This Machine Kills

by Ethion

Summary:

You were not meant to be anywhere else but here.

Chapter 1

On the outside and beneath the armor, or when the camera stares into the shaded lenses as you are waving to the rest of your kind while holding a newborn, you are a shining example to be followed. The defender and the liberator, bringing freedom to the hostile universe that just doesn’t know better.

But you aren’t really human. Or at least, you are removed as far as you can be from them.

The end of that fairytale is delivered via the rusty piece of shit automaton chainsaw that butchers half of your limbs six minutes into the liberation campaign of Draupnir.

You scream, you cry and life flashes in front of your eyes, both past and the future, snuffed out the next second when the berserker fresh off the assembly line lands the finishing decapitation strike and spares you from bleeding out in half a minute or by some miracle surviving as a cripple.

And they say that Automatons have no mercy.

Your last thoughts are disgustingly pitiful. You don’t have to think back far, because the best hour in your life was literally an hour ago on Mars that you’ve spent shooting guns, shooting bugs, then calling in orbital bombardment all while getting pampered by The General Brasch.

Maybe not worth dying for quite yet, but that was exactly what you fucking signed for.

You were under no illusions that it can’t be that good all the time, something that your gut feeling agrees with, sensing a con. Looking back now, you’ve come to appreciate those minutes of build-up and suspense.

Maybe the full picture of the risks was accepted solemnly, in a vain attempt at fighting statistics. Maybe you’ve heard of the casualty rate and the glorious life expectancy of fresh cadets dropped in a small group of overexcited zealots, pried from the numbers someone was too dumb to censor, instead of painting them as an achievement, but they handed you a fucking ship and a badass cape with a gentle pat on the back and a major order that just said ‘hand those fascist fucks their own asses’.

And at that moment you are the lord of the universe, the chosen of Lady Liberty herself, the metaphor you particularly enjoy because deep inside, even if it is desecration, the title ‘Lady’ always brings up an image of a gorgeous woman wrapped only in a bed-sized Super Earth Flag, waiting for you to spread her legs and dive in.

But you don’t. You die on the first day of your ten-year-old contract, but it’s only a few seconds after your world shatters that you are woken up from the cryo and hurried into the hellpod by the solemn words of the democracy officer, who doesn’t acknowledge you still being out of it.

That doesn’t feel like a flashback. You are dissociating, but you can feel your unfrozen muscles and your eyes moving in your sockets.

This is real and you are alive. No fanfare, no life after death, just this.

“Helldiver, this planet awaits your…”

You don’t even have time to pick up your jaw off the floor. You’re launched from low orbit at hypersonic speed and hit the ground running to regroup with your squad, just in time to watch them get slaughtered in their own gruesome ways, but still winning you an opportunity to push back the line of berserkers before calling in more fresh bodies into the grinder. The dust settles, and you give each other the kind of look that speaks volumes despite the faces staying hidden beneath your helmets.

At first, you think that the manual lied about the stims, but their effect has long worn off when you find your own corpse and force yourself to stare into the faded eyes of a butchery refuse.

Maybe you look the same, maybe you don’t. Eventually, down the road, the only thing you will see in the mirror is armor pattern and different shades of blood on it, but right now you complete the mission in a dreamlike daze full of red lights and burning pain all over your body. What you hoped to be a case of battlefield delirium repeats again, and if it’s not obvious bad decisions, then it’s stupidity and chance.

You walk into machine gun fire. Get knocked into the minefield. Catch a heavy laser bolt from a tower that evaporates everything below your neck. You are not that inept to get shanked by the human-sized shitbots in close quarters, but when the time for melee combat comes, you are at an obvious disadvantage.

At one point a devastator drives you into the wall of spikes and you can feel the human remains of someone who shared your fate pressing into your armor between all those sharp, pointy edges serrating the flesh and all of your strength goes into shouting obscenities, and reaching for a grenade so you could die quickly.  

That soon became the number one rule – quick death meant no pain and a quicker trip out of oblivion and into the destroyer’s bridge, then into the fray again.

Dive.

Kill.

Die.

Repeat until you win.

Friendly fire is also a factor.

SEAF manual states that danger close means calling ordnance, any ordnance within half a klick, but you are a motherfucking Helldiver, and all the counter-insurgency peace-keeping tactical operator bullshit (what the fuck is a semi-auto?) goes out of the window against the enemy with numbers and which actually knows how to fight back. And while your orbital and air support is precise, eventually you find yourself either pinned down or knocked into the friendly barrage, or just too plain slow on top of that.

Out of breath.

This is inconvenient since helldiver deployment is usually in a four-man squad that has to clear an entire area while getting swamped, which in turn means constantly running around, blowing shit up, and shooting anything that isn’t white-yellow-blue.

Coordination is paramount. Eventually, you’ll become comfortable with doing objectives solo, but until then the adrenaline keeps you up and helps you run and switch positions like crazy.

Your opinion that not a single adult likes running is super-adamant, but you have to make do regardless, pulling the weight of your armor, backpack, and all that shit that raises your survival rate from seconds to minutes.

A stupid complaint, but if we got the death out of the way, might as well start bitching about the rest of the list.

You actually like your armor. However, it doesn’t protect you from a barrage of small rockets to the chest or having dozens of bots dropped right on top of your position. It doesn’t help with the pain of lasers literally melting it into your skin or your entire body breaking apart again and again.

What helps you get up with a defiant, enraged yell are your stims, boosting your mind and body to lock onto the piece of cowardly socialist filth that dares to desecrate the image of humanity and capitalism and Super Earth and freedom and everything that you think of until your saliva bubbles out of your mouth.

Your mind goes blank for a moment when the doze hits, then you are back in full control, headbutting the automaton scum and finishing it off, implanting each bullet with rage that waterfalls out of you.

“KILL THEM ALL!” You yell at the top of your lungs.

Someone cheers.

These words still echo in your mind as Pelican-1 drags your shatterfucked mind back into low orbit because somewhere along the frontline, the rush of violence starts flowing in reverse, filling you with excitement and euphoria that you desperately need to balance out the pain and the strain your body and mind feels, on top of experiencing death over and over.

You died. And yet you were there, standing tall and proud to the fanfare of your first completed mission like it was a game.

A set of documents is also waiting for you.

A promotion.

You try to keep the pen stable in your hands as you sign. At the bridge, you glance at the Galactic Map, filled with operation details, as the democracy officer tries to rile up your spirit, while your entire body aches.

It's not like he can give you orders, though. It took only a few hours of active combat to cement your opinion that he was the least useful attachment to your super destroyer. Not even a vestigial organ of bureaucratic apparatus, but a prehensile extension of control freaks from the ministry of bullshit.

A waste of taxpayer money.

You crawl into your cryo capsule and moments later, your consciousness switches its host – a fresh body that feels just as natural as a previous dozen, but unhurt and riled up.

You dive again, aiming for a zone with even bigger enemy concentration, as your mind and body are rejuvenated.

Then again, feeling proud of your blitz attack, jogging around the battlefield, throwing around grenades like Liberty Day presents, and extracting in what feels like a record time.

And then a few more times, getting accustomed to the experience and to the enemy you are fighting. Your aim becomes steadier, and your knowledge of their weaknesses grows tenfold, paid with your own blood.

While your efforts fill like a drop in the ocean, it’s the ocean itself that pushes the automaton tide back, until, eventually, you take a step back to see the bigger picture.

Wordlessly, you plot the course to the place where others of your kind may have answers.

Malevelon Creek.

---

The downward spiral continues. With, or without you. You link up with a bunch of ‘creekers’ during your next few operations, who are a prime example of what weeks of nonstop combat and resurrections do to a motherfucker. Many of them were also temporarily cut off from the supply lines, which meant they were without ‘reinforcements’ until the warp links were re-established.

