10-04-2016, 04:05 PM
I wish this helm could take pictures, Bonent. Sadly, the military decided we only needed the bare minimum.
Over the thick layer of dark clouds, high enough that frost formed on his visor, Ratione gazed at the rising star on the horizon. Rays of light washed over the storms below like a wave of bright gold. The folds and curves lit up like hills and valleys, like another land altogether.
I wish that I could show you this somehow. This small moment in time, falling through the sky. When I’m not stuck on ship I don’t want to be in, or some planet I don’t want to be on. Just falling, and looking at the stars or the sun. Just falling.
“Ratione.” His helm’s internal speaker crackled to life. “Ratione, do you copy.”
Against the wind rushing past his body at terminal velocity, the Furtumin reached for the small button on the side of his helm. “Solid copy, Tombetr-Um is green. All callsigns check in.”
“Tombetr-Xou is green and ready to kick some furry ass!”
“Tombetr-Bos is green and ready to shove my foot down your throat Gnifeu if you don’t shut yer trap and take this shit seriously!”
“Can it you two!” Ratione barked at his squadmates. “Call signs tuatre through xes report.”
“Tombetr-Tuatre green, Um.”
“Tombetr-Juinqe orange, sir, sorry but I must have come in at a bad angle.”
“What’s wrong Juinqe?”
“My instruments are going haywire. I can land this, but I’m gonna have to do deploy my chutes when we get under those storm clouds.”
“Solid copy Juinqe, we’ll see you at the after party. Tombetr-Xes, report.”
“Face is pr-pretty green sir.” A meek, sick voice came through to Ratione’s helm.
“Take it easy rookie, no need to be a badass on your first drop. Just leave the fighting to the men, alright?” This comment was returned with laughter on all other ends of the radio.
“With all due respect, Ratione, go fu-uck yourself.” This however was met by bellowing howls and shouts of approval from the whole squad.
“Rook’s got balls squad leader! Maybe that’s why he’s so sick, he’s being weighed down faster than the rest of us!”
“That’s not how falling works Gnif…” Tuatre retorted, which elicited Gnifeu to calling him a smartass.
“Alright men, radio silence, time to get serious!” Ratione barked over the radio, and everyone went silent on cue. “Remember, we’re dropping chin-deep into a literal shitstorm that’s blocking radio communication with orbital, so when we’re down there we’ll be all cold and alone without any way to get out of there in case, somehow, the enemy manages to become a threat.”
“Sir yes sir!”
“Alright, and the plan?”
“Present a five hundred page essay on why they made the biggest mistake of their lives pissing off the 33rd Roppium Battalion!”
“That’s what I like to hear, time to get mean boys!”
The blackness came up to Ratione faster than he had expected. All around him, the clouds swallowed his body whole. All he could hear was the thumping in his chest, his breathing, and the rumble of thunder and lightning all around him.
“Don’t mind us big guy.” He spoke softly to the storm. “Just passing through.”
“I call this move the ‘fuck you and the next three guys behind you’!”
Ratione turned around, holding a Sar-khun archer’s head in his palm as he squirmed and hopelessly scratched at the Furtumin’s arm. Suddenly, through the sea of footmen, the squad leader watched as four heavy infantrymen were sent soaring through the air at least ten meters. The bodies and their plate armor were crumpled all in the abdomens, guts either hanging from their mouths or nether regions.
“And whoever you happen to land on. But hey, who's counting?” Gnifeu rocketed into the air before slamming back down into a few light armored troops that had formed a meager shield wall.
Ratione closed his fist around the skull of the archer, brain matter and bits of white bone oozing through his fingers. His squad mates had sprinkled themselves on the battle field, drawing off the force of a few hundred thousand enemy soldiers from the small Novan garrison. About half a kilometer north of his position, they had managed to rally fast enough to throw up a shield wall in a narrow ravine cutting into the cliff side. There, Ratione could see the mesa where he had been told an outpost got bombarded by Sar-khun air support.
The squad leader looked down, back to the cluster of troops he had been dealing with. The Furtumin had managed to cut a small, oblong clearing amongst their ranks, a shield wall surrounding him. Suddenly, slipping in between the front line all around him, a full charge of footmen with axes and maces came through. All of them had large round shields on them, aiming to surround and trap the Novan. Behind them came a circle of pikemen, slowly lowering their long polearms as they descended.
