Purgatory, 16: Inferno
25 Jan 2024Meowers
Warning: violence, cruelty, graphic descriptions.
"The ability to adapt, remain collected and think clearly in urgent, emergency situations is crucial, no doubt. Yet there's another side, one not so many think about after the job is done. The cost at which suppression of your own mind comes."
T + 80h 54min. Received a message from the reinforcement group. They're in the system. Okay, now... Let's be smart by being stupid and pretending to be smart.
Whitley, power up your comm station and let me use it... Shit shit shit let's do that fast
T + 81h 18 min. Seems like it worked. The thing we did... Direct FTL transmissions are a no-go, they would reveal us instantly. So, there's a fundamental principle that hasn't changed for more than a millennia: many simple electronic devices send and receive signals operating with bits, binary code, ones and zeroes, on and off, modulating the signal by working with power, tone, frequency, anything else like that. Burst of eight bits, a byte, carries 256 possible combinations, enough to code any letter in the alphabet, or numbers, or many other symbol things.
Upon reaching the orbit, our ships, obviously, requested any reply, even a little blip, to determine their reentry point, so we imitated a seemingly-random noise like some merc's device has gone haywire, and sent it on a wide range of frequencies just up into the sky. Low tone is a 'zero', more intensive is a 'one', half-second pauses between the signals. The message was prepared by me an hour ago and converted into a series of letters, L and H. Low and high. So I had to push the buttons in the correct order, affecting that generated 'random noise' and making it not quite random anymore, and then we set it on repeat until they confirmed.
"go back 2 systems, don't scare them, we need to find the centre, leave a scout ship on another orbit to listen"
Of course it took them some time to realise what's going on and decode. Thankfully, it isn't a forgotten techno-shamanic ritual, many military comm stations have coding-decoding sheets for a reference and we've been taught to use this technique as a last resort, or in specific scenarios like ours. But, yeah... Even being certain a few hours ago, some of my soldiers turned sad, like, the help is here, two battalions with armour, ships and rockets, ready to incinerate anyone we point them at, requesting our coordinates again and again until they read my message, they were within a few minutes reach and I've just sent them back to wait. I can't see any other way, you know? We have to uproot that heinous Azimuth piece of shit, reveal the core of it, otherwise all the deaths and suffering will be for nothing. We still need a scalpel before going full sledgehammer mode; our scalpel is becoming a bit dull, bent and rusty yet we don't have another one.
* * *
So much for a rest, something riled up the entire village... 82 hours, 22 minutes, people are gathering at the altar and the far gates, chanting some rubbish again, what the heck for... Shit.
Alert! Grab the guns, shields on, Azimuth truck incoming!
Shit can't aim too many of those folks around... Ignatowski, can you snipe... Gods-bloody-dammit. Jarvinen, laser mic, on the windshield!
The villagers are surrounding them, welcoming... Shit, they're pointing at us. Three scientists in coats and a handful of mercs, we could've deleted them in a blink of an eye, if not for these dumb tribals blocking the only line of fire we can get through those damned huts. And the tribals look confused. Some of them played the same whack-me-please thing mincing on their tiptoes, some pointed at us, like, maybe they thought that we were Azimuth, some... Well, it's certainly a different behaviour.
One of the scientists has a device of some kind, with a microphone at one side and kind of emitter on another...
Crap. That thing affects the tribals. It's hard to filter the words through the noise and babbling, yet there were... "Wrong gods" and "remove". Shit. Okay. Okay, got it. Belly on the ground and bipod time...
Everyone, hit the ground and take aim. Brace yourselves, the shit is coming.
Here I am. And I will introduce you to whatever gods you pray to. They better be ready, you all are about to start your journey... Now.
Open fire! Open fire! They're hostile!
Rockets! At them dammit, not the truck! What the... Innocent you say? Fuck just give me that damn thing, I'll show you... Here it comes... Splash! Load another and clear the backblast!.. Splash! That's how it's done... Repeat now!
Snipers, nail the mercs! Dammit, torches.... Don't let the cavemen close! Mow every one down, leave none standing!
Dammit... Trees! They're in the trees! Knock them off!
More around the huts... This way, rocket the shit out of them!
Retreat to the river, second rifles, with me to the right, medics and HQ get the wounded out, everyone else left! Crossfire them!
Grenades! Shred the fuckers to bits!
Shit, get back, get back, covering!.. Fuck how many of them?
Retreat and shoot! Walk and shoot, don't let them close! How do you like that you morons?
Fuck... Come on you shits, try me! Come on, more of you bastards!
Don't let them escape, finish everyone off
Gods-bloody-dammit... Casualties report!.. Pfff... Finally. Don't drop your shit right now, I want this village wiped out. Once we're clear, check the truck.
