Euphoria

Chapter 1 pt. 3

Chapter 1

Pt. 3

                The transport drops us off at the military base, where Flash immediately finds a group of girls and starts showing off his gear. I swear it’s like he has a radar for girls; fat, skinny, ugly, beautiful…he doesn’t care, as long as they don’t have an extra package in their pants he’s down. Heavy and R.E. head for the weight room to build a little muscle. And as always, right on cue and large group of children bombard Slade, begging him to tell them a new story.

He’s good with kids…it’s amazing, he rarely talks in the field, and he’s colder than ice itself when in battle. But when it comes to children, he’s a completely different person. To be honest it’s scary. How can he be that cruel and unforgiving in battle, but have the biggest heart everywhere else…Sometimes I like to think that the children are his motivation. To think for one second that the Euphorians could be a danger to the human children in any way is what drives him to be so thorough with his blade.

            6 and I head into the HQ building to get our next mission. We aren’t the leaders of the team as many people see us. Our team has no leaders, we are all equal rank. But me and 6 act as leaders, always looking for the next mission and battle strategies. We are this way because out of the entire human race, nobody wants this war to be over more than me and him.

I don’t know what his reason is. Maybe he’s tired and getting too old, maybe he has kids of his own and he just wants them to be safe. Could be one reason…could be many, but I know he wants this war to be over just as bad as I do. I can see it in his eyes, he has that determined look. Not the kind of blood thirsty man, who just wants to kill. No that was R.E.’s look. 6 has the look of obligation, to finish what the Euphorians started. And you could see it in his attitude, the way he never got tired from fighting, the way he never took too long moving from one enemy to the next. He knows that time is not a luxury we have when we want this war to be over.

I know this look, because I see this look every day in the hologram mirror. Like I said, I don’t know 6’s reason or reasons. But I have just one reason that I want this war to be over. They say that Love is the only thing more powerful than war. And I believe that, in fact I believe it is the only thing that’s kept me alive this far…

            As we enter the war room of the top deck of the HQ tower, men of all ranks who were sitting around the holo-map stood at attention. Corporals, Generals, Sergeants; all these men who would typically outrank us, standing and saluting me and 6. The reason being…respect. We have saved every last one of these men and their men, some of them more than once. And a few of them have told us they are forever indebted to us.

            Corporal Mathers is the first to release his salute “Shane, Mr. 6. It’s good to see you guys, come on in.” The moment our feet hit the floor of the war room, the light panels on the floor turn from white to blue and the battlefield hologram in the center of the room changes. In fact it’s not a battlefield at all anymore…It’s a tower. “We have coordinated your team’s next mission” Mathers says.

“As you can see you won’t be dropping into a battlefield guns hot. In fact this will be somewhat of a stealth mission.” He looks up to see what our reaction is “Go on...” I say curiously. “This is one of 5 Euphorian communication towers, but it is now also a rendezvous for Euphorian battle teams who have completed their mission. Now we believe this is gearing up to become the starting point for their next assault. Intel states the Euphorians plan to attack our HQ, they finally have a weapon powerful enough to take out our defenses and destroy this entire base. This attack could heavily cripple us and we would not be able to regain composure in enough time before their forces over run us and end the war.”

6 looks at Mathers with his one good eye, suspicious as always “So what exactly are you proposing we do?” The corporal pulled up another map “This is their HQ, about 5 miles from the tower” “So you want us to take their plan and do it to them?” I interrupt. Mathers gives me a bit of a smirk “Precisely, We need you to sneak into the communications tower, steal the weapon and destroy the tower. With the communications and the power to the HQ down, they will never see you coming with their weapon…” “Until it’s too late” 6 finished. Mathers looked please as if he thought 6 was on board with his plan. You could see the corner of his lips slowly turn upward with anticipation as 6 opened his mouth to speak.

“What do you think kiddo?” he says to me, and before I can answer he verbally attacks Mathers, “how can we trust this plan? Where’d you get your intel from?” “Come on 6 you know that’s classified…even to your unit.” He says with a short laugh and a supposedly reassuring smile. “I think we should take the mission” I say before anyone else has the chance to speak.

            The corporal smiles at my compliance. “See, even young Shane is on board” I hated that comment. It made my guts turn. I’m 24 years old, I’m not a teenager. I’m a man, I’ve loved and lost. And this war sure as hell made me grow up fast.

Then the corporal approached 6, every other officer in the room sitting on the edge of his seat, the tension in the room so thick it’s hard to breathe. And in a bit of a hushed tone he said to 6 “Old friend, let go of your skeptics. You know that if this plan goes accordingly…it could end the war.” 6 then glares up at me “Alright” he grunts. Those words were all he needed, no matter how much he didn’t like the plan, if someone like Mathers truly believed it could end the war, he would do whatever it took.

The corporal and 6 were young men together, trained at the academy and both graduated sharing the spot for top student. One could say they were best friends, probably the only person 6 considered a friend. They were equally as good…in everyone else’s eye. But I always thought 6 had a bit of an edge, a coldness that would keep him from hesitating when the time came. And that was the difference maker because Mathers went on to be an officer and 6 was sent into the dirty missions no one could handle, and years later he bumped into me. But that’s a different story.

            “Wonderful!” said Mathers “You guys take the weekend off, you deserve it. Go home, live it up, and on Monday…the first step to ending this godforsaken war.” Then he looks at me, with a strange look and says “I’m expecting things to change, questions to be answered. For all of us…though some more than others.”

As the crystal doors close behind me I ponder those last words he said. He was saying them directly to me. How did he know I had questions? I have tons of questions. But I wouldn’t dare ask them given that my nature for so long was ‘shoot first, ask questions never’ let alone the questions I had might lead people to think I was on the verge of becoming a traitor.

            No! I must bury these questions, these unethical thoughts. I’m a soldier I’m not meant to think, I’ meant to Do or Die. And that is my creed…

End of Chapter 1