I am in my thoughts. The classic sounds before a battle fill my ears.
The shouts of the crew, the occasional wail of a siren, the hum of the Eagle and Pelican engines...
They are somewhere out there, far away. But right here with me are only the familiar and habitual echoes.
Metallic clank. Armor. Steel sabatons.
They are heavy, but the power is felt. Every step is like a hammer blow. It's as if I'm knocking on the ground. My feet leave tracks on the soft earth.
Armor. It knows what battle is. I forge the hinges, fix the drives. Smooth, cold, cruel metal hugging the skin. On the shoulder is a bright red mark—a symbol, a point of pride. I cast a glance at the reflection in the frozen glass. Unrecognizable, unbreakable.
Father always said that armor is the most important thing. Such is the way, such are the rules... But now I understand that armor is only part of something greater.
A bandolier on the belt. Packed to the brim.
A black blaster Pistol. It is silent but craves action. A reliable friend on the battlefield. But that's not all. An assault blaster on the hip. A faithful hunter. Kill fast, kill quietly. I know what that means.
From early childhood, my family taught me to fight. They taught me combat, embedding this knowledge into my very soul, making war the principle of my existence.
They wanted me to fight against my own. They wanted me to help them change our world, to throw off the shackles imposed by the old men...
Fools.
We are already free. Great Holy Liberty fills every moment of my life. Every gust of wind, every breath of this body...
The shutters of the armor rack close, and the final element of a Shock Trooper descends to me from the ceiling.
A dream is fastened to my back—a Jump Pack. It is not just technology. It is freedom. But falling down is not my style. Only with it am I high in the heavens... unreachable. And I am like a bird. Moving away from the earth.
To the left of the heart—an energy shield. It covers, it protects. Powerful, but not perfect. One must be fast. The skill of survival. Cunning. Paving the path to victory.
A PDA is fastened to my right arm.
I open access. I tighten the straps firmer. Double check.
Everything is in order, holding tight, which means it won't fail. There is no other kind of tech in my squad; as long as it works when needed, leave the fancy new gadgets to the whiners from the Second Echelon.
Fingers slide over the armor. I check everything for the third time. My hand hits a hilt.
A small knife—cunning. Hidden in the boot. I carefully pull it out. It's not for a big fight. It's for a single strike. It is the last chance if the enemy is close.
Thoughts carry me back. I am a soldier. I am a hunter. I am a Helldiver...
Final touches.
Data arrives on the PDA; the landing zone is designated. The Super Destroyer descends closer to the planet, opening the ramp. A couple of minutes until deployment; all that's left is to descend lower into the atmosphere.
"Jango, time."
I nod briefly; my gaze, full of gratitude, slides over the figure of my sister, who is with me.
Lean, resilient, strong-willed—a predator, like everyone else in the squad. But unlike the other two, my sister and I don't like idle talk; only business.
"Hear that, boys? Commander Altman is with us today too! So don't you dare embarrass yourselves, or I'll let you all rot in training!"
Hitting the readiness button, our squad leader is the first to jump from the ramp, fearlessly plunging into the void. We follow right after him.
The roar of sabatons echoes in my ears. Around us is the roar of cannons, and the Super Destroyer's engine blazes overhead, lighting our way. A cannon fires from the side, sending a bolt of incandescent plasma toward enemy positions—clearing our path.
I spread my arms to the sides, surrendering to this beautiful and so brief moment. My sister giggles quietly into the radio but does the same.
We soar like birds...
But the moment of delight ends, and a hundred meters before the ground, the Jump Pack kicks in, braking our high-speed flight. Hell has broken loose around us, and we are at its very center.
Finally.
****
I dodge a buttstock strike to the head. My bayonet finds a pirate's liver, and I twist the blade, making the bastard collapse to the ground in tears. Leaving the blade in my opponent's body, I draw my blaster and put a shot from the hip through the head of a Tsurr attacking me.
