101

On their first drop, the average life expectancy for a frontline conscript is one minute and forty-one seconds. A count of one hundred and one.

On their first drop, the average life expectancy for a frontline conscript was one minute and forty-one seconds. A count of one hundred and one.

The number rattled around Jack's head while the atmospheric turbulence rattled his body. It was all he could think about as he clutched his weapon and tried to keep his footing. The thundering Terradon dropship plummeted through the planet’s static-filled clouds. In truth, staying upright wasn't too difficult, no matter how many anti-air missiles or flak bursts exploded nearby. With the crush of bodies inside, Jack could have slept, slumped and still been held up, pinned between sweat and shoulder blades.

"Thirty seconds!"

Shit. How had they gotten so close to the ground? Jack could barely hear the madness of war below over the Terradon's engines.

What the hell was this planet called again?

Jack had been a builder a month ago; he had never left Holy Proxima. He had never even left the New Sydney Metropolis before. He had basically never even prayed to The Whole, except for show, when people around him started looking at him sideways.

Now he was about to die for them.

He looked down at his weapon, hoping the pathetic thing would comfort him. The grunts called it the Plinker, and it was barely bigger than a pistol.

No stock. A magazine that fitted twenty-four ten millimetre rounds of what purported to be armour-piercing ammunition. Front and rear aperture sights. A one-size-doesn't-quite-fit-anyone grip and trigger sitting just behind the ammo. A tiny foregrip built into the magwell. A mass-produced weapon for the mass conscription of bodies.

"Twenty seconds! Make ready! LZ is hot!"

The pilot, coated in the Terradon's thick armour plating, had the nerve to sound scared. Jack tried to see past the almost hundred heads in front of him to the bay door of the dropship. The thick alloy was already dented.

With tight helmets strapped to every head in the drop bay, Jack couldn't tell who anyone was. Every soldier seemed like an exact duplicate of the same doomed man. He listened to their chant-like prayers to The Whole, even hearing a couple of muttered pleas to the heretical pantheon of Jesus, Allah, God, Mohammed and others.

The double Kevlar layer covering everyone's chests, shoulders, upper arms and legs was just as mass-produced as the Plinkers and probably wouldn't stop very much. Bodies and bullets were all The Whole needed, a wave of flesh that would wash away the heretic rebels infesting their corner of the galaxy.

"Ten seconds!"

There was a collective hiss as everyone around Jack inhaled the Saint's Breath from the canister each grunt was required to carry. Jack checked his Plinker instead. Loaded. Locked. A crumb of comfort.

Every eye around him bulged, pupils blown, limbs twitching, breathing rasped. Cries of defiance roared through the compartment. Jack closed his eyes tightly and held the Saint's Breath canister to his mouth.

"Five seconds!"

Nothing came out. The valve was jammed. Jack's hand began shaking. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

"WHOLE BE WITH YOU!"

The Terradon's boarding ramp lowered with a groan, and the battle beyond roared in fury.

The average life expectancy for a frontline conscript is one minute, forty-one seconds. A count of one hundred and one.

The explosions, gunfire and whine of atmospheric engines met the cry of the conscripts as they charged, dragging Jack along with them.

An EM rocket breached the Terradon's shields and struck the inside edge of the bay. Jack couldn't tell how many of the conscripts were caught in the blast, but the wave of smoke and vapour that struck his face was hot and stank of burnt meat and copper.

One hundred.

The charge was uninterrupted, and Jack was dragged through the smears on the deck, his boots skittering. He heard a whistling from above, and he didn't even get a glimpse of the outside world before a shockwave kicked his back and threw him and the rest of the conscripts off the ramp and into the air. He hit the ground with a crunch and tried to breathe.

Ninety-five.

Multiple heavy impacts on his back stopped him from taking a breath, and his lungs screamed. Whatever was hitting him was both hard and soft, wet and dry, and hot, squirming and screaming and laughing and crying. Waves of heat washed over him, diluted by the crushing weight on his back.

Ninety-three.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. The odour of burning meat filled his nose. All he could hear was his own heartbeat. Hot pain in both ears.

Get out. I have to get out.

Ninety.

Jack wiggled his fingers and toes. His fingertips drummed against the receiver of his Plinker, still strapped to his wrist. He grasped it tightly and forced his aching limbs to work. He pushed himself forwards.

Eighty-four.

Bodies. He was covered in bodies. Some were dead — the lucky ones. Several were still alive, bones broken, skin blackened and broken and cracking with every movement of their charred faces.

Eighty.

Jack surfaced. The blazing, wrecked Terradon bathed his face in searing heat, its engines destroyed, its armour breached, a great gaping jagged hole in the side where the fuel tank had been.

Half the platoon were sprawled on the dirt. Some were still feeling the holy power of the Saints Breath, trying to get up and stagger towards the entrenched enemy. A few were in too much pain, writhing and screaming as they burned. Others laughed madly, with no eyes, with their guts spilling all over the ground. One of them put the barrel of his Plinker in his mouth and blew his brains all over the rock, straight through the top of his helmet.

Jack let out a harsh, single bark of laughter. Their helmets wouldn't even stop a Plinker round?!

Seventy-eight.

A secondary explosion went off in the wrecked Terradon, and Jack felt the heat go from searing to boiling. He rolled over, and without testing to see if he could walk, dragged himself to his feet and ran.

Seventy-seven.

The planet. This planet. What the fuck were they doing on this planet?

