His vision was shaky… His breathing, desperate… The only sound he could hear was the rapid beat of his heart hammering away in his ears. He felt his stomach churning as it tried to push out its empty contents and his muscles cramping as the tension wound them up tighter and tighter. Truthfully, his entire body was shaking in fear as he prepared for the inevitable. What few thoughts passed through his mind left him retreating deeper inside himself, hoping it would all go away. But it was finally happening, after nearly four weeks of waiting and worrying, and he wasn’t ready for it, not by a long shot. There was no chance of escape… no hope for mercy… Vince felt himself slowly losing consciousness as he could not cope with the terror that the future held. His mind retreated into the darkness, accepting its peaceful embrace…

But a sudden piercing sensation in his arms forcefully pulled him back from the abyss. For a few seconds, he felt nothing but a slight fading pain. But then, it began… The sudden rush of power spread from his arms to chest and finally to head and legs, each step of the way loosening and relaxing his muscles and strengthening and reinforcing his lagging energy. His mind steadily cleared as the drug cocktail worked its way through him until he finally let out a calm, collected breath. As his hearing cleared, he finally opened his eyes to the sight of the quiet, dimly lit metallic world around him. His thoughts solidified until he accepted what he was doing on this shuttle: he was going to war… just like the dozens of others strapped in around him.

There was no choice in the matter. The orders of his superiors were absolute. Running or cowardice was punishable by death; that was the simple law of this war. There was no place for hesitation on the battlefield; to die in service of the greater good was an honor, and every man and woman had learned that from the first day they had learned how to speak. It was the core belief of the reality that Vince lived in. To believe otherwise was to betray humanity. To betray humanity was to betray all those who had valiantly sacrificed themselves in the last century of war. And to betray the dead was to forget the thousand worlds of the Terran Dominion that were now nothing more than graveyards of the damned.

Vince chuckled bitterly as he laid his helmeted head back against the hard surface of his restraint cocoon. He wanted to scream that it was all hogwash, that he didn’t belong here… that it was all a mistake. But, he knew he couldn’t. He was militia, and his duty like all the others around him was to fight when there was nothing else left to throw at the enemy. He was expendable… all for the greater good. Vince opened his eyes back up, resolve forming in them to accept the fate that the gods had cast for him.

SSHHZZZZHHH! Suddenly, the communications systems or the com in his helmet started spitting out static, and a voice came through on all channels.

“Attention! Attention! To all assault troopers of the 6/75th, prepare for combat landing! LZ is marked as orange medium! Expect heavy civilian presence! Orders are to secure the sector until the 8/90th, 4/90th, and 5/57th can relieve the position. Strike hard! Strike fast! To the honor of Terra!”

As the loudmouth CO’s, youthful voice cut off, a gruff, experienced sounding one filled the com link. “You heard the man! We’re walking into hell! When ya kiss ground, get to cover and keep yer eyes open! The damn mutos will be comin’ for ya like they got a plasma blade up their asses! An’ I won’t say this twice, so keep an eye out for the civies! I don’ need no bitchin’ from above that one of you morons killed one ‘cause you can’t control yer trigger finger! Understood!”

“Yes, First Sergeant!” A couple dozen voices roared out the only acceptable reply over the platoon wide comlink.

As far as inspirational speeches went, neither of the voices had been too helpful, but at least First Sergeant Menz had been a bit more realistic. Vince scowled when he thought of the hard faced, older man and his hard ass attitude but shook off the past, annoying memories. There was no place for that in the shitfest the platoon was walking into. He had other things to do before they hit dirtside.

Vince began double checking that his gear was working properly. The clear, plasteel display on the inside of the faceplate of his helmet showed everything that he looked at clearly and without any lag. The semi-dark shuttle interior didn’t really look like much, until Vince used a single, mental command via his brain stem link to turn on his helmet’s night vision. As his eyes moved, looking at different objects or people around him, little holographic circles tracked them. All the other soldiers, militia just like him, immediately had small red identifier tags light up above them, and certain objects like weapons were immediately tagged with blue identifier tags. A single mental command/thought made the tags go away.