No matter how much we thinned out this cursed race on Orvax, the filthy blue-skinned slavers were still everywhere in the galaxy.
The blue-skinned body slumping forward was caught by me and used as a shield. The Tsurr's smoking head flopped from side to side, occasionally drenching me in its foul blood.
Slipping my hand with the blaster along the alien's ribs, I open fire on his buddies, picking the freaks off one by one. The Tibanna is running out fast. So many freaks of all stripes had gathered on Tragalis that I feared how we would bury them all after the battle.
A pod slammed into the ground behind me, and a moment later, a modified Pelican transport flew overhead. Dropping its heavy and—for me—extremely welcome cargo, the pilot gave the approaching pirate forces a final strafing run with the autocannon before dipping his wings and disappearing into the sky.
Another Helldiver scrambled behind me. Activating the gift from orbit, he promptly climbed into the cockpit of an Exoskeleton, then zealously entered the fray, drenching the area from a pair of heavy repeaters on the right arm and a heavy laser cannon on the left.
Under the hum of the war machine, the roar of shots, and the scent of Tibanna, the two of us pushed forward, breaking away from the rest of the squad and provoking the Helldivers to begin a counter-assault on the pirate scum—who were advancing in dense waves.
A couple of drones flew past me, the chirping machines humming merrily with their small propellers. Packed to the brim with explosives, they headed for a box of droids marching steadily through all this chaos. Another "lost" shipment from the Trade Federation, which in recent years had flooded the galaxy with its ships and dim-witted machines.
"Though, they keep the decent droids for themselves, nothing like the trash they sell to pirates."
With a grunt, I dump the Tsurr's body into a nearby pit and, pinning my knee to its chest, I raise my assault blaster, covering the advancing walker—which was sowing confusion in the ranks of the panicking enemy.
A pair of fighters flew overhead. A brief dogfight, and now one of them crashes near us, taking out a couple of Helldiver soldiers. A fierce battle had broken out in the sky between small aircraft, and every moment the rooftops were lit by another fiery bolide that threatened to take someone with it.
"TANK!"
The Exoskeleton didn't have time to turn before a massive green plasma bolt hit its left side. The formidable war machine spun on its axis and crashed to the ground with a roar, without ceasing to fire its remaining weapons. The smoking hulk of the walker shielded us from a new wave of pirates and other filth, while also providing temporary cover from a squad of heavy armored vehicles that had somehow crawled into the city limits.
A rocket hit the first tank—blowing off the turret and crushing the pirates running nearby. The explosion scattered a dozen bastards across the area, sometimes throwing their bodies in separate pieces.
The next tracked jerk blew up on a pack of detonators dropped by one of the allies. Not looking where he was going, the rookie behind the wheel simply crushed a whole pack of explosives, causing his right track to be blown to hell, and the machine itself began to veer off, smashing a building and causing a collapse.
The last one backed away in fear, but several aimed shots from autocannons and M41 Rocket Launchers quickly turned this pile of expensive iron into burning wreckage.
Unfortunately, replacing the trio of tanks, a heavy walker burst right through a building, menacingly swinging its cannons in different directions.
"Take cover!"
The soldier who didn't have time to execute his own order was vaporized by a shot from a heavy laser cannon. His upper body burst like a balloon, while the Helldiver's legs flew in different directions.
The walker fully emerged from the ruins of the house and, leveling its hull gun at us, opened rapid fire, trying to hold back the pressure from my boys and girls.
A pair of laser cannons protruding from the sides and a gunner behind a repeater tried to follow suit, but due to the constant firing of the main caliber, they kept jerking their muzzles aside, cursing the recoil of such a massive gun aloud.
"Booker! Sharous! Blow this thing to kingdom come!" Pressing a couple of buttons on the PDA, I activate a targeting beacon and hurl it with all my might into the hand of "Major." Nodding to me, Billy nudged his partner's shoulder, and a moment later, this pair of psychos flew out of their cover on Jump Packs, landing just a dozen meters from the walker.
