So, lets sit down.

The plastic chairs are comfy once you sat in one for twenty years. Just sit and
give what Im saying some thoughts.
Imagine a clockwork mechanism. Imagine it being large and clunky. Huge and clunky, even. all
those small gears the size of a teeth, large cogs the size of a wheel, miniscule these and those
that all, for some reason, work.
But not really. Some parts dont. Instead of transferring the momentum, like all good-goodie
clockworks do, they just make noise, which is more than nothing, but in the end isnt very far
away. The engineers know about that, but they dont give a fuck, because repairing the cogs is
tricky, while telling the branch clockwork manager the mechanism works is easy and pays just
as much.
Not the whole mechanism works that way: some parts work just fine, but could use some oiling
(which doesnt pay any extra), some work perfectly, but many, many more never worked to
begin with and are just... there, too old for the engineers to remove (because that may cause
unnecessary why did you remove the bosss favourite useless cog inquiries).
Have a picture in mind?
Great.
Thats how the Army of the Republic works nowadays.
Mostly, it doesnt.
Now imagine a huge can of sardines that falls out of the sky.
While flying down, the can separates into smaller, personal cans, each can packing a single
sardine, all juicy, smelly and ready to die again. Thats the average spaceborne infantry drop
pod, one per squad, disposable, orbit launched.
My drop pod has no sardines. It only has me and nine disembodied sardine heads, all calling
me sarge. I dont even get the full fishies.
I get huge watery eyes, brains the size of a peanut and and a white piece of a broken spine.
- PREPARE FOR SEPARATION, YOU FUCKING SPACE MONKEYS! WERE BREACHING IN
TEN SECONDS FLAT!
I get my breadnbutter, the YES SARGE, and calm down. Separation in five second means
that in twenty seconds, half of my squad will land. In another ten, the whole squad is boots on
the ground. In fifty, almost everyone of those shitheads will be dead.
And Im, stuffy-sargy MacDuffy, all locked in a dimmed, ceramics-laden motoarmour, will lead a
one man charge away from the battlefield, to places where the cogs of the Military Machine
wouldnt expect me to grind myself down.
All in all, agreable.
Sounds easy, but its not. I dont like the idea, to be honest, but being alive the next morning to
not like it even more kindles my heart quite a bit. The holopad shows me a vidprayer, but I
ignore it, too busy staring into the plastic walls of my pod. Making plastic capable of surviving
spaceflights and political corruption is the greatest achievement of my century. Might as well
stare into it. There are small red lights, all meaning something incredibly techy, and release
clamps, and composite metal stronglines, and resin suspenders, and holopads, but theyre as
bland as the plastic while being flashy and irritating.
The small period between atmospherical breach (or launch, because some space bodies lack
atmospheres) and pod separation is called The Flashback. Its incredibly short, half a minute
max, but thats quite enough time to ask yourself a lot of questions and not answer a single one
of them. Why is the Titan Republic dropping thousands of tin men on the god forgotten barrens
of Deimos? Why do we fight wars at all, being all advanced and stuff? Why is the modern porn
so bland? Why are tickets to the old mother Earth so expensive? Why is the prayer so boring?
Why is the food so bad?
Theres a load of question to ask, but I dont even try to answer them. Mind you, I can. Ill do
that, just for you.
Deimos is important strategically. The Martians control it, but not really well, because the
Martian Space Lifts are shit. The capships are busy pummeling everything military-looking from
orbit, but the capships have the incredible ability to bomb everything non-military instead while
keeping the small and heavily armed marts fine and kicking and ready to tear us a new one.
Thats for the Why Deimos part and Why us part.
Wars are cheap and easy. Building a motoarmour costs nothing. Ammunition is cheaper than
air. Spaceships are made of plastic, syntmets and dog shit. But living spaces? Political levers?
Diplomatical poker chips? Those are priceless. Everybody wants them. Everybody are just
dying to have them. And many of those everybody die quite literally. That covers the wars.
The porn is bland because were too good at it. We had porn forever. We tried everything, from
making it virtual to adding girls with thousands of dicks for characters. Weve seen it all. Were
lost. Every soldier in every army waits for the Porn Messiah more than he waits for discharge. At
the very least discharges actually happen.
Because Mother Earth is a beautiful piece of DMZ, green, nice, with air that actually feels like air
and gravitation that feels right. Earth feels right, thats the word. Like the place you belong to. Of
course youd fucking hog any penny on every fucking ticket for this wonderful place. Thats
capitalism for you.
The moment I see an engaging prayer, itll mean the Porn Messiah actually delivered himself to
thine. Thats a dumb question, you landie.
Because the food was never good. You need something more than hard-producing chemplants
to make good food. Agriculture, for one. Or cattle. Or a good chem factory instead of the ones
we get on Her Icyness Of Titan. Maybe a one with someone who knows the difference between
salt and sugar.
This means I answered my questions, you know. This also means its time for Dispersion.
And the dispersion began.
The heartpod automatically starts projecting flares, both digital and physical, and shoots us, me
and my squad, that being squad four in company nine and some other organisational shit thats
written on my frontal plate anyway, in every fucking side like a pretty, pretty flower.
AA takes a sardine immediately. Just poofs the unlucky sod the moment he starts descending
on brakejets.
This shit of an army has a squad tactic Im supposedly required to uphold. Ill tell you about it,
for the giggles.
A ten person squad of space monkeys, that being spaceborne motoarmoured infantry is
expected to be the primary unit of an advancing dropforce of two or more divisions. The squad
is divided into two five-man sections, each commandeered by a different sergeant; one of the
sergeants, that being me, is also responsible of being the company command joystick in this fun
game of war. To compensate for the fact that war is bloody, terrifying and messy, every
motosuit has a personal zero niner (or, as the techies call them, a generation zero point nine
artificial intelligence) used for field coordination and quick response; in practice, this means a
cheery female voice explains you whats going to kill you in the next five seconds.
Going back to the tactics, the average squad is built around the typical heavy gunner - anti
armour pair. Monkeys are usually fitted with gauss rifles (typically called His Jammesty) and
some other stuff like wrist-launched airbursters, but two incredibly important monkeys are
issued with either a heavy gauss, which is basically the same flechette launcher as the usual
gauss, but does it in much longer bursts, and the Arm of The God Himself, the Rail.
The Rail is capable of taking down armoured infantry in a single, quick, satellite and wetwork
assisted shot. Flechettes can rip your armour eventually, grenades can fry your transmission
and motors, but The Rail kills you, right here, right now, and youre afraid of The Rail. You cant
hide from The Rail. The armour wont help you. Why would you expect some cover and rubble
manage to do it? The Rail makes you afraid to move from cover and makes cover useless. I
love The Rail. Every soldier from Titan learns to love The Rail.
And the martians?
Theyll learn to hate it.
And then I land.
With a loud sizzle and a louder roar, the pod snaps, launching forward a plate of plastic and
metal, giving birth to Staff Sergeant Catherine MacDuffy, the greatest survivor.
- LEG IT, YOU MONKEYS, DO YOU WANT TO ROT IN TINS FOREVER?!

Deimos is a rock. Thats about all you can say about it: its a piece ofucking stone that some
larger than reality garcon left in the black soup of space to irritate Mars.
It was apparently even more of a rock before the martians took to enlarge it and employ a
pulldowner to give it some gravity. Apparently, it wasnt even a sphere. It was an irregular
shape or some shit. What a joke.
- WAIT FOR THE HEARTPOD TO LAND! I WANT THE RAIL UP AND RUNNING THE
MOMENT IT TOUCHES THE GROUND!
Deimos is hardly ten klicks in diameter. No atmosphere, gravs all artificial, no particular use,
really, other than sticking a huge metal box with enough sensors to tell what underpants does
the martian president wear today. You could also stick in a Rail, but bigger and capable of
lobbing airburners right in Red Planets backside, but thats the second stage of commands
grand plan, and the way it looks down here, its a pretty daring plan.
I toss orders over the wetwork, and the fishes take cover. Were stuck between two hills, right in
the middle, and a heavy laz right in front of us colors the black sky red with beams, burning drop
pods before they disperse, setting the overcans ablaze.
When the heartpod drops, we rearm. You cant fit the Rail in a personal pod, so you have to
drop it with the main structure; same goes with any additional equipment above the standard
load, and without his satchels, a spaceborne isnt a spaceborne. This system is shit: if the
heartpod goes down, youre stuck with a Jammesty with limited ammunition, but there isnt
much of a choice. Not for the engineers, not for us, because the alternative is a solid drop, no
dispersion pod, alternatively known as The Ten Men Flying Grave.
In ten secs, we get the first order from D-TACCOM; I scream something inspiring over the
comm while listening to the non-inspiring order of taking down a triple-A nest, the one in front of
us. We dim the camo to the neutral gray-brown of Deimoss sands and move out, some private
murmuring something about how a chav from the squad died just a minute ago and nobody
gives a damn.
Wait, somebody died?
The squad command interface confirms it.
Weird. Anyway, we move - not much time left, the way it looks.

We get spotted by a drone, and I thrash it. Its a shame theres nothing to hear on a stone with
no air, because the gaussgun has a really nice sound. It slashes the air, tears it in half. Not
here. Here it just makes iron rods fly. Space is dull.
The drone gives us a bright red flash before falling down with its jetties in pieces; I double tap it
and scream something about licking the ground. We take cover, and we do it in time, because a
jetmortar shell hits us right as we hug the ever dry dirt.
Those fuckers are a godsend, the jetmortars. Not for us right now, but for soldiers in general. It
works in any gees, it doesnt need an atmosphere to wreck shit, and it fits with any squad
tactics. The only difference between using one on Earth and using one on Deimos is a slightly
limited range. A small munition, roughly five kilos plus warhead is launched upwards, either on a
piston or by its own jetty. It flies high and stops itself, does a really pretty airroll and chooses
some motherfuckers to kill.
Then it launches itself downwards. Just like now.
Someone dies, catching a direct hit. Died instantly, explosion shock. Thank God his satchels
were locked in ceramic cascs, and we take them and run before another shell pummels us into
dust.
By the time I see the triple-As, heavy laz dischargers buried into foxholes and connected with
direct wiring to a command-and-control station plus some light plastshields set up as cover and
a load of man in light motos ready to eat my guts for breakfast, I get into the specific state of
aversion from my branch of armed forces, the Aerospace Fleet.
For example, the typical fleet CAS tactic is based on small crafts, like AIMs and aerospace
hybrids and whatnot providing strafing runs and missile runs on targets lit by earthbound
squads. However, until the combat zone is cleared of automatic and semi-automatic AA, you get
jack shit for CAS and fuck you for dessert, because the fleet itself cant provide support on
demand in fear of damaging the natural satellite. Initial fleet runs with small, low impact, high
precision shells are basically about taking out everything that is capable of scratching the
warships and having the droppies, that being us, deal with everything else.
I dont like dealing with fortified positions with huge guns capable of horizontal fire.
I dont like fighting martians in general. Theyve got the most refined optical and chemical
production in Sol, Mother Earth not included. That means theyve got enough oldtech plants to
produce cheap, infantry issued laz dischargers, semi-auto, loaded with one-shot chargecells,
shooting beams hot enough to occasionally take upon a moto in a single frontal shot.
And Deimos isnt making anything better.
Its small. Intolerably small. If I send those fuckers to die under fire, I cant just turn back, hide
and drink a carbonated protein drink, the one you get in the motosuits feedtubes, until some
fuckers take me home or some other fuckers taking me prisoner. Its not like on Tethys, where
you can hide in the rubble on the shores of some tropical floatcity.
Its Deimos, appropriately called. Were invading, and were doing it badly.
If they get me, theyll kill me.
If the invasion fails, it wouldnt be here to take me back.
So I fuck it. I release the safety and give my fishes a look.
- CHECK YOUR GUNS AND PRIME YOUR SACHIES, YOU FISHFUCKS, WERE MAKING A
POINT AND SCOOT ASSAULT!! TACCOM WANTS SMASHED GUNS AND WELL DELIVER
HIM SOME!
I hear some roars on the comm, and thats all I need. Some orders over the wetwork, and we
leg it, all huddled up, all ready to win any war and fuck up any redsand nigger we see. I look
upwards, away from the dull grayness: space is slightly more dull without an atmosphere to
make it nice to look at. Even space engagements are dull to look at. One star shooting a lot of
ship-killer class stars at some other star. Its much nicer when youre close, but save me the
grace of being close to a ship in combat.
When on Deimos, my zero-niner will tell me whatll kill me.
In space, Ill just die.
As soon as we get in range, I order a Rail shot; one fish stays with the Clearwater Railfin to
keep the fuck out of danger, and the rest of us, including me, get on, running even faster. As we
move forward, plastic boots hitting the ground like hammers, I dont see the shot ripping time
and space to hit some fucker, whose only mistake was to like red and white uniforms, but I feel
it. You learn to feel when the Rail shoots. Its like a sign from god.
I see a martie, blown apart by the hit, plastic, meat, bone, metal and fabric going up like
fireworks, and a few seconds later, I see red beams, because Im not the only one to see the
pink bits flying around.
We start firing, spraying on the run, trying to reach cover; a second rail shot takes off a heavy
gunner, and by the moment we hit the ground near some terrain irregularity, we arent even
dead.
The heavy gauss gets setted up, and we immediately vault over and run again. I dont like what
I see; I see an AA laz turning itself to face us, empty lens and overcharged emitters, and I
almost scream.
- BREAK UP, TWO TEAMS! TWO FUCKING TEAMS, TWO FUCKING SIDES! FLANK EM!
The Rail gives a shot at the AA laz, but the fucker doesnt even budge. They cover the fucks in
armaplast-ceramic composite sandwiches, same stuff they wrap tanks and gravgliders in.
So it fires. Just fires, beam after beam. Nothing I could do.
Not at me; not at the pair of sardines who chose to go after the commander, like good fishies.
I dont have time to look, but my sidecams have. Triple-As are designed to take down aircraft,
and when one of those hit a moto in an no-air envirement...
It aint pretty. Pretty clean, though. It just cuts him in two halves, a bit of legs downwards, some
shoulders and a head upwards. I see a gauss rifle with the stock melted off falling down the grey
ground.
The stupid fuck. He didnt have a lot of use for his torso, now did he? He was a useless little fish
in a plastic box.
No, he wasnt any good. A stupid little fuck.
But for now, he was my stupid little fuck.
I am upset.
Not stopping my run, not stopping my spray, I rip a satch off my back. The cask autoejects.
I take a second, barely evading an accurate laz shot, and I throw it forward.
Then I rip another satchel charge.
Then I run.

The thing with laz dischargers, be it large or small, is that theyre really sensitive to where you
shoot them. You see, if youre using a laz discharger, lets say, on Earth, you better be shooting
in two-rounders and not further than 500 yards. A two rounder will shoot two beams in less then
0.004 seconds, if my pedia isnt lying - fast enough for the first beam to clear some airspace for
the second beam. That way, it deals damage.
Without an atmosphere to wreck the beam, you can shoot in semi at any fucking target within
visual range with minimal power loss.
Deimos havent got any atmosphere. Laz dischargers are the kings here. The ultimate weapon.
But one thing Deimos has in buckets.
Gray fucking sand.
The satchel lands three yards away from the foxhole. The marties get down, the triple-A faces
away, protecting the lens, and the fucker explodes in a blue flash, raining down fragments and
dirt.
A lot of dirt. A whole cloud of it. Slowly descending, pulled down by the joke that is Deimoss
gravity.
The marties dont wait: they get up, the set to full-auto, they spray at me, they want to kill me,
but fuck, fuck them all, because I made them some dirt-based atmosphere to suck off. Beams
hit me, melt the outer armalayer, forcing my zero-niner to fill my ears with warnings, but I dont
give a fuck, because they dont penetrate. And when Im close enough, I set the second satchel
to airburst and throw it.
I may be smiling.
Im not sure.
When the dust clears, we regroup. We get together, we check ourselves. Squad interface is
borked for some reason, so I check on analogue. Were down to five men. The Rail got
pummeled by a mortar. It survived, but the fish that was supposed to cover the Railman died.
Two died under fire. Its a shame, now that I think about it, but Im glad I can actually think
about. We scavenge the remaining satchels, again, and cover in the foxhole, near the torn
remains of the triple-A; its a good position, albeit heavily scarred by the satchel, and we set up
the armaplast shields to face a potential enemy. We do it in time.
In a minute, were counterattacked by a raider team, light motos with high mobility and fast-firing
dischargers. We hold up neatly - most of us. My gauss jams immediately, misfeeding the
flechette to the coil chamber, and I have a fun time trying to unjam the plastic fuck of a gun.
The Rail saves us, though. The godsent gun just shoots, one time, then another, and they
retreat, leaving two lacerated corpses behind. I smile, and this time Im quite sure I smiled.
We check the perimeter; when Im sure its clear, I order a quick rest.
Not much to do, resting. Being a moto means you dont really have to anything but make
pressure points react to limb movement. Youre not tired after hours upon hours of combat.
Youre just... strained. When it all stops, youre kinda lost. Youre waiting for it to continue, but
instead, you just get a protodrink and some silence.
Some silence is nice, though. Five minutes of silence is a lot. I dont get more than five.
TACCOM sets up a new drop zone nearby; we get a new order: we get some light armour,
some new fishies to put in the cheery tactical barrel we are, and then we assault the local HQ,
taking down some strongpoints in the process.
Spitting in the moto is forbidden, and I fucking hate that regulation.

Accompanied by a team of fishmen, a Grenadier gets dropped. As a spaceborne, you learn to

like the company of Grenadiers: a nine feet moto is a large target, but when you replace the fish
inside with a one point four AI, you suddenly get a whole fucking lot of free weight and inner
space. Suddenly, more than two hundred pounds of passive armour and seventy pounds
overweight of applique add on armour appear out of nowhere, all neat, all porcelain-12 and
armaplast. All added up, you get a large, very well armoured target, and god protect the
motherfucker wholl assume that the Grenadier is slow. Its like a bear. All huge, all burly, until it
suddenly runs at you at fifty miles per hour. It adds up. People shoot at the Grenadier, and the
Grenadier survives, and people dont shoot at us, and we kill with newfound efficiency. God
bless modern tech.
I integrate the Gren into the wetwork and check the command panel; all works fine, surprisingly,
and we hold position until an equipment pod drops, bringing some ammo, some wristers, a
cannon. A 30mm cannon. Grenadiers get all the coolest weaponry, I tell you. Gauss assisted,
belt-fed, recoil-mitigating, with external aiming available in any environment. Its not as accurate
as the Rail, but its large, scary, shoots shells that explode and is otherwise unnerving. Its also
much better at taking out armour: two-stage HVAP are considerably better at penetrating
sandwiches than most pure-kinetic weapons, and the Rail is as pure and kinetic as large ladies
get.
We leave the foxhole as soon as we rearm, quickly moving towards a small hill nearby for a
better vantage point.
I constantly eye the sky for mortar shells, but its clear. Its not trying to kill me for once. What a
fresh feeling. TACCOM shows that we actually succeeded in dropping some medium armour
two clicks away; theyre moving towards the martie HQ, and theyre moving very, very
successfully.
Combat turns into a routine very quickly. I hear a soldier murmur about his dead comrades, and
I stop him. I dont want to - let him murmur, let him compare how dead the dead are to how alive
he is - but I have to, because that fish brain will miss a fucking engagement. Ive seen hundreds
of spaceborne like him. They build a wall made of fear around their own senses, and if you dont
break that wall, they die.
We get into combat every now and then, nothing big, quick fire exchanges between piles of gray
dirt. When youre accompanied by a mech with a built-in heavy gauss and an automatic cannon,
marties tend to shorten engagements to see the enemy, shoot at them once and run like the
fucking solar wind. Were playing it safely, relying on the Gren as much as we can; the
mechanized giant just mows down everything he sees, maximum accuracy, minimum flinching. I
like to watch autocannons fire; in the weak gravity of Deimos, spent casing fall down slowly,
spinning like drunken ice-dancers, falling down until they hit the ground. We take on a triple-A
nest in less than a minute; in ten minutes, weve taken out every minor target were supposed to
take.
STRATCOM is mostly inaccessible to small fries like me, but we do get some semblance of a
bigger picture. The fleet tackles what it can and drops what it can, but thats not much, because
the martian long-range sensors are still up. This is a bad, bad thing, because once you get close
to Mars, it shoots high-precision Beyond-Individual-Sensor-Range missiles at you, and they will
fuck you up, and you will lose, so you gotta form up some SEAD as soon as possible. Deimos
holds a high-resolution P-band sensor array, other than being a potentially useful rock, and its
just far enough from Mars to keep you safe against most BISR launchers. Smaller arrays are
located on the orbital connector rings of Mars, and a whole fucking load of individual sensor
sputniks are orbiting Mars all the time. If Deimos is taken out, you get a hole in the BISR shield,
just enough to assault the orbital rings.
It would seem logical to attack the launchers directly, but, as far as I know, theyre set up in
incredibly thick CIWS nets, just enough to obliterate any extreme-range SEAD breach-missile
weve got, while the BISR monitors orbiting Deimos were a much easier target, so command
decided to begin the assault from the natural satellite using drop infantry...
Blah-blah-blah. I quit reading that bullshit and check His Jammesty once again.
Were close to the HQ. I can tell by the read beams and Fire Needed! requests over the
TACCOM.
The Deimos HQ is a great fucking bunker, built out of construction foam, metal composites,
ceramic strongboards and plastic plates. It looks like a dim, grey pancake with broken surfaces
here and there; it looks unimpressive, to be honest, but I know too well that really, really good
military installations all look unimpressive. Theyre too busy being ten clicks deep in the ground,
surrounded by spaced walls and seismic balancers. Cities and bunkers are the death of us.
They make me paranoid. The unimpressiveness scares me a little bit more than the remains of
the martian unit, desperately holding the entrance, spending what little ammunition they have.
Im pretty sure theyve got ten times the amount of soldiers, all buckled up in the small, dark
corridors of the H fucking Q.
I connect with the 11th and 19th squads; the lucky fucks havent lost a single sardine, but Ive
got a mech in x my squad, so they can go fuck themselves. As we move forward, I see a pair of
mortars being set up in a burned-our foxhole; as we advance forward and engage the remaining
forces, shells start falling down, and for once in this fucking battle, not on me.
We take cover at a heavily damaged plateline, returning fire from time to time. I order the Gren
to take cover behind a knocked-out gravtank - some light martian model - because the marties
got a whole lot of intact recoilless guns, and I enjoy the company of my ten foot angel of death
well too much.
Stupid martians. Theres a golden rule of thumb when youre planning to successfully integrate
gravtanks into your doctrine: you dont use them on low-gravity worlds. At, fucking, all. You
overaccelerate a little bit, and the grav will get the skids: too much inertia is gained during
movement while the natural loss if inertia is too low, so once youve started moving, its much,
much harder to stop. But youve gotta stop eventually, and a vehicle desperately trying to stop
moving is a vehicle you destroy.
All in all, the situation is bright. When you get infantry, armour and light artillery all together, you
call them combined arms and send them rolling down the road and rolling down anything they
see. If something is too large and scary to roll over, you scream at the mortar guys until they
dealt with it, and then you continue your roll. Everyone likes combined arms, from TACCOM to
grunts, and we like it for a reason: it gives results, and in ten minutes of active fighting (my
gauss didnt even jam) we get a green light from TACCOM - perimeter secured, well done,
paper medals for all of you stupid fucks, well be at the presidential palace at Terra Rossa
around tomorrow noon.
For most sardines, it means its time to have some rest and, potentially, load on some troop
transport, get on some assault ship and potentially get some sleep on some resin fucking bed.
For me, however, the meaning behind the words is quite unpleasant, because I see a new order
on my command interface.
In ten minutes, well rearm, well get some applique installed, well hear a stupid fucking prayer,
and well go down the large armoured hatch on the large fucking bunker without any fucking
support.
I grind my teeth.

