The Maschinengeist War:
The Voids Horn
Chapter two
Requiem
Tristram Raeburn
I followed quietly behind Grey Eagle as we moved through the city toward one of the city's bomb shelters in the area. It was surreal how silently the giant man, or battleship apparently, moved. Which shouldn't have been too surprising as I designed him to operate as stealthy as a battleship could be, especially at night.
It wasn't night, though. It was maybe 3 to 4 PM, roughly. So, I probably wasn't seeing the full extent of his stealth capabilities. Which was a mildly terrifying thought. Which led me to another confusing thought. I was pretty sure ships were supposed to be female, but here he was, striding through the city ahead of me. I wondered how that worked out.
I still doubted he actually was the Grey Eagle, but the evidence supporting the claim continued to mount as we moved along. He 'saw' the void creatures well before I did without a direct line of sight, which was probably his RADAR at work. I also saw bullets from the Void Creatures that punctured through modern flack armor, and Kevlar just bounced. Off. His. Skin. And his clothes. There was no way he was human, but I doubted he was allied with Void Creatures, either. If he was, I'd probably be dead by now.
This part of the city held credence to my last thought. Corpses were everywhere we went. The Void creatures spared no one, but at least they didn't mutilate the corpses, small mercy. Still, I threw up twice already as we moved through the city. Aside from the sound of distant fighting, an uneasy silence filled the air for most of our trek.
"Sir," Grey Eagle startled me out of my thoughts. "If I may ask, weren't your original orders to hold the intersection I appeared in?" Grey Eagle asked quietly, and with anxiety and hesitance, I didn't think the massive man was capable of. Another question for later, it seemed.
"There was no point in holding that intersection. We were sent forward to that intersection to delay the Void creatures' advance towards the evacuations. We've done that, and judging by all the broken barricades we've passed, we were the last ones holding that line. Now, all we can do is find survivors and then get the hell out of here." I explained after a moment.
I knew I might get yelled at later for not holding in the intersection if I lived that long. But, on the other hand, I would rather go down saving civilians instead of holding a forgotten intersection in the middle of San Francisco. In all honesty, the higher-ups will probably be shocked that an egghead like me lived while thousands of others didn't.
"Understood. Do you know where emergency shelters are in the city? Unfortunately, I do not possess a map that has them." Grey Eagle asked as we continued down the road.
"I do. I… I saw a map of the shelters once." I informed him as we passed another group of corpses. I averted my eyes quickly and struggled to keep my gag reflex under control.
"Only once? Are you certain you still remember?" confusion leaked into Grey Eagle's tone.
"I remember them. There's not much I can forget." I quietly dreaded the nightmares and memories that would crop up after all this.
"Is your brain a computer of some kind?" Grey Eagle asked and turned his head to the right to face me slightly, but not enough for me to see his face.
"Heh… no. Definitely seems like it sometimes." I gave with a dry laugh. Many people have asked that, and most would have received a much more irritated response, but I could handle simple curiosity.
Grey Eagle simply nodded and faced forward as we continued on, which I was thankful for. I didn't think now was the right time to explain how a mental disorder worked. The eerie silence returned, and I almost wished Grey Eagle would ask another question.
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Unknown
It seems the afterlife is peaceful if the blank emptiness in all directions is anything to go by. However, I didn't like it.
I'm a War machine, a Tank, an Abrams! If I can't find something hostile to throw hands with, I will throw hands with my crew. With varied results… none of them were severely injured… mostly.
Irrelevant at the moment. While I went down fighting, I still wanted to fight something. My country is probably still under attack, and I'm not just going to sit here doing nothing.
However, a black expanse in all directions didn't really give me much to go off of to get back. The feeling of being watched didn't help either.
"We can help you get back." a distorted voice asked to my right, and I snapped my attention toward it. I looked it over and felt revulsion flow over me. It looked like what killed my crew and me. The pitch black spin and clothes plus glowing eyes are hard to mistake.
I blinked once before punching it in the face as hard as I could. I froze after doing so.
'Why in god's name do I have an arm? I should have tracks! Armor and machine guns! And where in the ever-loving fuck is my main gun?' I questioned the absurdity that's a part of me now.