With a kick, Sharous toppled a pirate standing before him and shot the scumbag with a burst without looking, then sharply moved left, taking cover behind the wreckage of the first tank, thereby concentrating all the enemy walker's fire on himself.
As for Booker...
With a mad cry about Holy Liberty, this guy jumped onto a nearby building—or rather, what was left of it. Maneuvering and dodging a series of shots, he jumped from the edge of a broken floor at the last moment and activated his pack in mid-fall, landing at full speed on the roof of the robot's cockpit.
Tossing the beacon into a seam in the armor, with the laugh of a maniac relishing the moment, Booker jumped off the walker's roof, again activating his backpack in mid-fall and landing next to his comrade.
Freezing on one knee, he didn't even have time to turn around before a blue beam struck the designated target from the sky—turning the war machine into smoking shards.
A wave of sand and smoke hit my face, and with the destruction of the last unit of heavy equipment, our enemies fell to their knees, throwing their weapons away and begging for mercy.
****
"You'll regret this! You hear me! I am a Vigo of the Black Sun! I..."
A buttstock strike to the teeth silenced the massive Falleen, Xist, who had taken down five of our boys with a lightwhip. Choking on some of his own teeth, the green-skinned alien spat a glob of blood and shards onto the ground, then silently burned me with a hateful gaze.
He wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last. Given that Rick and his friends had given us quite a bit of freedom in the Outer Rim, this was already the third major crime lord whose gang we had dispersed under plausible pretexts.
"Alright, pack him up. They'll pay a high price on Wohai if we bring him in alive." Seeing Xist begin to slowly realize what fate I had prepared for him, the Falleen started thrashing in his bonds under the interested gazes of my men. "They practice the death penalty there... in the maw of a blast furnace."
Struggling and cursing me to the last, Xist was dragged onto a nearby shuttle, from where he was to be taken to the Soul of Liberty, one of the Adjudicator-class cruisers hanging in orbit surrounded by small destroyers and old remnants of our fleet.
A rare sight—since the Helldivers now have many signature ships, both large and small. Our entire old fleet is now busy guarding our supplier planets, as we usually have enough of our new ships, but Tragalis was a planet heavily populated by vermin. And even though the local population immediately switched to our side, helping to kill the pirates and slavers, still, a Vigo of the Black Sun is not an opponent to be trifled with.
Recalling the face Somnia made when I first refused to take additional ships, a smirk spreads across my own lips. My sweet deputy was right again, so I should clearly get her something tasty as an apology...
"Boss. A message just came in from the Soul of Liberty. Our guard fleet is needed elsewhere; apparently, the giant's clones have attacked again..."
"Here we go again."
I thought to myself, noting something strange. Usually, to save my hide, my friends were ready to sacrifice anything, as they all believed to a man that the Helldivers would surely fall apart without me...
Nonsense, of course, but it was nice to see their concern.
And the fact that now, right after the battle, half of the fleet led by the second Adjudicator is being recalled... Strange things are happening. What on earth happened over there?
"Damn Magnus, always interfering and sticking his nose where it doesn't belong... I'm starting to understand the Emperor."
Smirking at my own thoughts, I wave my hand to the soldier, allowing the guard fleet to depart. We have enough ships to fight off most opponents, and the few who could stand against us now don't hang around the Outer Rim.
"Of course, there's a chance Zeta will attack now... Though, what's the point? He clearly would have had enough ships to strike anyway."
Calming myself with such thoughts, I went deeper into Xist's palace with the other Helldivers, hoping to find many useful things here... useful for the cause of Democracy, of course.
****
"Preparing for hyperspace jump. Three... Two... One..."
As if in slow motion, I watched our escort ships jump, first one ship, then all the others...
Only we didn't move. The Soul of Liberty hung near Tragalis, but inside, I—like the rest of the crew—felt an impact.
