There was silence for a moment before the Major spoke again.

"All right, kid, we're in the shit, but our heads are still above it," Major Whimdell said. He coughed for a second then spit a couple of times. "This your first combat drop?"

"Yes, sir," Kelvak said. He gulped several times.

"You're still alive, that's what matters. Where there's life there's hope," the Major said. "First thing's first, we need to take stock of our situation."

"My Mantid engineer is down, he's got three flashing amber rings around his icon and that's amber too," Kelvak said.

"That means he's badly injured. As long as none of the rings are red, the injuries aren't life threatening," the Major said. He hawked and spit again, a thick wet sound. "All right, I can kind of see some equipment deployment cases. What have you got?"

Kelvak looked at his linkages, blinking through them. He could see their signals, 3-42 Infantry, Delta Company, Weapon's Platoon, Fourth Squad and the listing, but that was it. No options, just their labels.

"Just the labels. They aren't mine. They were loaded into the drop-pod with me," Kelvak said. He realized his kinetic sleeve was beginning to feel squishy.

"OK, first things first, we'll fix that," the Major said. He coughed again. "Give me a second."

There was a hiss. "OK, can you hear me?" the Major asked. Kelvak saw the Command Channel was flashing.

"Yes, sir," Kelvak felt a tingling rush down his legs that turned immediately painful before vanishing.

"All right. That's step one. Let's see if I can use an override on it," the Major was quiet a moment. "No luck."

"What about your engineer?" Kelvak asked.

"Both are dead. They didn't survive the drop, neither did my eVI warboi," the Major said softly. "It's just me and you, kid."

Kelvak felt panic well up for a second but he managed to push it away.

"Do you have commo with anyone else? Even my graviton communicator is down," the Major said.

"Let me check again," Kelvak said. He ran another frequency scan and got back one live signal. "I've got a single signal."

"Check it. Try to feed it to me," the human said. He coughed again and cut the mic.

There was a Hesstlan female in a nice suit urging everyone to flee, that Precursor machines were coming and everyone needed to get to shelters or flee the city. Her voice was calm even if her fur was damp from stress sweat. She was warning that Confederate forces were making landfall as well as the Precursor machines and not to approach Confederate troops engaged in fighting. She urged people to take supplies and retreat to basements if they did not have access to shelters. A list of emergency shelters and centers scrolled by on the bottom.

He held Himf'thalla, shielding the brood-mommy the way she had shielded him when he was a podling, as both of them watched the Tri-Vid in the shelter. The rumble of combat above them made a picture of his mother and father fall off the wall and Plemil'till scooped up the podling that had been hiding under the table and crying, moving on all fours to hide behind Kelvak.

"scary scary" Plemil'till whispered, covering her eyes. "wish would go away"

"The Terrans won't let them get us," Kelvak said, watching as the female Hesstlan began urging those near a Terran military base to flee toward the base. The tanks of Second Armored were firing above the shelter, which had jammed less than twenty feet down from the surface, their massive guns shaking the partially deployed emergency shelter.

"safe podling brave podling" Himf'thalla began to sing.

Kelvak yawned, warm where his brood-mommy leaned against him, holding his quiet but frightened little siblings.

"Kid, wake up!" the Major's voice cut in just as his suit pumped synthetic adrenaline into his system, bringing him out of the half-dream.

"'m 'wake," Kelvak mumbled. He tried to sit up and groaned at the pain and weird feeling. He tabbed up a piece of stimgum and started chewing on it. "How long was I out."

"Not sure. Fifteen, twenty minutes?" the Major said. He coughed again, retched, and spit. "Dammit, my ejection seat is fried, same with my canopy. I'm not getting out of here," the Major coughed and cut out his mic.

Kelvak cut off the feed from the Tri-Vid station, the view of the city reappearing. He could see the contrails of aircraft duking it out in the sky, the wild loops of evasion and pursuit, the straight narrow lines of missiles, the puffs of blackish smoke where someone had gotten a kill. There were still streaks coming down from the sky. The bright flash of energy weapons fired from orbit, the smokey trails with the fireball head of debris or an incoming drop pod, the streak that suddenly broke into dozens of contrails that signified a missile battery from orbit. Three of the skyscrapers were on fire, burning fiercely. His armor pinged structural warnings on one that was slowly starting to lean. All of them were damaged by the fighting.

