left.
Then...Scrape.
A
sharp, rhythmic rasp, metal biting ice.
Scrape.
Someone
tearing at the world above her, shovel or gauntlet clearing snow in
frantic strokes. Each one punctuated by a voice, raw, desperate:
“Spartan! Spartan!”
The
name hits harder now. Something in her recognizes it.
Scrape—thunk—scrape
And
then a violent burst of white light floods her vision as the last
layer of snow is ripped away.
A
silhouette stands over her. Smoke coils around them, thick, chemical
gray from a smoke grenade, hissing into the frigid air. The
battlefield roars in from all sides like a heavy metal drum line,
gunfire hammering, veloxsteeds bellowing, Venators screaming
war-prayers, the world smashing itself to pieces.
Arturo
drops to his knees beside her Olympian armor, black and crimson now
half-buried in churned ice. His visor is cracked. He’s panting
hard.
“Spartan.
Spartan! Stay with me, hey, HEY!”
She
gasps violently, the sound like someone dragging air through a
crushed lung. Blood sprays inside her helmet, splattering her visor
from the inside.
Her
body convulses. She tries to move, she thinks she does, but her right
side is still burning, still gone, still thirty years old and dying
in a jungle.
Snow
steams off her like she’s a fallen meteor.
Arturo’s
hands clamp onto her helmet, “Come back. Come back to me.”
But the moment his palms brush the right side of her armor, he jerks
away with a sharp hiss.
The
heat bites straight through his gauntlets. The metal is searing.
Spartan
drags in air in frantic, broken gulps, each breath like she’s
drowning on dry land. Her lungs seize. Her throat rattles. She snarls
in pain, low and feral, but her eyes are unfocused, still locked
somewhere decades ago in jungle humidity and burning phosphorus.
She
doesn’t realize she’s pinned. Doesn’t realize the fallen
cryolume tree still crushes her left side. Doesn’t realize her
right arm is still there, intact, armored, trembling.
Arturo
digs harder, scooping snow with bare hands, flinging it aside to
expose the damage:
Her
once-pearlescent pauldrons are scorched to midnight black. The upper
layer of the right pauldron is gone, vaporized entirely; the
remaining plates are split open like peeled metal fruit, jagged and
curled, their edges glowing faintly red. Shrapnel from her own armor
punched inward, metal and ceramic needles driven deep into muscle and
hydraulics.
Blood
and actuator fluid drip into the snow, turning it pink, then red,
then black.
The
right side of her helmet is caved in along the cheek and jawline,
vent plating burst outward. The chestplate beneath is warped and
pitted, still cooking from the impact.
She
hears shouting. Foreign syllables. Korean. Her breath seizes. Her
spine locks.
The
distant battle, the veloxsteeds shrieking, hooves pounding, twists in
her mind into the snapping jaws of war K9s, metal teeth and low
growls cutting through the trees. The roar of Venator war chants
blurs into the barked orders of enemy soldiers closing in on her.
Her
vision contracts. She doesn’t see Arturo. She doesn’t see snow.
She sees jungle. The ridge. The fire. The blood.
With
a strangled cry she jerks her body, strength returning in a wild,
panicked surge. She wedges her arm under the fallen cryolume trunk
and hurls it aside, sending it crashing into the snow with a
thunderous crack.
She
bolts upright. Steam hisses violently from the ruptured seams of her
armor.
Then
she turns and shoves past Arturo, nearly knocking him
sprawling, and plunges into the frozen forest, moving not with
strategy but with animal panic, raw survival instinct.
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“SPARTAN!”
Arturo’s voice cracks. He stares for a heartbeat, stunned,
disoriented, then lunges after her, boots skidding across ice.
“SPARTAN,
STOP!” he yells as he sprints into the cryolume woods, breath
steaming in the cold, following the crashing sound of her retreat as
she tears through the snow like a wounded beast trying to outrun the
past.