Shaped charges and red thermite lines thrash the five-inch armoured door in mere minutes. It all
falls down with a flash. It looks nice. Melted metal is beautiful. My dad worked on a metal
refinery, and I got to look at huge ceramic pots with liquid metal in it. It was like lava, but hotter,
meaner and with a potential to turn into doorknobs. I liked doorknobs. I used to open doors just
to touch doorknobs. Most doors were plastic with sliders, and doorknobs were rare. I liked them.
I dont know why.
Im having the flashbacks again, dont I?
I do.
Time to get ready.
We get add-on armour installed to increase survivability in close combat. My personal opinion
on CQB amounted to burn em, but command has a sweet spot for martian tech, so they send
an assault team down. Five moto squads, two assault E-Gs, one heavy moto squad. Heavy
fucking motos. They require special, double-sized personal droppies, so you only get five H-
motos per squad; theyve got motorized rollers on their legs, and thats 30mph while maintaining
accurate fire and being decently armoured. The only sardine to roll in a H-moto is a cool sardine
that passed an SSE evaluation with a decent mark.
I didnt, so instead of rolling, I walk. Add-on armour is a solid way to ersatz a medium moto into
an assault model, but you never feel like the real deal.
Youre way too slow.
At least we get decent weapons. Well, decent. An overcharged gauss is a cool weapon in a
compact package, a slick, powerful death machine that removes any opposition like a fat man
removes frankfurters. All in all, pretty good, and the quick projectile speed drop isnt a problem
when youre fighting in CQ. Sounds nice?
Problem is, you get a barrel meltdown in five hundred shots, so you are outright issued a pack
of three barrels for quick change.
Coils tend to bake down in a thousand and a half shots, and exchanging a coil module is much
more tricky than sliding in a new barrel.
The plastic furniture, especially the handguard, tends to turn into soup after prolonged fire.
But you know?
When youre in a two by two corridor, and theres a fucker in front of you, and youre both
armed, it feels quite good to be the final motherfucker to keep standing.
Im sad you cant fit a Railman in a tunnel. You could clear corridors with a single Rail shot. Just
bang, and its Christmas, and therere dead, bloody goose all around.
TACCOM blinks with a two-minute readiness. I sigh and scream over the comm.
- GET HERE, YOU FISHFUCKS, ITS TIME TO GET INTO THE BARREL!! WE GET DOWN!
WE CLEAR THIS NEST! WE GET BACK! WE GET A MEDAL! HUP HUP HUP!

A Gren clears the entrance for us, and it does it nicely. The mech just stands there, emptying a
box after box of thirty millers, glittering in cannon flashes for three minutes straight; when
TACCOM calls him off, the entrance is half buried in small rubble and spent casings, and I really
hope most of the bunker will look like that in twenty minutes max.
How do you storm bunkers?
My best answer is dont. However, command isnt happy with my answer, so they have their
own.
First, youve got a base of fire. Thats what the heavy motos gonna do. They secure entrances,
large corridors, big rooms and everything large and dangerous at the same time.
Second, youve got an E-Gee team. They carry the advanced explosives, they carry recon
leapies, they carry tech breachers and direct-to-net overcharges. They also carry sapper kits to
deal with IEDs and mines.
Third, you get us, the maneuvering teams. We clear side rooms, breach secondary doors,
control cleared corridors, form up strongpoints if needed and die, die, die, die all the time
because were doing unsafe things without enough armour to do so.
Its a solid plan, as written by a spreadsheet warfighter.
Rock solid, until something goes wrong, and fuck all plans, because they will go wrong.
However, right here, right now, it all goes as planned.
BOFs roll in, shooting on the move, quickly engaging anything they can see with the
overcharges set on full-auto. E-Gees go second; as soon as they get the moment, they drop
recon rollies, funny little balls with minimalistic servos, one point two AI and a rebounder wave
sensors. I like those little things: some mad genius of a guy actually wrote them a pet-based
behaviour program, and you can play with them for hours. They even react to petting. We had
fights over them on the assault ship until the shithead of a stuffie took them away.
As soon as we get a semblance of a perimeter, my squad moves down. I dont even have to
scream at them. Tunnels are bad. Its in a soldiers blood.
Tunnels are bad.
The heavies move forward, using the new intel, and we tromp behind, carbines up. Its dark and
cramped: the emergency lights are offline, and the only semblance of light in the visual spectre
are the IR-tags on the powerpack. I move to the overspectre and gather up.
Once, I got lost in a service tunnel, back at home.
I shake my head. Its not the time. Not the time.
Its never the time.
First stop is the airlock doors. Calling two-ton composite steel a door is cute. Well be blowing
those down, melting the stronglines. However, before you do anything, you set up a smell
breacher that penetrates the door without destroying. You do that on every door.
Thats called unsealing the herm.
If you havent got a mask, you die. If you havent got an enclosed suit, you die.
CQB is a cruel, cruel thing.
We get in after ten minutes of waiting. Melting doors takes time. Melting SPLA 6 doors is a lot of
time. Melting two SPLA 6 doors is even more.
I wait, and my sardines wait with me.
In the dark, hearing your own breath like the only sound in the world.
When the doors fall, we get up.
We get up and get fighting, because the enemy is still there.

Its not like theyre not ready for us. A fortified bunker is a deathtrap filled with angry people, and
god damn those martian are angry. We came under heavy laz fire as soon as we melted down
the second airlock door, instantly losing a stupid fucking heavy to an overcharged shot; we
immediately hug every available corner and support column, returning limp fire and being afraid
to even breath. Thats what bad about tunnel fights - the moment youve got a large enough gun
looking at a small enough corner, its instantly 1917 again, and youre no different from some
kraut fuck with a huge mustache crouched in a trench for months. It certainly feels like months.
Thank god weve got E-Gees. As opposed to us, the fishmen, who get carbines, and the heavy
motos, who get portable LMGs, the engineers are issued MICWs. Its a fucking wonder. The
cherubs middle finger. The assault engineers second dick. A semi-automatic grenade launcher
with a gauss car tucked on as an accidental afterthought. When shit hits the fan, an engineer is
the closest thing to a mortar youll get.
And the engineers delivered.
In two seconds, suppression was broken; in ten, the H-motos were rolling forward, spraying on
max speed.
We push them down a level quite fast. Really fast. I check the dead, turning bodies faces up.
Theyre not even soldiers, most of em. Some stupid fucks in non-protective enclosers with silly
rebreathers instead of helmets. Most of us do a clearing routine; most doors are autolocked, so
we simply seal them up, but some tend to hold up a deskjobby with a PDW trying to be a hero,
so we breach, clear and move forward.
Rince and repeat. Level after level. We move nicely. It goes too well. An IED collapses a tunnel
in front of us, but nobody dies. What the fuck is going on.
We face a strongpoint, but we destroy it in a fish-and-chips, by-the-book pincer.
Pincers never fucking work.
A level after a level. I lose a fish, yeah, but he died because he tried to earn himself some
stripes, which even luck cant help.
In an hour, were on level -18, clearing down barracks. I hate myself. This place is a mess. Its
not a battle. Were clearing out rooms of pen warriors and PC rangers.
It feels sick.
Another hour?
Were on level 30, two rearms later. Weve worn down the remaining PDF squads to taters.
Were moving forward, fresh and clear, we shoot in full auto, like theres no future, and I scream
some bullshit over the comm, and it looks fine. Three heavy motos died. Twelve meds, too. One
E-G.
This is the final level, the command and control, the tech control, and the button room. The
heart of Deimos.
I expected more, I expected a last stand, but most of them just surrender. Hands up. Slowly.
Theyre like civvies with nice stripes. We move them to the lifts; as soon as were sure that most
of the large rooms are clear, we get to corner-cleaning, which takes time.
To save some time, we break into smaller squads; I get to go alone, because my squad doesnt
like me much, but hey, even I dont like me very much.
In ten minutes of intensive walking, Im standing in front of a wooden door. True to god wood.
Im amazed. Most of the motos are busy sweepnclearing; the intel pic shows me a single man
behind a desk in a nice room with pictures and chairs for guests. An officer. Officers are a hard
bunch, arent they?
I promise myself Ill try to be polite. Then, I break the door.
Hes clearly old. A rebreather, a suit. A beret, of all things. I stand there for a second, expecting
him to surrender, but he doesnt. Hes proud, and so am I. He shoots a PDW at me, aiming at
the head: I return fire, turning his desk into rubble. Im a better shot. He falls slowly, flipping his
chair, which is plastic and grey. Im surprised hell sit on a chair like that. Those chairs are
uncomfortable. Youve gotta sit on one for twenty years until you ass deforms to fit the plastic
better.
I smirk. At myself, at the old officer. I get closer to look at his face.
A second passes. Its a long second. I look down, and my smile dies.
Very quickly, I feel myself stupid and upset. As stupid and upset as I ever got. I got turned down
by my first highschool sweetheart. I didnt feel as stupid then.
You double tap. You always double tap. Gauss guns have low stopping power. Flechettes are
fast, but weightless.
You always double tap.
The officer smiles, the old fuck. He presses a revolver to the space between the chest and
abdominal plates of my moto. A revolver. A five shooter. .357, Martian Ordnance Autorevolver.
Its silly beyond measure. Stupid. Idiotic. Retarded. I dont believe it.
A revolver.
Another second passes. Its longer than my whole military service.
And then it ends.
He shoots. I hear the shot. The barrel was pressed against me, after all. Theres air to transfer
the sound.
Soon...
There wont be.
It hurts as hell.
I spray, I dont even see where to. I just hold the trigger. Im screaming, Im hating this old fuck
of an officer, I hate myself, I hate my drill sergeant, I hate TACCOM and STRATCOM, I hate my
squad, I hate my weapon, I hate my armour, I hate it all.
Why am I so stupid?
We won the fucking battle of Deimos.
We cleared a hole in the BISR protection sphere.
We suffered considerable losses, but we proved superior to the technological marvel of Mars.
You know why Ive been calling the spacebornes fishies?
Because in a war against Mars, youd better stop trying to remember the faces and names of
your comrades. Theyre better off as sardines in a can. In the end, thats what we are.
We die all the time.
But I never thought Ill die like that.
Im dying of a revolver bullet, after a battle won.
The decompression hurts more than everything. More than my shame.. My organs are a mess.
It hurts. My intestines try to escape my belly. My blood squirts away like water. My zero niner
tells me Im dying.
It hurts so much that I stop thinking.
As Im falling down, dying...
It gets easier. For some reason. I feel a fall, dimly.
I think it may be for better.
Im not a very good lass, after all.
I lived a long life, all in all.
Thirty years is a lot.
It was fun.
God it was fun.
I had a bunny.
What a stupid bunny it was. I should've got a cat.
I came into the army with a PTSD, but I cured it there.
I got stuck in a tunnel once, but in the army, I forced people to be stuck in tunnels, and it helped.
I was good at what I had to do.
I survived, you see. Until this point.
I was decorated.
A silver star is a lot.
My parents are proud of me.
Dad sent me a hand-made pure steel necklace once. I have it on my neck right now.
As I make peace...
As I think of what was instead of what wasnt and wouldnt...
As I get ready to die...
Somebody slaps a foam block to my wound, restoring compression, and I...
I survive.
But this is an entirely different story. Commented [1]: End of first part (self-titled)

There are a lot of stories to tell, all in all. Surviving in spacebornes is hard. Commented [2]: Start of second part (Fishtank)
You survive for a reason, like being incredibly lucky, crafty or having incredibly competent
commanders, and all three make for great story material by virtue of being very, very rare.
Some stories are great stories, of war, blood and grit, of all the techy stuff only soldiers get, af
all the heroism we show, of the lovingly warm time of sitting in a trench and not dying. If you
served for two years, youre guaranteed to have a story like that.
Like that Deimos one.
But not every story is like that.
Some are just.. stories. To tell them out. They dont really matter, they dont tell you nothing
about human nature, or the darkness of war. Its just stuff that happened. Stuff you wanna
share.
For example, the Army of the Republic, yeah?
One could ask, what does an army do most, and youd be inclined to answer fight wars, but its
wrong. Army does paperwork. Inventory control. Coordinating troops between transports and
outposts. Setting up bases. Doing budget work. Army does budget work all the time. In days
long gone, army did budget work to fit expensive stuff in. Now, its about getting the cheap stuff
even cheaper.
My whole kit, the moto, the L3A3, the clothes, the backgrounder they fitted in the back of my
skull, five days worth of feeding cells for the moto, ten loaded boxes of flechettes, food into the
feeding tubes, general issue grenades...
It all costs as much as I do in two months plus fighting soldier royalties.
Its cheap.
Its dirt cheap.
Centuries ago, a fighter jet would cost more than an honest man would earn in ten lifetimes.
Now, its less than a desk-jockeys year wage.
So anyway...
Here I am, lying in a fishcell on a troop carrier ship.
My belly hurts like hell. Its not even a real pain. With a enforce treatment, wounds heal up too
fast. Way too fast. It works like a charm, really. Woosh, the wound is clear of dead tissue and
dirt. Woosh, undefined cells injected. Woosh, programming manipulator arm makes new tissue.
Woosh, youre okay, drink this pill once a day, your new intestines looks cool.
And afterwards, youre stuck with phantom pains for days.
They even left me the bullet. It didnt shatter. Full metal jacket, 310 grain Army Special. Its a Commented [3]: >.357 >310 grain bullet. How long
nice bullet. Martians know their shit. I play with it for two minutes; I want to tell a joke about is it?
penetration, but the only fish Id tell a joke like that died without embarking out of his droppie. I
put the bullet into the breast pocket of my undermoto. For some reason. I sit like that for a
minute. The pain gets to me.
As soon as Im done reminiscenting about how weird dying was, I stand up, salute a fat faced
major giving us, little soldier men, the Face; I know him from somewhere, but his particular Face
is so fucking unpleasant I dont care.
There arent even medbays on troop carriers. They just slide a medmod into your fishcell and
call it a day. I like fishcells. They remind me of the crumped hotels on Earth, back in the day;
two by one joke of a room with a bed and the potential to be anything.
You eat in your fishcell.
You sleep in it.
You run you physcon in it.
You get a tellie, a bad, a dining room, a treadmill, a church, a toilet, all in one!
Sounds bad, but it isnt. I wasnt joking about liking the fishcell: its comfy, and if you want to give
your legs some stompin, you just take a walk around the corridor.
Its like I have anything to do. When the major leaves, I lock my cell and take a stroll.
Maybe something interesting will turn up.

Nothing does. Troop carriers are dull. Masturbating is a no-no. They lack a mess, so no
alcofights either. A joke compared to the marvel of a full-fledged assault ship or a carrier.
Something always happens on those: if you want to look at stuff, you go to the carry decks, you
want to fight people, you just hit someone. Carriers are large enough to hide moonshine
breweries, for fucks sake.
Troop carriers, on the other hand... theyre not large, not well armoured. No special equipment,
just two pair of all-round CIWS-guns and a whole lot of applique armour plates. Just... ships with
troops in them. APCs with photon engines. Glorified trucks.
Telling FNGs to run around looking for a 1-DI0T form is fun and all, but I did it times and times
over. Most FNGs die before getting the chance of playing the prank themselves. Its kinda sad,
and I stopped doing it. I feel like a better person.
Its still boring as hell, though.
So I slip into the equipment deck, to the moto holds. Motos are okay. Theyre... things. Some
soldiers draw stuff on their motos; I never did, because Catherine MacDuffy is anything but a
fucking painter, but I like looking at what other fishes draw.
TITANIA GLORIA SEMPRE!
Unoriginal and bastardized, but I commend the patriotism.
YOURE NOT BORN A SOLDIER...
I know that one.
YOU DIE A SOLDIER.
Yeah, right.
A picture of nude lady. A good picture, but I recognize her from some netmag cover. Some fish
is either tasteless or has the sluttiest pile of girlfriend you can find on the far rim.
THIS MACHINE KILLS...
Yeah, theres a large list of what this machine kills. Redsand niggers are the latest addition.
Theres a hole on the chest and some yellow R&R stickers with notes to replace the damaged
plates. Redsand niggers killed you, sardine. Irony is a cruel bitch.
GALAHAR KNIGHTS!
Thats a football team.
89
Thats the year the Jupiter Incident War ended. My brother died on it. Nothing else is written on
the armour, and I nod in acceptance. You understand the idea well, fishman.
YOU GAVE THEM A SON, MOTHER, THEY RETURNED YOU A MAN
I laugh.
TEN YEARS TEN THOUSAND THRILLS
Thats the official recruitment ad for superlong conscription. Survive it, and youre set for life.
Roughly nine percent actually do survive, surprisingly.
THIS IS MY ARMOUR...
...and this my gun. One of them broken, the other has jammed.
THE DESK IS THE BEST DEFENCE!
Theres nothing to add. Not fighting and being as far away from the battlefield accounts for
100% of flawless war survival cases.
A picture of three armed men, crossing rifles. Thats an allusion to the bond between the
Spaceborne, Planetary Defence and Ground Units. Personally? Fuck all of them, theyve got
shit on the spaceborne, and fuck you, fishman, for thinking otherwise.
I make another step and look at the next suit.
I smirk.
Its an older model. A MK3 with solid torso plates instead of a two-piece plate.
Remember Deimos.
I knock at the suit one time.
Remember Deimos.
I knock another time.
Remember Deimos.
I knoch the last time.
And then, I was sure I remembered Deimos.
Ill remember Deimos for a while.
Deimos tried its hardest to kill me,
And failed.
The shit of a planetoid is right in front of us, and soon, in two days, Ill be embarking on a fast
moving dropper with a Zero-G Thruster pack on my back and loads of applique in every
possible slot. Ill be assaulting an Orbital Ring, and Deimos, small, miserable Deimos will do its
best to pummel the hell out of any AA or missile the Ring will throw at me.
Remember Deimos.

