The family burned before him. They stood no chance against a titan. The words "Leave nothing alive" were seared into his brain. The flashing light, the adrenaline all culminating in a burning world. The mother, a short woman protective, the way she clutched her crying baby close to her chest. Her young boy to her hip, the father, pointed an ancient militia issued rifle at the hull, remaining strong even as he stared down the barrel of a thermite launcher double the size of him. The father looked afraid but remained strong till the last. He screamed with the rest of them.
That didn't stop me. I watched as the fathers gun melted in his hands even as his legs were taken off from below by the Incendiary round. Flames immediately spread onto the mother and children, their clothing burned. They began scorching, their skin blackening, flaking instantly under the extreme heat caused by liquid thermite dispersed around the impact point. The grass charred instantly, they had no respite against the flames. After the burning I considered the smoldering remains that were once a family.
In the heat of war people say that they aren't themselves. This is false, or at least in my case it was. I made that decision. I pulled that trigger, I watched as their insides boiled, hair and clothing burned, as their muscles gave at the point of death, or just before in the case of the father, his will to live faltering especially early. Probably in part due to his lack of legs preventing him from shielding his family in any way. The mother died slowly, her fingers twitching tight around the swaddle of smoldering cloth no longer crying, her arm wrapped around the corpse of her son already burned from the inside out by inhaling the flammable gas.
Every day the images pass over my eyes again and again. The mission order, the fear, the woman, the baby, the child, the father, the fire, the screaming, the smell, the smoldering remains. The mission order, the fear, the woman, the baby, the child, the father, the fire, the screaming, the smell, the smoldering remains. The mission order, the fear, the woman, the baby, the child, the father, the fire, the screaming, the smell, the smoldering remains. Again and again. Sleep doesn't dull the remembrance and they soundtrack my dreams with their screaming. They spread my mind apart and it burns.
I am long past my glory days but I am to be deployed from orbit soon enough a planet named Harmony is to be invaded. They do not know we are coming, it won't matter either way.
The outcome for me will be the same.