Red
Baron and Liam’s Position – Continuous
Red
Baron’s voice cuts through the storm like a razor.
“Liam!
Grenades. NOW.”
Liam
balks, fingers trembling around the pin of his single frag. “Sir,
Samayel is still—”
“He
can take it.” Red Baron’s tone is iron. Final.
“That armor is built to survive orbital debris. The Venators
aren’t.”
Liam
swallows hard, nods, and snaps the pin free.
Two
metal clinks. Two arcs disappearing into the churning crimson,
electrified smoke. A hellish fog, pulsing with red lightning
like some wounded god breathing.
For
a heartbeat, nothing.
Then
WHUMP, WHUMP.
The
detonations hammer the forest floor, shockwaves shuddering the air.
The crimson smoke balloons outward in a violent burst as bodies, and
pieces of bodies, hurl out of it. A Venator’s arm, still gripping a
sword. A torso. A scorched helmet spinning end over end before it
hits a tree and splits open like a cheap ornament.
Snow
sprays in every direction.
Red
Baron doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. He’s already raising his
rifle. “Up. Fire into the
cloud.”
He
squeezes the trigger. The rifle bucks, muzzle flash bright against
the red haze. Liam forces himself to follow, lifting his own rifle
and emptying bursts blindly into the roiling smoke where Samayel
vanished.
Bullets
stitch into the crimson shroud, sparks briefly illuminating shadowed
shapes. Some Venator screaming. Something large shifting. Something
metallic grinding.
But
no silhouette of Olympian armor. No crackle of Samayel’s
lightning-talons. No voice. Just that suffocating, living smoke
swallowing every round they send into it.
Liam’s
magazine runs dry. He ejects it with shaking hands. “Sir… I
don’t— I don’t see him. I don’t see anything.”
Red
Baron lowers his rifle one inch. His visor reflects the pulsing
crimson fog.
“Neither
do I,” he says.
The
smoke ripples. The red haze thins at last, its crackling glow
guttering out like a dying fire. What remains is smoke, settling low
over the churned snow, until something moves
beneath it.
A
gauntleted hand punches up through the slush. Then Samayel rises. Not
like a man. Like some vast, armored revenant dragging itself out of
the grave. The Olympian plating is blackened, cracked, electricity
arcing weakly across it. The red scorch-marks cling to him like
warpaint. Hydraulic fluid drips from ruptured joints. Snow hisses to
steam where it touches him.
He
lifts his head and roars,
a sound so guttural it vibrates through the frostbitten air.
Liam
nearly drops his rifle. “Oh my god…”
Red
Baron doesn’t hesitate. “Samayel!”
No
response, Samayel lurches forward, dazed, instincts feral and raw.
Red
Baron sprints toward him, Liam scrambling behind.
“Samayel,
it’s us! Federalists! Stand down!” Baron calls
again, louder.
Samayel
jerks toward the voice, turning with a predatory snap of his helm. Up
close, he looks wrong, too slow, too heavy. The Olympian armor, once
fluid as a second skin, now drags at him. Sparks spit from the
joints. A warning glyph on his powerpack flickers through its cracked
shell.
The
armor is dying. And it’s taking him with it.
All
around them, Venators hesitate, tightening their formation around the
distant clash where Thaneus battles Rho Voss. None dare step toward
Samayel now.
Red
Baron raises both hands, deliberate. “We need to move, now. We have
to get out of here.”
Samayel’s
breathing is ragged inside his helm, metallic and struggling. “Rho…”
A hiss of static. “Spartan…”
Liam
glances at Red Baron. “Sir, this whole line’s collapsing around
them. We stay, we die.”
Red
Baron shakes his head sharply. “Not without our own.”
Samayel
steadies himself, planting the broken haft of a stolen Venator spear
into the snow to keep upright. His voice is a growl shredded by pain.
“We
get them,” he says. “Or this was for nothing.”
