DIVING INTO HELL

Helldiver: Samantha Briggs

The gravel rolled beneath the desolate uniform, crackling with each step she took.
Dragging for miles across a barren and empty landscape that was tarnished from inhuman beings. The uniform she was dragging carried someone who she had not the clue of, but desired to help in some way.
Dropping into such a dead landscape after witnessing so many tutorial videos by Captain Barsch felt wrong. Where are the bots? Were they hiding and waiting for me if I take a wrong step?
Suddenly the uniformed being was caught in a pit, jolting her back towards the path she had created in this wasteland of Oil and Gravel. Her moment of thought stopped her journey entirely. She turned to face the pit, never letting go of the hand of the person as if she was trying to comfort them as they laid there in the hole. The pit stood a foot below her and the uniformed being had malformed to fit the tight space it provided.
She fell to her knees and used her free hand to attempt to lift the torso of the being out of the hole, hoping to drag them out by force once the majority of them was out.
The helmet clattered against the gravel again as she pulled them up, letting it rest on her knees before pulling at a more aggressive pace to get the body out.
Finally the body flopped out of the hole, tearing the uniform to reveal ashen skin beneath the fabrics. Almost charred from something that affected the inside of the suit and fried them, but not the outside. The skin crackled and fell onto the dark gravel as she lifted the arm once again to get more surface area on the gloved hand of their's.
She resumed dragging the body, the clattering of gravel resuming behind her as she took one step and then another and then another. Her feet didn't stop no matter how long she had been moving, voices and images ringing through her head of Democracy and Freedom.
Her eyes glided along the distant horizon and then towards the sky, the visor of the helmet altering her vision as she tried to embrace the light during its time here.

She dropped the uniform, letting it rest by the crashed supply pod as she collapsed beside it, feeling her padded knees and shuddering breaths hitting against her own face.
She pulled herself against the pod, allowing herself a moment to rest after walking such a large distance. Her legs had given out on her own weight, the uniform causing her body to ache as her body slowly grew into a more fetal position.
She examined the sky once again, the light attempting to scurry from her eyes as she mindlessly stared at the ships above her.
They can see me. Why don't they help? Do I not matter? Do they not care?
The ships launched illuminations of red blasts against the planet she laid upon as if they were attempting to blast through the planet itself. The armor of her uniform shook with each blast against the planet as if they were shuddering from fright.
She glanced down at her wrist, her stratagem panel had been ripped off of her by an automaton long ago when she had first dropped. The pain was starting to rise inside of her left wrist from the metal fragments beginning to obstruct her blood flow.
She then looked over to her side where the stoic uniform rested and raised a hand to caress it, wanting to feel the rough dirt that covered the uniform, but too scared to take off the glove that hid whatever skin she might have left underneath the gloved hand.
Instead of touching the Uniform she decided to rest her fingers lightly against the chin of the helmet, not knowing the feeling, but memorizing the cloth surface that her gloves provided as a form of protection against the harsh climate. She ran her fingers along the visor, wiping off any dust it had gathered from being dragged so far in a hope to see the face inside. The visor however didn't show the being's face, just the red tinge that was stained with orange spots along the edges.
Her body unwrapped as she flattened herself, placing her hand against the surface of the planet. She didn't know how much longer she could live in this condition, Five minutes, Ten Minutes, Days, One day she was going to give into malnutrition. Especially from how little flora existed on this tarnished planet.
She laid against the cold gravel now, rolling her hand along the surface out of an acute sense of boredom in the surrounding area. Her fingers grazed across the small stones, collecting dirt and cleansing them of their previous states of battle.
Her hands raised above herself, measuring the distance between each ship as she laid upon her back, letting her cape wrinkle in its many folds. Her hands moved back and forth between each ship in the dusk-filled sky as if she were to possibly connect them and bring them upon herself and force them into submission with her bare palms.
The ships had a dark tint to them and so did everything else because of the visor of the helmet that felt heretical to even think of taking off. The ships were large and robust, as well as equipped with precision weapons that dangled off of the belly of the stone and metal beast. Lights illuminated the windows of the creatures showing that each of them were full of divers or workers that were almost naïve to the horrors occurring beneath their dense hulls.
She brought her face down to face the supply pod, attempting to lock her hands onto the triangular Hull and lift her democratically strengthened body up and keep moving because Freedom Never Rests.
As her body lifted and unwillingly observed the grim area around her she quickly noticed the luminescent, signature, red face of an Automaton. It ventured over the horizon, far from her, but due to the lack of obstructions it could see her as broad as a bug on Super Earth if it so desired.
Her legs shambled beneath her weight, the metallic case of the automaton embedding into her mind, no matter the distance it was from her. Her feet had preemptively implanted into the loose stones beneath them so she remained standing. Her eyes lowered and scanned the grounds, attempting to find some object or weapon to defend herself since she had lost her assigned liberator and sidearm at drop.