Another day, another fight, and another bloody death. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. 

Life on the frontlines has always been grim as it is gruesome. At the ruins of an old mining colony was quite the fierce firefight. My small but experienced squadron have reached a standstill with the enemy forces. 

To my left a soldier was frantically firing his pistol. His body was missing from the waist down. His jaw was barely hanging on by sinews. George, he was always talking about his newborn son, from the boy’s birth to his first steps. War takes the best of us first.

To my right, engines roared to life with colorful plasma. Tanks and large mechanical armors began clashing, crushing those beneath them. They were dead but their armor still shone brightly.

I was at home here, amongst the hounds of war. Sounds of death beautifully in my ears. Here: War composes it’s masterpieces amongst bloodied men and battered spirits. As much as I wanted to stay and help the others, I had my orders.

Three weeks ago the enemy pushed back our forces and turned this once peaceful colony into another cog in their cruel war machine. After killing the men and enslaving the women and children, we were to take no prisoners...

...at least that’s what my men know.

The colony was all just a front. There were no innocent children nor damsels in distress. Simply put: we were sent here to secure the emperors favorite toys. 

It was several decades ago that the miners that actually lived here discovered alien artifacts within the large caverns that litter the planetoid. The Empire was quick to replace the miners with soldiers and scientists. What happened to them is better left unsaid.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The colony was soon turned into a training ground for experimental infantry. I know all this because I was one of the first soldiers here. Born as an abomination of a human and alien genome. This was where they implanted servitude into my brain with whip and needle. Only one in ten survive the implantation of the alien strands. Those that do are quickly enslaved with cybernetics. However, mine were defective. I lack one of the loyalty genomes that most my age do, giving me free thought. Though they don’t know that.

Darting into a broken down, but familiar building embedded into the grey planet’s rock and entering a hidden cargo elevator , memories of  the pain and surgeries surfaced. Me and my siblings had made many struggles here. In the end only a third of us survived. Their faces were still fresh in my mind, drenched in blood and tears as they were dragged away by guards. To me this was no home, it was a graveyard for my kind.

Much to my surprise, the elevator opened to a clean and beautiful white bunker draped by orchids, fountains and gardens. This bunker looked more like a luxury resort than it did a research facility. As I was searching for any signs of the enemy troops, I noticed something was off. 

It was too quiet.

Experiments were left on their own. The tables had hot mugs of coffee on top of research notes. The gardens were green and the benches were warm. Hell, there was even an unfinished game level in the common room.

However...that’s when I saw it.

While exploring the empty white corridors, I saw a small red streak of blood at the corner of my eye. Following this line, the lights began flickering. White halls turned red as black mist began to cloud my vision as I went deeper towards the excavation sites.

It seems like I found what I was looking for. The large blast door that led to the deep excavation site was destroyed. It was like something big smashed it to pieces. Whatever this thing was, it was calling me. Alien words resonated with high pitch tones.

What the hell did they send me towards?

Surprised by a wet crunching noise I readied my rifle. The vault door lead to a large cavern system. Activating several nearby drones to scout ahead, I was able to follow the trail to a large cavity before my drones were disabled.

In front of me was a silhouette. No, it was something far, far darker.

A mound of corpses.

At its very peak was a spear, wiggling with tendrils and dripping with blood.

And it called to me.

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Hello! Came here to that I’m back. I plan to keep the writing as a side hobby. This doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped The Steel Heart. I kinda broke my laptop, which held several unpublished chapters. I wrote this during my free time so please bear with my release schedule.