Gamestonk. Gamestop. GME. My thoughts are on Reddit, under my u/martinshkreli & subreddit martinshkreli. Those are authentic and discuss why GME is one of the most unprecedented events in market history. Here, I'm going to discuss the populist attitude that is creeping into this odd situation and add some thoughts on short-selling in general.
Let's cover my own unique angle on the concept of a 'short squeeze'. Most would define it as an erratic upward change in price driven by short-covering. I believe short-squeezes defined this way are usually a fictitious idee fixe that aggregates a number of discrete market behaviors and dynamics into a convenient and pithy moniker. The image of python-like buyer constricting some hapless speculator into a higher stock price is evocative but misleading. Many knew me as a short-selling specialist on Wall Street, focused on 'binary events' of biotech stocks. I think I've seen it all: I was once short more than 75% of a company's shares outstanding (I do not recommend this). I bought 75% of a company on the open market, etc.
Short-sellers are governed by the same market dynamics as longs. They get nervous when positions go against them and consider exiting. Like longs, they can double down if they wish. The only difference is that, of course, short positions grow when stocks rise. And they can rise infinitely, while long positions fall asymptotically to zero. But both get, theoretically and assuming no fundamental changes have occurred, more attractive as they move against the trader.
Short sellers have to pay borrow fees to longs (typically tiny, but sometimes massive). They have to locate stock to short, again usually easy, but sometimes difficult. Both are perilous when those rare adverse times arise. Why? Despite the possibility of a growing cost of renting stock, the ultimate fear of a short-seller is a "buy-in". It is nightmarish and has only happened to me once or twice, excluding options-related activity. A buy-in occurs when a broker decides to forcibly exit the short position on behalf of the trader because the broker and trader cannot secure the 'locate' which is supposed to underlie the short sale. The buy-in order is typically violently disruptive: a market order for the whole position near the closing hours of the market! The SEC published a list of stocks at risk of buy-in: the fail to deliver list.
My point is that a 'short squeeze' can only practically affect the trader for two reasons. The first is that the trader digs in, doubles down and doesn't exit as his position grows. That's bad trading, and will eventually blow the trader up. But, if the stock is a 'good short', that short will be replaced by more traders with stronger hands/a better entry price/smaller position. What's more is the average investor can't tell if this is happening! The second is the buy-in. I haven't heard GME shorts being bought in, but again, how would you know, other than the grapevine? My point is most of the disruptive, exciting trading here is simply long speculators banging away at the stock.
New longs are sometimes attracted to rising prices, speculating they'll increase further: that's called momentum. Those buyers are typically offset by the existing longs who are excited to exit at higher prices. But, if there is a large short position in the stock, a speculator may feel that those covering (buying to get out) short-sellers will provide additional fuel to the momentum. That's sometimes the case, but higher prices should lead to more supply from both long and short sellers. My feeling is the actions of large long holders probably have more influence on the stock price than shorts who dart in and out, and typically in smaller size. Remember that shorts who capitulate are often just replaced by new shorts who are attracted at the new lunar prices.
In essence, 'short squeezes' become a self-fulfilling prophecy as new long investors pile in trying to 'squeeze' this sometimes phantom of a short seller, and existing long investors may hold off selling for the same reason. With some Popperian skepticism you will easily see that the same dynamic can exist without the short boogeyman, or with a short boogeyman of any size. Speaking of which, where is Chanos and his slavish groupie, Carson Block?
Speculative momentum can occur for any reason. Let's not forget that the 'trapping shorty' strategy is an awkward idea for a few reasons. Short sellers are often sophisticated market participants who are betting on the decline of a stock. You usually don't want these type of traders sniffing around your favorite longs: I recall writing a 'short report' on a stock to watch it fall 50% that day. If you do a study of stock returns of highly shorted stocks, they are pretty awful. The reason there is 'no arbitrage' is the borrow rate.
But even if you got this poor short to capitulate and squeeze, the amount of buyers who are now holding stock at absurdly high prices put way more energy (and money) into the stock than the short seller's white towel ever could. A sledgehammer killed the fly: now what? Alternatively, are you the host or the parasite?
On populism. I don't really think most investors or speculators should go into any investment thinking that there is 'an enemy'. Concentrated (big) investments (bets) give rise to emotional behavior, typically the enemy in trading and investing as it clouds rational thinking. It's a lot better to be Socratic with your 'opponent' and understand what they're thinking. If your position were to be half the size it currently is, would you be as emotionally interested? Try it! You'll lower your risk and feel better.
Some of the behavior going on at WSB sounds more jihadist than speculative. The idea that there are some investors who are 'good' and others who are 'bad', or that there is an 'establishment' is BS. Everyone has the same goal: I have a pile of money, I'm trying to make it bigger, fuck your pile--I don't care about it. Anything other goal is contrived, foolish and won't help you win. You can't 'fight the rich' by trying to become one of them. Don't you see the irony? A related thought experiment: what if this trade continued to work really well? And another, and another? Then some WSBers are billionaires. Aren't they the new 'enemy/establishment?'
Who do you think hedge fund managers are? They're typically the anti-establishment. Things have changed a bit, but the most successful HFMs are actually the WSBers of the past. These are guys who didn't fit in well at i-banks, often got kicked out for having big mouths or not wearing the right ties, or just wanting to wear jeans at work and not fill out TPS reports. When they started their firms, people like Soros, Icahn, Steinhardt, Robertson, Cohen, Griffin, Loeb (who has posted anonymously on boards), Samberg, even Cramer were fish out of water and had very tiny amounts of capital, often begging for investors.
The need for an enemy. To sustain increasingly insane behavior, it isn't uncommon to use a straw man or a scapegoat. Oppressive regimes used this technique in the past, and the media uses it today. Retail investors don't have much power individually. With your $5k RH account, you can't day trade or even qualify for margin. It's pitiful. So, it's understandably quite exciting to finally feel like a 'player' that you read about. To be a part of 'something'. The problem is the media is goading you to be somewhere between a lemming and a life-agnostic but impotent jihadist. Blowing yourself up won't impress anyone, and there is no afterlife here, other than a minimum wage career and mom's sofa. GME and shorting in general is small potatos in the scheme of the Wall St. machine. Don't worry about getting 'even' with the rich. That's jousting at a windmill that will waste your energy.
No one here, hopefully, wants to be a lemming. Those willing to 'die on this hill' have to realize something: Wall Street doesn't care about its speculators. The new traders who vanquish the old simply replace them. Nothing changes. When LTCM blew up, or Amaranth, Visium, Galleon, or anyone else, it is 'out with the old and in with the new'. So, perhaps WSB can blow up 1 hedge fund or maybe 5, but so what? Eventually, the tables will turn and it will blow up. The leveraged, fast-money trading markets are a violent place and the only people who care one whit are the brokers charging fees (directly or indirectly). They only care to make sure the sorry carcasses can pay their bills. They know there will always be another speculator lined up, ready to shove his money into the lotto machine. There is no pride here. There is no credit for being a good solider. You either survive or you don't. Your job is to survive and thrive. Becoming a lemming will guarantee failure as per the statistical truism of gambler's ruin (enjoy the proof in measure theory). With enough time, anyone playing a game with <50% success rate (equal payouts), will lose all their money. Get that number above 50%. Add the Kelly Criterion to your trading strategy.
You might ask, "(that's all well and good OR we'll agree to disagree) but, Mr. Shrek, isn't this a good trading strategy? (ganging up on shorted stocks)?" As long as you're not a lemming/jihadist (willing to walk over the cliff, whether or not you have a "cause"), and you ignore a somewhat slimy ethical/market manipulation question, I don't see anything wrong with it. There are better ways to make money, since you're asking. Stoking (or worse, participating in) a buying frenzy that is akin to a forced musical chairs game is a little crazy. Once a stock is absurdly valued, you're just hoping the sell-off doesn't happen while you're holding it. If you have enough lemmings or jihadists 'helping you', that's a good thing. They will hold your bag--someone needs to.
Of course, if you've found the "next" Microsoft or Apple, no one needs to hold any bags. But, no company can increase its objective (aka fair) value quickly enough for this... phenomenon? situation? absurdity?... to make it reasonable. Those things take years, go slow and steady, and this frenzied buying/"short squeeze" phenomenon won't let value play a factor. That's why WSB GME longs have shifted theses from "well, Gamestop was/is cheap" to "the gaming cycle" to "Ryan Cohen will save us" to "...jihad?!"
Each member of the herd has its own financial parameters, too. Some may have $500, some $50,000,000 or more. Some may be willing to lose their entire stake (and even more) on an out-of-the-money or levered trade. Some are not. Some were in the latter and somehow end up in the former. Some are in one column at one price and another column at another--some are switched from column to column by force. Today's lemmings/jihadists are tomorrow's sellers. When you're hanging off the mountain, pay attention to the guy holding the rope.
Loosely 'coordinated' buying can certainly affect stocks. Heavily shorted stocks and small cap stocks are the kind that require less capital than typical to 'move' a stock. The irony here is when putting on a position, the trader's goal is typically NOT to move the stock with his actions!
I still think GME is wildly overvalued, but that doesn't exactly mean I'm 'bearish'. One funny idea here is reflexivity: GME stockholders may become serious GME customers and the company's fundamentals improve that way! Excluding some such miracle, eventually GME stock will trade at <50 again. I still think it will trade at 1,000 or more BEFORE that happens, and that the decline process will take a long, long time (several years). Keep in mind, anything can change. GME can do serial secondaries that destroy its stock. Management's job is to create value for their shareholders--but perhaps they will avoid pissing them off. There's a strange loop! Finally, the stock could be halted by the SEC or completely banned by brokers. Don't overdo it. Watch the borrow rate. Keep your positions at less than 25% of your capital--live to play another day.
Disclosure: I've never traded GME stock and do not intend to.
(From martin, posted by mo)

My mom left me a set of tapes to watch after she died.

