Langrid didn’t realize it wasn’t the ground shaking him any longer until it was too late. The next thing he felt was a kick to the head.
“Get up you lazy meat-sack,” bellowed the sergeant while lining up another kick.
Langrid was drowsy but had fast reflexes, he rolled away from the assault and bounced to his feet. The sergeant turned the missed kick into a foot stomp and did his best to crush Langrid’s toes. Now mere inches from one another the sergeant continues his assault verbally.
Langrid has heard it all before, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if looking straight through the angry shouting man before him, his mind wonders what kind of chow they will have after plundering the compound ahead. He hopes they have meat; he hasn’t had fresh meat in a month. The tailless cave rats found in most of the places they’ve conquered would be a welcome change from the scavenged bird carcasses that provide the majority of their protein these days.
He missed the days when hunting was an option. If it were, they’d still be in their own compound. Clouds of poison gas have been a constant for decades, anything with a respiratory system caught in one when they appear is soon dead. Large game, Langrid has never seen large game, has been extinct for a hundred years. Small game animals are all but gone these last few decades. If they find something dead, it goes in the stew pot. No sense in going out and looking, you’re as likely to find a pocket of poisonous air as anything to eat.
It suddenly becomes quiet. What were the last few shouted words? Something about rotation and turns; the rotation shouldn’t have him in the front for this engagement, he should have three more rotations before moving up to the front. He doesn’t acknowledge comprehension and hopes the sergeant starts up his diatribe again.
“We march in 30 minutes. Get moving!” The sergeant doesn’t wait for a response, turns and heads back to the command pavilion.
Langrid is one of six soldiers from his compound with the gift. The sergeant is another, they have the special job of being the spearhead of every assault. They have a high chance of survival in these fights, but you never know when the other guy will be stronger or have more capabilities. Langrid can absorb fire and physical force, others can throw lightning too. There are stories of fighters flying and slowing down time, but those sound too incredible to believe. But he can’t rule it out, nothing is certain in this world, except the sun is going to set and the ground is going to shake, everything else is as good as a guess.
Langrid casts his gaze around camp to see if anyone was paying attention to the sergeant’s rant. He catches the eye of Wesley the camp snitch and top gossiper standing not so far away to have not heard it all. A subtle nod serves as an invitation that a big mouth like Wesley couldn’t resist.
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“You heard the sergeant, what was that all about?”
Wesley, who cares not for Langrid, gages the situation, “Did you seriously not listen to what he said?”
“All I heard was blah-blah-blah, you’re up front again. That’s a load of crap, they can’t keep coddling the others like this.”
“Nobody’s being coddled you idiot, you’re all up front on this one,” Wesley waits a few seconds for that to sink in before continuing. “Our scouts say there are thousands of old corpses around the compound ahead. Somebody or a bunch of somebody’s or a champion is defending them. Commander thinks it will take all of you to crack this one open.”
This isn’t unexpected; people in every compound are sprouting abilities. Everywhere they go they are facing fighters with gifts of their own.
“What else did the scouts find out? What are their women like?”
“Another disappointing find, their women are all stage-one colonizers like us. Life here in the north must be rougher than our homeland.”
“Ugh, I’d like to see a face that doesn’t look like mine at least one more time before I die.”
Langrid’s homeland was far to the southwest and was until recently well provisioned. Life was easy for a couple hundred years. Their easy life allowed them the luxury of advancing genetically, with each generation becoming more diverse than the last. His mother had yellow hair and his father had silver hair, but then it all changed. Hunting parties started coming home empty handed, some didn’t come home at all. Their water supply became poisoned from the same volcanic and geothermal activity that was producing the gas clouds that have plagued them for the hundreds of miles they’ve wandered. It’s the same everywhere, poison in the air, no game to hunt, all plant life picked clean of anything edible by a dwindling population of scavengers. Everyone and everything are struggling to survive. The stress and low sustenance existence re-triggering their biology to produce more stage-one colonizers. More people just like Langrid, just like Wesley, just like the sergeant, and just like the men and women they are about to raid, rape, and pillage in the compound ahead.
Langrid considers pumping Wesley for more gossip but decides he’s heard enough bad news for one day. Instead, he finds another place to lay down until the final forced march had them moving again. He sits with his back to a southern red oak tree; he knows these are called southern red oak because he was born with that information baked into his brain. It’s a stupid name, why call a tree southern when they only grow in the deep north? Langrid ponders the accuracy of the information in his head while watching the others check their weapons and stowing gear in their shelters in preparation of their march to battle.
Soldiers in a colony army’s primary weapon is a multipurpose tool. Essentially a short shovel, no more than 24 inches in length when folded, one edge is sharpened like an axe blade, the other is serrated like a saw. When they are not being used to kill, they can dig holes, chop trees, and cut through branches. Their brains are full of knowledge of hundreds of weapons, but for some reason they were deployed to settle this place with nothing but what was found in their bunker-like compound. Their old home had been equipped with all the supplies they needed to survive in this world, but nothing to use to protect it or themselves from the predation of others like themselves.
Langrid briefly wonders if he’s missing something. He shakes his head; Nah, Wesley would have told him if there was something else, he was supposed to do.