I had a couple centuries of 'combat' under my belt while serving the Lanaktallan Unified Military Council.

What innocent fools we were as we foolishly assaulted Fortress Sol.

Wisdom was earned with blood.

I hope I led with wisdom and not with pride and hubris after the Terran Emergence. From "The Hasslehoff's Bloody Jaws", Admiral (Upper Decks) of the Warsteel (Formerly Grand Most High Executor) Mru'udaDa'ay, New Singapore Press, TerraSol, 12 PTE (Post Terran Emergence)

"One little Clone, walking all alone. He was taken down with a simple Throwing Stone.

Two little clones, marching as a Pair. They were taken down with arrows through the air.

Four little clones, running as a team. They were taken down with a Laser Beam.

Eight little Clones Riding in a Truck. They were taken down with a Missle and some Luck.

Sixteen little clones Flying through the sky. They were taken down With an AA gunner's Bulls Eye.

Thirty Two Little Clones Climbing up the wall. They were taken down in a Hand to Hand Brawl.

Sixty Four little clones Digging at the earth. They were Taken down..." -Beginning of Terran Nursery Rhyme, Post Legions War, Verses Variable, as recorded by u/Jhtpo.

He had been born Impton-7163122 on Telkan-2 only twenty-three years before the Big C3. He was removed from school at 16 and set to driving mech-loaders. His tests always showed him to be docile and quiet, submissive and hesitant to act.

Then the Precursor Autonomous War Machines came.

Impton has sspent the year and a half piloting stumbling junk that the Unified Corporate Council called a warmek, fighting in battle after battle. Sometimes he only had the redeployment flight to rest, thrown into battle after battle as a disposable asset. He had marched forward with hundreds, thousands of Telkan just like him.

They had died.

He had not.

The end of the war found Telkan liberated and he was unemployed as the Industrial Concern he had been employed by was bankrupt and being chewed on on all sides by Terran lawyers. He got a settlement and intended on drinking his way through it. His plans, when he met her, met them, and started a little family.

He joined the Telkan Marine Corps, finding himself again, finding purpose again.

And he had his family as well as the Corps. Something he had resigned himself to never having.

A family.

It was a humble thing. Him, a wife, a single broodcarrier, and some adopted podlings whose parents hadn't survived the war. They were all podlings from people who had fell next to him. The tattoo up his right arm held the Council ID numbers of every man who fell at his side.

For they were his brothers.

Then the Devourers came.

He fought in the streets, then in the jungles. Always riding a beat up warmek, whatever he could steal, borrow, or recover. He fought because it was what he was good at, what he enjoyed, and what he craved. Everyone he knew, had known, was gone.

More ID numbers were encoded into his tattoo.

When Daxin the Unfeeling, Liberator, had come, he was on the wall of a Main Support and Refugee Base, fighting on the wall, his family behind him. He had lost an arm, the Bliss trying to carry him off, the drugs from the armor mixed with rage keeping him conscious.

When Daxin the Unfeeling came, soon after the mountain had exploded. He was already out of the hospital, in a mech, fighting, always fighting, to keep the jungle back from the base.

Away from his wife, his broodcarrier, his podlings.

After the mountain exploded came cleanup. After the cleanup he found himself as part of the First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force. That sent him to Terra.

He had arrived only a month or so before The Bag had closed.

Impton had been tasked with guarding Steel Eyed Sangbre, the Tnvaru Matron, in the cold wastes of the Vodkatrog lands. When the Lanaktallan had assaulted Fortress Sol, Impton, like the rest of 1TMEF, had gone forth to fight against the Unified Council.

They had won, but The Bag was closed.

And the universe had gone on while he was trapped inside.

His grief at the loss of his beautiful Nulthree and Ra'althri'im, of the loss of his beautiful podlings, had driven him to drink and grief fueled depression.

The Vodkatrogs had understood his feelings, had welcomed him as a brother. He had begun fighting with next to the Horde, at the drunken advice of another Telkan. For years they had fought, side by side and against the Warsteel Hordes.

He had been reborn as Ivan Wektaki the Telkan, of the Black Skull Blood Drinker Vodkatrog Warsteel Horde. He had accepted longevity treatments even as he had embraced that his part was to take part in the endless strife over territory and honor. He was sure his beloved wife and broodcarrier would accept longevity treatments and were waiting for him to return to their embrace.

Then The Bag had opened.

Like many inside The Bag, they had eagerly awaited to find out how much time had passed, looking forward to being reunited with friends, families, loved ones.