My mom was the sort of person to look like a wallflower until you got close and then spout out facts about her favourite animal. It was an emperor penguin. She said their journey for love and parenthood was the hardest and most connecting with her.
I’m told all the usual things about her; she had a smile that could light up a room, her laugh cut through the malaise of an awkward party, her stride was confident and her form was elegant. From the day I could understand what it was to be remembered, she was painted to me as a true goddess.
After all, aren’t all moms supposed to be that to their children growing up?
Mom died when I was 4. Aggressive cancer riddled her body with tumours, stole her stride, her smile, her laugh. Everything in just 18 short months.
I didn’t see her for much of it. But if I did, I obviously didn’t remember. I heard somewhere we don’t start forming memories until we’re around 2 years old and implicit memories - those unconscious memories that stick with us automatically - aren’t even until we’re 7.
So essentially my mother was already dead for 3 years before I could even unconsciously think of the word “Mom” and go to her face. A face that was stolen from me. A face that I’ll never see.
I’m giving you this background information now because it’s vital that you understand my mom before we get into the thick of it.
I can’t sit here and tell you I loved my mom unconditionally. I didn’t know her. Dad was never in the picture, so Grandparents were where I was shipped off to. Good people, kind people. They raised me on stories of my Mom and made sure to do the one thing she’d requested when her sickness finally got her:
”Show Nick the milestone tapes.”
For those unaware; a milestone tape is something where a loved one, usually a parent, records a loving video to congratulate their kin on a moment they’re missing out on. First day of school, marriage… you get the picture.
I remember being 5 years old, I’d not long tripped on the stairs after miscalculating my steps and smashed my front tooth on the top step, sending my first baby tooth flying. Thankfully, the pain was short-lived in my mind, I was mere days from my birthday and a surprise trip to Disneyland was coming up. In the middle of packing, I was sat down in front of the TV with my Grandpa Mihail and him putting in these pristine discs, a gaudy logo flashing up on the screen still burned into my retinas to this day:
“Gone, but not deleted: A video message from Leanora Stankowski.”
The image would flicker for just a moment, always just a moment each time, then she’d appear.
A young woman sat in a black leather armchair with a small table to her side and patterned wallpaper behind her. She was in her late 20s with her raven black hair tied in a messy bun, strands curled and dangling down her porcelain face, a beauty mark sitting just beneath her right eye, the pair of them shining like emeralds that caught the first ray of sunshine, black lipstick gave way to shimmering teeth and a smile that made even an oblivious little me feel… lost.
“Hi pumpkin, it’s mommy! I hope my little prince is watching the throne while i’m away… how can you be nearly six years old and already losing your baby teeth? You’re growing up too fast, little man!”
She puffed out her cheeks as she feigned a frown before giggling. My heart sank in my chest, I knew something wasn’t right even then. Her tone was playful, buoyant and full of joy, like she’d never missed a moment of my life.
“Make sure you put your tooth under your pillow tonight, Deda Mihail will make sure the tooth fairy comes and nothing else!” She raised a single finger with a wink, posing for a moment before her face fell, her posture sank and she fell back into the armchair a tad, growing smaller as she coughed. After a moment, she cleared her throat with a quiet dignity and made sure the hand she coughed into went out of shot as she fixated on the camera with a weak smile.
“Mommy loves you, my little crown prince. Close your eyes and breathe with me…”
I looked at my Grandfather and with tears streaming down his face and a bite on his lip; he put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. I did as I was told and took a long breath in, the air cold and filling my lungs, intoxicating me as I heard her words. The same words i’d come to hear at the end of every video she recorded:
“I’ll always be with you.”
-
And so it went. For every milestone I undertook, there was an accompanying video. When I graduated middle school, when I rode my first bike… even when I broke my first bone, she had a video ready.
I was around 11, when biking home from school, I collided with a speeding driver. The bastard didn’t even stop as my small body careened over his windscreen, rolled over the hood and smashed into the concrete, tearing my right arm to pieces.
Passers-by said it was a freak accident; that the car just appeared out of nowhere and then vanished. But hell, what do hit & run drivers do? Speed, speed, speed.
Medicated up to my eyes and sitting up in hospital, Grandpa handed me a mini-dvd player and the familiar face shot up. I could never tell you in those earlier videos if these were done back to back or months apart, but Mom still looked radiant… albeit with more coughing in each iteration.
“Hi pumpkin, it’s mommy! Though, i’m sure by now you’re probably cringing at the mere mention of me referring to myself that way… oh god, do people still say cringe? It’s hard to know what the world you’re in is like anymore, but moms are never supposed to be cool, are they?” She chuckled, a faraway look in her eye as the pit of my stomach expanded.
“No…” I thought, tears in my eyes, gripping the sheets with my good hand. “I WANT you to say those things. I WANT you to embarrass me…”
“Well, if you’re watching this, then you’ve broken your first bone… I hope it’s a bit later in life and not when you’re so upset you can’t even hear me. But sweetie, this is an important life lesson that I wanted to be there for; pain happens. It’s a part of our world, and everyone in it must experience it. Sometimes it’s physical, like now when your body hurts so much that you wanna yell and cry out. Sometimes it’s emotional, which you get when someone upsets you, hurts your feelings… something you might also feel from seeing my face right now, which I’m sorry for.” She trailed off, that weak smile plastered across her face like the greatest lie ever told. She took a breath, and I heard the quivers in her voice. Both from sadness and from sickness. “BUT, you are my little crown prince, and while you’re watching the throne, I know you’ll do great things and overcome ANYTHING that stands in your way. You know why?”
“Why…” I breathed, my body radiating with hot pain but my heart aching. I leaned in as she leaned in, like sharing a secret only we would ever know.
“Because you’re my son and my love for you will push you to do anything.” She whispered, my face involuntarily growing into a smile without even realising.
“Just don’t look at the wall behind me.”
My eyes were fixed on hers, a small sliver of the background visible behind her ear. As my eyes slowly broke from her gaze and travelled over, she spoke again.
“DON’T.” A frantic whisper escaped her lips. My eyes snapped back as a pale shade shifted out of sight.
Blinking once, I saw she was sitting back in the chair, talking as if nothing had happened. Had I dozed off? I was on high pain medication; it wasn’t impossible…
“I’m running out of time, these are only supposed to be short, so i’ll finish up here. “Mommy loves you, my little crown prince! Close your eyes and breathe with me…”
Again, I did as instructed and heard a distinct creaking sound from the speakers, undoubtedly her settling into her chair.
“I’ll always be with you.”
-
So the years went, fewer milestone videos popped up. Some of them were simply mundane or not that noteworthy. Not why we’re here. But the usual events; first day as a freshman, last day as a senior, prom night and even an embarrassing one wherein a 17-year-old me had the most uncomfortable 15 minutes of being explained dating etiquette and safe sex by my long-gone mother.
By the time I’d reached 21, only four tapes remained. Grandpa Mihail had passed and Grandma Suza was getting on, so they were given to me with the obvious instruction to not watch them until the time was right.
And this is the part where things take a turn.
A bad breakup, bad life choices, even worse friendship choices with substances readily available, a lifetime of insecurities stemming from no parental figures (all the love in the world to my grandparents, but it’s not the same) and a series of videos from your long-dead mom are enough to fuck anyone up.
So, I grabbed a bottle, some pills and put the next video in, planning to binge them before I took my leave. I mean, fuck it, what’s the harm if I’m ending it all, right?
The video flickered and cast a long shadow across my dismal apartment before the visage of my mom came into focus.
It’d been a couple of years since the last video and in my emotionally unstable, drunken state… I was not prepared for what I saw.
Emaciated, sunken eyes and a slack jaw, her tongue hanging out and drooping to the bottom of her chin, thick pungent saliva with her concave chest heaving under the weight of the oxygen machine wrapped around her face. A looming shadow with two bright blue orbs for eyes and jagged pillars for teeth, wrapping its arms around her.
It locked eyes with me and cocked its head to the side.
“NEW.” It croaked, my skin bubbling with fear and chilling my blood, I had never felt a terror like it.
It felt like it knew me and saw into me.
I recoiled and in my cocktail of fear and horror, retched up everything I’d downed not 10 minutes earlier. A torrid mixture of bile, acid, pills and booze spread over my carpet as tears ran down my face. My stomach ached and every cell in my body screamed at me in protest. The thoughts swirling in my thick skull were that of disappointment, disgust and repulsiveness. I felt weak, alone and broken as I collapsed onto the floor in the fetal position, sobbing.
“Sweetie, it’s Mom.”
Through blurred eyes and a haze of pain, I looked at the TV half expecting some emaciated creature to lurch through, but there was my mom. She looked tired, her hair now matted to her head and exhaustion racking her bones, but beauty radiating through her as she held her hands in her lap and leaned forward, smiling.
“If you’re watching this… then things are bad. I don’t know how bad, but I can guess. Grandpa wouldn’t have let you watch this if you’d gotten your heart broken or were at that age where emotions are as high as a kite and just as volatile… so I can assume that, much like me, you’re in a bad place…” She coughed and I felt the need to sit up and give her my full attention, this woman no more than 6 years my senior frozen in time still finding ways to command my attention with her every word.
It was like I was 5 again.
“Sweetie, I know I can’t talk to you like a child anymore, so I won’t. Honestly, I’d been so excited to see you grow up, go through that phase where we bicker and argue over small things before finally settling in the longest and most beautiful phase of our family dynamic…” I watched her lips quiver and eyes glaze over, my own mirroring as she shakily concluded “The one where we’re best friends who always look out for each other.”
That broke me. Every emotion I’d trained myself to hide away when kids started asking questions I couldn’t answer, situations I’d wanted my mom in, moments I felt alone… I let it out in one volatile evening of self healing, the words on that tape echoing in my head long after it stopped playing.
“The road ahead will be tough without me. It was always going to be. But, you’re the crown prince and you’ll eventually have that throne, survey your kingdom and know you can do ANYTHING and conquer ANYTHING… it’s getting closer now, but we still have some time left. So don’t let whatever is going on beat you, nor the thing after that. The Penguins didn’t, did they? I’m sure Grandpa told you, but they’re my favourite… those little birds share the burden of parenthood, walk over 100 miles and nearly starve to cultivate new life… I’d do all of that and more for you, honey. Because…”
She closed her eyes, and I did too, without prompting, we said it together;
“I’ll always be with you.”
-
It took time to get better. All things do. I would spend so many nights in withdrawal with the shakes, vomit, and staring up at a horrific beast looming over my bed. Like the thing on the tv but foggier, it’d imitate my movements and try to get closer. With every step, its eyes would glow just a bit brighter, everything else remaining shrouded in darkness, even if light passed through my curtains.
I don’t know how I made it through that time of my life.
One night, as it made its way to the foot of my bed, I closed my eyes and breathed on instinct, reciting my mother’s mantra. I suppose in moments of crisis; we turn to our most personal coping mechanisms and I wasn’t about to go back to the bottle. When I finished, it was gone.
Over the years, I completed my program, got clean and went through therapy to cope with the grief. When I hit 26, I met the 2nd most important woman in my life; Natalie. She knew what it was like to go through pain, to go through suffering alone. To play with the wrong demons.
We fell in love; we got engaged and eventually married. As she had been countless times before, mom was there to congratulate us.
Natalie had seen some tapes, but this was her first one that in its own way was directed to her. Mom was nearing the end by this point, her thin frame barely clinging to her always beautiful dresses and her skin beginning to stretch like paper. She took great gulps of air from the oxygen tank before talking, but somehow retained that exuberance she’d always had.
“I knew you’d find someone wonderful eventually, Nick. Penguins always find their mate for life and you’d be no exception!” She giggled through strained coughs, turning her head slightly as if she could see Natalie. “I don’t know you, but I bet you’re the most beautiful woman in the world if my crown prince chose you. Well, after me of course!” Another laugh, this time accompanied by tears from the two of us. “There’s just one more to go… So, look after each other. Love well and experience everything you can. And don’t forget…”
Natalie gripped my hand with her left, a hand on her bump with the right as we closed our eyes. I could hear the scratching sound more prominently now, but I kept my eyes shut, not wanting to ruin the moment.
“I’ll always be with you.”
-
We were so excited to have a baby. Natalie had come from a big family and was eager to start expanding our own. Even though I was reluctant, I couldn’t help but share in her enthusiasm when so many late nights were spent fawning over baby names, cute outfits and lofty plans for the future on how our kid would even behave around us. Determined to be “cool parents”.
But in between all of that, my mind would cast back to those tapes of my mom, the only parent I really knew. I wanted to use them as a guidebook for my own steps. She’d been such an integral part of life, it seemed… odd to not have her in it now.
Keeping the last tape separate, I re-watched the entire set one by one, reliving those moments I couldn’t truly appreciate until my own burgeoning journey into parenthood.
But when I got to the broken bone tape, I froze.
Once again, she leaned into the camera and whispered, eyes full of fright and panic.
“Don’t look.”
I pushed pause on the video and took a moment. Surely I was just highly medicated at the time, there couldn’t *really* be anything there, right?
So why was I so reluctant to move my eyes to the right to find out?
Taking a breath, I moved the video frame by frame and watched the corner where her face didn’t cover.
That shadow. That same fucking shadow. Looming in the background, eyes burning red with fury.
“DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK. DON’T LOOK.”
I jumped, the video was skipping, stuck on the sounds of my mother’s panic stricken voice begging me not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. I stared and watched this creature take confident, unnatural and twitchy strides from the background, getting ever closer to the camera. I saw the muscles on its face twist and undulate as it pressed its cheeks up into a twisted grin, the sight of rot and earth and unspeakable things in its mouth all displaying themselves in full glory as it intonated one word that sent screams through my home before shutting off.
“SOON.”
-
Natalie was 8 months gone, petite and a history of prior drug abuse. They said her heart just couldn’t take it, her body gave out, and that it was a miracle our daughter survived.
I took it all in and yet none of it as I cradled my entire universe in my arms, the second greatest woman I’d ever known now taken from me too.
“Phoebe.” I breathed, unable to take my eyes off of her perfect little face as she slept soundly just 12ft from her dead mother. “Her name is Phoebe, and she is the crown princess.”
Somewhere in the corner of my eye, a shadow cast itself over Natalie’s bed, right as they put the sheet over her.
From that night on, there would always be noises outside our home. Always faint howling. Always a solitary spot in the front of the property where no light could touch it.
For a while, I forgot about the videos. Forgot about everything that wasn’t Phoebe. Raising her became priority #1 and I would work any extra hours I needed to, give up any friendship I had to and spite myself in whatever way was necessary to ensure that my perfect girl slept soundly at night.
It wasn’t until Phoebe’s 2nd birthday last week that I finally got the courage to dig out the videos and watch the last one.
How many times had I sat in a home, emotionally destroyed and at a crossroads in my life, waiting to see this woman’s face and hope she’d somehow have the magic words to guide me?
As the picture flickered on, the logo shining up on screen; I cast my head back with a mixture of surprise and sadness as I realised the significance of the year;
I was older than her now.
“Hi sweetie, I guess we’ve finally reached the end, huh?”
Her voice sounded… younger. I looked down and saw her standing up. No chair or wallpaper in sight. It looked like she was recording this in her bedroom, a picture of health, all things considered. Her eyes red from crying but her voice unwavering, like she’d prepared these words carefully.
“This is technically the final video for you, but the first for me. Weird how this all works, but this is how it needs to happen… if you’re watching this, you’ve got your own little princess to protect. The crown prince has now become the king, and I couldn’t be prouder!” She beamed, but my stomach tightened at those words.
“Your own little princess.”
I breathed, my chest tightening. How did she know?
“I imagine you’re now wondering how I know. Well, that’s not the important part. What’s important is if you saw what you think you saw. Within the videos, between the frames. There is something lurking here, Nick. Something ancient.”
I felt the house shudder, settling into place, no doubt. But I couldn’t separate myself from the fear running through my body.
“It feeds on misfortune. It watches from the shadows and waits for small, tiny windows to make itself known. I don’t know where it came from or what it is, but I know what it wants…”
A rumbling behind me, the sound of wood splintering and creaking. The unmistakable sound of tapping that i’d heard every time we did the mantra at the end of a video. I was shaking, but I didn’t stop watching.
“It wants us, Nick. We seem to be a… source for it. When it finishes using us, it moves on. A long time ago... I was told that if I captured it in film, solidified it in these repeatable tapes, it would slow it down… maybe even stop it. I have no idea if it’ll work, but you deserve to know now that you can almost certainly see it too. Because if it doesn’t stop here, if YOU start to see it… start to experience misfortune…”
My heart skipped. Tripping over the stairs and narrowly missing cracking my skull as a child, losing my first tooth. The hit and run that shattered my arm, my first broken bone. Marrying and losing Natalie, my first love…
Oh no.
Oh god, no.
I willed my body to move, to leap out of the seat and rush to Phoebe’s room, but I had to hear the rest through, screaming at my mom to tell me the solution.
“When your Deda Mihail told me about our curse… how he took me in after my Father died... about how it passes from father to daughter, mother to son, and so forth… You can try to avoid it, but it always finds a way…" She looked down in shame, clutching at her sleeves. "Truth be told; I didn’t want to get pregnant. But, things have a way of happening and I knew I couldn’t give you up.” She glanced behind her, something off camera scaring her into grabbing at her arms and rubbing them, shame and fear on her face. “I’m so sorry, baby. But I want you to know that there is power in these words. In these videos. I will do EVERYTHING I can to protect you, just like I know you’ll protect your child. No matter who it hurts in the process. Because…”
One last time. I just had to close my eyes one last time and it would all be over.
I did it on instinct. It didn’t matter that there was a slew of sounds alerting me to an invading presence in my home. That it was rapidly approaching me.
All that mattered was the mantra.
“I’ll be here for you, always.”
But what I heard parroting me back was not my mother.
A guttural, inhuman voice barked back the phrase and I swear I felt its breath inches from my face. I felt eyes unrestricted by pupils or sockets spin around, focusing on my weakest point. But I didn’t waver.
After a few agonising moments, it darted away and out of view, leaving only the static of the TV to keep me aware that I wasn’t in fact dreaming.
As soon as I knew it was safe, I ran to Phoebe’s room and checked on her, convinced that she was next in a long line of losses. Convinced that some otherworldly spectre had taken her from me.
Convinced I would be alone again.
You can imagine my relief when I opened the door to find her softly sleeping, clutching her teddy bear with his own attached blankie. The same toy my mom had given me.
I looked at her with the enormity of the situation overshadowing me. The realisation she was the same age I was when my mom got diagnosed.
The realisation that soon, I would be the one making a slew of videos for milestones I’d never get to see her inherit.
My crown princesses’ kingdom of nightmares.
And I don’t know if this is what my mother intended, but I took those words at the end to heart.
“Protect your child. No matter who it hurts in the process.”
-
I’m sorry, everyone.
I don’t know HOW this translates across mediums, but there is power in describing an old and malevolent force. Just like there is seeing it in the corner of your eye or when you experience a lucky break from death. A mis-step here and a wrong turn there. You’ll always see it.
My mother gave up everything to buy time, give me the chance to right the wrongs and find a better way, a way that involves my daughter growing up with her father in her life, without the plague of whatever this is hanging over either of us.
Maybe you won’t be the one, maybe it will simply look at you and find you not to its liking as it did me that fateful night, inches away from my flesh and determining that I simply wasn’t “ripe enough” yet.
But someone will come across this, and it will bite. It will bite and never let go. Be it nightmares, sleep paralysis, a slew of unfortunate mishaps or something flitting in the corner of your eye, it’ll be there. Whatever it is.
Waiting.
I wish you well, and I hope you don’t judge me too harshly.
But to me and to Phoebe, family is everything.
So close your eyes and take a deep breath.
Because they’ll always be with you.