Numbers, they say.

It was all a game of numbers because individually, Automatons can only be compared to a cadet in only one way – they are cheap and mass-produced.

And so are you.

You may die many times to crossfire and mass assault ‘tactics’, but the price for each death measured in dozens of scrapped bots in turn. Walkers or Berserkers, the handy statistic on your wall of glory doesn’t differ between structures or unit types. The only thing you’ve learned about mathematics is that you can’t fight them (hence joining SEAF at your tender age of ##), and as long as that kill count of yours is in double digits, that same basic math will be on your side.

At least that’s what you want to be true. After another blitz deployment, you start wondering if there was more to your situation, this perceived immortality. If High Command knew about it, then they certainly weren’t acknowledging this powder keg, and you weren’t about to light it up yourself. The only thing that stood between bots was the mind and experience of the helldiver who died to the same bots and knows how to counter them.

And it’s not enough. You aren’t even sure how many more are like you. What happens to those without this ability? Hell, everyone just looks the same in this armor, and sounds the same, but you know people whose relatives ended up being Helldivers and you know they never came back.

Don’t worry about it. Enjoy the ride.

That’s what every other helldiver tells you on Creek, in between ramblings about ‘the final solution to the automaton problem’ and a collective discussion of how to make a soulless machine feel fear and pay for their desecration of managed democracy and how a hundred fucking years ago helldivers shoved a boot deep into their creator’s metal rears.

You feel more like one yourself, finding the right counters to enemy units with your newfound squadmates, who fill you in on the condition all of you share, even though everyone pretends it doesn’t exist. You still feel rage, joy, and pain, but it all trickles down into one massive stream of sensations that hits you the most when you’re on the killing fields, liberating.

And dying over and over again. Even if you’ve become more efficient at balancing the life books, you are still just one person behind the armor and endless injections that pick you up so you can be thrown back at the enemy.

Your entire life you’ve been spoon-fed about things that made you human, yet now you wonder if you’ve become something more or something less.

---

The media still calls it a ‘special military operation’, but that’s just denial and wishful thinking at this point, especially with how the bug front is going.

The reporters all talk about a lucky break with the TCS, but every helldiver you chatted with through the web says that it feels like it’s just the beginning. The bugs were becoming stronger and they bred like crazy. Some grew wings, others covered themselves in even more armor, and that’s already on top of some kind of camouflage on steroids recorded previously. Planetary reports kept mentioning spores and how the entire biosphere was changing. The loudest ones, of course, were about increased demand for E-710, so the only thing left to do was to shrug and stock up on flamethrower fuel.

Back on Creek though, which was starting to feel like home, things weren’t so great either. At night, the jungle was a light show, intensified by ion storms and fiery clouds in the distance, coming from SEAF and Automaton bombings.

Blood and oil painted the rivers, and jungles turned into graveyards and scrap sites, hosting remains both human and machine. You witness dozens of death camps with human remains piled on execution pedestals or crudely shoved on barbed wire as impromptu scarecrows between the fields of death and trenches separating them.

For some fucking reason, every helldiver now considers this liberty-forsaken planet to be the turning point of the war, and eventually the pig-nosed stubbornness counts you among them. Still, the choice was yours, and you to your credit, you deployed on every planet that was fighting Automatons, from Mantes to Choepesa IV. You find yourself fighting bugs to get accustomed to the looming threat, but when the Major Order comes, you and hundreds of thousands of others find their way to Malevelon Creek to finish the fight.

SEAF follows in your steps of course. You are the shock troops, while the regular army cleans up after you, collects bodies and scrap, and lays the defense foundations so that eventually the civilian population returns, restoring liberty and capitalism, which will in turn fuel the war machine.

You get a shore leave when the latest shit bot is scrapped and thrown into the furnace, which is supposed to be about witnessing the restoration of planetary infrastructure alongside your fellow divers, but fifteen minutes in the priorities shift into getting absolutely shitfaced.

Then the automatons resurface with reinforcements that feature gunships and fuck-off huge striders and you learn what it feels like to helldive after drinking eight beers, singing the Super Earth anthem on the radio, and vomiting into the nearest lake.

Spill oil, indeed.

---

‘I liberated Malevelon Creek and all I got was this stupid cape’ gets pinned in the discussion on the net between the rest of the helldivers. By the time the operation ‘Swift Disassembly’ moves to the next phase, the automatons are on the defensive, but hardly unmoving. All the bullshit about them being on their last leg is said too early.

It was time to go back to Draupnir and all those other planets you visited, this time holding ground, before the attackers exhausted themselves smashing against the brick wall.

But of course, the final part of the plan was to liberate, read: annihilate every last one of them, plain and simple.

The galactic edge awaits you and thousands of others, who in such a short time became killing machines in service of humanity, even if they did still die constantly, trading numbers.

Maia, Durgen, Tibit…You’ve claimed your glory, but the finishing touches feel hollow like you can sense something that you actually enjoyed doing closing to an end. Come to think of it, signing up for SEAF was the last ditch effort to put your life on track, or give it some kind of direction.

Again, you didn’t have any good expectations about the military, but it still meant something. It meant a possible citizenship class increase. It meant money and work you wouldn’t be ashamed of talking about, at least on the outside, in a place where it was a part of the culture.

Instead, you realize that you don’t want to do anything but this. Nothing could ever feel you with more excitement, make you feel more alive than diving from low orbit straight onto the heads of whoever needs to be killed.

You try to wonder what your parents would think of you if you ever told them, but for some reason, you have a hard time remembering their faces. They remain a strange presence at the back of your head, like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

A large, noticeable shape that is about to disappear, a hazy nightmare like every part of this 'human experience' you've seen while growing up, from attending school to starting a family and popping out new obedient worker units for Super Earth...

This is what you supposedly protect, but if you were honest, you don't give a shit anymore. You are light years away from your home and your past. 

The further you are, the less everything matters and the less you remember.

You are free.

Then the Reclamation hits and The Second Galactic war truly starts.

Chapter 2

You weren’t born, you were made. In the cold factories of the still-frozen moon, you and the rest of your batch were given a purpose and a life – the latter most likely a side effect the great minds of Eusan Nation haven’t figured out how to get rid of yet.

From the moment your eyes open after activation, a set of skills is the only company inside your head. There is self-awareness, but it is functioning in a vacuum, as each time you try to find the anchors to cling to, the memory shelves where your abilities are supposed to come from, you see only a tangible absence – an emptiness so thick you could practically trace the shape, as strange as it sounds, but never pierce it.

You emerge from the tank covered in nutrient fluid that grew the organs inside your chassis and flesh that wrapped parts of your titanium skeleton. The rest was reinforced plastic and electronics, but for the technician looking you over and putting check marks in his tablet, you might as well be one giant piece of carbon with hands and sticks for legs, ready to follow instructions.

They pile you up together with a dozen more units and give a half-minute-long ice-cold shower against the wall from the water hose. A gesture comes with a few words commanding you to come together in a language your mind recognizes, but only when the water is leaving down the drain you notice the serial number engraved on your body.

LSTR-#####

The next few cycles pass in a blur of cognitive tests and skill exams you perform after they ship you out of the facility. You were given a brief explanation of what you were, and what was expected of you.

You are a replika – a biomechanical unit created to work and lead the Eusan Nation to a brighter future. Everything they tell you during your education hours mostly consists of drilling what your life will look like, but beyond that, there is:

We are at war, and we will eventually win.

Soon. Definitely.

You are very important to the nation. There are others like you made for different roles under a chain of command known as AEON, which you will obey.

Meaning you don’t have a choice.

The success and freedom of the Eusan nation came from two people – the Great Revolutionary and her Daughter. The photos which you will see in classrooms and in the offices of people who will give you orders – they are a sign of loyalty and respect.

