---Esme’s perspective---
---Friday, 20th of November, 2685 Terran Calendar---
---Eastern Pangaea, New Australia---
It’s slow going as we walk through the Murnma Gorge, a natural crack in the solid rock of the cliffs surrounding it which formed, long enough ago, that the base has completely filled in with sediment.
I warned the Captain about belchers and we did some intelligence gathering, both consulting old elevation charts and asking the survivors who claimed to be familiar with the area before we set off.
Consensus was that this path was unsuitable for them, being saddle shaped.
However, we were warned that there would likely be traps, set by partisans, before the Safe Zone’s establishment.
That’s why we’re moving so carefully over the, mostly buried, preWar road.
We’ve already suffered one casualty to a tripwire IED… I’m just glad Evans wasn’t killed with that blast… out of the fight for sure, though!
The mules float along, in our midst, carrying all the supplies we’re going to need to build a camp and a defensive palisade across the pass, a screen of trap spotters walking ahead of them.
“There…” announces Burrows, pointing forward “…the Jackman Valley! If the attack comes, that will be where it comes from… Set to work! Palisade 50m back from the mouth of the gorge so they can’t use the blindspots to sneak up on us! I want medical tents there, bedding tents over there, the mess area can go here, I want the watchtower on this rise here, look out posts on the tops of the cliffs and make sure that both they, and the routes up to them, are NOT visible from the plains! Look lively and be alert for traps as you go!”
---Nathan’s perspective---
---Monday, 30th of November, 2685 Terran Calendar---
I’m sitting in the watchtower, beneath a canopy of orange and red camo netting.
My armour clad frame is motionless as I wait to be able to see what Milligan just commed to warn me of from one of the clifftop lookout hides.
A vehicle, coming from the South, headed North.
First one… quickly followed by more.
My heart stops as I wait to see what they do.
I’m simultaneously torn in two directions…
The dispassionate, god’s eye strategist in me is praying that they stop…
This is the most defensible route they could choose to attack… and even a total annihilation of this force will likely be fewer casualties than would be faced if the amassed army chose to turn South or keep going North.
On the other hand, the war-weary man, surrounded by brothers and sisters in arms whom he does not wish to make die for him, the old soldier who wants nothing more than to go home and become a notable playact with a beautiful man or woman to hold each night… is hoping that that army sees our barricade… and moves… along!
The lead vehicle slows, turns toward us… and stops…
The strategist celebrates… the tired soldier grieves …
---Esme’s perspective---
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
---Tuesday, 19th of December, 2685---
*Dakadakadakadakadaka* blasts my gun as I fire down at the xenos charging our palisade for the fifth time today!
My muscles have been screaming at me for the abuse they’ve been suffering for about a week.
Now though, I’m finally actually feeling them becoming unresponsive!
Just. a little. longer!
If we can just hold out for a few more weeks, it’ll be over… One way or another…
Reinforcements have arrived… the armies, North and South, are already preparing to flank the one we’re fighting. They’ll either surrender… or be annihilated!
Alternatively, the whole GU might give up and send these guys an order to surrender themselves to us!
That’s supposed to be happening any day now!
Afterward, I can go back to Earth… go to that London orphanage… and scoop my little boy off the ground as he totters toward me… implausibly, instantly recognising me for his mother…
He’ll be 2 by the time I make it back…
---Friday, 1st of January, 2686 Terran Calendar---
I’m stood outside the palisade gates with Richards, keeping watch, ready to run inside and signal the doors to be closed if they look like they’re about to charge us again.
Someone’s coming.
Just one someone… unarmed and with his strange, two thumbed hands raised above his head…
It’s one of those snake fuckers that killed Oskar… Probably one of the worst choices for an emissary to this battalion… though they probably don’t know that…
I know exactly why he’s coming… they’re getting desperate…
They’re going to try and coax us into abandoning the Flynn Valley to its fate and threaten to bombard us if we don’t…
And we’re going to refuse… we can do nothing else…
I’m never going to see my son again… I’m going to be buried at Red Sands, next to Oskar…
“Halt!” shouts Richards.
---Ssafazaoz’s perspective---
The Terran song of martyrdom and those musical… pipe-bags are still clearly audible, when I make it back to my battle lines.
fff♫ Wah fur Skotlunz Keng an Loh
Friidumz sord wud stron gli Droh
Friiman stan an friiman fo-oh
Let hem foh wi mii!♫fff
“They declined…” I say, sombrely, to the massive man with grey skin, four eyes and eight limbs.
Vlixrothju snarls, around his tusks, and I turn to face the gorge mouth, ready to watch the insanity I just played my part in…
“FIRE!!!” screams the [War King] into his comms.
The camp is battered by the blast of a hundred artillery pieces, all aimed at that barricade, sounding…
The pipes fall silent as the cliffs collapse, burying our route forward…
“They died for nothing…” observes my superior, Srassiahsk.
“No… they didn’t…” I correct.
---Gordon’s perspective---
---Wednesday, 13th of January, 2686 Terran Calendar---
We fly, in an atmo craft with the doors open, over the field of carnage that resulted from the xeno scum thinking that the best way to attack the valley was through a fucking bottleneck!
The soldiers, visible below herding surrendered subHumans onto transports, pay us little mind as we pass overhead.
Disgusting!
Both those spineless cowards accepting our mercy after burning every olive branch we offered… and those spineless Terrans still offering mercy to those who’ve proven they just. don’t. deserve. it!
What we’re after, where we’re headed, are real heroes!
Brave Humans who proved that they’d rather die than give the xenos an inch… by doing so!
I don’t know the names of the other five in the shuttle with me… Better that way…
Not hard to work out that they’re all men and women with stories much like mine, though.
It takes us about 20 minutes to cross the mountains and for the Jackman Valley to become visible, with how slow we were going.
It’s heavily disturbed from the more than month long encampment and battle that just took place on it… but completely deserted, luckily.
The rubble clearance site comes into view and I see something I don’t expect!
Rather than the bodies being left where they lay, someone has made sure they've been gathered up into neat rows, still in their armour, against the canyon wall!
“Isn’t that nice of them…” I sneer “…the scum made our job easy for us(!)”
The others chuckle.
I take out a box of nitrile gloves and offer it to each of them as we come in to land.
They all take a pair and put them on.
“Remember! Quick and clean! We don’t need bodyparts, just swabs!… We want to get out of here before recovery arrives! I don’t want us to have to explain what we’re doing here… alright!?”
They all nod and we hop off the transport.
“You two, start at opposite ends of the back row! You two, the middle! You and I’ll do the front…” I bark.
They hop to it and I take out my own bag of vials and cotton swabs.
I bend down over the first corpse and remove her helmet.
“Euugh…” I gag, at the mottled skin of the redhaired woman in the throws of, post rigor mortis, secondary flaccidity “…you’ve seen better days, haven’t you…!?”
I take a cotton swab with my right hand and open her mouth with my left.
“…And you’ll see better days again!”