“Smart.” Ratione spoke through his helmet’s external speakers, addressing the crowd. “You figured from the last ten guys that I squished that you really can’t take me on like a typical heavy infantryman.” The circle began to close, shrinking in circumference, the pike hedge becoming denser as it got closer. Ratione stood still, and waited.
Eventually, the pikes poked his armor plates, and each one of them was pulled back right before being lunged forward into his joints and visor. The Furtumin did only so much as to bring his hand up in front of the glass visor in front of his face, if to just prevent a scratch. The rest of the blows skipped off what seemed to be his “weak points.”
“Thing is.” Ratione raised his other hand to slap away the pike tips all around him, knocking them out of the hands of the footmen. “This isn’t a situation of victory or defeat. There’s no winning or losing. Right now, I’d hardly consider this a battle.” He reached forward into the shield wall, his hand batting aside the metal boards and wrapping its palm around a random Sar-khun throat.
The air itself seemed to stand still as the Novan brought his enemy up to his visor, staring directly into the whites of their eyes as they struggled to free themselves from the grip.
“This is me, informing you personally, because I guess you assholes didn’t get the memo.” He choke-slammed the soldier into the mud. “We are in charge in this galaxy!” He bellowed over the troops, meeting the eyes of each and every one, reveling in the fear he felt in the atmosphere. “We are Nova! We are Novans! And our word is law!” The Furtumin took a random stab at one of the other soldiers, his blade easily bashing the round shield aside and sinking deep through their armor and everything underneath.
This caused the shield wall to break, as now a circle of enraged Sar-khun, clearly not agreeing with the declaration of dominance, threw aside reason for the sake of being the one to bring down the Furtumin. Ratione felt himself suddenly weighed down by the mass of arms and bodies throwing themselves at him, pulling his suit into the ground with all their strength. Soldiers piled on top of each other to add more and more weight to the pile.
This resistance was futile.
“Command, burst!” Suddenly Ratione felt himself rocketing towards the dark sky, raindrops speckling his visor as looked upward. With the added mass his jump pack could only accelerate his suit around half the distance it usually did, and reaching peak altitude he still had a few stubborn Sar-khun hanging on tight to the armor.
His body was limp, how the Novan had been trained to react whenever his suit accelerated him. This was to avoid pulling muscles and breaking bones from the sudden jerk. So as he began descending, his limbs hung loosely about, slowly raising above his torso. Still at least five enemy soldiers were on him.
Ratione waited until his jump pack was aimed back downward, then gave a second burst command. Now he was moving very, very fast back down to the dirt where the group that had attempted to kill him earlier was waiting.
At the very last second, the Furtumin righted himself, thick boots slamming into the ground and knees bending to absorb the shock. Still, the sudden stop left him a little dizzy and a small headache began worming its way in.
I’m getting too cocky. He thought to himself, straightening his body and looking over the bodies that he had thrown into the dirt. Some were still alive, either crying out or feebly stifling screams as they cradled broken bones. Some had landed straight on their skulls, instantly severing their spinal cord connection. Some of them either twitched violently or subtly.
“Geeze…” Ratione put a hand on top of his helm and on his hip. “Some races never learn. You need to pound them into the ground a few times before they give up.”
“You will fall.” A strained voice, gurgling with blood in the back of the throat, managed to make his way into his helmet’s audio receivers. The Novan looked around for the source, focusing his senses on a Sar-khun pikeman that lay against the body of a comrade.
“You…” He began to wheeze and cough, spitting out bits of blood, bile, even a tooth. “Eh, heehhh, you will all pay… for this…”
With a few long strides Ratione was towering over the alien that inexplicably knew his own tongue. He could now see that the Sar-khun’s eyes were completely blacked over from blood, he must have received a nasty concussion.
“How?” The Furtumin crouched down in order to make his eyes level with that of his enemy. “Tell me how. We are the ones in charge here. Anyone that hopes to defy our rule will be met with the reality of the galaxy swiftly and without mercy.”
