Sigma/Star

Chapter 23: Omnicorp, Ochenkov, and Others Part 3

He had taken a life. Killed his first man as a soldier. And he couldn't feel anything inside. The crash, the event, it had stolen that from him. He felt empty inside and cold, a robot sitting within this deadly machine. And part of him just wanted to kill them all for this, for everything. For killing so many in the ship. Or for his dad. The thought struck him like an arrow. Was he doing it for the memory of his father, for revenge?

He didn't have time to think though. The barrel swiveled to aim at a new target, to take another life. This time he missed though, the enemy shifting too fast to be hit. He needed the battlesuits to be stable for a moment in order to connect with them, something that was much harder than he had originally thought. His first kill had been a tad lucky. Now he would need skill, so long as nobody noticed where the shots were coming from in their enormous Goliaths.

"Sol...yo...have...the right....return..to..." The radio in the tank crackled and faded out. It was a strong voice, commanding in its nature, probably coming from a sergeant of some sort. Grimsley hadn't realized the radio might have gotten damaged in the crash. He had simply been thankful he was alive at all.

With a couple hard kicks and some banging, Grimsley reset the device and the signal started coming through strong. "Soldier, do you hear me? We need you to return to the city immediately! Repeat, return to the city immediately!"

"Copy that. Understood." Grimsley let out a tremendous sigh as the stress of the war was temporarily lifted. He was being taken back, being reassigned to a new squad. Of course, it made total sense. This tank was valuable to the war effort and they would want to use it over watching him go on a berserk rage through the battlefield. He would get to return to a safe place, to be put back into an organized system.

The tank turned slowly and began to roll backwards towards the city and away from combat. There was a release in Grimsley, a little return to himself there, some emotion shooting through his empty core. He wasn't quite as dead anymore.

* * * * *

Kaiser Namio sat with head in hands on a small chair in his room. General Christian was sitting across with a data-slate in front of him, containing all the files from the war. Namio rose up and turned to look out the window. He lived up on the top floors of the central building in the capital, hundreds of feet high. The enormous building overlooked the whole city from the centre, and Namio had windows running all around so that he could see the place he loved so much anytime.

Beneath his feet was the infrastructure that ruled the entire country, where bureaucrats and politicians came in and out daily to make the nation run like clockwork. And Namio controlled them all. Some days though, like today, it was a tougher job than normal.

"Where is he now?"

"Nobody knows Namio. He took off from the war and shot into the sky. He's faster and smaller than most things we can track and you and I both know he can jam any signals attempting to reach him at any time and so-"

"Find him Christian!" Namio roared. He turned violently and knocked the chair over. It clattered and Christian cringed a bit at the sound. "We need Sigma! We cannot have our greatest weapon running around the countryside freely."

"We'll do what we can. I'm doing the best with what we have but you must understand-"

"I understand it all Christian. I put you in charge of the Sigma initiative because I trust you to keep the country's top priorities in mind. Sigma is our top priority. Sigma alone can win the war. But more importantly, we need Sigma to talk with the Jahari, to compete with them and barter. In order to negotiate with a monster, you need a monster of your own and Sigma is that monster. What would you have me do now instead Christian? Tell me!"