Surely, it couldn't be that long, right?

Then the truth came out.

Thirty-nine thousand eight hundred ninety three years had gone by.

The knowledge had hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes.

They were gone.

His wife, his broodcarrier, his podlings.

More than gone.

They had died twice. Once, when their physical bodies had ceased to function.

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Then when someone said their name for the last time.

He was surprised, although in hindsight he knew he shouldn't have been, by how many of the Warsteel Cossacks had joined those who were not from Terra on the surface. They had stood, as naked as possible depending on their cybernetic replacement status, in a howling blizzard as each person had said the names of lost loved ones.

The Cossacks had repeated the names with those who spoke.

Impton had engraved the names of his broodcarrier, his wife, and his podlings on the skull of a Telkan who had died during the invasion and who nobody knew who they were. He had smeared his own blood on the salt crystals on the skull, saying the names softly.

The deep caves, where one had to be a cyborg to survive, had matched his soul burning sorrow. The hymns and slow songs let him grieve. The darkness hid his sorrow.

They were gone.

He hoped she had remarried. He hoped that Ra'althri'im had given birth to many podlings that she cradled and loved. He hoped his podlings had lived full and happy lives.

He wished, wandering the darkness of the deep caves, that he had died fighting the Lanaktallan invasion force.

Then came the word.

The First Telkan Marine Expedition Force was reforming. All of those Telkan Marines that had survived the years gone by were to report for duty if they were willing.

Impton found he was.

He sought for permission and was granted it by one of the Baba Yaga who lived in the black frozen swamps.

The cyborgs of the Warsteel Hordes had watched as his armor was prepared. As Hate Anvil Witches had prepared it for service to the Horde, to Terra, to the Telkan people.

While others went straight to their armor, Impton had gone to another place. A place where only some had gone. A place of darkness and despair.

He had knelt on the salt crystals, wearing only denim pants and a white and blue striped shirt with its sleeves torn away, a red bandanna around his forehead that had the rune for Telkan embroidered into it. He showed no fear as the one of the Baby Yaga had come forward and placed an ornate box in front of his knees.

The Baby Yaga bit the tips of each of his fingers, her sharp black iron teeth sinking into the pad at the end. The pain burned up his arm but he showed no fear, no pain.

Opening the box revealed an ancient percussion and chemical driven firearm, disassembled and set into the red velvet of the case. It had an inlaid chassis, not warsteel but gold and the white bone taken from tusks of the great wooly mammoths of the Horde Lands. There were prayers to not only the Digital Omnimessiah encoded into the frame of the pistol, but to Gods even older. It had a cylinder that would hold six bullets, bullets that a pull of the trigger would rotate into place for a percussion hammer to strike the primer, igniting the propellant, to fire a single .45 caliber bullet made of salt, warsteel, and iron.

Impton put the pistol together, reciting the prayer or psalm engraved on the piece that was visible to his eyes. Between each piece he reached down, touched the salt he knelt one with bloody fingertips, and lifted the salt to his tongue. He kissed each piece before locking it into place, blood on his lips smearing the oiled metal.

Once the pistol was assembled, he kissed the end of the barrel and opened the cylinder.

Tradition of the Vodkatrog only demanded a single bullet in the chamber.

He locked the first one in for his wife.

The second for his broodcarrier.

The last for his podlings.

He bowed his head, saying each name.

The Baby Yaga, under the stern watchful eyes of three Baba Yaga, recited the names with him.

The cylinder held three bullets, each of them spaced by an empty chamber.

He spun the cylinder and lifted the pistol up so it was next to his head, the barrel pointing upright.

He could hear the oiled whir of the cylinder.

He snapped the cylinder closed with a twist of his wrist, put the end of the barrel to his temple.

And pulled the trigger.

He didn't know which would be worse. The click of an empty chamber or the sound of his own skull shattering before the bullet wiped everything away.

The click was loud, echoing through the chamber.

The Baba Yaga nearest's hair snaked out, wrapping around his hand, prying open his fingers, pulling the pistol from his grasp.

The Baby Yaga led him out to his armor.

He had stared at it.

"The last suit I shall ever wear," he said slowly.

He got in and the suit locked around him, going live. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as the pilot jack locked in with a burning pain and feeling like his spinal cord was being twisted around a hook bladed knife.

His new family, the Warsteel Cassocks, escorted him to the spaceport, each tribe sending an honor guard as he passed through their territory and was joined by more Telkan reporting for duty. At the starport he had clashed forearms with brothers he had not seen in decades and some he had fought against on the snow driven tundra of the Warsteel Steppes.

