SURVIVAL
Year 824
Lubnatsi's frontlines
350 kilometers South of Marley
War was an essential part of the world. It could be compared to a forest fire, how it cleanses an old canvas for new life to take its place.
Conflict with other nations was inevitable. Marley held all the cards, they could make any play, and gain any reward. And by that logic alone, every conflict slowly became a gamble, and war was a great motivator.
The Middle East has banded together, forming one whole allied force consisting of several nations and their respective militaries. They fought for the same reasons anyone else did. They safeguarded their secrets despite an agreement world leaders made to share everything.
They suffered from a drought. People began to starve. They were all lies, of course. They tried to hide it for some time now, but keeping such a military a secret was impossible.
With their advancement in military might, Marley grew worried. They tried settling this matter diplomatically, as they had done for the past few hundred years. But alas, their armies moved on their borders and Marley was forced to act. Another war was at its tipping point.
Their numbers are staggering, their technology superior, but what they lacked when compared to the Marleyan Military was a fiery determination.
General Calvi has deployed the Eldian shock troops, an elite and almost suicidal force created for one purpose alone. To fight.
Victory wasn't theirs to take. Glory was a dream. And honor was the motivation for keeping such a monumental machine moving. All the Eldian shock troopers wanted was recognition and to be redeemed of the sins of their fathers, and their fathers before them.
Yvonne heard each breath she took through her gas mask. Each became longer and faster as they approached flashes of fire on the horizon and thunderous explosions echoing over an almost flat land.
She could hear a faint whistle through the chaos, then, shortly after their artillery ceased their barrage, a whole drove of Eldians screaming as they charged through the frontlines. She was part of a single company of young men and women who would bolster the ranks and replace those inevitable losses.
"Yvonne." The trooper heard her name to her five o'clock. Turning her head, she saw another face of leather, rubber, and glass looking back.
"How is it?" Gerhard asked as he gestured to his white collar.
"Looks fine." Yvonne said. She put her eyes forward and tugged on her collar, checking the seal on her mask.
"Get a good look at it!" Her commanding officer shouted at the tip of their company. He was an Eldian with centuries of war in his blood. Unlike other officers, he constantly praised them, saying if they weren't destined for bloody glory they would have become fine Warriors.
"This is our home!" He continued to shout. "We earned the right to live here! Now they have the gall to encroach on everything we've built! And now it's our duty to protect it! Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?!"
The shock troops gave a resounding response of pure animosity. They screamed without fear, shouted insults as if their enemy could hear it, and smiled with excitement.
The sun began to slowly creep up on the battlefield, marking a new day where, hopefully, their penance would end.
"How long have we been hitting them?" Gerhard asked a fellow Eldian.
The rolling artillery was fired back up and the former company had taken the enemy trench. The distant shells pounding Mid-East positions traveled along the earth, shaking Yvonne's fresh cup of coffee.
"It's been a week at this point." A young woman wiped the lenses of her gas mask, ridding it of dirt trickling down from the ceiling.
"The next trench is their fallback point." Their officer added. "We take that, and we'll force them into a retreat. However, it's the most well-defended. I don't expect us to follow the artillery."
"What would you do, sir?" A trooper asked.
"A night raid." He hummed. "Another artillery strike just before sundown will leave them vulnerable. After a couple weeks of hard fighting, they're sure to be on shaky legs."
"I think today might be my day." Gerhard murmured to Yvonne.
A gust of wind cooled Yvonne's sweat-slick face as she removed her gas mask. She was a young woman, no older than twenty like everyone else in her company. Their officer was the only exception.
She pushed a hand through her scalp, rustling the stubble of black, dirty hair covering it. And her eyes, as cold as ice and bright like the sky, only shared a short glance with Gerhard.
"We can only be so lucky." She said, sipping her coffee.
"You don't believe me?" He asked. His brows furrowed with an iron will, stifled anger, and many other emotions they shared.
"I'll believe it when I see it."
"Hmph. Just you wait..."
"That's enough." Their officer said, his voice low and calm. "Pay attention now. It doesn't matter what's on the other side. Our mission is clear. We take that trench by any means necessary. Honor and glory can wait, our enemies cannot."
"How long have you been waiting, sir?" Another trooper asked. Yvonne recognized her voice. The high and almost innocent sound belonged to Belinda. Unlike the rest of them, she cared for their carrier pigeons and was the youngest at just fifteen.
"Forty-five years." Their officer said with a humored huff. "How old are you, Gerhard?"
"Nineteen, sir."
"Hmmm. That would make me... sixty-one."
It wasn't common for shock troops to live for so long, let alone an Eldian man. Yvonne could see it in his eyes, the deep desire everyone carried. He wanted to die, and whether it be some miracle or misfortune, he couldn't.
"Then it could be your day, sir." Gerhard said.
"A man can only dream." He chuckled.
