Helldivers: A Day in the Life

Heavy Weapons

Pain swirled around Bruce as his eyes fluttered open. The bright sky sent an acute stabbing of pain through his eyes. If he was being honest, he was surprised he wasn't dead. The behemoth had nearly crushed him when it landed on him. The green sky told him he was still on the planet, and a deep breath reminded him that his ribs were still broken. He turned to the side, coughing up a wad of phlegm and blood.

"Good, you're awake," Candice said between sprays of reFoam.

Another deep breath and a groan. "How long was I out for?" Bruce asked.

"Not long. I'm almost done. We'll finish up and get you back up into space. You look-" The roar of a turret cut off Candice's words and set Bruce's ears ringing. Turns out, the helmets they wore did quite a bit to shield the sounds of war from them. The cardio accelerator probably didn't help either.

"I'm not going to be able to walk Candice. My left leg is numb and as you can clearly see, I'm missing my right leg."

"I'll have Doug carry you. He's not good for much else."

That brought a laugh and another wave of pain shooting through his chest. "Be nice Candice. It's his third drop. Drag me around the back side of the behemoth and you two get moving towards the last objective. I'll catch up. I've got an idea." Bruce said, digging out a stratagem.

Candice stood and nodded. Doug looked down from atop the beast, "You guys talking about me?"

"Yeah," Candice responded. "Get down here and help me move him." Doug jumped down as the turret let out another long stream of hate. Doug and Candice pulled Bruce around the side of the behemoth so he was facing the turret. "Keep up with her Doug," Bruce shouted at his teammates' backs as they ran off into the forest, "She's not in a good mood."

"Fuck you, Bruce." She said while making a rude gesture over her shoulder.

Bruce looked down at the stratagem. It was amazing that a small piece of equipment could bring down such fury against the enemies of man. Depending on what code was put in, helldivers could call down anything from ammo and weapons to airstrikes and ATVs. At the academy, Instructor Silva had said that helldivers had the ability to call in anything that they wanted, as long as they had the clearance to do so, and could argue the reasoning for it. They were told to keep the heavy weapons and equipment reserved for emergency situations. They should only be used as a last resort.

With the stratagem in his left hand, he carefully entered the numbers for the EXO-44 Exosuit and the stratagem glowed green. If he'd still had a helmet on, a sixty second countdown would have shown on his display. It didn't much matter at this point. He threw it into the forest and looked down to the nub of his right leg.

Candice had done a good job making sure that the foam had been formed into a dome so it wouldn't catch on anything when it hardened. He knocked on the dome a few times with his knuckles and was satisfied that it was hardened through. He was also pleasantly surprised at how little it hurt. In his field med course, Instructor Silva had told them that reFoam had been specifically engineered with nanomachines to direct blood flow from any artery it found into any other vein is found. This effectively kept blood loss as low as possible while also keeping a bleeding helldiver from leaving a trail for enemies to follow. The painkilling effects were added much later as it was found that helldivers with missing limbs being seared shut screamed loud enough to attract more attention than a blood trail ever could.

Interesting that helldiver comfort was added as a result of improved mission capabilities...

Bruce reached for his water canister and was pleasantly surprised he hadn't lost that too. He took a long draw from it, looking up at the fireball that was his supply drop. If he still had a helmet, he would have seen the timer showing twenty seconds until impact accompanied with an alert to vacate the landing area. The sides of the delivery capsule explode away revealing two enormous parachute canopies that blossomed from the top of the exosuit to further slow its descent. A few hundred feet above the ground, the parachutes cut free and the folded up, six ton war machine came crashing into the trees less than twenty yards away.