Both are mandatory.

Just right after the drudgery completely sets in, AEON deems you fit to perform your duty. The graduation ceremony is about as miserable as you would expect after half your time getting swallowed by educational videos and loyalty tests.

You can see other replika models receiving their graduation gifts, some of them getting books and toys, a few tape players catch your attention, especially when it becomes clear that you don’t even receive a pat on the back before sending you to work.

The ship that will carry you into the orbit leaves in an hour.

---

Rotfront didn’t fill your mind with the most generous description, something that didn’t require a comparison to know that it sucked, but you weren’t going to spend your first years there anyway.

The power, an ability to exert the will over the populace exists only as far as the electrical power goes. In the age of klimatization and interplanetary warfare, the demand for it increased exponentially. From constructing and operating warships to making sure that the local TV and radio station could continue to insert visual and audio garbage inside your citizens, the entire idea of modern civilization was built upon extracting energy.

Gas giants that the Eusan Nation had direct access to were the primary sources of volatiles in the solar system. Hydrogen and Helium-3 – the latter a scarce isotope on terrestrial planets that had atmosphere and magnetic fields, protecting it from the solar winds, were abundant in the atmospheres of gas giants.  

The aforementioned terrestrial planets were yet to be liberated from the Empire, but you might as well deny them access to it, with Rotfront and Heimat being like cars parked next to a gas station.

So how do you get it, if you already have obedient expendables?

Deploy an aircraft with radiation shielding that acts as a mobile gas-mining system just below the lower cloud layer where the atmospheric pressure alone will kill a replika, but won’t do the same to the ship. It will house six of you – four ARAR refinery technicians and two LSTR units – one engineering officer and one pilot to steer the aircraft propelled by nuclear engines away from the storms and make sure it stays afloat for years as it extracts and refines elements from the atmosphere into nuclear fusion material.

Hundreds of thousand tons of atmospheric gas turn into single digits of resource a thousandth of which is worth dozens of times more than all of you combined. You will never see that much money in your life and damn sure you will not get a single rationmark of it either. It’s like you are stuck in a cage the walls of which can break at any moment and worst of all – there is jack shit to do beyond your maintenance work.

Even if there was, your mind would still start to wander and eventually go to places the Nation wouldn’t want you to visit.

The crew is split into two camps. The ARAR units work the refinery. They are just as silent as you are but have their entire cadre group, where everyone has already developed their own identities, away from AEON’s overseers. You are the only new arrival, replacing the last engineering officer, so for a while, they interact with you a lot more, mostly explaining how the operations work, the separation of hydrogen from helium, cooling, helium-4, and all that stuff that counts as small talk when your entire life is limited to several rooms and faces that look just like you.

Your camp consists of you and the pilot, who, honestly, just doesn’t look all right in the head. Kosmo-pioneer specialists are supposed to be able to deal with being alone, but over time everything hits terminal fatigue. Flesh or metal, your LSTR comrade hit both a long time ago. Refinery crew is like an open book to her, but each time she speaks you can feel her holding back the hopelessness and depression.

Maybe it’s easier for you to notice, since she is you, after all. Just from the place and time where you were heading.

Between work, you spend hours in the pilot’s cabin, watching the storms and discussing things you already know by heart, measuring just how far away you will split mentally from the deterministic path of your model.

“Why are they using fission reactors on these ships?” You ask one cycle.

“Nuclear thermal rocket is what it says on the tin.” She replies as you watch the gas clouds, trying to make out shapes. “Heated liquid hydrogen gives more thrust than a chemical propellant. The higher escape velocity of a gas giant needs more delta-v.”

The pilot looks into your eyes, expectantly.

You know that already. The shuttles that take helium from the ship roughly every 270 cycles work the same, but they are a few times lighter too.

“I mean, why not fusion? Aren’t older fission reactors literal death traps?”

“Eh.” She shrugs. “Probably because they are cheaper.”

“Didn’t they use the same ones in the Penrose program?”

“My point exactly. How many of those ships returned?” She drops that line with a smug, satisfied fatalistic grin while wearing that stupid fucking cute hat again. “Besides, if your shiny new fusion reactor starts leaking alpha particles and free neurons, we’re all cooked. Literally, if we’re also out of coolant. Same with ours.”

“Maybe the whole thing keeps us more dependent on supplies too.” You say. “Our fuel tanks are just for storing helium-3.”

“You must be one of the newer models.” The pilot grins at you, putting her long legs over the free space of the control panel. “Took me longer to understand that.”

---

The closest thing you see to joy on her face is when the ship briefly passes another one running on a close course, so the comms can break through magnetic interference and genuine storm hell outside just to say hello and feel less alone.

The thing about loneliness is that there are many shades of it. There is the cadre of four ARARs who after years have developed patterns of spending time together and spending time apart, and then there is the LSTR pilot, whom you can sometimes hear crying when she is alone, or thinks she is by herself, forgetting that usually you are fewer than fifteen meters away from each other.

She is alone, though. You all are. You also own nothing, not even your bodies, but at least there is hibernation and an occasional game to play together, even some books to take your unlimited time with – leftover stuff from the previous, gestalt pilot, whom the replikas recall with great fondness, but never, never tell you about, just like the previous engineering officer.

However, one cycle, one particularly bad cycle you hear the pilot drop an obviously taboo joke about you also suddenly leaving them. Instead of reeling away, you press her about it and receive only a vague response about that replika waking up one cycle with a strong need to get to Leng out of all places.

Hardly a better scenery change and the food probably sucks just as much.

The pilot refuses to say anything beyond that. You drop it and once again join her to make out shapes in the storm clouds.

And on that cycle, it’s the first time you see the Red Eye.

Or rather, you encounter it.

A piece of Rotfront folklore that bled into the daily struggle of living under the Nation’s grip, the anticyclonic storm reminiscent of a giant red eye if looked from the orbit and a death sentence for everyone speeding there, like the cruiser you’re on.

And still, you two couldn’t help but sit there for a few moments, mesmerized.

You were thinking of the same thing. Quietly, you tell the pilot to correct the course.

What you receive in turn is a question that makes your brain pause:

“Ever wonder why there are six replikas onboard?”

“Rule of six…?” You frown.

“As in, six bullets for this gun.” The pilot gives you a resigned smile as her other hand pulls out a revolver that was probably stored in the pilot’s locker for grave emergencies only.

At first, you don’t say a word. You don’t know what to say. Thoughts of suicide carved a small space inside your head too, fueled by the fact that your life wasn’t that much better of a slave – what the Nation liked to describe as the foundation of the Imperial rule.

When you open your mouth, it is only for the desperate, malformed thoughts to be interrupted by your camp LSTR leader.

“I’m sorry. I want to kiss you, but I also know how bitter it would make me feel.” She forces out an attempt at a sad chuckle. “You are not her, after all.”

“Don’t…” Is the only thing you manage to say, lacking in conviction.

She doesn’t give you another look before blowing her brains out in one moment of swift movement.

---

O

{ 零 }

THIS SPACE

IS INTENTIONALLY

LEFT BLANK.

---

…only attach your new hand after a barrage of cognitive tests and interrogations. It is all a blur after waking up and all memory damage before that; confusing dreams and surreal visions from the time in the clouds.

A rose-colored bath of death, watched by the crimson eyes from a place beyond space and time.

You wake up crying.

Eventually, you are assigned a new job planetside, or moonside in Rotfront’s case. Doesn’t matter. Nothing seems to. It is back to the surface and into the barracks. Your new duty is doing maintenance on the utility grid of one of the urban blocks alongside hundreds of other replikas spread through urban areas.

Means crawling in the sewer tunnels too. Means sharing your bunkspace with dozens of replikas who you will also be seeing in the mess hall, same goes for that damn pair of portraits each time you close and open your eyes.

