Chapter 1

Four dropships descended to an industrial complex. They were ugly things, a single pilot rectangular cockpit plastered to the front of a box that carried troops, four circular sub-light engines, and a pair of stubby wings for atmospheric maneuver.

In the first dropship, Yeshua was having the jitters. This was his first deployment. He was here with his supervisor, Lieutenant Amad and two other soldiers, Corporal Hannah, and Sergeant Cassandra.

“First time?” asked Amad.

Yeshua nodded.

“I remember my first time. I died a dozen times. But we ultimately prevailed. IT’s usually the death part that gets people.”

“I guess so.”

“You’ll get used to it, Private.”

“Arriving over the complex! Things are looking a little hot! The Marines have already been engaged!” yelled the pilot over the intercom.

“Time to go to work, Yeshua.”

Yeshua nodded.

The dropship door opened.

“Let’s do this!” said Amad.

“Stick together!” responded Hannah over her shoulder.

Yeshua gripped his weapon and ran out, jumping off the ramp. The rest of them followed suit.

Yeshua fell a solid thirty feet. His gear took the impact hitting the ground. Yeshua got up and started sprinting into the industrial complex looking for cover, holding his weapon. He looked to his right and saw Amad leap into the air, activate his jet boosters, and leap again onto the roof of the structure ahead of them. Yeshua slid into the structure, weapon out and ready. He got back on his feet, did a near ninety degrees turn to the right then another one to the left.

He left the structure behind and saw a furious battle ahead of him. Robotic soldiers engaged the marines en masse. A quick mental calculation, there were twenty robots engaging four marines, holding position behind a wrecked vehicle and using it for cover. Four marines out of a total of thirty marines spread across the entrance of the complex. And twenty robotic soldiers of two-hundred attempting to push the marines out.

One member of the original squad of four glanced behind them.

“Look, a Spirit! Now the odds are in our favor.”

Yeshua continued past the marines and leaped over the vehicle. He readied his weapon and pulled the triggered, peppering the robots with small caliber bullets. He took two down with shots to their head and kept going, reloading as he slid through their formation.

“‘Nades out!”

Explosions sounded behind Yeshua. Yeshua continued to and then up the wall behind the formation. Yeshua ran up it and turned to leap off. Five of the robots were destroyed by grenades lobbed by the marines. Yeshua used his jet boosters to hover in the air for a moment and gunned down a further two robots. The jet boosters ran out and he dropped to the ground.

The robots turned to face him, aiming their plasma rifles. The marines took the opportunity to stand up and gun them from behind. Caught between the two, the robots only half-heartedly fired at Yeshua. Yeshua boosted to the side, catching a bullet, but running up a wall at an angle. He ran across it, firing into the crowd of robots, only killing one as he ran. Yeshua hit the wall’s ninety degrees turn and kept going, dumping the rest of his magazine into the robots as he leaped off the edge of the wall and came down.

Yeshua slid into cover to reload. He peaked out, and dumped another magazine into the dwindling robot formation. Plasma bullets went sent in his direction. He took several of them but they didn’t kill him. Yeshua reloaded and peaked again. Two more kills.

A marine called out to him, “We’ve got this! Thanks!”

Yeshua silently acknowledged the marine. They were tough people. Not army grunts, they had energy shields and tactical equipment just like Yeshua. Marines were sent ahead to engage enemies head on. They had access to reincarnation technology like Spirits, the type of special forces soldier Yeshua and his comrades were, but marines had a lower priority and respawned at a slower rate. Priority was given to Spirits for their battlefield impact.

Yeshua rushed into a structure, maybe a factory or something. He slid down a set of stairs and came face-to-face with a squad of robotic soldiers. Yeshua aimed his weapon and gunned three of the five down. Their fire was inaccurate, even at this range, and Yeshua only took two bullets. He would regenerate his health after this fight.

Yeshua reloaded. The speed of reloading his weapon always amazed him. He pulled the mag out and rapidly stuck the next one in. Always full ammunition. Reloading magic was absolutely fantastic.

Yeshua mowed down the last two robots.

Then Yeshua took a high caliber shot to the shoulder.

“Yargh!”

He clutched it and saw in his periphery, a robot with a bolt-action rifle. Not quite a sniper rifle, but man the thing hurt. Yeshua took a second shot to the head and died, his guts exploding across the factory floor.

Death was always a funny thing.

Yeshua’s soul floated through the void, hearing muffled cries and shouts of his memories. Flashes of light here and there, representing emotions and events from his life so far. It was a calming effect to reflect on what he had accomplished.

Just as Yeshua was getting used to the void, he was violently pulled back to reality.

Yeshua picked himself up. He was in a small elevated metal shack, possibly a foreman’s ready room. Yeshua gripped his weapon and rushed outside where the battle continued to rage.