Rho
Voss’ Position – Continuous
Rho
Voss staggers, but he does not fall. He can’t fall.
Not with Spartan gone from sight. Not with Venators closing in on
every side. Not with Thaneus riding him down like a wolf on a wounded
bull.
Snow
blasts upward as the titansteed circles him, steam venting from the
armored barding. Thaneus lashes out with Samayel’s stolen spear,
its crackling tip hissing as it cuts through the air.
Rho
raises his zweihander to parry.
CRACK.
He’s
too slow.
The
spear punches into the seam of his shoulder plate and drives through
it, shoving him half a step sideways. A power cell ruptures against
the impact, bursting in a flare of blue sparks that spray across the
snow like dying fireflies.
Rho
grunts, not in pain. He is far past pain. It’s anger that pushes
the sound out. Fury. Desperation.
He
pivots into the wound rather than away from it, trapping the spear’s
blade deeper in his shoulder, and swings his zweihander with his
other arm.
The
world becomes blood.
The
Venators closest to him, five, six bodies, are swept up in a single
arc, the zweihander’s mass cleaving them cleanly, bisecting armor
and bone, flinging halves like butchered animals into the snow. A
spray of crimson mists the air. The survivors recoil in shock.
Thaneus
only laughs.
“Good!”
he shouts over the chaos, yanking the spear free with a sickening
metallic rip. “Show me why Absjorn covets you so!”
Rho
snarls, turning on him, but three more Venators slam into his back
and flank. Maces hammer against his armor. One sword finds a gap
between plates and pierces a hydraulic line, hot fluid spraying out
in a stinging burst.
Rho
crushes the attacker with an elbow strike that caves in a helmet, and
with a savage kick he sends another skidding across the ice like
broken debris. But with each movement his armor grinds, one arm
slower, one leg heavier.
He
tries once more to break for Spartan’s last known position, just a
few meters, just enough to see if she’s breathing, but the
titansteed lunges sideways, blocking him. Its armored chest slams
into him like a battering ram, forcing him back toward the Venators.
The
priest-warrior twirls the spear and staff with insulting grace, voice
a cruel purr.
“Running
to her, Rho Voss?” The spear lowers, aimed at his throat. “Let me
put you down first.”
Rho
braces, blood dripping from under his pauldrons, breath a harsh hiss
through damaged filters. His zweihander trembles in his grip, not
with fear. With rage.
He
lifts the blade, ready to commit every drop of strength left in him.
He doesn’t fight to win. He fights to reach Spartan’s body, or
die tearing a path toward it.
Just
as Samayel, Red Baron, and Liam reach Rho Voss, four,
no, five smoke grenades arc out of the forest.
Perfect throws. Clean lines. They hit the snow around Thaneus, around
Rho Voss, around Samayel and the Federalists, each one hissing as it
detonates.
White
smoke floods the field.
A
wall of it. A choking, blinding, depthless fog that swallows
titansteed, Venator, Federalist, and Vardengard alike. Shapes
dissolve into silhouettes; silhouettes dissolve into nothing.
Then….
A
howl. Low, rising, guttural. Then a second. Then a
third.
Each
call overlaps the next, answering, echoing, Vardengard war-howls
rolling through the cryolume forest like thunder trapped in a canyon.
Venators freeze at the sound, weapons sweeping wildly through the
smoke. Horses stamp and rear, snorting, confused.
Snow,
blood, broken armor, the hulking shape of the titansteed, everything
vanishes inside a blinding storm. The Venators shout in alarm,
weapons snapping toward shadows they can’t see. Thaneus barks
orders, but the smoke folds over him like a shroud.
And
then the Vardengard arrive.
Ashurdan
hits first, an obsidian bolt erupting from the fog with a
storm-forged claymore. His blade clangs against Samayel’s Olympian
armor, not in hostility but in signal, a sharp, deliberate strike to
snap Samayel out of his spiraling fury.
