Strike Witches: Fallen Humanity

Second chance

This was certainly a strange world, with its largely young population forced by old men to fight among themselves.
Its surface was three-quarters covered by a huge ocean, its sky almost perpetually covered by storm clouds and debris and smog.
Fauna on the brink of extinction, the very little remaining flora preserved like a relic
Most of all, the strangeness lay in its inhabitants, the humans, beings whose food, whatever it was, was swallowed up and never expelled, but transformed into energy, a very particular energy.

Steady technological progress had ceased forty years before the present date thanks to the First Nuclear War, but what little technology remained was still used, always for the purpose of killing the adversary.
On the other hand, there was never much advancement in any field, thanks to one particular, cost-free and efficient trait that every human possessed: Clones.

Every human could generate exact copies of it out of nothing, reflecting their abilities and emotions, all fed by that special energy.
A healthy mind would have used this trait to advance humanity, to help it, but someone, from the beginning, thought that fighting was the only reason for existence for these clones.

The year's 2031:
The heads of the United States of Earth have declared three months ago a peacekeeping mission in the area of Everest City, an important Hive City under the control of the Dominion of the Remaing Land.

The Earth Council announced it as a temporary occupation of the city to neutralise the Second Ark, a terrorist organisation who took control of the city.
De iure this is a peacekeeping mission, de facto a special operation to take control of the city and secure the precious reserves of drinkable water.

One month ago the 3rd Multirole Army of the USE took control of the city with a disastrous amount of casualties.
The DRL is trying to take back the city to destroy it and cover the retreat to the Fortress City of Shambala.
The 7th Flamethrower Platoon "Firestarters" of the 505th Joint Assault Division is currently defending the Temple of Life, a sacred hill made of natural grass, a significantly important morale booster for the troops.
Being the only one remaining of their Company they're getting massacred, because fighting with the flamethrowers would mean the destruction of the temple, so they had to rely on their secondary weapons.

Combat Lieutenant IT773ST-G2, known by his platoon as Andrea, is covering with the help of five soldiers the rest of his platoon, trying to transform the flamethrowers into bombs to launch down the hill.

Who was Andrea? 
Strange to say, maybe a psychopath, maybe a kid consumed by PTSD, definitely someone you wouldn't want against. The thirteen years of his life have gone from bad to worse, continually downhill, surviving each time regardless of the number of wounds he has collected.  Sometimes he looked at himself in the reflection of an object and wondered if he was dead, if his torture was witnessing the death of his companions, his family, every time.

In his heart the only thing he wanted was the best for his non-biological family, aka his platoon, too bad the 7th "Firestarters" was his 6th "family". 

He was an instructor, each time he survived and was moved to another platoon, which in turn died and he started the cycle again.
He would have liked to be more inexperienced, he would have died immediately and all this would not have had to happen again, but he cared too much for his soldiers, he HAD to live to make them live as long as possible.

"MISHA!!!" he shouted at a soldier "How much time do you need?!!".
Technically he couldn't use personal names as he was of higher rank, but no one was around to point it out to him so he used them anyway.

Misha was the soldier who had to prepare the bombs from the flamethrower tanks, unfortunately, also screaming, he replied "We can't use them! I can't delay the explosion!".