Inferno

1 - Battlescars

NOTE TO ALL READERS: THIS BOOK IS NO LONGER CANON OR UP-TO-DATE WITH MY CURRENT WRITING STANDARDS.

If you would like to read the current up-to-date version of rewritten Inferno, please go to my author page and read 'The Architect Codex' instead.

Shit. This wasn't good.

Tobias couldn't make himself look away, and so was rewarded with a view of the blossoming explosion that once was the extraction ship. He cringed a bit as he saw chunks of both metal and bodies fly in every which way, both snow and ash now drifting through the air. With a loud crunch, the skeleton of the ship landed in a heap upon the rocky ground near the edge of the cliff, and slowly fell over the edge. Not that it mattered; anyone who'd been on that craft was surely dead.

This was supposed to just be a routine op. Rumors had sprung up of potential militia activity on Nedar, and so several pilots and squads of grunts had been sent to investigate a sector of the planet. The incident at Demeter had been an unbelievable blow to the IMC; the fueling station was completely destroyed, crippling travel from the frontier to the inner colonies, and Admiral Graves had turned traitor. Not to mention how many buddies he'd lost there. The point was the IMC had been hit, and they wanted to hit the Militia right back.

As it turned out, the rumors had been right; there was definitely a Militia presence stationed here, and they were not happy with the intrusion of the IMC. It had been like kicking a beehive. Pilots and grunts had swarmed the landscape, and soon it become an all out battle with Titans and humans alike.

Regardless, they'd managed to clean house pretty well; they'd effectively wiped out every Militia soldier, pilot, and spectre in the area. The order had been received for everyone to head back to the cliffside for extraction. He'd been a bit further than the others from where the LZ was, and so he'd started making his way back.

It was when he was only a few hundred meters away that he saw the massive lone Titan barreling out of cover from the trees that surrounded the clearing on the cliff. Some distraught Titan that had apparently lost its pilot, and decided to take revenge by self-detonating its nuclear core right next to the drop-ship. Poor bastards didn't stand a chance.

And so it came to be that Tobias was now stuck here, alone in this god-forsaken winter landscape with nothing but dead trees and snow around him. He knew what this meant; he was a goner. He wasn't a pilot yet, only a trainee. Maybe higher ranking than a grunt, but they wouldn't go out of their way for someone like him. Besides, they were likely under the impression that there were no survivors considering the drop ship had exploded with nearly everyone in it. No, the IMC would consider the operation a success with all hands lost, and forget about it.

He didn't trust either the IMC or the Militia. The IMC had a reputation for being unbearably imposing on the frontier worlds, and the Militia were known as nothing more than terrorists. Rebels maybe, but terrorists all the same. He hadn't been involved with the Militia, but after two years or so of being a grunt for the IMC and only recently training to be a pilot, he could definitely say that their reputation was deserved. But that didn't make them worse than a faction that was just escalating a situation to heights it didn't need to be. He fought the militia not because he believed the IMC was right, but because he thought it was the quickest way to peace. But that line of thinking was certainly coming back to bite him in the ass now.

He looked every which way for some sign of shelter that he could take cover in. Obviously, the Militia had some kind of outpost out here. They hadn't come across it, but these fighters hadn't just popped out of thin air. He had to find that outpost, and take refuge. His pilot suit could only compensate for so much; if he was out here still by nightfall, the temperatures would kill him. Looking to his right, he noticed tracks. There were several; Titans and humans alike, but some of them appeared to come from a central direction. That could be towards the outpost.