Fury
Retired Roleplayer
Anton sat down in his chamber, his home satellite station currently orbiting the planet known as Earth. He gripped the, half empty, freshly opened bottle in his hand, waiting for his muscles to stop trembling. It was often around this time of year, when he was alone, that the memories of the Archaedian War flooded his mind. It was now rare for him to get decent sleep without getting drunk on a strong beverage.
As he flinched, Anton watched the bottle slide off the edge of the counter, spilling whiskey everywhere. Cursing, he bent down to wipe the mess, and stopped to see his own reflection in the spilt liquid. He was a mess; unshaven, bags under his eyes due to lack of sleep and his hair was in dire need of cutting, now a shadow of his normally pristeen and well-kept self. "To think this horror show swooned many back home..." he chuckled, and was immediately overwhelmed at the thought of his home planet and his mind sunk into the past...
Dirt flew into the air as yet another High-Ex Shell hit the ground. The deafening boom resounded in the troops' ears as they took cover behind their armoured vehicles.
A Sergeant at this time, Anton led his unit around the corner of an evacuated building. Being the first of his "Meta-Human" kind, he flew up the ranking system faster than any soldier before him, giving him such a highly regarded position at mearly 19.
"Alright, men!" He barked at his unit "remember the objective! Get to the nuclear power plant and set the detonator! The machines are using it as a power source, we need to blow it to hell! Civvies aren't an issue, most have been evacuated, the ones that are left have either turned or are dead. Move out!"
"S-Sarge!" came a shout from behind, as the rest of the unit moved ahead. Anton turned his head to see a Cadet, no older than 17, trembling as he held his rifle. "Sarge...I-I can't do this...You saw what they did to Squad 9! There was nothing left...p-please...my mother is sick, she needs me back home!" Anton grabbed the small-framed kid, whose dog-tag read "Ramirez", by the collar "We do this, or we are dead. We have a job to do, grow a pair. Once this is over, I'll come with you and tell your mom what a great job you did myself!"
Seeing Ramirez's composure improve slightly, Anton shot off, plasma-rifle in arms, the objective nearing slowly yet steadily.
The metallic thuds and groans of the nano-roid infested droids was heard, and Anton could already see red. To his left, a trooper met his demise at the hands of an N-16, the hulking machine grabbed the man in its metallic pincers and tore him in half. Anton heard every tear, pop and crack of vertebrae, cursed by his heightened senses. He kept running forward, leaping high into the air, over the wreckage of a truck. Speeding ahead, he saw more get mowed down by the vast arsenal of missiles spewed out by the nano-roid cloud ahead, consisting of a vast swarm of nano-bots.
Signalling to the other troops, they stopped and met behind a building . The Sergeant watched as two troops dragged another behind them, his entrails spilling out as he barely clung to life. "Sergeant, what do we do!? We're losing him!!" came a shout. "Medics, where are they!?" he yelled, "Sir, they're all dead!!" Ramirez replied, tears visible. Anton stood still, not knowing what to do. "Sir, the machines are gaining on us!!" "Sir, we can't help him!!" "Let's go!", the cries came like a barrage of gunfire. "We can't save him, let's go!" Anton commanded, pangs of guilt overflowing him as he left a comrade to die for the sake of the mission.
After what felt like eternity, the unit of 190 now reduced to 17 stopped at the powerplant, Anton tore the steel doors off their hinges and headed to the control room. After plunging the detonators and setting them up to blow in 3 hours, he headed back out through the doors.
The machines recoiled, as an N-16 blew up into a pile of shrapnel. The Archaedian reinforcements had arrived, armed to the teeth as tanks rolled in to clear the area.
Soon after the small group of machines were destroyed, Anton sat down as the medical unit checked him for his injuries. Finding out he was unscathed, Anton got to his feet and went to check on his unit. He counted the troops and found that one was missing.
Breaking into a sprint, he ran towards a figure in the distance that was barely moving. It was Ramirez. "He must've been taken out while we ran to the backup unit!" Anton thought, as he ran closer.
The small-framed boy was in a horrific condition, each of his limbs were severed by the sadistic cybernetic creatures, and he was left to bleed out in the scorching sun. "S-Sir...." he struggled to form words as he saw Anton approach. Anton stopped beside his comrade "H-hang in there....medics will be here...." he reassured Ramirez, but mostly himself too. "T-tell mom I did good....I did my duty...please..." he whispered weakly to his superior. Anton grasped the boy's shoulder and smiled sadly "You....you did great ...your mother will be proud of you..." he muttered, as yet another one of his cadets, a kid forced into war, died upon his orders. Ramirez fell to rest, with a smile on his face, as Anton removed his dog-tag and pocketed it.
Shifting back into the present, "The Last Archaedian General", Anton Winter found that he subconsiously gripped the many dog-tags that hung off the chain around his neck. He smashed his glass against a wall and broke down into a fit of sobs, the sound of his sadness echoed around his empty home...
