Is it the turbulence or the magnitude of what we’re about to do that has you looking all green and grey around the edges?” Barks the Sargeant at the rear of the rickety personnel carrier. A haphazardly made drop ship amounting to little more than a transport container with a heat shield and a few hours of life support bolted into the roof. The interior is colourless, except for the rust and burn marks from previous drops. Timidly the young trooper responds “Is it, is… is it always like this?” He stammers his way through the question as the drop ship rocks violently in the brutal atmospheric turbulence. Small bits of rust and debris fling about the interior as the planets gravity well starts to take hold. With a terrible lurch and a muffled cut-off shriek, the sargeant, who is sat opposite the meek trooper at the rear of the vessel, leans forward with a vicious grin and snarls “Every mother fucking time my son! , isn’t that right boys and girls?” From all around the cramped vessel chants of “Urrah!” Can be heard. For several heart beats they repeat it in unison, with the echoes reverberating off the rusty & bare tin walls. Leaning back against the walls the sargeant bellows “Any second now boys and girls, the ship will kick on its reversing thrusters, we’ll then have to hit the ground running!” With a violent jolt, and the screaming of the jets, soldiers are rammed back into their spartan seats, a cold hard chunk of reinforced pipe with spare bits of rubber zip tied to it. Not much better than just having to squat or stand for the duration of their orbital drop. Given the speed at which they descend, the seats provide almost no safety whatsoever. But these troops aren’t careening through space in a mad dive for the surface for their own safety or for anyone else’s for that matter. They have one goal in mind and it isn’t for the faint of heart. The bland and timid trooper begins to shake violently, and vomits all down his front. The other troopers seated around him, afix their bayonets, testing the triangular serrated blades against their thumbs, and tighten down their helmet chin straps with a quick and knowing grin. Everyone pukes on their first run. There are no simulations here, no dry runs afforded to new converts. Not when you’re the rebellious underdog in this intergalactic battle for the soul of humanity. You either exalt in the mayhem and bloodshed and live to fight another day, or you end up as a pieces of the body count. Whimpering softly to himself, the coarse chunks of his breakfast clinging to his make shift tactical vest, the trooper looks to be in no condition to have to savagely murder his way to the rendezvous point several kilometers away, north of the drop zone through densely populated urban living quarters. These aren’t soldiers that the troopers are looking to massacre, they’re just ordinary folks who happen to live under The Company’s occupation. But they failed to heed the call to rise up, and are now just another line item and tally for the profit loss section of The Company’s ledger. It is all very cold and calculating, if it were not, you might just go mad. Peering over the heads of the seated troopers the sargeant calls out his trusted few with his all too familiar refrain “$1000 Credits to anyone who can prove they killed more than their assigned 300 women & children!”.
On a quiet summer day, as the wisps of soft clouds swirled in the sky, a company family fun day at the park is underway. Thousands of families have gathered for picnics and games at the expense of The Company. The rising sounds of laughter and sport drift lazily on the summers breeze. In the small gaps between bursts of laughter the rustling of brilliant blue leaves can just be heard, punctuated by the odd lilting bird calls native to this foreign world. With little warning the wisps of smoke suddenly materialize into hundreds of clunky metallic drop ships littering the sky. With the echoes of laughter still in the air, tens of thousands of miss matched black clad troops storm out of their drop ships and grind their way through the gathered masses. In a flourish of blades, knives, swords, guns and a hail of bullets the shock troopers gain purchase on this world and settle in for the fight of their lives. None of the inhabitants are armed, no one is prepared. There was no warning, no issuing of a declaration of war, no established protocol being followed. In the fetid wake of the troops are naught but the final screams of pain and horror as bits of bodies are left strewn about the town. Within the blink of an eye, the black mass of shock troops have ripped through the inhabitants and fled across field and wood and town to their rendezvous. All but one. A tallish, bland and timid new soldier, who isn’t wearing a helmet and is covered in vomit. He simply stands numbly, hands at his sides, pupils madly dilated, dizzy in the mid day sun. Head baking in the glare of the hot sunlight as he stands utterly still in the ghastly aftermath. With a violent lurch he crumples to the ground to retch, spilling bile and the last vestiges of his breakfast on the blood soaked ground. All ready the noise from the flies and carrion birds is settling in, soon it will be deafening. Falling face first, tears soaking his eyes, laying prone upon the ground he reaches out his hands to curl his fingers about the sticky hot entrails littering the park, the young timid trooper gasps in horror and passes out.
In the distance the sounds of rocket thrusters boom. The sudden raucous explosions and the wafting smell of fumes causes the timid man to stir. There, not five kilometers to the north of him are streams of jet blast as the rescue ships depart the planet. In less than fifteen minutes, they had entered the atmosphere undetected, mutilated vast swathes of a town’s population and fled for their next attack. All non combatants, no military or intelligence objectives taken, just shear violence and unadulterated terror. Then vanish back to the stars never to be seen again.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 