Disposable Heroes

By Cody J. Farrell

The drop freighter loses its savage grapple with gravity for a moment. Everything inside the vessel rises and falls from the interruption. Like those old music machines with the plastic wheels. Discs. Records. They’d collect dust, and songs would skip.

“Ya know…” starts Sergeant Cava, battle rifle resting against his chest. “There’s a certain advantage that comes with playing on the home court.” He grins, revealing rows of shiny metal teeth with a black cigar clenched between them. He inhales deeply, turning the ember a furious red, and as he exhales, it fades to a piercing golden yellow.

It has a name.

As smoke rolls up Cava’s heavily scarred face to his cybernetic right eye, the still-visible bright white orb remains trained on me. Scanning. One of the corporals begins to laugh about something, and soon his laughter is joined by shouts of agreement and excitement. What is the name of that? My attention falls back to the cigar. Then toward the crimson beacon light above the exit ramp. When it’s green, it’s time to fight.

My gaze lands on Private Zerdan, who has his head between his knees, a heavily tattooed hand trembling, white-knuckle grip on an already full barf bag. His free hand, robotic beneath the elbow, hangs at his side. Occasionally a diagnostic flexes the black steel fingertips ever so slightly. Some troopers stink like stale urine. Yellow. Angry cigar tip. Rifles ready. Angry red. The ship walls rattle, the record skips a song again. White eye staring still.

It’s a simple thing. Sweet. Why can’t we remember?

 Cava speaks. My attention falls to him as if somehow he silently commanded it.

“General Hakka declared that target Bio Mass must not be allowed to leave the sector. The research laboratory is compromised. Don’t waste any time trying to salvage the wreckage. All civilians and units are considered compromised.”

There are murmurs from the troops, a sort of semi-spoken agreement of the dangerous situation that awaits them. There is a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the ranks of faces that stare, wide-eyed, at Sergeant Cava.

“We’re not going to let anything take our home from us, are we, troopers?” Cava shouts, stirring the soldiers to roar their responses. Another skip. Dust. The cigar falls from Cava’s lips, landing in the darkness between his combat boots. The furious ember burns. Skip. Diagnostic twitch.

Cava’s eye never blinks as he addresses me. “You get one chance out there, DH-1. Don’t waste it. Or I’ll put you down myself.”

Zerdan vomits again. The light flashes a verdant green. Zerdan drops his bag with a wet splat. The screaming engines cut and the drop ship lands abruptly upon the surface of Gezza VI for the first time in several shipping cycles. The troops rise from their seats, reeking of adrenaline, and storm down the landing ramp.

I follow once Cava releases the gravity locks from my frame’s harness. I step on the vomit. I snuff out the cigar. I know the names of these things but not quite what they mean.

I exit the ship and stand still in the domed expanse of Gezza VI before me. I can barely hear the soldiers slip into the night. How can they move so freely?

Cava’s command signals me to the left flank of what was once a three-story building. Laboratory. The dog tags of five soldiers rattle on my neck as I move.

Names I must no longer answer to.

The stone and metal that make up the burning building have changed. Stained. I am unable to ignore the difference. I can’t remember the word for the algae-like growths that emerge from sections of damaged wall. Foreign. Invasive. Dangerous. I stare until I receive Cava’s command.

Turning away, I move from cover to cover, paying no mind to the writhing comrades I’m ordered to crush underneath my heel. They’re compromised. Protocols must be followed. Soon they’re all deathly still. Their eyes are wide, faces and mouths growing with those same protrusions.

They’re already dead.

Not yellow.

Not green.

I kneel, engrossed by the warm-colored lichen sprouting from my friends. There are gunshots and screams, but the sheer volume blends them into a nameless grating static. More gunshots, more commands. Part of me wishes to respond to the order, the servomotors eager to perform. The other part lingers, pauses for too long, fixated on the consuming growths upon stone, steel, and flesh.

There is a sudden flash upon my display, the loud metallic thunder of hail on a windshield. I turn to see Cava has fired upon me, fear flickering in his human eye. His robotic metal jaw shines in the reflection of flames.

I have clearly been wounded, but there is no pain.

Nearby, a tankard of ship fuel ignites from a stray bullet. I look around and not a single member of the platoon is standing. They are all on their backs or crawling on their stomachs. They writhe, screaming, dancing to a song I cannot hear.

“DH-1! DH-1!”

I ignore Cava’s call.

A roaring explosion lights the night up in a myriad of colors, exposing the thousands of razor thin tendrils floating upon the air, wrapping around the faces of the soldiers. Burrowing up their nostrils and slithering down their gasping throats.

All the screams are one. All the screams are done. These memories are not my own.

The wind shifts, and I stand amidst a gust of hundreds of scattering embers and ashes, bathed in the golden glory of the ruined laboratory. Not a gust. There is no wind within the dome. This is a massive breath. The embers come rushing past me, reflecting their sunset-like glow off of my mostly-metal body as the mass at the center of those tendrils within the burning laboratory inhales, causing the floor beneath my frame to tremble. Enthralled, I cannot move. Rapture. Everything is… Orange.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cody J. Farrell is a self published poet and writer based in New York’s Catskill Mountains. He released his first book, “The Ghosts of Autumn” in July of 2020 and is currently finishing his first novel, “Innocence”. The novel is a dark fantasy thriller set in 1980’s rural America and heavily influenced by Indigenous American mythology. Farrell is also writing content for TTRPGs including Dungeons & Dragons as 1/3rd of Tabletop Totality.

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