OCTOBER TERROR – “The Final Charge” by Peter Germany

The Final Charge

By

Peter Germany

 

67%

 

His heads-up display said 67%, and it wasn’t going to go up. The only change would be the free-fall as he began to move.

“You ready for this, Sean?” Janel said.

“No, you?”

She shook her head. “Not even close. 71%.”

“That’s 4% more juice than I’m packing.”

“Considering we’ve had three days of rain, I think we’re better off than we could have been. Oh and don’t forget the firefights and bombardment by hi-explosive shells, cluster bombs,”

“Incendiary,” Sean added.

“We can’t forget that.”

“Shit,” Cole said. She was hitting the frame around her leg with a club hammer. She flexed and it began to move freely.

Sean Banner looked down at his leg, wrapped in the exoskeleton that encased his whole body. It hadn’t had a proper service for almost eight months, and it had repeatedly gone wrong over the last few days as they’d waited for the inevitable attack, and then the order to counter-attack. Almost three hundred years after the Great War and they had reverted to that same old suicidal strategy. One group of troops dug in a hundred yards away from the enemy’s trench. One side would go first, then the other.

Death would have a busy day.

 

66%

 

The drone footage being transmitted to his heads-up display showed the objective: a nuclear power plant, the last one in Europe – maybe even the world. It was enough to power eighty percent of the survivors but what was left of the European Government didn’t want to share with the British.

The last war had seen Europe caught in the crossfire of a biological, chemical, and nuclear onslaught. Now everyone was rushing to grab what was left of the resources after war had bled it dry, and the politicians were sending troops to fight each other instead of finding ways for everyone to survive.

Sean thought they should use their limited munitions to shoot all the politicians because once they were out of the way, the survivors would just get on with it and share this power plant. Those politicians were secure in bunkers with their own generators and solar cells while everyone else had to fight for any form of electricity they could find.

Sean could see a lot of movement in the footage, all of which made him feel like they were outnumbered. The Europeans were dug in deep with infantry, armour and artillery, but most of all they could keep their weapons charged.

 

58%

 

“Why haven’t we gone over?” Janel said.

“I don’t know.” Sean’s muscles ached. They’d been in their exos for almost three hours. All of them had their suits on standby, not wanting to use up too much of the power.

“What the fuck is command playing at? We can’t be on standby this long, it’s draining the cells, and our bodies can’t take the pressure of the exos. We’re going to be exhausted by the time they send us over.”

“Since when has command cared about us, down here in the shit? They’re back at base eating steak and patting each other on the back.”

“You two, shut up,” Company Sergeant-Major Bird said. “We’re going over in five minutes, five minutes people.”

 

50%

 

Whistles blew and everyone rushed over the edge of the trenches to begin their kamikaze charge for the enemy lines.

Sean and Janel were side by side as they launched themselves into no-man’s land. Bullets from both sides flew past them. Disruptor mortars erupted all around them. One caught Bird, his exoskeleton convulsed, breaking both his arms and legs. His body bent backwards, spine shattering. Sean didn’t stop moving. To stop was to be a stationary target and that meant death.

Janel took a hi-ex round to the body and blew up, covering Sean in blood, bone, and intestines but he kept running. The enemy lines were less than fifty yards away when he stood on a mine.

 

36%

 

Sean could taste copper when he woke up, but it took a moment for his brain to fully process what it meant. He lay in mud where he had fallen. No-man’s land all looked the same: mud and bodies. He tried to get up but couldn’t, so lifted his head and looked down the length of his body. His left foot was a bloodied mess. The exoskeleton’s boot had taken the brunt of the mine’s force but not all of it. His right ankle had an unnatural twist in it. He couldn’t move his right arm and his back felt strange. His heads-up display was cracked, but still working. It showed his exo’s power cell capacity, and a technical image of the exoskeleton against the cracked screen. The parts of the suit that weren’t working were illuminated in red. The whole suit was pretty much in red, with a few sections in amber. The only part of the exo that still shone a healthy green was the control panel on his left arm, but as he couldn’t move his right arm, he had no way to operate the panel. What troubled him most was there was no static in his ears. He couldn’t hear the sound of war. They had lost.

