When you think you have it all figured out, a human will appear, probably naked and screaming, possibly while on fire. Congratulations, your day is now ruined, but at least you had a good laugh.
– Nuk saying, probably in reference to humanity’s ability to stumble into situations no one ever expected possible
The human battle rage is one of their most frightening natural abilities. Every known sentient or non-sentient species has a basic fight, flight, or submit response. Humans, and to some extent Shraphen, don’t. In both cases, their response is only fight-or-flight.
This fact is frightening enough, since it applies to all lifeforms on Earth and Burrow. But what is even more terrifying is the cocktail of chemicals the human body uses to make the fight response more devastating.
Cortisol, noradrenaline, and adrenaline make the human unnaturally strong and dampen pain receptors to a level where the human almost doesn’t feel pain.
Once entering this battle rage, the human exists only to fulfill its stated goal. This explains the basic human fight mentality:
“I don’t care if I die, if I can take you with me.”
To prevent enemy human troops from entering this battle rage, commanders are ordered to avoid all civilian casualties and not to shoot enemy wounded or prisoners.
Excerpt from Know Thy Enemy . Mandatory course material for Federation Officers, date: sometime after 50 P.I.
Nirfir got the news at dawn: Sergeant Major Zhou Jian had died of complications from his wounds.
He couldn’t believe it. The wounds had seemed superficial. Then he remembered how quickly the injury had become infected, despite treatment.
I’ll have to inform the squad. This is the worst possible moment for something like this.
He was worried about the squads’ mental health. At first, everything had gone fine. Martife had been reinforced directly by Mammuts, a huge relief. The combat engineers had done wonders, strengthening the soil of the small isthmus to allow the Mammuts to cross it.
Then they were rotated out of the ruins, a week’s reprieve to gather strength, the General himself had said.
The week was the shortest week Nirfir had ever experienced.
After that, they were flown to Shratora, together with the newly arrived troops of the 5th Army.
Shratora was different. The most apparent difference was that the city was still standing. The humans had taken it in a surprise air assault. While the forces in the south, his forces, had taken the brunt of the enemy defenses, Shratora had been an easy victory at first.
The second difference was the fortifications. A massive wall surrounded the city, complete with turrets, dedicated vehicle ramps, and layered defenses.
Nothing could take the city from the army’s hands, or so he had thought.
The third difference was the root of his unease. The Batract had seemingly piled every dead Shraphen body on the continent into mountains beside the city.
While the Shraphen soldiers tried to ignore the dead, Nirfir noticed his human comrades glancing at the piles. He also noticed that the humans seemed angrier.
That worried him. He had hoped Zhou would return soon.
Now he was the squad leader, and he had the feeling the humans were slowly losing it. Wherever he walked, the humans would glance toward the dead and suddenly be overcome with anger.
Yesterday, they had eaten, and when the personnel from Mortuary Affairs joined the line at the kitchen, he had seen every human step away, making space for the defeated-looking officers.
After-action reports said the bodies were brought in overnight, after the humans had taken the city. Obviously, the Batract thought presenting the dead would frighten the humans. Nirfir was sure it was one of the enemy’s biggest miscalculations.
The alarm ripped him out of his thoughts. Like clockwork, the enemy attacked every second night.
But for tonight, the leadership had planned something different. Tonight, they would immediately counterattack. Nirfir hoped the fight would ease some of the rage his human colleagues carried.
His human squadmates threw away the cards they had been playing with and shared an ominous glance. They were happy the enemy had attacked. Chibuike rotated his head while flexing his muscles and cracking his fingers, while Russo only smiled, like a predator happy to jump its prey.
Nirfir was once again glad the humans were on his side.
They are all mad.
They all jumped into the always-ready armored suits that stood with their backs open along the side of the squad’s small barracks.
Monkey King , their trusted IFV, was parked outside, and two engineers who had been updating some software were packing up their things in a hurry.
“All good to go. Kill some Firebugs for me,” one of them said to Russo as he jumped into his driver’s seat.
