The Angels 2200 Forum Role Playing Game

The Battle of New Thebans

Part 2

Read Part 1

The war is long over but still my inside curls up whenever I see a soldier. The uniformed woman who’s sitting opposite to me must know how I feel, I can tell by the look in her eyes. I already regret to have asked her to come in, she’s probably just another veteran who’s collecting money for just another charitable foundation. But then there’s something about her that’s different. Silly me, she’s much too young to be a veteran, she could be my daughter. And unlike all the others she doesn’t look like she’s very confident she wants to be here anyway. She looks rather uncomfortable and nervous. I find myself being curious what kind of story she has to tell.

"Six months ago the automatic flight control system at the Mars jumpgate detected a large object in the vicinity of the gate. It was slowly drifting towards Mars and would cross the main shipping route in about one and a half year. When they sent someone to investigate they found out it was the remains of an unknown Charan Battleship which participated in the Martian Liberation Campaign in ninety-seven. It was destroyed in the proximity of an old mining station named "New Thebans". Of course they couldn’t allow the wreck to endanger the traffic at the jumpgate, so they gave it a little nudge that would bring it right into the Sun in a few hundred years or so, without crossing any shipping routes. But the wreck had a lot of small debris trailing in it’s path which still could form a danger to civilian spacecrafts, so those got cleaned up manually. It was by sheer luck that one of the workers found an old JMLAD among the debris, which to her surprise was still operational. There were a few video messages of private nature saved on the JMLAD, so she turned it in at the Office of Welfare of the Bereaved, which was a very fine thing to do. Now we at the office had quite a piece of work figuring out the original owner of this JMLAD, because there were no accordant data saved on it. We finally managed it by performing an image comparison search with an still we took from one of the video messages. We believe we’ve found the person in the personnel database of the Charan Navy, the 57th mobile infantry to be more precise."

She hesitates and nervously fumbles a photograph out of her pocket.

"Ma’am, is this your sister Claire?"

I already feared something like this, nonetheless I feel a sting in my chest. The girl on the picture she shows me is Claire all right. Now I really whish I had slammed the door shut in her face. Oh why do they have to come to me with this after all these years, after the pain is almost gone? How long ago has it been? Almost thirty years? The realization makes me feel so old. Slowly I nod. Without another word she pulls an JMLAD out of her bag and puts it on the table in front of me.

"I... I will leave you now. Here, take this card, those are the numbers of my office. Please call if you need... if you need any assistance."

She hurries out of the door.

I’m staring at the JMLAD on my living room table. It is old, battered and scorched, but the little blinking light shows that it still has power. This is Claire’s? Mechanically I press the power button and the JMLAD powers up with a little bleeping noise. I skip through the menus to the entry "Private messages", but my finger hesitates over the play button. Should I really do this? Should I do this to me after all? Maybe spoil the memory of my playful little sister? But the yearning is stronger, I want to know what happened to her. The screen flickers, then there she is: Claire. She’s smiling. And she’s still so young. Her juvenile face fills the whole screen.

"Hi sis’! I wanted to send a message earlier, but I didn’t find the time, ya know, with all these drills and so... anyway, they say we’re going on a campaign! We’re going to Mars, sis’, and we’re gonna kick them Terrans in the ass right in front of their porch! I’m so excited! I can’t wait to be there and show them... But unfortunately that means ya’ll have to wait for this message till we’re back ’cos they’ve imposed a gagging order. This ’s so stupid. As if Terra still had spies on Chara... I’ll send this as soon as we’re back in the system. Bye!"

I startle at her face vanishing and the screen going black again. Then it shows the menu. "Next Message" is blinking. Angrily I press the buttons to bring her back. But she looks tired and pale now.

"Hi sis’! We went thru the jumpgate yesterday evening. They’ve told me it would be bad, but oh my... I’ve been puking all night. They say the first time is always the worst, but they say this at about everything. Right now I’m really looking forward to the journey back. In fact, I think I’ll stay here till they invent a better method. Haha, only kidding, ya know I’ll never leave ya alone. Now, look at this:"

The field of view swivels around, showing a crowded dorm room, stuffed with about two dozen bunk beds and an according number of young women wearing gray battle dress, body armor and the occasional helmets. Most of them are resting on their bunks, some are fiddling about with their equipment. There also is an impressive amount of weapons and ammunition around. Claire comes back into the view. Now I notice she’s wearing a body armor, too.