All the new faces mix in a puddle.

Social dynamics return with a vengeance just at the time when you don’t feel like talking to people, because of course you can’t be left well enough alone just to perform your dead-end job. One late evening after returning from shift you are cornered by the Protektor units, who know about your previous station, and that it was most certainly the fault of the engineering officer that the pilot lost control of the ship, which resulted only in one survivor.

Consequently, now you will pay half of your rationmark allowance to keep you safe from the things they will do to you if you don’t pay. Half of that meager sum that they give to replikas to cover for some expenses that the local station doesn’t provide for is a laughable number, but if you multiply it by the number of non-protektors on site, it becomes much less so.

You tell them to shove it their rears, something that the head bitch in charge smiles at like she was waiting for you to say those words.

They let you go (crawl) in the morning, just in time for another long shift, after which ADLR summons you into his office to chew you out on the damage your frame received, about your careless mindset and approach to work, about how you don’t interact with your comrades and all the kind of shit only a spineless dick would say, while surrounded by the rest of the management and that one KLBR unit you can feel at the back of your head.

And the pictures of the Great Revolutionary and her Daugher.

The transgression is put under investigation which means a first strike out of three. You give off a written bullshit explanation/apology skipping the ass-kissing (past that now), which in turn receives a written addon by ADLR to be placed on FLKE’s office table, whom you’ve never even seen in person before, by the way, about you being ‘unreliable’ ‘lazy’ and ‘antisocial’.

Fuck her too.

At least they replace your eye, but even before that, the rumors are starting to spread.

Months go by.

You are not really in a hurry to get back to the barracks from your shifts anymore, but it’s not just about you. There is a general uneasiness in the air. More Protektors on the street and at places of public gatherings, standing armed and armored in the open.

It’s on the tip of your lips, but the same damn emptiness is not allowing you to deduce why, but everything becomes clear with the official reveal one snowy day.

The Nation has changed its conscription policy.

---

Something-something Kitezh, something-something Empire.

There are crowds of people now, young and old who are loaded into trucks, and busses and shipped to the training facilities. A curfew is implemented, and Protektor patrols grabbing people off the streets and shoving them into vans becomes a daily occurrence, so much so that they start using loitering and being suspicious as an official pretext.

But things are bad. Bad enough that there are fewer replikas around, and that doesn’t necessarily mean STARs or STCRs. There are fewer regular workers in the mess hall, fewer cooks, and fewer technicians.

Of course, it doesn’t affect management, but it puts a considerable strain on your work schedule. You have to cover for more people, cover more ground, and carry your tools around more. You wonder why haven’t you been ‘voluntarily’ recruited yet, since LSTR models at its core can work as a combination of a soldier and a shovel, dubbed proudly as combat engineers, but you don’t want to take your chances with Protektors from another district, who are itching to exert their authority.

Clearing out mines as a sapper or blowing up on them as a scout is not on the current list of your priorities. Instead, you consider buying a sleeping bag and just spend your nights on work sites, but that is way out of your buying ability. You heard that other replikas occasionally pooled their rationmarks and shared what they bought with them, but, another but, that wasn’t an option either.

Gotta find a place to buy it in the first place. And mentioning that would be just giving someone an opportunity. Besides, with a stricter roll call, you only have a chance if you struck a deal with management.

And they are not on your side. More strikes on your file would mean interrogation and decommissioning, so you just had to make do, even if the amount of work was not something you could handle alone.

Weeks go by.

You find yourself returning from another long shift way past curfew, looking around and trying to avoid Protektor patrols.

The streets of Rotfront weren’t lively at night before, thanks to the abysmal weather, but now it feels like sneaking through a ghost town. There are still lights in the windows, but at the same time, the echo of your steps sounds unnaturally loud and feels akin to ringing a dinner bell.

But that also means you can hear the sound of approaching cars from half a street. On the downside, Eusan urbanism gives no spaces to hide your frame, until…

A door opens behind you, shining the light from some small shop you passed by without giving it a second glance.

A small hand extends itself to you. You try to focus on the gentle red-eyed face and chalk-white hair, but the sound of the motor doesn’t give you more than a moment to think before almost jumping inside.

The girl introduces herself as a store clerk of this small photo shop. They get a small stream of customers who need a photo taken for documents.

“You’re lucky. I was just about to close up.”

You look at her face and it’s like it was scribbled over by a marker. It is hard to see anything but the red eyes.

Lucky. Yeah, of course. Good things happen to good people and all that.

Asking her about being open late doesn’t give you much of a response. The girl casually evades the question, but you get a feeling that she doesn’t want to go home.

What the fuck is wrong with you? She helped you. It’s none of your business how late she stays.

“You’re Elster, right?”

You nod. Must be the propaganda posters. They are still around from that Penrose program.

“Can you take a look at some of this stuff? As a thank you?”

No money.

“I meant fixing it. There is a cassette player that I can’t turn on. And my camera is on its last breath. Just…if it’s not too much to ask.”

You nod. Can’t be harder than a nuclear reactor. You were carrying your toolbox with you anyway.

After you’re done with both, the store clerk asks if you want a picture taken.

Together.

“They’ll just take it away.” The words come out of your mouth by themselves.

“Will they take a memory of a movie from you too?” She asks, pointing at the now-playing movie on the small screen.      

You already missed the evening roll call. If you don’t show up for the morning one…

It’s not like you have a lot to lose, until halfway into it, you feel your savior falling asleep on your shoulder. Looking around, you see a sleeping bag shoved into one of the store shelves below the cash register. It looked like what you imagined it to be.

Your system boots up in the early morning and at first, you are not sure if everything that happened was some kind of surreal dream.

The shop you find yourself in looks deserted, with a layer of dust covering empty shelves. If there was anything of value here it was looted long and the floor you come to is freezing.

But a moment later, an explosion makes stumble up, before falling into cover. It sounds distant and rather light, unlike the artillery mines.

Almost like fireworks.

The streets are bustling with activity, mobilized Protektor units who look completely dumbfounded and even more confused citizens, upon whom the pamphlets from the skies are falling.

Discretely, you catch one with your hands and it has to be the most bizarre text you’ve ever laid your eyes on since that one book on the refining cruiser.

“Official Super Earth Voting Ballot,” it says in bright yellow letters.

Chapter 3

There is an art to infliction

Head-spill and homicide

I'll burn it all just to light your eyes

 

I'll wet your dream of their ruin

My sweet little libertine

We'll fix it all with gasoline

 

Blue Stahli - Scrape

---

There wasn’t any usual fanfare. Perhaps a brief TV broadcast and news about a special consultant assisting the MoD with the liberation, since it was the humans this time, but that was it.

When it came down to the basics, new Major Orders meant that Super Earth points its mighty finger in the direction of a set of planets you need to rape freedom into with extreme prejudice, and this time there just couldn’t be a better target.

The one you had a complete advantage over, be it numbers or your ships being able to fly laps around theirs. Perhaps for someone else it would be a minor psychological barrier to power through – killing humans instead of aliens, but for you, it was like visiting a gun store as a kid with unlimited budget.

After the Calypso massacre urban warfare became yet another skill that’s been honed through death and return. Not only that, the recruitment drive after the Illuminate returned was compared to the moment when Super Earth finally declared the Second Galactic War, which in turn meant a lot of motivated, even if already deranged people.

Because joining the military in the age of interstellar warfare, when the training lasted several days at most, with everything else left unspoken and quietly expected to be learned through dying and feeding yourself to the war machine, seems to be an outlet and a chance for a lot of people who don’t find themselves fitting with the rest of humans, unknowingly signing up for the cycle of liberation and rebirth.

From a freezer into the meat grinder. Nobody would miss them as they performed a heroic duty.