“Your… your arrogance.” A low chuckle managed to escape his muzzle, blood dripping from the jowls. “It will be your downfall…”
“I don’t think you get the picture here pal.” Despite his obvious blindness, Ratione’s gauntlet wrapped around the Sar-khun’s throat. He pulled the whole body closer to him, speaking in a low and hushed tone.
“This isn’t a war. This isn’t a fight. There’s no winner, no loser. There is just you listening to what we say or else we bring down our boot so hard it decimates your entire race. Get it through your thick, hairy skulls. We are gods to you.”
Despite the intensity of Ratione’s words, the soldier kept laughing. Laughing in the face of a god.
“I would never. That is disgusting.”
“Just a no is fine pal.” Rholand slapped his little black book shut again, and proceeded to limp back to the front gate.
“What is this for?” Ratione raised his voice a little so the old guard could hear him.
“Just a standard survey.” Rholand waved it off, “We do it for all the prisoners.”
“You are a strange species.”
“Yeah, we’re the weird ones.” The guard shut the gate behind him and locked it back up. “Okay Mr.Literal.” He continued on his way to his stool, mumbling something under his breath about something called a "website".
As the old man made his way back to the front desk, Ratione took back his spot in the corner of the cell, relaxing back into crossed legs. It had been a few hours since he had first sat there, and it felt nice to stand for a bit. His thighs and calves had begun to get sore, and now he leaned against the bars to relieve the pressure on them. How much longer was he even supposed to be in here? Were they just going to keep him locked up, or put him to work? He would have much rather preferred to do menial labor than just sit on a cold, hard floor for a day.
I wager that I should use this time to assess my situation. I’m on some foreign world where the laws of the physical world do not really apply. That, and I’m surrounded by a race that is eerily similar to my own in way too many respects. I’ve also managed to just suddenly know their tongue.
The Novan brought one hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. Or perhaps it would be best not to think about it too hard. Perhaps this is a fever dream, and my body is still back home. Sitting in an infirmary after reinforcements came, or perhaps the Sar-khun took me prisoner.
The though sent chills down Ratione’s spine, and he visibly shuttered.
Is this the “hell” I’ve heard so much about from other faiths?
Over the thick layer of dark clouds, high enough that frost formed on his visor, Ratione gazed at the rising star on the horizon. Rays of light washed over the storms below like a wave of bright gold. The folds and curves lit up like hills and valleys, like another land altogether.
I wish that I could show you this somehow. This small moment in time, falling through the sky. When I’m not stuck on ship I don’t want to be in, or some planet I don’t want to be on. Just falling, and looking at the stars or the sun. Just falling.
“Ratione.” His helm’s internal speaker crackled to life. “Ratione, do you copy.”
Against the wind rushing past his body at terminal velocity, the Furtumin reached for the small button on the side of his helm. “Solid copy, Tombetr-Um is green. All callsigns check in.”
“Tombetr-Xou is green and ready to kick some furry ass!”
“Tombetr-Bos is green and ready to shove my foot down your throat Gnifeu if you don’t shut yer trap and take this shit seriously!”
“Can it you two!” Ratione barked at his squadmates. “Call signs tuatre through xes report.”
“Tombetr-Tuatre green, Um.”
“Tombetr-Juinqe orange, sir, sorry but I must have come in at a bad angle.”
“What’s wrong Juinqe?”
“My instruments are going haywire. I can land this, but I’m gonna have to do deploy my chutes when we get under those storm clouds.”
“Solid copy Juinqe, we’ll see you at the after party. Tombetr-Xes, report.”
“Face is pr-pretty green sir.” A meek, sick voice came through to Ratione’s helm.
“Take it easy rookie, no need to be a badass on your first drop. Just leave the fighting to the men, alright?” This comment was returned with laughter on all other ends of the radio.
“With all due respect, Ratione, go fu-uck yourself.” This however was met by bellowing howls and shouts of approval from the whole squad.
“Rook’s got balls squad leader! Maybe that’s why he’s so sick, he’s being weighed down faster than the rest of us!”
“That’s not how falling works Gnif…” Tuatre retorted, which elicited Gnifeu to calling him a smartass.