Traffic was going by on the road behind him, only a hundred yards or so from where he'd slammed into a building in the park. The Major was only fifty feet or so from him, the warmech face down, one arm outstretched and pointing off to the right, the other still in the water. The traffic was all one direction and Kelvak could see people running down the streets.

Everyone was avoiding the grounded Confederate troops.

"OK, kid, time for some lessons," the Major said, the comlink clinking.

"What?" Kelvak asked, gasping for a moment to get his breath.

"Notice the civvies. They're all running one way, and just that, they're running," the Major said. "Can you get a good view of them?"

Kelvak tried to get his visor, which was starred and cracked, to zoom in on the crowds.

"My visor's shot. I hit something on the way in," Kelvak said.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Really? What?" the Major asked.

"Not sure. I couldn't see it," Kelvak groaned as pain rippled through his abdomen. "I hit something hard, then something squishy that covered me in purple goop, then something hard again."

"It was invisible?" the Major's voice was intent.

"Yes, sir," Kelvak answered.

"OK, remember that. One of us has to stay alive. That's important data that MI's going to need to know," the Major started coughing and cut off his link. It gave a metallic clink and the Major's voice came back, breathing heavy. "Purple, huh? Can't think of anything besides the Quolbeyan that bleed purple and they're pacifists on the other side of the Confederacy. Good job, Marine, you might have just gotten data that can help the battle more than any simple fire and maneuver plan could."

The Terran's voice sounded odd to Kelvak.

"Are you all right, sir?" he asked.

"Better than Sigmar's Fury is," the Major said. He started to cough and cut the comlink again.

A small group of Hesstlan ran through the park, running across Kelvak's field of vision. He tried to raise his arms but found they wouldn't listen to the orders of his brain. One Hesstlan, an adolescent female, started to stop and stare at him but her parent grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

"Um, sir," Kelvak said.

"Yes, Marine?" the Major's voice was odd sounding.

"I can't move my arms, sir," Kelvak said.

"Have your onboard med-comp do a verbose diagnostic report on your spinal injury," the Major said, cutting off the comlink again.

Kelvak followed the instructions, feeling horror fill him at the full extant of the damage.

"How bad, kid?" the Major coughed.

"Three of my vertebrae are just gone, sir. Nothing but bone fragments. I'm missing part of my spinal cord," he paused for a second. "My tailbone is snapped free along with the end of my spinal column. I've got a foreign object through my abdomen."

"Yeah, I thought you knew about that," the Major said. He coughed again. "Your armor is cracked up pretty bad. Never seen damage like that on warsteel, to be honest. Probably that thing you hit on your reentry."

"My display's showing red and yellow on all my armor," he paused for a second. "Sir, are we going to die?" It was getting hard to breathe, like an iron band was tightening around his chest.

The Major sighed. "I don't know, kid," the Major cut his link as he started coughing again.

Kelvak felt like it was easy for the Major to say. He was Terran. If he got killed, he'd just get downloaded into a new body and could keep going. Kelvak didn't have that choice, didn't have that option. He had one life, and he was roughly a third of the way through it already at nineteen.

He refused to cry. Refused to snuffle like a podling. He stared through his cracked and starred visor as more Hesstlan ran through the park, running right by him, in between the Major's massive warmech and Kelvak's scout armor. They ran around the heavy equipment boxes that kept taunting Kelvak by showing their contents but refusing to respond to anything else.

More and more Hesstlan began moving through the park until it was a steady river of them. Move than a few moved by close enough that they kicked him, although he could barely feel it.

"Sir?" Kelvak tried. There was a sudden feeling of pressure release in his chest and he groaned out loud. "Sir?"

He got no answer.

Kelvak laid their, helpless as a spluttering roaring sound started. The crowd screamed and began trying to run every which way. Blocky, crude looking flying machines swooped in, thrusters on the bottom of the craft spitting and spluttering, glass globes on the top with wires and rods sticking out. He saw they grab a few of the Hesstlan, pulling them into the air for a moment before the body jerked a few times, went limp, and was dropped. The glass globe would light up, then glow blue, and the machine would swoop in on another victim.

The Hesstlan were panicking, screaming and wailing. He got kneed in the face and his faceplate cracked more. Another Hesstlan grabbed something that Kelvak couldn't see, but that made his guts erupt in fiery pain, so that they could climb over the top of the downed power armor troop.

The machines swooped away, but the crowd was still screaming and going every which way.