Okay... That was a bit rough. At least no more seriously wounded or dead. A few light headaches from the stones hitting the helmets, but nothing really ugly. Moving back to the village, slowly. Gotta make sure the place is clean.
T + 82h 54min. Confirmed clean. The truck has a few new holes in it but it can move. Time to leave...
What in the hells are you doing? Stop it... Spare the ammo. If you want to burn this place, I don't care, use their bonfires.
Crap, I'd better sit down on that stump and let them have fun, my entire gear is so covered in blood it's effectively red now. Okay, paper towels... So. Everyone around turned hostile after that Azimuth scientist told them something about us being wrong gods or whatever. Using some kind of emitter to communicate. And shit got out of hand immediately. Had to end everyone.
My folks are losing it. And I have to admit that. I saw Navarrete's shocked, widely opened eyes, she's been clasping her machinegun like it's the most valuable thing in her life, after the massacre ended. I saw people unsure if that's even real or not, with disbelief, rejection, dismay etched on their faces as they watched me sending rockets into the crowd, explosions throwing torn bodies and flesh into the sky like shredded rags, and the tribals running, yelling, with sticks and axes in their hands, through the smoke and bloody mist, showered by their fellows' limbs and ripped insides. I, myself, used the expansive setting hoping that a spray of neighbour's guts in the face could stop someone. No good, everyone's gone berserk, switched to APs to pierce more of them through. Had to shout at those dumping their ammo all over the place, we didn't have much left and now we're seriously low. Yet I understand how hard it is, and always has been, not to do that, facing such a primal, deranged mass ready to tear you apart with their bare hands. I won't tell the name but I had to grab one marine by the shoulder and shake so violently I thought their own helmet glass might've broken their nose. With the chaos around, the poor bastard dropped the rifle and curled up, back pressed against the tree, arms wrapped around the head. So I told to stick closer to me, at least, and aim at my tracers. Just to aim at them, making the shots follow them closely, not thinking of what's happening at that moment, and on the receiving end. Better of something insane, impossible, goofy, or even straight away unhealthy. Or to hum some stupid, braindead song that normally gets stuck in your head and can't go away. It always helps to stay sane.
Once it ended, I saw a few soldiers throwing up, inhaling the stench that has been all over the village already and now it's mixed with the thick, almost palpable stink of bloodbath, torn and burned flesh, splattered brains, shredded intestines with their contents spilling out. Both our medics frantically ran from soldier to soldier trying to figure out whether or not the blood covering their armour head to toe was theirs.
Maddened tribals ran at us, men and women, young and old, half-naked, like a human meatwave, facing the gunfire, their front ranks falling, shredded, corpses stacking on the ground, laser impulses shaking their bodies hit after hit, and my and Navarrete's plasma barrages cutting deeply into the shapeless, deranged human mass, creating entire empty corridors and blasting through the huts and wooden fence behind. Only for the empty spaces to be filled again in a few seconds. They ran over their dead and wounded, no attention to the losses, red blood-shot eyes and faces skewed by the grimaces of pure, primal hatred. Wounded, with their arms and legs severed off, their stomachs burned and guts falling out, they kept crawling and shouting, of pain and rage, dying of shock, blood loss or stray shots. And some of them are still crawling, trying to get up and get us, after the fight. They were doomed anyway, none lives with wounds so severe and no medicine available, yet my soldiers are walking around the village with their eyes empty, searching for those still trying to move or groan. Cutting their bodies in half or slicing the heads off with machetes, smashing the skulls with boots. Impaling them onto their own pikes. Leaving none alive and none dead without such a damage to the body that make the remains even barely recognisable as human.
The central 'street' of the village is now littered in bodies and body parts, the ground soaked in blood, once we entered the village again to wipe it clean... We were almost knee-deep in the dead. We walked, bones cracking under our feet, ground turned into a red, disgustingly wet mud, we walked, sending shots to the heads of poor bastards who still somehow stood or sat, surrounded by the hellish picture of disfigured, dismembered remains of people who lived nearby just an hour ago. Some of them, looking at us, muttered their unrecognisable sounds, quietly, in a saddened, disappointed, apologetic tone. A few of them locked their widely opened eyes on us, their faces pale as snow, from bleeding or fear; a plea, a desperate attempt to save their lives. To make us feel more than automatic kill on sight response. Their hypnotic rage had ended, but ours didn't.