“I will, Mitsu. I will.” Russo’s tone was still the same, but there was an angry inclination beneath it.
“Sir, Monkey King is in perfect order, just updated to the newest firmware from Earth,” the tech Russo had called Mitsu reported to Nirfir.
“Thanks. Now get into the shelters, or somewhere else. In a few minutes, all hell will break loose here.”
The two techs looked at each other, then glanced at the heaps of dead Shraphen on the outskirts of the city. Always that glance. Then their faces hardened, and their eyes sometimes grew watery.
“Sir? Kill those bastards. Can you do that for me?”
Nirfir was taken aback. The techs often joked with the humans, but they had never spoken to him so directly.
“I hope so.”
They looked again at the gruesome evidence of Batract cruelty and ran off to wherever their duty station was.
The whole exchange told Nirfir more about humans than his shared duty with them ever had. Even though it was almost exclusively Shraphen who had died on the northern continent, the humans felt the pain.
Where most intelligent species avoided feeling that pain, humans sought it out. To get angry. To feel hatred. And then. Then they prepared to seriously fuck up everyone who had hurt them. Nirfir was sure of it now.
Unlike the other times when it had been time to defend the city, Monkey King wasn’t ordered to its defensive firing position, but rather to a staging area in front of one of the gates, together with the whole 4th Brigade.
Today, the fleet and the newly formed Theatre Command had planned something new.
General MacAllister himself had called all troops at noon and informed them of their objectives.
“Soldiers, Shraphen, humans, comrades. Today, when the enemy attacks again, they will get their surprise. The 37th Spaceborne has been training with volunteers from Burrow and is now back to an acceptable strength. And Earth has sent two more armies.”
The General smiled the same predatory smile humans did so well.
“Today, we push them back where they came from. We used orbital fire sparingly over the last few weeks, along with air support, to hide our capabilities. That restraint is gone. Today we push back, and hard. Your commanders have their orders, or will get them shortly. Make me proud and give them hell.”
Monkey King reached the designated position. Nirfir had a flashback to the attack over the isthmus to Martife. Only now he was sitting at the commander’s station.
He had no time to mourn Zhou, but he decided then and there to avenge the silent and methodical human, tonight.
Nirfir thought he knew the impact of human orbital fire, but what rained down on the attacking enemies now was out of all proportion.
The advancing Firebugs had begun to spew their plasma at the defensive positions as usual. Nirfir could hear the city defenses opening up on the encroaching enemies. The quick bursts of the Lancer guns, the same as the ones mounted on Monkey King , were interrupted by countless shoulder-fired rockets.
Then the gates in the wall were dropped, and the 4th Brigade prepared its attack.
Nirfir could see the enemy’s surprise through the eyes of countless surveillance drones.
“Go, go, go. Flank west. Stay out of marked zones!” The platoon commander’s orders came over the radio.
The 3rd Platoon left the city. On the HUD, large red circles were visible. Those were the marked zones, all exclusively around large enemies or enemy troop concentrations. The target zones for orbital fire.
Rokla opened fire on a large group of Scrin that had tried to scale the walls seconds earlier, while Lance Corporal Kumar manned the missile launchers at the back.
Nirfir was about to designate a particularly close Firebug for one of the Gungnir’s short-range drones when the fleet unleashed its first salvo.
Five Firebugs imploded when a ‘Rod of God’ hit them center mass. Nirfir’s fur bristled. The closest bug hit was only five hundred meters away from them.
“Yeehaa!” Russo shouted from beside him when Monkey King was splashed with the ichor of the beast.
“Stay away from the targeting zones, Russo.” The ground was shaking violently from the impacts, and Nirfir wasn’t keen on getting any closer to the impact areas.
In his mind, raining down hypersonic tungsten rods into a battle zone where enemy and friendly troops were engaged in close-quarters combat was pure madness.
When he had said as much at the platoon briefing, the platoon leader had just grinned and said, “Exactly. That’s why we’re doing it. No one else would suspect this.”