I sneak out of the holds; I hear some E-Gees talking behind the section lock, and I dont want to Commented [4]: New part.
quarrel with them about the Holy Sovereignty Of The Cargo Hold and the Engineering Deck And
the No Grunts Allowed Treaty of Two Weeks Ago. E-Gees take their duties like civvies who try
too hard; when shits going bad, theyll be among the first to get screwed by command, so they
take their job pretty seriously - a bit too seriously, I always said, but I understand, so I dont
mess with them. Were on the same boat, arent we? Im a moto, yeah, but that doesnt forbade
me to use common courtesy, so I break a leg and slip away silently.
Its a good thing troop carriers like this one are pretty large; as I stick to some emergency ladder
going right through troop deck B towards troop deck D, I feel proud of my knowledge of the drill
and the placement of rooms, corridors and climbholes and the occasional low-gee zone. I know
them well enough to evade both ship inspectors, E-Gees and the occasional lad having a wank
or a lassie in the slipnslide; one-twenty, and Im walking the Holy Sovereignty Of The Soldiers
Piss Land again.
I go for a walkaround. Still, not much to do - ten mins so later, Im opening the door to the
recreational room on the top of deck D. The D-45A is classified a sleeper/medical troop carrier,
so it spares thirty square meters for the grunts to blow some steam with some funny-fun
recreational activities, like beer, which is a very, very popular function.
Its a nice room: only half full and the aforementioned beer is a Titan-brewed Underhill Miners;
its a shitty brand, I know, but I have some fond memories of it: twas the first beer I ever drank
as a young lass. It warms me up. Makes me laugh a bit funny. Fifteen mins, and I sit around
with some boots from the 401th and 309th playing cards, and oh God Almighty, some grunts
owe me pants.
But you know?
It feels nice, yeah. But it doesnt really change anything. I came feeling nice. Now, I feel nicer;
as soon as I go back to my fishcell, Ill feel the same as usual. The steam doesnt get blown, the
clanks doesnt clank, the rust is still there. The problem is well.
Mostly, theres no steam at all. Not because of how hard-hardy we, the motos, are. It doesnt
gather to begin with.
Whats there to gather steam, anyway? Battles? Yeah, they kick you up, but youre kicked down
almost immediately with so many meds you dont even feel your heart beating.
Conflicts between different battalions?
Ha-ha. No. Between motos and tankers and flydogs, maybe, but we dont see them that much.
The E-Gees arent nice, but theyre brothers and they make our life better.
Conflicts surrounding command?
Whats the use? Wanna know how I got my staffie chevron and fancy crown below it? Some AI
2.4 block in STRATCOM think tank room number 9 looked upon the organizational charter of
my battalion, than it looked upon the losses and damages table, then it looked up every
personal doc and said that ol Cathy is a good lass and is now staff sergeant, because AI
jumbo-yumbo and the battalion has lost 30% of its troops anyway.
I didnt do anything heroic, nor I was exceptionally good at anything, nor I was really willing to
take command. But one day I woke up and some hat told me Im now a slightly less cool hat
than him now and that Im supposedly good at screaming at people, and as of right now, Her
Cold Majesty of Titan expects some really good screaming to be done.
I blinked, I saluted, and I did just that: I screamed at people, and I did that for four years straight,
all up to this day.
Even if youre a hat, you dont do much anyway in the motos. Staff sergeants are just fancy
normal sergeants to lead ten men squads or five men specialist squads: according to
regulations, Im to supervise my squad and my men for one, uphold morale and fighting spirit for
two and lend my field expertise for three. Three covers my commanding aspect: I lend my
expertise and I give advices. Soldier listen to orders, because the sarge is the missing link
between TACCOM and the actual war, but thats about it; If I want to see myself actually making
decisions, I transfer to some other army
Its not because of some corruption in the ranks, or higher-up villainy, or some colonel thinking
he knows better. Its because Im a little puny moto down on the ground, and up there is the all-
seeing eye which is TACCOM. TACCOM is 90% AI and with enough processing power to take
notice of the fact that the enemy didnt have time to shave today and 10% wise-ass generals
and colonels that grew out of their moto boots towards the third chevron. AIs eat up intel and
shit analysis; fancy hats with small mustaches hum patriotic songs and point their fingers on
large maps. TACCOM makes the decision. I dont like TACCOM. Nobody on the ground does: it
doesnt feel right, having some invisible hand point you at stuff without being nearby.But wait.
Listen up.
Let me tell you that. Every now and then, a hat will decide that Protocol Eltzin is now in use
and TACCOM MADE A MISTAKE. Then, the hat tries to make a decision of his own; to take
upon a different enemy squad, or to hold some different strongpoint, or to use some different
equipment against a target.
When TACCOM orders us around, we get 15% operational losses on average per D-class op.
Thats a lot.
When some shithead sardine colonel evokes the Eltzin?
Platoons die out. To the last men, in some heroic last stand because some bearded wanker
though it was a nice idea.
So fuck it. If we want to blow some steam toward command, we do that inside our own
battalions, not on shared sleeper carriers.
So I dont blow steam. Im sitting behind a table, and in front of me sits a naked men and two
half-naked women who thought they could hold the stakes. Thats one weird table, and Im still
going all out; shame they dont know that the cards are marked, but good ol Cathie doesnt surf
on a sea with no waves, and what is a sea if not the place too look at half-naked humans?
Its a wet mess!
Oh. By the way.
Theres another thing. Theres that bioapproved and genetically absolute way of blowing steam
called sex. You know about it, you want it, you need it, thats your ticket to the gene train, and
thats one great fucking train. Humans want to get on that train pretty hard, and they cant really
say no to basic instincts, can they? One could think that mixed-sex units full of people not
older than thirty would be quite shaggy units. One could also think of the implications and the
influence on the combat effectiveness of the unit.
But theres none.
Thing is, when you sign up your assngrab with the military, you agree to many things. To how
many years, to what branch, for how much money if youre career. Along the thousands of
points that you have to agree upon exists a small notion that you agree to the brass having total
and utter control of any genital or genitals your body may or may not contain. On paper, it
sounds fishy and something along the lines of a porn novel, but in sad dull reality? They just do
the smart thing and turn any gender you may have off.
Its called graying. Package Gray is a chem cocktail that makes you frigid. Makes you gray.
Makes you the kind of guy who could read the Bible aloud to the sight of the first piece of action
he gets. We eat those like candies; masturbation is still fun, but it feels pointless, and when you
actually see members of the opposite sex, you it takes you time to remember whats their sex
supposed to be exactly. Its not like were emotionless: were humans alright, but if two motos
feel they love each other a bit too much and they want to go to the next step beyond platonic
love and poems and involve some fluid exchange in their emotional bond?
They have to pick up their guts and go to the chief medical officer of the ship theyre stationed
on.
Generally, CMOs refuse such stuff. Go on a leave, fuck your brains out, then come back. Thats
the by-the-book answer. Thats the answer 99% of the motos will get, and considering that not
many ask to begin with?
Yeah.
So Im sitting behind a table with a whole lotta naked cuties around it, and Im mostly concerned
that I cant sell the pants I just won.

The worst thing about Orbital Rings? Commented [5]: Start of part "Sliver Rings"
Theyre not even rings.
It irritates the hell of me. I dont know why. Its just... wrong. You name things according to what
they are. The Rings dont fit.
There isnt a single, complete, ringy Ring. At all. Theyre never encircle a planet fully. Instead,
you get a lot of circle fragments, all parallel to the equator, holding the Lifts in place with grav
reversers installed on the whole length of the Ringline.
You use them as spaceports, as weapon platforms, as observation and meteorological stations,
to entertain tourists, to act as lift stations. Useful things, the Rings.
Yeah.
The Lifts?
Hm...
Speaking of the Lifts, and the Space they take us to.
Space is kinda important. A pile of years before, the one to control the seas and rivers was the
one to have the tastiest dinner. To do so, you need a lot of ships, dont you? Load them with
stuff and armed men, send em around, be fat and wealthy.
Didnt change an inch.
Space is the new sea. Spaceships are the new... ships. You load them with motos or goods,
you get back some more goods or dead motos, so having a lot of ships with a lot of goods and a
lot of motos is fuckhugely important.
Heres the tricky part. You can build a ship on the surface of your spaceball and launch it
upwards conventionally. Yeah, youve gotta build a launchshield, but thats not much. Seems
nice and easy enough. It is. However, one cool day youll find out youve gotta put your ship
back unto the surface.
And kabam:
Your ship burns itself while breaching. Poof. Just melted plastic, charred ceramics and a lot of
steel parts half mixed with human remains. Sure, theres stuff that can exit and reenter the
atmosphere at will, but theyre expensive. Youve gotta build them out of titan+ or alumast while
minimising the use of ceramics, plastics and heavy-weight composites. When youre done with
building it, you get one of the two: an expensive yacht or a combat-ready aerospace hybrid with
enough weapons to level a mountain.
Anything else could and will be satisfied with a normal space port.
We dont even build ships on the surface anymore: you make the parts downwards and
assemble them up above.
To cheapen the process.
I smile for a bit.
Grin, even.
I exit the thought train.
Back to reality.
Im in a plastic moto, flying at hypersound+ towards a martian Orbital Ring with three shitty lifts
dangling below it.
Im in full Zero-G gear. Thats a lot of gear. Armour, thrusters, additional electronics, more
sensors, more comms. Youre also issued with a RoF limiter and a recoil muffler on your gauss
so you wont fly away.
All in all, cool stuff.
Im holding on to a shippie with two squads of sardines. They dont even mumble or murmur.
Spaceops scare the fuck out of them. Theyre too busy asking themselves questions like what
happens if my thrust pack dies, or what happens if Im blown away by an explosion and cant
find the way back, what happens if Redsandia captures me into her G-field and gives me a
one-way flyjob down the surface.
Yeah, you guessed it. The right answer would be you die, but oh god, you have to be stupid to
die like that. Most spaceops casualties come from one of those:
Enemy point fire, like small arms, or friendly heavy fire, like cannons.
Heavy fire.
Emphasis on heavy.
As we move forward, missiles outrun us. STRATCOM has stuck two Fatrail batteries on
Deimos. Loaded them with saboted rounds.
And now they fire, taking down triple-As, missile launchers, CDM projectors and anything
remotely military-related. The Ring burns, and weve gotta make sure it burns in a controllable
fashion.
- LISTEN GOOD AND LISTEN HARD, FISHHEADS! WERE GONNA NEED SOME LIFTS!
WERE GONNA NEED SOME LIFTS REAL HARD AND REAL GOOD! WERE TAKING THIS
PLASTIC SHIT OF A RING IN TWO HOURS MAX! CHECK YOUR GEAR ON PASSIVE, GET
YOUR THRUSTERS PRIMED, WERE GOING ZERO IN FIFTY SECONDS!
I see them gathering up. Almost hugging the shippie. Id pat them if could.
You learn to hate shippies. Not that theyre bad. They do, however, give you that false feeling of
being safe. Feeling safe kills. Shippies, other than being an unmanned glorified photon engine
with handrails to hold to, have a shield capacitor. A small one, but nevertheless. The pedia
videos show you a shield capacitor at work, and you drool about one for days straight. Its just
there, eating beams like its nobodys business, ignoring rail shots, crunching down flechettes,
melting bullets. The moment you see it, you want it. You want it hard. Nobody wants to die.
Problem is, a shippies capacitor is made with disposability in mind. Itll hold a triple-A shot,
yeah, maybe two, even, but when the third one hits, the heatsinks will melt. Instead of mobile
cover, you get a fast-flying fuel tank with no protection whatsoever.
Not something you hug. A bomb designed to kill the fuck out of you deserves no love.
Im flying on one, towards Ringa Granda Numero Five, loaded up, born to try my hardest not to
die.
Im staff seargant MacDuffy. Spaceborne infantry.
And I scream.
- PREPARE FOR ZERO! PREPARE FOR FUCKING ZERO IN TEN FUCKING SECONDS!

When the moment comes, I dont even get enough time to scream. Its not like I even have to.
Bing, a green light blinks. Everybody gets the light. The light is a signal: you jump, or in five flat,
you splatter. As for me, fuck being on this cruising missile for a second above the regulation. Ill
feel bad about myself. Feeling bad isnt good for soldiers. You start thinking about how many
things are bad in this world, and commanding officers, NCOs and TACCOM are the first to
come to mind.
So I stop thinking and let go of the handrail, macro-put (thanks god for hands free macro-put!) a
formation order on the wetwork and set the main thrusters to max.
I feel the gentle pressure of the engines going hot.
I smile.
For a second, Im a space bird. Im free.
Im the forgotten daughter of the solar winds.
Then the shippie explodes, gobbling a CIWS-overcharged beam, and Im sarge again, back into
the fight. In my sideviewers, I see the heatsinks turning into red jelly, and the explosion that
comes next. In smug pride I see that every single of fishheads from my squad is right behind
me, taking a position in the default shippie-breakaway formation.
All this ruckus is about not getting hit. The shippie gets you as close as possible with some
shielding, to let you see a beautiful beam once or twice without dying afterwards. After you get
into the mystical land of As close as possible, which often translated into very far away, you
try your hardest to get into point-blank, that being boots on the target. Since shielding is out of
the question once the shippie is toast, you get into formation and perform maneuvers, which,
in its own turn, translates into having panic seizures and tottering like a monkey with a burned
ass.
We do just that. 0g gear is almost exclusively about thrusters. You get loads of them: a main
pair on your back, four minis on your shoulders, two on your boots and a whole lot of micros on
every possible spot. The only capable moto is a Zero-G moto, and the only capable Zero-G
moto is one with a pilot so afraid of something he tries to fly into every direction at the same
time.
Thats what maneuvering is about nowadays.
Being random.
The Ring is nice. Looks nice, I mean. A thin, slick midsection, called the ringline, connects a
few round hubs, which in turn act as anchors for the Lifts and house the pull-uppers. In typical
fashion, its all built with modularity in mind, so the midsection is bristling with attached
subsections.
This being Mars at war, most of those subsections are attached triple-A batteries, Combat
Countermeasures, additional shielding, cruising missile pods, sensor arrays and drone bays.
All in all?
The flesh and blood of fun, a 35% expected survivability rate. You learn to mistrust those,
because they assume the average laz never jams and many other things youd better not
assume.
Does it make it more pleasant in any fucking way?
Of course not.
- WERE IN LD RANGE IN FIVE SECONDS FLAT! PREPARE TO EVADE! HOLD
FORMATION, HOLD TO YOUR RIFLE, AND KEEP, TO THE FUCKING, FORMATION!!
The Fatrails do wonders, but theres so much they can do. The Ring is ablaze, but the combat
sections? Those survive. A lot of them do. Theyre well protected. The martians arent stupid.
I grin. This isnt OSUT, this isnt COIN, this isnt fucking century old cans above Neptune, this
isnt boarding merchant ships. Its not the same. It feels good.
I feel different. Not a soldier, as a colonel would joke. A warrior.
We fly forward. Like little plastic wasps.
The moment were in range, the lazcannons start releasing beams after beams. At us, at squad
2, at the support drones, which limp behind. At the stupid, lonely shippies, discardable and
hated. Were dropping around 6000 motos at the Rings right now, STRATCOM tells me. This
very moment.
Might as well try being among the best.
So I evade. A beam almost hits me.
I evade.
Another one, and two afterwards.
I evade.
A missile outruns me and gets shot, because its a stupid missile. I evade.
I evade a beam that melts a moto right behind me. Sorry, fishman. Ill remember you.
I evade, and evade, and evade.
- CHECK YOUR RIFLES! CHECK YOUR COMMS! CHECK YOUR SATCHELS!
I take a second to breath in while evading some debris.
- PREPARE FOR TARGETSIDE!!

Im focused. Ive got three fishes on my back, a baked fishs leg somewhere behind, a silver ring
right in front of me, and a somewhat red planet right in front of me. Im not really me, in the
worlds view. Im The Republic Herself. Small, evil, imperialistic. Mars is even worse, because
hes big, evil and imperialistic.
Were a cosy little solar system. We suck on the Suns energy tit. We work plastic to make
spaceships. We achieved cold fissure.
Were pretty cool, Id say.
But right now, were animals.
I do a quick roll. My legs face the incoming silverness of the Ring.
- REVERSE THRUSTERS!
The support drone, in his limitless, 1.1 AI dumbness, overruns us and almost gets shot. My
squad is okay. We slow down. I take a deep, deep breath.
And then we land. Targetside, middle of the Ringline, below the attached sections. For a few
seconds, were safe.
What a weird feeling.
TACCOM forwards orders. We wait for other squads to land, while were at it, we take down
triple-A batteries and bomb missile silos, like the undying ubermensches we apperantly are. We
set our boots to maghold; I hate maghold. It feels wrong. A second ago, youre a bird, now you
have to fight your own boots to walk.
At least you dont fly away if anything happens.
Thats scary. Flying away. It doesnt happen, but you think about it, occasionally.
It scares you shitless.
Weve issued a whole load of explosives. Theyre not satchels, mind you: we get demolition
rockets in a one shot discardable tube, six tubes a person; once youve called something
satchel charge long enough, it stays a satchel charge forever, and the equipment lists can kiss
my shiny, plastic ass all they like.
The support drone carries additional ammunition and nothing else, so he just bumps into a
metal strongline, desperately trying its hardest to brake. And then he stays there. You can call
one if you need to, but you better not, because any martian that has a semblance of reason will
wreck your drone the moment he sees it. That means youll be stuck with no additional ammo
until TACCOM has a bright thought along the lines of infantry with ammo performs surprisingly
better than the ammoless analogue, so you keep your drones safe. You better keep them safe.
We call drones like that dumbos for an obvious reason, but rarely. You always appreciate
another satchel. Youre almost thankful to command for providing you a vehicle that does
exactly that.
Almost.
We get hit by patrol drones as soon as we get that precious second to breath.
Martian stick those fuckers everywhere they can. They stick drone cradles on every attachable
combat section for repairs and patrolling. They arent even cool drones. Just barrels with six
thrusters, two manipulator arms and a laz carbine. Gray. More plastic than ceramics. Some
visors. Martian visors look creepy.
Good thing theyre lightly armed and stupid. They just float. Minimal evasion. Maximum pew-
pew.
And Im a bird again. Maghold offline. Thrusters to 20%. I slide, just feet above the silvery plates
of the Ringline, evading heatsinks, solar panels, microsensor arrays and laz fire. I shoot back.
Im smiling.
Back in the day, when I failed my SSE evaluations, I did so because I got a shitty score at
ground maneuvering. Not exclusively, I wont lie. But mostly ground maneuvering.
I was okay, otherwise. Good, but not very good, and a high mark at SSE requires being very
good. I wasnt.
However, I did get a single perfect score. Just one. I was proud. I puffed my cheeks like a
fucking hot air balloon, even though I failed the evaluation for H-Motos.
I was perfect at 0g.
I am a bird;
I am a butterfly;
I am become death.
On squad level.
My fishes arent that bad, either. Theyre a cut above the typical sandwich feed. They disperse,
they take cover, they actually request squad commands, they return fire. Tracer flechettes - 0g
gausses are loaded with those exclusively - glimmer around like fireworks. Drones, on the other
hand...
Drones are sturdy, but stupid. Colonel Dumbo-Kilgore level stupid, and thats not even inflating
it: every single one-oner will be quite sure that taking cover is a direct violation of kill em all
protocol. An one-fiver would be smarter, harder and better, yeah, but hell cost you twice the
price, and thats a lot of money for taking cover.
On the field, though, it makes a lot of difference. It makes so much difference Im actually smug
right now.
Why would you lose time that could be used to kill humans, eh, drono?
Yeah, botty, you dont do silly stuff like that, I murmur. Just stay in place.
Good botty.
Two minutes, and squad 2, 9, 13 and 19 are targetside.
Five minutes, and weve taken down the patrol drones. Theres more of them, but they dont
attack all at once - they protect the sections theyre based on, mostly.
Six minutes, we go up. TACCOM reminds me Im not here for skid shooting.
Im here to be the skid for someone else.
Whats a combat section on a Ring? Its like a normal section, but with less metal (to reduce
potential covered positions for potential magholding invaders like us), more armour, no solar
panels, protected sensor arrays, Combat Countermeasures like digiflares and magnetic
slowdowners for kinetic penetrators and lotsa plastic to keep the thing intact. Most combat
sections are modular - you just fit whatever you want into the turret sockets, which usually
amounts to stick more of the largest gun in it. Some sections, however, are made with specific
roles in mind, like BISR-M silos. Destroying specialized sections is fun.
Destroying modular sections is not.
Not today, at least, because theyre packing triple-As like theres no tomorrow, and youre in dire
need to ruin today for someone else.
At least most of those things ignore us. When youre under constant fire from missiles and CAS-
craft, small fishies seem like a secondary concern, especially when youre a one point two AI. I
actually agree on this one, but if I was to be a triple-A cannon, Ill get me some sucker FNG
triple-A cannons to guard my flanks.
And Ill be fucking right.
Its not like Im stupid. Its not like generations after generations of motos were stupid. We do
have tactics, and we use them extensively, and we develop them extensively, and we hone
them. We developed thousands of tactics over the years, we honed them, were ready to fight in
space, on the ground, in the air, in cities, under the seas.
Im blaming the mortality rates on the enemy being ready to do the same exact thing.
So, Zero Gee. The coolest thing about 0g is that your facing isnt dependant of your major
vector of movement. You can pop out of cover while looking wherever you want, shooting at
whatever you want or showing your ass to something you didnt predict will be there. When
youre done firing, you can pop right back by reversing your thrusters. Breaking line of sight is
the bread and butter of 0g. Were carrying 360 sensor cov for a reason: youve gotta have a LoS
in every side at the same time, like a chameleon 2.0, because the alternative is never seeing
the moto thatll kill you.
In space, nobody hears you coming.
So we keep up. We advance from broken LoS, popping like true to god popcorn, releasing
satchels and quickly going down, before the discharges melt us into fine fish jello. Do it two or
three times, youve got yourself a fine, ravaged combat section.
And we do it. I quickly assign pop vectors, I assign a whole load of them, because thats how
you do it: no using the same vector twice, because the one point two is smart enough to
instantly know where you came from and where youll go. You move. You change vectors. You
do it quick and clean: you move just enough to force the turret to retake aim, lose a precious
second and get a nice, crunchy, 22kg explosive load with an engine blazing silently right behind
it.
Boom.
Its a simple tactic, but when you can appear from below the targeting horizon of the gun, it
works. If the tactic works, you use it.
You use it as quick as possible and enjoy the results.
I like the look of a fine, ravaged combat section. It releases what little oxygen it gets in nice, fiery
flowers full of black, organic smoke. Plastic burns like solid, stinky yoghurt. The bonds between
the monomers turn into porridge made of physics. Fragments fly.
Its beautiful.
There are explosions like that all around us. Here and there, turrets fly. Missiles drop.
The Silver Ring glitters in the red light.
As I laugh, we get hit by a raider team. I lose a fish instantly. Bad luck - direct penetration
through the weak spot between the ceraplates around the neck. At least it was quick.
Im not saying it was painless.
- DISPERSE!! TAKE COVER, MOVE ON A BROKEN VECTOR, STICK FUCKING
TOGETHER!!

