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21.07.906.M38
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POV of New Dominion Trooper
"Congratulations on making the right decision, Terran brother," the medic said as he shook my hand at the end of my final genetic modification session. According to government records, from that moment on I was considered 100% Terran.
I had joined the Dominion's latest recruitment campaign, one that offered five thousand credits to any man or woman who met the physical requirements to become a trooper. The Dominion urgently needed five million new soldiers to prepare for some kind of imminent conflict, and the notices had begun appearing everywhere.
In New Korhal, recently, the government had launched a campaign where they handed out free televisions to all citizens. In every broadcast, day after day, information about the recruitment program was repeated: the benefits, the duty, the pride of serving. They also talked about new jobs, opportunities within the Dominion, stability.
The sum was enormous—almost the equivalent of six months' salary at the cannery where I worked, not counting the additional benefits: the shares registered in my name, which usually generated around five hundred credits a month. I didn't think about it much.
For four months, my life was reduced to obedience. Running, swimming, jumping. Assembling and disassembling the weapon until I could do it with my eyes closed. Crawling through mud. Shooting. Learning the basics of close-quarters combat. Simulated combat drills. All under the constant gaze of my instructor.
The training was intense. They pushed us to the limit, pressed us to always give more. According to them, there were new tensions on the frontier, another possible conflict with a xeno race like the T'au, who had recently been pacified—or, as the news kept repeating, completely humiliated.
Our Lord Regent was preparing for a new campaign.
The months passed slowly. Each day was a different kind of hell, until suddenly everything became strangely calm.
They had us board warships and transported us to a sector east of New Korhal. It was a system not yet colonized by the Dominion, though there were clear plans to do so. We stayed there for several days, waiting for orders.
For the first time, we had something close to rest. We were only required to keep the dormitories spotless. We had unlimited access to food, could go to the gym whenever we wanted to strengthen our bodies, and spent long hours talking with the comrades of my regiment.
It was during those days that I realized how much I had changed.
My hair, once light brown, was now black. My green eyes had turned a uniform brown, meeting Terran physical standards. I felt stronger, more energetic. I even seemed to have grown a little, as if the genetic change had finished shaping my body.
'So this is what it feels like not to have mutations,' I said, looking at myself in the mirror as I posed.
But on one of those days, everything changed.
Maximum alert was activated without warning. The ships repositioned immediately and entered orbit around the lifeless planet of the Spatha system. The world was called Spatha I. Luckily, from the transport ship carrying us we were able to access an observation point.
From there we saw things I will never forget.
In the void, enormous luminous masses moved slowly. Some radiated so much light that, at times, they looked like a second sun inside the system. According to what we were told over internal channels, the Dominion fleet was engaging xeno forces, unloading its entire arsenal against them.
For hours we watched as the shots grew larger and larger. The energy masses grew, accumulated, and were hurled at something enormous that advanced without stopping, as if it didn't care that the entire Terran Dominion fleet was firing at it at the same time.
Suddenly, one of the targets exploded.
It became a burst of light so intense that for a second I thought I'd gone blind. Then another followed. And another. We watched as those slow-moving objects exploded into hundreds of heavy fragments, leaving space filled with glowing debris and incandescent remnants.
The battle continued.
Then we saw a rock.
It was far larger than all the others. Every Dominion ship concentrated its fire on it—cannons, missiles, everything. And still, nothing seemed to happen to it.
Until it began to break apart.
The enormous mass split into several pieces, but it was already too late. One of them entered the atmosphere of Spatha I. From our position we watched as that gigantic rock descended and finally collided with the planet.
The fighting in space went on for a while longer, until all the other rocks were destroyed into multiple fragments. Only one had managed to strike the world.
Then the voice over the loudspeaker echoed throughout the ship.
"To your battle stations."
We moved immediately. We formed up in the transport bays as the hatches opened and the drop ships prepared.
"Come on, come on… I can't wait to shoot these orks," one of my comrades said, unable to hide his excitement. He wore the tight smile of someone who had been waiting months for that moment.
"I hope it's just like in training. I'm going to kill so many no one will be able to keep up with me," replied one of our squadmates—the most competitive of the group and holder of several shooting-range records.
The ship lifted off shortly after. The entire group felt the thrust of descent as we began our approach to the planet.
"No atmosphere on the planet. Normal gravity. Keep your oxygen masks active and await further instructions," the sergeant ordered as he moved among us in his CMC armor, visually checking each of us as we descended at high speed.
It didn't take long to touch down.
Thousands of transport ships were landing around us, unloading troops and matériel without pause. The moment our boots hit the ground, we began our assigned task: deploying the Earth Splitter artillery batteries.
We put on our work exosuits and started hauling the heavy components out of the holds. Everything was fast, almost automatic. We assembled, connected, and secured sections while other teams did the same all around us.
That was when we saw it.
From the sky, enormous objects began to fall. They descended at tremendous speed, wrapped in incandescent trails. One after another they slammed into the ground with brutal force, shaking the terrain and embedding themselves deep into it.
Bunkers.
They had been dropped directly from the ships.
We had barely finished assembling one of the Earth Splitters when the order came through. Our group was to enter the bunker and take up positions, while the other units continued assembling the full artillery network.
A massive line of bunkers stretched as far as the eye could see. Once inside, after removing my exosuit, I passed through a double airlock system. As I cleared the second door, oxygen immediately began circulating inside the bunker.
Everything was far too well thought out.
