The Red Frontier: Wrath of the Vanquished

Chapter 19: Bad Memories

Trying to put the thoughts of the past out of his mind, Marcus made his way down the continuing hallway and made a left at the next junction. Greeted by an open doorway, he quickly stepped though, making his way through more corridors and up a flight of steps before reaching his destination. A hallway labelled 'Officer Quarters.'

On his right was a room, and after scanning his PDA's chip on the lock, the metal planel slid open. "Welcome, Major Winter." A voice filled his ears as he stepped inside, the light level inside rising to reveal a flat-panelled desk, several personal storage drawers, a metal wardrobe, and a single bed all to himself.

The room Captain Baker had given him, and yet he only used as a workplace.

On his desk was a fat pile of neatly aligned papers; criteria, briefings, reports, the typical deluge of bureaucracy that preceded every mission the SOSC did. Picking them up, he quickly organised them by their seals and stored them in his backpack, which lay at his feet, leaning against the metal frame of the desk.

As he worked, Marcus glanced at an item which decorated his temporary workplace; a holographic picture frame. Leaning over, he picked it up, smiling as he took a closer look at the cycling images held within; him and Jennifer side-by-side on the Mount Ramses Nature Reserve, looking out over the spectacular view. A black-out drunk Ferro fallen asleep in a ditch after their night at the Tundra Goat Bar. The company's group photo outside the Colonisation Memorial, arms wrapped around shoulders as they pulled each other close, squeezing into frame as one big family

Marcus smiled, but his eyes became burdened with sadness as he looked on. After the war's end, everything had seemed so carefree. The all-consuming and savage fight to defend The Red Frontier and bring an end to the Sirthon conquest, a fight that swallowed countless lives, seemed to finally be a thing of the past. 

But then then they received their surprise orders to come here. To return where it was all meant to end.

When the company heard this, each one of them was either heartbroken or furious. They were all part of the 'lost generations'. Fathers, mothers, daughters and sons who had never known a life without war. Who were all born, and often died, while the Sirthon War raged on.

Marcus' great-grandfather once told him of a time when the galaxy wasn't wracked by conflict. The old man had never so much as touched a rifle, let alone leapt from a dropship or charged through a mortar barrage. To the ten-year old boy, his stories were but fairy tales, pleasant dreams and flights of fancy that would never really come to pass.

This was after his homeworld was attacked, after all. Under the rule of Chancellor Yronan, a nationalist brute bent on conquest, the Sirthon Republic campaigned ruthlessly into Union territory, settling upon planets that humanity hadn't touched and purging those that they had. Billions were slaughtered, and the Union fought back against them, uniting with the other nations of the galaxy to form the Galactic League, a coalition to defend the remaining planets and states of the Milky Way's charted regions.

That was sixty-five years ago. Sixty-five years of war, the vacuum of space aflame as entire fleets were destroyed and planets were torn asunder by gruelling battle. And during this conflict, the warships of the Sirthon 15th Fleet descended upon the mountainous world of Horus with but a single goal - genocide.

Marcus was only five at the time, yet he remembered that day vividly. Orbital plasma beams turning buildings to ash in a heartbeat. Torpedo barrages pulverising the streets and scything through the planetary defences. Armour-clad Sirthon troops rampaging in the streets, their blaster rifles scouring flesh from bone as their lifeless eyes looked on, unfeeling and uncaring.

Marcus saw it all from the evac craft's windows, a little boy looking on as the great peaks of his homeworld ran red with blood.

As a member of Horus' wealthy elite, the Winter family were one of the first to be rescued from the carnage. Carried to their family's off-world manor on the planet Janus until the conflict blew over. It was there that Marcus spent his adolescence and finished his education, getting a degree in economics.

But he wasn't going to use it in the way his parents expected.

The memories slithered through his mind. The army transports that took off from ground level, carrying new recruits off to the war. The ever-present sounds of thundering gunfire from the parade grounds that littered the planet's surface. The faces of the recruited as they trudged through the streets. Even as the crowds cheered them on, Marcus observed the expression that peered out through their helmets' visors. The looks of fear, dread, doubt and despair as they were forced from the safety of the core worlds and frog-marched off to the warzones. All but certain of a young death, little more than a number on a spreadsheet.

If national propaganda was all he had seen, things may have been different. But personally beholding the effects of the conflict on the Union's planets and people alike made Marcus inflexible. He was going to help humanity win the Sirthon War.

So he strode down to the local recruiting station. Wound up in officer training school. And the rest... well, that was history. Thankfully, the League managed to fight the Republic off Horus, and after years away, Marcus returned to the planet of his birth, everything instantly familiar to him as he did so... only to be called back to duty once again.

His mind suddenly returned to his current mission, and to one thing in particular. To a document that had been sent to each member of his company by the Union Foreign Office on Vulcanus after his meeting with Marshal Idriah. Reaching down into his backpack, he took it out of its storage place; a single piece of paper titled 'Current Knowledge of Xan-Klar Culture.'

All it contained was two short paragraphs of text; one detailing the known societal structure of the Empire, and the other simply stating that they were a deeply militaristic race. The Empire was, obviously, an absolute monarchy, with a Xan-Klar High Council acting as the Emperor's advisors. Who made up the Council was a mystery, but they were most likely members of the Xan-Klar nobility. The lords and ladies who, coincidentally, also made up their ambassadors.

The text didn't even come halfway down the page, a fact that sank deep into Marcus' chest. It really did show how little humanity knew of this new species. A species which had become the subject of great fear and suspicion throughout the galaxy.

A lot of rumours about the Xan-Klar had circulated since the end of the Sirthon War. That they brainwashed their own people through both propaganda and force of arms. That they tortured prisoners of war just for fun. Some even said that the reptiles ate each other when times were lean. How much of it was true, Marcus didn't know, but the Xan-Klar way of life wasn't important to him right now, regardless of how repulsive it might be.

Just like the title they gave him: Kormac Telgaiur. What it meant or translated to didn't matter in the slightest.

What mattered was that one war for the Union had just ended, with billions dead and entire planets scourged almost beyond repair. And he would not see another one do even more harm to a galaxy already wracked with strife.

The Malevir Cartel had been preying on more merchant ships than ever, violence between species had sprung up on multiple worlds across the Union, and governments were torn on whether to bring the Galactic League's members closer together, or to disband the coalition entirely.

Marcus knew full well that he wasn't a diplomat or an ambassador, but nevertheless, by helping the Union here, maybe he could avert one problem following the upheaval that the war had wrought across the stars. And he knew the Xan-Klar better than most humans, along with Jennifer and Ferro.

After all, just a year ago, they'd fought alongside them...