The lights on the decks flickered, and all the monitor screens went dark. Having not yet undressed after the battle, I was the first to snap on my helmet, issuing a combat readiness order via PDA... but I was still too late.
A moment later, five Dreadnaughts emerged from hyperspace right in front of us and immediately opened fire. The enemy clearly knew the point where we would get stuck and had already leveled their guns at our position.
The shield was swept away instantly, and in the following seconds, the echoes of explosions detonated somewhere inside ripped through the ship. Dozens of thunderous blows rained down on the Adjudicator's hull, after which the unfortunate ship lost control and began to drift toward the planet.
Panic-stricken screams rang out on the bridge. Arkam and the twins, who were my only companions today, showered orders in all directions, hurrying people to the escape pods.
"MOVE! SAM, HURRY UP!"
Grabbing me by the shoulder, Sula tried to pull me toward the nearest evacuation point, but I threw off his hand and pointed to the numerous enemy fighters that had left the bowels of the Dreadnaughts and were now shooting down the escaping people.
"We're going to land the ship, and in the atmosphere, we'll deploy in assault pods." My calm voice acted like a sobering slap to all the crew members nearby. As if hitting a wall, the people looked in surprise at me, as I calmly sat in my captain's chair. "Shut down the weapons, all power to the shields and engines. Find out what those explosions inside the ship were. All crew, prepare for an emergency landing on the planet..."
The new impact forced me to shut up, as the ship lurched with such force that I nearly bit my tongue. But the main thing was done. The crew began to fight once more for their lives and the life of our mighty ship, which was still holding together under the enemy's concentrated salvos and sabotage from within.
The Soul of Liberty was holding on with the last of its strength. Heavy turbolasers tore it to shreds, while missiles and laser cannons finished the job...
But that wasn't the thing to worry about now. The ship was rapidly approaching the planet, and besides the skill of the crew, we had to rely on the luck that had never failed me.
The Soul of Liberty, like an ancient beast pierced by the arrows of enemy fire, tilted under the weight of its destiny. The hull walls, once gleaming in the rays of starlight, smoked and rattled as if in a death agony, emitting a plaintive groan that sounded almost human.
In every strike against the metal panels, there was a sense of shock, as if the ship itself realized its fate. Its core, filled with the fading power of the reactor, shook in a blinding dance of pain as ruptured rods failed, and the ship's massive body, suddenly losing its orientation, glided into the abyss, experiencing a terrible sense of betrayal.
And there it was, rushing downward like a giant bird stripped of its wings, crushing the stars in its path, swept away into a vortex of incomprehension.
Thick clouds of dust and ash covered the Soul of Liberty like a death shroud as it entered the atmosphere of the planet Trigalis. Fire flared in its depths, heating the ship's walls to impossible levels. Scorching them and melting the few remaining technicians alive.
Every scrap of the cruiser's plating writhed, like gruesome metamorphoses striving to break to the surface. It was not just a machine; it was a living being—courageous, weary, full of hope and fear all at once.
Metallic screams and groans echoed through the overloaded compartments, echoing the desperate cries of the crew and the alarm that had triggered after the sabotage.
With desperate internal resistance, it seemed to bid farewell to every moment of its existence, every mission, every sacrifice. Its navigation system spun in a mad dance, in a final, merciless frenzy.
I felt the rush of air beginning to burst through the breaches, as wild winds carved their path, threatening not only its essence but the very core of what remained of it.
There was no more flight. Only the fall remained—heavy, slow, inexorable.
Against the backdrop of gray clouds and sharp cliffs, the Soul of Liberty descended rapidly, losing parts of its mighty body along the way.
The ship was plunging into hell, but in every tremor, one could hear the echo of an unbroken spirit. It was wounded but not defeated; forgotten voices rang around it in a soft whisper, creating the somber breath of a final symphony.
And when the Soul of Liberty finally touched the ground, the world around ignited in a bright flash of light; dawn was breaking on this side of the planet.
***
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