Never Underestimate...
To my left and right they prepared to engage, charging only their primary buffers to stave off the initial, frontal assault. First contact was always the most dangerous, because, surviving that, we could maneuver and that's when skill came to play. After all, it was all just play, right? Even now, when death hovered closest, I fell back into 'play'. Life was play, death was play. Everything in the middle was a lingering slog between the Life and the Death. Some deaths you walked away from, some...
Part of surviving the fighting and the blood were the pockets of memory one could slip into. I had a numbered chest pocket on my uniform, it read 22. But these "internal" pockets were designed, every one of us had them, I had many. The commander's speech was coming to an uproarious finale, I heard the muffled response from the safety of my pocket. To my left and my right, I even heard my own voice shouting, though it sounded far away and garbled like it might if my ears were plugged from altitude. I yawned to release the pressure and we took our first steps.
The enemy was tentative, maybe cowed, but they too advanced. There was no blue glimmer of a superior shield wall, though we all saw the glinting like light reflecting off chrome. This was no chrome, only the hint of a less powerful warding, one that our weapons would pierce if we took the finer approach. Our foes were right to be concerned. We were steps from the fray.
In my pocket I found an old keepsake and logged in, calling up a blipping carrot and a large rectangular, dotted grid. At the carrot I typed a command and recalled my past move, thus discerning my exact location. I had logged similar, declining and advancing grids and had a pretty good idea on the lay of the 'land'. The blinking carrot begged a command, and I released a beacon to my past. Who was still about, and who might respond? The keepsake was old, it was ancient, the relic of a past computational era often equated with the pyramids and the fall of the last modern western civilization. Those were thousands of years distant, but history teaches us nothing more than forgetfulness. Nevertheless, a handful of my peers, friends in another lifetime, answered the call and together we merged our grids and prepared to battle.
My initial training, training from birth I might add, enabled existing in multiple dimensions. I let my earthbound senses, and the movements of my compatriots, control my primary function, which was seconds from clashing weapons to shield wall, while by a faded green alphabet I took command of my space jumping fleet. Charlie215 was 6 grids away, the closest to my battalion. Three warp jumps would connect us, but our target was beyond Charlie215, closer to Miguel@Liberty and NickyPaperclip. We could converge, but only simultaneously. To do otherwise would risk a calamitous defeat.
We should flank the opposition. The carrot blipped slowly, fading to the background. My boot fell heavy, sinking into the loam then catching on a buried limb. The momentum flung me forward and I purposely began a somersault, which my powersuit aided, thus bringing me upright, just scratching the ground. I shook my helmet and dislodged a chunk of green moss clinging to my visor. The frontal buffer burned the remaining dirt, leaving the slight odor of ozone, but it faded into memory as I fell into step, now into the second unit, trailing the primary contact team. They were moving fast, and readying their weapons. I would have to be content with my new position.
Our preparations were complete. NickyPaperclip had evaluated the separate battalion configurations and computated the movements. On her thunderclap we would fly, warping at our own capabilities and converging on the enemy. Thrusters burned, weapons charged, our digits dancing on their imaginary keyboards on the periphery of our sight. On the battlefield my infrared vision saw the enemy dissolve from the center and open up, swallowing the rush attack of my unit. The frontal blue energy field became less than useless when the defenders slipped away, and as they wheeled to engage, several were cut down from the sides and behind by missile weapons. I came up behind too late, but my mistake turned fortuitous and I took several arrows and an exploding rock or two fully frontal, then charged through to cut into our foes second unit.
Suddenly the battlefield opened wide and units were spread widely, surging together and falling apart as bodies fell whole or in pieces to the dirt. My company leader, myself, and two others formed a wheel and moved into the meat of the fray. Our blue shield deflected the strikes of earthly steel and we easily cut down the glinted chrome of their fading wards.
Etherwhere, the behemoth iron battalions converged for a second, a green blip, then warped simultaneously to the center grid, phasers blasting, photon torpedoes flying. The Klingon fleet evaporated, leaving 0's on the grid where a * existed before. We were well on our way to securing a patch of grid 10X10, and adding precious resources and star bases to our inventory. Salutations, NickyPaperclip, Charlie215, Miguel. And godspeed, until the next engagement! And here, on the earth's green grass, we powered down and lowered our visors, looking upon eyes we saw only in dull moments, supping, drinking, sleeping, bloody, dying. The hill was above us, and what lay beyond was our only goal.