It surprised me that the structure had survived the initial impact intact. One level below there were bunks, a storage area with ammunition, food, and weapons. Literally everything needed for combat was concentrated in a single place, which also seemed designed to function as our home for the duration of the campaign.
That's where our watch began.
The bunker operated as an integrated combat station. From inside, we controlled its weapon systems through consoles very similar to the drone-control interfaces we had been forced to learn years earlier. We had access to machine guns, laser turrets, and a swarm of repair drones we could release if the bunker's structure was compromised.
Even so, nothing happened for the next eight hours.
When we rotated out with the next group and left the bunker, we were assigned artillery duty. By then, several defensive layers had already been installed. There were three full rows of Earth Splitters, and on the horizon we could make out several battlecruisers firing their batteries at ork positions.
That's how several days passed.
We watched as the cruisers unloaded their laser arsenals again and again onto the enemy. During that time we also saw members of the Prometheus Company's Royal Guard moving through the area, usually leading rapid strikes against ork enclaves. On one occasion they returned with several prisoners, who were transferred to a field laboratory set up near the front.
As the days went by, everything became too quiet.
We did little more than eat rations and wait for orders. They had installed a machine designed to generate nanobots similar to the ones we carried in our blood to heal wounds, but these were programmed to fly and destroy a kind of spore present in the air. Apparently, that was how the orks reproduced.
It was common to see enormous metallic clouds moving across the planet, cleansing the atmosphere and eliminating the spores completely.
The boredom reached the point where we went back to training.
The officers reorganized the area and we resumed drills, this time using laser weapons instead of ferromagnetic ones. According to what we were told, it was a cost-saving measure. Laser weapons drew power directly from the fission generators supplying all installations, making their ammunition practically infinite. Heavy artillery, by contrast, was kept in reserve for large targets.
After weeks without any news, something finally happened.
The orks began to mobilize.
We all took positions inside the bunkers, while some teams remained in exosuits ready to operate the artillery. We activated the information displays and watched as a large hostile force advanced toward our lines. The battlecruisers kept us informed in real time about everything that was happening.
That surprised us a little.
The enemy forces were clearly inferior in number.
Thanks to the cruisers' support and targeting systems, we began unloading the laser batteries on the orks while they were still about six kilometers away. They kept running toward us while the fire struck them without pause.
For more than ten minutes I kept the optics active, watching the battery cameras. I fired in controlled bursts, making sure the barrels didn't overheat.
When it was over, the horde had been completely wiped out.
"Seriously… is this all we're going to do?" I said while looking at the tactical map and confirming there wasn't a single ork left alive in the area.
"I don't know about you, but I killed more than a hundred," one of our squadmates replied, smiling as if she'd just won a competition.
Normalcy returned quickly.
According to the scientists operating near our positions, they were convincing the Lord Regent to turn Spatha I into a training world. The infestation was under control. They literally allowed the orks to reproduce, but didn't let them develop heavy weapons. Every time construction attempts were detected, they bombarded them without pause until everything was reduced to rubble.
Because of that, our routine became simple and repetitive.
Use the laser batteries to eliminate small green-skin hordes. Physical training. Eating. Sometimes helping the engineers of the Prometheus Company move or install their creations, since they were working on improving laser weaponry. The entire planet had effectively become a massive testing ground.
It was strange to see someone who could kill you with a single blow also be so intelligent and meticulous. Still, for some reason, all of them had ended up in the Royal Guard.
Every day, members of the Prometheus Company went out in their ships and returned with more captured orks. Some were taken to laboratories to be studied. Others were used directly as test subjects for new laser weapons. They measured how much energy was needed to pierce them, which adjustments improved efficiency, which configurations made shots more lethal.
In the few weeks we'd been there, we had seen dozens of different prototypes. Some heavy, others light. Some failed due to battery issues, others overheated. But each version was better than the last.
They were constantly refining their arsenal, testing new technology on living subjects while, at the same time, cleansing the planet of spores.
The only moment we truly thought we'd enter real combat was when, for almost two full weeks, they stopped bombing the orks.
That was when they responded.
The wave came all at once. Improvised vehicles, machine guns, and enormous numbers of green-skins advancing together. This time it wasn't a skirmish. It was a full assault.
We responded with everything.
Thousands of artillery pieces fired at the same time. The barrage was so concentrated it looked like an entire strip of the planet had been torn away. When all the batteries hit at once, the terrain simply ceased to exist in that sector.
There were several similar waves. In one of them, the scientists even managed to identify the same ork tank taking part in multiple attacks. Every time it was disabled, they pulled it back to the rear… and it reappeared in the next horde, as if nothing had happened.
That caught the attention of the Prometheus Company.
When they finally managed to capture one of those tanks and brought it in for analysis, the result left everyone baffled. Inside there were no engines, no control systems, nothing resembling functional technology.
Just a rock.
On it, crudely painted, were the words: RED 'UNZ GO FASTA.
That was enough for the Prometheus Company's engineers to start losing their patience. They couldn't understand how any of it worked. Ork weapons were little more than chunks of metal with teeth, assembled without any apparent logic, and yet they fired—though when we held them in our hands, they fell apart into pieces of scrap metal.
The same thing happened with their aircraft. Some had managed to take off before being shot down by the Sky Furys, and when they were examined, the result was the same: inside there was nothing but a red-painted rock.
Nothing else.
That drove the engineers completely mad. They couldn't explain how that "technology" worked. It followed no known laws. It made no sense.
In the end, nothing made sense. But the planetary bombardments resumed, and the orks returned to their mass charges, using only infantry. For us, that translated into something simple.
Excellent marksmanship training.
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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