I've got a human body of some kind. However, the Marine dress uniform I'm wearing looks great on me, plus one to negative some fucking number. Not really important right now.
I really want to kill an idiot, and god has provided the idiot. I have also been provided with this new body, and I will make it this idiot's problem. Said idiot has recovered from the punch to her face I delivered and is glaring at me. A grin spread across my face as my jet turbine engine in my chest revved up to speed. Which is now my heart and maybe lungs? Semantics.
"Attacking me won't help-" the idiot started speaking but received a haymaker to her jaw. She let out a broken cry of pain as she reeled back. When will the idiot realize I'm not interested in talking?
"Semper Fi, Bitch!" I yelled at the idiot as I unleashed a can of whoop-ass on her. A punch here, a kick there, and a block over there, once the idiot started fighting back. Didn't work, though.
I would like to call it a fight, but it was a one-sided beatdown. Anything that actually hit me, I didn't really feel at all. Guess I found my armor.
After a minute or so of fighting, the idiot was a broken, dead, and disintegrating mess on the ground. Shame. I wanted to bring the corpse to a Corpsman or a doctor if I could find one. Maybe they could have figured out how the idiotic things tick. But, on second thought, I probably should have taken it prisoner, instead of killing it.
Oh well. Back to find a way out of here. Thankfully I could still tell which direction was which. Internal compass for the win! I figured east is the best way to go. I had no idea if this was some alternate reality superimposed over the real one. If it was, I didn't want to go west, come out of whatever this is, and drown in the pacific ocean.
I think I'm grasping at straws, and maybe those weird spatial anomaly theories one of my old crew members, Lance Corporal Jack Dan, read might have rubbed off on me. Not that I can really remember the specifics. The rest of the crew and I always felt like our brains dripped out our ears whenever he talked about the theories. Maybe that's why he never made it to NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer).
Regardless I started marching in that direction. I have a city to protect, heads to crack open, and no weird spatial anomaly bullshit will stop me.
"Oscar 3 'Requiem', Moving out!"
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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Tristram Raeburn
"Contacts ahead." Grey Eagle stated quickly but quietly.
I cursed under my breath while unslinging my rifle. Grey Eagle pulled a 50 Caliber machine gun out of nowhere and shouldered the giant weapon. I blinked in surprise but moved behind a car's engine block for cover. I hesitated when I noticed the car's holes and the two police officers' corpses. It likely wouldn't work as intended, but I didn't have any other options.
Down the road, I saw a group of 15 void creatures milling about in an intersection in front of us. The X-junction is relatively large, but we weren't near any major interchanges. We would have to go through or around them to get to the emergency shelter. I looked through the scope of my rifle and saw they were moving corpses into the intersection. This was new…
"Hey, Grey Eagle, what do you make of this?" I asked him as I continued to observe the Void creatures.
"No idea, but I don't think we should leave them to their own devices," Grey Eagle replied without hesitation.
I wasn't too keen on trying to fight such a large group. I'm confident Grey Eagle would be fine, but me? Not so much.
Before I could rebuke or agree with his idea, a distinctive boom of a 120mm cannon caught my attention. It was immediately followed by an explosion in the X-junction, which had to be a high explosive round. The smoke and debris obscured the intersection for a time. While the interchange was obscured, the distinctive sounds of a 50. Caliber machine gun, and two separate 308. Caliber machine guns opened fire into the intersection.
A 120mm cannon, a 50. Caliber machine gun, and two 308. Caliber machine guns… If my sense of direction is still working, there must be an Abrams to the left of the intersection or the south. However, I didn't hear the grinding of tracks or the dull roar of a jet turbine engine. I did hear yelling and cursing, though. Maybe it was immobilized, and one of the crew was caught outside the tank? Right now, it's an issue for later.
"Fuck it, hit 'em!" I told Grey Eagle and started firing at the void creatures. A moment later, Grey's machine gun opened fire. The Void creatures scrambled for cover as they tried to respond to the crossfire they found themselves in. Thankfully they were more interested in shooting at the more prominent threats in the form of Grey Eagle and the Abrams.
