"More!" cried the sergeant. He was the only man who held any command left alive on the battlefield of ashy limbs and stale gore.
With hands and arms and bodies streaked with blood and trembling with exhaustion, the troops insert their last remaining power cells into their sergeant's suit,hurrying to obey his final command. The Eviscerator-class WarForm that he wore was designed by men and women long dead in this centuries' long war, painted with formation signs long forgotten and insignificant in their world of brutal expedience.
Their duty complete, each man manages a solemn salute. They discard their now-useless armour. They carry their fallen comrades – only those who still breathe – and they march off to the next horizon, for all hope of casevac had been crushed by the electron bomb a few minutes ago.
The sergeant watches them go and lets loose in his mind a private form of luxury; reminiscence. Battles fought, laughter, grief, and the brief love between soldiers in a war they'd grown too used to.
His armour powers up for one final time. The power couplings hum in unison with the cheery beeping of his rebooted HUD. His blood fills once again with artificial adrenaline and a strange yet familiar twinge of melancholy.
This melancholy has been the sergeant's true guide. He knew sadness, each time he saw that the fine children of the Nation had to die for a cause older than their great-grandfathers. He knew weariness, each time he stood upon another mountain of foes.
It is with melancholy that he faces death, knowing that this time, he shall meet it at last.
The foes come, seeing a live victim, so irresistible and so... alone. Oh,but these foes, for all their alien intelligence, do not know the truth.
The sergeant had long transcended life itself ere his final command.
YOU ARE READING
Melancholia
Science FictionA short narrative of another generic war, set in a generic sci-fi setting. Can be easily expanded into a larger universe if I have the time.