Five times more the crowd, still moving across the park, was attacked by the fliers. Every time the crowd panicked, trying to scatter, hemmed in by the sheer amount of bodies.

It started to get dark. The crowd was down to just plodding along.

"You there, kid?" the Major asked suddnly, jerking Kelvak out of a half doze. He was breathing fast, a wheezing whistle in his voice.

"I'm here, sir," Kelvak said. He coughed for a moment and the tight band released his chest.

"How long was I out?" The Major asked.

Kelvak checked the chrono and saw that part of his faceplate was damaged. "I don't know, sir, my chron display is damaged."

"Anything," the signal cut out. When it came back on, the Major was breathing heavy. "Anything important happen while I was out?"

"The locals started going by," Kelvak said. He coughed. "The enemy's got hovercraft, they keep attacking the crowd then leaving."

"Oh," the human coughed.

They were both silent as the crowd slowly thinned, slowed to a trickle, then the park was clear. The night was lit up by distant explosions, streaks and explosions in the sky, and the sounds of combat could be heard echoing through the empty streets.

"Not sure if that's good or bad, kid," the human coughed.

"What?" Kelvak asked, jerking his head and thumping his head inside his helmet. The pressure sleeve had completely deflated.

"Either the civvies are all dead, or we managed to hold the clankers closer to the edge of the city," the Major coughed. "Good if we held them, bad if they're all dead."

They were silent for a bit, the only sound was the breathing of the two wounded men.

"Hey, kid, do you see that?" the Major asked.

"See what?" Kelvak asked, blinking rapidly to clear his blurry vision.

"That. In between us. Do you see it?" the Major's voice was stressed.

"I don't see anything," Kelvak said. He tabbed up a piece of stimgum, then chinned the control to open his faceplate.

The night air was cool and tasted sweet to Kelvak even though it was full of the taste of burnt meat, scorched lubricants, carbonized metal, and heavy ash. He could hear the sounds of combat, but far away.

Layered over everything, in the dimness, was the sound of screaming from all around them, of millions of terrified beings howling in terror and pain.

"Kid, close your faceplate, it sees you," the Major snapped.

Kelvak blinked rapidly. He still couldn't see anything.

"Kid, it's getting closer, close your faceplate," the Major shouted. "Kid! Kid!"

Kelvak chinned the button again and his faceplate slid back into place, one of the cracks lengthening.

"You can't see him?" the Major asked.

"No, I don't see anything," Kelvak said. "What is it?"

"I have no idea," the Major admitted. "It's, three meters, maybe a bit more, tall. It's wearing some kind of glittering robe, rippling iridescence. Two arms, long fingers, six fingers per hand. Pointed head, tentacles on the lower third. Three big all white eyes. It's dark purple, shiny, like its slimy. It's just floating in mid-air above a bluish disc that kind of looks like a graviton disc."

Kelvak squinted. "I don't see anything."

"It's touching on you. Hold still," the Major said. "Turn off your com."

Kelvak turned off his comlink using his neural jack. It took twice, the first time the 'muscle' not flexing. He saw his arm get lifted up in front of him, but still couldn't see or feel anything. His hand was moved up and down, then whatever had him bent his elbow back and forth, then waved his arm up and down before dropping it.

A moment passed then the massive warmech lifted up, hanging limply in midair. It was flipped over and dropped back on the ground.

Kelvak couldn't see what was doing it.

KID. STAY. SILENT. floated up on his cracked and damaged faceplate from the command channel.

The cockpit on the massive warmech suddenly began to tear open, the warsteel armor bending back like cheap plas. Metal equipment ripped away, thrown away, and then suddenly the Terran appeared, held up in mid-air.

Kelvak could see that the Terran was wearing a pilot's cooling suit, that as he was pulled from the mech loops of his intestine spilled out. Still, the Terran reached forward, grabbing at something only he could see.

THFWOOP!

The Terran jerked, the sound was more in Kelvak's head than anything else. The Terran swung a fist, is other arm moving as if he was slapping something aside.

THFWOOP!

The Major jerked again as the sound hit. The Terran swung his fist, thick purple fluid suddenly coating his hand. Kelvak could see the Terran's eyes were bright red.

The Terran was suddenly yanked spread eagled. He tore in half, the lower body falling back into the cockpit of the warmech. He struggled, then his arm tore off, then the other.

The body was dropped into the warmech.

Kelvak sudden felt very very lonely.