Chapter 15
Invasion of the Republic of Po
[DATA: 20. CYCLE 11. YEAR 40 INDUSTRIAL]
[LOCATION: CENTRAL HALL — BLIN]
[TIME: 09:00 LOCAL]
[STATUS: GLOBAL BROADCAST — FREQUENCY “VOX RECTI”]
The temperature was hemorrhaging at a merciless velocity, yet the rhythm of events was incinerating toward a boiling point. Three days had expired since the ISS Ambassador emerged petrified from Halter’s sanctum, and the world had been submerged in a deafening, void-like silence. No official communiqués, no explanations. This invisible tension was propelling foreign populaces toward a collective seizure of anxiety. But the hiatus was concluding: the Chancellor had mandated the opening of international radio conduits for a manifesto that would fracture the foundations of diplomacy.
?The morning light in Blin was frail and ashen, as if the sun itself recoiled from fully illuminating the Central Hall. Inside, the atmosphere sat heavy, saturated with the stench of ancient wax, acrid tobacco, and suppressed dread. The government functionaries stood aligned like lithic statues, their obsidian uniforms absorbing the stray light. The Generals brandished their alphabetical ranks, which glinted with a sub-zero luminescence beneath the gargantuan chandeliers. No one dared to respire audibly; the stillness was so viscous it could be felt.
?At the hall’s epicenter, upon a podium of black oak, sat a heavy iron microphone—tethered to the high-output radio transmitters. Beyond those walls, the world had achieved stasis. In the cacophonous cafes of Bratan, the frigid factories of the BAA, and the opulent salons of Frenca, the solitary resonance was the static hiss of frequencies awaiting the voice of the man who clutched their destiny in his palm.
?Halter ascended the podium. His footfalls upon the marble were jagged, rupturing the silence like a sequence of gunshots. His hands, as pallid as the floor’s masonry, anchored themselves upon the timber edges of the lectern. He did not regard the masses before him; his stare was fixed elsewhere—upon a blood-drenched horizon known only to him.
?“Since the dissolution of the Geot Federation,” he began, and his voice—low yet lacerating—rippled through the waves to every crevice of the planet, “they have utilized our name merely as a masquerade. They exploited us as instruments to liquidate the fronts that arose in defense against other states, solely to preserve their parasitic order. They harbored a visceral fear of our potency; thus, they bartered us like common criminals when our utility expired.”
Abruptly, a dry, violent paroxysm of coughing severed his sentence. The stillness in the hall became so viscous it felt tangible. Halter hunched slightly, his knuckles whitening as he constricted the edges of the podium. For a singular heartbeat, the world witnessed his physical fragility—a hairline fracture in the Chancellor’s armor. Yet, when he elevated his head, his eyes were more iridescent—and more lethal—than ever before.
?“The ISS brands us as aggressors because we dare to dismantle their systemic rot. They coerced Frenca to align against us; they dispatched ambassadors clutching perfumed threats. They presumed that by stripping us of the honor of our alphabetical ranks—a legacy dating back to the epoch of Bisk Von Mull—they would reduce us to soul-less automata. They were mistaken. We solicit no permission to manifest our identity. The justice of Nax-Geot has just severed its shackles!”
?Halter lunged forward, his voice no longer a mere address, but a summary execution order that tolerated no dissent.
?“We do not combat solely for Nax-Geot. We fight for every nation that seeks liberation from this parasite siphoning the world’s lifeblood. One World. One State!”
As the hall erupted into rhythmic applause that resonated like bursts of anti-aircraft fire, Halter abandoned the podium without casting a single glance toward the mesmerized horde. Blais awaited him at the foot of the dais, a dossier clutched against his sternum like a shield, his visage ashen from the contents of the parchment.
?“Chancellor,” Blais hissed, his strides accelerating to match Halter’s predatory rhythm as they exited the hall. “The intelligence you requisitioned has arrived. The situation is incinerating faster than our projections anticipated.”