Bruce struggled from his sitting position to his hands and knees. He crawled as fast as he could. Even with the Cardio Accelerator coursing through his body, it still took a whole minute before he made it to the exosuit. In its folded up form, its legs rose up from the feet to stick up above the sides of the cockpit where its knees bent to rest its hip joints on its enormous feet. Between the legs, the cockpit was an unassuming box with a bulbous front windshield made of twice hardened glass. A helldiver needed to climb up a six rung ladder sticking out of the backside of the machine and enter the stratagem code for the suit before they could enter.

Easier said than done when you only had one leg.

Fortunately, there were also two vertical bars running up alongside the ladder. Bruce grabbed the bottom two rungs and climbed into a standing position on his one good leg. A vertical bar in each hand, he hopped up, putting his foot on the bottom rung. After a few more hops, Bruce was at the door. He typed in the entrance code and the door rolled up into the cockpit like a garage door. The pilot's chair rotated from the windshield and slid a short distance to rest at his knees. Exhausted, he turned around, took one last look at the behemoth, and collapsed into the pilot's seat.

As the chair began to slide back into position, two antennas of a scout drone popped up over the corpse of the behemoth followed by the faceplate of the hideous bug. Bruce leaned forward and slapped at the door close button, but his fingers only brushed the sides of it.

"Ahh fuck yo-" was all Bruce got out before the bug lifted its front two legs in the air letting out the same ear piercing screech as it did before. The turret belched a stream of bullets, cutting the sound and shredding the scout. Bruce's chair rotated towards the front of the mech and locked into position. A wave of exhaustion laid over him like a blanket and he closed his eyes to savor the comfort. Maybe he could just sit in the chair and let the other two take care of the rest of the mission. That would certainly be the easy way out.

He was just so tired of it all. Tired of being on this planet. Tired of dealing with the heat. Tired of being tired. Tired of being a helldiver. He was going to kill them all.

His eyes snapped open. The console in front of him glowed to life. Two joysticks slid out from under the front console to stop a comfortable distance from his chair. Between the joysticks, there was a big red flashing button that read "ENGAGE" in bold black letters. Bruce smashed the button with his fist and the exosuit sprung to life. The words "Welcome Helldiver" showed on the windshield as the blast shield lifted up and out of the way to reveal the turret and forest beyond. The exosuit's tri-barrel machine gun fell forward and locked into position on the right side of the exosuit and, while he couldn't hear it, the doors to the rocket pods on the left side opened.

Bruce reached out and grabbed the joysticks as he looked over a read out on the windshield. The left stick moved the legs of the exosuit while the right one pivoted the cockpit and aimed the cannons.

As the cockpit rose into position, the words "Happy Hunting" showed in the center of the windshield before fading to reveal a display similar to his helmet. At the top left, a readout showed that he had twelve thousand rounds of .30 caliber ammunition and eighteen hellfire high explosive rockets left on the pod. A sonar pulse sensor on the bottom left of the windshield showed a small 360 degree readout of everything around him within fifty meters. The sonar showed he had targets closing behind him.

When the cockpit was settled into its final position, Bruce cranked the right joystick to the left. The left stick he pushed forward to pivot the exosuit and create some distance from the enemies sprouting up around him. The aiming reticle swept over the bugs and Bruce pulled the trigger under his right index finger. Heavy rounds of hatred flowed out of the three barrels of the exosuit, turning the bugs into paste. Bruce pulled the left stick towards him to keep the suit moving backward away from the enemy. The exosuit crashed through the forest turning trees into splinters and churning up dirt with every step.

After a wave of more than twenty bugs had been punished, Bruce moved his left hands to the communications panel to open his squad channel. "Candice, Doug. Can you hear me? I've got the exosuit online. Drop a beacon for the next objective?"

"Took you long enough." Candice panted into the communicator, "See you there."

"I'm really not in the mood Candice. Drop the fucking beacon and I'll meet you there." Bruce screamed into the communicator and clicked the mute button. The beacon showed he had about two miles of forest to make it through before he got to the final objective. It shouldn't be a problem for him. At least he didn't have to walk. He pushed the left stick in the direction of the objective.