Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Without Hope ❯ Enemy ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 2: Enemy

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Fourteen hours after the drop onto Verduun...

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The crunch of incinerated earth underfoot. The gentle clanking of weapons on armour. Distant explosions, distant screams of pain. The constant thudding of a heart that beat for no reason. These were the sounds that penetrated Elaanus, but none of them mattered. These were the times that the broken woman was most at peace. She had orders. Objectives to complete. And she would do whatever it took to fulfill them, no matter the orders, no matter the price. It didn't matter if she understood them or not, or if maybe she had to think a little harder on them to determine whether they truly were in the name of peace and justice. Not that she thought there was any nobility or righteousness in blindly doing as her superiors commanded. It was deeper than that. As long as Elaanus had orders, as long as she was driving herself towards a goal, suddenly her existence had a meaning, a purpose, even if all that that purpose was was to bring destruction, it meant that she had a place. Maybe that's why she joined the army. It didn't really matter.

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She stood in what had once been someone's home. Now the metal wall in front of her had been torn off completely, leaving only jagged scraps to separate the mediums of inside and out. The human leant her aching back against a bent spire of six inch thick steel and peered around the edge. This was once a city. Elaanus let the thought enter her head. The sight before her was now one of destruction. There had been trees here. Now they were no more than kindling. Smoke poured into the sky from the roaring flames that seemed to be enveloping every building in sight, buildings that had been smaller versions of the towers on earth, with all the same luxuries and pleasantries.

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The fires burned blue due to the high argon content of the atmosphere. Bodies littered the ground outside, but very few of them were soldiers. One caught her eye, a man who must have been struck by a laser beam. Where his right arm should have been there was nothing but a gaping hole in his torso. There wasn't much blood as the searing heat had instantly cauterized his wound, but so much of him was missing that his heart and lungs had literally fallen out of him. They lay in the ash beside his corpse. A lot of the bodies were on fire too, probably where their clothes had been ignited by the heat from the lasers. Every once in a while she could make out a figure in armour, maybe with a weapon at his side, and even more rarely Elaanus spotted the metallic remains of a synthetic. Fingers brushed the black hair from her face and secured it at the back of her head. There was more work left to do. She raised her weapon and ran into the ruins.

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There it is. she thought. The synthetic production factory. It was about an hour later. There were less fires now, but only because this was their territory. The main body of our troops hadn't arrived here yet. Elaanus looked out at the flawless white structure, all curves and elegant shapes, nothing angular. It reminded her of that street art back on earth. A shining street here too. The ash had been lasered into shimmering glass. Just as cold and lifeless.... Her mind went to the electron bomb in her hand and suddenly it's weight hit her. Fifteen hours without rest and lugging this thing around. Originally a man named Seyack had helped her carry it, but after half his head had been sheared off by an automated drone she had been forced to brush the fragments of his brain from her cheek and lug the thing around by herself. She was the only one left, and she was tired. Elaanus eased herself down to the ground and carefully set her load down beside her. When they had landed, the scout team went ahead to give a report of what they were up against, but after there was no report they had been forced to go into the unknown. It had cost them.

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Even in her exhausted state, with the sound of fire and combat all around, the instincts that had kept her alive for so many years alerted her to the smallest click from behind some rubble. In a flash, her weapon swung around to take aim at the shadow that had exuded the smallest of sounds. "Friend or foe!" Her voice was hoarse, not as intimidating as she had hoped. Her joints ached as she crouched behind cover and waited for an answer. "Friend, friend!" came the deep voice, and soon it was followed by a familiar face. Elaanus Mit'ezka did not lower her weapon. Instead, her heart beat faster.

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No human had eyes that shone as brightly green as the four eyes of a Ferolian, the eyes that peered back at her. It walked towards her on all fours in that curious way the aliens did, using it's tough, clawed hands as feet; they clicked softly, the sound of talons on glass. The sniper rifle was slung low on his back, just above the hips. It could not be placed any higher, the elaborate spines that adorned it's back and head would have been in the way. It's mouth hung open as it panted softly, like a dog might, to lose body heat, and inside she could make out those long canine teeth that would usually be shielded by the hardened muzzle of the creature.

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The Ferolian spoke to her, it's voice seeming to come from many people at once. "Captain, you're alive. Are you wounded?" She felt no pain, only disgust at his display of concern, but she didn't let this show. "No. Just catching my breath." She looked out towards the building in the distance. There was a whirr as Elanuus' mechanical eye automatically zoomed in on it and she watched the synthetics roaming the factory's perimeter. "That's where they are coming from. We take this bomb inside and detonate it in the Virtual Intelligence room. It will fry the electronics of every synthetic inside and wipe the V.I., cutting off communications for the synthetics in the area." She stood up and hoisted the bomb on to her shoulder. She took a moment and let her subconscious indulge in the vision of this alien dying horribly as they made their invasion, but a moment was all she could spare. It blinked one set of eyes, then the other and stood up on it's rear legs "Yes Captain Mit'ezka."

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There was an electrical whine followed by a screech and sudden silence as Elaanus pulled the trigger of her rifle and scorched the insides of the last guard to the factory. Another kill. Another notch on her belt. A tear touched her cheek, sliding slowly to her chin and then falling to the dirt. As much as she hated them, as much as she wanted revenge, every life she took sent a pain through her heart at the thought of a being extinguished from the universe. At times like this, when her emotions built inside of her all she could think about was the question why. Why was this all happening? Did it have to happen? Couldn't this be stopped? And if not, at what point did the conflict become inevitable? Who fired the shot that tipped the balance, flung the sentients of the galaxy past the point of no return, where the only answer left was in fire and blood. Some had told her it was only a synthetic, just a machine. But these things were alive. They felt emotions. They had hopes and desires, they had evolved from the first artificially intelligent computers. Organic life had crafted these machines in their own image, passed on their feelings into their metal children and made them come to life. It seemed ironic to her. Studies suggested that modern synthetics formed a strange, radical culture where they expressed and experienced emotions beyond even that of an organic. If anything they were more alive than Elaanus was. Maybe these murdering abominations are the ones that are truly alive... she thought to herself. And I am the cold, empty robot, come to end their existence. I can never feel what they feel. At that moment she fell into the black, cold pit of her subconscious once again. Loneliness and despair took her and all she knew for sure was the state of her broken self, the things she had lost as a child and would never know again. To anyone else, such as the Ferolian, this chain of thoughts took a fraction of a second and was over just as quickly. Then, Captain Elaanus Mit'ezka shifted her cold, empty gaze to the factory and went to work.