?“Articulate it,” Halter commanded. With a motion nearly imperceptible, he smeared his lips against his sleeve, ensuring Blais remained oblivious to the thin, crimson stain left by his prior paroxysm.
?“The Eastern Front is hemorrhaging resistance, sir. Po is almost entirely within our grasp; Colonel Avasha’s maneuver is yielding devastating dividends. However...” Blais hesitated for a fraction of a second, “our informant from the West confirms that the BAA has deployed an additional 150,000 echelons into Frenca. Combined with the indigenous military, we are facing a quarter of a million men marching toward our perimeter.”
Halter anchored himself before the massive marble valves. A leaden silence descended between them.
?“They project to strike Byg and Thira as a primary phase,” Blais continued, his voice vibrating with a tremor, “and subsequently launch a direct offensive toward Blin.”
?Two hundred and fifty thousand troops. A wall of flesh and steel engineered to fracture his equation of power. Halter narrowed his stare.
?“Notify the Western General Staff immediately. They are to convene at the tactical hub within the hour. And ready the transport, Blais. We depart now.”
?“You are venturing to the front personally, sir?” Blais inquired, a surge of astonishment escaping his composure.
?“No, Blais,” Halter replied, as the heavy door groaned open and the glacial gale of the North struck them with visceral force. “You are coming with me. This is no epoch for remaining entombed in offices.”
[DATA: 20. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: CENTRAL CONGRESS — BAA (UNITED ATLANTIC ALLIANCE)]
?[TIME: 03:30 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: EMERGENCY ASSEMBLY — FANA CAPITULATION CRISIS]
Across the ocean, within the BAA, a deceptive and obsidian tranquility reigned. The populace remained entombed in sleep, oblivious that Halter’s manifesto had just shredded the veils of global diplomacy. Yet the Parliament had not awaited the dawn to convene. The Congressional Hall teethed like a hive of rabid wasps. The atmosphere was viscous, saturated with tobacco smoke and the failure of a ventilation system unable to combat the rising human heat.
?President Wish sat at the vanguard, elbows anchored into the oak table, fingers buried deep within his hair. Halter’s voice had just expired over the hall’s loudspeakers, yet its resonance seemed to be clawing at the walls like a blade.
?“‘Peace without Violence’!” an opposition deputy bellowed, slamming a dossier of reports onto the table. “That was your mantra, Mr. President! Here is your ‘peace’! Halter just spat in our faces from the other side of the globe while you anticipated him to sit at the negotiation table like a gentleman!”
?“Enough with this hollow rhetoric!” a government representative countered, his visage flushed with indignation. “We forged this state into an economic superpower. If we had adhered to your counsel, we would have been at war a decade ago!”
?A violent rupture of the doors interrupted the chaos. A young informant, his uniform disheveled and eyes bulging with visceral dread, surged inside. His labored respiration echoed to the final rows. Silence descended over the hall like a guillotine.
?“Fana…” his thin voice vibrated. “Fana has declared unconditional capitulation. The official communiqué was just released. It is now SRR territory.”
?A murmur of disbelief erupted like a chain explosion. How could a state with such fortified perimeters collapse within mere hours?
?“What are you raving about, you lunatic?” the opposition deputy roared. “Fana’s defensive line was the most resilient in the entire North!”
?“The SRR merely touched them,” the informant said, swallowing hard. “They assaulted, they withdrew, and then... something occurred. Something that coerced them to surrender without discharging another single round. They are petrified. They have been reduced to human shadows.”
President Wish, who until that heartbeat had remained with his head bowed, snapped his eyes open. His respiration accelerated, and a cold sweat colonized his brow. He murmured to himself, his voice bearing the crushing mass of a death sentence:
?“S-1A. They have deployed the S-1A. It should never have devolved to this.”
?President Wish rose with a mechanical, weighted motion. He did not shout, yet his voice possessed a frequency that severed every whisper in the chamber.