...This is what I wanted to happen. Being in command tends to be like that:

You assume something based on your experience, you devise a course of action that would
benefit your group and your objective in the most immediate fashion, you hope like
motherfucker that itll happen as you planned. You pray for it. If it wont, thingsll get messy.
And getting them to be un-messy again will be your job.
Just like now.
A CAS craft hits us. Well, not us. It tries to spam the laz discharges with ECM and take them
down in a quickie, but the FCS does its job so well it blue-on-blues right on our position, ripping
the section we were standing in two shredded halves.
The cool thing about CAS crafts, like the space-only A/S-18 or the aerospace hybrid A/H-15, is
that they pack a very specific gun, which basically defines the class all by itself. Its a special
gun, requiring a very unusual cradle requiring a very specific craft construction requiring some
technical jumbo-mumbo long lost to man. That gun transcended guns and cannons. Apparently,
we stole it from Zeus along with the Rail.
Its a Gauss. A gatling Gauss. Three barrels. Three positions. A firing position, a forced
pressure gas cooler position, a loader position. Thirty five millimeters a round at velocities high
enough to bend time.
Such a shame the average pilot cant keep up.
The stuff were standing on, all thermoplastic and whatnot, it goes bang. It flies. In two seconds,
its not a section anymore: it tries to be everything at the same time while mostly being burning
debris. Im standing - well, hardly, but almost standing - on one half.
My fishes - on the other.
And not a single martian hit.
Aerospace Force can fuck itself.
I launch myself, primary thrusters to max. I evade. The raiders do the smart thing - you hit
where the enemy is the weakest or least numerable, so they try to kill me the second Im
separated, and I do my hardest to deny them the pleasure.
Not all smart things are smart in application.
Id bet a five.
On myself. Im quite biased, if youre in doubt.
Im free!
Im a bird of prey!
Does an eagle hunt for hawks?
Fuck yes.
A squad of 0g equipped martian raiders are much harder than hawks, though, but theres one
thing.
Im not your usual eagle, either.
A quick roll, Im out of the LoS, sliding along the Ringline, another roll - Im behind the northern
side. They keep up - theyre fast, Ill give them that - but I have them where I want them: well,
not exactly, because my backcam only shows me two of them, and theres supposedly four, but
Im pretty fucking sure Im quicker.
Another roll on my side minis, and Im below the Ringline; Mars is right below me, and here, on
its orbit, I fear none of its evils.
I do, actually. Silly quote.
As soon as I stabilize my flight, I fly towards a long hanging section. Its a good general idea; I
get some side cover, maybe a shot or two, and then Im back in cover again without any speed
lost.
Seemed like a good plan at the time.
Its not. Afterwards, I even understood why: raiders always keep a rearguard squad to limit
enemy maneuverability. Flanking is easy when youre in 0g - the sky is a flank, and the ground
is a flank, so having someone to guard it is nice.
And they do just that.
The moment I appear from behind the section, smiling like crazy and feeling aroused from all
the adrenaline, I instantly get hit. Fuckers waited for me, and they guessed lucky. I change
vector like the wind of gods, I almost scream, red mist clogging my vision; beams, beams
glimmer before my eyes, and I feel an archangels wing covering me the moment I disappear
again behind cover, flying into the space between two power sections.
Im using everything I can to gain speed. Minis, even micros. Im alive. Thats the most important
thing. Im alive; Im alone; but I fight.
I even smile again. I take a second to breath. My hearts beating like crazy. No sound but my
own breath.
Space is harsh.
I give the feeding handle of my gauss a nudge, just be sure, and I feel a chill going down my
spine. It slided easily. It never slides easily. Right of the factory line, it doesnt slide easy.
Oh no.
I look at my rifle.
And at the hole, right in the place where the feeder ramp was before a laz melted it.

I immediately start moving again.

First thing to do:
No panic. Panic isnt fear. Panic is fueling your cognitive process with fear, and fear makes for a
bad fuel. Burns the cylinders out, and your fun ride of a life will end in a blazing, smelly,
meatnplastic kinda way.
Second thing to do:
No throwing away the rifle. I almost did it on autopilot. Normally, you just replace your rifle at the
heartpod or the dumbo, but here? Here, Im playing a poker game, and the stakes are very
fucking high, and leaving my rifle for everyone to see is basically saying my hand is worse than
the one your mother had, nine months before your birth.
Third thing to do:
Think.
Whatve I got on myself?
No pistol, for one. Within standard pistol length, gauss pistols dont have enough coils for decent
acceleration, chemlaunched firearms are quite higher the cheapest cheap mark, so that
automatically makes it too expansive, and long range plasma cutters are issued to E-Gees
exclusively with no combat application in mind.
An utility knife. Funny thing, utility knives. They make them out of polymers with specific
monomer placement - stays sharp until the blade breaks. They make kiddy knives, training
knives and combat knives in the same plants. Same process. Different polymer structure.
Something like that. Amused me to no end.
A satchels. Well, two satchels. Tubes seem okay, autodiag gives me greens. Thats 22kg*2 of
explosives with no less than twenty different ways to set them off, proximity mines among them.
The detonators on most detonation modes are shitty, though. Nothing beats the good old
proximity cap.
Fourth thing to do?
I repeat step three while sliding along the remaining of a side section.
Then I smile.
Kill em all, thats what Im going to do.
Beams hit the plastic debris right below me, so I scramble sideways, along the ringline; I need a
plan, I need it fast. Marts are not stupid. Theyll assume Ive got my equipment intact, so theyll
skip the pleasantries of giving me long, victorious looks before thrashing the hell out of me. I
have to assume things. I have to predict things.
A quick sidevec off the ringline, along the section holding holders, and Im flying upwards, away
from Mars. I need to give the place I look.
The marties wouldnt approach me right from behind, because theyll assume Ill be only moving
via lines I can quickly cover with fire. Theyll try to approach from upwards or downwards,
depends on their own starting vector of movement. Someone will be protecting the ringline,
because the ringline has the best LoS. Someone will try controlling the sections.
Ill start with the sections guy.
I dive, evading fire, and hide again; doing a quick rec up and down, I slide to the side from
below the ringline and fit myself between two plastic walls. Thats a good position, but not good
enough. I trust my intuition on this one, because intuition accepts fear as fuel just fine.
Fear, all in all, is just the talking, sulking embodiment of your survival instincts.
I dont trust TACCOM or STRATCOM, I dont trust officers, I dont trust diags, I dont trust AIs, I
dont trust my own, old, stinky logic.
But if theres one thing I trust, its my survival instinct.
You know why?
Im still alive.
So I move upwards, to a triple-A module. Its mostly intact, and good god the turrets are down,
because Im in no condition to evade heavy laz. Without stopping for a second, without slowing
down, all thrusters max, I drop a satchel - just eject it off the tube, set to proxy mine, and dive,
dive, dive like the wind, because I was never here. I roll to the other side of the ring from below
it, I fly into a large hole in a storage section, evading fire from a martie I failed to catch a glimpse
of, and leave another satchel, right at the other side.
Then I fly to the most obvious position. I fly to the center of the ringline. I turn back. I move back.
To where I left my squad. Im the wind, and Im surrounded by windhunters.
Its the moment of truth.
The just moment.
As I flight forward, the burning sections, the ringline, the space battle above me all mixing into a
single line of silver, black and orange...
Diag gives me one explosion. In my backcam, I see a red flower, blooming in the blackness. It
was a good overwatch position, was it, redsand? No, it wasnt.
Two seconds later, another flower blooms. You rushed back up from under the ringline, didnt
you? Fast, short route, mart?
Fuck both of you.
Beams glimmer, trying to hit me. A third mart came from above, with nothing but debris to
protect him, and I fly towards him, gaining more and more speed, and I evade, I evade, I evade
until I can see the lenses on his visors.
Im breathing heavily. I feel like a berserk of the old.
A polymer utility knife will break off a ceramic plate, but Ill cut through armaresin. Blood flows.
You can hardly see it in the blackness.
I laugh, I laugh like mad, Im shivering, I cant control myself.
And then a beam hits me, taking a micro off. And then another. I turn on what thrusters I have.
He just stand there. In the middle of the ringline, a gray figure on glittering silver.
I try to move towards him. I have to reverse my vector. Time slows down. It takes me a year to
breath in.
I fly forward, and a beam hits me. In R&R analysis, this is called a pre-penetration, and is used
to indicate a plate so damaged itll decompress from shock. .
I fly forward, and another one glazes my leg, damaging a servo. Thats not much in space, but I
feel the heaviness. It pains.
I fly forward, and my primary leftie thruster goes down, and I lose momentum.
It all slows down.
Everything is so slow.
Did I do a mistake?
Where did it go wrong?
I dont know.
And then I hear it.
CLEAR GROUND, BE ADVISED, POTENTIAL BLUE ON BLUE, DANGER CLOSE.
My sensors blink, restarting, hit by a quick ECM spam.
In space, nobody can hear your gun spinning.
Nobody can hear it firing.
But I sure as hell can see it raining down.
This fucker missed by a mile. The closest intact triple-A is 300 yards westward. Its not even a
primary target. Its targeting sensors are most likely down.
And as I smile again, as my heart starts to beat, as air fills my lungs anew...
I come to understand that my life was saved by a retard piloting a CAS.

When my heart remembers the difference between itself and a roaring engine, when my
breathing gets normal again, I fly back down, to the ringline. Two minutes later, I find my squad.
Two motos, one hole. Theyre fucking stupid. They took cover in a hole inside a combat section
the moment they were fired at. They returned blind fire, and thats all they did, because theyre
two fucking sardines without a can to drop them right into the meat grinder. All the marts had to
do was shoot in their general direction with a laz, and they hugged the plastic like it was their
own, sweet mother.
I dont even scream at them. Im too busy being alive.
They may be even right. Theyre not the ones with a hole in their chest.
Nor am I, though. For what matters.
Around us, a battle is still going. The Ring weve taken (or almost taken) is comparatively lightly
defended. Combat sections, drones, raiders, tunnel rats inside the ringline. Thank god Im not
going down there.
Some Rings? Deserted, because of incomplete lifts. We took them in twenty minutes flat, and it
was a really fucking useless objective to fulfill.
Some Rings, on the other hand, are protected. Many of them?
Really fucking well-o.
We failed to take the 5th Ring, which is visible from where Im standing. It took heavy fire from
SEAD crafts and gunboats, but the marts? They just started collecting debris, setting up heavy
laz nests, prepping mines in every possible hole. The 5th holds up the major spaceports. Lifts
going down right towards the capital. No taking that shit. Theyre more likely to damage the lifts
then leave them to good ol Mother Titania.
In ten minutes, were on R-D with three other squads, most of them in tatters. TACCOM, in his
limitless cheeriness of a three years old child playing his dads stratgame assigns a new target
to take on, but we fuck it, because weve sustained enough casualties for a field R&R, which I
request as the senior officer in this whole bunch of fish.
We get into a tourist section to rest for a bit. Its a nice section, a restaurant, most likely: all
glass, views, plastic tables floating around and colourful artificial flowers all around. It was
someones wedding, three days ago.
I smirk.
Bad day to plan a wedding.
We sit down. Theres metal on the floor. We get comfortable. Someone tells a joke, but I dont
listen to it.
I look.
Im in front of Mars, and Mars is in front of me.
We are face to face.
I give the Red Planet a long look from a large, broken window. Its not very Red, now, after the
years. Theres a lot of green, a bit of emerald, stuff like that. A load of yellow. Seas of gentle
blue. White clouds. Its not very different from Earth, now that I think about it. Similar sizes.
Similar grav. After the T-Forming, its the same exact atmosphere, just slightly more dirty.
Here, on the orbit, among beams glittering in the dark, missiles roaring without a sound, soldiers
perishing without a trace, I stand, alive, before the gestalt of everything Im supposed to fight.
In a day, Ill be dropping down, along the lift.
Ill be dropping down in heavy gear, ammo loaded, weapons ready. Full squad, gravtanks at the
ready, with grenadiers brandishing semi auto 75mm cannons and a colonel telling us some shit
story about how glorious our fight is.
Itll be a nice story, to be honest. But I know whats it all about, under the fancy words. The
colonel knows it too, but we have an agreement: we know the story is shit, but we listen to it,
because the truth is ten times more shitty.
We are falling down from the sky to cripple a world.
To destroy someones home.
To kill someones husband, brother and son.
To leave a planet in tatters.
And if someone asks me, later, when Ill get old and grumpy and unpleasant and Ill develop a
drinking problem...
What did you feel?
Ill tell him that war happened. Wars happen.
That once, little Cathie MacDuffy went to a large, grim-looking housy to enlist.
That she went through OSUT and was among the best.
That one day, some important man asked her and many others like her to promise something.
To promise your country to do your best for it. To do what she asks, what she needs of you.
Yeah, its bullshit. Its politicians playing games. Its money being tossed from a pocket to a
pocket.
But its not about them.
Its about you and your promise. When the push comes to a shove:
You better keep your promise. Commented [6]: End of "Sliver Rings"

My name is staff sergeant Catherine MacDuffy. You shouldve know by now, but its okay. I
dont like it when people remember my name anyway.
Im a soldier. A fish. An important fish. Every five or so minutes, I scream at another fishes.
Every minute, I give them orders. Every hour, I see them die.
There is a reason you dont call fishes by their names. There is a reason I dont want them to
know mine.
When Cathie will die, nothing will change for my squad. Sarge perished, and then STRATCOM
pulled another sarge right out of its strategical ass. This is how its supposed to be. When a fish
dies, TACCOM gives us reinforcements. Fishes die every day.
If you know a name, a face, a story, together with the fish, a part of you turns black, small and
very close to dead.
Not dead, but thats the bad part:
Once in a while, itll remind you of what was. Of a face thats no more. Of a voice youd like to
forget.
So Im Sarge.
And those are my Fishes.
I like it that way. Many, many, many fieldies in the army like it that way. It retains your humanity.
Keeps you whole, whole enough to return home and smile when youll see your mother.
But not everybody are like that.
Some want their face to be known.
To be well-remembered.
And lance-colonel Baldwin is sure to be fucking remembered.
Were on a martian liftplate, slowly sliding down. 200 tonnes isnt much in pure weight, you
know. A moto is like... 130 kilos unloaded without an operator, and a grenadier is three times
that weight. Yeah, sure you can count it up and see that you can actually fit a whole lotta motos
on a martian liftplate, but if you look at the ground very hard, you understand its full of marties,
and they dont have 200 tonnes of weight limitations. On top of it, they really, really hate your
guts and have enough weapons and equipment to disembowel you for a direct-to-bowels hate
speech, and suddenly, nope, 200 tonnes isnt much.
However, were all smart little people. Its the 23th century, after all. Being smart is a must. The
marts, while having incredibly shitty gen-2 lifts, as old and worthless as the art of curling, have
enough wits to use outweighter gravplatforms. You load those on your liftplate, give em enough
techwork every now and then, and bang - 550~ tonnes of carried weight. Load it, launch it, hour
and a half, its on the ring, half an hour to unload it, and in half an hour, its back, ready to be
loaded again.
So, what does it all have to do with lance-colonel Baldwin?
One more minute.
When we came in, guns blazing, the marts locked the liftplates on ground level as soon as shit
hit the fan. You could technically ask why didnt they blow up the lifts, but... well, lifts are one of
those things that are actually expensive. Very, very expensive. Mars was in to replace its lifts
for fifty years by now, but they just didnt. Not because they cant, mind you, but because the
buck to do it is so fucking nifty theyll rather use outdated spinelifts with gravplatforms on them
instead of building new ones. So they didnt, and instead, the aforementioned new liftplate is
now hugging the Red Planet, like a bird afraid to fly.
But were the evil invaders, so we have that covered. Weve brought our own plates. Quick
assembly, quick install. Theyll burn out in ten or so runs to the ground and back, but thats
enough. We dont, however, have any gravplatforms with us, boo-hoo.
But were sliding down right now, and were not afraid, or not afraid above the allowed fear
quota, and I can see Mars, and its all beautiful, and I know for sure this mission isnt more
suicidal than most.
Yeah, we dont have gravplatforms.
But we have gravtanks.
On this particular plate - a battalion. A shitload of light gravvies, a bit of meds. One command.
An infantry company, that being us, the motos, is attached to give the tanks the required booty
on the groundy edge. You know how you transport motos on gravarmour?
Its fucking laughable.
You strap them to the dropnets, usually located on the side of the tank. .
Strap them.
So... well.
Where was I?
Lance-colonel Baldwin.
Hes giving a speech. Hes our commanding field officer for today. He inhabits a command tank,
and Im strapped right on to it. I can punch the side armour, and the colonel will hear me.
The soldiers love him. He gives the best speeches. He has enough bravado to make the Prime
Minister blush and enough understanding of the soup that is a soldiers brain to give that
bravado in very well thought-out sentences.
He cuts the shit pudding that is a soldiers everyday life in small enough pieces to make it
tolerable.
They know his face. He asks for names. Theres no fish around lance-colonel Baldwin. There
are only humans. Everybody is a veteran, called up by Her Cold Majesty of Titan to bear arms in
her name, everybody is hero, deserving the respect and love of those hes sworn to protect,,
everybody is a patriot, everybody is the rifleman, the tanker, the pilot, the desk monkey his
country needs.
It feels good. To exchange handshakes with a colonel. To see him trust in you. To know that
someone who isnt a complete shitface is giving you orders.
His way of doing has a grain of truth, you know?
Problem is, the average fish is behind four centimeters of ceramics and plastic, and mister
Gung-Ho Baldwin can have tea behind enough passive armour and RA and countermeasures
and active armour, that he would most likely miss the Rapture and the End of The World As We
Know It.
He wont even spill the tea.
Its easy to give speeches and remember names when youre a tanker.
Last in, first out.
Tankers are those to tell the stories when everybody else has died.
- WELL HIT THE 4 KILOMETER MARK IN ONE MINUTE, LADS! - he declares in the comms.
He doesnt scream. He speaks in a voice thats larger and bigger than any other. He screams by
whispering. He shakes mountains by talking loudly.
- I WANT YOU TO CHECK YOUR ARMS! I WANT YOU TO BE READY FOR ANYTHING! IN
TWO MINUTES, WELL SLIDE OUT OF THE SKY, AND WHEN WILL HIT THE GROUND, I
WANT TO SEE A PLANET IN FLAMES! DO YOU HEAR ME?!
- YES!
- LOUDER!
- YES!
- BRAVO!
And the motos answered in roars.