"Meet my platoon. I wanted to introduce some of ’em to ya in person, but everyone’s much too excited and nervous right now since we’ve been put on alert so I’d better leave them alone. See that tall blonde over there? That’s Corporal Mickey, my group leader. Haha, no, that of course ain’t her real name, but if ya’d hear her talking ya’d know why we call her like that. This one, the brunette cutesy with the glowing face is Marisa, she sleeps in the bunk under mine and she’s a real bitch, but at least she doesn’t snore. An’ look who’s there - the one who’s checking the heavy blaster. Recognize her? Yup, it’s Anis, who was in the seventh grade with ya. Who’d thought she’d end up in Special Weapons? Haha!
Oh, ya hear this? That’s the fighters coming back in. They are going out on patrol all around the clock but as far ’s I know they didn’t meet anybody yet. The whole ship’s buzzing with activity since we arrived in Sol system and we’re only waiting for... Oops, here comes the Sarge!"

The screen flickers for an instant before the message continues. The recently rather quiet dorm room is now bustling with activity. Soldiers in full battle garment hurry about pushing past each other, shouting and clashing their helmeted heads. It is very noisy and Claire almost has to shout herself. She’s beaming.

"OK, this is it! We’re going out for some action! Sarge tells we’re gonna board some space station! Gotta go! See ya!"

Next message. If I said Claire was beaming at the end of the last message now she is clearly radiating bliss out of every pore of her skin. I think the last time I’ve seen her this happy was at her sixth birthday.

"I’ve got one! We’ve been to this old station and I’ve got one of them stupid Terrans! Shot her right in the face! Wanna hear about it?"

No, I don’t want to hear about how my little sister killed a human being. But she tells me nonetheless.

"We stormed into the hangar but they had been waiting, barricaded themselves at the far end. ’Twas brutal! But after we got a couple of them the rest ran away. Haha, ya should’ve seen them run! Chickens! They didn’t get far, o’course. One got shot down as they ran, another one tried to board herself up in some room, but we drove her out after a few minutes. But the last one was a nasty bugger. Tried to hide and ambushed us when we were tracking her down. Now that station is a pretty big pile of metal. And it’s creepy! Huuh! The whole upper part looks like it’s abandoned for ages and it’s freezing cold there. Everything’s covered in frost, there’s trash and stuff lying around and all the lights and doors are broken. And there’s some kind of giant factory hall, where she lurked behind some machine. The clever bastard waited for us to separate - we had to split up to sweep the hall - and then she attacked Marisa who was last in the line, covering my back when I was checking out some crates. She shot Marisa right in the face, but I got her back for that! Shot her in her pretty face, too, burned her quite nicely. Medics say she’s gonna survive, thou, but at least that’ll teach her! I gotta go now, grab some food. I think some of the girls planning on having a little party later, to celebrate our first victorious battle. It’s prolly better I have something in my stomach by then. Haha! Bye!"

The next message starts dark and quiet. Claire has left the quarters. From the shelves I can make out in the background it looks like a storage room. I instantly notice how quiet it is. The constant drone of engines that has been in the background during all previous message is gone. But wait! Is that gunfire in the distance? Claire isn’t smiling anymore. Her hair is uncombed and greasy and her face is dirty and gleaming with sweat. There are clean streaks on her cheeks, where tears have washed away the dirt. Her eyes are reddened. She somehow looks much older now. She hesitates long before she sighs heavily.

"Oh crap!"

She turns the recording device off again. When her image comes back she’s wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She sniffs and sighs again. There is so much bitterness and fear in her voice:

"I... I dunno what happened. They never warned us. There was an attack... I think. All of a sudden the whole ship was shaking from explosions. They must’ve hit us pretty bad. The engines are down and the hull is breached on some decks. I’ve lost my platoon, don’t know where they are and the comm is down, too. Last thing before it went silent was the announcement to prepare for being entered. After that the shooting started, don’t know if you can hear this. They’re still pretty far away, but they’re coming closer all the time. I think I’m all alone on this deck, but I’m also sealed in here. The bulkheads to the staircases are all blocked - I think there’s no air in there - and the corridor to the rear is closed by debris and fire. Well, good thing is of course that means them Terrans prolly won’t find me here. I couldn’t do anything ’bout it if they did, I left my gun in the dorm. Only thing I can hope for now is that my guys gets me outta here before the air runs out..."

Suddenly she bursts into tears. I can hardly understand her last words under her sobs.

"I’m so frightened, sis, I don’t wanna die!"

There are no more messages.