?“Enough!” His hand struck the table, causing pens and water carafes to recoil. “We are devouring one another while the world is being swallowed by two insatiable monsters. You crave a culprit? We are all culpable—all of us who believed the wolf would be satiated with hollow words and sterile promises.”
?He cast his stare toward the opposition deputies, who remained frozen beneath his sub-zero gaze.
?“I have already dispatched 150,000 of our sons to Frenca. They are stationed there, enduring the rain and the mire, prepared for immolation. If you wish to persist in debating last year’s fiscal budget, continue. But I am issuing the strike order now!”
The opposition deputy, the man who moments ago was convulsing with rage, looked Wish in the eye. He witnessed the resolve of a man who possessed nothing left to lose—a leader who had finally identified his calling. He adjusted his tie with a solemn precision and stepped forward.
?“I align with the President,” he stated, his voice now low and resonant, terminating years of political fracture. “As of today, there is no opposition. There is only the BAA.”
?One after another, every member of the parliament ascended to their feet like a single, biological entity. The shouting vanished, replaced by a cold, chilling unity that saturated the hall.
?“This is our potency,” Wish remarked, looking toward the window where the initial light of dawn was fracturing against the steel monoliths of the BAA skyline. “Let Halter and Brusk witness the consequence when this state resolves to fight for its existence. Execute the strike order! We march toward Blin. If they desire ‘One World’, let them have it—but it shall be governed by our protocols.”
[DATA: 20. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: ROYAL RESIDENCE — PISA, FRENCA]
?[TIME: 10:30 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: BAA FORCE INTEGRATION — WESTERN JOINT COMMAND]
The morning in Pisa, the capital of Frenca, was gilded yet frozen, as if the light itself refused to nourish a soil preparing for slaughter. Inside the sanctum of Piro—the 56-year-old sovereign—the scent of expensive timber and vintage wine coalesced with the rhythmic, heavy thud of combat boots marching across the plaza beneath his window. Piro swirled his crystal chalice, observing how the red vintage stained the glass, as if it were distilled blood awaiting its extraction.
The knock upon the door was jagged—a dry strike that did not solicit permission but announced a presence.
?“Enter,” Piro commanded, his stare anchored to the troop movements outside.
?Adem stepped inside. His BAA uniform was rigid, devoid of a single crease, and upon his sternum, his Grade B insignia glinted in the morning glare like a metallic warning. Despite his youth—a mere 33 years—Adem’s eyes bore the sub-zero calcification of a man who had spent his existence over strategic charts and death-calculus.
?“Sir, I am General Adem. I have just finalized the disembarkation of the initial Atlantic divisions,” his voice was as acute and clinical as a razor’s edge.
?Piro pivoted slowly, a smile crinkling his eyes into an expression of aristocratic civility.
?“General! It is not merely an honor, but a salvation to host the potency of the BAA here. You shall spearhead our sons toward a victory that will be etched into the annals of history,” he elevated his glass in a premature toast that felt jarringly out of place.
?“I am merely executing protocols, sir,” Adem replied, maintaining an unyielding stance. He harbored a visceral contempt for the opulence of this office while his echelons were inhaling the grit of the staging grounds outside.
?The white timber door ruptured open once more with a momentum that defied salon etiquette. Sebastian surged inside, radiating a buoyancy that clashed violently with the chamber’s leaden atmosphere.
?“Sir, the host is ready!” Sebastian announced, his voice vibrating with an almost infantile enthusiasm. “Our forces and the Atlantic divisions have fused into a singular monolith. A quarter-million bayonets await only your signal, General.”
Piro reclined into his heavy leather throne. He impaled Adem with a stare, his smile failing to suppress a layer of corrosive cynicism.
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?“Adem, satiate my curiosity. How do you intend to fracture this ‘incarnation of justice’ that Halter just prophesied over the airwaves?”
?Adem approached the expansive tactical chart spread across the mahogany, anchoring his hands upon its surface.