What is a tank, exactly, and why do we even field those in these wonderful times when space is
a joke and the next frontier is boredom and making food tasty again?
Mostly, its a combination of things: being fast, being very well armed, having decent protection
and decent logistics, and being fucking everywhere.
And Im only semi-joking.
Those little sliding fucks can glide at up to four meters, can be airdropped without chutes, have
more than 2000 clicks of operational range. Most gravvies slide at 140mph at any weather, can
move above water, can ignore a whole lotta stuff like large stones and weight-triggered mines,
can move in any direction, ignoring facing, can do grav overcharge jumps. Sounds cool?
It is.
War is fast, ground war is very fast, and having a lot of gravtanks is the golden standard of
being fast: youre both fast and dangerous, and that makes you strategically valuable.
It makes you strategical gold.
Even from a motos PoV, gravs arent bad. You get a flying cannon with some MGs attached
here and there. Its loud, clunky, wants too much support all the time, but it occasionally saves
your ass, and that amounts for much . Tanks are okay. Not as much as the Rail, because the
Rail keeps you safe, and the tanks want you to keep them safe, but all in all?
Theyre decent, the gravvies.
I like them.
The only thing thats bad about tanks are the tankers, because theyre the cheekiest cunts
around after SF, but if you cant handle an annoying tanker, then its time to choose another
branch.
- Sargent MacDuffy?
Its the colonel. I sigh.
- Sir, yes, sir.
- Check your weapons. Were sliding off in a minute. Your squad is assigned to my vehicle, and
I put my trust on you and your squad to keep my tank safe, sound and combat-worthy, sergeant.
I sigh again. Thanks god for hands-free comm.
- Sir, right away, sir.
Here, in the atmosphere, you hear things. I hear the roar of air. I hear the sound of ceramics,
emblazoned in the entry flames. It makes me calm. Its a simple, constant sound. I do the
routine. We do the routine. I check the straps. I prepare myself.
Fucking straps. Pods are infinitely better. They feel better, theyre better protected. Theyre
fucking pods.
While this? This is something right off the lunapark of hell.
You dont even get a holoprayer.
Why is it I always take a mental pause off the world before my ass falls into a new oblivion?
The training fall.
The patrol drops on merchant ships.
The deployment on Callisto. Then on Ganymede. Fuck Ganymede.
The spacefights on Jupiters orbit. When we had to leap ships.
The Flashback before the drop.
The seconds before in-range separation on shippies.
The strapdrop Im about to have.
Maybe, just maybe, you leave a small mark. A chip on the stock of your life.
This was a moment that was supposed to kill me.
So afterwards, you can count them up and smile, because they all failed.

Let me tell you about chutless jumps.

Only gravvies and jumpmotos can do them. On paper, chutless jumps are the gods prefered
way to deploy his angels to fuck shit up. You fall fast, you fall quietly. Youre hard to see. Youre
almost impossible to take down before you touch the ground. Youre the tip of the ceramic blade
which is the Spaceborne Assault Unit, designed to remove planetary defence forces in a single,
red-hot blitz.
But let me tell you that:
When the lance-colonel accelerate his middo and slides off the platform, screaming something
along the lines of HOOO-AH...
I see the ground, the lakes, the forests, the cities, the sand, the dust, the fields, the techspires,
and I know for sure that the only thing keeping me safe from certain death are six gravpads and
a bucket of bravado.
My ass clenches hard enough to bend iron. I stop breathing.
Yeah, I know the failure rate is almost non-existent, and that having a double chute will most
likely make you a target for triple-A, but this... this is no space. In space, you hit things when
youre stupid. In space, youre free. The only G to hold you is the Ghost-G. The far-reaching
hand of stars and planets. Nothing else.
But on Mars?
On Mars, Mama Gravity is cruel mistress. She wont let you go away. And if you try, shell want
you back. And if you made her unhappy, shell mess you up. Mess you up dead.
We fall.
Were falling fast, but if feels slow. Suspended in the sky. Free-fall acceleration is a sucker.
Nothing to hold me up but my own psyche.
Im sliding down from the sky:
Im afraid;
Im amazed;
I want some soup with fresh bread.
And then we start shaking.
- What the...
I look back, towards the liftplate weve just left. I see the light gravvies, tumbling, with motos
having dropdown seizures. It looks weird. Like a boy, dropping his favourite toys from the big,
big toy bag. Plastic soldiers, plastic tanks, falling down till they hit the floor.
Then we shake again, and the lighties tumble to the left. Oh, no...
- Sergeant, weve hit a turbulence zone. Do you hear me, sergeant?!
- Sir!!
- Were about to get separated, sergeant!!
I know, you fucktard. I know.
And the worst thing?
When we get out of the turbulence zone, were flying towards a forest. The wet, green,
constantly rotting forests of Mars are well-known around the Sollie.
Theres even a joke about the forests of Mars.
When shit will hit the fan, go hide on the boiling-hot Venera or dive into the jungles of Mars with
a rifle.
Shit doesnt stick to shit. .
- No support, sir?!
- Of course there is support, sergeant, this is an assault operation, not armed recon!! Well get
some orbital drops the moment we secure a landing site!! Just hold tightly! Dont panic!! HOLD!
TIGHTLY!
The forest gets closer.
Fuck it. This is no place to die.
No sense in panicking if you dont plan on dying.
- SIR! YES, SIR!
A minute passes.
And then we land in a river.
Hehe. Land.

Water erupts in shafts. First, the tank hits the river with the gravpillow. Then, as soon as we feel
those excessive Gs of a sudden stop, our straps autoclick, and we are launched down, into
water, like small plastic missiles towards a monstrous, swamp-coloured snake. Towards the
bottom. Its gross, dirty, green and full of enough rotting leaves to create fresh soil on fucking
Mercury. As we go through the water, it envelops us, consuming recoil. Its a pillow, a hard
place and a hammer in the same time. Weird feeling. Never felt like it. I never dropped into a
river before. Im pretty sure its stinks as hell too. However, the moment I submerge,
unstrapped, the aircell starts feeding me pure, Titan-made oxygen. It fills my lungs nicely. Feels
like home.
I cant see shit, though, so I click my visor into IR-mode and look around.
Motos cant swim. A 200 kilo moto with 30 kilos of equipment is a bad raft choice, but we can
walk underwater just fine. Most of the time, anyway. I free my leg from a watergrass net and
start walking; you have to walk slowly, because the underwater ground is composed of sticky
shit that tries its best to keep you underwater forever.
You know, for fishes, were surprisingly bad swimmers. Yeah, sure, there are light motos for
specops with underwater modes included in basic configurations, but most of us lil sardines?
Most of us, we drown.
Like some idiot from squad, right fucking now.
Bad landing. Damaged a servo while hitting the water. He bitches over the comm, but I shut him
up. Its business as usual. Landings are dangerous. You put plastic men in plastic boxes and
expect them to land unharmed? Pff, no.
A damaged servo is a joke. A dead moto is a notch on STRATCOMs plastic body boxes for
home return table.
We pull him out with the colonels tank in less than a minute, one more, and his servo is
replaced with a spare.
Another minute, and the landing euphoria calms down, and I start asking myself questions, like
where the fuck am I, what the fuck happened and what am I supposed to do.
First of all:
Were not a spearhead of operation Dustfall. Spearheads are made of SF teams deployed by
ghostdrops and heavy motos with Grenadier Vanguards, making enough ruckus and kicking just
enough ass to create a case for Level D redeployment of enemy units surrounding the
liftgrounds.
When the cool, operator-type guys are done with their job, not so cool high-mobility units (that
being gravtanks and motos, ergo us) to engage the redeployed units and giving the SFs enough
time to embark on airshippies for quick raids on important stuff like triple-As, sensor modules,
airbases, BISR missile silos, fuel and ammo depoes, field HQs and whatnot.
That has nothing to do with us, though, because were to continue playing try not to get fucked
over by the whole martian army until the main forces drop from the lifts.
Thats two hours of not dying.
Thats a lot. On enemy ground, thats forever.
And we, that being a single command medgrav and five little motos, have extended that time of
being on enemy ground by three hours minimum.

We regroup. The colonel is in the zone. Hes faced with an nonstandard situation where a
speech and a by-the-book order will not cut the dough. Hes thinking.
Im counting.
Five motos, one Rail. Earthbound kit, that being a sliding facemask for increased operator
comfort, two aircells instead of the spacekits six and a different weapon. Why a different
weapon? Well, its not really different. Its the same gun.
But weve gotta adapt.
Space is the gauss rifles friend. In space, were issued with L3A3 rifles. Thats 120 .11
flechettes per boxmag, shredding armour with no concern for filthy air or plebian gravity.
Aiming is easy. Supression is nifty. I love the L3A3 rifles, and the only downside is that theyre a
jamming piece of junk, but thats another story.
However, when youre stuck in a dirtball with an airball and a pullball surrounding it, youve got
to abide certain rules. Air fucks speed. Gravity fucks your ballistics, and suddenly, you beloved
.11 round turns into a sewing needle at best and a toothpick at worst. The round is too light.
While the exit velocity is as good as ever, by the time the flechette has flew 300 yards, it has
lost every bit of penetration speed it had. It tumbles and dances like nobodys watching.
So you need a larger round. So you rechamber your L3A3 to .303 +G, add two coils to the
acceleration chamber and youre a happy little moto, ready to kill.
And its still a jamming piece of junk, by the way.
Why? Well, because stuff. To make misaccelerations (empty coil runs; they happen when the
coils run a full cycle, but fail to capture the round, and it stays in the chamber) impossible, every
+G round has a light piston. First, the piston explodes. The round gets its initial speed: not
enough to actually hit anything, but just enough to move through the barrel. Then the coils
capture it as it runs through the acceleration chamber, and wham - required combat velocity.
Even if a misacceleration occurs, the round will still leave the barrel, and the next one will load
without clogging the chamber with a double feed.
But fuck you, because pistons are shit, so instead of double feeds, you get even funnier stuff -
chamber tumble, where a round will be stuck in the acceleration chamber because of a faulty
coil cycle, and the next one will load as usual and will proceed to collide with the stuck round.
Right inside the rifle.
Bam.
You get used to it. After the tenth rifle that explodes, jamms to death, has its coils melt down or
simply stops shooting because Armashava Buddha had the lazy finger, you learn to see it as a
symbol.
A symbol of a military that needs better rifles, but its better to not think about it too much.
Colonel gets his shit together. The marts are pulling our navsats down like its the Independance
Day, so were stuck with physical until the fan will finish the turd off for good. Physical is hard to
work with in forests, so we do the simplest thing - we try to leave the forest, set a navbic for a
clean location read, get some motos via drops and move to some nice place to die in heroic
combat.
I shrug. Good enough.

I feel like a scout again. I hated the trousers. Titan has two forests. Literally. Not enough space
as it is. One is called Whiteshire, another - Wildereen. Both are sad excuses for forests. Too
small, to shallow. Titan is cramped. Without enough living space on your planet, your forests will
inevitably look like glorified parks.
But here, on Mars?
This isnt a forest. Jungle will be downsizing it. I hear and see monkeys, I get stuck in lianas, I
see more colours than a drugged narco on LSD+. Weve spread out, and I cant see for shit
except for the irritating blinking of the squad position beacons; with a foliage so thick and the air
so humid, you cant engage anything effectively unless youre at handshake range or unless
youve got a sensor array so powerful it can bake potatoes.
Like the one weve got on the colonels tank.
Most commtanks are like that. You cut your ammo rack by half for additional long-range secure
comms, you add enough on-armour sensors to accurately predict the type of underwear the
enemy wears, you add a one point seven AI and you get yourself a tank smarter than the man
commanding it.
Im not quite sure thats the case with Baldwin, but the same way you zero your sights, youve
gotta zero your opinion on officers, and zero is a good term.
We move away from anything resembling roads; with grafmaps and compases being the only
indicator of the position of your own ass, youve gotta be careful, and were as careful as it gets.
We dont expect anything shooting at us, though.
Why?
Its a fucking forest, thats why.
What retard starts dropping his troops on forests?
When you drop your sardines at a very hostile ball, youre interested in accomplishing certain
goals.
Theyre pretty specific, those goals.
Youre interesting in forcing the enemy to engage a lot of small groups while hoping to have
enough forces to successfully destroy each one.
Youre interested in crippling logistics. When you hit weak spots, you want them to stay weak.
Good logistics mean that any spot will be a strong spot very fast.
Youre interested in minimizing urban fights. Why?
Because fuck urban fights. When a moto goes to hell, hes forced to fight COIN in good ol
Earths Moscow forever.
Youre interested in minimizing fights with the enemys strike groups, like tank divisions, air
assault divisions, heavy infantry battalions and combat engineers.
Youre interested in attacking political and industrial centers. Thats pretty basic, though. Let
STRATCOM think of the basic stuff.
See?
Not a single forest.
As I think that glorious thought, a laz beam hits the grav though foliage. Nice, clean, fast.
Burning leaves, branches and flowers in its wake.
Thinking about it, thinking on duty is bad.
Leads you to moto hell, excessive thinking.

The beam hits a REA block, which explodes, releasing thermofoam. The thermfoam roars. I
hate the sound. Quickly expanding, vibrating from the lazers heat, burning and baking, the foam
looks like a huge orange flower, rapidly growing on the gravvies turret; in a second, the laz
discharger hits the overheat point, and the beam stops, leaving a trail of hot steam.
The discharged REA is immediately ejected from the armourplate; the orange flower lands on
the ground, splashing dirt. Even through the air filters, it smells like hell. Like burned plastic
mixed with boiled chems.
And the tank stands, unscarred.
Its not like a thermofoam discharger can actually stop beams. They cant. We dont install them
on spaceships for a reason.
They do, however, take an additional second to burn through.
Enough to force a discharger to hit the forced discharge cancel state. To stop firing. To cancel
the beam. To prevent overheats in the optical chamber.
Enough to keep our gravvies going.
It all takes two seconds max. A thunder in the clear sky.
Another second passes.
I give the colonel credit.
His FCS is set to return fire on auto. The turret moves. The cannon lines up.
The 120mm GC sends a MAG-SP HEAT round towards the foliage. I dont see where, but I
know where. You follow the beam. You follow the heat.
It connects.
I hear the explosion. Through the green, brown and yellow of the leaves, I see hints of orange,
red and dark blue, sparkling. A generator being destroyed. Fuel burning. Ceramic armour,
ruptured.
Another second, and I run, forwarding orders through the wet, setting my sensors to double
relay. Time to engage.
Being a good moto, I quickly destroy any thoughts of why am I engaging redsand niggers in the
middle of a jungle. I concentrate. Comm relays me a detailed scan. Twelve infantrymen. One
tank, in tatters. One MG-carrying dumbo. I see them clearly. I can shoot, but I dont, because I
make assumptions. As I move through the dense wood, I dont see beams, burning the leaves.
Does that mean that I can see them, and they cant see me?
Seems that way.
I grin.
I change the orders. Fuck blitz. Well hit and run.

Motos are made for hit and run. I buckle up. Gather my weight. Rifle at the ready. I run, heavily,
quickly, hitting 29 mph, taking aim.
The moment I have a clear shot, I press the trigger.
Oh, the sound of gauss. I missed you. Three-round burst to conserve ammo. Side view gives
me a green blink. Target hit.
And I fucking run. Im a camouflaged tiger, running through the forest, as the Red Fire Snakes
try to hit me, burn my skin, boil me alive. Im a monster in a forest thats not mine, alone in
woods that hate me with four brethren, fighting a force that wasnt supposed to be there.
Im the golden, ideal moto, in the golden, ideal situation. Outnumbered, outgunned, late for my
own funeral and having fun from every single second.
We engage quickly, sweep and clean; the marts do the smart thing and cover near the burning
tank, returning fire, but here, the All Seeing Eye is on my side, and the one who knows where to
aim is the one to shoot true. The dumbo sprays toward our general direction; one of my fishes
get hit, but the squad interface shows me a non-penetrating hit, so Im unconcerned. In a
minute, theyre down to four men; in twenty seconds, the colonel decides to show us, stupid
fishbrains, whos the battleboss, and finished them off with four rounds from the co-axial thirty
mill.
We check them, quicky-quick. Theyre patrols from one of the numerous planetary protection
divisions, courtesy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; light motos, general equipment, weirdly
good comms. We move away the second were done. Moving is key. In a situation as fucked as
this, you move. You move all the fucking time.
The colonel said something about us making a really good job, but thats a wasted speech. We
know that bloody well.
Nobody died yet, you see.

As I walk through the forest, alerted, ready to rip and tear anything stupid enough to show on
the short-range scan, I think. MIA-controlled PDF divisions. I did my portion of reading while
lying my ass off in the week-long travel to Mars, so I know a bit of this and a bit of that: PDFs
are not deployed as frontline troops, because youre paying the army to do it. Instead, you stick
PDF squads, which are mostly light motos or no-motos, to any spot deemed important enough
to have its own icon on the map and be targeted by hostile forces. If the turd turns out to be a
bit too much for the martian warfan, you can redeploy PDF units to engage invaders directly,
sure, but thats a bad idea in general, because most PDFs are undertrained and lacking in
combat experience. PDFs are the same in every part of the world. Theyre no different on Titan.
If anything, theyre worse.
Being a PDF commy is the worst officer job possible. Youll be stuck playing Budget Cuts: The
Game until discharge.
And theyll cut your discharge fund too, while theyre at it.
I sigh.
So, back to the thought.
Why are we facing peedees in the middle of the supposedly empty forest?
Until no intel is available to clear this weird misunderstanding, we proceed with the same leg it
out of the forest plan. Im worried. Not of the fact that weve faced with something we dont
really understand, but because if it turns out to be important to the tiniest bit, the colonel will try
to play hero and engage it. As is. Five motos, one tank, a huge fucking forest and uncountable
numbers of redsand niggers, ready to chop your ass off the moment you give them the chance.
What can you hide in a forest? Not much. A sensor bus flying on orbit in hardscan for two
minutes (thats the average flight time for a sensor bus until it gets shot down) will notice any
types of non-underground bases. Hiding an underground base under a forest is plausible, but
then they wouldnt be protected by PDFs - the marts deploy army units to protect clandestine
military installations. Nothing as large as a BISR silo can be hidden inside a forest, because that
stuff is large and hard to hide. Instead of hiding it, you protect it.
So what are we facing, exactly?
Could be a training base. Maybe some unfinished undeground building sites. Maybe tunnels. No
idea.
I roll this whole process again, from one side of the brain to another. It gives me no ideas until
I get tired of it and stop thinking at all.
I am Catherine MacDuffy, a decorated patrol droid.
We engage some troops later on, while moving further east, toward the expected forest
clearings. Searchndetain groups, both of them, light weapons, two motos per six men. Not
much. We deal with them in a minute max, because the colonels tank does wonders: it keeps
us running, gives us eyes. We keep it safe in return: later on, we evade a tank platoon, and we
notice it before the commo. Three lighties, which isnt much on paper, but if theyre lucky, theyll
fry our asses in a single firing run, and were taking no bets.
I kinda envy the marts when it comes to tanks. A bit. Our tanks, you see, are using barreled
cannons, either simple, gauss or the rare, anti-tank Big Rail. Gives you a fine choice of shells,
like MAG-SP (Magic Soup) HEATs, kinetic penetrators, high explosive, frag, canister, missiles
of any kind, anything that fits in the barrel and is launchable by cartridge cases; rails shoot
simple stuff, like composite spikes or metal slugs. Its pretty cool. You can handle loads of
targets, you have specialized ammo, you can do a whole lotta things like a true god of war,
ready for everything! Boo-ya, Titania, spaceborne, tea and crumpets!
But when the screams get silent, questions arise. For cool cannons, you need an ammo rack,
which has the potential to go up spectacularly, you need to make tanks big, you need to provide
them with tricky logistics. Stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff, which goes on and. Which stacks
itself. Not very nice when youre ten feet in a foxhole, and your only hope of taking a Centurion
Gravo down is a tank with no ammo. Our own fucking comm is locked to 22 shells in a rack.
A martie tank turret, on the other hand...
Being a laz discharger, the mart Conquista-L optical lazer is independent of ammo. You feed it
energy, it fires. You feed it energy in short bursts, it fires short bursts. You need it to fire longer
beams, you fit a cooler plate above the optical chamber.
You get my drift?
I think you do.
Theres no difference between the martian tank cannon, autocannon, tank HMG, CIWS and
triple-A. Its the same Conquista-L. Feed it energy in different amounts and in different patterns,
it does whatever you want. You provide the generator with cells, it gives you energy. Your
logistics are easy as pie. Your light tank doesnt feed enough energy to the discharger? Feed
the gun a dircon cell, and itll fuck the shit youll point it at. STRATCOM fears that Mars will be a
long, long run of a fight because strategical balance and geography, but fuck those clowns.
The marties will be a long fight because they can shoot for long. In any mode they need. In any
situation that arises.
The only thing a Conquista cant do? HE.
But the fucking marts got that covered too.
They fit mortars everywhere. You have free space in the armour? Have a mortar.
Mortars.
I shiver.
The sun starts setting. The colours dim around us, and then turn into solar orange, as the last
sunlight flows through the foliage. We load on the tank, planning to travel a portion of the way
through the river; one of the fishes starts singing some ol song, back from Earth, and Im too
tired to stop him.
Something about a green river. Catfishes bite. Waters flow.
Yeah, lil fish, thats a good song.
Sing it.
And then I see a star, ascending.
Flying towards the sky.
In the weak sunlight.
The song stops. The blue-ish flames of a space-capable engine leaves patches of reflected light
on my visor. Its unpleasant. It autodims.
Thats a BISR missile. Ground to space.
In a place where no BISR missiles could be hidden.

