Final Days

It is war. NATO has declared the colonies to be UNFIT of Romanian Rule and has declared War on Hannibal Spartacus and his small band of Freedom Fighters. Now the fight has landed on Earth.

On what was once the beautiful forests will be an ash wasteland, the sea a body of acid and chemicals, the deserts and the cities turned into a desperate war for Earth and Humanity. NATO has declared war on the outlying colonies of the solar system. Thousands have died, but the colonies have now banded together, forming a coalition of the Greater Good and have taken the fight to Earth under the man named Hannibal Spartacus. Millions have been slain, every form of weapon and gadget used. This is the story of those times, the time of a man in the middle of this conflict...

 

 

I ran as fast as I could, my Lahr semi-automatic rifle feeling heavy of my shoulder. My heart was pumping, threatening to burst out from my chest. My boots pounded against the barren landscape. The bullets screamed past me and I kept my head down, holding a hand to my helmet. How did I get into this damned mess!

“We have come for you! Help us!”

No time to think about that now! I jumped over a mutilated corpse that was still bleeding over the muddy ground and tumbled into a hole. I shuddered as the ground shook violently and un-strapped my rifle, unloading the clip and pounding in a fresh clip, flicking off the safety. I took off my helmet, wiping the building up sweat on my forehead. I glanced at my shoulder and pressed the wound. I hissed in pain and put my helmet back on. I got comfortable and unslung my rifle, putting it on my lap. I looked up to the lip of the fox-hole and saw a glimmer of metal. S**t!

I grabbed the outdated bucket of bolts and swung it to the edge of the cliff, careful not to cause more pain to my shoulder. I need a medic. “I’m Resistance! Soldier… Uh…” I quickly looked at the grime covered tattoo on my forearm. “634! 6...3…4!” I yelled out.

I took cover behind a small patch of cover the dusty crater would allow me. I moved forward cautiously, careful not to make too much noise which was easy to do. I only had my combat knife which had yet to see blood and my rifle with its last clip in and my helmet.

“Di… Ya…. R… at?” I could just make out over the screaming shells of death. Another shudder jarred my spine but I ignored it, focus! Three men tumbled down into the crater.

“Come out Yer’ Bloody Panzer!” A man yelled not a meter from me.

Now or never. I jumped up quickly, rifle cocked and quickly trained onto three raggedy assed Resistance soldiers. Evidently they were from another planet to me, their thick accents probably pointing towards one of the twelve regiments of Mars. I kept my rifle trained. Train Company of the planet Jupiter was killed by HISDS assassins. “Code!” I shouted behind my rifle butt, clicking the safety off. The soldiers turned around in horror, hands in the air.

“I said CODE!” I yelled as another missile crashed into the shattered Earth. I shuddered.

I was suddenly on the ground, a combat knife of similar design to my own on my neck. “We got a Panzer Boys! Haha! You thought you could kill us did you? Really I should slit your throat right here, what do yer’ think boys?!” The man yelled cockily over the shells.

“Remember Red Leader, we’re suppost’ to take der’ prisoners!” A man to the left called out. Yep, he’s definitely from Mars, probably from the Rust colony.

“No y’all got it all wrong, Ah’m bloody Carrion!” They stared back at me. “My code is 634!” I felt myself choke, no sweet fresh air coming into my lungs. I was afraid to even gulp the knife was so close to piercing my skin, but it was hanging limply in a madman.

Red Leader pressed the knife closer to my throat and I grunted as it bit into my soft grubby flesh, beads of crimson blood dribbling down my throat.

“You will fight until death, the virtues of Courage, for Honour and for duty…”

“Who was the master of the fifth regiment, who?!” He shouted directly at me.

“Uhh… Cameron James, Cameron James!” I shouted desperately.

He drew back his knife, wiping my blood onto his jacket and held a hand out. I took it.

“Sorry mate can’t be too careful.” He explained.

“Show your tags!” The man on the right shouted, still not trusting me. I grabbed my dog-tags out and showed him. He looked at me and nodded. I put them back.

“What company ‘r y’all from?” I shuddered as a bomb crumpled straight into the ground not twenty meters from us.

“We’re from Second Company Second Squadron.” It is a very funny thing what Hannibal Spartacus did. He mocked the whole system and won many a battle by it. A company equals a regiment, a squadron a battalion or Centurion and a regiment is the individual squadron.

“Ah’m from First Company Fourth squadron.” I explained, slinging my gun over my shoulder and sat in the scorched earth, the cold air slowly sucking the body heat from me, but I didn’t care.

“Ya’ an Original eh?” The one on the left asked.

I nodded grimly. Since the Omsk Massacre, there are few of us left. Some of the last of us were killed here, our bodies buried in the sands of the Desert of death, or Southern U.S.A. I was really the only one left that I know of. The last Avenger.

I heard a faint ringing sound and looked over to see the man pull an antenna from his pack and laid it on the ground, and I realized what it was. It was a Long Range Scanning Audio Transmitter that was used to send around a long message of code that only resistance could understand the few of us left that is. The man put on a pair of headphones and a speaker and listened in.

 

 After an hour the man snapped out of it. “Well boys, that’s the signal. The Resistance is launching a full scale invasion and we’re to be part of it. They think we’re fully armed and so we’re movin’ out.” The man said grimly.

I got up from the floor, my back and sides aching and my head pounding and my stomach rumbling. The medic had fixed my shoulder up and moved it back and forth, the bandages already a dark bloody colour. “Ok, we are they?” I asked.

“Here’s the catch.”

“Always the bloody catch.” Exclaimed Red Leader.

“The advance is behind enemy lines. We have to get there before we’re killed!” We all shuddered as another missile crashed into the ground.

“Well let’s get on with it, when’s the-.” but I heard the signal before I could say it. “Ah, we’re screwed.”

“I guess that’s the signal then.” Red Leader grimly muttered. I heard the thousands of voices lift in the air, and felt it. So this is what bliss is…

“For the Resistance!” I bellowed out and scrambled up the meteor, the people in the crater beside me as well screaming the same thing. The Panzers kill us; well it’s time to get revenge for what they did to us!

I sprinted as fast as I could the barrage of missiles, the scream of machine gun rounds and the whines of the dying far away. They will pay!

I stumbled back, my momentum and all thoughts lost. The sounds returned to me. I felt my eyes go dead, my lids getting heavy. Scarlet, warm liquid pushed through my throat and escaped down my chin. I fell to my knees, my energy drains. I looked down to my body, opening my blood soaked hands.

Death.

The wound was terrible, but yet I felt no pain. My knees gave out and I fell to the earth, but felt peace at last, but something was missing.

I failed. The resistance is dead, NATO has destroyed them. The originals have faded away, and soon the Resistance will follow. The battlefield faded, the earth slowly swallowed me up, and my vision became dark.

NATO has won….