Sean looked at his right hand and tried to flex it, but nothing happened. Looking down to his legs he wondered just how much pain stoppers his exo had pumped into him.

An explosion shook the ground around him. He flinched and turned his head to where he thought it had come from but couldn’t see anything, except the corpses of his friends. He strained to see if any of them were alive but it was easy to see that none were. You don’t spend three years at war without knowing a dead body when you see one. His eyes welled up as he remembered what had happened to Janel. Sean had been fighting alongside Janel for a little over two years, and they had been through all levels of hell together. Now he was covered in her. Tears streaked down his face, carrying dirt, grime and blood away with them.

 

28%

 

Artillery rounds tore apart the lines where his side of this pointless, bloody war had been held up. Sean wondered who had survived long enough to get back to their lines, and if any of them would be alive after the ferocious bombardment they were going through now.

Did it matter if any of them were alive? None of them would be coming to get him. Even if his comms were working, he doubted anyone would come. He was in the middle of no-man’s land and any attempt to rescue him would be deemed suicidal. The enemy wouldn’t come for him; they wouldn’t even come out to attack. They were well fortified and not stupid enough to risk their numbers. Even if they did come out they wouldn’t help him. To them, Sean would be just another corpse. Even if he wasn’t a corpse when they found him he would be soon after. Prisoners of war was a phrase for a time when integrity meant something. Even if the troops on the ground aided him, their commanders wouldn’t, and punishment would be swift on those who had helped. His side wasn’t any better. Their orders had been clear: if they’re not on our side, they never will be and don’t deserve to live.

Sean licked his lips and tried to forget about where he was. He reached for his canteen and struggled as he undid the cap. He wasn’t feeling light-headed though, so he wasn’t losing any blood. Any wounds that had been opened must have sealed themselves up. His display flickered and he saw that his exo’s power cell was down to 35%. The exo had a first-aid unit built into the back, but it wasn’t a medical kit in the traditional sense. It was connected to smaller kits that were built into other areas of the exo and would communicate with the other devices and regulate treatment. Treatment meant pumping the wearer full of painkillers, adrenaline and military grade amphetamines. It wasn’t designed to save the life of the wearer, just to keep them fighting.

But when the exo’s power cell died, so would the pain relief.

 

23%

 

Sean’s vomit splattered onto his torso, and clung to his chin. He’d been feeling nauseous for a while and hadn’t been able to stop himself from being sick when it had finally come. He sipped his water slowly, not wanting to take too much in case it caused him to vomit again, but he needed to take away the acidic taste he had in his mouth.  At least the artillery had knocked their bombardment on the head.

He froze as he heard someone cough. Despite the pain it caused he looked over his left shoulder. He hadn’t noticed but he was up against one of the metal crosses placed on the battlefield to prevent armour from moving easily across no-man’s land, not that they had any armour but the enemy hadn’t known that.

Straining, he could just see a woman in an exoskeleton trying to get up. She was on her hands and knees and looked like she was swaying a little. She didn’t have her helmet on and he could see her shaved head and knew it was Bren Wood. Bren was good people and someone who he had a lot of time for. He wished she’d keep her head down. She was a good soldier so she had to be suffering from shell-shock. There was no way she’d be exposing herself like that for any other reason.

Sean tried to call out, but all his vocal folds gave him was a scratchy gasp. He tried again as Bren fiddled with the release of her exoskeleton. It clanked as it opened and she fought her way free of it. He watched in horror as she got to her feet and began to stumble around the body-strewn battlefield.

“..en…get…own.”

Bren looked his way and locked eyes with him just before she took a bullet to the chest. It didn’t knock her off her feet like he’d seen a hundred times before, but instead made her stumble back. She looked down at her chest in confusion before collapsing to her knees. Another shot and her head snapped back. Her body fell to the blood-soaked ground, leaving a red mist where her head had been. Machine gun fire tore up the ground around him as the enemy gunners honed in. In his effort to help Bren he’d brought the eyes of the enemy onto him when they hadn’t known he was there.

