The thunder of heavy weapons echoed in the distance, none of us flinched from where we were sitting. I flicked my finger on the screen in front of me, turning to the next page of the book I was reading. A hundred yards away a shell from the Luminari cannons hit the ground exploding, sending red earth flying. None of us even shifted from our positions beneath the hulking giant tank we called home. The Mobile Armed Command Center or MACC had been on this planet since the first year of this war. They’d stopped making MACCs after the first decade of war, the giant tanks were considered to slow by high command, but they are so durable and self-sufficient that even now fifty years later they were still in service.

I’d been on this planet for ten years now, it had been five years since I’d left its surface and two since my years of enlistment were over. Any day now I’d receive my discharge papers and head back to my home planet.

“Captain Enil,” a staticky voice came over my transponder snapping me out of my introspection. Unlike the distant fire of weapons this sound made me flinch, that transponder had been dead for over a week. “Captain Enil, do you copy? You’re needed on the Western Front, head there immediately.”

“This is Captain Enil,” I said tapping the respond button on the transponder. “I’m afraid we can’t comply with that. Our MACC’s track got wrecked in the last engagement, we’ve been repairing for the past two days. If you sent in a resupply, we could get moving in a couple hours.”

“Negative to that captain, command has the fleets stretched thin as it is; we can’t move any ships for a resupply,” the voice of the high command responded.

“We’re running low on rations, and we haven’t gotten any resupply of combat stims in three months,” I said. “Its going to be pretty hard to fight the enemy with just regs and without bullets and food.”

“Find a way captain,” command said the voice calm, sterile and as merciless as iron. “For the Empire and the Emperor.”

“For the Empire and the Emperor,” I responded my voice lacking the enthusiasm or patriotism drilled into all of us during training.

Standing up I shook the red dirt off my armor, bits of solarite glinting as they fell back to the dirt. I picked my helmet off the ground dusting if off and setting it under my arm. My armor was mostly all black ceramic cobbled together from a mix of different types and styles that had been deployed over the fifty years of war on the planet. I hadn’t been issued a new set of armor in over three years and had to scavenge what I could to replace and repair what broke down. My legs and vambraces were the red metal of corium, the same damn metal we were fighting on this planet for. I technically shouldn’t have been wearing enemy armor but in order to be reprimanded for it, high command would actually have to set foot on the planet and deal with us grunts in person.

My second transponder buzzed. I didn’t flinch as I tapped it, I was used to this one going off. “What?” I asked.

“We got a message from high command sir?” Lieutenant Melor asked, he was my second in command and should have been my replacement as captain two years ago.

“Yes,” I said. “And stop siring me. I’ll be heading back to Balan 4 tomorrow and this will be your circus to run.”

“Sorry sir, won’t happen again sir,” Melor replied.

I sighed. “Smart ass, I’ll be up in a second to check the scopes.”

I walked up the ramp into the vehicle bay of the massive MACC the men on its side apply a fresh coat of black paint. I found it funny we were running low on everything but paint, the golden sigil of the half sun and crescent moon of the Kyshen Empire stood out proud on the side of Hades. Men who should have jumped up to salute me as I passed just gave me a passing nod as they kept repairing our speeders, cleaning their guns, or eating what food they’d been able to forage and scavenge from the battlefield.

I passed into the MACC’s midsection past the giant tank’s main reactor to the stairs. I took them two at a time as I ascended to the third floor. I stopped like I did every time, looking above the bulkhead above the doors were a bronze plague was bolted to the wall. There was one like it on every MACC on the planet each one holding the name of a different god of death from the mythologies of old earth with the motto of that particular MACC.

Hades

I am the lord of Death.

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The guardian of the underworld,

I judge the souls of man;

Giving grace to the good,

And damnation to the wicked.

I read the motto remembering when my captain had died, and his position had passed to me. I technically shouldn’t be a captain, but no replacement had arrived an I the only officer who had actually been to academy I’d received a field promotion and had been the captain for the last five years. The doors to the bridge slid open and I stepped into the control room. I took a seat in my patched captain’s chair looking out the window of the bridge over the battlefield that stretched for as far as the eye could see.

Only a few tufts of grass and the occasional bush were left of the massive forest that had once covered this planet. I hadn’t been there for the firebombings that deforested the surface, that had been before I was even born. The red dirt of the planet always reminded me of the thousand’s dead as if the world itself were bleeding.

“We getting a resupply?” Melor asked me, swiveling his chair to face me. The rest of officers and technicians on deck turned to hear my answer.