Timeline of Trump's Russia Connections from KGB Cultivation to United State President

Retreat, Hell - Episode

A/N: Hey, guys! Normally, I'd hold off until Saturday morning to post this, but I'm going to be busy the rest of the week and won't be able to do much posting, so here you guys go, a little ahead of schedule! Coming in at 16,673 words, it's not the longest episode ever, but it's still on the longer end!
In this episode, we get more running, a special marching cadence, and a few big reveals. Plus some bitter-sweet and happy squad feels at the end.
There are only two main episodes left in Act III, then we'll be back into the war with Act IV. I've already got a lot of Episode 16 written, though if past experience is any indication, it'll probably still double in word count from where I'm at now by the time I finish fleshing all the scenes out (and I'll always have a few unexpected scenes crop up before I'm done). How soon that'll all be done is still hard to say. Work is still keeping me pretty busy, and every time I think things are going to ease up or settle down and give me more free time, it doesn't.
On another note, I'd like to hear from you guys on what brought you to RH, or how you heard about the story, and what some of your favorite parts of it are so far. I can't promise I'll give you more of everything you love (and I can't please everyone), but knowing what you guys enjoy, and what you think is good helps me know what I'm doing right, and what I can focus on to continue doing good. I really look forward to hearing your feedback!
Here is the Patreon post for anyone who wants it in one solid block. Now, without further ado, what you're all here for:

Retreat, Hell – Episode 15

[First][Prev][Next]

“Give me that old Marine Corps Spirit!”

“GIVE ME THAT OLD MARINE CORPS SPIRIT!”

“’Cause it’s good enough for me!”

“’CAUSE IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!”

“It was good for Chesty Puller!”

“IT WAS GOOD FOR CHESTY PULLER!”

These people run too gods damned much! Rinn panted as the battalion thundered around the base on their morning death march. And oh, look, here we are, running past our barracks again, getting our hopes up just to dash them… He stifled a whine. At least today they’re cutting the run short for helicopter training. When this is all over and done with, I don’t ever want to run again…

***

“Hahahaha! And the looks on their faces when we went evasive!” Edison kissed his fingertips and flared his hand as he backed through the bunk room door. “Perfection!”

“Nah, the best part was old Shields here,” Kawalksi threw a heavy arm around Rinn’s shoulders, nearly causing him to stagger into the door frame. “He was all stony faced, like, ‘I’ve done this before, this is nothing exciting,’” Kawalski said, putting on a fake deep voice. “Even as the huey went sideways!”

“I was trying not to throw up…” Rinn admitted, flicking an ear at Kawalski as he trudged back to his rack, sore, tired, and trying to pretend that his legs weren’t all wobbly after the day’s aerial adventures.

“Yeah, what’s the straight-horned one with all the “that’s what she said” jokes, Tyaytyay?”

“Tyehtyeh,” Rinn corrected.

Kimber gave him a “whatever” wave. “Yeah, him. He puked his guts out all over the tarmac three feet after he got out when we landed.”

“Ha! He did better than old Stuffy McStuffyface, threw up in mid-air!” Kawalski chuckled. “Projectile vomited when we went evasive! Though, we were horizontal at the time, so it mostly just went straight out the door!”

“Mostly my ass!” Kimber said. “I was sitting at the down door when he spewed! He puked all over the back of my helmet!”

“Hahaha, yeah, it was great!” Kawalski grinned. “You should probably go clean that off, though…”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Rinn sighed as he popped his boots off, wriggling his toes and savoring their freedom. The human boots fit better than any other pair of boots he had ever been issued, and they had mostly broken in by this point, but they were still combat boots, and didn’t quite match his foot shape. He pulled his shower gear out of his pack, looking forward to a hot soak, only to watch a parade of four Marines scramble past, already half undressed and dibsing the showers first.

He sighed, setting his shower kit at the end of his rack before digging out a pen and notebook. It’s probably best to go last, anyway, now that we get more than five whole minutes of hot water… More time to soak.

“More English lessons?” Bradford asked, leaning over to look at his notebook as he flipped it open.

“Yeh,” he yipped, still amused the Gyani word for ‘yes’ was so close to an informal English word for the same.

“And what’s the word of the day?”

“What is the word for…” he frowned. “It is a place in a home where you build a fire…”

“A fireplace?” she asked.

He flicked an annoyed ear at her. Of course that would be a word they used… “Yes, but… no, that is not the meaning I’m looking for.”

“Mantle?”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not it, either. The place where the fire is, the foundation, the hearth.”

“The hearth?” she asked, and he sighed.

I should have just led with the word. The words were different, but the meanings were identical. Not everything translated so well, but many words did. “Yes, that is the word. Hirth…”

“Hearth,” she said, emphasizing the vowel sound.

“Hyarth.”

“No, no y, stop putting y’s in everything.”

“YI Dyon’t knyow whyat you myean,” he yipped in heavily accented English, flicking an ear at her and sticking out his tongue.

She laughed, then grabbed her pillow and swung it at his head, barely missing as he fell to the side. “Now try it again, you guber.”

“Ha-arth,” he said, drawing the vowel out as he sat up. “Harth.”

“Close enough,” she said, chuckling.

He flicked his ears up with a smile, and jotted down the phonetic spelling in Gyani.

“How did you say your word for it?”

“Sfyisch.”

“Ssfayeesh.”

“No, sfyisch.”

“Sfwitch?”

“No, it’s not a hard tch, it’s a softer sch.” He considered for a moment. “It’s like a hissing tch. And its yi,” he yipped the short vowel sound, “Not uuhhhhwwweeeee. Stop flapping your big, fat lips.”

“Hey, you got lips, too, dumbass!”

“Yeah, but they’re not so fat and poofy, like yours!” He flicked his ears at her. “You look like you got stung by a bee.” He flicked an ear to the side. “Or a dozen.”

This time, the pillow did catch his head, and sent him flopping to his rack. “Oof.”

“Who’s got big lips now, bitch!” she said, puffing her chest out and swaying her head back and forth.

“I don’t know, was that your lips or your pillow you hit me with,” he said, sticking his tongue out at her, promptly earning himself another bonk. “Oof.”

“And just for that, you’re gonna have to wait until I’m done with the shower,” she said, hopping up and snagging her toiletries bag as a gaggle of half-dressed Marines chased each other out of the head.

Rinn chuckled as he tossed her pillow back on her rack and sat back up. That’s just more time for me to soak…

“Hey, have you guys seen my Switch controllers?” Kimber asked, digging through his pack. “I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Where’d you have them last?” Dubois asked, not even looking up from the boot he was cleaning.

“I could have sworn I put them back in this pocket,” he said, tapping a pouch on his pack. “That’s where I keep them, but they’re not anywhere…”

“You can borrow mine,” Edison said, once again performing surgery on the squad’s GoPro. He gestured absently at his pack. “They’re in the clip-on bag, somewhere…”

“Thanks, man, but… I wanna find mine.”

“D’you think someone might’ve, like, grabbed ‘em by mistake, brah?” Stevens said, pulling on a clean shirt.

“Or not by mistake?” Miller asked.

“Yeah,” Elder said, looking up from his phone. “We had that platoon thief a while back, remember?”

“Dude, that’s why you need to carve your name into them,” Davies said, lying on his rack playing his own Switch. He lifted his hands to show his name carved into the same kind of controllers Rinn had seen Kimber using. “That’s what I did with mine.”
“I had my name on them, man, in sharpie.”

“Yeah, but sharpie can come off,” Edison said, still focused on the GoPro. “Alcohol or a dry-erase marker can do the trick.”

Kimber grumbled something, and started expanding his search area.

“Hey, Shields,” Kawalski said, dropping down next to him. He only had his boxers on, and was still a little damp from the shower. “Teach me more keshmin swear words! How do you say fucknugget?”

Rinn raised an ear and an eyebrow at him. “We don’t have that one.”

“Well, come on, then, what else have you got? I’ve got a new one for you! ‘Twat!’” Kawalski grinned. “Means ‘pussy’ in English English.”

Rinn flicked his ear. “Is that how you use your words words, when walking down the street street?”

Kawalski laughed. “No, fuck face, it’s English spoken by the English, as opposed to real English spoken by Americans.”

Rinn paused, pen in mid-air, and stared straight ahead for a moment. “Wot?”

“Kawalski, you dumbass, the English invented the English language,” Dubois said. Rinn didn’t even need to look at him, he could hear the eye-roll.

“Guys! Guys!” Gomez stuck his head out of their supply fort. “I found some boxes we missed! They’re full of fucking duct tape!”

“No shit?” Kawalski said, immediately distracted by the prospect of creative acquisition. “How much?”

“I dunno how we missed it, hoss, there’s boxes and boxes of this stuff! Different colors, too!”

“Sweet! Grab us all a roll! Jabs, too!” Kawalski paused, then stood up. “What all colors are there?”

“Dunno yet, I haven’t gone through all the boxes, but there’s a few at least.”

“Lemme see…” Kawalski disappeared into the fort. “How the hell did we miss all this… Oh, I see, it got buried behind the fuck tent.”

Dubois looked up. “Why do you have a fuck tent?!”

“Dude, you always need a fuck tent!”

“Who the fuck are you fucking!?”

“Your mother! Heheheh!”

***

Rinn pulled the earmuffs off his head as the firing line was declared cold. The new earmuffs they had been given had deeper cups with more room for his ears, but they still didn’t fit well. We’ll have to talk to somebody about getting some properly designed for us, he thought as he trudged down range to collect his targets. The Marines had scrounged up a few more of their pop-up metal targets for the “new” range, but they were mostly still shooting at paper targets tacked to wooden frames.

Back at the tables behind the firing line, Rinn looked over the keshmin targets with a pleased quirk to his ears. Their scores were not anything the Marines would consider good, by any means, but even the grizzled Gunnery Sergeant running the range begrudgingly nodded his approval at them being passable. Barely.

