Don't Give Up - A Sci-Fi Short

Two Soldiers, Two Guns, Two Lives

‘Don’t Give Up’

Iceni, Rexus Prima System

Late 2341

Two soldiers, two Alliance airborne troopers, clad in composite drop trooper armor, ran in the cold, dead snow. Running from what didn’t matter. What mattered was that they ran away, firing a shot or two once in a while as they did, from their probable deaths. They weren’t retreating, however – they were fighting.

The cold nearly froze their HUD on the glass interface, and the frozen atmosphere outside nearly seeped into the slits of their armor. Although covered in thick, black leather mantles, the two airborne troopers still struggled. In the frozen world of Iceni, on a lone, quiet outpost, their unit was surprisingly attacked, and they were among the little survivors of their unit. The Dominion soldiers landed at night… when they were all asleep. Slit their throats on their beds. The Dominion had came for a reason that neither Alliance command nor themselves ever knew, especially the world of Iceni was too far from its star to present any geological value.

The lone outpost they were posted on was massacred. Although a deal of troopers managed to evacuate through the grounded drop ships, the two soldiers – namely Rick and Karel – were left behind unintentionally. Now they had to run miles and miles through the deadly glaciers of Iceni towards the evac point before nightfall. It would’ve been better if they were alone, but they were not. Dominion lower caste soldiers, and their knightly Elven and Orcish officers, ran in pursuit in the frozen rocks behind them. On the first sight of movement, the Dominion soldiers would fire a barrage of plasma that was capable of obliterating a whole town. At least that’s how it felt to the two, freezing soldiers.

Specialist Karel Blaze and Corporal Rick Aaron ran across an opening between two gigantic white mountains that were literally larger and taller than any sky scraper the two had ever seen in a human city. They ran, their breaths clearly heard by each other through the built-in squad communications radio within their helms. Running several hundred meters without stop, they encountered a piece of rock that struck high out of the ground. When they came near it, they discovered it had a cave that dug quite deep inside the ground. Rick, standing in front with his M2 Bulpup Assault Rifle in hand, used the neural interface within the helmet to scan the cave’s contents. When the HUD scanner came up and went down, nothing was revealed. “It’s empty,” said the Jewish, Alamo Colony-born soldier.

“Let’s get in, man. Dominion troops could be here anytime!” Karel said, his mantle’s tails flapping. His rifle was shouldered, and he was evidently freezing under his lightweight armor.

“They may as well spotted us by now.” Said Rick.

“What?!”

“Get inside.”

Systematically, the corporal was an NCO rank and specialist was not, despite having the same pay grade. Because Karel had a lower rank than Rick, he followed orders without question. The two quickly went into the cave.

Relieved of the cave’s warmth, the two sat at the edges of the cave, putting their body weight onto the floor. The two took off their helmets, revealing their cold and tired faces. They also put their weapons on the floor, relieving themselves of any burden they carried. Rick had olive skin, although made slightly paler due to the cold that nearly froze the tip of his nose through the glass of his visor. His stubble of a beard was humid, mostly due to the combination of his armor’s air conditioning and the exterior’s coolness. Either way, he was freezing.

Karel had an Asian touch to his face. Slant eyes and a shorter-than-average nose, Karel wasn’t the brightest in his class but always aspired to become a soldier. Showing promising signs of bravery and personal valor in his teens, he signed up with the army in 2239, two years before the start of the war with the Dominion. He had never imagined himself half-frozen on a world so distant from his home on Colony Rasmussen III.