?“The design is elementary and merciless,” his fingers struck the coordinates of Byg with concussive force. “We shall initiate the assault here, leveraging the full potency of our heavy ordnance. We will liquefy their vanguard beneath a deluge of fire. Subsequently, we shall crush them with infantry until they lack even the oxygen to respire. We will bisect their territory and march upon Blin. We shall hoist our colors upon Halter’s balcony before the sun sets on the coming week.”
?Piro exhaled a faint laugh, a resonance radiating absolute security. He swirled his chalice, watching the light fracture against the vintage.
?“Exquisite! Halter may possess velocity, cunning, and his manic visions, but he can never contend with this mountain of steel we have resurrected. He is minuscule, Adem. Small and inconsequential, much like his dreams.”
?“Let us trust the dividends of victory come with minimal human expenditure,” Adem murmured, his stare never severing from the map for a single heartbeat. He did not participate in Piro’s levity.
?“Expel your concerns, General. Nax-Geot is merely a shadow terrorizing the world in the dark. Once the glare of our armor is ignited, the shadow will dissolve,” Piro countered, drawing a long draught of wine.
?Adem donned his military cap with a mechanical precision and adjusted the collar of his rigid uniform.
?“It is the lunatics we must scrutinize, sir. They are the unpredictable variables. Yet even he shall find no crevice to evade us. Now, permit me to audit the echelons. I require every soldier to know precisely where he will bury his bayonet.”
?“Proceed, General. You possess the absolute autonomy of victory,” Piro stated, pivoting back toward the window, while Sebastian trailed Adem out, leaving behind only the scent of vintage wine and the blueprint for carnage.
[DATA: 21. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: VANGUARD — PO SECTOR]
?[TIME: 12:30 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: OPERATION “THE KILN” — IGNITION PHASE (THE BAIT)]
The meridian sun over Po offered no warmth; it merely illuminated the ashen mire and the frigid alloy of the bunkers with a sterile, clinical glare. The heavy stench of residual fire and combusted diesel coalesced with the saline humidity of the excavated earth. Erten worked with hands vibrating from exhaustion and the biting chill, scavenging rusted components from lacerated MGV-42s. This mechanical labor was his solitary anchor, preventing his psyche from fracturing within this necrotic landscape.
?Seventy meters beyond, upon a strip of terrain that appeared forsaken by the divine, several Nax-Geot convoys crawled with a torturous inertia toward Blin.
[SUBJECT: WOUNDED NAX-GEOT ECHELONS — APPROX. 5% OF ACTIVE FORCE]
Within those steel hulls, over the ruptured road, the resonances of the wounded echoed as they were tossed against metallic walls. They had been intentionally exposed—stripped of aerial defense or fire cover—a fragment of wounded flesh hurled deliberately before the enemy wolves to lure them from their burrows.
?Amidst this chaos, as soldiers scrambled to secure their final coordinates, Avasha sat perched upon an inverted ammunition crate. In her hands, she clutched the baking manual, consumed by the page for “Chocolate Soufflé.” She wiped a smear of mire from the parchment with her black-gloved hand, as if that stain were the paramount crisis of the day.
?“What are you doing?” Erten’s voice was a stifled whisper, saturated with revulsion. “Are you truly deciphering that book here? In the epicenter of this inferno?”
?Avasha did not elevate her head. Her red eyes scanned every line of the page with surgical focus.
?“I just returned from the reserve depots; I had abandoned it there. But the intelligence is harrowing, Erten,” she sighed with an artificial melancholy that induced a shudder. “The chocolates and confections are hemorrhaging. I must ration them until the fresh logistics arrive from Blin.”
?Erten regarded her with a species of petrified astonishment. An exhaust pipe slipped from his grip, impacting the mire with a dull, wet thud.
?“An inferno is poised to erupt at any heartbeat! Men are expiring as bait on the roads and your focus is on glucose? I fail to comprehend how they sustain your commission! You are clinical!”
