Banshee

6. The Field Test

Karina's life flashed before her eyes as an enemy tank came smashing through the wall next to her. Where her brain failed her, however, her training took over. Almost automatically she raised her Silcar rifle and blasted a round at the behemoth that rumbled past her. The weapon bellowed out a ball of energy that blasted its deadly way through the thick armor, silencing it completely. A hatch opened to reveal a sentient trying to get away but she fired another blast which exploded inside him, tearing him apart.

Karina sat down in the cover of the now immobilized tank to catch her breath. Even though she had been trained for situations like these, she still struggled to stay in one piece. Okarron dropped down beside her from wherever he had come.

"How are you holding up, Karina?" he asked with genuine interest.

"I am still alive, so I suppose I hold up pretty well." she answered, "Although I will be glad when this is over..."

"Then you will be glad to hear that this is the last stronghold left to take before we can advance on the city unhindered."

"Then I am most certainly glad," she concluded.

A few hours later Okarron's prediction came through, as the last resistant sentients finally surrendered. He himself, however, wasn't there to see that. Okarron and Karina were already on a convoy headed for the main city in this area...

...and surprisingly also the only one...

Karina's mind was in a different place altogether. She felt somewhat out of place... as if she was trapped inside this body that wasn't her own. Would this be her life? To kill and conquer in the name of the Kanarr and their insatiable god? Karina wasn't averse to taking lives... Okarron had partially trained her by letting her fight to the death with captured enemies since a few years after he had found her. But this had been different. This had been a fight for survival, with enemies that held no reservations whatsoever towards killing her if they had the chance, just like she had felt no remorse over ending their lives. And while Okarron had watched over her the whole time, as he had always done, she knew that even he couldn't have prevented her from dying had the time come.

The city came into view. Coming in from the north, Okarron could see the ruins of what had undoubtedly been claimed by those earthquakes over the years. Luckily the streets were still mostly passable, although only wide enough for one vehicle at a time.

Perfect place for an ambush

He sent a Ranh scout forward to look for possible traps, which returned 5 minutes later saying that it had found nothing and all resistance should be expected in the inhabitable quarters to the south. With that news Okarron ordered the column forward, ever deeper into the shattered heart of the city.

So far, Karina only had bad experiences when it came to the sentients here. The first time she met one, her ship got shot down and Okarron barely managed to pull her out of there. The second time, a sentient killed a Ranh and might have barged in to kill them all if he hadn't been so wounded. And ever since that day she had been locked in deadly combat with this species of aliens. Even though they had stood no chance before her, they had kept on trying to kill her, to kill all of them, as if they had some foolish hope that they could stop what was coming to them. They would all be overtaken. The invasion would get them all, just like it had done to her people years ago. If the Silcar had been so easily conquered, what chance could these aliens possibly stand against the might of....

A loud shriek tore through her thoughts, followed by an explosion and panicked ambush warnings. Out of the rubble came hundreds of sentients who, by their looks, were the scum of their kind, yet were as ready for a fight as any other, coming at her with a ferocity that would put have put most Trena warriors to well-earned shame. They fell upon the Trena and Silcar troops with such unexpected force that they were knocked off their feet.

Little did she or Okarron know just what they had gotten themselves into... safe out of Kanarr sights, a sentient ran quietly through the rubble of the old city, before passing through a broken gateway and onto a surprisingly well-kept courtyard, where he was met by a large man, surrounded by several others.

"Baas," he said, "the aliens have entered the city and have been surprised by the ambush."
"Are they breaking or fighting?"
"From what I gathered a little bit of both!"
"It'll do for now, but we need to move quick if we want a good batch of weapons, let's go!"

A sentient charged into the transport where Karina blasted him apart. She jumped from the vehicle and fired into an oncoming mob, killing several. Okarron came out behind her and gave cover fire as she reloaded.

"We need to pull back!" he said. "they took out the rear transports; we'll have to go on foot."

The two made their way down the column as Trena warriors covered their escape. 

That night, however, the Kanarr exacted a brutal vengeance on the inhabitants of the old city. Kanarr operatives and Ranh commandos stalked the ruins, looking for small pockets of sentients which were torn apart with ruthless efficiency. Larger pockets of resistance were surrounded and flushed out by gleeful flamer-wielding Trena. Yet the humans did not go down without a fight. Equipped with Kanarr weapons that were looted from the lost convoy, they made sure that the alien invaders paid a high price for every inch.

From the questionable safety of the new city, both human soldiers and civilians looked on as the ruins burned and weapons fire and the screams of wounded and dying combatants filled the skies.

Okarron and Karina looked on from a hill safely outside the old city, as Kanarr artillery bombed the city with precision strikes. Okarron had always loved artillery strikes; he had always found them to be a cleaner kind of warfare then using infantry. Sure, both were equally messy and deadly in their own rights, but artillery was a weapon of distance. He knew that it would kill, but it would remain unseen. And to a Kanarr, an unseen kill was a clean kill. Karina had attributed this sort of thinking to Okarron's training as a Kanarr commando, who did most of their kills unseen and therefore considered themselves to be clean killers because of this. Whether this was the reason or not, she had given up on trying to understand years ago; Okarron's thoughts were as alien to her as his anatomy. 

A Trena messenger approached the two as they stared silently at the burning city.

"My lord, the sentients of Zevendorp rebel against us; the Ranhkiller rallied them and our troops were pushed out in the initial uprising."

"The Ranhkiller..." Okarron mused for a split second.

The town was of undisputable strategic importance and had to be taken back. But at the same time he could not leave the siege of the city.

What about Karina?

He turned to the Silcar maiden.

"It appears that an opportunity has risen for you to test your command skills."