Not bad at all, for what little training we’ve managed to fit in around everything else. Lord Anyo is even showing a particular knack for the weapons, at least on the fixed range. Rinn was pleased to note that his own scores had surpassed Anyo’s on the dynamic range, much to the Knight Captain’s chagrin.

Lunch consisted of MREs at the range, and Rinn once again got to demonstrate his “advanced knowledge” of human equipment to the other keshmin, and warned them away from the less favorable MREs. Not that I’ve actually tried many of them, but our pallets seem to match close enough that I’ll take the Marines at their word.

The lunch break was short, barely enough time to heat the food and gulp it down, before they were hurried off to the next event on the range, this one pushing the artificers to their magical limits.

“Cease fire! Cease fiiire!”

Rinn panted, overheated and out of breath, as he lowered his stave. The targets down range were shredded, both by gunfire and spellfire, but this wasn’t a measure of accuracy.

“Most impressive, Ahyat,” Yeshai said as Rinn stepped back from the firing line. “How many armor enhancements were you able to maintain?”

“All twelve of them, Your Grace,” Rinn said, still trying to catch his breath. “But I couldn’t keep up with the machine guns. I could barely keep up with one, nevermind three!” He shook his head, making sure to close his mouth to keep his tongue from lolling, though his ears still flopped a bit. “The best I could do was one enhancement every fifth or sixth shot with two. One in a dozen with three.”

Yeshai snorted. “No worse than anyone else so far, and you did it while maintaining all armor enhancements, a very fine shield, and respectable spellfire of your own.” He flicked an ear. “Any of us might surpass you in single skills, but on the whole, I’d dare say you’re the best of us, and by no small margin.”

“You honor me, your grace,” Rinn said, giving him a bow.

“Your service honors the kingdom,” Yeshai replied, dipping his head in return.

Straightening, Rinn couldn’t miss Anyo glaring at him, but he pointedly ignored the Earl. Sinyan had gone before Rinn, but Anyo had gone before him, and all but confirmed Rinn’s suspicions that the Knight Captain was a sparker.

“And who’s our next contestant?” Gunnery Sergeant Valdez called as Rinn flopped down next to Bradford, happily guzzling the bottle of water she handed him.

“Tyehtyeh, that’s you!” Yenyed called, glaring at the oblivious artificer.

“Oh, right!” Tyehtyeh said, looking up from the spellstructs he had been studying. He barely even put on his false-deep voice.

“Oh, here we go…” Bradford muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t be spiteful,” Rinn said, flicking her ear with his tail. She swiped at the offending appendage and tried to grab it, but he quickly snatched it out of her reach. “He’s made incredlbe progress these last two weeks. He hasn’t admitted it, but I’m fairly certain he’s had no formal education as an artificer, or even at all.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “So his bluster’s all just a show, deflecting from his … ignorance?”

He dipped his head with an affirmative ear flick. “And the more I give him to study, the less he remembers to put on the act.”

“Huh…” Bradford said, giving Tyehtyeh a newly appraising look.

“Line ready?” Valdez called out. “Shooter’s stand-by! FIIIRE!”

Tyehtyeh immediately popped up a shield and sent a triple burst of tight, powerful firebursts down range, before the Marines could rack their bolts and engage. Brief flashes of light rolled down the line as armor enhancements went up.

He still needs to kill that startup flare, but at least he’s cut out the continual glow, and his efficiency is a hundred fold better. He’s barely leaking any mana!

Tyehtyeh hesitated as the rifles opened up, several rounds zipping down range unseen. He rolled his ears, shifted his feet, and every single shot became a visible bolt, glowing as it snapped down range.

More rifles opened up, then a machine gun, then two, then tree. Rinn’s ears shot up under his earmuffs. Every single round glowed.

Then Tyehtyeh brought his stave to bear and let off a barrage that made Rinn’s spellfire look like a peashooter.

“CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIIRE!” Valdez called as the targets disappeared into several plumes of splinters and smoke.

“Holy shit!” Bradford said. “He hits like an artillery piece!”

Rinn looked at her, then to Tyehtyeh, then to Yeshai and the other keshmin. A small part of his mind was pleased to note that he wasn’t the only one whose jaw was hanging open.

“Did I mess up again?” Tyehtyeh asked, sheepishly scratching at the base of a horn.

Yeshai shook his head, the first to collect himself. “No. No, you didn’t.” He looked at Rinn, forcing the field artificer to collect himself. “Second Artificer, you wouldn’t happen to have a metering artifice in your repertoire, would you?”

He cocked an ear to the side, wondering what the Duke was getting at, before it clicked. “Yes, your grace, I do.…” he stood up, retrieving his stave, and walked over to Tyehtyeh with Yeshai. The Marines and other nobles muttered amongst themselves in their separate groups as Tyehtyeh squirmed under the unexpected attention.

“Second Artificer Tyehtyeh, have you ever been officially metered?” Yeshai asked, stopping in front of him.

“Well, ah, no, Your Grace,” Tyehtyeh said, scratching at the base of a horn. “Militia really only ever cared that I could sling spells, didn’t much care for any of the details.”

“I suspected as much,” Yeshai said, dipping his head in a small nod. He flicked an ear at Rinn, then back to Tyehtyeh. “Second Artificer Ahyat, if you would be so kind.”

Rinn nodded and stepped forward, his stave held low in one hand. He didn’t really need it to run this particular artifice, but he suspected the extra precision and peak range it allowed would be useful.

“What’s this, then?” Valdez asked, stepping up to the line.

“The lad has never been officially metered,” Yeshai said, waving a hand at Tyehtyeh, an exaggerated gesture probably for the human’s benefit. “He has no idea how powerful he actually is. We’re about to find out.”

“Will this hurt?” Tyehtyeh asked, his ears nervously twitching back.

“Of course not,” Rinn said. “You don’t even really need to do anything. Just passively channel a mana stream.” He paused. “Down range, if you please.”

“Right,” Tyehtyeh said, turning to point a hand down range. Rinn brought up the metering artifice, set so the measurements were visible in the air. At first, there was nothing, then Tyehtyeh closed his eyes and everything spiked.

“Above and below…” Yeshai muttered as Rinn scrabbled to shift the ranges the meter was displaying. Tyehtyeh blew past the maximum levels. Twice. “You’re a gods-damned savant!”

“What?!” Tyehtyeh squeaked, spinning around and cutting off the mana stream.

“Not just a savant,” Rinn said, his eyes and ears locked on the measurements his artifice was still displaying. “Your Grace, he’s one of the most powerful savants to ever live.”

“What?!” Tyehtyeh said again, this time with a little less squeak. “That can’t be right…”

Yeshai, turned to Valdez. “Gunnery Sergeant, we are done here for today. We need to do a complete examination and assessment of Second Artificer Tyehtyeh’s abilities, and I need to write to the King.”

****

Scrubbing her face, Bradford trudged around the corner of a building on her way back to the barracks, after dark, and smacked right into someone. “Oh, shit!” she said, stumbling back while fumbling out to catch the other person before they fell.

Bradford kept her balance. The other person he the ground with a yipped, “Oof.”

Looking down, horrified at her clumsy inattentiveness, she found Rinn glaring up at her. “I was hoping to run into you on my way back, but I didn’t mean for you to take it literally!”

She laughed, reaching down to help him up. “Sorry, I’m just a little brain-dead right now.”

“Oh,” he said, standing and dusting himself off. He flicked an ear at her. “I couldn’t tell the difference.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, giving him a shove that sent him staggering and nearly back into the dirt.

“Abuse!” he cried, struggling not to laugh. “Help! Help! I’m being abused!”

Bradford just continued walking, flipping him the bird over her shoulder.

“That rough a day?” he asked, jogging briefly to catch up. “Too much going on on your surprise afternoon off?”

“Pff, I wish.” She sighed, waving at the barracks ahead of them in the distance. “Most of the guys got the rest of the day off, thanks to Tyehtyeh, but not me.” She shook her head. “Nooo, I’m a Sergeant now, with ‘field experience,’” she said, with air quotes. “Since I happened to be free for the afternoon, I got pulled into another planning meeting for the field exercise we’re doing at the end of the week.” She shook her head. “Normally, these things are all planned out weeks in advance, but now we’re trying to cram that all into a few days…. Ugh!” she scrubbed her face again, heaving a sigh. “What about you? How was your afternoon?”

Rinn sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Probably not much better.” His ears twitched, and he shook his head, letting them flop around. “More testing with metering artifices more precise and capable than mine will be required to know his exact power, but between myself, the Duke, and the other nobles, we were able to determine that Tyehtyeh is a savant, and one of the most powerful to ever live. There are two, maybe three other savants alive who are more powerful than him, and those not by much.” He scrunched his snout. “And he has the education of a quillhog farmer!”

Bradford laughed. “Sounds like someone’s a little pissed off that their spot as the top artificer has been stolen by an uneducated bumpkin.”

“I’m not pissed off!” Rinn snapped. “Not about that, anyway,” he sighed, tugging at a horn. “It’s just- I’ve taught Tyehtyeh a hundred times more in the last few weeks than anyone else has ever taught him. Almost everything he knows, he learned on his own! He’s not just a savant, he’s not just one of the most powerful savants to ever live. I have to admit, he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

“Oh, really?” Bradford asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yes!” Rinn rolled his ears. “Now, of course, he doesn’t act like it at all, not in the least, because he has the education of a quillhog farmer! But instead of a bumbling idiot who can barely figure out which end of his pike to point at the enemy, he taught himself how to do magic from scratch, using a bare handful of spells he was shown as an example, and a few concepts he overheard in conversation.”

“Damn,” Bradford said, shaking her head. “Imagine what he could do if someone taught him.”

Rinn vigorously nodded his head, eyes wide and ears up. “That’s exactly what we just saw today! And if he had a proper education.…” He shook his head. “The Duke has written his father and the King, and the nobles of are two minds about what to do with Tyehtyeh. On the one hand, he should be sent to a university, trained and educated. In time, he might become the most powerful savant to ever live!”

“On the other hand, he’s useful now?”

“Yes.” He sighed. “The education he should get would take years, when he is already a powerful battlefield savant, and we are in desperate need of every advantage in the war.”

“So what are they going to do with him?”

“I don’t know. The Duke has a lot of influence to sway that decision, but it will not be made by him. That is for his father, Lord General Yangri, and the King to decide.” He sighed. “Until that decision is made, I will be continuing my tutelage of Tyehtyeh, and the other artificers will provide selections of well-designed spell structures for him to study and master.”

“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to worry about tomorrow,” she said as he opened the door to their barracks and waved her in. “It’s late enough as it is.”

“Indeed,” he said, following her through the door. His ears twitched as they approached the bunk room. Bradford could here muffled shouts and laughter coming from inside.

Glancing at Rinn, who gave her a smirking flick of an ear, she opened the door. The room fell to immediate silence as it swung open, the bright light of the hallway casting a sharp outline into the dimmed room.

Inside, every other member of Second Squad was wearing assorted styles and colors of masks made out of duct tape. The diversity of styles included cut-out or molded eye holes, teeth, full cheek guards, bikers goggles, a medieval doctor’s beak, mohawks, and more. Holding a wild medley of cardboard-and-duct-tape melee weapons, they were clad in little else besides a chaotic mix of speedos, diapers, vests, and/or a few get-ups that looked suspiciously like pleasure harnesses, all made from a rainbow of duct tape.

In the dim light and resounding silence, they all turned to stare at the door.

Bradford slowly cast her gaze across them as she looked from one side of the room to the other, the Marines all frozen and staring at her in silence, before she quietly backed out and shut the door.

“We’re going somewhere else for a while,” she said, still staring at the door she firmly held shut.

Rinn’s ears, held straight up, swiveled to point behind him. “That… That sounds like an excellent idea…”

“Yeah…” she said, releasing the door and pulling herself away. She looked at Rinn. “Anyone ever show you how to play Xbox?”

“I can’t say that I have,” he said as she pointedly ignored what sounded like Kawalski’s muted shouting behind the door.

“Sounds like a great time to learn,” she said as muffled chaos exploded behind the door. She turned and headed towards the common room. “C’mon, I’ll teach you how to play Call of Duty, and we can see what other games they managed to snag. I haven’t had time to play anything since they set the system up.”

***

Rinn fidgeted as Echo Company formed up outside their barracks complex. He was nervous. First Sergeant Khatri had found out about his cadence project. He was nervous because he expected to be called on to lead the whole company through his new cadence.

He was also nervous because he was the one who told First Sergeant Khatri about it the night before. That’s why he had run into Bradford on the way back to the barracks. He gave a silent prayer to all the gods above and all the gods below that the squad wouldn’t find out.

“Company! Atten-hut!” Rinn snapped to attention with the other Marines as Khatri marched out in front of them. “Marines! It has come to my attention that one of our augments has been undertaking a little cadence project, translating a Ganlin marching song into a Marine Corps cadence. Is this true, Second Artificer Ahyat?”

Rinn had to struggle to keep his ears from plastering back against his skull. “Yes, First Sergeant!”