Looking at the armored militiaman secured in a metallic harness right across from his own metallic cocoon, Vince scowled at the crappy, grey colored powered armor that the militia had been given. The Gleson Mk. VI was like all powered armors, in that its basic design was nothing more than a form fitting, metallic shell that was filled with nanofibers to enhance a soldier’s strength. However, this model was nearly a generation old with only a handful of internal systems having the new nanotech enhancements. Even the armor’s central computer or centcomp was unforgivably old and had dozens of software glitches in its operating system. There were no antigrav jumpers, no autocannons, no electromagnetic shield emitters, no nothing... Against the enemy waiting for the militia, the Mk. VI was nothing more than a death trap. Of course, it was cheap … so the upper echelons had decided it was appropriate for the expendable militia.

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His scowl hardened into a frown and he looked down at the Zexon P530 assault rifle, secured between his armored legs. It was a standard piece of equipment for all militia across the Terran Dominion, and its plasma based discharges were effective… against man made targets. Against the mutos, there was a 50/50 chance that of its firepower breaking through enemy armor. Of course, to make up for its deficit, the R&D division of the Terran Dominion Armed Forces had added a plasma grenade launcher to the rifle. Suffice it to say, everyone carried as many spare hydrogen power cells as possible since the plasma grenades ate up power greedily.

And that was all… There were a handful of others in the platoon with some ‘heavy weapons,’ but for most of the militia, there was no ‘need’ for anything else. Vince snorted in frustration as he wished he could get his hands on the stupid politician or general, who had thought up that clause.

Suddenly, the shuttle began vibrating a bit as Vince felt a high pitched whine through his armor. He had been on enough combat exercises to know that the shuttle was lifting off from where it had been on standby. That meant the platoon was on its way to the gates of hell.

“Fuck!” He shouted the words, knowing that no one else could hear it outside his helmet.

He would have said a lot more, but a request for a private channel popped up in the corner of his view just then. Vince guessed it was one of the others in the platoon and accepted the request. Suddenly an excited voice popped in. “Hey, Vince! We’re finally going to be droppin’ the fire on the damn mutos, bro! Been tellin’ peeps here that I’ll be killin’ the damn freaks left and right. Hellza ya!”

Vince shook his head in frustration. Benz or Beanhead as he was commonly know wasn’t exactly the smartest cookie in the jar, and everyone in the platoon knew to keep their distance from the idiot, since… well, let’s just say more than a few were taking bets on how many minutes the fool would last once the fireworks started.

Before Vince could reply, another voice cut in. This one, a woman’s voice, made Vince roll his eyes. Crimson as she was known, wasn’t exactly a sweetheart. “You been shootin’ up on more of those adreno shots, Beanhead? Cause ya damn sound like it. Keep yer skinny ass away from me dirtside!”

A more nasally, nervous voice, most likely belonging to Crawler, cut in. “Umm… So, you guys think it’s gonna be bad?”

Around that time, Vince lowered the volume on the channel, leaving it droning in the background. Somehow, he always ended up getting drawn into their mini arguments. He knew it was their way of blowing off any lingering anxiety, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted this time around. The battle this time was going to be for real and not some combat game…

Instead, he pulled up live imagery from around the shuttle by jacking into its hull cameras. It was a little trick he had learned from some buddies in the maintenance and repair division. His first sight was the smoke rising in the distance from dozens of locations. It was hard to tell what was on fire since the ground was covered in a multitude of skyscrapers and domed, residential megacomplexes, but suddenly, it was pretty obvious to make out… the ‘thing’ that did not belong.

It was larger than any skyscraper or megadome and was literally a dozen miles long and hundreds of feet tall. Dozens of large, conical spikes protruded from it in all directions, and blasts of red light, most likely bioplasma, could be seen erupting out the monstrous construct at random intervals. At a quick glance, it looked like some kind of mutated head of corn… but that funny impression faded in the face of reality.

Vince felt his mouth run dry as he realized he was looking at a crashed muto dreadnought. He knew there was space battle taking place in orbit about Verendel VII, but knowing it and seeing one of the monstrous vessels of war on the ground were two different things. The dreadnought had somehow punched through the orbital defenses to crash in city of Artens, and as damaged as it was, it most likely held thousands of mutos. And the closest units of the Terran Dominion available for combat were the militia…