“It was just orders for us to move to the Western Front,” I said. “Still the same shit as always, pilots stretched to thin to send us any new supplies or reinforcements.”

Melor spat the sentiment mirrored by the others on the bridge.

“So, I guess that means you’re stuck with me for a little longer,” I said propping my feet up. “What the state of repairs on track 2B?”

“It’ll take at least a day and a half more to fix it,” Sergeant Karsen said. “Our foraging parties have been finding less and less food, even the monsters from the caverns below ground aren’t coming to the surface as much.”

I grimaced. “I hate eating those things.”

“They’re better than starving,” Melor said with a shrug.

“Barely,” I grunted. “I think I miss the taste of a bacon and a plate of eggs more than anything.”

“I miss the touch of a woman,” Melor said with a wistful sigh.

“You’re on stims,” I said. “Even if you were to go back home now, you’d have to wait six months for them to work out of your system before you’d be allowed to have sex.”

“Just don’t get the girl pregnant,” Melor said with a shrug. “It’s not that hard. I heard a lot of girls back home like it when a man’s still stimmed up, gives him speed, power and endurance.”

“And if there not careful they give birth to a superhuman freak nine months later,” I said shaking my head. “Why risk that?”

“The kids fine, what’s wrong with being superhuman,” Karsen said scratching the head of brindle furred dog we’d taken on. “I’ve got a cousin whose dad was still on stims, he’s fast as viper. He’s a bit twitchy because of his enhanced speed but you won’t find anyone faster on the draw then him.”

“And what about their dietary requirements?” I asked. “It depends on what stims stick in the genes, fast and twitchy ten times the needed carbohydrates in the diet, super strength you need to eat a tenth of your weight in protein a day to keep your body from cannibalizing itself.”

“How do you even know all this stuff,” Melor asked.

“I read,” I said. “When this is done I’m going to use my pay and buy a farm in the outer territories, you gotta be able to do everything yourself out there.”

“We’ve heard all about your damn farm,” Melor said. “Least you could do is talk about settling down with a woman and make it more interesting when ya tell it. Aint your pipes backed up like the rest of us?”

“Unlike you savages, when I meet a lady I like her to have some class,” I said.

“I like’em with class too,” Karsen said. “Just not when I’m in bed with’em.”

“Don’t matter much anyhow,” Melor said. “Only got ten men onboard who are still fully stimmed up, if we don’t get a resupply soon, we’ll be as reg as the rest of em.”

A beeping sounded from one of the control consoles.

“Sir,” one of the junior technicians said. “I’ve got several power sources on scans rapidly approaching.”

“Pull them up on scope,” I said leaning forward in my chair.

Screens on display lit up as the sensors connected and fed information in. A group of fifty warriors in a mix of red and gold armor were speeding closer to us.

“Tell everyone to get in and shut the doors,” I ordered. “Can we get them with the rail guns?”

“They’re using the terrain to keep in cover,” Melar said. “And they’ll be to close in thirty seconds. Do you want us to use the side guns?”

“How much ammo do we have left?” I asked.

Melar grimaced. “Not enough, we really need that resupply.”

“Then we have to handle this up close,” I said putting my helmet back on and checking my belt. My gladius hung at my belt along with a brace of pistols. “Anyone whose still fully stimmed up get into your suits and power them on.”

I pulled my gauntlet down and opened up a metal case. With three syringes in it, I was running low on stim myself, but this would juice me up for the next six months before I’d need another dose. I injected the full contents of the syringes into my veins. I felt my heart skip a dozen times and my veins bulge all across my body as the combat drugs hyped up my body increasing my speed, strength, pain resistance and even my ability to think faster. I pulled my sleeve back down and strapped my gauntlet back on heading up to the top of Hades.

Ten men joined me on top of the MACC, we were three stories up as we looked over the scarred barren landscape. Everything was silent for a moment as we all held our breath. Then we heard it, the whine of small engines, I caught a glimpse of gold for a second before it disappeared into one of the thousands of trenches marring the battlefield. My hand went up to my chest as I reached under the breastplate and the lights on my armor turned on as the power amplifiers activated.

I stepped off the edge of the MACC and touched my boots together the spurs activating and the rocket propulsion cushioning my landing as I bent my knees touching down on the red earth. A speeder came into view, and I raised my left hand and energy shield snapped up the red light semi-transparent allowing me to dimly look through it.

Guns on the speeder fired and I braced my feet as the shots hit.