Grey, desolate stone and shale whipped past Jack as he bolted across the charred and bloodstained ground. A fell wind roared across the jagged, rocky ground, whipping around the sharp cliffs ahead and around them. It was as if he was running into a giant predator's mouth. Corpses that had run from the row of Terradon dropships were littered and scattered across the dust, their Plinkers sitting beside them unfired.

What had they died for? Who would colonise this dry, arid place? Were there minerals in the gore-covered rock? Chemicals in the smoke-choked atmosphere? Were there jungles and oceans and rich soil somewhere, and the dropships had landed squarely on the planet's asshole?

Seventy-two.

Gunfire yanked Jack from his mad mind, ripping from the clifftops in flurries and bursts. The majority of the conscripted infantry were ahead of him, running and ducking for cover among the larger rocks and boulders. A railgun slug hit one and turned it and the men behind it into scarlet gravel. It had come from a heavy emplacement or a tank, and Jack was too terrified to look up for the vapour trail.

Sixty-seven.

The gunfire chewed through the conscripts caught in the open. Jack threw himself down among the boulders and rocks, but he could still hear the shouts and screams, as well as the bellowed orders of the sergeants and officers over the transmitters and receivers. The rocks cut into his bare hands as he wriggled forwards.

Sixty-four.

The rocks got taller and taller around him, and the pinging of ricocheted shots against the growing walls quietened. The spaces were becoming narrow canyons, and soon they were tall enough for Jack to stand in relative safety.

He held out his Plinker, gripped it tightly, and jogged forwards. He watched out for any side passages or instances where two canyons joined together. The heretics knew about these fissures; they had to know. This was their battleground.

Fifty-four.

The numbers ticked down in his head as he tried to stay as quick and quiet as possible. Could he hear footsteps down here, or was it more distant gunfire?

The pathway split. As Jack looked around, he found himself looking down the barrel of another Plinker.

"Hold fire!" There were three of them, dirty, covered in blood, helmets askew, eyes bulging. The one with the pointing Plinker breathed heavily, exhales coming out in a high-pitched whining wheeze.

Fifty.

"Lower it!"

The trembling soldier stepped back and dropped the Plinker to his side. The one who had spoken patted him on the shoulder and fixed his eyes on Jack. "Follow us. There are a lot of men trapped on the rock, pinned down."

"What are we going to do about that?" Jack wondered, his voice hazy.

"Whatever we can." He stepped forwards and grabbed Jack's neck. "The Whole will guide us. Open your mind to your faith. War drives the biggest splinters."

What the fuck are you talking about, man?

The blind confusion had to show. The man leaned close, and a coldness descended.

Thirty-five.

"You believe, don't you?"

"Yeah... of course. Have faith. I just need faith."

The soldier nodded. "Come on, all of you."

Twenty-six.

They ran along the tight fissure on unsteady feet in single file. What Jack had considered to be footsteps earlier grew louder and louder, certainly gunshots now.

Twenty-one.

The four of them were alone, completely. Scurrying between rocks like cockroaches, avoiding the watchful eyes of the exterminator.

Twenty.

From up ahead, a tapping, chattering roll of thunder washed over them, bouncing between the fissure's walls. A spray of red blasted against the jagged rock face just ahead of them, and two of their soldiers stumbled back and crashed to the ground. One twitched; the other didn't.

Nineteen.

"Move up, slowly," their self-appointed leader hissed.

Eighteen.

They padded forwards, weapons ready.

Seventeen.

"There has to be another way around," Jack hissed, his heart in his throat.

Sixteen.

"Did you see one?" the leader snapped back at him.

Fifteen.

"Weapons ready."

Fourteen.

The leader moved up to the edge of the corner and peered around. Flecks and shards of stone and rock scattered across the passageway in a hail of machinegun fire.

Thirteen.

The leader pointed at another of their quartet and Jack. "Up here! Suppressing fire around this corner.

Eleven.

Jack hesitated, but the other soldier dragged him forwards.

Ten.

At the edge of the wall, Jack watched the other soldier lean around, then half of his body vanished in a red haze of gore and chipped stone.

Nine.

"Suppressing fire! Now!

Eight.

The other one was praying. Oh ... fuck.

Seven.

"Now!"

Six.

Jack leaned across and poked the barrel of his Plinker around the corner. He squeezed the trigger with his thumb. The little weapon wobbled in his tight grip. The smaller calibre meant less recoil, and he kept squeezing, but without looking, he couldn't have been hitting anything.

Five.

The roar that met the tiny war cry of his pathetic weapon deafened him in an instant. Blood sprayed across his face. He screwed his eyes shut as the rock face seemed to disintegrate.

Four.

He lost track of the other two soldiers: where they had gone, what they were saying, or whether they were even alive or dead.

Three.

Sudden heat. The breath left his body in a whoosh. His back slammed into the rocky ground. Or was it the wall? Whichever one it was, his face hit the other a second later and seemed to deposit a bucket of blood into his mouth.

Two.

No voice of any Whole rang in his ears. Who would have guessed that the Saints and generals and rulers of what Earth had become, who were nowhere near the front line, would have been lying to him the entire time?

One.

He couldn't feel anything in his body. Numbness engulfed him. Aside from the high-pitched ringing, was it his heartbeat he could hear? Or was it the booted feet of the shadows approaching from around the corner?

Regardless, the result would be the same.

Zero.

Jack wheezed in a breath, and a shocked smile bloomed on his face. He started laughing. It bubbled up through his body along with all the blood and dribbled from his mouth.

The shadows hesitated beside him. Jack couldn't muster any more words. The laughter must have confused them.

Who cared, though? Not Jack. If anything, he laughed even harder.