The Ballad of a Bullet | A Short Girls Frontline Story

[December 25th, 2056 | 16:53 hours]

Misty drops of rain peppered the ground outside the entrance of the cave as I sat, tattered and broken. The thin and cold streams of soothing rain running over my bare thighs in the darkness. There wasn't much I could do at the moment- my stomach was torn open from a stray artillery shell and my legs have been blown off by small arms. I was neck deep in enemy territory... my commanders' already abandoned me to the enemy likely and I've no quarrels to give. I had only made it out alive from the Sangavis warehouse assault by the skin of my teeth through commandeering a Humvee out of the hot zone and even then, its large frame made it a target for bombardment by the enemy. At the moment though, my mechanical heart was still pumping- unlike my sisters strewn across the fields in open graves. Outside the cave I could still hear the sounds of buzzing guns, rocking explosions, and roaring engines of jet fighters in the sky, lighting the ground up with streams hellfire visible in the distance. I couldn't think of the enemy, my comrades or my commands. Maybe the deafening sound of war had seen to drown out those thoughts, or maybe it was just the ceaseless years of service in these same fields which have made me accustomed to their ring. All I could think about was the rifle in my hands and the bullet in it's chamber.

It was a long minute, but a full one that I couldn't help but take. The muddied sheen of my rifle's black coat, marred with scars from battles past seemingly glowed in the dark as I held the ejection port of the weapon up to my eyes. The weapon design itself was nearly a century old now- a relic of a war bygone and up until this day, I thought that the quartermaster was playing a practical joke when he issued her to me not three decades ago. We've been together through the years now and with countless conflicts under our belts, it can be said that I currently treasure her more than I do my seat in heaven. She was my namesake and a sort of sister to me in a sense. Very least, she was still functional... unlike my actual sisters in arms. Like a man at death's door, I clutched and hugged her tightly to my body before in a fit of grief I tossed her aside onto the hard rock beside me. The memories of my comrades were slowly starting to fade back in against my will and soon tears started to drip slowly from my eyes. Before I knew it, I was wailing alone in the cave.

The charging handle on my rifle was stiff and cold, the plastic on it jagged and sharp, but with a quick pull, I ejected a singular bullet from the chamber and with it, started bashing the cavern walls with its copper plated head. My collar had started to well up with tears as I bashed harder and harder at the wall, the salt and magnesium from the tracer tip flaring up in sparks against the solid stone. It had been like this from the start hadn't it. I was nothing if not a tool created for the express purpose of sacrificing a humanity that I never had. For a little while longer, I stayed that way until the tip of the cartridge gave out and broke off the casing, letting out its gray powdered innards onto my tattered skirt.

As I got onto my severed legs, I could feel my broken wires brushing down upon the floor as I attempted to get to a higher elevation near the entrance of the cave. If I didn't move, the streams of rain wouldn't completely drown my frayed cords in its sapping currents. On my way, though, a jagged piece of my broken metal thigh snagged upon the cracked ground and I was quickly tripped back to the back of the cave of whence I came: my back was now soaked in a puddle and I could feel the water trying its hardest to rush its way up to my stomach wound and into my circuitry with only the tiny dam of my metal exoskeleton keeping it at bay. It was there that I started to give in, my back against a puddle formed within a shallow pit in the cave as water soaked my thin clothes.