“And it is my understanding that it is in a workable state. Is this true, Second Artificer Ahyat?”

Rinn hesitated. He swore he could hear a pin drop. “Yes, First Sergeant!”

“Outstanding! Now, as you all know, I take great pride and joy in a proper marching cadence, and to hear this warms my heart.” He clutched a hand to his chest for emphasis. “The deep, sub-cockle regions of it. Second Artificer Ahyat, you will be leading us in this cadence today!”

“Yes, First Sergeant!”

With the closest Rinn had ever seen Khatri come to a smile, the First Sergeant made a crisp about face and saluted Captain Spader. “The company is formed and ready, sir!”

“Very well. Get them moving, First Sergeant.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Khatri pivoted and marched to his place in the column. “Company! Forward! March!”

Feet crunched on gravel and packed dirt as Echo Company stepped off. Khatri called out a basic cadence as he turned their column out of their little assembly area, what the Marines had started calling the grinder, and onto the road.

“Ahyat!” Khatri shouted as the last of the Marines snaked onto the road. “Sound off!”

Rinn cleared his throat. “Yipe! Yipe! Yegh!” he shouted, the corners of his mouth twitching as the Marines echoed back the nonsense sounds. Here we go, he thought, taking a deep breath.

“I left my heart in San’Riiaaaaa!” he called out in English. His t’s were still a little soft, and he still dragged out his vowels a bit longer than he should, but his accent was still clear.

“I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAAA!” The Marines echoed back, and he could hear the surprise in their voices. He smiled and called the next line.

“I left my heart to heed the caaaall!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO HEED THE CAAAALL!” The Marines’ voices were stronger, more certain, adapting quickly.

“I left my heart to shield her theerre!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO SHIELD HER THEERRE!”

“I left my heart to goo to waaaar!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO GO TO WAAAAR!”

“Chorus!” he shouted, before taking another breath.

“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”

He closed his eyes for a beat. He could already tell his throat was going to be sore when this was all done, but he wasn’t going to bungle it. Another breath, and he shouted again.

“I found my boots in Rotiyiiiin!”

“I FOUND MY BOOTS IN ROTIYIIIN!”

“I learned to march in formatioon!”

“I LEARNED TO MARCH IN FORMATIOON!”

“In line and square and in colummn!”

“IN LINE AND SQUARE AND IN COLUMMN!”

“To bear my heart in San’Riiaa!”

“TO BEAR MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAA!”

This time, a few Marines joined in on the long notes of the chorus.

“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”

A few more had joined before the chorus had finished.

“I donned my armor in Toiyooo!”

“I DONNED MY ARMOR IN TOIYOOO!”

“I wrapped myself in clooth and steeeel!”

“I WRAPPED MYSELF IN CLOOTH AND STEEEEL!”

“Re-enforced with maail and speeell!”

“RE-ENFORCED WITH MAAIL AND SPEEELL!”

“To shield my heart in San’Riiaaa!”

“TO SHIELD MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”

Marine voices started to overpower his as he drove into the chorus once more.

“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”

“I grabbed my pike in Mol’Raiii!”

“I GRABBED MY PIKE IN MOL’RAIII!”

“Enchanted bright and shaarp of biiite!”

“ENCHANTED BRIGHT AND SHAARP OF BIIITE!”

“I lift it up and hoold it hiiigh!”

“I LIFT IT UP AND HOOLD IT HIIIGH!”

“To guard my heart in San’Riiaaa!”

“TO GUARD MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”

The Marines had picked up the chorus this time, and he could barely hear his own voice over theirs.

“We carry on the looong campaaaign!
We steel our hearts and maaarch aloooong!
To keep the war awaay from hooome!
We raise our pikes and neeever yieeeld!
‘Til we’ve freed the yoke from all Gahlaaa!”

“I earned my strips in Riiun Paaass!”

“Blood stripes!” someone shouted in the brief gap before the rest of the company echoed back.

“I EARNED MY STRIPS IN RIIUN PAAASS!”

“At Koilay, Bruhl, and Sai’Li’Unnn!”

“AT KOILAY, BRUHL, AND SAI’LI’UNNN!”

“In blood and fire I baattle throuuuugh!”

“IN BLOOD AND FIRE I BAATTLE THROUUUUGH!”

“To win my heart in San’Riiaaa!”

“TO WIN MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”

This time the Marines beat him to the chorus, and he straightened in pride as voice was drowned out by a company two hundred strong.

“WE CARRY ON THE LOOONG CAMPAAAIGN!
WE STEEL OUR HEARTS AND MAAARCH ALOOOONG!
TO KEEP THE WAR AWAAY FROM HOOOME!
WE RAISE OUR PIKES AND NEEEVER YIEEELD!
‘TIL WE’VE FREED THE YOKE FROM ALL GAHLAAA!”

“I yearn to see my heaarth and hooome!”

“I YEARN TO SEE MY HEAARTH AND HOOOME!”

“Family, friends, and soomeone mooore!”

“FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND SOOMEONE MOOORE!”

“I promise one day too retuuurn!”

“I PROMISE ONE DAY TOO RETUUURN!”

“To see my heart in San’Riiaaa!”

“TO SEE MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAA!”

“WE CARRY ON THE LOOONG CAMPAAAIGN!
WE STEEL OUR HEARTS AND MAAARCH ALOOOONG!
TO KEEP THE WAR AWAAY FROM HOOOME!
WE RAISE OUR PIKES AND NEEEVER YIEEELD!
‘TIL WE’VE FREED THE YOKE FROM ALL GAHLAAA!”

“I left my heart in San’Riiaaaaa!”

“I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN’RIIAAAA!”

“I left my heart to heeed the caaaall!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO HEEED THE CAAAALL!”

“I left my heart to shield her theerre!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO SHIELD HER THEERRE!”

“I left my heart to go to waaaar!”

“I LEFT MY HEART TO GO TO WAAAAR!”

He held the last note to signal the end of the cadence. The Marines copied the long note, and it trailed off as they made the final turn, approaching the rest of the battalion’s formation. The First Sergeant timed that well… he thought, but felt one last call was needed. “Royal Host, Never Yield! Two-Five!”

“RETREAT, HELL!”

“Company! Halt!”

***

“Guh, my head feels like mush,” Bradford said as they trudged into the gym. “I swear to god, if I have to go to one more strategy seminar or training planning session, my brains will all ooze out of my head and have to be mopped up off the floor…”

“Don’t worry, Jabs,” Edison said, tapping her arm. “We’ve got your favorite activity to make up for it: Picking up heavy things and putting them back down.”

“Damn straight!” she laughed.

“Raaawwwgh!” Edison said, flexing his arms in front of him. “She-Hulk STRONG!”

Laughing, she gave him a shove hard enough to send him staggering off to the side. “Stronger than you, pencil-arms.”

“Why do we keep having to sit through all these seminars, anyway?” Kimber asked. “We’re Marines. You don’t put us in classrooms. You give us a gun, and point us at whatever you need destroyed.”

“It’s to figure out how to train the next guys,” Bradford said, stepping over to a weight bench. “Got my spot?” Rinn and Edison paired up by a couple of benches by the dumbbell rack nearby while the rest of the squad dispersed through the gym.

“Sure,” Kimber said, stepping over to the weight rack. “How much to start?”

“Fifty on the bar to warm up a bit, then up from there.”

“Cool,” he said, grabbing a weight. “And what do you mean, figure out how to train the next guys?”

“The next guys,” she said, locking a weight on her side of the bar, then settling down on the bench. “The next group of Marines and Artificers, or Soldiers and Artificers, or whoever the fuck else gets sent through this program.” She took a grip on the bar as Kimber moved into position at the head of the bench, and with barely a grunt she heaved it off the rack and started doing reps.

“When did we get put into a program?” Kimber asked.

“We’re not in a… program,” Bradford grunted out between reps. “We’re… pathfinding it. The training program… that integrates artificers and the U.S. military.”

After several reps, she shoved the bar back up on the racks and stood up, wiping sweat off with a towel as she switched places with Kimber.

“You think they’re making this a program?” Kimber asked, heaving the bar off the rack and starting his own set of reps.

“Fuck yeah, they are. No putting that cat back in the bag. We’re just kind of the pilot, fumbling our way through, figuring shit out for the people that’ll come next.”

“Hadn’t really thought of that,” Kimber said, putting the bar back up on the rack after his set.

Bradford snorted as she grabbed more weight for the bar. “You’re a Marine. You don’t get paid to think. Good thing, too,” she winked at him.

“Damn straight!” he laughed, locking a matching weight on the other side of the bar and moving back to the spotter position.

Their conversation tapered mostly to insults and encouragement as they added more weight with each set.

They were just locking another set of weights on the bar when Kawalski called over. “Kimber! We need you! Gomer thinks he’s the wrestling champion!”

Kimber glanced back at Bradford, but Edison spoke up. “Go ahead, man, I’ll spot for her.”

“Ha!” Bradford snorted. “Spotter needs to be able to at least help lift the weight that’s being benched, and that ain’t happening with your pencil arms, and I could probably bench Ahyat for reps.” She glanced at him. “No offense.”

He shook his head with a dismissive ear flick. “None taken.”

“Ha, I bet you could!” Edison said.

“Kimber!”

“I can’t, man! Jabs is gonna bench Shields!”

“What?!”

“Jabs is gonna bench Shields!”

Bradford laughed, glancing at a bewildered Rinn.

“Man, I gotta see this,” Elder said, elbowing his way to the front of the crowd that spontaneously formed around the weight bench. It felt like half of Echo Company was there.

“Hey, how many reps you bet she can do with him?” Kawalski asked, hustling the crowd even as it formed.

Bradford looked at Rinn again as a pair of Marines lifted the bar out of the way. He was shoved towards the bench, and his ears drooped in defeat.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not benching him.”

“But, Jabs-“ Kimber said, before she interrupted him.

“Dude. He’s, what, one ten?” She raised an eyebrow at Rinn. “One fifteen, soaking wet, with a brick in your pocket?” He shrugged his ears, flicking the end of his tail at her. “I just repped one thirty,” she said, pointing her thumb at the bar, “And upped it to one forty-five. I’ve got nothing to prove by benching Ahyat.”

“Aw, c’mon, Jabs,” Kawalski said. “It’s not about provin’ nothin’, it’s about bein’ funny!”

“I said no, Kawalski.”
[First][Prev][Next]
Continued in comments...

Why did the garbagemen start coming in the dead of night?