“Alright men, radio silence, time to get serious!” Ratione barked over the radio, and everyone went silent on cue. “Remember, we’re dropping chin-deep into a literal shitstorm that’s blocking radio communication with orbital, so when we’re down there we’ll be all cold and alone without any way to get out of there in case, somehow, the enemy manages to become a threat.”
“Sir yes sir!”
“Alright, and the plan?”
“Present a five hundred page essay on why they made the biggest mistake of their lives pissing off the 33rd Roppium Battalion!”
“That’s what I like to hear, time to get mean boys!”
The blackness came up to Ratione faster than he had expected. All around him, the clouds swallowed his body whole. All he could hear was the thumping in his chest, his breathing, and the rumble of thunder and lightning all around him.
“Don’t mind us big guy.” He spoke softly to the storm. “Just passing through.”
***
“I call this move the ‘fuck you and the next three guys behind you’!”
Ratione turned around, holding a Sar-khun archer’s head in his palm as he squirmed and hopelessly scratched at the Furtumin’s arm. Suddenly, through the sea of footmen, the squad leader watched as four heavy infantrymen were sent soaring through the air at least ten meters. The bodies and their plate armor were crumpled all in the abdomens, guts either hanging from their mouths or nether regions.
“And whoever you happen to land on. But hey, who's counting?” Gnifeu rocketed into the air before slamming back down into a few light armored troops that had formed a meager shield wall.
Ratione closed his fist around the skull of the archer, brain matter and bits of white bone oozing through his fingers. His squad mates had sprinkled themselves on the battle field, drawing off the force of a few hundred thousand enemy soldiers from the small Novan garrison. About half a kilometer north of his position, they had managed to rally fast enough to throw up a shield wall in a narrow ravine cutting into the cliff side. There, Ratione could see the mesa where he had been told an outpost got bombarded by Sar-khun air support.
The squad leader looked down, back to the cluster of troops he had been dealing with. The Furtumin had managed to cut a small, oblong clearing amongst their ranks, a shield wall surrounding him. Suddenly, slipping in between the front line all around him, a full charge of footmen with axes and maces came through. All of them had large round shields on them, aiming to surround and trap the Novan. Behind them came a circle of pikemen, slowly lowering their long polearms as they descended.
“Smart.” Ratione spoke through his helmet’s external speakers, addressing the crowd. “You figured from the last ten guys that I squished that you really can’t take me on like a typical heavy infantryman.” The circle began to close, shrinking in circumference, the pike hedge becoming denser as it got closer. Ratione stood still, and waited.
Eventually, the pikes poked his armor plates, and each one of them was pulled back right before being lunged forward into his joints and visor. The Furtumin did only so much as to bring his hand up in front of the glass visor in front of his face, if to just prevent a scratch. The rest of the blows skipped off what seemed to be his “weak points.”
“Thing is.” Ratione raised his other hand to slap away the pike tips all around him, knocking them out of the hands of the footmen. “This isn’t a situation of victory or defeat. There’s no winning or losing. Right now, I’d hardly consider this a battle.” He reached forward into the shield wall, his hand batting aside the metal boards and wrapping its palm around a random Sar-khun throat.
The air itself seemed to stand still as the Novan brought his enemy up to his visor, staring directly into the whites of their eyes as they struggled to free themselves from the grip.
“This is me, informing you personally, because I guess you assholes didn’t get the memo.” He choke-slammed the soldier into the mud. “We are in charge in this galaxy!” He bellowed over the troops, meeting the eyes of each and every one, reveling in the fear he felt in the atmosphere. “We are Nova! We are Novans! And our word is law!” The Furtumin took a random stab at one of the other soldiers, his blade easily bashing the round shield aside and sinking deep through their armor and everything underneath.
This caused the shield wall to break, as now a circle of enraged Sar-khun, clearly not agreeing with the declaration of dominance, threw aside reason for the sake of being the one to bring down the Furtumin. Ratione felt himself suddenly weighed down by the mass of arms and bodies throwing themselves at him, pulling his suit into the ground with all their strength. Soldiers piled on top of each other to add more and more weight to the pile.
This resistance was futile.
“Command, burst!” Suddenly Ratione felt himself rocketing towards the dark sky, raindrops speckling his visor as looked upward. With the added mass his jump pack could only accelerate his suit around half the distance it usually did, and reaching peak altitude he still had a few stubborn Sar-khun hanging on tight to the armor.