Me heart skips a beat. I can feel the air, filling the colonels lungs.
It all goes down from here.
Down, and down, and down.
Suddenly, I realise I dont know shit. STRATCOM is silent to reduce potential wetwork hacking.
TACCOM is silent because were off the Big Net. The colonel screams. Were to go forward,
were to find the target, were to destroy it, he screams. I wonder: are colonels like Baldwin
really full of shit? Most likely, but maybe...
Maybe theyre furious that theyre declined real command. Lance-colonels are different from
normal colonels. Lance-colonels are field commanders. They fight with the troops. They live with
the troops, and when the shells fall, they die, just like us. Theres a breaking point for most
officers: when a lieutenant gets to become a lance or a deskie. What do they feel when they get
a new medal, a new chevron, a new tank seat that theyll occupy until they die instead of a nice
stack of papers to turn around? When theyll be fieldies forever, sergeants with nice hats, the
exact thing they tried not to be?
Maybe, just maybe, lance-colonel Baldwin really wants to die.
Its a weird thought. If a man wants to die, you respect him. Men are not made to die. Men are
made to live and fight for every second, to rip, to tear, to destroy, to do anything required to
ensure that a future exists.
When a man wants to die, hes won a war against himself.
But right now, the colonel isnt a single man. The colonel is a part of a unit. He is the unit. He is
to live and to ensure that the unit will live.
That Ill live.
I respond to the order. I object, but he doesnt listen. He adds speed. We move forward. I put
my hand on the strapline, ready to release. In a minute, were hit by three PDF squads. We
move back, towards the forest, ditching the green river; as soon as were on the ground, I
destrap. Theres thirty of them. Maybe more. The remote weapon station shoots through the
foliage. I hear the battle, but I dont see it: they jam the scanner with a mobile ECM carriage. All
I see are requests popping on the squad interface.
I order them to move. To run. To throw the marts off. Five motos. One rail. One tank.
3 TANGO UP FRONT, BOF NEEDED
1 TANGO HEAVY SUIT FROM THE LEFT, BOF NEEDED
AMMO ON ME
2 TANGO UP FRONT, ARMOUR SUPPORT NEEDED
We dont stop. If well be slow, theyll regroup. Theyll set up a fire base. Theyll overwhelm us.
In two minutes, Im down to 180 bullets in reserve in the autofill bandoliers.
ANTI-ARMOUR UP FRONT, CHANGE VECTOR
A beam cuts a tree right in front of the tank. I throw commands, I try to be what the army calls
me, a staff sergeant, a decorated veteran, a warrior like no other, but Im an ape in a forest with
many other apes trying to kill me dead.
HEAVY GUNNER FROM THE RIGHT, FLANKING NEEDED
A rapid-fire laz discharger rips through the flowers, twenty meters to the left; the tank silences it,
and were still running. I release two airbursters from my wrists; I hate those little grenades, but
they give a loud bang, and frequently, its enough.
ARMOUR UP FRONT TO THE RIGHT, LOS DECLINE NEEDED
Aerosole grenades pop up, hiding us in thick, white smoke. I dont even see the forest anymore.
Its just beacons, blinking in the whiteness, among the sounds of battle.
Its chaotic. Its a mess. We move to a clearing, and the colonel spends a high explosive-
incendiary, shooting blindly, somewhere, anywhere, and he hits. The wood goes up in flames,
and the phosphorous wave forces my moto to close the external airducts before Ill burn my
lungs. I hear a scream. Not everybody were as lucky as I.
The colonel orders us to advance. He tells us were blind, that we need to take the jammer
down, that theres an objective we must complete.
I cant even kill him and say it was an accident. Hes in a tank.

The sun is down. The night consumes the forest like a large bowl of chicken soup. I try to
imagine the jungle as a soup bowl.
Itd be something my dad will cook. Yeah, itll be a soup. Its certainly a soup. Its made out of
water and something is boiled in it. Little motos, burned tanks, hidden BISR silos, huge trees,
grass the size of a ceremonial longsword, some bright flowers for herbs, some river muck for
smell. Mix it up and boil it in a large enough stewpot, and youll get my dads soup: a legendary
poison used to kill dragons.
Thats my dads soup, however. This particular jungle soup is different: its a poison made to kill
mortal men, but in value packs. One squad at a time. One battalion a run. One army a day.
And then, the cycle continues, and a new soup is made.
The marties retreated. My squad is still without casualties. This is a wonder. A bloody wonder,
and a one undeserved.
Were just some fuckers in a shit as deep as it is useless.
Some tankers near Point Dango could use that luck much more than us.
As we walk through the burnt patch of ground, where the HE-I exploded, I kick a baked moto.
The forest refused to burn. It just... flickers. Small greenish flames in the dark. The air is too
humid. I turn my visor to IR, and I see nothing. Forest. Forest everywhere.
Its quiet, though. The forest shuts up when the face of war started grinning. We try to
coordinate, but without much luck, so we walk in a tight group, the tank right behind us. It cant
see shit: the jammer is wide-band, overarching, strong enough to reduce wetwork speed to
twenty times below the norm. How do you find a jammer thats created exclusively to ensure
that you wont find your own nose when youd like to pick it?
You follow the largest light.
Its a huge fucking light. It fills the diapazone of every sensor youve got. Normally, you get
SEAD planes to fuck it up, but here, in the jungles of Levenskog, the only weapons we have are
the ones we brought. Thats not much.
Any amount of weapons is not much if used against an enemy you know nothing about.
What do we know about the local PDFs?
They exist. Thats sums it up.
We move toward the general position of the jammer; as soon as we pass a nice, gentle creek,
surrounded by yellow karka grass, I hear a loud ping. The wetwork dies. The only comm
working is the automorse of the beacons. No sounds at all. I feel like Im in space again.
By myself,
Surrounded by insanity.
We find the jammer in ten minutes.
Its a light martgrav, no armament. Another lightie for escort.
I smile. Jammers are these little things you hate. Not because theyre especially bad, though
they are. Because they feel like they break the rules. Like they cheat. Yeah, you know that wars
yield no rules, but...
You expect things. You expect things to go in certain ways.
And when jammers start jamming, the melody becomes a bit unpleasant for the soldiers ear.
You hear that single false note. You expected something else. You cringe. Sometimes, you die.
So, as I hear the commtank shooting its autocannon, I smile. As the lighties hit the ground,
burning, full of 30mm holes, I know that a good thing has been done. That a bad thing was lifted
of this shithole of a planet. Its time: I wait for the wetwork to load.
It doesnt.
I give my squad a puzzled look. The jamming is in place. ECM, wide-band, all-specter, most
sensors are down, wetwork is down.
I swear. I dont hear a word over the dead comm. Maybe the colonel swears too.
And then, the jamming goes down. The sensors go up. Ten seconds, and we see a missile,
penetrating the rivers surface, steam rolling from the engines heat. Two hundred yards, my
rangefinder declares. Two seconds, another missile leaves the surface, roaring, darting towards
the sky. The scanner array goes back online and runs a full scan, as required by regulations:
fist, I hear a notification ping, and then, I see two targets.
Two bipedal mechs. Theyre large, theyre very fucking large, dwarfing the colonels middie in
every dimension; theyre not humanoid, either. Both are underwater, walking on the riverbed,
slowly, gracefully; Im stunned. Dumbfounded, even. I dont see a lot of details: the scanpic is
blurry, more outlines than forms, but I see some certain things clearly.
Both carry a block of BISR missiles, huge containers, visible in mag. Both carry enough
jammers to blind themselves, and I need no fucking pictures to confirm that.
Im pretty sure they didnt see us. Now, Im pretty sure the see us very bloody well.
And then, the colonel screams.

The walkers deploy sensor rods, thin modules, reminiscent of the venerable periscopes. They
look at us. Puzzled. Thinking. AIs dont have gears, but I hear them turning, and they do it
slowly.
And then they click.
For a short while, the world stops turning. Its like the Flashback, but shorter: its what you see
when you life chooses to turn a page in the large, large Journal. I see stuff. I hear stuff. I smile, I
cry, I scream, I laugh. Then...
Then, things happen. They happen very fast. In a flash. In a breath. Low-band ECM start
running. Basic stealth. I dont see outlines no more. Just small sensor rods, peeping through the
murky water. Mortars shoot. Mines fly. The colonel screams again.
And then, I duck.
What can I do against a target I cant see? What can I do when a senior officer orders me to
something I cant do? What do I do against a danger so large Im not even afraid of it, because I
cant understand the extent?
I like being a moto. Fishes in motos can answer questions like that very easily.
You run.
The wetwork is fine, so I try getting my fishes into a formation right behind me; my luck, and
especially their luck, is running dry. We fought for six hours, surviving every encounter, and
then, in a second each, two sardines are shredded by direct mortar hits. Just like that. In an
instant. Stupid fucks, you dont stand in the open. You just fucking dont. Why would you stay in
the open?
I know Im lying to myself. I was in the open with them, but I was in front of the formation, and
they were in the back. They died. MacDuffy lived.
This second, Im okay with it. Ten seconds later?
Ten second later, Ill forget, because Im really, really busy. I do my hardest. I do my hardest to
survive.
I dont stay in the open, and the smartmines trying to hit me get thrown of course by the thick
green hell above my head; I run. I run. Motos are good for running.
Running is good for you. OSUT is running. Moto courses are running.
You attack, you run, you defend, you run, you retreat, you run twice as fast.
You run.
Even the enemy I dont see moves. Its mortars stop shooting the moment it stops getting hits;
its smart. Its thoughtful. It conserves ammo. Its smarter than the colonel, who shoots a Magic
Soup, but misses; the shell shutters underwater, expanding in a blue ball of plasma, boiling
water, and then it explodes in a pillar of steam and foam. I request concealment on my position,
and the tank responds; as soon as I stop seeing anything but white smoke, I decide to hide
behind some other tree, more treeish that the current one, so I move away. It was a shitty plan,
to be honest, because I misjudged the vegetation. It betrayed me, the fucking forest. We move,
and suddenly, were in the open, and the mortar bloops again, and theres nowhere to hide.
Again and again, mines erupt from the water, stop in the air, looking for us on planars, and
launch at us like high-explosive lemmings.
What do I do?
You guessed it. I run.
As I run, I look. At the dirt, flying upwards, at the shells, hitting hard. I know why they dont hit.
Incorrect leading. One extra meter to the front, and were in the damage zone. two extra meters,
and youre feeding us mines.
Its a weird feeling. You survive, and you know that you do so exclusively by some engineers
mistake. A silly mistake. I own my life to many things, dont I? A silly mistake is now amongst
them. I have (or had) five brothers, though. Its actually possible I owe my life to two silly
mistakes, but thats a depressing thought.
The situation is depressing as it is. It doesnt need any help. I lose another fish. He gets the
wonky servo, he falls, he gets hit by a shell.
I dont even swear. Im surprised I dont forget to breath.
The colonel decides to play the game. To be a hero. Its time, Im sure he thinks. Its about
time to carve a new name in the soapstone of modern History.
Fuck it. Modern history is no stone. Its sand.
The colonel doesnt give a shit, though. He orders a move. He leads his tank to the open,
strafing left and gliding front, towards the shadows in the water; the autocannon erupts in the
general direction of the dark figures. The HMGauss barks. A carnival of war occurs before me,
and the colonel does his hardest to be the prime clown.
He executes a maneuver, he moves in zig-zags, he splashes water left and right; its like Im
watching a movie, and the main character is just two minutes away from an action one-liner.
Hes a pretty good tanker, Baldwin. Hes okay. Hes full of shit, but hes okay. If he wins, I wont
be upset. If he loses, Ill running away.
He gives another shot, right on the move; a miss, but the plasma ball looks pretty
Then, a laz erupts from the water. The frontal armour eats a hit. I grin. Stupid marts. That was a
simple trick. A very simple trick. You should get a discharge instantly for falling for that.
You cant aim for shit?
Force them to fire.
Aim.
Fire back.
The tank does a quickstop, cannon lowered.
During quickstops, you abort movement, you aim, you shoot. The driver needs no additional
commands to start moving; the moment the shot is done, the pedals should be pressed as hard
as its humanly possible.
Baldwins driver does exactly that.
The Magic Soup descends. I see a blue flash. Than, an orange one.
Then, a mech explodes spectacularly. Its BISRs go up in a loud bang, the water column
brought up by the blast being so large the boomrain reaches me. Its an work of art. I dont see
the wreckage, but I dont need to: I see the fire and the steam and the metal parts flying around.
Thats a pretty solid giveaway.
As the colonel glides sideways, quickly ditching the river, I have that weird, weird though:
Its quite possible that Ill survive this day.

Or so I though.
Were humans, after all. Every fish, every moto, every pilot, every tanker, every desk monkey,
every cook, every inteloffski, every shipmaid, every opface, every techhead. Were silly little
monkeyfishes, eager to return to Earth, to climb on a tree, to eat some fruits and throw some
shit at each other. To live another day. To eat another meal. To survive the next sunfall; to see
the red sun and wonder at its magnificence.
Whats the difference between a carnivore beast, trying to eat you, and a huge, BISR carrying
bipedal whom I cannot even see?
Theres none.
At all.
Itll happen like this: fight or flight kicks in. Your eyesight gets more sharp. You gather up, you
show your teeth, you breath heavily, your heart beats like crazy. Your instincts will kick your
conscience out for a walk. If youre really crafty and lucky, you will live to see another day.
If you dont, nobody will remember you. You get eaten or sent home in a box.
For the dead you, its all the same.
Then, it happens. The second mechs sensor rod disappears. The water is just a dirty mess
again. Dark. Murky. A general ECM flash on wide-band roars from somewhere underneath,
blinding us for a second. Sensors go down, wetwork restarts, visual range runs a recontrast,
getting the visible range back on.
And then, theres nothing. The mechs gone.
The silence falls.
Its not real. Its not silent at all: your powerpack runs, humming, the wind whistles loud enough
to hear, water flows, and with so many shit on the surface, it flows rather loudly. Leaves get
rustled, Phobos is glittering in the dark sky. Thats no sound, though.
But none of it matters. For me, for the colonel too. My mind is a trained mind. Its bent on
hearing nothing but a few sounds: the heavy step of a mech, the bloop of a mortar. The roar of a
laz, ripping hot tunnels in the air. Those sounds are the sounds of Death approaching. The ape
in me listens hard. It wants to know the exact time to run .
And I hear nothing. Qlum. Tiho. Nitz.
But Im Catherine MacDuffy. Im an Ape 2.0. Im a smart ape, with cool new features.
I dont hear, but I know.
I feel. I feel the nonexistent step. The soft movement of riverbed muck. The sounds of a
monster, suddenly frightful. Suddenly large. Suddenly dangerous.
So Im silent. On the ready. Like a mad, red-eyed hare, Im afraid of the world more than my
miniscule mind can manage, and moment the switch will click, I will become a red mist.
Too fast to die. Too slow to live.
I try to ease myself, so I try to remember the way the first mech was scorched. I try to bring
myself to think the next one will go down just like the first. Thats a game against yourself. Its a
game of telling the best lie. Its always like that with new enemy tech: you use the tactics you
know, the tactics you love, the tactics you honed first; you check if they still work, if you need to
reteach yourself, if you need to adapt. You hope the enemys flashy new toy will bork. That the
cool new grav will smash from a good ol Leaping Drunken Betty, or that the new CAS will cook
some PilotnEggs because of a burnt fuel cell, hit by your favourite MANPADS from the
ASSBADS.
If you see success, then youre a happy moto. The enemy is a fucking moron, the OPFOR
techies should shoot themselves, and youre on a straight run for Bighat Gen. For a while.
Then, quite full of yourself, puffed up like a plastic fugu, you use your fav tactic again. To check
if still works; if it still manages to work some magic, do some wonders, lend you some chits to
bet on Deaths poker table.
It doesnt. It does shit. Your Betty fails to penetrate, your MANPADS explode in-flight.
So you see a grav, still gliding towards you. A CAS, weapons blazing.
And then you understand that it was nothing but blind, blind luck.
So much of it you do deserve a medal. Maybe two. Most likely, posthumously.
Like now. As the colonel sprays the water with his thirty mill to provoke the fucker, nothing
happens.
Silence.
Im afraid I know what happens next.
Too fucking afraid.
And then mortar shells erupt from the water, but they dont fall; they expend fuel, staying up.
The mech puts up a fight.
It shoots; the red glaze of a charging cannon is visible, gleaming in the murky darkness, and
then, it hits. The front of the colonels tank is illuminated by the red light, but the armour holds
up. The tank dances, quickly strafing around, sixty feet from the river; a quickstop and it shoots
back, and Im pretty sure itll hit. Its no biggie, hitting the source of a laz beam.
Im wrong.
The mech fucks us. Fucks us all. It does so royally, like only smart AIs can: it feels like the last
minutes of a chess match, when youre ready to check, and then the emotionless robot declares
a mate. Theres nothing you can do. It happened. You failed. We failed. The moment the tank
lines up for a shot, the mines explode. A shell from a gauss cannon flies fast, but not enough.
And what is a Magic Soup, if not for a thin container with two magnetic suspenders and a
weaponized plasma charge?
The fragments hit it. It cracks.
And then It explodes, expanding, releasing the ionized, boiling air.
One feet above the water. It looks quite fancy in the nightly air. I bet the bipedal appreciates the
show. I grind my teeth.
The mech releases aerosol grenades, quickly covering itself; I feel a hard thump, rolling through
the ground like microquake. A wide step?
Ten seconds of silence. The tank strafes again. Then, another ECM flash hits. Another blink.
Another second lost.
Three more mines fly skywards. The colonel isnt stupid; he fires the same moment the mines
rupture the waters surface, but the mech fucks him all over again. The mortars can shoot in any
direction. There was no mech where the colonel thought there will be. The plasma shell hits the
dirt. It hits fucking nothing.
And then the walker shoots again. The frontal armour is covered in steam from the humid air,
red-hot, visible in the darkness; I gulp, because I know what it means, and I feel myself useless,
because theres nothing I can do. Im a trained moto, Im a veteran, Im a soldier of rank, but
now, Im a meatbag stuffed into a plastic box.
One more hit. Thats all the tank needs: one more hit from below, and the front will melt, and the
armour will penetrate, and the reactor will bang, and the colonels dead, and Im
Im next. The prime candidate.
For once, I cheer for the colonel. In all of my life, there wasnt a single case of me dying, and my
only hope of having a happy fishy ever and a clean not-dying record after is a small stupid man
with a chevron up his ass. A weak hope. But a hope nevertheless.
The only one I have.
A second passes.
What does my only hope do?
What does this man of honour, a citizen of the Inner Kingdom of the Titan Republic, a loyal
knight of His Majesty the King of Titan(s Inner Kingdom), a Lance-Colonel of the Titan
Spaceborne Forces, what does he, in all of his wisdom, power, experience and tactical genius
do?
He screams something through the Y-comm and rushes forward. Full front. Full speed. Gravs
ready to melt, plastic falling apart, cannon, pointing forward. His armour is bright red. His tank is
ready to fall apart the next second after the next laz hit. Yet he charges. I can swear I hear him
over the comm, screaming something about god and king.
The commtank rushes towards the river.
The final push, the final yards.
Tow-row-row.
Baldwin could use a sabre. Will he die? Will he live?
I dont know.
I feel like Im in OSUT again, and my sports bra and granpants are the only things left to bet on
the poker table.
I cant breath. I can look. I must look. I must know.
He hits the aerosol cloud.
And then, time stops. The clockworks stop clicking. The arrows show endoclock.
The mech leaps. The river explodes in a torrent of muck. The mech It looks like a frog. A frog
the size of a building. Two huge, overpowered legs. A missile block. Armour, armour
everywhere I can see, and jammers, and sensors, and separate aiming blocks for the BISRs.
Dark grey. Massive. A monster. A beast to throw shit at until you die.
I see the laz cannon it wields, I see it flashing, ready to fire, and the mech fires first. Its not a
Conquista-L, carefully placed in a blocky ordnance arm. Its a Conquista-H. The ones they put
on spaceships for close combat. Used to destroy ships the size of a ten-story building. Large.
Powerful. Im disgusted with myself. Why didnt I think about it? Why didnt the colonel think
about? It was shooting from underwater, and it was still landing hits. How could we miss that?
Its not something you bloody, fucking miss!!
As it connects, I hear the roar. The beam punches through the tanks turret in less than a
second: clean swipe. one entry hole, identical exit hole on the left side of the turret, melted
circles of ignored reactive armour and passive armour. It happens so fast. Too fast. The tank
moves by inertia. Slowly. Flailing. Soon, it stops. Slowly, as if disagreeing; I disagree too. This
isnt how it works.
This isnt how charges end. You expect glory. You know its silly. You know its stupid, but you
expect victory and cries and rifles held up.
You dont expect reality to happen.
But it happens.
The mech lands. The monster realigns, taking small step to increase stability. And then it turns
towards me. Slowly. Shambling. Doing huge, gigantic steps.
It has no hands. Just legs. Massive torso and small mini-legs for ease of upturning. Two main
visors. Large. Red. It looks at me. Right at me. Into me. At a little moto. Two little motos. Against
an ancient creature of lore.
I aim my rifle. Two quickfire laz dischargers bare up, armour plates sliding sideways; the cannon
is pointed at me, the mortars are ready to shell me, Im armed with a rifle, and it feels surreal.
Fiction. Mess stories. Drunk club rumblings.
I give the tank a last look. I almost laugh. Well, thats a pretty cool way to die, to be honest. An
armoured abomination burning you up? Thats much cooler than dying from a moto decompress
because your techies are stupid, stupid fuckers.
I blink.
The red holes on the tank turrets theyre easy to see in the dark. Too easy. Theres no
smoke. Nothing hides them.
I freeze.
Commtanks.
Commtanks have no ammo placed in the left side of the turret.
Commtanks store comms.
In the left side of the turret.
The longest second I ever lived through passes. Twenty millennia later, I smile.
The tank shoots.
The mech does a weird, shaky step sideways. I see blue light. The bipedal tries to turn towards
the tank, the ordnance arm shaking, the cannon trying to glow up another beam. Second later, it
explodes with a thunder of exploding plasma, mixed up with burning fuel cells. It goes up. It
goes everywhere. The remaining parts of torso and legs tumble and fall.
And I scream.
Im a fish, Im alive, and I darn do want to live forever.
As we rush to the tank, the gunner gets his head out of the turret and looks at us with large
eyes.
- The colonel
The colonel was in the way of the beam.
The tankers pull his body from the crew compartment and lay him on the turret. Hand baked
right off. He doesnt move. He smiles.
I think about saluting. Did this little fuck achieve what he wanted? Was that a good death for a
Lancie? Does he feel good? Is he happy, in the tanker heaven? Was all of this necessary,
stupid little lancer, was it any good?
As you fought against a weapon yet unseen by the Republic, as you stood your ground, as you
were reckless to fight for the sake your own and furious to lose them, did you feel just? As you
were shouting commands, did you feel like you won a small war over yourself and your
comrades?
I smile.
I know the answer.
Fuck no, because youre live and kicking.
We punch him with double stabbies; theres just five of us, or four and a half, two tankers, two
motos and an officer, handless, smiling in his unconscious dream of glory, yet unreceived.
I look towards the horizon, I see BISRs, flying up, orange dots and white trails, glowing in the
night. BISRs we didnt detect, launched from a weapon we didnt know about. BISRs, taking our
fleet apart, limiting drops, breaking formations, forcing us into a state of hard if not impossible
deployment. BISRs, killing hundreds of stupid fishbrains just because they choose a wrong
branch of service.
I look at my squad, at the moto, looking smug and bouncy, at the tankers, tired beyond
imagination.
I open my mouth to speak.
- As the current most senior officer, I, staff sergeant C. MacDuffy, am taking command of this
outfit until the required command vertical can be reestablished.
I declare it calmly. I earned a second of calm. I earned it the hard way.
- My first order
I look at the horizon again. At the forest. I hear it laugh. Welcome to the jungle, Cathie.
- Continue the retreat. Were getting out of here.
I hear wilcos. We strap up and slide.
And so we did. In two, the forest was behind us. The colonel was stable. In three, a cargo vertie
has taken us to the forward base. In four
In four, a different story begun.