?Avasha extracted a small pink confection from her pocket. The wrapper crinkled with a sharp resonance in the stillness of the killing fields. She slid it into her mouth with an elegant, predatory motion.
?“Calibrate yourself, little one,” she stated, her cheek bulging with the sweet. “Everything proceeds according to the blueprint. Besides, these are exquisite... they possess the essence of wild strawberries. Here, take one. You possess the pallor of a corpse; you require the sugar.”
?“No, I don’t want it!” Erten erupted, collapsing back onto the metallic scraps, impotent against that tranquil insanity.
?“As you wish,” she shrugged with absolute indifference, “more for me.”
[LOCATION: OPPOSING SECTOR — PO FRONT LINE]
?[TIME: 12:45 LOCAL]
Upon the antithesis of the front, within the saturated trenches of Po, the Colonel—bearing the Grade G insignia upon his sternum—clutched his field glasses with such constriction that his knuckles throbbed. He scrutinized the exposed Nax-Geot convoys, his jaw locked in a kinetic nervousness that was hemorrhaging his tactical judgment.
?“Colonel,” the commander flanking him stated, his voice vibrating with predatory impatience. “Observe them! They are retreating in a state of total fracture. They must be over-encumbered with casualties. This is the apex of opportunity; their perimeter is pulverized. This is our chance to liquidate them once and for all!”
?The Colonel hesitated. The Grade G upon his uniform was a testament to a protracted career, yet one devoid of strategic luminescence.
?“Why are they maneuvering with such exposure? It is illogical. Nax-Geot does not commit such amateurish transgressions.”
?“They are desperate, sir!” the other insisted. “If we do not strike now, they will reconstitute behind that ridge and the window will seal. We must crush them while they are frail!”
?The avarice to be the architect who dismantled the myth of Nax-Geot’s invincibility blinded the Colonel. He inhaled sharply and extracted his flare pistol.
?“Very well. Forward! Annihilate everything that respires!”
As the Po echelons surged over the frozen mire beneath the failing meridian sun, the Nax-Geot spotters had zeroed them from their initial stride. An officer lunged toward Avasha.
?“Colonel,” his voice was acute, “the prey has entered the aperture. They are advancing.”
?Avasha did not accelerate. She snapped the baking manual shut with a dry, definitive crack—as if she were locking the sarcophagus on those thousands of men.
?“Initiate the baking,” she stated, ascending slowly. Her red eyes narrowed toward the horizon, where the dust plumes of the adversary began to lacerate the skyline. “Erten, mobilize!”
Erten elevated his head, disoriented, his hands still defiled by the obsidian grease of the armaments.
?“What? Where are we going?”
?“Cease the inquiries,” she interjected with a sub-zero finality that permitted no rebuttal. “Retrieve the optics and follow. I require you to witness this.”
?Within the “Death Belt,” the Po echelons were penetrating deeper into the vacuum. The silence was absolute, preternatural—so heavy that only the frigid gale dared to maneuver between the ranks. A dry, metallic click reached the ear of one of the majors—the resonance of a mechanism being armed. Dread colonized his senses.
?“Colonel,” he whispered, “I harbor a harrowing premonition. Something is scrutinizing us from the shadows. I suggest an immediate extraction until a reconnaissance of the terrain is finalized.”
?“Enough!” the aggressive commander mandated. “We are at war, not on a village promenade. Do not devolve into a coward now that victory is within our grasp!”
?As the Colonel stood suspended in the void between them, impotent to decide, they were being zeroed by Avasha’s stare. She noted the enemy column decelerating and turned to her officer with a diabolical smirk.
?“Damn them, they cannot remain still,” Avasha murmured, observing the adversary’s hesitation through the optics. “They have detected us. Officer, mandate the immediate commencement of fire. And prime the PaH 2000. I require the extraction route to be transmuted into a living inferno.”
?“Hold!” Erten shrieked, seizing her arm. “You intend to deploy the PaH 2000? Those platforms discharge three shells in nine seconds! You will level everything—even our own soldiers entrenched with the MGVs!”