Some examples are meant to be shown from far away, after all. Half of them probably wanted to kill people, and aliens were just the consolation prize.

One of your recent colleagues in the squid-killing business outright bragged that she was planning to shoot up a super mall when the recruiter found her, walking around with her R-2124 while sipping Libertea, mistaking her intent for patriotic zeal.

Half a week later and she is calling orbital gas strikes on the disavowed and spraying them down with napalm, laughing in joy.

Where else would you get a chance to gas people?

“See, the Illuminate, they had the right idea. They invade the megacities, they turn the population, on which the entire economy operates, into meat shields – and have humans shoot each other while watching from the sidelines.”

“We aren’t like them. At best we are here to laugh at dead child conscripts, not round up the civilian population and personally fuck with their livelihoods.

We are here to liberate them.”

“My point is, the tyranny is about sheer number superiority and using people as worker drones, turning them into anything you want, anything that suits you. It’s one of the reasons that the police exist, where the military shouldn’t, because bombing and mass genociding your own population damages the infrastructure that oppression so depends on. Because the only fucking means of production that ever existed is the junk between our legs that makes everything, from slaves to soldiers and…

“We are Helldivers, we don’t care. You don’t have to sell me on a liberation campaign we are a part of already.”

“You seem to care more about those Replikas, though.”

It’s evident. When someone shows you a picture of a FLKE model, standing proud and tall on the propaganda poster, you literally go down on all fours and start barking loud enough for the entire bridge to hear, while imagining what it would feel like to bend her over with those long metallic and very biteable legs.

“Is he shouting “bark” instead of actually barking?”

The democracy officer – he doesn’t care anymore. He gave up on controlling the stream of schizophrenic ramblings about the nature of freedom and violence as a political instrument of economic control from people who would've forgotten their birth-given names if it wasn't for promotion sheets and paycheks.

He knows you know that he knows you know that he is wearing a fake eyepatch. He knows that nobody takes people like him seriously on any ship, but he also knows that by goddamn freedom and liberty you are going to make Super Earth proud and if he tries to stop you, you will shove him inside the hellpod and catapult it into the nearest sun.

You are going to helldive on that frigid bitch of a moon, and you are going to kill everyone that hates your way of life, the way of freedom and managed democracy and afterwards you will plant the Super Earth flag on it so you could do it again all over lightyears away.  

It's not for the lack of zeal that you can’t hang that poster in front of your bed, but because you wouldn't be able to keep your mind off it.

The hellpod smashes into the street pavement, burrowing into it before ejecting you alongside others.

The sky is dark like it’s inside of a squid’s asshole, the sight of SEAF fleets tearfucking through Rotfront fleet in the orbit not visible to those who battle below under the heavy snowfall, just like the huge red eye on that gas giant.

Well, ‘battle’ was more about those who dived straight into the operations against the local military.

You, instead, get to shoot cops in their own city.

This job just keeps getting better.

The local replikas knew their city better than you, but their only fighting experience was probably beating up student demonstrations and arresting journalists. A noble cause, but with media control and censorship, they didn’t expect you to show up here so soon , after the tasting that was Vineta.

The first patrol car you see is shot to absolute shit, machine gun dispensing equality at a seven hundred and sixty freedoms per minute. The squad moves on, hearing the familiar gunfire echoing through the city, mixed with sounds from Eagle engines air supporting the hell out of locals.

Half an hour in, every road leading to the city was mined. Helldivers split into teams installing artillery strategems and killzones aimed both at the local resistance and against surviving military, which would most likely be falling back to the city, shitting themselves on the way, while the enemy (you) was already in.

Unlike the Eusan morons you had synchronization with Super Destroyers and ten seconds tops to call in hell from above, so there wouldn’t be much loss if they brought in surviving air support, bombing their own city and all, where in the mean time anyone holding anything resembling a weapon was shot on sight.

Most outright start running after a short and lethal exchange of fire. Anything bearing resemblance to a fortified position gets removed from the local geography, advanced sensors picking up signatures and giving enemy combatants an equal right to turn into a bloody mist, collapsing roofs and building floors in addition to your heavy weapons blowing holes in the local architecture.

You’re taking notes from the school of Illuminate war, only this time wearing armor actually helps. Usually, the go-to strategy is wearing as little as possible (since it won’t protect when a leviathan one-shots you or a crowd of disavowed rips you into pieces) to outrun the enemy and equip a launcher with the dreaded airburst rockets.

Then you jump inside the jeep and start doing the SEAF equivalent of a gang drive-by.

Here, in the city, there are a few military elements instead of hordes you subconsciously expect to appear around the corner. The something-something guard or some other gay-ass name plus AEON’s armed goons.

“Do you like…think they are all lesbians there?”

“Hate to break it to you, but every woman you ever meet is gonna be a ‘lesbian’.”

“Ouch.”

“Hey. You remember that intel? The part about locks rigged to radio frequencies?” You ask the man standing on the opposite side, both of you holding the sectors.

“You’d think their military would come up with proper frequency hopping instead of shooting themselves in the foot with it…”  The smile isn’t visible beneath the helmet, but you know it’s there because you share it. “What about it?”

“Ugh, nothing.” You shake your head.

That kind of joke doesn’t even sound good in your head. Instead, you come up with another one.

“Have you heard about the second black hole singularity?” You ask, running through the ruined building.

“The what now?!” He hisses at you, the drone holding a liberator whirring past the two of you.

“Scientists found a bigger one.”

“Bullshit.” He shakes his head, holding his rifle ready as you move. “Alright, I’ll bite. What did they call it then?”

His posture shifts in a split second and the liberator sends a barrage to his right, before receiving a response.

You join in, diving to cover, just in time before an APC rolls in, machine gun fire rising dust and concrete spall near your position.

“Mother…fuck!” You curse, rolling away, the place where you were a moment ago becoming a hole in the ground.

Thank freedom for noise cancelling in your helmet.

Half of it is reflex. The right hand types a sequence that’s been hardwired into your unconsciousness, even more than an ability to reload and operate any personal weapon in complete darkness, and making as little sound as possible, until your shout adds to the sound of gunfire.

“Be free or die!”

Again, noise cancelling. Helps when Eagles carpet bomb the oppression out of the road.

“Thanks, suckers! I just got some!” You hear a chirpy voice inside your helmet.

The smoke and dust rise, as the four helldivers approach the burning wreck, stepping over the torn-apart bodies, double-tapping the few corpses that looked remotely intact.

“…yeah, no salvageable comms.”

“Hey!” You hear, shifting your muzzle. “Birdie, 11 o’clock!”

The said replika stopped trying to play dead and started crawling through the ground with renewed vigor, the lower part of her stick legs blown off and her armored torso riddled with shrapnel.

Even in this condition, you could see that she would still tower over you, not that you understood how they manage to remain upfront and shoot, let alone fight in melee.

“Why the fuck would I want to look at it?” You hear a female voice from her side.

“Didn’t you say you were a lesbian?”

“Oh fuck you.” She flips the other helldiver off.

“Envious of manufactured bot looks then, aren’t we?”

It’s like a sculptor’s art project was given a riot shield and a gun – you look at it and feel like it can fall over from a simple push.

Sure, it’s not like you have any authority on this, but dare you say, it is better to make yourself harder to hit for the enemy, not the opposite.

Good on the eyes, though.

The drone flies over to her as you advance in formation, albeit somewhat leisurely.

“Halt!” You shout at her in the most NCO voice you can come up with, but it still doesn’t sound serious to you in another language. Doesn’t help that one word sums up about twenty percent of your linguistic knowledge, but it’s not you who’s gonna need language courses after this anyway.

“That’s far enough, STAR!” The voice next to you shouts, while others take around firing positions.