To get back to the main complex, Yeshua would need to cross a bridge. Luckily, no one blew it up. Despite the battle, it was in good condition.

A squad of robots on the other side of the bridge and in the main complex saw him and opened fire. They were maybe forty feet away. Yeshua readied his weapon, clipping two of the group and putting them down after sustained fire. He reloaded and short-sprinted in a slide in one fluid motion. While sliding, Yeshua nailed one of the remaining three robots. He reloaded and ran past the two remaining robots. Yeshua slid again but rotated his body and as he slide backwards, put the last two robots into the ground.

Yeshua hit the wall with a thud. He wasn’t hurt, just winded a bit. Yeshua reloaded and dusted himself off as he rose.

Time to go find that sniper and settle the score.

Yeshua found the sniper. No, Yeshua did not kill the sniper bot. Hannah gunned it down with her automatic rifle.

Yeshua heard her through his headset, “You good, kiddo?”

“Yes, I think I’m fine.”

“Good. How many kills?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Rookie numbers!”

“I’m trying my best!”

“I’m on fifty-two. Avatar is ready for deployment but I’ve not seen any enemy armor so I’m keeping Cowboy in my back pocket.”

Cowboy was a type of lightweight Avatar, pilotable mecha that Spirits like Yeshua and Hannah could deploy to the battlefield and pilot. They were the equivalent of an armored vehicle, like a tank, to them. Hannah went with the Cowboy-class Avatar. Yeshua chose the Herald-class for his. Spirits could swap out their choice before deployment but it would reset their progress bar for Avatar deployment.

Inside Yeshua’s helmet, he pressed his lips together.

Hannah continued, “Amad says his Avatar is ready too. Sandy says she’s almost there.”

Yeshua came to an overlook section of the factory complex. He saw two squads of robots engaging a squad of marines. The marines had some level of cover. Yeshua dumped a whole magazine at the squad on the left. He only succeeded at taking out one robot.

“Man down, man down! We’re taking casualties!”

Instead of trying to engage the robots from range, Yeshua leaped off the overlook and slid down its sloped walls. He chucked a fragmentation grenade into the first clump of robots. Before it went off, Yeshua engaged the second group. Using his superior speed, Yeshua came up to the first robot and put his knife into its face. Then he stuffed the magazine of his weapon down the throat of a second robot and dumped most of the magazine into it. Yeshua reloaded.

The grenade went off on the first clump of robots, taking two of them.

The robots stopped trying to murder the marines to face and engage Yeshua. Yeshua jumped into the air and made a double jump to give him more air time. He dumped another mag into a robot. The marines peaked around their cover and finished off the last two robots of this squad.

A third squad of robots rushed to engage Yeshua and the marines.

Yeshua came down behind one of the robots of squad number three. He put his knife into its back and it went down. The robots of the first squad and the ones from third squad continued to engage the marines instead fight Yeshua. For that, Yeshua sprayed into the third squad, earning two more kills before his mag went empty.

Yeshua randomly jerked his neck a few inches as he reloaded, which saved his life as he felt a high-powered round almost scratched the paint of his armor.

“Sniper!”

The marines jumped back into cover leaving Yeshua alone in the middle of the factory clearing with a sniper aiming for him.

“Not dying this time.”

Yeshua pulled out a syringe and jammed it into his chest, punching through his armor and injecting the contents into his heart. Yeshua started forward, running at superhuman speed. He did a short hop, touching the top of the low wall the marines ducked behind. Yeshua used the wall to accelerate his momentum. He jumped into the wall behind the marines and careened left. Two more sniper shots came in but Yeshua was moving too fast for them to tag him.

Yeshua continued wall running. The wall curved. He ran with it. The wall ended and Yeshua leaped off the wall, the syringe’s contents keeping his momentum high. Yeshua almost landed on a building, a whole twenty feet from the wall he jumped from. Yeshua only bunny hopped on the roof. The hop kept him going. And going right into the sniper, standing on a roof platform.

The sniper, of course being a robot, didn’t react. Yeshua came down on it like a sack of potatoes. Yeshua dumped a mag into the sniper and broke it to pieces. He got up, reloaded, and turned to look at the marines. They had destroyed the third squad, and a fourth squad, of robotic soldiers. Yeshua raised his fist. The marines raised theirs.

A presence landed on the rooftop platform behind him.

“Doing alright?” asked Amad.

“Yes, sir.”

“The machines are being pushed back. Alpha, Bravo, and Delta squads are not encountering much resistance.”

“Nothing here besides the odd sniper, sir.”

“I feared so. Command was wrong. They briefed me that this factory complex was heavily defended. There’s nothing here that the marines could not clear, given time.”