Nirfir had just gotten an overview of the situation back. The platoon had almost reached its first route point, pushing through the enemy’s first wave into a flanking position on the second, when the fleet opened up with the next volley.
This time, he had time to observe the sky. The shockwave from the inbound projectiles pushed aside the clouds, creating circles of clear night sky within the cloud cover.
The ground visibly buckled at impact. The shockwave killed everything within range of the target. But he had to confess, the accuracy was the most frightening part. In the briefing, he had learned that the fleet was aiming for the center of the bugs, and now, on the ground, he could see them hitting almost every time, right on target.
“Second wave neutralized successfully. Platoon, commence to point two,” the platoon commander called out.
Without any additional orders needed, Russo steered the IFV toward the next target zone. They left behind scores of Scrin advancing on the city. But defending the town wasn’t their mission objective.
They had been ordered to break out of the encirclement while the enemy advanced, so the defenses around the enemy’s forward operating bases would be weakened.
The last wave was in front of them, and before the drones and Kali had even finished counting the advancing Firebugs, the first exploded, some under orbital fire and others from direct hits by the 4th Brigade’s tanks.
Nirfir knew the engineers had worked around the clock to repair and upgrade the Merkavas' hulls, and the crews were now more experienced and eager to regain their honor. Having a lower kill score than the IFV companies had severely darkened their mood.
Protomatter ammunition had an odd visual behavior. You could see the projectile's flight path as a white streak in the air, and instead of simply disappearing, it seemed to burn away slowly.
Nirfir had seen it multiple times, but it was fascinating every time. He had to force himself to focus back on his targets, but his crew was so experienced at their jobs that they didn’t need any supervision.
The remaining Bugs were quickly taken out, and before the ground had even stopped shaking, the column began its push through the Scrin that acted as their infantry.
His heart began to beat faster, because now came the tricky part. The city’s artillery would fire only meters in front of them to clear a path, but for it to work, they had to maintain a steady speed and drive in a straight line.
In front of them were tens of thousands of Scrin, and his platoon was driving straight at them at full speed. Any slowing would be dangerous, as it would cause the vehicle to leave the protected zone. Nirfir swallowed.
Humans are mad on a good day. This was absolutely insane, driving into one’s own artillery fire.
They were about to hit the first score of three-legged Scrin when the artillery fire struck, point-blank and exactly when needed.
He had calculated that the projectiles had been launched fifty-four seconds ago. Humans were mad, but extremely precise.
The HUD displayed the safe zone overlay. The next volley hit and took out more of the tightly packed enemy. To Nirfir, it seemed they didn’t show their usual enthusiasm, almost as if they weren’t prepared for an encounter this far out from the city.
A thump on the roof of their Gungnir startled the crew. Were they hit? Nirfir checked with one of the ever-present drones.
On top of the turret were the bloody remains of a Nazgul. Using the battlefield overlay, he could see that above them, in the cloud cover, friendly Sleipnirs were engaged in a dense fight against enemy Nazguls.
All the while, artillery shells exploded around them, throwing up dust and the remains of Scrin. The tank was already covered in a mixture of dirt, bug ichor, Nazgul blood, and whatever fluids Scrin left behind after being ground up by shrapnel.
The Shraphen in the crew looked sick. The humans only grinned and cheered when the vehicle crushed a wounded but still moving Scrin.
They are compassionate to their allies without limit, even willing to die for them, but they are just as gruesome and cold to their enemies. Never forget that, Nirfir.
The whole brigade had stopped firing, conserving ammunition for their mission objective, trusting their safety entirely to the precision of the city’s artillery.
In front of them, the lines of Scrin opened up. They had pushed through the enemy. Nirfir’s ears relaxed a little inside his helmet. They had made it through.
From the sky, the first Sleipnirs appeared beneath the cloud cover, taking up defensive positions around the advancing brigade.
Next mission objective. Take out the first enemy base.