His body was limp, how the Novan had been trained to react whenever his suit accelerated him. This was to avoid pulling muscles and breaking bones from the sudden jerk. So as he began descending, his limbs hung loosely about, slowly raising above his torso. Still at least five enemy soldiers were on him.
Ratione waited until his jump pack was aimed back downward, then gave a second burst command. Now he was moving very, very fast back down to the dirt where the group that had attempted to kill him earlier was waiting.
At the very last second, the Furtumin righted himself, thick boots slamming into the ground and knees bending to absorb the shock. Still, the sudden stop left him a little dizzy and a small headache began worming its way in.
I’m getting too cocky. He thought to himself, straightening his body and looking over the bodies that he had thrown into the dirt. Some were still alive, either crying out or feebly stifling screams as they cradled broken bones. Some had landed straight on their skulls, instantly severing their spinal cord connection. Some of them either twitched violently or subtly.
“Geeze…” Ratione put a hand on top of his helm and on his hip. “Some races never learn. You need to pound them into the ground a few times before they give up.”
“You will fall.” A strained voice, gurgling with blood in the back of the throat, managed to make his way into his helmet’s audio receivers. The Novan looked around for the source, focusing his senses on a Sar-khun pikeman that lay against the body of a comrade.
“You…” He began to wheeze and cough, spitting out bits of blood, bile, even a tooth. “Eh, heehhh, you will all pay… for this…”
With a few long strides Ratione was towering over the alien that inexplicably knew his own tongue. He could now see that the Sar-khun’s eyes were completely blacked over from blood, he must have received a nasty concussion.
“How?” The Furtumin crouched down in order to make his eyes level with that of his enemy. “Tell me how. We are the ones in charge here. Anyone that hopes to defy our rule will be met with the reality of the galaxy swiftly and without mercy.”
“Your… your arrogance.” A low chuckle managed to escape his muzzle, blood dripping from the jowls. “It will be your downfall…”
“I don’t think you get the picture here pal.” Despite his obvious blindness, Ratione’s gauntlet wrapped around the Sar-khun’s throat. He pulled the whole body closer to him, speaking in a low and hushed tone.
“This isn’t a war. This isn’t a fight. There’s no winner, no loser. There is just you listening to what we say or else we bring down our boot so hard it decimates your entire race. Get it through your thick, hairy skulls. We are gods to you.”
Despite the intensity of Ratione’s words, the soldier kept laughing. Laughing in the face of a god.
***
“…aaand one more question, if you had to fight in an arena for sex, would you?”“I would never. That is disgusting.”
“Just a no is fine pal.” Rholand slapped his little black book shut again, and proceeded to limp back to the front gate.
“What is this for?” Ratione raised his voice a little so the old guard could hear him.
“Just a standard survey.” Rholand waved it off, “We do it for all the prisoners.”
“You are a strange species.”
“Yeah, we’re the weird ones.” The guard shut the gate behind him and locked it back up. “Okay Mr.Literal.” He continued on his way to his stool, mumbling something under his breath about something called a "website".
As the old man made his way back to the front desk, Ratione took back his spot in the corner of the cell, relaxing back into crossed legs. It had been a few hours since he had first sat there, and it felt nice to stand for a bit. His thighs and calves had begun to get sore, and now he leaned against the bars to relieve the pressure on them. How much longer was he even supposed to be in here? Were they just going to keep him locked up, or put him to work? He would have much rather preferred to do menial labor than just sit on a cold, hard floor for a day.
I wager that I should use this time to assess my situation. I’m on some foreign world where the laws of the physical world do not really apply. That, and I’m surrounded by a race that is eerily similar to my own in way too many respects. I’ve also managed to just suddenly know their tongue.
The Novan brought one hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. Or perhaps it would be best not to think about it too hard. Perhaps this is a fever dream, and my body is still back home. Sitting in an infirmary after reinforcements came, or perhaps the Sar-khun took me prisoner.
The though sent chills down Ratione’s spine, and he visibly shuttered.
Is this the “hell” I’ve heard so much about from other faiths?
"Our fear is our weapon."