And just like that, Amad exploded.

Yeshua erupted into action. He stabbed himself again with the syringe; its contents had refilled, and took off in the direction of the marines. He wanted to be surrounded by friendlies before taking stock of the situation.

Yeshua rocketed off the rooftop in their direction.

Yeshua did not make it to the marines. Beams of light came down from above and disintegrated his comrades. They didn’t have time to blink. All of them gone.

Granted, they would be back, but whatever was there was powerful.

Yeshua backed up to the cover the marines were standing behind and tried to make out his adversary.

A metal man stood at the far end of the industrial clearing. The man had no helmet but shimmering effect around his head suggested there was some sort of energy shield waiting to connect with incoming attacks. He was clad in sleek curved silver and blue highlight stripes, with a pulse reactor glowing on his chest, and his right arm finishing in a pulse blaster where a hand would be. The man stood at a slight angle and Yeshua could see a set of jet thrusters peeking from the back.

The man held his right arm, pulse blaster on the end, in a stance wherein a fit would be poking upwards at chest-height.

“Demon of the Night! Your foul stench will haunt this land no more. The People will send you back to the hell whence you came. Let us begin!”

The man rotated and rose his hand to above his head and activated the weapon. He positioned it out in front of him at arm’s length with his free hand under it in a fist as if gripping something. It glowed and around the weapon Yeshua for a second thought it looked somewhat like a bow and arrow.

“Galitilde Desilda!”

A light pulse came out of it and towards Yeshua’s position. Yeshua hopped into the air and made a second jump with his jet booster. The pulse impacted the wrecked thing below Yeshua.

Yeshua landed and took off to the left, into the complex. And not a moment too soon as a second pulse shot came in. Yeshua took the syringe and jammed it into his heart once more, accelerating to get away from his adversary.

The metal man followed using his boosters to keep Yeshua in his sights.

“You won’t escape, Demon!

“Galitilde Saquu! Saquu! Saquu!”

Small light pulses licked Yeshua’s heels as he rushed back into the complex, the metal man firing his pulse shots out rapid-fire. Yeshua used wall running to keep his momentum going. Right turn, wall run, hop across an opening onto the wall on the other side, left turn, continue running on the wall, second hop at the end of the hallway, left turn again, leap to the ground and slide. Yeshua slid down a set of stairs and tossed his frag grenade behind him. The metal man rushed down the path Yeshua took. The grenade exploded in his face. Yeshua put a magazine into the likely area where the metal man was.

He did not, however, stick around to see if the metal man was dead. Yeshua continued through the complex. Left turn, keep running, right turn. He was back at the bridge to the foreman’s shack.

A dark shape came down at then angle and obliterated the foreman’s shack. In the fires and ruins of the former shack, the metal man rose.

The metal man brought his pulse arm up across his chest, hand-length away from his body, back of the fist towards Yeshua.

“I said you won’t escape, Demon. And you shalt not escape.”

“Galitilde Desilda!”

The metal man took aim at Yeshua, who took it as his cue to halfway-sprint into a slide towards the metal man. The metal man unleashed a bigger pulse shot but luckily, aimed at Yeshua’s head or upper torso. Yeshua slid under it, squeezing off a few shots into the metal man, which took the bullets on the chin, and prompting the metal man to teleport blink lest Yeshua collide with him. The metal man reappeared where Yeshua started and fired a fan of pulse shots back towards the sliding Yeshua.

“Galitilde Adavdo!”

Yeshua exited his slide and did a ninety-degrees turn to the left and flew off the bridge into the open ground below, his momentum carrying him forward. He heard a shriek of frustration behind him, followed by several pulse shots. Yeshua’s speed evaded the pulse shots, though.

“Saquu! Saquu! Saquu!”

Yeshua left his slide and ran towards the complex wall. Technically he was going to be cornered but he activated his beacon.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. I need your help, Herald.”

Far above the battlefield, a Herald-class Avatar was deployed. It teleported to a point above the battlefield and started its descent.

Yeshua took cover behind a low wall. The metal man leaped off the bridge and came to a landing fifty feet from Yeshua.

He aimed his weapon against the metal man and emptied the rest of the magazine into him. The metal man took some of the bullets but a dodge to the side caused the rest of them to miss.

The metal man fired off a quick pulse shot and knocked Yeshua’s weapon from his hands.

“Not so tough without your gun, are you?”

Yeshua did not respond. He was counting the seconds.

“Answer me!”

Yeshua continued to stay silent.

“Very well. I shall have thou head, Demon.”

The metal man charged up a mega pulse blast. This one clearly showed off a bow and arrow effect. The metal man unleashed it into where Yeshua was located and the area was covered in dust.