Hello everyone. Haven't posted here in a while as I've been SUPER busy with college work. Anyway, here's a little story I wrote as an exercise for a creative writing evening class I'm taking. The assignment was to write a story beginning with the line "More than anything else in the world she wanted to wanted to be as far from where she was as possible".
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More than anything else in the world she wanted to wanted to be as far from where she was as possible. She wanted to claw down through the damp, blood soaked soil and hide like a rabbit fleeing a fox or soar into the clouds like a sparrow from a hawk; but she could not. Like the thousands of other soldiers around her, Jenna Asline knew that there was no running from this battle.
Everything Jenna saw around her looked like something from a night-mare. The flicker of las-guns, auto pistols and las-cannon firing flared out like stars against a back drop of pill-boxes, trench works and shattered vehicles. The sound was deafening, weapons constantly firing, engines roaring and wounded men screaming desperately for a medic. But the worst aspect to this hell was not the sights nor the sound but the smell. Even through her re-breather, Jenna could almost taste the foul mix of blood, spent ammunition and charred human flesh; the smell of death.
‘INCOMING!!’ Jenna heard a voice to her right roar out. Sure enough, as she quickly pulled her eyes from the scope of her las-gun, she could see the tell tale stream of smoke that followed in the wake of a shell.
Immediately, and acting more on instinct than free-will, Jenna dropped from her firing position to the muddy wooden floor boards of the trench and threw her hands over her head. She could hear the awful, crying whistle of the approaching shell as it began its decent towards the earth. Though only seconds away, time seemed to slow to a crawl as Jenna awaited what she was sure would be her deliverance.
The deafening sound of the projectile fulfilling its purpose was accompanied by a thunderous shaking of the earth. The blast rippled through the ground around its impact zone like a rock falling into a pond, turning flesh to pulp and metal to shrapnel before it finally dissipated.
With a weary grown and trembling hands, Jenna pulled herself to her feet. Looking around, she was amazed that she lived still. All around the battered emplacement were heaps of body parts and chunks of meat that, not so long ago, had been human beings.
Still dazed from the shock of the explosion, she dimly registered that she had lost her weapon. However before this thought could become a worry she spotted an identical las-gun on the ground beside her. If one advantage had been given to her and those still alive around her it was that there was no shortage of weapons that had become ownerless.
Picking it up, she noticed that a severed limb still clutched the hand-grip as surely as if it was still attached to its unfortunate owner. With utter indifference Jenna simply wrenched the arm free and shouldered the weapon before climbing back to her earlier position without a second though. If anything at all about the act had sickened her it was that she no longer found such sights distressing.
* * *
The shell may have dazed her slightly but Jenna quickly regained herself and continued firing shot after shot towards the enemy trenches. The process had become such repetitive monotony that she no longer gave a though to where her shots landed or what they hit, just that they were in the right direction. To Jenna, her position and duty made her simply one more cog in a vast and ever active machine, constantly turning without any knowledge of why or for how long.
It was until several minuets had passed that something about what she saw alerted Jenna that something was different. For months, she had stood at the exact same position and each day looked upon the very same sight; wrecked tanks, rotting bodies and miles of trenches cut into the earth like tears in a sheet of paper. The only changes were the occasional pill box or shell launcher. But now something was different; the enemy was not firing!.
Slowly, this realisation spread through Jenna’s fellows and they began to halt their fire. For the first time in many weeks, the sounds of war gave way to hushed and confused voices of men and women that had become to accustomed to the sound of their own doom. Soldiers around Jenna began to case uneasy glances at one another, hoping to find an answer to their questions written on their comrades’ faces.
Jenna quickly pinched her thigh and was rewarded with a slight pain and the assurance that she was still alive and that the shell had not sent her to some ironically themed afterlife. Looking through the scope on her rifle, she could make out the forms of her enemy as they moved through their own trenches. They seemed to be in no hurry, the few she could see looked to be trying best as they could to keep their heads down as they would in a barrage.
She cast he eyes away from the scope. The sudden lack of action by the enemy was more terrifying to Jenna than hearing a dozen heavy shell launchers unleash their fiery payload at once. It was with a chill that she came to a sombre realisation; there was only one reason for an enemy to hold their fire; an attack.
A quick glance at the men and women behind and to her sides told Jenna that each of them had reached the same conclusion. However, not a single life-form moved from the enemy trenches. To Jenna, an attack meant a suicidal charge by men and machine across the crater pocked and wreckage strewn contested land between the trenches. But there was nothing.
She gripped the hand grip of her weapon tightly and bit down on her lower lip. It was then that the eerie silence was broken.
* * * *
The sound was coming from above the heads of the men and women below it but it was nothing like a falling shell or attack fighter. Instead it was a booming roar that spoke of the coming of something of enormous mass and terrific speed.
Jenna looked up to the sky with a feeling that was a mix of terror and curiosity building inside her. She listened to the horrid sound grow louder and louder until, finally, she was treated to the sight of its origin.
There were dozens of them, massive balls of fire that pierced the black clouds like the blast from a shotgun, hurling towards the world below like vengeful seraphim. The sight lasted only seconds before some of them found their target and crashed into the earth.
One landed several meters from Jenna, the force of its impact would have knocked her from her position and back into the trench had she not dug her fingers into the ground in front of her. The true form of what had fallen from the heavens was clear to her. It was a massive construction of steel, shaped like a coffin and still smoking from its fiery decent. Every man and woman around Jenna kept their gaze fixed on it, too terrified to move.
Suddenly, the steel behemoth began to vent white gas and let out a hissing sound like the warning of a snake. Jenna let go of her hand-hold and grabbed her rifle tightly. Scant second later, the sides of the steel coffin blew open with a might blast. Unable to brace herself against the shockwave, Jenna was, this time, thrown violently back ward into the trench to land hard on her back.
She immediately tried to stand but was rewarded by a sharp pain in her lower back. With horror, Jenna realised that she could not move her legs; the impact of her fall must have broken her spine. Unable to move, she could only watch the awful scene as it unfolded.
Above her, several other soldiers gave voice to shouts of pure terror and turned to leap from their viewing positions. Not one of them made it. There were several deep “thudding” sounds and the men that had tried to flee were blasted apart by some unknown force.
Then, from over the wake of the trench came several massive warriors clad in deep blue armour with golden shoulder pads, their faces covered by leering masks with terrifying, glowing, red eyes. Each of them carried a gun that would have looked more in place if it were strapped to the roof of a jeep or the side of a tank turret. They fired in perfect unison, every shot from one of their weapons spelling the end of a man or woman trying to flee their wrath.
Jenna’s eyes streamed from a mix of pain and horror. The warriors from above were coming and she knew they could not be stopped. In a final, desperate act to spare herself the horrible death that so many around her had suffered, Jenna reached behind her head and pulled her re-breather mask free. She sucked in deep breaths of the toxic atmosphere, knowing it would cause un-consciousness within moments.
Jenna's final few moments were filled with the bitter realisation of what these harbringers were and why they were here. She had dismissed them as a myth, just another story made to fighten children. Now Jenna knew that she had been wrong, they had all been wrong in the path they had chosen. Their fate was now sealed, for what mercy could there be for those that had sought to remove themselves from the Emperor's light?
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