I've been losing an average of 30 minutes of sleep every night for the past 10 days.
Now I’m down to a paltry 4 hours and 30 minutes, my walls are beginning to shift and my vision is blurring.
I have to focus. I NEED to focus.
Someone out there has to know.
Does anyone know why the garbage collectors have switched to the night shift?
Even asking it sends shivers down my spine. It’s late and soon I will hear them turn up to collect. I can’t sleep upstairs anymore, not where they can see me.
Now I sleep in the living room with my gun propped up against my shoulder, the weight a stern reminder that I am present.
I am awake.
I am a threat to them.
They won’t try anything if I’m a threat to them, right?
Fuck, I’m sorry. Let me explain.
My name is Tyson. I’m a farmer with a thriving family, a loving wife and two bright young boys. We live in a very remote area that requires a significant amount of divergence for basic services. I won’t say where, I won’t risk my family or my business, especially knowing what kind of armchair detectives there are out there. I respect what you all do and fear you in equal measure. So I’d rather throw you a bone you can thoroughly chew on as opposed to delving into mine and my famili’s personal info.
What I can tell you is this patch of land has been in my family for six generations, was not acquired illegally, built on sacred land, and to the best of my knowledge has NEVER had a violent occurrence or bloodshed.
We’re normal, hardworking folks who have always tried to do right.
Which makes what is going on here all the more difficult to understand, to quantify and reason with when the basic logic gives way.
I hear you, you’re undoubtedly scratching your heads and asking “why are garbage collectors such an issue?” and I don’t blame you. I’ll get to that.
Something shifted by the gates. No sound, can’t be the garbagemen, you hear them a mile off.
They’re not subtle about making their presence known.
The first night they turned up was so startling that I honest to god thought we were being robbed by the most unprofessional thieves this part of the world had ever birthed. Rambunctious, loud and borderline jovial in their candour.
It was always the same. Each and every time.
The sounds of the huge mechanical vehicle roaring as it drove up my dirt road, crushing twigs and kicking up dirt as it ground to a stop by the gates some 50ft from my front door.
Two thuds, boots hitting the ground, stumbling over to the main gate where our trash was left for the garbagemen on a Tuesday. Usually a couple of surly men got out, grunted, and hauled ass out of the area as soon as possible.
These two? Couldn’t have been happier to be there from the sounds of things. Young men, the smiles almost visible in their tone;
“This the one, Bill? Looks ready to me!”
“I reckon it is, Jeff! Let’s get ‘er done!”
A laugh, a high five, the sounds of something being dragged and thrown into the truck before they’d back out of the driveway and go off into the night.
Unusual, right? My wife & kids certainly thought so, especially when the trash was still there the next morning.
“Maybe they were some weird kids pulling a prank?” My wife Lucy remarked, taking a sip from her coffee and glancing nervously at the window. I think she was saying it more for our boys benefit than our own. I nodded and ushered them away from the windows, told them to go play.
The next night, it happened again. No specific time so much as that dead of night period between 1am and 3am when the world falls totally silent around you. None of our animals made a peep during that time frame, nor did we dare to.
Because when we heard them roll up again, we were paralysed with fear.
It took a few minutes to realise it, but when I looked to my wife and she returned my fearful glance with a wide-eyed stare and a nod, we scooped up the boys and huddled in our bed.
The exact same sounds. The exact same timed footsteps. The exact same conversation.
We heard them drag something wet into the truck before leaving after maybe 15 minutes. My younger boy Jace was always anxious and hearing this uncanny valley shit at his age sent him into a panic attack. We spent the remaining time soothing him while my older son Travis took to peering through the window with me.
Our pig pen that lay some 40ft to the right of the house had the door ripped off the hinges and a blood trail leading from the entrance all the way to the farm gates where the garbagemen had been.
When we mustered up the courage to inspect further, the pigs were silent, unmoving and staring at the long dirt road that lead away from the home, the tall trees that littered our farm looming overhead as if to silence them from telling what they’d seen.
We tried calling the city council to complain, but they were as perplexed as we were, said trash pickup day was still Tuesday and that since it was only Sunday, we weren’t due. They advised we filed a complain with the police for trespassers, but that yielded absolutely nothing.
In the meantime, things escalated.
Night 3 brought us the same routine, same sounds. Even after we’d taken to putting a lock on the pig pen, they still took one. This time making sure to leave a small pile of viscera behind, perhaps as a warning.
We elected to putting the animals in the barn and dead bolting it, hoping the pranksters would get the message and perhaps get bored. I’d ordered a cctv camera but with my location being so out of the way, it was going to take time to arrive and I wasn’t about to stand in my window with a camera pointed out at some weirdos.
We didn’t consider the consequences of this defiance.
It was Night 5. The boys were sleeping in our room and like clockwork; they showed up and pulled me from what little sleep I was getting, my wife soon after. Silently, goosebumps raised on our skin and a chill in our bones, we strained our ears against the open window, hoping to hear their frustration and subsequent decision to leave.
The routine continued until “Jeff” spoke to “Bill”.
The moment they opened their mouths, I knew something was horribly wrong.
“This the one, Bill? Looks locked to me!”
“I reckon it is, Jeff… Let’s pay ’em a visit.”
They rattled our front door knob and politely knocked at the door. Five rhythmic knocks, five seconds of silence, five more aggressive knocks.
I bolted downstairs and grabbed my rifle, keeping the lights off but my aim focused on them. Adrenaline pushing fear aside, if only to defend my family.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’ve been coming onto my property unannounced and I ain’t standing for it no more.” I pulled back on the bolt and the sound filled the room.
“You got three seconds to turn on your heel, or I’m firing!”
My eyes adjusted to the front door and in the darkness, two shapes stood behind my door, shrouded by the shadow of the night. They were tall, thin legs and bizarre movements… like they were swaying in place.
Those three seconds felt like an eternity.
“ONE!”
The shadow to the front leaned forward, trying to press its face against the glass. Something was wrong.
“TWO!”
It moved away and tapped the letterbox, testing if it opened up. When it did, it held it open and spoke as the second shadow stepped closer.
Three never came. Instead I backed away out of terror and barricaded our room, unable to speak.
It repeated my last words back at me. Exact same pitch. Exact same tone. But something was… off about it. Like hearing your own voice played back through old speakers, you sense an eeriness to it.
As i’d instinctively taken steps back, however, the other one spoke. This was the first Time either said anything that didn’t repeat and I swear to god it makes my heart pound in my throat just typing it.
“We have come to collect. Come outside.”
My legs carried my body before I could register what was going on. Rushing to the bedroom and locking it, I pulled my family in close and held my head down to theirs, desperate to block out whatever ungodly sounds erupted from our front door.
It took a half hour before they gave up, assumed their usual routine and left, the sound of the tires speeding off up the road bringing some degree of relief.
Until the following morning when our nearest neighbours, The Gundersons, reported a break in at their farm some 5 miles up the road. The perpetrators had smashed through the gate, entered the barn and done such violent acts to their cattle that of the ten that had been attacked and mutilated, only two survived and were immediately put out of their misery by the patriarch, Ted.
“You’ve been havin’ problems with these sons of bitches too, Ty?” He bellowed down the phone once I began retelling our sleepless events. “Shit, you sound like hell and probably look worse than the cows at this point. I ain’t havin’ it. You got a young family to support and when they hurt one of us, they hurt all of us. Tonight we put an end to it, ya hear?”
I nodded, agreeing to stake out our property that night and do whatever needed to be done. Hands still shaking, I grabbed a stiff drink from the cabinet. Never been much of a drinker, most of this was my dads for the tougher times. But if times weren’t tough now, I don’t know when the fuck they would be.
Ted rolls up around 11pm, wife and kids are asleep and we shoot the shit in the living room for a while, mainly discussing how the harvest had gone and what we could do to protect our livelihoods in this day and age. The conversation petered off as they often do when a night draws on, but it was as we fell silent that the realisation swept over us;
We were going to confront these people tonight.
I gripped my gun a little tighter as Ted gave me an assuring nod, peeking out the window for any signs of the garbagemen.
“Son of a… my farm!” He bellowed, springing to his feet and bursting out the door before I could get a word in edgeways.
He was halfway down the road before I could ask him what the fuck he was doing. He turned, his eyes wild with fear and rage, pointing a shaking finger to the small shape that was his house far across the hill.
It was on fire. Large pillars of smoke billowing forth as the fire danced in the light, illuminating the surrounding fields.
“I can’t sit here while my farm… my livelihood burns away, Ty. If those bastards are behind this… well, you can’t bet your ass they won’t last the night when I’m through with ‘em! I’ll teach ‘em a fuckin’ lesson about the value of things… the things people throw away.” He turned on his heel and ran to his truck, speeding off before anything more could be said.
This would be the only night the garbagemen don’t pay us a visit. I get a bit of extra sleep, but my wife doesn’t. She just stares out the window at the Gunderson farm in the distance and shakes her head.
She knows how there will be no help on the horizon.
She knows how close we are to that fate.
And seeing that scares me to death.
-
The 8th night. They arrive with no vehicle sounds, no grand build up to the crescendo of their routine. They whistle softly as if calling an animal, patient in their call as they scrape something around in the dirt.
I’m crippled by fear and cannot dream facing them, I look around in the dark and see Lucy is still asleep, Travis is snoring in the corner… but Jace… Jace is wide awake and transfixed.
And staring at the window overlooking our driveway, reaching out to open it.
I leap out of bed and just about tackle him away, the shock of waking up to such a violent affair sending him into a panic attack as the entire family snaps awake in a frenzy, shouting over one another as he cries uncontrollably.
“This has got to stop, Tyson. We can’t do this anymore… We can’t live like this…” Lucy was exhausted, her eyes barely open and her teeth chattering. In the moment of silence between us, the whistling started again, almost mocking in its tone if it weren’t for the sinister giggling behind it.
“SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE US ALONE!” She screamed, walking towards that same window. It took everything I had to hold her back as she fell to pieces in my arms, the entire family crippled by nerves and a lack of sleep.
It was only when one voice cut the air that the final nights events were set in motion.
“The things people throw away…”
Oh, fuck… Ted…
One look into my wife’s eyes and I knew what she was thinking. There was no stopping her.
She darted around, packing the kids’ clothes and any essentials she could find, ignoring the whistling outside and instructing our boys to focus on getting whatever they needed.
“You do what you need to do, I don’t care if the nearest town is a three-hour drive or I undergo the seven-hour drive to my moms. I will not stay another night in this fucking house. Not until they’re gone.” She was almost delirious, fuelled by fear and anger as she darted around like a hurricane, turning over tables to get what she needed as if prepping for a weather event. Within the half hour she’d been rushing around, the noises had faded and the outside once again fell silent.
I couldn’t leave the house. It’d been in our family's lineage for generations. We’d been born here, lived here and died here no matter what. As the head of the family, it was my job to stay here and protect it. Even if I couldn’t protect those that I loved most under its roof.
She waited another hour before getting in the car and leaving, kissing me with all the passion she’d had when we first met. I told Jace he had to be strong and that he’d one day conquer his fears because I believed in him. I told Travis that as the eldest; he needed to protect them like his life depended on it.
Then, just like that, I waved them goodbye and promised I’d join them at their mother in laws when this was over.
Now all that was left was to sharpen my resolve and find out what this was. I took the chance to try and get some sleep during the day, but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t come to me. So, liquid courage it was.
One way or another, this was going to end.
-
Night 9. The penultimate night.
Not a sound. I mean that in the most literal sense. The wind didn’t move; the trees didn’t speak, not a single blade of grass danced and no dirt was kicked up.
Everything was silent. So silent. My own thoughts were amplified in this void of sound, every inane thought of what could happen flitted through my mind and forced me to double check every window and door. Triple check the locks, ensure no oversight was left.
Couldn’t let them get an opportunity. Even if it’s just me. I know they’re watching even now. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said a shadow moved just behind the porch window. Can’t be sure, not without checking.
I think they were biding their time, keeping me on edge and making sure I *knew* they could step in whenever they wanted and do as they pleased.
But I kept my nerve, I resisted the urge to bolt to the truck. I’ve got my whiskey and I’ve got my gun.
I’ll see this through, even if it kills me.
-
Night 10. Now we’re all caught up.
I checked on the animals this morning. What was left was a pile of bones, flesh and waste. They’d been taken the night before and I don’t know how I didn’t hear during the silence. There was but one horse's body left, teeth marks riddled the torso, and the legs had been torn off.
Our crops had grown fetid, decayed and worn, nothing in our farm would yield a damn thing anymore.
My livelihood was decimated in front of my eyes.
Gone.
It’s late now, I’m sat in my armchair with the rifle loaded and ready. My hands are shaking and my knee won’t stop bouncing. I feel the dread start in my gut and worm its way through my chest before lodging in my throat and forcing every breath to be a labour of pain.
They came early tonight, truck roaring and routine sounds in full swing.
Only there weren’t two sets of thuds this time.
There were six.
They walked up to the porch, a shadow covering every facet of the window and the door panes. Not a spec of light coming through.
The voices don’t change their pattern, they never do.
“This the one, Bill? Looks ready to me!” They pound their fists against the window, a dull moan emanating from the background. Pained, muffled and growing in strength.
“I reckon it is, Jeff! Let’s get ‘er done!” Nails drag down the glass. A horrific groaning accompanying the repeated intonations of their godforsaken phrases.
“The things people throw away...” Ted… poor Ted smashing his head against the wall, repeating it with every sick swing.
It was only when I heard the fourth voice that I finally looked out the window, perhaps on instinct.
“Not until they’re gone.”
My Lucy. My sweet Lucy calling to me.
I can’t begin to tell you what I saw when I pulled back the curtains for just a split second, but every forbidden aspect of it is burned into my brain and it will not leave me even as I shut my eyes from the surrounding chorus of madness.
My kids… my fucking kids are now saying they’ve come to collect. That I must come outside. That whistle has come back, it’s… it’s almost soothing.
I can’t bear to do this on my own, I can’t live with that image in my fucking skull anymore. I miss my wife. I miss my kids. I miss sleeping soundly at night.
What if it is them out there? What if they’re really just wanting me to get help and my own sick mind has put me in such a state that I’m here, asking you for help on something that is, at its core, truly simple?
I’m going to put down the laptop and open the door. I have to know.
I have to.
Why did the garbagemen start coming in the dead of night?
Does anyone know?