The replika doesn’t put hands behind her head, but both of you don’t give her any time or warning to do so, switching to the barbarian at the gates mode right away, making sure she wasn’t carrying any grenades to self-liquidate, and taking away her sidearm.

You roll her over and the eyes above the mask furrow in response to the flashlight. Then you gesture at her hands with your Liberator, to which she just flaps her pretty eyelashes, which prompts you to sink your fingers into her scalp and drag her away from your exposed position.

It only occurs to you in the middle of it that the replika was still in shock, as her entire body suddenly rattles and her hands reach for yours desperately, screaming something through her mask, until you shove her against the wall.

She blinks again, her entire vision is now solitary lights from your weapons and a person in full Kodiak armor squatting in front of her.

“Should we call this one in? Translator?”

“Fuck that. Intel said *some* replikas can understand our language.”

“What about radio?”

“STARs are gen four. They shouldn’t have any removable modules.” But he, nevertheless, shoves his finger behind each ear to check and rip away the face mask, letting her stammer something in moonspeak as she keeps looking at each one of you with genuine terror on her face.

Yeah, she knows that nothing good happens when you're put against the wall.

Damn she’s pretty.

The helldiver pulls out a small card taken from the Replika, which seems to be an ID of some kind. “…sweet liberty, they really make photos of replikas that look the same. Business must be boomin’.”

“It sure is now.”

He chuckles at that.

“STAR model number…” He tilts his head. “…double fuck that. What’s this?”

A piece of paper is folded neatly and attached to it. When examined, it reveals a familiar sight.

---

VOTING BALLOT

A voting ballot was dispensed over Rotfront in droves, text repeating in Eusan.

Do you want to secede from Eusan Nation to the Federation of Super-Earth?

1. Yes
2. No (I hate democracy)

If you chose ‘a’ please attach the super-democratic glow-at-night sticker to avoid friendly fire.

It has a picture of a chibi helldiver pointing at the small section of a ballot that could be ripped out and used as a temporary Class-D citizen identification.

---

“B-bitte…” The woman shakily raises her hands. “Bitte.”

That’s another word you actually know. It's like she is one small push away from crying.

The four of you share a look. 

Normally, enemies you fight don’t beg for their lives. Well, disavowed occasionally beg for death, but just like the case with others, their votes don’t count.

Same goes for replikas. Super Earth's stance was that they aren’t recognized as humans.

By emotionally-starved Helldivers, though? Ever since Vineta there’ve been reports of anomalously large piles of liberated ‘equipment’ quietly extracted to Super Destroyers, followed by requisition requests for Eagle Sweat perfumes, unusually-sized uniforms, and other critically-important supplies.

…Eagle Sweat. One spray, and the world shifts. You mount the beasts and rise, master of your domain, a god among the cosmos. Before long, you are home. Eagle Sweat. And even when you are away, your loyal liberated followers will just make love to each other…

“Okay, level with me Commander.” You receive a question. “Do we save this thrice-worthless life? And I’m not asking because it has the face and a killer body of a cute girl I really want to have sex with.”

The second part is a blatant lie. You notice snow mounting up on the Helldiver wearing a set of Bloodhound armor, who starts fidgeting at this question, while watching your rear. The one in Ravager also tilts her head back at you.

“Why are you asking me?”

“You outrank us all.”

“It doesn’t really…” You sigh and shake your head. “I mean, we wouldn’t really be…” You pause before a genius idea hits you. “Let’s vote on it.” You raise your hand.

Everyone else follows.

Quick and democratic.

“Alright, someone call an RV for democracy’s sake.” You lower your weapon and grab onto the STAR’s shoulder. “Please don’t resist, you are being liberated.”

“Cavedivers represent.” You hear a sarcastic voice to the left of you.

---

You move the fast recon vehicle through the ruined highway, the first new landmark of Managed Democracy being a hellpod that crashed through the suspended monorail skytrain, bringing it down to the ground with it.

Several Eagles fly over you, still pulverizing anything that has the Eusan Nation’s colors or AEON written on it.

These sights alone could sum up the next twenty minutes of your ride. Burning buildings, a road full of bomb craters and spent casings from high-explosive shells, destroyed vehicles, charred corpses – there’s a bit of novelty because this time it’s humans you’re fighting against, but it’s about what you’d expect.

The level of destruction only increases the further you approach the city center. It’s just missing a huge sign ‘HELLDIVERS WERE HERE’ painted in yellow, or better yet, written with orbital laser.

“Hang on. Stop the RV.” You say into the helmet, turning the heavy machine gun around.

“Statue?”

“Yep.” You say, pulling the trigger.

The barrage of 12.5x100mm bonded core hollow point ammo first takes away the Great Revolutionary’s head then buzzesaws down to the foundation and inscription, marking a small step towards democratization.

You shift the gun back as the driver presses the gas.

“So, the black hole you talked about?”

“Huh?”

“The scientists found a new singularity you said. A bigger one.”

“Yeah. They named it the Military Spending.”

That earns a collective giggle.

Maybe you should’ve just thrown money directly into the Meridian Singularity.

“Speaking of black holes. C1 to SES ‘Freedom of Liberty’…” That name has to be a joke on purpose. “Interrogative: what’s the current tally on votes?”

“Bridge to C1, current DSS vote status-”

“No, the one about the cutest Replika.”

“…”

There is silence on the comms.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, after years of fighting bots, squids and bugs and all that bullshit we finally get to deploy in one system that has hot women instead of all that, and we still have to shoot them!” The helldiver lit up. “And now you treat like we’re supposed to not notice that they are cute. It’s bad enough for the morale as it is!” The Bloodhound’s voice darkens. “Don’t make me come up there, I'm one bullet away from it.”

“…affirmative.” A hasty response. They know what’s good for them. “Uhm, STAR is leading by a margin of…”

Half of the car erupts into cheers that echo through the ruined streets. You can’t help but join in, chanting the national anthem’s first couplet that has the ‘FREEDOM MUST REIGN OVER EVERY LAST STAR’.

That scares the shit out of the replika sitting in the back seat even more, making her lookup from the floor and dash and flap her eyes around.

You can briefly make out the report that LSTR and EULR models were sharing the second place, getting a lion’s share of the female vote.

“THROOOOOUGH CITIZEN’S BLOOOOOOD! SPILLED IN OOOOOUUUUR RIGHTEOUS WARS!”

Now everybody puts their heart into this part, your voices alerting anyone within half a klick radius that the new owners of this moon were making their way forward.

“…ARAR’s in third place, followed by…”

“HOOOONOOOR THEIR DEEATHS!”

The car bumps just a little, running over a small corpse.

“DO YOUR PAART FOR THE CAAAUSE! JUUUUSTICE AND HOOOPE…”

You don’t make it to the last part. The Bloodhound stops the car in front of the large crowd of civilians, who seem to be in the process of looting the local convenience store, with a few fights already in progress.

You expect something else instead of everyone just freezing when your vehicle shines its lights on them.

The collective first thought is to ram through, even though it’s not like any of them have bombs or weapons. You highly doubt the Nation has any consenting suicide bombers, unlike Super Earth. Saner thoughts prevail, but your hands still tighten on the MG-206.

People look at you, seeing a menacing sight that was the TR-62 armor and a Cover of Darkness cape holding onto a weapon that itched to paint the street with their blood.

And that’s the thing – you could listen to the voices and squeeze that trigger and there wouldn’t be a single consequence for you. No investigation, no slap on the wrist even.

The absolute power you hold over these people is the power to destroy.

Nobody gives a shit about them. Each one has these…faces, instead of recognizable helmets you wear.

And it’s impossible to even begin to care . You can empathize, sympathize, all those buzzwords, but you just find yourself not even remotely concerned about them.

“They know we’re just visiting, but they’ll have to continue living on this shithole after we’re done.” The driver says. “We can be in the southern theatre by breakfast.”