I shot one in the chest point-blank, looking straight into his eyes in return and forcibly holding his shoulder, it was so quick that he didn't even feel any pain, and a grimace of begging for mercy remained on his face even after the expansive plasma round stormed through his body, exploding in the middle of it, leaving a clean round entrance wound but a gruesome, horrible mess in the back, shattering the bones, mixing pieces of his ribs and his spinal discs together and throwing them in a wide cone a few metres behind, along with burned tissues of his lungs and heart, showering the wall of the hut that had instantly turned red. Once I removed my hand from the shoulder, the body fell flat face down on the ground. The face still begging for mercy.
Damn idiots. I have a machinegun. A heavy automatic plasma rifle, eighty pieces of superheated death in twelve seconds. And a platoon, with rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and one more machinegun, smaller calibre but twice the rate, at my side. You don't have to be military to figure out that running naked straight onto that, waving a stick, isn't a thing you'd like to do, even if you're primitive and don't even have a concept of what rifles and rockets are.
Now, well. Now I'm sitting on the stump and cleaning my equipment. A little sad because I have only two full eighty-rounder keglets-o'-fun left and twenty six in the one that's loaded. And my troops are... Letting the remaining anger out. Some of them are less aggressive...ish. Sat on the ground and stumps next to me. Hands still trembling, holding cigarettes, one after another, eyes vacantly staring at nowhere. You know this stare. I know this stare. I know it better than a human probably should. It tells you everything, without saying a single word. There's more in this stare than words can convey, describe in its full intensity, tell you about the thick, enveloping, roiling mix of thoughts and emotions which barely can coexist together at any other moment. When it's needed, you're a machine. Do or die. But, after everything ends, that wave overwhelms you, yet leaving a place for an eerie, unnatural emptiness and silence. A deafening nothingness, under a thin shroud of noise, which grows larger every minute, pushing every thought aside, leaving a void in the wake of the wave. Making your soul empty. Your eyes still open but not seeing anything.
Others are turning the village into a pile of ashes, burning one hut after another along with the old corpses inside. They laugh. With that kind of laughter you'd rather stay away from. They kick the burning walls and watch the fragile, frail primitive buildings crumble, throwing sparks in the air. They climb up the trees to drop the bodies down. They throw limbs and large chunks of flesh into the fire. They keep crushing lifeless skulls and slicing the mauled bodies. They already demolished the altar and tossed pieces of it into the fire, including the ancient suit. And they keep laughing and cursing the villagers that can't hear them already.
And I wait. I wait, cleaning my gear. Observing. There's nothing I should do, frankly. It's better to leave the opportunity to them, for them to take. It's better to let them feed the demons, to free their souls of the anger and hatred. To close this blood-soaked page and move on. We've been here too long and have seen too much for your average soldier.
I think I could enjoy a couple of smokes too. And my last can of instacoffee.
* * *
Oh, it seems... Alright, let's keep it formal. T + 83h 39 min. So, it seems like my folks have vented everything away. And calmed down. The village... Isn't even a ruined village anymore. Only a tall fence surrounding an entirely infernal picture, a festival of death and unnecessary destruction. Nothing left intact, nobody left alive. We're now boarding the truck... With me at the controls, expectably. Some of my troops... Let's say, they needed help to get onboard. Some convincing, slight pushing and shoulder-grabbing. Thinking of why we are here, why we have to do all this, and how and when this would end is better to be done, done and let go, inside, in the vehicle that moves forward, with other people sitting next to you. The same people that could tell you not to touch your weapons when there's nothing around to shoot at.
Techs are already familiar with the biosignature lock and had it cracked just after the battle. The thing is damaged but I hope it could cover a few kilometres. And it's a different type of vehicle actually, not a cockpit with a large empty cargo or human cargo box behind, connected with the cockpit by a tiny hatch, more like a public transport but an off-road one, with seats and windows, and the whole compartment undivided. It couldn't accommodate the platoon, so some of those who aren't wounded are going to ride on the roof. Thankfully, it's metal and reinforced, and they could also use Foster's fancy gadgets and their own eyes to observe the surroundings. Can't say they're scenic though, only trees, trees and more trees.
And the interesting surprise on the map. It has the C-02 place right down the road, presumably similar to the C-03 which Steven mentioned as a kind of a facility where they also 'convert' the able-bodied prisoners into prison guards, filling their heads with enjoy-the-pain fuckery along the way. And the village has its mark too, C-02-03, with numbers going up to C-02-05... Four more settlements full of primitive folk? That makes... A few thousands of them. Ah, holy craps. That's a lot of wild and stupid people. Also, one of those villages is close to the road too yet I don't think we should make a detour.
T + 83h 52min. Checked everything and got that thing moving. The road looks like it's certainly going to take several hours more, and, judging by the time, even going at full speed, we could reach the compound only at night. At least we may use darkness as a cover.
* * *
Next part: #17: Enemy of My Enemy
Next part: #17: Enemy of My Enemy