Two of the Void creatures were killed in the opening explosion if the pieces of them scattered around the intersection were anything to go by, and five more were gunned down in the crossfire. The remaining Void creatures made it to some kind of cover, such as cars or barricades.
The Abrams lobbed another high explosive shell and killed two more of the Void creatures along with the cover they were using. The pieces and shreds of the Void creatures and the debris from the non-existent cover obscured the intersection again. I couldn't see the Void creatures well enough to continue shooting them accurately. Grey Eagle and the Abrams didn't have that issue.
Grey Eagle focused down the Void creatures one at a time. He didn't stop firing until his target died. Then he simply found a new target. The cover didn't matter 50. Caliber rounds will cut through anything eventually, and Grey Eagle seemingly didn't need to reload.
The Abrams seemed to have the same never-ending magazine that Grey Eagle has. From what I could tell, all three of its machine guns kept filling the interchange with lead and only stopped to acquire a new target. The last six Void creatures were pinned and cut down systematically in short order, but I didn't hear the Abrams main gun open fire again; they were probably conserving ammo.
Once the shooting stopped, an oppressive silence settled in the area like a blizzard. Nearly everything in the X-junction was shredded by machine gun fire to some degree, but I still didn't hear tracks or a jet turbine engine. The Abrams had to be immobilized. Maybe one of the crew would peak around the corner?
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I noticed Grey Eagle was next to the car I used as cover. He raised a hand placatingly before turning toward the intersection.
"I'm moving up; cover me," he told me in a whisper.
I nodded before looking back down my scope. Despite technically being the high-ranking officer in the equation, I wasn't keen on arguing with a man who could shoulder fire a 50. Caliber machine gun without issue. Not that I disagreed with him. As far as I knew, he is invulnerable to small arms fire; I'm not.
I kept scanning the interchange slowly as Grey Eagle advanced. It didn't take long for me to see him appear in my line of sight near the X-junction. I watched him move behind a car near the intersection's stop line and crouched behind the car. I silently noted he was still able to look over the roof.
"Texas!" Grey Eagle called out suddenly, and I heard it echo in the deserted street. I felt a chill go down my spine. That echo wasn't natural for a city like San Francisco.
"Star!" a gruff feminine voice called back. Her voice also echoed in the deserted street. Grey Eagle nodded before coming out from behind the car. Machine gun still in hand. As he did so, a woman in some type of full body armor, which I'd never seen the exact type of, came around the corner of the intersection.
Both Grey Eagle and the woman stopped upon seeing one another. The rifle -- with a muzzle brake like what would be found on a larger caliber cannon, not a rifle, and some kind of secondary barrel and trigger. -- in the woman's hands snapped up toward Grey Eagle. Grey Eagle simply raised his machine gun toward the woman, and one of the most awkward stand-offs I'd ever seen ensued.
While the stand-off occurred, I took a chance to look over the woman. The armor she wore was green in color, aside from her legs, shins down, colored black, and had a blocky shape I'd never seen in any Army or Marine armor or equipment. She has an American flag on her shoulder along with the insignia of the Marine Corps and the Army. There are regiment numbers on her shoulder, but I couldn't make them out at this range.
The woman wasn't nearly as tall as Grey Eagle, but she was definitely taller than me by at least a few inches. The armor is an odd mix of slim and bulky, with the front and sides of her armor incorporating small square panels. Her armor also has a backpack that reminded me of a bustle rack.
The woman's armor's pauldrons also threw me for a loop. On each shoulder was a small machine gun emplacement; one was larger than the other. They both focused on Grey Eagle when the woman's rifle did.
As a weapons development officer, I should have at least heard about what weapons she wielded, even the rumor mill can be frighteningly accurate, but I keep on drawing blanks on what the rifle she's wielding could be. While armor isn't my area of expertise, I still should have heard something about it due to the weird pauldrons. If they're even functional.
"What are you?" the woman asked. I wasn't close enough to hear them, but I could read her lips. Unfortunately, with Grey Eagle's back to me, I couldn't tell what his response was.