At this point, their artillery mingled with a thundering cloud of rain. They fell in the hundreds, creating small hills of spent shells.
Everyone carried their weight in the trench. Eldian or not, they were all lowly men and women down in the mud.
Yvonne shoveled away at the muddied ground, creating a small river of brown water. The rain wasn't letting up as it flowed into one of their craters, filling it and making a soup of dismembered body parts and blood.
As she readjusted her mask, she spotted a bundle of tattered cloth in the mix. It was white and dirtied, a piece of clothing she also wore.
Satisfied with her work, Yvonne swung her shovel down, cleaning it of mud. She then followed the trench, looking for yet another flooded portion to tend to.
On the way there, she spotted one of the many Marleyan troops hunched over a body. It was one of theirs, a young man by the looks of it. Whoever he was, he died with his rifle close and half his head missing.
"Uh, hey." The Marleyan stood. It was an older gentleman, someone with time behind their belt. Yvonne didn't care to look at anything else other than the bundle of metal in his hands.
"I figured you would've wanted these." He gave his bag a shake, rattling the many tags like coins in a purse.
"Toss 'em." Yvonne said.
"W-what?" The soldier was taken aback. That combined with her expressionless mask made him uneasy.
"Get rid of them." Yvonne raised her voice, thinking he didn't hear her. "Or keep them. Doesn't matter."
She stepped into their drainage, brushing past the Marleyan to continue along the trench.
The soldier stood there, his head hung low and his eyes stuck on the bag of stamped names and numbers. He shook his head and sighed with dread conveyed clearly on his face.
As the sun neared the end of the battlefield, a flap of feathered wings silenced the trench. Eldians and Marleyans alike looked to the sky, their breaths held as they awaited news.
Yvonne watched as Belinda took a small scroll from the pigeon before setting him in his cage. The winged messenger had come a long way and earned a small handful of feed.
"Sir." Belinda presented the scroll to their officer who unrolled it and read aloud.
"A night raid." He said with excitement hidden by his mask. "A couple hours from now they'll cease fire. That's when we strike."
Handing the scroll off to Belinda, the officer planted a firm hand on Yvonne's shoulder, saying. "Gather the others."
"And the Marleyans?" She asked, nodding.
"I'll give them the news. Just gather the others. We'll all be going over."
"Finally." Gerhard said, evidently impatient.
"And me, sir?" Belinda stood at attention.
The elderly man gave a long pause as he looked at the young girl. Whatever emotion he felt, it stayed under his second skin.
"You as well, Belinda." He said with a curt nod. The girl's mask filters whistled with an excited gasp. She was eager, and so was Yvonne when she marched out of their tunnel.
If the world were different, maybe a more peaceful place, Yvonne could see it being a night of sleep. Being bundled up under a warm blanket as a crackling fire kept her company was nothing more than a thought.
The idea left her mind as fast as it entered. She was brought back to reality when a piece of barbed wire snagged onto her pack, rustling the metal overhead.
She remained put with her head in the mud. No words were exchanged as she waited until Gerhard crawled through and fiddled with the barbed wire, freeing her from the trap.
Gerhard gave her a small push, giving her the okay. She continued their long, grueling crawl. A mixture of mud and clay soaked her uniform, turning it into a more beige color.
The Eldian shock troops crawled along the battlefield, slowly closing the distance to their enemy. Gerhard, the most fiery of them all, remained ahead of most. Nothing stopped him, not even a fellow Eldian missing her lower half.
The young man rifled through her pockets, taking only a couple of clips from her bandolier before handing it off to Yvonne. When he was done, he gave the body a good push, clearing the path.
As they neared the line, Yvonne could make out a faint conversation being held. The voices were too faint to be made out in her mask, but they were quiet, cautious.
Gerhard honed in on the enemy with his breathing labored. His heart beat wildly in his chest, making the inside of his mask a hot mess of sweat and condensation.
Reaching underneath the collar of his uniform, he pulled the breathing apparatus clean off. He allowed the sprinkle of rain to cover his face and soak his short, blond hair.
He waited for Yvonne to eventually catch up, and when she did, he smiled. They couldn't speak, not when they lay right outside a concrete bunker.
With Yvonne at his side, he fixed his harness and opened each pouch, securing the two dozen hand grenades inside.
Today was his day, Yvonne realized that. She honestly envied Gerhard, but not enough to make it known.
They lay in wait for several minutes, lying completely still until a commotion erupted on their far right with a single gunshot ringing out.
Gerhard held the string attached to his vest and yanked it clean off, igniting the many fuses to his grenades. And without a second wasted, he stood up and sprinted clean over a line of sandbags to dive straight into the fortified machine gun nest.
Yvonne tucked her chin close and waited. She listened to Gerhard roar and the Mid-East soldiers scream in terror before he painted the walls black with soot and red with their combined blood.
Without a moment of hesitation, Yvonne took advantage of the opening and charged right in.