[6] Beach Head – Energy Sphere: Ernesto "Grandpa" Sandoval

Little is said about the times before the Exodus. None of the elementary education books of any of the Corpnations mention the events that actually took place between the final Corporate War and the moment the last orbital transport took off, or the last of the space elevator cords was severed. We all just assume that it was a moment of peace and joy, as we found a new home among the stars with our brothers, who greeted us with open arms.

My nightmares say different.

My memories are those of a child who has lived too long. A child who saw the screaming plea of the thousands of people who begged for a spot on the orbital transport, so swarmed with people that you could no longer tell the difference between one body and the next; so hot that many people’s journeys ended even before they had begun. My memories are of armed soldiers attacking their cousins, nephews, fathers, and brothers, following orders and ensuring the transport’s lift-off. My memories are horrible nightmares, and every night I wish they were only a figment of my imagination.

I am back on Earth. My nightmares are getting more intense, and the noise of the self-defense systems that unexpectedly turned on their own inhabitants once the government issued an order to “dispose of” anything that wasn’t “important”, is getting louder. My nightmare always ends on the same scene: the door closes, severing the arms of hundreds of people piling up on the other side of it, in a final attempt at surviving the ecological disaster that we had ourselves created. The feeling is not relief, or that sense of peace we have assumed overcame us given the Sphere’s educational silence, but rather of profound grief; a void; and deep shame.

Today, patrolling with the Hovertanks, I entered the edges of one of the great cities created before Exodus. A massive fortress that protected its inhabitants from the violent climatic waves: tornados, torrential rain, heat waves, and cold fronts that lashed at the planet over the last twenty years of human civilization on Earth. I went into the city through a ruptured gap apparently made by an earthquake, and finally polished by a few decades of heavy rains and hurricanes. I stood still for a second, even with all my combat years, when I saw the self-defense system’s tower still tracing my footsteps and incessantly firing its munitionless cannon. It was as if it was greeting us after almost a century of solitude. Thousands of “nobodies” surrounded the tower. “Nobody” is what the Corpnations called the millions of people who were “liberated”, and who had not had the fortune of boarding an orbital transport or a space elevator.

“Nobody” was left on Earth.

I stood there for a time. The Hovertank pilots did not come close to this place, since they did not understand the meaning of the scenery before me. After completing my sad contemplation, and a confrontation with my nightmares, I took my shotgun and, with a shot of solid pellets toward the tower I began my vengeance…

[5] Beach Head – Energy Sphere: Alejandro "Vulture" Reyes

“Vulture!” yelled Cat from the other side of the campsite, while she argued with the newly arrived Hovertank pilots.

Alejandro seemed to be lost in space; looking around the campsite, seeming to count… No, rather seeming to evaluate all the things that were there. Their place of origin, cost, maintenance, opportunity cost, and a thousand other factors that pilots would normally take for granted when they sit on their Mekas.

“Vulture!” yelled Cat once again, as the Hovertank next to her lifted off the ground, raising a cloud of arid soil, making Cat step away from the vehicle and cover her face, her long black mane of hair waving in the sand storm.

How many officers had been bribed to get that fuel tank here? How much money had been paid under the table to clear the transport of that ammo? Who approved the inclusion of Sandoval in the team? Why go through all that trouble?

“VULTURE!” Cat’s scream was barely audible amidst the dirt cloud raised by the Hovertank. Cat was running towards Vulture while the Hovertank lined up and charged a shell into the chamber of its Magnum Veritas Revolver: a large cannon designed to make its objective stumble and fall, rather than pierce its armor, rendering it useless for as long as it took to finish it or run away from it.

This Earth is just an arid deserted dump. There’s only sand, and heat, an a damned never-ending horizon…

“VULTURE!!!” Cat kept screaming desperately; frantically running towards Vulture, gesturing for him to get out of the way. Meanwhile, the Hovertank, already charged, was lining up to shoot a colossal Jian Regime practice model. These were expected to be the most likely opposition, given the proximity of the Regime camps.

The horizon. The damned horizon. There’s nothing here…

“THAT’S IT!” yelled Vulture, his facing showing the satisfaction of having found an explanation to all his doubts. This would allow him to formulate a plan to take advantage of this “punishment”. However, his delight was silenced by the shot fired from the Hovertank’s Magnum Veritas, which hit its Jian target only a few feet away from Vulture, shattering it to a thousand pieces, none of which hurt Vulture, who seemed to have been protected by an aura of triumph.

Fuming at his recklessness, Cat got to his side and tried to punch him for having ignored her warnings, placing himself in the middle of the blast. But Vulture simply dodged her, and then pulled her closer to him with a swift arm-lock, and spoke in her ear: “I’ve got a plan”.

Cat smiled…

[2] Beach Head - Energy Sphere: Isabel "Cat" Reyes

The scorching hot sun made the three massive space transports seem like mirages as the hot air rose from the expanded soil, distorting view. The transports opened their frontal gates, leaving their noses up in the air while three heavy-load trucks emerged from the opening, hauling one Bear-class and two Tiger-class Mekas, connected to all kinds of power supply cords, ammo feeders, and data cables, fueling up and getting ready for battle.

The generator that fed the sleeping tents, which lined up like giant white igloos, emulating blisters on the face of the red desert, made an incessant, deafening, high-pitched noise, and filled the place with a nasty smell of ashes, creating a charming setting in the windless desert created by UV-rays after the “death” of the ozone layer.

“I hate this place”, said an ungainly soldier, sitting on the hood of a light recon vehicle while lighting a cigarette. “Even if I can smoke as much as I want to”, he concluded, inhaling deeply on his cigarette and watching the horizon while holding the smoke in his lungs.

“Oh, but I love it”, responded sarcastically the thin woman seating next to him on the hood of the vehicle, visibly uncomfortable. “Why’d you have to mess with the Minister’s daughter?”, and now furious, “Now we gotta baby sit these boy scouts”.

The “boy scouts” were a group of no less than fifty tactical recognizance scientists who, as the soldiers spoke, worked on preparing the camp: raising tents, installing internal atmosphere filters, checking atmospheric fluctuation meters, and preparing the defense material brought in on the heavy-load trucks. In the meantime, brother and sister argued about their fate, sitting on the recon-vehicle, next to a container with a bar code that read something like “latrine seat protectors”, very appropriate for their present state of mind.

“Oh, stop it. At least it’ll be quiet around here”, said the brother, as the smoke he puffed out of his lungs joined the smoke from the generator, which would not stop making that annoying noise that ringed in his ears.

“I don’t think so. The Hive and the Confederation are deploying camps already”, she replied while turning frantically, trying to find the source of the noise that seemed to come at her from every direction, and showing the horrible scar that some previous fight had left on her face.

The noise came from a huge, inefficient and dirty hydro-electric genesis generator, connected to a large water duct which took putrid water from a nearby well, converted it into hydrogen, and then into energy to feed the camp. As residues were poured again into the well, they left behind smoke and a nauseating smell that penetrated even the highest grade gas masks.

“Cat”, said the brother as he jumped off the hood of the vehicle, looking towards the horizon beyond the cloud of smoke, the sickening smell, and the noise of the generator, “there’s something out there, and if we play our cards well, we could keep it to ourselves.”

“I know that, Vulture”, she answered, “but first we need to take care of a couple of problems”. As she said this, she took the rifle that hung from the seat of the vehicle and took one blind shot towards the campsite.

They couldn’t completely restore the site’s energy for two whole days, until new transports came in, but while the generator was being repaired, there was total silence.