First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 407

[first] [prev] [next]
The sound of the cutting bars was loud, the city hushed even as it wailed in pain. Each time the powered cutting bars (Mark II) ripped through the tree rapidly, felling it. Mal-Kar and Karelesh used cutting bars given to them by a Terran to cut the trees into smaller lengths. Lu'ucilu'u and I used stick-on graviton lifters and a tractor-pressor beam to move the logs to the sides of my tank, the sides of the two buses, the sides of the combat grav-lifters. There other members of my work crew tied them to the sides with heavy cargo straps.
Several of the civilians manning "Refit Point Delta" were filling sandbags, working tirelessly to shovel dirt into sacks that they tied off and stacked. The sandbags were passed from person to person in a living chain, to be put upon the vehicles as one more layer of armor. They were stacked on the sides of grav-lifters, my tank, and secured with endosteel cargo netting. They were layered two layers thick inside the hoverbuses, with panels of endosteel plating in between the two layers.
Which was why both buses had Terran grav-lifters welded to the side to help lift the massive public transports.
A white flash made everything go flat seeming as the shadows vanished. The rumble came next, the shockwave moving the trees back and forth.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flashed in my vision right before another white flash lit the sky.
The civilians and what few military I had with me ignored it, continuing their work.
A N'Kar who had been a servant for a Most High was half out from under hover-fan three's skirt. Cables went from the power plugin on a nearby grav-lifter and vanished under my tank, allowing the N'Kar to weld a patch to the hoverfan skirt to fix a hole blown in it by Precursor fire.
I leaned forward and rested my head against the battlesteel of my tank, closing my eyes and feeling exhaustion fill me.
I had been awake for twenty hours since I had left the medical clinic and led my men into the burning city again.
Twenty more hours in the burning hellscape that had been a living city.
Five thousand people sealed into the bunkers even as they cried out to me to not entomb them below the earth.
But so many dead were sprawled in the streets, half-visible from collapsed buildings, or reduced to a smear on the wall.
You cannot save them all, Ha'almo'or, the matron's voice came back to me.
No, but I can try, I told her in my mind.
"Most High, eat," Feelmeenta urged me, tugging on my lower right arm.
"I am not hungry," I told her.
It was true. I was too exhausted to feel hunger any more.
"Eat," my electronic warfare specialist ordered. She held up a ration bar. "Eat, or I'll tell the Terrans you have been awake for twice as long as you should have been as well as the fact you escaped from the hospital."
I sighed, taking the ration bar and peeling the plas off of it. It wasn't Great Herd standard. The wrapper was brown, with a picture of a smiling Lanaktallan matron on the wrapper and the words "Goody Yum Yum Bar" on the side.
The Matron was in charge of making sure that the colts, fillies, calves, and wounded were all seen to. A Terran had asked her to smile real quick and then her image had appeared on the package the next time I had been handed a ration bar.
I'd seen the Terrans of the Sustainment Battalion pull them out of their fabulous nanoforges by the box, each box containing thousands of bars.
The bar was good. Rough coarse grain seed and dough, some kind of sweet and chewy center. It filled my first stomach, easing the dull pain, and I felt energy return to my body.
"Do we have any targets or is it another sweep?" I asked, taking another bar and opening it.
This one tasted of berries, was white with a center of sweet and thick crumbly dough.
It was the best thing I had ever tasted.
"Another sweep," Feelmeenta told me. She held up a canteen and I gratefully took it, drinking deep, enjoying the slight tart citrus flavor.
It was such little things, that the Terrans did and we were emulating, that made life bearable.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC
I hardly noticed the flash, the rumble, of the gentle push of the shockwave that made the treetop sway.
Two civilians I did not know exited the interior of my tank. The waste reclaimation system had failed, leaving the crew compartment thick with dung on the floor. I had helped scoop it out with sheets of plas during the day.
When we had arrived the two civilians, both Telkan, had gone in with pressure washers.
The N'Kar slid out from under the hoverfan, nervously rubbing his skin. "It should hold, Most High," he said. His voice was soft and submissive, like all of his people, but I could see the determination to do a job well done in his eyes.
"I thank you," I told him. "Once we leave will you be going to the shelters?"
He shook his head. "No. We will stay. We have guns now, given to us by the Terrans, as well as battlescreen projectors to protect this place. We will stay here, in case you need us."
The makeshift ambulance nosed its way into the clearing, settling down with the snarl of badly tuned graviton lifters. The back lowered and the filly from the first day clopped down. Gone was the uncertainty of youth, she moved with her head high, one hand on her medical bag, and she surveyed the area like a lord of old.
Two Goodbois and a Simba moved with her, the Goodbois on either side and the Simba behind her. All of them had the holographic light to make them look furry and somewhat harmless.
I had seen the twin linked rapid fire autocannons on the back of a Simba rip apart a Precursor war machine ten times the Simba's side with less than three seconds of fire. I had seen a Goodboi fire missiles at a Precursor air striker, knocking it out of the sky in a greasy explosion and rain of burnt and blackened metal, seen them fire the heavy tribarrel that had risen out of their back to destroy Precursor machines.
I had also seen them search out survivors in a collapsed building.
Like all things Terran, looks were deceiving.
When she saw me she trotted up to me even as I unwrapped another Goody Yum Yum bar.
"You will hold still, Most High," she said. Her voice was raspy, the voice of an older Matron, and her old eyes were red from exhaustion, but still her eyes and voice were steady.
"As you wish," I told her.
She ran the scanner over my lower abdomen and where my upper torso joined my lower body.
"Your heart is in good condition. The cyberware reports no cardiac events," she said, drawing up. "Your bloodwork looks good and your vitals are excellent once exhaustion and combat has been accounted for. How are the eyes?"
"Good. I am used to them now," I told her.
"And your foot?" she asked, pointing at the cybernetic replacement for my hoof.
"Still slightly heavy to my senses," I said.
She nodded slowly. "That it to be expected. You are cleared for duty, Most High Ha'almo'or."
"I thank you," I told her.
"Ambulance One is ready to deploy with you," she said. She trotted around to face the makeshift ambulance with "GREAT HERD EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES" painted on the side with blue paint stick. She turned at the waist to look at me. "Do not attempt to argue with me, Most High."
"I welcome your efforts," I told her.
She could feel my sincerity and nodded. A nod of a Matron far older then the teenager I had seen on the first day crying over the dead.
She trotted back to the makeshift ambulance, the Goodbois and the Simba following her.
Again, the warning, followed by a rapid fire series of detonations.
The Terrans were, to use their own words, 'giving the clankers Hell' out there, pushing them back step by bloody step from the cities even as they sent into the cities their power armor infantry and tanks in with Most High A'armo'o's tanks in order to clear out the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.
"Your tank's ready," the two Telkan said. They were wearing plastic coveralls over heavy laborer coveralls to keep from getting wet.
"Thank you, both," I told them.
The two Telkan made motions of embarrassment before they shuffled off, carrying their power washer and the water tanks with them.
I clopped up the ramp, settling into the combat couch. I leaned forward and pushed my face against the gunner's sight. I activated the tank's systems and felt it come to life around me as my faithful crew climbed in, the power ramp whining as it raised, the load of sandbags attached to the outside face providing more weight than the motors were used to.
I ignored the smell of burning metal.
Mal-Kar drove the tank out of the spot in the woods, weaving between the camo nets hanging between the trees. According to the Terrans they would scatter LIDAR and RADAR and prevent Precursor scanners from spotting anyone in the woods.
We passed holes dug in the ground by determined civilians armed only with shovels. Inside each hole were three or four civilians behind a heavy gun.
There had been plenty that had never been fired and only dropped once for me to arm them with.
As we got further out of the forest/park we saw how the holes had cover. Plas covered with dirt, with firing slits. I could see what I had learned were 'ranging stakes' further out, to let the gunners know the range of any targets.
More than a few of the civilians raised a clench fist to my tank as I drove by, some even calling out my name or the name of one of my crew.
I knew I would be punished for what I had done the night before.
I had armed the neo-sapients. Given them the guns that my own people, my fellow members of the Great Herd, had dropped in panicked flight. Ordered them to 'dig in', showed them how to fight, given them Terran technical documents for digging combat positions by hand, Terran documents on how to use the radio net.
They had put the time to good use and had been very persistent in learning what I was trying to teach them.
'Jawnconnor Time' the Terrans called it.
Mal-Kar had written the name "Timekeeper" on the barrel of our tank. A joke that made sense to us, but probably to none other.
We exited the trees, the hovertank hitting the thickly polluted river, sending up a spray of water to either side of us. The lifters, hoverbuses, and ambulance all followed, the water brown with a thick layer of rainbow oily effluvia on the top. Charred bodies and debris slowly floated in the current.
I put them out of my mind, despite the way it made my chest hurt.
We headed into a gap in the river retaining wall, moving into a massive culvert, the thin layer of water spraying up around us.
A dozen Precursor strikers roared by overhead, chased by Terran strikers and air mobile hovercraft, the shell casings from the Terran vehicles raining down around us, making chiming noises as they bounced off exposed armor or the ferrocrete of the culvert.
"Eyes wide, fingers on the trigger," I said over the tiny battle tactical net I'd managed to get cobbled together. It wasn't much, had the wrong headers to be tied into the planetary network, but it worked for our small force.
A building groaned to the side and began to collapse in on itself, the floors inside falling first, pulling the outside frame and facing in after it. It gave a steady roar as it fell in a strange candle-like plume of ferrocrete dust and twisted endosteel. The fires inside colored the dust and smoke red as the building finally finished collapsing and sent up a massive cloud of debris.
The dust washed over us, making the battlescreens crackle and snap at the attempted intrusion.
One of the crew served kinetic weapons on top of Bus Two opened up with a quick burst. I tensed, waiting, but no "Contact" came over the radio and I knew that the gunner had seen something suspicious and reconned it by shooting it a few times.
If Mal-Kar's Digital Omnimessiah didn't want us to recon by fire he wouldn't have invented triggers.
"Got a public communicator message coming in," Feelmeenta said, sitting up in her chair and putting one hand to the side of her helmet. "Immature Lanaktallan female, a bunch of others, they've got children and wounded. I'm patching in Ambo-One."
"Do you have a fix on their position?" I asked.
"Storm drain, one of the Tukna'rn ripped the grate off and got them inside. They've been there since the first day," Feelmeenta said.
"All units, eyes out, we've got survivors," I said over the comlink. I got back "yeah", "yes, boss", "OK", "affirmative", and "Sure."
My men weren't much on radio discipline and proper radio procedure, but they were the finest men the universe had ever known as they followed me through the smoke and fire of the murdered city.
Mal-Kar's gentle touch on the tank's controls wove a smooth pattern to the storm drain. There were kinetic and plasma and laser impact scars around the drain and someone had pushed dumpsters in front of it. The dumpster had all been shattered by combat.
The ambulance moved in front of the tunnel and lowered the back deck. I saw the filly exit with her Simba and Goodboi escorts.
I grabbed my weapon and hit the stud on my couch, the hatch opening and the couch raising as I cocked the rifle. It wasn't the plasma rifle I had previously held, I had no idea what had happened to it. Instead it was a brutal and ugly Terran weapon that shaved slivers of metal off of a block to create some weird variable munition.
The Terran who had gave it to me had set it to APDSDE (armor piercing discarding sabot density enhanced) and I had seen no reason to change it back.
"Most High," Feelmeenta started to protest.
"I will not allow her to go somewhere I am loathe to step myself," I snapped. "Eyes out, scanners up. Get a recon drone, two weapon drones, and a commo drone up, try to establish communication with Refugee Point Lima."
By the time I had finished my orders I had reached the tunnel entrance and managed to catch up to the filly, who barely acknowledged my presence as I passed her.
The ferrocrete of the tunnel was pitted and scarred, cratered and scorched, by combat. We passed several PAWM carcasses, their bodies damaged by close quarters fighting.
Some of them looked like they had been attacked with a standard vibro-axe carried by emergency services to get through modern hyper-alloys for rescue missions.
There were bodies of Tukna'rn too. Only three, but each one was a dagger in my chest.
"DON'T COME CLOSER I'LL SHOOT!" was suddenly yelled, the words coming so fast that they nearly blended together. Lights came on, illuminating me and my visor kicked in to compensate for the sudden flood of light.
"Gunner Ha'almo'or, Great Herd Emergency Services, we heard your call," I yelled back.
"Please, our friends need a doctor. They're hurt bad," a filly called out.
"Come up here so I can make sure you aren't a clanker in someone's skin," the voice said. They coughed, a wet sound. "Not falling for that again."
The medic touched my arm and I saw displayed on my visor 'collapsed/punctured lung' as she told me her rough diagnosis.
I turned my visor transparent, moving forward. The Tukna'rn was young, barely adolescent, but he had a discarded plasma tri-barrel in his arms, holding like a weaker species would hold a rifle.
"You're a Lanky," he said, using the slang that had seemed to crop up everywhere.
"I am," I said. "Great Herd Emergency Services. We're here to evac you out."
The Tukna'rn nodded, coughing again.
"You first, it's clear," the filly, no, she was no longer a filly. Fire and blood had washed away her youth. The Matron said.
"If Li'itlewu'un says so," the Tukna'rn protested stubbornly.
I nodded and gestured at the Matron Medic. "Let us go in further."
"They're around the corner," the Tukna'rn said, coughing again.
He moved down the passage, normally used for power, sewer, and water maintenance, around the corner, and stopped.
It was one of the bigger rooms. Maybe used for the depression that would normally be a pool of water, maybe just for maintenance crews to gather. Bedding of wadded cloth were around the wall, ammo boxes obviously picked up from abandoned positions scattered around, and boxes of canned food and liquid nutripaste tanks here and there.
A Lanaktallan filly, not much older than the medic, moved up. She clasped her hands, greeting me.
"I am Li'itlewu'un," she said. "Thanks be that you are here."
I looked around slowly. There a Hamaroosan female sat with a vibro-axe that the handle had been cut in half in her lap. There a Telkan female was drinking nutripaste slurry as she let a N'Kar female tie a bandage on her leg.
All around me was suffering, of civilians who had needed my protection and found me wanting.
The Matron Medic touched her helmet and I heard her give orders for others to come in, to carry litters, to clear one of the buses. I repeated her orders, adding my authority to hers.
"We have a refugee point with shelters," I told the filly. "You cannot stay here. The battle has moved to atomic weapons."
"Will we be safe there?" she asked doubtfully.
"The Terrans have arrived and are pushing the Precursors back, although it is still very fluid right now," I told her. Beyond her the Goodbois and the Simbas deployed purrbois even as the Matron Medic moved through the wounded, putting holotags on them that her assistants could read with their visors.
All too many of them were red for urgent care required.
I watched as the wounded were helped out, heading for the bus. The Matron Medic's assistants were on the bus, letting the two of us know that they were treating as fast as possible.
I put a call across the net for Terran medical assistance. Their medics, their SAR, wore armor that the Great Herd would consider heavy combat armor and carried guns that could shatter a Precursor machine with ease.
Less than a third were remaining when I heard a shout from one of the rear tunnels. Gunfire sounded out, echoing strangely in the tunnels.
"They're coming!" someone, it sounded like an immature Akltak, yelled out.
"GET THEM OUT!" I bellowed, charging down the tunnel, my warsteel hoof shedding sparks as I ran.
The two Akltak females were ducked down behind a barrier as I turned a corner. Beyond them I could see Precursor machines rushing down the tunnel toward us.
The two teenagers were only armed with axes.
"Fall back, retreat to the main chamber and follow your leader out," I ordered, lifting up the rifle.
"But what of you?" one asked.
"I will be fine," I told her.
Either they would kill me, or not. Either way, I could buy precious seconds to get the wounded out.
I hit the firing stud and the magnetic accelerator rifle opened up with a roar. Despite the fact it used magnetic force and not chemical propellant, the weapon still flashed at the barrel, a tongue of flame lighting everything up as if it was using propellant.
The heavy magac rounds ripped into Precursors armor, sending one, then another, then another, crashing to the floor of the tunnel in heap.
"We are hurrying, Most High," the Matron Medic told me. I could hear her breathing heavy. "We're loading onto Bus Two."
"I'm coming, Most High," Mal-Kar radioed.
"Negative, hold position. You have to escort the bus back," I snapped, adjusting my fire and raking another machine. "Get the refugees out, damn you!"
"As you command," Mal-Kar replied. I could tell he was unhappy, but I had no time to be concerned as more PAWM drones pushed forward. The rifle was roaring in my hands as I held the trigger down, bracing the butt against one shoulder and using three hands to stabilize it.
Return fire was lashing out at me. Hitting the barrier I was kneeling behind, bouncing off the tunnel walls, ricocheting off my Terran built armor. A hit between my eyes rang my bell but I kept firing, forcing them back with sustained autofire.
My own rifle would have overheated by now, but the Terran weapon's heat bar stayed stubbornly in the low yellow. I would have been out of ammo, but sixty seconds of sustained fire and I still had over 80% of the ammo block left and three more in pouches on my sash.
"THIS TUNNEL IS CLOSED!" I roared out, aiming low, at their treads, their claws, their feet, their legs. The weapon ripped apart battlesteel like tissue paper, the small machines too lightly armored to withstand the fury of the weapon. "THERE ARE LITTLES BEHIND ME AND YOU SHALL NOT PASS ME TO ATTACK THEM!"
A round hit my chest, making me groan, but I fired back, ripping the arms off of the machine. Their dead were piling up high enough now that they had cover as they advanced, some of them pushing their dead in front of them.
I grabbed a grenade off my sash with my lower right hand, pulled the pin with my lower left hand, and side-armed it down the passage even as I kept firing, the weapon less accurate now that I was only holding it with two hands.
The grenade went off with the bright bluish-white snap of antimatter, showering the tunnel with droplets of molten battlesteel and shrapnel. I felt pain in my right flank but didn't care.
"Almost out, two more loads," the filly, no, the Matron, told me.
"GET THEM OUT, DAMN YOUR EYES!" I shouted at her as I grabbed another grenade. "YOU SHALL NOT PASS BY ME!"
My mouth tasted of hot copper and bitterness as I kept shooting. A round glanced off my visor, cracking it, but I paid no heed as I threw the grenade into their midst. It went off with a sharp crack and a gout of liquefied battlesteel sprayed my foreleg.
I did not care.
In or out of a tank, I was the armored bulwark of the Great Herd. None may pass by me and live.
I was the people's will made manifest.
A sudden urge made me duck right before a hypersonic rocket was fired, streaked over my head, and blew a crater the size of my chest out of the wall behind me, showering me with ferrocrete.
I answered the rocketeer with another burst that found something good.
The robot exploded, the flame and wave of shrapnel washing over me.
"Last trip, Most High!" the Matron yelled. I could barely hear her. I was half deaf, but did not care.
I began backing up, throwing my next to last grenade as I did so. My rear eyes could see the passage was clear and I was easily able to navigate it.
But I had to do it step by step, keeping up the fire, the punishment, the denial on the Precursor machines.
They charged as they came around the tunnel and I answered with my last grenade and more fire from my rifle.
"YOU!" I roared out. I grabbed a vibroaxe that someone had left on a box and threw it overhand, knocking over a robot when the handle hit it. I kept backing up.
"SHALL!" I bellowed, spraying them with full auto fire as I entered the now empty room. I kicked over a box of plasma rounds, scattering them across the floor.
"NOT!" I slung a tank of nutripaste into the middle of the floor and put a burst into it, exploding the pressurized tank so that slurry sprayed out.
"PASS!" The machines rushed into the room as I backed into the tunnel that would lead outside.
"BY!" I backed halfway around the corner and changed my aim.
"ME!" The hypervelocity rounds hit the plasma rounds.
They exploded.
The fire shoved me, the blast wave pushing me down the hallway even though I braced my hooves, sparks showering from my hoofshoes as I leaned forward into the blast. Alarms started wailing and the front of my armor flashed yellow on my HUD, but I did not care.
I kept backing up after the blastwave passed me.
"All loaded, get out of there, Most High," Lu'ucilu'u said.
"Leave the back ramp open!" I yelled, managing to whirl around. I turned backwards at the mid-waist, watching in 'front' of me with my rear eyes, firing the rifle as I galloped wildly down the tunnel. My fire wasn't accurate, but they couldn't dodge and I couldn't miss as I fired 'behind' me.
My tank wobbled into sight, barrel facing backwards, the loading ramp down, the rear battlescreen off. Rounds that got by me sparked off the armor of the tank.
I could see the interior of my faithful tank, Timekeeper*, and galloped up the ramp. I let go of the rifle, letting the autosling pull it tight against my right forward flank as I threw myself against the gunner's sight, lifting my cybernetic hoof.*
The shot lined up, aimed at the scarred and battered chassis of the lead robot.
"YOU!" I stomped the firing bar.
The Terran "Enhanced Lanaktallan Plasma Munition Mark IV" detonated.
The loader whined as I lifted my hoof. The back deck loading ramp was whining as it closed.
"SHALL!" I stomped the bar again. The loading ramp was almost halfway up.
"NOT!" again.
The loading ramp thumped into place.
"PASS!" I fired the final shot as Mal-Kar goosed the fans.
We sped after the convoy as I used my gunner's sight to scan the skies.
"We've got them all, Most High Ha'almo'or," the Matron Medic's rough voice told me. "Nineteenth Evac is landing a dropship medivac at the Refit Point Delta. They're bringing in something called man pads"
"We will go there," I said. I was trembling with exhaustion as I waited for the gunner's couch to move into position. When it did, I collapsed into it, breathing heavy.
I rested my head against the gunner's sight, even as I kept my eyes open and watched. My still biological eyes felt grainy, thick, like slightly abrasive gum was filling them every time I blinked.
Within a half hour we reached the Refit Point and Mal-Kar set the tank down. I kicked the button and the loading ramp whined down as I got up from the gunner's couch. I staggered out, looking at the bus that Terrans were running onto.
I watched as wounded were taken from the bus onto the heavy, brutal looking dropship. It was all black and looked almost unfinished, as if the designers had stopped before doing any cosmetic work and said "Meh, good enough."
Perhaps, to the Terrans, it was aesthetically pleasing.
A Hamaroosan female, barely a teenager, marched up to me, her hands clenched.
"I bet you think you're some big damn hero," she snarled.
I shook my head. "You needed me days ago and I was not there."
She seemed taken aback for a second, but she clenched her jaw.
"Riding around in your tank like some kind of lord on high while we were fighting and dying in the tunnels," she snarled.
Mal-Kar started to step up, a Hamaroosan female of older years next to him.
"You don't know what you're..." the Hamaroosan woman said.
I held up my hand. "Let her speak."
"Where were you when we needed you?" the teenager yelled. "Where were you when the clankers came?"
I stayed silent. She did not want to hear my words. She needed me, needed the world, to hear her.
To hear her pain.
"Where were you? Where was the vaunted Great Herd?" she screamed at me, rushing forward. Her little fists hit my armored chest as she pounded on me, tears running from her eyes. "Where were you when they killed my sisters and mother and father and little brothers?"
Her knees buckled and she wilted, crumbling to the ground. I knelt down, putting my arms around her. She tried to push me away, crying, weeping, but I held her tight, rocking her side to side.
"I am here now, little one," I told her as I stood up, lifting her. I carried her toward the medical tent. "I am here now and I will not let them harm you as long as I live."
It started raining. Thick, gummy, black rain.
There was a faint flash, a rumble, and the treetops swayed as I pushed into the tent and handed off the girl, who was holding onto me so tight the Matron and the doctor had to pry her arms off of me.
I headed back to my tank, stopping to grab an ammo block to replace my half used one and eight grenades instead of four.
The tank trembled beneath my hooves as I mounted the loading ramp and clattered to my gunner's couch.
The tank rumbled as we led the way back into the city, the rest of the convoy following me.
There were more who needed me as she had needed me.
--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.
[first] [prev] [next]