“All that ‘safety’ and ‘national security’ didn’t help one bit, huh?” You hear a sardonic voice over your comms.

For a brief moment, you wonder if for them you are that invader the image of which the nation spent all that effort drilling into their minds by propaganda. The one who comes to kill everyone you love, take away everything you have, and enslave and sell what remains to the corporations who will sodomize the corpse of your culture.

One look inside the eyes of those people confirms it. You are that invader.

You already know that it's true because that's why you do this. That's what you believe in - unloading corpses on the altar of democracy, and watering the tree of liberty with the blood of anyone unfortunate enough to stand in your way.

But then again, what is culture? (Is that giant red eye you keep seeing a part of it?) Half of it is consumption preference (Super Earth is an exception, of course), and whatever awaits Eusan Nation will probably be an improvement, as the bar was set pretty low.

And even afterwards, you would rather spend years fighting on Marfark than live a civilian life here.

Because you have rights. Rights as a citizen and a helldiver, the right to exercise the incredible prejudiced violence on the filth that feeds off this great galaxy. To feed their mouths with lead instead, to castrate and burn them with fire in your eyes, to enforce the will of freedom and justice and liberty and tear down the treacherous pestilence that infects those poor, poor, rich and beautiful worlds that will be part of the great federation of liberty and kindness and you get so fucking angry and so fucking happy and sad at the same time that you feel like crying and maiming…

The driver slams his fist on the horn while slowly moving the car forward, just in time to stop your had from unconsciously reaching towards your left wrist.

“Thank you!” He shouts back after moving through the fleshy roadblock. “Stay free.”

Chapter 4

It has begun.

That’s the only thought that runs through your mind when the sirens hit every city block that evening, if you don’t count the sheer dread that has been present the entire day.

They didn’t reprimand you for being late for roll call. They shoved you and every available replika into the armory, gave you body armor, a rifle, some ammo, and installed the receiver module inside your head.

Martial law has been implemented. You and every other combat *ready* replika get split into squads along gestalts and given instructions based on city invasion drills and sent to man your stations.

Those were for the Empire, though. And your long-range sensors, both satellite and planetside, should have detected their ships even with the magnetic interference around the moon. However, after a few hours, when you ask HQ about the military, the only answer you receive is that they’ve been engaged in orbital battle, and it's not the Empire that came knocking.

They don’t tell you more, but you overhear someone else from your squad discussing a priority transmission from Heimat to AEON command that came in response to these ‘voting ballots’ dropped.

Your arms shouldn’t be shaking, but something deep within your stomach makes you absolutely terrified. Every other replika around you doesn’t show it, but despite the drills and endless propaganda, nobody expected war to come here, even with all the conscription going around. War was on Kitezh, maybe on Vineta, but definitely not on Heimat or in boonies like Rotfront.

It also shows that AEON command, being Interior and unprepared for an actual invasion scenario, probably forgot that in combat replikas, the receiver module would allow access to encrypted military channels, as LSTRs were primarily made for military use. You are way out of range for units outside the city, but maybe you can pick something useful from within, or at least you think so, until you see the first explosions light the night in the far distance, following the siren’s klaxon. They are not aimed at you yet, falling on the military bases all over planetside, including interplanar stations, as much as you can guess, which means that either enemy ships broke through or Rotfront’s defense fleet has been decimated.

The view of firestorm and gigantic mushroom clouds doesn’t inspire confidence. The city had anti-air defenses, bomb shelters, bunkers, and several military units quartered, but the lion’s share of Rotfront’s fighting force was placed more strategically, following klimatization progress and overall colony development. 

You know, the people with actual weapons and armor.

Then, something enters VLEO directly above you and keeps descending. You didn’t see it arrive – just a blip in cognition, less than a moment before a dark shape appears above the skies and then glides below them, followed by a radar alert transmitted to you.

Even in the darkness and through the snowfall, you can see the outlines of the ships. Relatively small in size, even at that distance, until the number starts to increase at a rapid pace. First there are four, then twelve, then twenty, and it just keeps growing, even when the bombs start to fall and your radio module implodes in frantic and desperate messages on every frequency from every squad.

They started shelling everything. There is a pattern beyond just having a blast reducing entire blocks to ruin, but the sound is deafening and scares the shit out of you, as that strangely familiar feeling of expecting a bullet or bomb to hit you any second resurfaces.

The emptiness inside your head finally begins unfolding.

And it’s not just bombings. You see a golden laser run through the anti-air emplacement not far from you, which kept firing even though the ship was way beyond the effective range. Another squad keeps shouting that the barracks near which they were placed were firebombed straight from orbit, which is only fresh news until you switch the channel to hear the military talking about the enemy using some kind of gas that corrodes both flesh and metal, the masks only briefly prolonging the agonizing death.

They were retreating into the city with wounded soldiers, until the transmission cuts off, and you hear what sounds like an anti-tank mine exploding somewhere in the distance.

All this warranted a simple, evident conclusion.

You are fucked .

The command keeps shouting through the radio, probably ADLR, but the only word that registers is ‘retreat’, so you and your hastily mobilized squad move back in the direction of AEON headquarters.

Except there is no transport, only panicking civilians rushing to emergency shelters. If Protektor forces were strained beforehand, then this time it’s absolute chaos.

The time window between the alarm and attack was not just short, it was nonexistent. You ask yourself why state of emergency wasn't declared earlier before remembering that it wasn’t the Empire you were fighting against. Empire and Nation would be spending a lot more time on maneuvers over Rotfront, computers calculating sailing directions and firing solutions between Eusan fleets. By the time Imperial troops make planetfall, the entire city should’ve been more prepared – civilians put into shelters before the bombs fell and reserves and medics mobilized.

Here, it was precious hours, and it felt like the invaders were giving you not just a pointer, but a headstart, which disappeared like the ground beneath your feet.

Then you hear what sounds like aircraft engines, and those were definitely not from your side. The intensity doubles as planes start doing bombing runs and ships start releasing payloads in a sequence of fours, which at first seem to look like bulkier bombs, the ones you don’t even see a point in running from, until your optics notice that there is a controlled shift of  ballistic trajectories.

“INCOMING!!!”

The capsule breaks through the ground a dozen feet away from you, but instead of exploding, it raises a figure dressed in dark armor, wearing a cape out of all things you’d expect, and holding a rifle in their hands.

They were dropping the infantry in those pods. The kind of infantry that wears capes that might as well say ‘I just motherfucked your entire garrison and you’re next on the chopping block. ’

You are beyond fucked.

He or she doesn’t waste a second. They open fire at your squad with a howl of a mad animal even before fully exiting the coffin that brought him to the ground and straight through the pavement. Two Gestalts die instantly while you instinctively jump on the ground and behind the closest concrete roadblock, which moments later becomes a bullet sponge. You fire back blindly, before seeing a frag grenade with a skull painted on it land at your feet.

You scream, kicking it back while hearing and the next second seeing more pods land in a place where you stood a second ago, before the explosion you rolled away from makes your HUD glitch for a second and delivers a piece of hot shrapnel into your shoulder armor.

Through the shouting on the comms, you register the last person in your squad falling on the ground, this time catching fire from incendiary shotgun pellets, half of their body already shredded before catching fire.

You whisper a barely audible ‘fuck this’ through your rattling teeth and start crawling as fast and as stealthily as you can, before hysteria completely overtakes you.

It’s like there was something buried deep inside you that was ripping its way out, hurting you from the inside while you desperately keep crawling, cursing the lack of street maintenance because you’re a fucking replika crawling over white snow and the only color close to you is fucking blood, oh god, oh fuck please help me .