“Move!”
he growls, forcing himself between Samayel and the nearest cluster of
Venators. “Pack threshold. Extraction only.”
Red
Baron flinches, almost firing, but Samayel barks, “They’re ours!”
through static, and that’s enough, barely.
Belqartis
and Naburiel
crash into Rho Voss’ position next, the smoke parting around them
like a curtain.
Belqartis’
twin axes flash in brutal arcs. He doesn’t kill, he maims,
carving space around Rho with surgical savagery, cutting tendons,
breaking knees, ripping shields from grips. Venators fall back
screaming.
Naburiel’s
mace slams into a rider’s breastplate with a crack like a falling
tree, folding the Venator over his saddle. His shield sweeps outward,
smashing another off his feet. He plants himself beside the fallen
Rho Voss, voice low and urgent through his helm.
“Brother.
On your feet. We have you.”
Rho
snarls pain through clenched teeth, but even half-crippled he rises,
leaning into Naburiel’s shield.
Ashurdan
throws an armored forearm across Samayel’s path, blocking him from
charging blindly deeper into the haze.
“You
overextended,” Ashurdan growls, hauling him back by the scorched
plating of his chest. “We’re done here.”
Samayel
wants to argue, to tear back toward Thaneus, but Red Baron and Liam
flank him, rifles up, desperately guarding his retreat. And in the
distance, Thaneus’ furious silhouette swings at smoke, unable to
find targets in the blizzard of white.
More
Venators attempt to close in, but Belqartis’ howl tears through the
smoke again, a warning and a promise.
“Pack
is together!” he roars.
And
for the first time in this battle, the Vardengard begin to pull their
own out
rather than carve deeper in.
The
Cryolume Forest – Moments later
Naburiel
has Rho Voss under one arm, dragging the giant through the trees.
Ashurdan hauls Samayel the same way, the Olympian armor sparking and
hissing with every uneven step. Red Baron and Liam flank them, rifles
up, breath fogging in the cold air.
The
forest swallows the battlefield noise behind them, first into a
muffled thrum, then into nothing. They’ve barely made it a hundred
meters when Rho Voss suddenly
stops.
His boots carve trenches into the snow. Naburiel stumbles at the
abrupt halt.
Rho’s
chest heaves. Head lowered. A low, instinctive growl vibrates through
his armor, more beast than human. Then he shoves
Naburiel away with a force that nearly knocks the veteran Vardengard
off his feet.
Rho
turns to go back. No words. He never needs them. The intent is clear
in the violence of his movement: Spartan
is back there. Alone. Buried. Hurt.
Belqartis
reacts first, intercepting him with a shoulder-check that cracks bark
off the nearest tree. Naburiel plants himself on the other side, both
of them pushing against the black-armored giant.
“Rho,”
Naburiel snarls, muscles in his neck bulging, “Stop. Stop! It’s
too hot back there. Thaneus still hunts!”
Rho
strains against them, boots grinding hard into the snow, refusing.
Samayel
tries to step forward, guilt ripping across his faceplate, but
Ashurdan yanks him back by the collar plate.
Then
Liam speaks, voice tight and shaking, “Arturo… he’s not here.”
All
eyes snap to him.
He
swallows. “He—he went after Spartan when she got hit. When the
tree fell on her. I didn’t… I didn’t see him when we pulled
out.”
The
forest goes dead-still.
Red
Baron shifts, scanning the perimeter. His breath forms a single white
plume as he lifts a gauntleted hand and points. “Look.”
Not
even ten paces away the
snow is torn up, deep gouges and boot prints and
heavy drag marks.
And
splattered across the churned path blood.
Drops
at first. Then streaks. Then a clear trail leading deeper into the
cryolume forest.
Red
Baron lowers his hand, jaw clenched. “Someone moved through here,”
he says. “Fast. Hurt.”
The
implication hangs in the frozen air: Spartan is alive. Arturo is with
her. And something took them both into the trees.