?“Calibrate yourself, scientist,” Avasha stated with a voice of unnerving tranquility. “I know precisely the mass of flesh that must be incinerated to secure this war.”
?In the succeeding second, the field detonated. The bores of the MGV-42s ruptured through the ghost-netting like famished predators awakening from stasis.
[SUBJECT: NAX-GEOT FORCES — ARMAMENT: MGV-42 — 1200 ROUNDS PER MINUTE]
There were no isolated volleys; there was only a wall of lead shredding the atmosphere. With a cadence of 1200 rounds per minute, they erased everything possessing a human silhouette. The Po Colonel watched, petrified, as his soldiers disintegrated before his eyes as if they were composed of sand.
[TARGETS: PO SOLDIERS — KIA 125 ACCELERATING]
“What is occurring?!” he bellowed, but his voice was drowned by the relentless metallic roar.
?“It is a snare!” the major screamed, hurling himself into the mire. “I warned you, Colonel! Now, prepare for the expiration!”
?The Po soldiers fled like lunatics, scavenging for a sanctuary that did not exist. Every inch of soil was zeroed. When the initial barrels of the MGVs turned incandescent crimson from the thermal load, the fire ceased for a heartbeat.
?“Now!” the Po commander shrieked, spotting a flicker of hope. “Bring forward the armor! They have exhausted their munitions!”
?It was their ultimate transgression. The eyes of the Po soldiers began to reflect the black muzzles emerging from the mud, their teeth chattering incessantly from sheer terror. Adjacent to the barrels exhaling plumes of acrid smoke, fresh, cold bores emerged, initiating an immediate interlocking crossfire. The soldiers of Po raised their rifles, but it was futile; the MGV rounds razed them in seconds. There was no need for precision—all it took was a finger on the trigger.
But this was merely the overture. The mire began to convulse beneath their boots. From behind the ridges, like lethal apparitions, the elongated muzzles of the PaH 2000 manifested.
[SUBJECT: PaH 2000 — ARTILLERY SYSTEM — 3 SHELLS IN 9 SECONDS]
As the Po armor attempted a desperate proximity, the firmament was saturated by a frenzy of 155mm ordnance descending like a deluge of fire. Armored plating detonated like scorched parchment. It was a harrowing symphony: the MGV-42s shredding the infantry below while the heavy artillery annihilated every armored vehicle that dared to retaliate.
[TARGETS: PO ARMY — KIA 234 ACCELERATING / 51 TANKS NEUTRALIZED]
“The plan is unfolding with surgical precision, Colonel,” the officer remarked, a smirk of unearned pride spreading across his face.
?But Avasha’s smile was far more diabolical. She felt nothing for the carnage, only a cold, predatory satisfaction in its efficiency. While the staff in the rear echelons began to celebrate a premature victory, Avasha’s red eyes had already detected the Po forces attempting a desperate, fractured maneuver to escape the slaughterhouse.
“Order the artillery to traverse two degrees East,” Avasha commanded. “They are attempting to break orbit.”
?“I believe that is unnecessary, Colonel,” the officer replied, his smile lingering in a way that grated against her nerves. “They have nowhere left to run.”
?That smile died an abrupt death. A single glance from Avasha was enough to turn the cabin’s atmosphere sub-zero.
?“Do as I commanded,” her voice was no longer a suggestion; it was an ultimatum.
?Within seconds, the coordinates were ratified. The artillery shells shrieked through the air, obliterating every remaining exit for the Po soldiers.
[TARGET: PO FORCES — KIA 276 AND ACCELERATING — RANGE: 55 KM]
?Avasha’s stare remained impaled upon the battlefield. She pinpointed several infantry units attempting to burrow into the craters carved by the initial rocket volleys.
?“Order the MGV units to pivot right,” Avasha barked. “The others are to widen their cone of fire toward the epicenter, saturating the perimeter of the field.”