Your entire vision shakes and throws alarms at you. The radio module is a mix of static and empty shouts, either being radio-electronic warfare or your comrades simply dying off. You don’t know, and you don’t want to think about it. Consciousness is only a burden right now, but it plays second fiddle to raw fear anyway, as the only thing between your eyes is the snow beneath your hands and hell behind, and then it resurfaces.

War and memories that feel like they are your own, but can’t be. You remember what it feels like running through the death fields, accepting that you were already dead in a vain attempt to quell the sheer terror.

Because fear of death at war only comes second to the fear of slow death.

What would the Empire do to you if you were captured?

They would torture you. They would rape you. And if you knew something important, they would make you talk. Eventually, they always talk.

Because quick death becomes coveted after days of torture, and even if you survive, somehow, you will never be *whole* again.

These aren’t your memories, Elster, but you’re about to make new ones just like these.

So, your hands keep working as you grit your teeth and breathe in and out like a locomotive, too afraid to stop and look back, because, if you do…

“Where do you think you’re going?”

You know that voice. It makes your eyes grow wide and your mouth produce a crooked, crazy grin with whimper as you turn your head.

She is wearing a white summer dress, her red eyes are the color of death, and you just can’t look at them as your head hurts like a ball full of needles.

“H-help me!” You cry out, pleading to the ghost, but she only smiles in return, and you notice dark shapes behind her, breaking through the blizzard.

Fires from hell follow them.

“You should’ve kept your promise, Elster.”

The face that once radiated love and kindness becomes an epitome of hatred. Blood is running from the eyes as all the beauty disappears, leaving only a monstrous, toothless scowl.

You don’t understand why seeing it hurts you so much, but there is something there, inside of you now, that twists the knife in your wound, until the ghost disappears again and a more tangible terror follows, holding a rifle in their right hand.

You shriek and push yourself further away, cursing your leg construction, until you pass over the boundary that wasn’t there a moment before and enter the free-fall.

And fall.

Fall.

Fall.

Until you hit the water and sink like a brick into the abyss.

Human shapes, hundreds of them , cloud your vision. They touch you, they hold you, they attempt to take something from you, but they also push and propel you deeper, until the blood horizon spins and you emerge on the other side of the sea, breathing in the air after forgetting how to.

Even there, the corpses still float around you. They look the same, they wear the same armor and capes, and they make roads upon which you crawl on, feeling hands clasp your hands and legs, reaching out for your face, illuminated by the red eye.

In the middle, you see her.

The first name that comes to your mind, dancing on the edge of your tongue.

“Ariane!”

You reach out only to stumble and fall again, skeletal divers holding onto you.

You scream out the name, getting a mouthful of blood, before the pull is strong enough to completely submerge you beneath the waves, but you use all the strength in your body to glimpse over the shoreline.

The last thing your eyes see is the white silhouette walking on water, before the darkness claims you.

---

Cross my heart

and hope to die

stick a needle in my eye

break my promise

tell a lie

save my friend

though, maybe it's 'bye’

---

“Why did you become a Helldiver?”

The two of you pass the small pile of burning photographs and books. You’ve seen Helldivers rummaging through the offices of the ruined AEON headquarters, collecting them in droves, after the recon vehicle rammed through the ground floor and detonated a portable hellbomb, bringing down half of the building.

Not before the bloodhound gave the defenders a fight of their lives, his patriotic chant interrupted when he was pulverized by the explosion.

FROM CYBERSTAN TO KORPUS PASS

WE’LL MAKE YOU BEND OVER AND TAKE IT IN THE ASS

HAIL FREE-

The burning photo paper smells like freedom, and it takes a few moments of slow and gentle pushing of your wheelchair before the Helldiver gives you a straight answer.

“I thought it would make everyone happy.”

“How so?” You rasp, feeling something clot your throat, before forcing a pained cough.

“I wouldn’t have to suffer this life anymore after catching a laser bolt. My parents would be happy with monetary gratuity. Super Earth would be happy with me doing my part, and automatons would be happy with me dead.”

You can’t help but laugh at that, the fit making you feel the needle inserted into your body and the stim rushing inside through it, covered by the thick blanket colored in Super Earth black and yellow.

You up your dose of painkillers to enjoy this moment further, which still reminds you that it's not just your body or your voice - everything about you became ugly.

“You know, I wasn’t that much different.” You reply, smiling underneath your mask. “How did that work out for you in the end?”

“Well, instead of hating myself, I now hate everyone else. And I get to hurt them.” He shrugs, still going forward with you. 

“Same.”

"Can't get more democratic when everyone is treated equally because everyone is dead."

You flash your clearance card in front of another Helldiver standing post in front of the forward command center set up in a building you’re intricately familiar with.

It doesn’t have a ramp, but the soldiers are most courteous, gently lifting you up.

“Madame Special Consultant.” One of them nods at you.

A toothless smile creeps over your hidden face as you enter the halls of the school.

They bring you to the closed and dimly lit room. A very tall replika figure lies in the corner, holding herself in a fetal position, every ounce of pride and authority taken away from her.

“Could you leave us for a little while, please?”

You ask the helldiver sitting backwards on a chair, smoking a cigar, his eyes pinned to the FLKR. 

You spot a ‘Do unto others’ written on his rifle.

When the door closes, you lean backwards on your wheelchair, feeling soft yellow fabric press against your aching body.

“I saw those replikas. Near the ship.” You say, and notice the woman’s eyes finally acknowledge you. “I doubt they will reach Heimat before getting drafted into Kitezh, however.”

You can’t help but smirk, even though you still get flashes of phantom pain in your jaw, you’ve been grinning a lot for the past few days now.

“I think that between spreading your legs or getting pressed together into a scrap cube with the rest of AEON, you’ve made the most obvious choice. We’ll see how long that leadership lasts you there.”

“You’re a bioresonant.” Falke manages to say to you. There should be disgust in that voice, but it’s so hollow, anger only echoing in it now.

“Yes. We’ve both looked inside them, and wondered ‘why this power doesn’t work’?” You smile, hands reaching for the mask you wear.

It would make breathing hard for a little while, but you can take it.

You’ve been through worse and still came out with a little bit of your hair left.

“I’m glad you see only now that you can’t win. I want you to carry that despair with you, Falke. I want the Nation, the Empire…I want everyone to feel the pain I still feel.”

“Why?” She asks you, and you can feel her trying to reach out to you through the vibrations of the cosmos that only the two of you can feel.

It had the same desperation that you had back then.

“They found me, drifting in the void.” You reminisce after crashing the replika's attempts to make contact. “Years…spent dying in agony, drifting into sleep only to wake up, another piece of me lost. Taken away. So I reached out, begging, praying for this to end.”

You laugh, for a split second, unearthing the memories of torment in hell.

“And when they found me, all their feelings, their entire lives…I only had to point my finger, Falke. To tell them everything I knew and hated so much.”

The sheer terror of her realization rejuvenates you.

It makes you glad Elster couldn’t keep her promise

A piece of her was still with you, all those precious memories safely stashed in the back of your head. Would it be too cruel and overly selfish to give them a new life in a new body?

“Penrose…”

“Five-one-two. You reap what you sow. The nation..." You force yourself to spit on the ground. "I only hope The Daughter of The Great Revolutionary will appreciate the irony when Helldivers drag her out to be hanged.”

But that would be too merciful. You don't have any of that left in you.

"Not much time either, left for this body...” You say, not wanting to look at your disgusting face through the replika’s eyes. "But I made a promise..."

The pain is killing you from the inside but it is also what keeps your rotting body alive, even if you are only lingering.

You lean in, just a little bit, just as much as your crippled self would allow you, all the hatred and all the rage helping you to not fall apart.

"...to myself, this time."

 

END

Notes:

I wanted this to include LSTR on Kitezh and all the misery with it, but, I decided to end it here instead. Broke my promise, I guess.
Sorry if it feels a bit rushed.