Primal Gambit

Chapter 8: Homecoming

Boisterous shouts boomed through the congested terminal as another bombing would. Screams, cries, pain – families that waited impatiently for their missing members' return from half the world away. It was a risk to leave a home stateside; a death sentence to traverse the bustlingly decrepit city streets. Polluted air and ashfall required civvies to wear gasmasks – further exorcizing them of humanity. People became numbers, dying on a meat grinder of a planet which shared no resemblance to its former state. Forests were no more, animals no more, resources dwindling and nearly gone – apart from the synthetics bioengineered by man to stay afloat.

Valerie sat on a lone bench near the terminal waiting for Doerrman to return from Siberia. A worn hooded shawl covered her torso, hiding her shoulder length auburn hair from the dun world. Underneath the gasmask was a face only recognizable by herself and her man. Freckled cheeks and a pointed nose, eyes the shade shared by flourishing leaves. Over her petite body and pale hue, she wore torn charcoal denim that lead down to withered work boots. Handcrafted tip-less gloves protected her delicate palms, leading up her arms which were covered by a black hooded sweatshirt and olive drab jacket. She looked down at her hands, unable to observe the pollution and population around her. They were one and the same. How she had made it through this last rotation was beyond her. A tour for him was just as much a tour for her. Behind the mask no one could make out the tears that welled beneath her heavy eyes.

Lifting her head, she observed the incessant crowds that hurriedly meandered through the terminal. She waited for the one person on Earth she felt anything for, the only man she found reconciliation within. People – animals, moved past her in a blur. She paid no attention. She waited patiently. The C460 Air Carrier would land soon and she would be able to feel it – the quakes in the Earth from the machine tearing apart the tarmac. Three times now, Valerie had sat on the same bench at the same terminal – waiting for the same C460 to bring her man back from Hell. The same neon lights whirred around a food court down the port. Above, the dim yellow light cast down upon her – she felt isolated in a world overflowing with people. Until the entire airport began to violently shake, the lights above swinging from side to side.

These massive ships had wingspans so large they blotted the sun from view, casting everything below in darkness. Designed to carry armament, vehicles, and men across the world, these beasts were created with extended lengths of flight in mind. Capable of refueling in the air, their vulnerability to enemy fire caused stateside engineers to bolster dermal exteriors to exceed expectations. Missiles would glance from her sides, small cannon-fire became less of a bother than bug bites. The assault variant, known between pilots as the AC560 Myrmidon, had her innards stripped down bare. Filling the cargo area were heavy artillery installations, barrels that pointed outward, toward the ground. The cannons could rain death from above for hours, being that the warships could refuel onsite. Warbirds would loom over a city for hours to ensure everything below was scorched completely.

The C460s were rolling in. Before she let reality set in, before she buried her feelings for mere moments to watch the mighty goliaths make their descent, she wondered what limbs may be missing from her man, whether physical or mental. It was her job to repair him, to make him feel whole again, to give love and to receive it. It was the calm before the storm, as Valerie knew that as soon as he walked or ran or rolled down the ramp her eyes were going to burst uncontrollably into water. It had been three years since she had last seen him. Three years waiting. It was always said among the military that the eighteen engines adorning the C460s were so massive that the behemoth broke infrasound – the lows in the grumbling engine could rupture the heart and maim a civvie who was improperly trained or armored in a colossal exoskeleton. If the girl's heart could survive upon reuniting with her man, the C460s would surely pose no problem. As the monsters drew close, children clawed their parent's legs while Valerie approached the broad window that trembled from the engines.

The ash fell heavily outside. It was the fifth straight day and the death toll was rising. In the distance through the gray and brown soot, Valerie could discern a shadow churning high above. AC560 – assault escort: dubbed the Myrmidon. On the ground, utility crews cleared and waited – gasmasks and radio banter between them – nervous chatter. Everyone became silent when the beasts finally came down, touching ground and rattling the core of the Earth – unsettling those standing above and those buried below. Hooks clawed from the hull of the ship and dug into the tarmac; tearing up rubble and shooting debris across the open expanse. Rocks smashed against the window before Valerie. She could already feel the tears coming warm and collecting under her eyes – water of a dried spring.

When the C460 stopped and silence engulfed the terminal, the girl's heart seemed to pause in her chest. Her pulse was throbbing in her neck, the warmth of her ears, but she could not breathe. As much a veteran as her man, she was seasoned to the feeling. Before minutes could pass, deafening sounds invaded personal space – children and adults alike covering ears, eyes, cringing at the high pitch of gasses emitting from the off-ramp that connected two worlds together and metal shrieking of industrial drills. The platform for the ramp slammed down.

Anything but first. The girl thought to herself as she recalled the procedure in the past. The first to come out were the first to go – those that had fallen, whose mutilated bodies were lucky enough to be retrieved. Cheap synth-balsa caskets adorned by dangling dog tags were going to be the first ones rolled out. Entire families would give chase, grabbing belongings and changing filters. Valerie could not see the tears underneath dehumanizing masks, but they were there.

She knew the timing was awful – that following his time of service Doerrman simply wanted to rest and get away. It was not her inconsideration that urged her to request aid from him upon his arrival, the problem had just sprung. The new information her clan of human rights activists were unveiling lead to a massive incentive. One of the men ensnared by the zoo was a professor in another life. Breaking him out and spreading his story would reveal the inhumaneness in the Marcotte Human Observatory. It was Valerie's own battle but she needed Doerrman's help.

The two had been together for as long as they could remember. Neither of them had much family – alone in a progressively decaying world. She had recently been coming to the realization that every time Doerrman had returned from a tour she gave more attention to the Activists' mending than to his, to theirs. She could not help it and for so long she simply assumed that he understood. He had his job to do and she had hers. She had yet to tell if Doerrman had consoled her equally or if said equilibrium was unnecessary due to the scarring memories that plagued his mind. She knew that if she sought his aid this time it would destroy them both.

The fall outside became sog as rain mixed with ash. Just as Valerie had assumed, the first men she could see walking down the ramp were in officer's uniforms, pushing gurneys stacked with as many caskets as they would carry. She became nervous when entire families rushed after the packaged corpses, fighting to catch her breath. She looked behind her at the women who sobbed and the children who screamed. When she turned back her man stood before her.

Doerrman was at too young an age to see the things he had. Across the world, battlefields and desolate shelled cities, he had become weary of it all. There was tautness about him, a thin but muscular build. When on tour the twenty-five-year-old soldier never removed his fatigues – strange camouflage patterns designed to make men invisible to the Charlie. Stateside he wore ancient clothes that packs of civvies would scoff at: a red flannel snug against his chest, old jeans tattered at the bottom and fading, brown work boots. The bleached blond hairs on his tanned arms caught the wind all the way down to his calloused hands. One wrist donned a tactical watch – functionalities countless. From his waist dangled an old leather holster; the weight from a large caliber revolver, forged from steel and wrought with inducing-dissuasion pulling it down. Off-duty personnel were granted permission to carry up to a certain caliber, the size of which Doerrman understandingly surpassed. When not on duty he allowed his chocolate hair to grow, before having to buzz it down to the calculated standards once more. Whether on tour or not, however, his brown-orange beard grew full.

He ran his calloused fingers down her cheek – a worn hand from faraway land.