- Mhhm - Donovan tilts his head. - Fisticuffs or knives?

- Noble colde stahl, course. - Connor speaks in true underlevel speak, with vowels so gobbled
up a linguist will declare it an entirely new language; it sounds funny enough, though, and Im
not the one to argue propa english anyway.
- The King, then. Twenty crowns on the King, win in the first two minutes, no injuries.
- Why?
- Hell just bring a bloody royal sabre to a knife fight, thats why.
Chatter bugs me. When the combat ends, Im suddenly a human again. The fishes are human
again. We discuss things, we eat, we fool around, we salute COs, we wait for assignments, we
run equipment checks, we do nothing. Im not a talky person when the chatter starts; not that I
dislike it, though. Its just out of my league. If Im not screaming at something to not die, I feel
like the world has gone mad and, I shiver in fear, has gone peaceful.
Brrr.
We returned to base neatly-britly. A cargo VTOL hops us in, catches the tank, and half an hour
later, were in the outskirts of camp Barka, reporting to some lieutenant and writing reports. I do
a detailed run on the encountered enemy bipedal vehicle; I tag it BISR, and it gets a green
plus plus autostatus, which is a bad sign. Fleets really in deep shit. When the sun sets and
nobody expect me to tell shit about anything thats not a motorized rifleman, Ill tell you that:
wars are won by boots and fleets, and if the second part suffers, well suffer too.
Fleet in shit equals to boots, dead in orbit. To squads that never got the fire mission they
requested. To tanks without ammunition. To fishes, dying from hunger in some shithole near the
Poles.
Now?
Now, ten hours have passed since our return. I had a good sleep and a good screamaround.
Now, Im fooling around, mostly running service checks on my moto; Ive stripped down the leg
servos for some basic maintenance and field R&R, and it seems to be in a good enough shape.
Dirty water clogged the connector bridge between the legs, though, so Im having fun cleaning it
out; solvent cleaning is a monotonous work, the stuff you get used to during OSUT, so I just
clean and clean away; I cleaned it hundreds of times by now, and judging by the three years of
service I still lack in my ten-year deadman run, Ill thats not nearly the last time Im on it. You
have those compressor pistols to apply solvent anywhere you need it, and small autobrushes
for quick cleaning; add some oiling here and there, and your plastic suit of death and plunder
will serve you well until youll serve it well.
I served it pretty fucking well, so no chitchat, you silly armour. Cleany-clean. Cleany-clean.
Its a moto R&R section, but a lot of stuff happens around; mostly motos on service or
maintenance, sure, but I see the occasional grav, or bippy, or command and control vech; some
heavy-duty engineer motos are setting up workshops, so its loud and dusty and busy and
somewhat hard to bear, but who gives a fuck.
Some engies pull a wrecked Grenadier, twenty feet away; its fucked right and proper, took two
or three direct hits to the front and bombed his own reactor right away. Connor stops his chatto
and gives the machine a long look; I dont, because a wrecked Gren is an unpleasant sight. One
day, the Gren assigned to cover you will look exactly like that, and chances are, youll look just
the same.
- Poor bugger. Why do they even make them in bippies? Ts not like it wins them any stars or
something.
- It is. - I answer, putting the servo back in slot and handsliding the bolts.
- Eh? Whore the oh wait, youre et MaDuffy folk, aintya? The staffie? Youre a lass?!
He passes me a brotherly grin. Hes okay, Connor. Im yet to see a moto, not being okay: were
tested pretty well for bad tendencies, so other than the occasional alcoholism, were good and
upright folk with no tendency for rape except for friday nights.
- Aye, thats me.
- Couldnt guess, eh. Youre using a male voicy from the bank, though, so cantta really put me
any faults. So what about them bippies?
- Yeah, what about the bipedals? - Donovan joins up - I like em, sure, but why bippies? Why not
light gravs, or treads?
I tell them a quick overview of the whole dimensions, sizes, ease of early drop lecture, with a
bit of an ease of production and your leg is your wheel and your suspension strapped for
flavour. I grin. Being a sarge is good. Your lectures are mandatory.
When Im finished, I get to the second servo; they discuss the weather, the officers (silently), the
generals (whispering), the POG lassies (as loud as possible); I dont really notice, cause my left
leg servo has a weirdly bent spigot in the power socket, so I go and get me a replacement from
the quartermaster, who stuck himself in a supply tent seventy yards away.
And then, some god descends and drops us a pack of beer, and suddenly, weve all been
friends for the last two hundred years.
- Howtt do you even came to service, MaDuffy? Deadmans miles, even? Been a bit of a mad
lass, eh?
- Heh. No. Pass me a keg.
- Here you go. What, no story? No nothing? No beloved lad, going up in a spacelift to never
return? No story of eh
- No. Story like any other. I bet youve got one better.
- No heartbreaking romance?!
- Shut your gobber, Connor. You really wanna hear?
- Sure! Youre one good lass, MaDuffy, isnt she, Donnie? Shelby?
- Course I am. Im keeping your asses twitching. Thats worth a crown or two. Pass me some
nuts while youre at it.
- Aye.
I crunch me some cashews and give the sunny sky a look. VTOLs fly erraticly, most of them
combat with ground attack loads; I wonder if the ammo supplies arrive in time. Fleet loves its
VTOLs. Theyre like a gravos, but flying and without a semblance of real protection. Flying is still
a big plus, though.
- So? Tell away, wella listen. I caen tell mine! Twas a good story until I told it the hundreth time.
- Youre full of bollocks, Connor, your story is shit.
- Yours ainta any better!
- Guh. - I take a long gulp from the can. Golden Lion is nice. I havent drank Golden Lion for two
years. They brew it on the orbit farms of Saturn, if I recall correctly. Have I ever told my own
story? I did, but it was a dull story. Not because its well inherently dull. Its just has
nothing to do with Spaceborne Sarge MacDuffy. Its the story of Cathie MacDuffy. The lass that
came to the recruitment center. Not the lass that came out of OSUT.
- I was born in Middies. Dad was an engineer, mum was housewife. No problems, no nothing,
but I had five older brothers. I was an only girl to a wiener party of siblings who love me so
much they made my life a mess to all messes.
Another gulp.
- When the only example of how stuff is done you have is a mum who served her own term
once and five brothers to constantly mess with you, you grow up a boy. Period. Not literally. I
knew quite well the difference between us, but
I sigh.
- I wasn't and Im still not the perfect example of a female figure, and my face is heavy and my
eyebrows can be used to chop down trees. At least dad said I had pretty blue eyes.
I shush at them as they start trying to cheer me up.
- I used to grow out my hair to be distinctively girlish, but my brothers started pulling it, and the
girls from social center wouldnt play with me either way because I screamed things that werent
nice at them. As I was nine, my elder brother went to war. He was a pilot. Flew a herder, mostly
combat models that controlled missile busses.
- Jupiter Incident War happens. The marts attacked Point Dellaver. He died in the attack.
I stay silent for a moment. Someone passes me another can, and I open it.
- Family dynamics changed. It was different. We fought differently, and we laughed short
laughs that sounded sad. For awhile, it was gleam. But times pass. I grew up. Had my ups
and downs. Fell in love, got declined. Beat my chosen ones lassie and got suspended for a
week. My eighteens were coming close. I had to do something with my mess of life. Most of my
brothers had their own families, own jobs, own stories, but I decided to relive a story of one of
them.
I smile, grinning, showing my teeth.
- I outboyd every single one of them. Every single one. I went to the recruitment center and
signed up for a ten year run. You all know the drill. Only two branches accept deadmen,
because it only pays off in two branches. Pilots dont, because they need your reflexes top-
notch for pilots. Thats six plus six as a contract job. Desk monkeys dont: you want benefits,
you work at your desk forever. So where did lil MacDuffy end up, hmm? Not in tankers,
because I got a bad mark at tech aptitude. MacDuffy is now the fish of fishes. The stink of the
spine, the edge of the rib. The colour trooper. Do you hear me?! Do you hear me?!
I laugh.
- CHEERS!

We drink, and someone else starts speaking. Were motos, were fishes, but right now, were
Titanians in uniform trying our hardest to enjoy the 40 minute break some general with a father
to his men mania has provided us with. When the clock will tick the last second of those 40
minutes, we will take a Liver+ pill (theres one attached to each beer can, as regulated by army
protocols) and get back to work. But for now, we listen. I listen. We speak. I speak. I think about
how I dont know any of those people, but they do seem to know me. No, I know some of them.
Faces, names, voices. But
Im never sure where we served together. Were we in drops together? Were we in assault
operation, or in 0g, or in tank support, or in COIN? I have no idea.
I know what you think: what about squads, what about comradery, what about standard
composition?
Ill tell you how we do it on Titan. Maybe its bad. Maybe its not. All in all, its the way that it is.
Were organized into divisions by goal and into battalions by type. Assault divisions with
motorized infantry battalions, mobile divisions with armoured battalions in them, aidrop division
with 0g battalions and so on. The closest you get to a moral anchor is your battalion. You are
the part of your battalion, and you will most likely be a part of it until the end; you battalion may
be transferred between divisions, but youll be a part of your battalion until it dies out.
Up to the last men.
It rarely happens. You battalion will be your battalion until youre sent home in a box or in a
sleepcell.
But what battalions do lack is pre-defined squads.
Instead, it has an officer line and a troop line. Each ranked by proficiency in different missions
based on OSUT, evaluations and combat experience. AIs run though the numbers, assembles
squads based on mission profiles and compactibility of the boots to the mission theyre
supposed to fulfill and each other as well. Then, it slaps an officer on top.
Thats about it.
When the next mission arises, a new squad is made. It may be the same exact squad, but it
may be not: theres no attachment, no stability. Just troops with a mission and a commander to
scream at them.
Why?
Because squads need to be as effective as possible without being hard to refill. Casualties
happen. They happen all the time. Every drop. Every day.
Its quite possible for a squad to not include any of the original members by the second
operational week.
Is Squad Two, Company One, 23th Motorized, also known as Dragoncats, the same Squad
Two if it didnt have any of the troops it had just a few days ago? If all of them died, if the
sergeant burned in his capsule before Dispersion, and every rifle was stomped by a team of
Mercurian Mercs?
STRATCOM deemed that its not.
Some soldiers hold to the names they see in the squad interface. Some dont.
I dont.
So I just drink, because I know one thing for sure - those are the soldiers and brothers who fight
my fight, walk my walk, stand my stand, run my run. Also, they occasionally drink my drinks.
Thats enough for me. It feels right. Like the four of the brothers I have back home, but watered
down and with funnier accents.
At least I can trust them.
They can trust me, for sure.
The beer runs out. Than, the forty stop runs out. We make grumpy faces, we eat our pills, we
kick and punch around to make place and move towards the moto stands. We get back to work.
I get back to my moto and set the power back off; the cooler buzzes, but without added weight,
the moto is silent like a spectre. Like a low-cost buzzing spectre coloured gray and made out of
plastic.
Most maintenance work is making sure the legs can hold with the pressure. You check the
servos, the weight nets, the armour lattice, the transmission connector bridges, you check for
dirt, for damage, for chipping, for anything that could lead to a faulty leg: motos are wolves, and
wolves get food based on leg performance. Were the same thing, and if I learned anything
during the seven years Ive been travelling the Sol in a personal 1st class cabin is that the quick,
running moto is the moto to laugh the longest and the moto to get the shiniest medal.
Next, you check artificial muscles; theres not much to check, muscles are only used on fingers
for high precision and on the back for additional carrying capacity, so I do it in two minutes max,
checking for power feed and individual movement and skipping full tests. Next, you lock the suit
and check for internal pressure and integrity. Those are easy to test for, but theyre important; in
atmosphere, faulty pressure increases fatigue, in space, you die dead.
Then, you check for the blessing of crew comfort; you do it by getting in and feeling comfy.
If you dont feel comfy, then fuck you first, check the aircon, padding pressure and joint rings
second. Then, you run an electronic check; its internal, so the only thing you do is watching the
progress bar.
Finally, you check body and hand servos, but since Im a responsible girl who likes her moto
and makes sure hes okay, it works good, it works gently and it doesnt even give me the faulty
bridge or the wonky servo on overweight tests.
Im proud.

I run rifle cleaning afterwards. Gauss rifles are tricky to disassemble, so it takes time, but I do it
thoroughly, so when it jams, I could point my finger and declare it a shitty, shitty rifle. I know that
rifle well. Come to think of it, I know it better than I know most of my comrades: at least I know
where we served together, me and that rifle.
I sigh.
The cleaning kit is hidden in the stock, and I take it out and disassemble my Ellie Afree.
It takes two minutes. Thats a lot. You can disassemble a full-chem automatic Settler Rifle in
twenty seven seconds max, but my Ellie isnt that simple of a gun. When I finish, Im neck
covered in parts. A receiver cover, accelerator chamber, barrel, upper receiver, feeding spring
and catcher, a connector ramp which transfers the acceleration to the feeding spring, a gas
buffer for the striker, the striker itself. The coils, which are detachable, the handguard, the front
and back sights, the line beacons for the firing interface, the computer sight, the magazine
catcher.
I almost growl.
A laz rifle disassembles into an upper and lower, a blinker chamber, a battery holder, a stock,
an optical chamber and a handguard plus the control bridge and aiming apparatus.
I growl.
Fucking marts.

The day goes. I do stuff.

Camp Barka isnt the nicest camp Ive been in, but well, Its a FOB. You dont expect anything
from a fob. Its tents, plastic quickbuilds, comm towers, set on grounded gravs, field generators,
workshops and repair dens. I walk around. At least theres a sky above. I love space, but I love
fighting in it. When I breathe, I enjoy an atmosphere filling my lungs. Even if its redsand nigger
air, its a good enough air; were not far from the equator, so its hot and humid. Theres grass.
Many motos havent seen grass for months.
I, I seen me enough grass in the fucking jungle. Ill rather look at the sky and breathe like a dog.
Hours pass. I clean my rifle, having a fun time disassembling it into twenty nine different pieces.
I do patrolling, I do some final R&R. The motos you know, let me tell you one little thing. Ill
stop rambling after that, Ill move on. But thats an important thing, so listen well.
When I was a wee little lassie, we had those free tellie documentaries about the stuff Titans
army fields and employs. I was a scout, so I had some knowledge of how soldiering looked
many, many years ago; it seemed depressing, the old way of being a soldier. Your country told
you to go into another country with nothing between you and the shit youre supposed to dig into
but kevlar and a chem slugger. You were expected to do great things with a glorified shovel.
And you did great things! They soldiers of yore they did, but they felt depressing. Unreal.
The Earth Wars, the big ones, with Germany doing things and rattling holes and the world
rattling back I thought that they were old wars, bad, stupid and fought by stupid, but
honourable and strong people.
Not like us, no. The tellie showed me motos. Doing jumps, combat exercises, drops, strapping
on gravos, attacking alongside Grens. The motos used back there were the now-venerable,
boxy and heavy-looking Q-walks; they looked powerful, big, ready to fight the world and be
victorious. They looked like the next step, like a step from human to god. Falling from the sky!
Wielding the power to bring the sky down!
I was amazed. I felt myself proud. I was like a little jingo with freckles. With things like that, I
thought, well have the world. Even if the world fights back, it would be a different fight: itll be
noble, fair, itll be a fight of warriors, not soldiers, gnawing at each other like mad pitbuls!
And then time passed. I was enlisted; I went to OSUT.
Then, OSUT ended, and not once during it I was taught that Im something more than a soldier.
Not once was a DI smug about being a moto DI. Not once did an officer say you made the right
choice. Of course they did, but you know if they mean it. My officers?
They didnt. All I learned it that my tool of trade, my moto, my bread, my butter and knife
You know what? Fuck it. Ill speak the truth.
Yeah, it was a large step forward. It did bring me up. It did make me a cut above; it did made me
closer to Ares, Mars, Kali and Thor. Sky was mine, and so were all the weapons humanity
taught to fly, ride, walk and swim.
But progress progress is blind. Progress is everywhere. Progress is everything.
As I did a step up the metaphysical ladder, everybody else followed me.
And the shit I was supposed to cut was now cutting me:
Four times deeper than it wouldve back then.

