Pan Galactic Assoc. Press (PGAP)
I will not...no...let me rephrase that...I CAN not, begin to describe horror that began after that
first stand off against the enemy forces massed against the clan units. I know now that the Final Reich War began that day, and the battle itself lasted for over 37 hours. I could answer specific questions if they were presented to me, but trying to think back on it and put my memory to paper without some external influencing me to put specifics to paper, I draw a blank. It was just too much. Too much death. Too much loss. Too much horror. Too much fear.
Too many times of me filling the waste collection bladders on my crotch and anus (yes, I shit and pissed myself, multiple times to be honest about it, and I have no shame over the issue. That's what those blasted things are for and I was not the only person on that battle field giving their reclamation systems a run for their money. I have a few incidents that burned into my memory like acid etched into a slate, that will never leave me. I will share two of them, the others, however, will go with me to my grave and I don't care how much my editor threatens me about it. I would rather be an unemployed reporter than the kind of creature who would
put such experiences as these on paper for every Bob and Jane in the galaxy to air out for every one, the bad laundry of that charnel house of raw, bloody slaughter.
Marble solid memory of Sean Collin McFae, Gary Allsop, Jazzy Tipton, Joel Parras, and Deborah Roaché-Hudak, performing over and over and over again, acts of bravery that would have stunned even the most jaded Hollywood stunt man. I had watched old movies from the 1940-1950's about World War II on Terra, but I never thought I would see the futuristic version of Normandy played out before and by this cast of characters. It was so unreal and made me feel rather separate from what was going on around me. Abstract is the closest to describing the feeling. I was there but I was not part of it. I was .... simply....an observer. I so want to talk for hours about the heroic acts, repeated over and over and over for hours on end by each member of our crew, but every time I get too specific I break down in tears and it all goes right back out of my head. It's just as well, if I were to honor any of them, they would mock it and me until it was meaningless to them. They don't do the job they do for medals, they do it because it is what they were born to do. It is in their blood, their body, their mind, and their very soul itself.
One thing that I clearly remember, and that will haunt me until the day I die, was my first head to head look into the eyes of those Otto Von Bismark mecha monstrosities. I stared at a frosted view plate in the shape of a porthole window. The glass was specially frosted, to make it to cloudy to be seen into from the outside, but clear from the inside, and the frosting over the glass was in actually a high density protectant against various methods of attack. It made me feel like I had just directly looked, the great white wale of legend, into his foul, diseased soul. Oh, how very apt that impression was, considering the opponent we actually fought. Otto Von Bismark and army of Germanic clones, bent on reviving the Nazi empire as the Final Reich. Apparently, Bismark fought in WWI not WWII, but he had studied the works of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich and as a result proclaimed himself an AVID Nazi!
So.....there we had been for a day and a half............fighting Nazi space clones....................do you see now, why I am having difficulty putting all this to paper. Suffice it to say, I was in shock. The events of the day speak for themselves, no matter how you cut it, though.
Our forces pushed back the IFRA (Imperial Final Reich Army) forces. Massive casualties were taken not only by the Brotherhood but also by the Rabid Bunnies on the south continent. Stories of bravery floated about over the com channels. A ragged cheer went up as the last of the Huge black mechas, mag lifted back up to their drop ships and presented their complete retreat. Only later did we learn that what we considered a win, was merely a diversion. Their primary target had not been the planet we engaged them on, nor the hundreds of other planets attacked that day. During these skirmishes across the galaxy, a second wave of mechas had seized every scrap yard, every recycling plant, and every mecha part production facility in the entire known sphere.
And that was the day that I learned about the Drake-Bismark Clone and Mecha Insurrection of 3299. It was a lesson I could have gone with out. It sucked. The whole damn thing had sucked. I just wanted to go home, get drunk, and cry for a few days. Sean Collin stood by me, quietly letting me vent about it, nodding at all the right places and patting my back when i needed it, then he quietly said, "This is what we do. You'll never get a soldier to tell you exactly why they REALLY do this stuff. But, I'll tell you what I think it is. It's love, man. Not the kinda love most dirt bags think of. No, it's a pure love that has no physical requirement to debase it. It is unconditional and it is forever. These warriors love each other so much, they will die for each other, kill for each other, bleed for each other, and when they get so old they have to retire, they will make up excuses to be around the younger ones, so that they can do for them or give to them anything, anything at all that might help them or make them feel better, because that massive obligation is an obligation that doesn't end with something so unimportant as the expiration of an enlistment contract. Yeah, I know it's weird, but that's it in a nutshell. We kill to save lives. We fight for those we love."
Two days later I got off the ship at the NYC space terminal on Terra. I took a taxi to the paper's offices in Manhattan, and their I have stayed since. I will never again take a correspondent post. Everything I needed to learn in my entire life, I learned from a muddy, half sober, sergeant named Sean Collin McFae, and I have no desire to pursue an advanced degree. If you need me, I will be in the copy room, kissing my boss's ass, and planning to join the company soft ball team, and I am NOT giving all this up EVER again. You want more? Go ask Sean Collin.
THE END
Submitted by Ron Frye#879655