Each time a string of bullets dug into the ground, Sean flinched. Even more so when they hit the metal cross that he was against. The gun crew didn’t know exactly where he was and he tried his best not to give himself away any more than he had done. After a few more bursts, the machine gun fell silent. Sean braced himself for the next round but it didn’t come. For the first time in hours there was no gunfire, no explosions, no sounds of pain and agony. It was just quiet and that freaked him out more than the cacophony of war.

As his ears got used to the silence he realised he could hear the hum coming from the power plant behind enemy lines. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the complex just a few hundred metres away. A few lights shone in the windows but he couldn’t see much more beyond the fortifications. Nine weeks of fighting for an inch at a time and this was as close as he’d got. This was as close as they would ever get. The enemy had been digging in for months before Sean’s regiment had been dropped in a mile out from the power plant. They had begun fighting as soon as they had touched down. Their drop ship had gone down before all of the troops could get out, its power cell taking a direct hit and tearing the mammoth aircraft to shrapnel and those in it to bones covered in charred flesh. Drop craft had re-supplied them from high-altitude but the last one had been four days ago. They had to take this power plant. If they didn’t then their loved ones would be living in the dark ages once again.

 

5%

Sean woke slowly as rain fell on his face. He’d passed out. The first thing he saw was his exo’s display flashing 5% in deep red numbers across the cracked screen, but it then changed to a red radiation symbol. He wet himself. This meant the area was radioactive, or that his side had launched a nuke and they were in the blast zone.

He shook his head. Maybe it was a malfunction with the exoskeleton- he knew it was damaged. Panic filled him and he tried to move again but all this did was bring pain. He cried out, and machine gun fire tore the sodden ground up around him once more.

His people wouldn’t nuke it, it was the last power station known to man. There weren’t the resources in the ground to burn, or the ability to make another one. That’s not to say they hadn’t tried. A whole swathe of northern Europe was a nuclear wasteland because of it. The smog blocked out too much of the sun’s light to make solar viable. Without this station, what was left of mankind would have to rely on wind turbines, which the wealthy controlled and charged excessive fees for the electricity. His people wouldn’t nuke it, but their leaders would. Sean knew if those who ruled from their fortified bunkers couldn’t have something then they wouldn’t let anyone have it.

Sirens sounded from the power plant. Anti-aircraft guns pumped flack into the twilight sky. He smiled at the beauty of it, like fireworks that he’d seen videos of when he was a kid, before electricity and food and water were rationed. He thought back to celebrating his wedding with the clean, recycled water that his now dead father had been saving for a special occasion. The two families had all chipped in with their rations of electricity to have a party with music and flashing coloured lights.

The rain hid his tears from the dead that lay around him, but it didn’t hide the weak smile on his face at the thought of his wedding to Sarah. He wondered if war and nature had buried her yet. He didn’t like the thought she was out there waiting for the scavengers to come. He knew she was dead, even if he hadn’t been officially told. She’d been deployed on the other side of the power plant. Their drop-ship had dropped them half-a-mile closer to the power plant than it was meant to, and into a minefield that had become a shooting range. He’d seen drone footage of the fight, and of the bodies scattered after the shooting had stopped. They never stood a chance.

The display over his eyes stopped showing the power cells remaining charge. Now it just flashed the nuclear alert urgently. Sean closed his eyes as the end of the modern era of humanity came to an end.

 

0%

 


About the author

PETER GERMANY

 

Peter Germany is a writer of Science Fiction and Horror from Gravesend in Kent who intends to finish a novel, one day. He is influenced by writers like Dan Abnett, Scott Sigler, CL Raven and Joe Haldeman.

When not pretending to be normal at a day job, he is writing or dealing with a supreme being (a cat), an energetic puppy, and trying to wrangle a small flock of chickens. He also spends an unhealthy amount of time watching good and bad TV and movies.

You can find him at his blog: http://petergermany.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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