?This time, there were no objections. Every gear in her death-machine turned exactly as she predicted. The soldiers of Po found no sanctuary; as soon as one MGV battery ceased, another emerged, reloaded and fresh, to sustain the rhythmic harvest. As the massacre intensified, Avasha’s smile did not fade. Each uptick in efficiency brought her a twisted, infantile joy.
?[TARGET: PO FORCES — KIA 345 AND ACCELERATING]
[LOCATION: PO SECTOR — EXECUTION ZONE]
?[TIME: 13:35 LOCAL]
[SUBJECT: SNIPER — DSR-3: PRECISION OPTICS — CAPABLE OF STRIKING A COIN FROM 1 KM]
[LOCATION: UNKNOWN]
Suddenly, a thin, lacerating sound—like an extreme whistle of wind—pierced the heavy atmosphere: Puf. The Po Major impacted the earth instantly, a clean, obsidian puncture centered in his forehead.
[OBJECTIVE: 1/3 ELIMINATED]
“Sniper!” the Commander shrieked, attempting to seek sanctuary behind a metallic husk, but his command was severed mid-sentence. A second projectile, equally clinical, dropped him into the blood-saturated mire.
[OBJECTIVE: 2/3 ELIMINATED]
The Colonel possessed no time for orisons. A blinding white glare from the final detonations, a dry impact that permitted no reaction, and his frame collapsed lifelessly upon the soil he once identified as home.
[OBJECTIVE: 3/3 ELIMINATED]
Avasha lowered her optics and inhaled deeply, as if she were drawing in the scent of a blossom rather than the stench of charred flesh and diesel.
?“Officer, notify Central Hall and all of Blin,” she stated with a chilling serenity. “The Republic of Po no longer exists. It is now sovereign territory of Nax-Geot.”
Erten remained upon his knees, fractured. His stare tracked the horror upon the horizon, where the PaH 2000 batteries and the MGV-42 volleys were leveling every remaining structure, transmuting the landscape into a hollowed void.
[TARGETS: PO ARMY — KIA 463 ACCELERATING / ARMOR 103 NEUTRALIZED]
“This is a nightmare,” he whispered, his voice suffocated by absolute despair.
?Avasha noted his pallor—he had assumed the complexion of a breathing corpse. She approached and descended to her knees beside him, indifferent to the mire that defiled her Grade S uniform.
?“This is the nature of the conflict, Erten,” she stated, observing the red horizon with her sub-zero stare. “If we did not liquidate them, they would have reciprocated. It is the elementary mathematics of survival.”
Erten’s eyes, which until that moment reflected the pyres of the battlefield, pivoted toward her with a spark of hopeless revolt.
?“But we were the aggressors! We are the invaders infiltrating their sanctuaries!”
?Avasha ascended to her feet with a weary sigh, as if articulating a self-evident truth to a recalcitrant child.
?“Comprehend this, Erten: the world is putrid to the marrow. I have witnessed that decay with my own eyes, and I will not permit history to replicate its transgressions. If I must utilize violence to humiliate those who obstruct the justice we are establishing... so be it.”
?She inhaled deeply, her composure returning instantly. Then, she extended her hand toward Erten, her voice assuming a disturbing, almost predatory tenderness.
?“Take this.” From her pocket, she extracted a confection of incandescent red. “It is my preference. I trust you will find it palatable.”
As she retreated with measured strides over the carpet of spent casings, she spoke to herself with an almost clinical curiosity:
?“Regardless, I am inquisitive as to how Aista executed them. A singular projectile for the entire command staff... or did she excise them one by one, to watch the sequence of their collapse?”
?Erten remained stagnant. He stared at the red sweet in his defiled palm and the incinerating fields before him. He no longer possessed an anchor for belief. Science, his paramount passion, had just been vindicated as the ultimate instrument of mass extinction. Yet, his mind drifted back to Avasha’s rhetoric... to that blood-drenched justice she promised.