I speak lots, dont I? Im the speaky-speaky staff sergeant MacDuffy, who has a funny, silly
name for everything, usually consisting of gobbling up some vowels to speak the words faster.
One could assume that thats moto jargon, soldier speak, that soldiers talk to each other like
that to increase the speed of communication or something along the lines; that hardened
veterans try to speak fast to do more stuff instead of speaking long words.
Thats a correct way of thinking, but the assumption is wrong:
To do more on the battlefield, soldiers dont speak, because theres nothing for a soldier to say.
At all.
Passing info?
Tagnpass, all auto, hands free, controlled by voice or backgrounder.
Requests?
Link 1-1.
Panic, tears, pain, death cries, chatter?
In accordance to STRATCOM regulation 1042, Use of On-board Communication Equipment,
i, no soldier will or shall use the provided comm-set except for the Comm Article 11
(TagnPass) or the Comm Article 13 (Link 1-1).
There are exceptions, of course: its handled right in the next article, but its vague. It means that
unless your cool story would save enough asses to make twelve drill sergeants proud, you have
no access to the walky-talky. You shut up. You dont speak.
I speak. Im the sarge, after all. Rarely: Im under the special comm access tab, which means I
can use it to rally up troops, provide verbal support and strengthen morale and be a helpful lil
sarge in general. I can also allow other soldiers to speak if I deem it useful for the squad in the
current situation; I generally keep the comms unlocked at all times, but even then, most soldiers
just shut up. Theyre used to it. This is how they do stuff. If they want to ask something, they ask
the pedia. They want to speak with command, they leave a tag through C-A 11, and if I feels like
it, I relay it up. Soldiers walk silently, kill silently, die silently. Motos have the stealthiest
orgasms.
When soldiers spend battles not speaking, in full silence, jargon develops slowly. Not much of it
reaches every unit: a lot of jargon is locked forever inside battalions and dies without ever
leaving them. Not all of it, of course: every fish knows that hes called a fish. Some say its
because of the sadrine can drop pods, some say its an old term to refer to U-class motosuits
with their huge, watery-looking visors; some say its because of the general stupidity within the
ranks.
Me?
Me, Im a smart little sardine, so I know that all three are true, but the last one is the truest of
them all. But since Im a fish nevertheless, thoughts tend to swim a lot inside my fishy little skull.
From here to there, from there to here.
Thats especially true when youre strapped to a net that has at least nineteen names in
seventeen different battalions, and the tank carrying the net has just hit some mart wheat field
while riding at 90 mph in cruise. Its proud, its large, its spearheading an attack formation, and
horizontal shake turns the contents of your head into a mush of thoughts and ideas and hopes
and fears, and all you really want
You never know. Never. Most likely, its a cheese sandwich.
Two hours before, I was doing nothing; -1:40, I was in a moto; -1:20, I was armed and ready, -
1:00, I was issued an external urban fighting bubble cloak tent, made of P-band active fabric to
make my silhouette hard to distinguish for externally corrected marksmen sights.
Then, I got a squad assigned and loaded on a middiegrav: ten minutes later, I am a part of
Operation Redwig, the primary cog in the clockwork of the Ring 5 Offensive.
Its fascinating, how quickly do we enter battles: one minute, you were enjoying the first real
meat youve ate in five years, the next, the horns yell, because The Meatgrinder Cometh.
And motos are in with premium tickets for the best seats.
I laugh a bit. All in all, lifes good. Its a nice day: a tank day, as some would joke. Sunny and a
bit too hot to my taste. Marts get twice the summer length good ol Earth does, but with climate
balancers, its not as bad as it couldve been: as we ride, the sky is blue, the occasional bush
among the grass is not complaining, and we, small plastic men in big formless coats, strapped
to the side of large tanks, we look stupid, but theres nothing you could do about that.
The tanks change formation, leaving the wheat field behind; two minutes, and we pass a small
river, and since were not in-op yet, you can put the free-com on, which the tankers do.
- Goooood morning, Mars! Thiiiiis is the Titan Armed Service Free-Com speaking, its twelve
oclock in the mornin, weather is as good as it gets, sky isnt falling on us yet, so its time for
some sounds to fill the waves!
The radioman laughs. Hes got a soundly, life-loving voice. With a voice like that, youre either in
free-coms or in high command, telling people what to do in a voice that makes them agree with
you.
The radioman made the better choice.
- Get your ears primed for The Trudies, Tank Days! Nothing like oldrock to set the war
amock! Dont you just love the old sound?!..
...The guitars enter. The drums drum. The bass is especially heavy. The Trudies were always
about the bass guitar. It;s weighty. It sets up the song.
Like now.
Do you hear the roar?
Do you hear the roar?!
Why didnt you listen before?!!
It staaarts!!:
Load up the shells, close em the hatches and bays:
Its the right time, the right time, the right time, the right time for the tank daaaaays!!
For the tank days.

The head tank does a small sideslide and shoots in the air. It shakes me quite hard; my teeth
clench, the servos whine, the balancers blink me an uneven terrain notice. A strapped ride
isnt a pleasant one. Its a ferry ride Id rather ditch: drops are drops, VTOL rides are VTOL
rides, but strap rides are outright shit. Youre not protected, you look like a retard; youre
balanced, though, and that makes a difference: Im yet to see someone who can hold his
balance on a cruising grav.
The battalion slides over a small hill into a decorative flower valley, one of those nicey rides
the marts are building as tourist attraction: tankers, tankers see the world from an IR visors
perspective, so we ride right atop the flower beds, leaving torn petals behind, launched off by
the grav pressure. For a second, it looks nice, but as I think about it, it looks bizarre. Tanks.
Rose petals. Like a scene from a badly set up romance muvou.
Thats no muvou. Itll make for a good one, but not now: to make a good muvou, you let the
blood flow down into the drain until history becomes history, heroes become heroes and grunts
are left grunts, forgotten, gray motos. Then, a good muvou is made: a muvou to entertain, to
give birth to new ideas, to create new realities:
Realities that have nothing to do with what the war was about.
This particular war?
Its about fucking nothing. Its about mining rights, revenge for the Jupiter Incident War and tech
blueprints.
I want to spit, but I cant. Im disciplined. No spitting in the moto.
Aye.
Thats the contents of my head for now.
For now.
Excluding the bumps and the silliness, I dont feel much in terms of physicals. I dont feel the
wind, but I hear it scream. The shaking is the only feel I have: is it my own shivers or the tanks
vertical wobble?
I dont know. Soon, Ill get the chance to check.
Were two clicks away. Thats two clicks too close to a target Im quite afraid to go near: the
small valley houses a four lane road, leading to a small town near a lake. A town. Its called
Weisenstadt or something along the lines: its one of the old Martian towns, back from the days,
all stone and museums, all sturdy, all nice. It holds a missile artillery battalion too, STRATCOM
tells me; STRATCOM doesnt like enemy artillery. We get redirected from the previous route
towards it. To a town with four battalions holding it. With sappers, engineers, conscripts, armour.
We have the air, but in cities, you need the ground.
The new route is labeled Vector 1403; Assigned groups: A-BT 401/D/I10th.
Its a good-looking arrow on the plan; it points for a combined cavalry/infantry battalion towards
a small grey point on the map. Logical, simple. Plans are like that.
In reality, it points towards a town.
Towards an urban environment.
Towards an old mart town, three stories high buildings, stone, heavy construction, a lot of cover,
a lot of concealment, a lot of marts in every fucking hole: you never want stuff like that. If you
do, youre a fucking fishbrain with no future.
And Id like to fancy me a fish with a tomorrow.
ETA four minutes.
The cibbies drop formation and lose speed, allowing the mids to form a firing line. That shell,
fired a minute ago? Its a mapmaker shell. A miniature sensor bus.
I get a detailed map and share it in the wetwork. We lose the valley towards broken terrain right
left of it; the road will most likely be protected by heavy guns further ahead anyway, so no use to
try storming through the front door. Three crusaders break off for a firing position, towards
higher ground; not much of it, but as much as I dislike crusader drivers, leaving a sternguard is
by the book. We, we proceed further, circling the town for a better approach; theres a
small forest two clicks away, but I see it for two seconds, and then the grav slides into a long
hollow patch of grass-covered land, hidden away. We slide like that for two minutes. I dont hear
the wind anymore; I hear nothing but my own heartbeat, slowing down.
ETA two minutes.
A large bump throws me off: the tank drives off a ridge, getting five seconds of flight time, and
when it lands, were on a huge pancake of flat land. Farmland, rural stuff: fences, hedgegrows.
A city, one click away. In direct sight.
For a second, nothing happens. We slide forward. The UI gets spammed with new info. I hear
nothing and I see nothing - time has tumbled and stopped.
The next second, the middies prepare to fire.
The whole line: chosen targets become yellow, the turrets turn towards them, and they
become red. I hear a feign sound: a FCS siren, indicating fire readiness.
Then the tanks fire.
Its so loud the dB compensator activates. The air trembles from the shock and heat. Its a quick
burst - follow-up shots fly within two seconds. High Explosive, Incendiary (Smoke), WP.
Explosions cover the cityscape almost immediately, orange flowers upon the gentle colours of
light brown and white. Clouds of dirt and smoke. Puffs of white.
Within them, men burn. Mart oldblock buildings are all stone and metal and coverplast and
wood. They blaze. You could cook dinosaurs on a fire like that, but oh god, thats not enough.
A quickload, then, another set of rounds goes off. All on the move. Not stopping for a second.
To be sure. Triple tap, tank sized, at a city-class target: it burns in black and red and grey and
dark brown. Thats not enough.
The mapmaker worked nicely. As we move within destrap distance, we havent lost a single
vehicle. Thats not enough.
The tankers know where to shoot. Thats not enough.
The clock ticks. ETA 15 seconds.15 seconds ago, 36 rounds fell on the town of Weissenberg.
Thats enough for it to give a few flames, but thats not enough for the mart fuckers that inhabit
it. Ergo, its not enough for us.
A fighter-bomber flashes a danger close.
Thats a bit better.

Mapmakers, they show up potential targets as well as mapping out streets and buildings and
strongpoints and anything they can see. Theyre not reliable when it comes to the individual
mart with the individual laz and the individual ATGM, but it shows up concentrated forces nicely
- they tell you where to strike on the big scale, as hats like to tell us, but thats not as easy as it
sounds. Marts arent idiots, after all. They know how to fight urban. They know how to make
attackers miserable, but were not stupid either. An ASH with a full load of red propane fuel air
bombs doesnt differentiate. Large groups, grunts dug in, vehicles in the open, buildings out of
steel or plastic or wood. The bombs disperse; then, they connect to our wetwork, choose up
targets, release aiming wings and make course corrections. All in a second. Small black plus
marks, up in the blue sky. The aiming wings reduce drag, so they just stay there, for a
moment or two. Not moving much.
Then, they engage accelerators and propel himself forward, towards the small town below.
Me, I dont see that. Im busy.
ETA 1 second.
Green light.
Destrap.
We fall down in a carrot patch. Dirt flies. Were zero three clicks away from the city, and I
scream.
- RAT RUN! FULL PLATOON, V-SHAPE, FORM ON ME! RUN YOU FUCKING FISHES! RUN!
And we break into a run, towards explosions, slowly roaring up above the small city.
Rat run rat running is one of those things that are hard for the average fish. In OSUT, rat
running is taught for a month, because its something your whole body will be against. Your
body will rarely have any problems with a moto until somebody creates them externally, but rat
running is a different thing. For the most part, motos arent hard to pilot. At all. A civvie gets into
a moto, he can do almost everything we can within two minutes of walking and jumping.
But almost everything.
And not as good.
The trick comes from the fact that motos, albeit programmed to move like humans do, move
rather differently. The stuff moving a moto consists of twelve servo sets and a suspension
netting holding the stuff together without being too rigid for small movements. Artificial fibro is
used, but minimalistically - in the belly and the back to reinforce carrying capacity and decrease
shock on the spine if you fuck up. Fingers have detailed fibro nets too, mostly for accurate finger
movement and high-speed coordination, but everything else? Servos squicking and crying and
doing their best not to break the connector bridges. Servos dont really move the same way we
do, and albeit programming compensates for that, there is a lag. But if you know what exactly
will it compensate for and how?
Bang, you move a bit quicker. A bit, but a bit is all thats needed for an instructor to fry your ass
in control training.
And rat running is even worse, because humans physically cant rat run. We cant bend so
much towards the ground without falling, we cant balance ourselves on the move for the
required degree: we cant rat run. We cant. We know that. Our legs and hands and bodies and
minds know that.
But motos can. Theyve got the programming and gyroscopes and balancers. They can run at
50km/h in full combat load while holding the body low enough to not exceed 50% of the original
figure height. And you?
You are the same.
This is where the similarity between a moto and yourself become a nuisance. You have to stop
being you, Name MacName, son of ManName, a creature of meat and dreams and fears and
become Moto Noname, a creature of plastic and controlled violence and quick movement.
We?
We are just this.
So we run.

Its just business, pure and simple; I scream at my squad, I get a TACCOM-assigned position,
then the middies scramble away from the town to join on some assault, and the lights stay with
us, and we run like hell under some aerosol poppies, giving cover, and we run, we run, we run
before it disperses too much.
We run an unbalanced run towards a burning city full of people who want us dead.
Its not as bad as it could be; the Crusaders did a good job of clearing the city line, and we dont
get shot as we run through the fields and decorative microrivers; the cibbies slide behind, rolling
on half-cruise, and I wish for an APC so hard I almost feel the small, murky and tight space of
one. Its not that we dont have them, its just that command deemed them unnecessary for
most ops; motos are large, so fitting them into armour is a hard thing to do, so you need capsule
carriers, which are the size of two Crusader tanks and are as expensive as three of them.
In the end, heavies and speccies get APCs, because theyre the most important fodder you can
scrap. We dont.
Instead, we run when its time to run.
And after a while, the run ends.
Cities and towns, before they actually gather up into streets and blocks, tend to be a randomly
distributed mess of buildings, roads, fences, parks, small squares and parking lots and CCA
towers and aerotransport bays. Buildings range from one-story fuel stations and dayclubs to
three-story sleepbongs or guvbuildings; here, at the very least, because back at home, you get
spires for everything. Not enough space for small stuff. Titan is large by design and by
requirement. But Mars? Here, you get small stone blocks. We run toward one; its not our
assigned position, but TACCOM is quite vague, so any cover is good cover.
We stay at the very first building, me and my squad of four; blocks baked black from the
explosion, and it still burns, so we dont stick around - we run towards the closest next cover, a
burned civvie cargo truck down a small road. Not much of a cover, either, but its something and
it gives me a few second of think time, and thats exactly what I need. I run a TACCOM check to
know where did I end up; were a flank cover for the larger assault engineer group moving
towards the main street, and in a minute, well get a personal light tank for base of fire plus,
which is nice. For now, its busy setting up slowfall sensor shells; theyre stealthy, so theyll
linger, and in return, we get a good, precise mapmaker that shows me good, necessary stuff.
Its still silent, though. Were not engaging yet. Theres nothing to engage. Nothing shoots.
Nobody looks at us. Nobody. Nothing. Silence. Right now, most of us, the motos, are in, and
add two minutes, the whole platoon is boots in the town; the tanks roll behind our lines, and
within another minute, every gravvie is now visiting Weissenberg, and its still nothing. TACCOM
is nervous, so I get new orders - eyesnblazes, search and engage - to go deeper into the city
limits along the Dallehovich Street, doing zig-zag sweeps and assuring a clean corridor for the
tank to advance. I confirm and get a commline with the tank commander, some Irish I dont
recognize by voice, and we exchange some default speak; then, I order a move on forwards.
I decide to set us up in a vantage before going any deeper to Dallehovich, so I blink a block, a
cafe with a set of burned down umbrellas and half-melted plastic tables fifty yards forward;
responds blink, and we move out, guns up.
During urban, youre walking slow unless youre pretty sure where you need to be and how fast
must you be there; I order the squad to eye the three-sixty just in case of the marts being smart
enough to fool the mapmakers. If your squad is good, itll know what to do by default, but Im
never sure its good enough; I dont believe that Im good enough, and I have no reason to
assume that any of my fishbrains is any fucking better, so we walk - four motos looking towards
every side of the world like some weird gods and a Railman right in the center, assured that if
anything happens, no wall will protect the heretic from his godly vengeance.
Its still silent. We get to the cafe in thirty; we dont fit into the door covering the side entrance,
and going through doors is a novelty anyway, so we set up a thermite line and cut ourselves a
larger entrance right where the kitchen is supposed to be in a place like that. The wall burns in a
blinding light; when the thermite line burns out, I just kick the wall, and it crumbles, letting us in.
Not much of a place to let in, though - most of the interior is ashes and plastic puddles; windows
are broken, the bar is in ruins, and I can only imagine what the coffee machine and the roidman
garcon looked like, because right now, theyre too burned out to imagine anything but a
scrapbot. I order the railman and his cover up, to the second floor; we stay here, curled up at
the windows, covering entrances, and as soon as the Rail reports target acquisition online, we
move out - to give the street a closer look.
Its ruined, and more than I could describe; the roadcover is stones and rubble, so damaged it
collapsed down to the city sewage in an uneven wave or broken beton and black and yellow
roadplates. The lectrolines are visible, and the water tubes are still leaking, and it smokes quite
a bit, and its not even a full collapse - some parts of the road are still intact, but they look like
islands in the sea of rubble. Its a killzone, above all; difficult terrain that is easy to shoot at from
the buildings, a trap so by the book it hurts, but Im not planning to go down there - fuck it, Ill
give it a look, but nothing else, and then we flank through the buildings.
I order a fish to give me a base of fire, and another one to assist; fish one sets his Jammesty on
a window, and fish two gives me an yes-blink, so we move forward, eyefucking the windowlines.
For a few second, its just two motos on an empty street made out of coverstone, building plastic
and superbeton slabs. Its not a good street. Its a tattered street, a street thats too dead to
support a towns blood flow.
And in the next second, I do the most stupid thing I could do in an urban fight. Not some FNG
with a broken rifle and a D-fit moto, not a smug officer with too much balls and not enough brain,
not a tanker who thinks that walking on the ground is something that he can actually do well.
Me.
I step on an anti-personnel mine.
Just like that.
Im not even upset. It was a bloody well hidden anti-personnel mine, for one. Some fucker
tucked it under a huge plastic plate and covered it in a polyethylene 21b wrap ; not my senses,
nor my Tri-Sight nor my zero niner could tell that Im about to step into a turd made of boom.
For two, when I fall down, thrown aback by the explosion, its so painful I can actually sure that
Im alive.
In the next second, the town grows loud and blinking in red beams. Tanks open fire. Missiles fly.
The sortie gets requests. The battle of Weissenberg begins with staff sergeant MacDuffy getting
stuffed.
As I try to balance myself, to stand up, down the street, some hundred yards away, a laz
discharger starts roaring in full auto from a hole in a broad wall. I see the beams hitting two feets
from me and getting closer as he zeroes in, but then the Rail decides to scream, burning the
gun so fast I dont even get to die a stupid death. My ears ring and my legs are okay, but my leg
suspension is mostly toast; the coverfish runs to me, spraying blindly, grabs my moto by the
backstrapper and drags me back to the cafe. He gets fired at; hes fired at for sure, but Im too
cloudy to see where from, and the Rail returns fire. But I dont see if it hits well, and if I dont
see, Im not sure. Im too cloudy.
Sorry.
Im really kinda sorry - its too silly not to be sorry for.

They engaged us neatly. Operative capability is outstanding. Ambushes all around the city; they
used the little time they had to reinforce basements into ersatz shelters, and fuck them, because
they did an admirable job. We failed at frying them. We used fuel ABs that kept buildings intact.
Now, we were reaping the saws.
As Im dragged to the bar, Im still shocked and trembling. The marts killed a fish, the interface
blinks - the one covering the Rail, and the railman ditches his position in panic. Were left with
no fire support, and as a sardine helps me to replace a transmission cord and fitting a new
servo on, I fucking scream at the lightie to smoke us ASAP. Laz fire fries the cafe wall; I hear
the ablation booms roar, five feet away, and it sounds like shit so bad I want to just fuck it and
leg away from the town altogether. I cant. With some help, I walk again in two minutes; the
transmission sets up, I run as usual, and as soon as the smoke deploys, I order to leave the
building. We go through a side entrance, back to where we started, but its nothing like it; we
come under fire almost immediately, from a squad of marts thirty feets away, clinging to some
rubble, conscripts without motos, but with laz rifles. Ive got no time; Ive got stuff to do, Im one
step away from the grave, so we shred them with grenades; the tank shows up on the far end of
the street, and we get a new TACCOM assignment, and the grav blasts the side wall of one of
the buildings - its time to fight a rat fight, within a block of stone not fit for moto fights.
Its hard to tell what you do and why during urbans. Its hard to tell what happens. As we breach
through the still dusty hole, I empty my mag at a target I hardly see. I get fired at through a
window and I return fire, but I dont know if it connected; two grenades fall from a hole in the
ceiling, but the fishes manage to hit the ground; I throw a shake sensor to a spot next to that
hole, and in ten second, the railman clears the second floor by dumping shots at potential
targets. It all happens within twenty seconds. Within the same building. A laz MG sprays at us
from a building twenty feets away, and we return fire; I give the tank a fire request, but he
denies, so I ditch the house altogether.
Its kind of a mess, but Ill try to explain.
Were assigned to control the flank of a larger attack group. In broad terms, we just failed - as I
got pummeled by laz fire in a building thats baked into the worst beer bread since the creation
of beer bread, I frankly dont see myself enjoying this fight or even winning it. Considering the
places weve got fired from and the amount of laz frying our morale, were faced with a martian
skvada, basically three squads, which is considered a Major Outnumber and gives me some
karma points when making order requests, so I make up my mind:
No, no fighting that. I request a retreat order, and I get it; we strap to the tank and slide further
along the Turnip Queen Street toward the Carnival Square, a small square near the city outskirt,
named, conveniently, after a carnival that supposedly takes place there once a year. TACCOM
still wants a clear flank, for now, so were to hold there. Were to hold there for ten minutes, no
less, and then we leave to randee; no hope that thisll go smooth, but its better than trying to eat
concrete, so I shut my inner grump up. Thats city fighting. It goes like that. The worst tactics of
the worst commanders meet up in the worst situation possible.
All in all? Urban is a poker game. You try to play safe, bet a little bit here, a little bit there, but
you never know when the enemy will go all in, and youll never know when hell get lucky.
The tank rolls us rather quickly; as soon as we get to the square, we disembark and take firing
spots along the decorative fence.
At least weve got good visibility. I check my L3A3 and pat the reset bolt.
I breath deeply.
- TAKE POSITIONS YOU FUCKING FISHES WERE HOLDING THIS BLOODY SQUARE
UNTIL TACCOM GIVES US A LEGGING LIGHT! DO YOU HEAR ME?!
I get a yes. Sure they hear me. Even the tank hears me; its a shame the enemy doesnt hear
me, and when the mapmaker blinks me two incoming enemy squads with a mortar setting up
two hundred yards away, I wish theyd hear me too and just go away, peacefully, not wishing to
mess with a force like us.
And then, we get fired at.