"You're serious?" she continued after Grey Eagle's response and received a nod from Grey Eagle.
She muttered something I couldn't make out and lowered her rifle, ending the stand-off.
"Well, I'm Oscar 3 Requiem M1A2 Abrams. 37th Armor Regiment, formerly 1st Marine Tank Battalion." the now named Requiem told Grey Eagle. Her armor and weapons now made much more sense and explained why I hadn't heard of them. They already existed, but not like this. Also explained why she had both the Marine and Army insignias. She was a Marine tank, but now she's an Army tank that's keeping her past in mind.
I lowered my rifle and stood up with a sigh. How the hell was I going to explain all of this to our superiors? First, a living battleship, and now a living tank? What's next a… I shouldn't jinx myself.
I started walking through the deserted street toward Grey Eagle and Requiem. Weird name, but I've seen tanks with far more outlandish names. Tankers are an odd bunch.
I made it halfway to the two of them when Requiem's head snapped toward me. I waved at her.
"He's friendly." Grey Eagle explained before she could ask.
"Right, and who are you? Don't look like much." Requiem asked as she looked me up and down.
"Tristram Raeburn, Weapons Development officer. Just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I'm not going to just sit around." So I told her as I checked over the wound on my arm. It looked alright, but I'm not a medic.
"Huh, alright then. What's the plan?" Requiem asked as she looked over me again with more approval -- respect? -- in her eyes and voice.
"Evacuate civilians from emergency shelters. We can't fight back an entire invasion with a battleship that can't bring all his weapons to bear, no offense Grey Eagle." I started explaining the plan, and Grey Eagle nodded toward me.
"A single tank and a flimsy guy with a sniper rifle." I continued, and Requiem snorted.
"We get to a shelter and escort whoever's in them out of the city. The more people we get out, the fewer people the reinforcements have to worry about." I finished explaining the plan to Requiem.
"Understood. When are we expecting reinforcements?" Requiem asked.
I was about to answer, but Grey Eagle did instead.
"An hour. Two at most. My crew got access to radio channels, but I can't send anything without them tracking it back to my ID. That would be met with open suspicion at best or outright ignored and shut down at worst." Grey Eagle explained, and I raised an eyebrow.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" I asked quickly.
"Took my crew some time to find a way to connect with the frequency without broadcasting my ID, and they got it working during the fight. So I should go unnoticed in the chaos for a while, but not forever." Grey Eagle informed us. Both me and Requiem nodded.
"Anything else we should be aware of?" Requiem asked as I checked my ammo.
"There might be a few pockets of soldiers still alive. They responded to the transmission about reinforcements but weren't transmitting otherwise. One's in the general direction we were heading. Nothing else to report." Grey Eagle informed us further and pointed to the east. Conveniently in the direction of the emergency shelter nearest to us.
"Huh… right. One question, though. Why can't you bring all your weapons to bear?" Requiem asked Grey Eagle.
I glanced over at him with curiosity.
Grey Eagle never explained why he couldn't bring all of his armament to bear. I wasn't entirely complaining either; having 12 16-inch guns suddenly in the middle of San Francisco probably wouldn't end well. But, on the other hand, I'm pretty confident cloudy with a chance of missiles would have been in our future.
"Weight. I severely doubt concrete and asphalt can withstand 72,000 tons of weight focused on two points," he told us, and I nodded. Made sense, and that's not even considering the recoil of his main armament.
"Wouldn't I have the same issue, though?" Requiem asked as she looked down at her feet or tried to. I didn't think she could easily because her chest and armor were probably in the way. But, I didn't ask or look long enough to verify.
"I don't think so. Your weight is traditionally spread out through your tracks. They don't cover the same area anymore, but they might still act like they do. However, we both are walking impossibilities, so this is all speculation." Grey Eagle theorized, and I nodded along. What he was saying made sense despite the nonsense of the situation.
"Regardless, we have a shelter to get to. Let's go." I told them as I slung my rifle over my shoulder.
Grey Eagle nodded and took point, and Requiem took up the rear. I stayed between them, feeling a bit like dead weight.
Yet, despite being in the open and in an active war zone, I was possibly the safest person in the city.