They were moved to an island in The Gulf of the Pirate Lords, where the 1TMEF was restructuring. The Master Armor Specialists and the Armorer watched as the Telkan of the Expedition Force returned after fifty years of 'going native', noting the modifications to armor, weapons, and loadouts.

Ranks were put in place according to training, experience, and where they had served. Impton refused his promotions, staying with his rank of Senior Sergeant that he had possessed when he had arrived on TerraSol.

The Old Warhorse, the General in charge of the 1TMEF, a Telkan who had fought in war after war in Terra, starting as a base lieutenant and rising through the ranks through fire and blood, had ordered that the modifications were to remain.

Including his own wildebeest skull adorned helmet.

Then came the orders.

Defend the Ornislarp Noocracy.

1TMEF was deployed in company sized elements to close with and destroy the enemy.

Which is why Impton was in the middle of the enemy robots.

His platoon had charged across the short cut fields of grain, firing their weapons as they closed with the robots that moved in jerks and fits. When the Telkan had closed, they went to pistols, SMGs, or even more esoteric weapons as they took the fight straight into the enemy's teeth.

In each of his hands Impton held a war axe. Warsteel, engraved in the designs of the Warsteel Cassocks, the engravings inlaid with salt crystal made red with his own blood that burned with a bright fire. The hilts were wrapped with a thin braid of hair from a Baby Yaga, allowing him to hold the war axes without fear of blood or lubricants making his grip uncertain.

Impton crossed the axes, his suit's internal systems taking the context and ramping up the battlescreen in front of him. The enemy's fire shattered on the battlescreen and Impton took two steps forward, spinning in place, the long strips of vellum inscribed with spells of the Baba Yaga fluttering, the chains attached to his armor clinking, and the axe blades tore clear through the warsteel armor of the robots, ripping them in half.

His eyes glowed red as his rage at the malevolent universe filled him.

It had taken everything away from him and filled him with loss and a pain that never ended deep inside of him. He was bleeding from wounds that even the best ripperdocs and the finest nanites could not close.

A Treana'ad robot lunged at him and he kicked it back before chopping it into pieces with two sharp blows from each axe, turning and crossing the axes again to deflect a round from a tank that was already exploding from the rockets fired by someone else.

It was total chaos. The BATTACNET was down or just howling out gibberish. Commands were voice only across the close range links. Robots screeched and exploded, the guns fired, and cutting bars roared even as hydraulic jackhammers normally used to mine salt, gold, lithium, diamonds, or other valuables that had to be wrested from the earth ripped apart the robots.

His rocket pack fired point blank, the fusing standoff distance disabled, and the three tanks nearby exploded in flame even as he parried a bladearm and ripped the Treana'ad robot in two. He kicked a mantid robot away, the robot shedding pieces as it flew up in an arc.

Someone tagged it with a missile and it exploded.

But Impton was already moving, joining two others to jump up onto a spasmodically moving warmek, climbing up it. Impton used his axes as well as the grav spikes into his boots, the cruel blades of the axes leaving huge rents behind as they climbed up.

The cockpit only contained computer equipment haphazardly wired in.

Two hits with an axe and the warmek fell backwards to crash on the ground.

He and the two others stood up and looked around.

The robots had all stopped moving.

He could see one of the Chernobogs bend down and pick up two smaller warmeks in the fifty ton range.

"Yes, yes, now kiss," the Chernobog rumbled, mashing the two warmeks together. "Mmm-wah, mm-wah. Oh, no we shouldn't. Mmm-wah, mm-wah."

Impton laughed.

The Chernobog crashed the two warmeks together hard enough parts came off then dropped them.

Senior Lieutenant Harktraw appeared in Impton's HUD.

"Fall back to the dropships, the Warhorse says Fleet is sounding a recall."

"Roger. Third Platoon, Second Section acknowledges," Impton said. He looked up. "Chernobog! CHERNOBOG!"

The big full conversion cyborg turned his attention from the two tanks he was banging together on the ground and looked at Impton.

"Fall back to the dropships, this fight is over," he said. He tilted his head. "And no stealing toys to play with!"

"Aw," the Chernobog sounded like a podling told they wouldn't get after dinner pudding.

He looked around.

"All right. Form up. Dropships will be here in fifteen minutes. I want everyone on before Lieutenant Harktraw gets to the dropship," Impton ordered.

Icons winked and voices responded with acknowledgements.

Impton looked around.

I wonder why they stopped fighting? Robots don't care, they don't have any morale to break.