EPTAs he breathed a sigh of relief he lowered his head and saw that his cloak was not as complete as it should be. At the end of what remained of his arm the wound was clearly visible even though the rest of him had disappeared from sight.
26381 turned off his cloak after staring for a few more moments and looked up towards his destination. He could just make out the outlines of some of the Zerg buildings in the distance, spiked silhouettes coming up from the horizon.
A deep breath and then he continued on.
* * * * *
“So what are we going to do?”
“What?” No one had spoken for hours, an eternity in the heat of battle, and Fields had almost completely forgotten about the outburst between Anders and himself. Kalkar had been quietly contemplating options while focusing on staying alive and now decided it would be best if he and Fields would at least be unified even if nothing else around them seemed to be.
“Him, that's what.”
“Oh...” Fields looked over at Anders and realised that even he had become silent. The roar of battle made it hard to notice. An explosion just outside the bunker brought his attention back around. “I guess there's nothing we can do.”
“I disagree.”
“Really? What do you suggest then, Sergeant?”
“Firstly, I suggest you drop the sarcastic bullshit.” Fields shot a glare directly at Kalkar, but Kalkar kept firing as if nothing happened. “Secondly, I think we just wait 'til we are ordered to fall back and then we leave him.”
“You're joking, right?”
“Not even a little.”
“That will never fly with Command.”
“Why does Command have to know?”
Fields let out a sharp breath in disbelief at what he was hearing.
“I get what you're saying, man, I really do, but we can't just ditch him because he can't cope. That's inhumane.”
“You were the one yelling at him not that long ago.”
“Yelling at someone and leaving them to die are two completely different things. I'm pretty stressed, like I assume everyone here is, and I felt the need to vent. I vented, it's over, now I'm back to killing. I may be a selfish cunt but I am not going to leave a helpless man to die a horrible death.”
A few moments passed without response from Kalkar and there was a lull in the battle directly outside. Perhaps they were winning. Kalkar sighed, turned towards Fields and stared directly at him.
“Nice speech there, but it changes nothing. If we try to save him in the incredibly likely event that we need to fall back, he is going to get us killed. Where's the sense in trying to save one guy and three dying? Tell me that, Corporal.”
Fields faced Kalkar and pushed his chest out aggressively, sneering.
“Do what the fuck you want, I am not leaving him. Coward or otherwise, he doesn't deserve to have to deal with those things.”
“Fine. Your funeral.”
The two didn't turn away for several seconds, neither wanting to relinquish anything to the other. In the tense moment they began to hear a lot of heated chatter over the radio.
“What is that?”
“Oh my God...”
“Where did they all come from?”
“INCOMING!”
Fields and Kalkar looked out of their gun holes and saw what the commotion was about. They were not winning the fight, the lull was simply the Zerg regrouping for one large offensive to finish the assault. Both agape, they saw only a few hundred metres from them the bloated forms of banelings, glowing green with the acidic bile they were filled to bursting with. They scuttled with incredible speed over the war-torn ground. Pockmarked from the siege tank shelling, covered in the dead corpses of thousands of Zerg and littered with wreckage the banelings just kept coming.
An explosion erupted from the centre of their ranks, a perfect shot from the mechanised division located behind the bunker Fields, Kalkar and Anders occupied. There was a giant spray of green going everywhere, and another, then another, but the banelings kept coming forwards. They got closer and closer to the front line until they were within range of the bunkers themselves. Neither Kalkar nor Fields opened fire.
“Sergeant,” Fields said morosely, “I think it's time to fall back.”