m bet over under second half video

Bet on 2021 Super Bowl at Sports Interaction, with online sports betting on Super Bowl betting lines, Superbowl bets, 2020 Super Bowl point spreads and odds ... First Half Over/Under Over 27.5 1.91 Under 27.5 1.92 Team Total Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Over 27.0 1.85 Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Under 27.0 ... Second Half Over/Under Closed. Closed. Super ... I also like the second half to be the highest scoring half at -105 because of the previously mentioned reasons. Pick: Chiefs to score more points in second half than first half (-125) & second ... You bet on what the result will be by the conclusion of the 90 minutes of game + injured time (Home victory, Draw, Away Victory).Extra time or penalties shoots won’t count as a final result. As for the total, the Over/Under has dropped a point from the 57 points it opened at. Six of the last seven Super Bowls with a total of 50-plus points have stayed Under dating to 2001. You bet if the sum of the Second half is going to be over 1.5 goals or under 1.5 goals. OVER= +1.5 GOALS; UNDER= -1.5 GOALS; Example: R. Madrid vs Manchester city 1-1 the sum of the goals is equal to 2(1+1) so it will be (OVER) Last year’s Chiefs-San Francisco 49ers game also finished under the robust over/under of 54½, with a 31-20 final score. The best prop bets for the Bucs-Chiefs Super Bowl There are reasons to ... Types of second half betting. How do second half bets work? There are two main types of second half betting markets. The pre-match markers, with odds “evolving” during live betting: 1X2, over/under goal, both teams to score, correct score etc.; The specific second-half betting markets, which are taking no consideration of what happened to the first half. Second Half Goals predictions for Today for football games and second half goals betting tips. Second half predictions are mainly related to scoring goals in the second half and allows you to pick whether there will be at least one or more goals scored in the last 45 minutes of a match. This is one of the most popular football tips and it's tightly related to expecting over 0.5 goals in the ... There’s also an over/under bet for Brady’s rushing yards, set at 0.5. If Brady runs for a single yard, the bet wins (and the over has +150 odds, meaning a $100 bet would earn a $150 profit if ... Best strategies on bets to make now and bets to make later for Divisional spreads and Over/Under totals. ... (Under 51.5): Bet Later ... The Chiefs stop unit has snoozed a bit in the second half ...

m bet over under second half top

The Next Ed Sheeran - ALL Performances The Best Singer ...

Billie Eilish also rates being a teenager, Avril Lavigne, and more in this episode of Over/Under.-----SUBSCRIBE to Pitchfork.tv: http://bit.ly/yK2Fbp-----F... The Bridge Is Over by BDP (Boogie Down Productions) from their debut album Criminal Minded (1987)LYRICS! :Intro:I say, the bridge is over, the bridge is over... Clevver is THE #1 source for pop culture, entertainment, and celebrity news, interviews, and more! Welcome to Clevver News! Clevver News is your one stop sho... About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators ... Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole's Platinum selling hit "Over the Rainbow" OFFICIAL video. Loved all through the world, IZ's version of "Over the Rainbow" has touc... How to fold a shirt under 2 seconds. This step by step guide shows you how to fold a shirt very quickly. Works on all short sleeved tops including t-shirts a... The current world record for solving a Rubik's cube is 3.47 seconds. Could it be faster? WIRED's Robbie Gonzalez explores the mind-boggling math and finger-t... Check out Family Feud here: https://rebrand.ly/FamilyFeud^^^^^ International Talent Spotlight ^^^^^ SUBCRIBE Len Ken Channel: http://bit.ly/2fhpDdd About L... Here are the BEST plumbing tricks when working with copper pipe ever. These tricks took me almost a DECADE to learn and I am giving them all to you, enjoy!Ch...

Second Half Betting Explained How to win a 2nd Half Bet

m bet over under second half

m bet over under second half - win

We need to talk about NOK

Shkreli on GME - 1/31