The end is nigh.
It will come from the depths. Blackness, crushing pressure; an abyss housing our doom… and yet… the end of the world will be a relief for me.
My name is Xaio. I will give no family name, for should anyone find this, my family name would live in infamy for eternity. Not that I expect anyone to find this. I write it for myself, to place the final thoughts of the endbringer to paper so as not to think them any more.
Where to begin?
It was eight months ago that the first attack came, but the beginning was probably two years ago when I finished my training and took command of the Omega tank squad. (I’m changing names of course, I wouldn’t want anyone to search for further information on me. The nicknames are real though, no one would write them down officially anywhere.) We were three tanks; one light, one heavy and a Titan class mobile Bunker. Those were good days. As much as I came out of school with a complete understanding of the mechanics of the vehicles, situational planning, terrain, supply, strategy… my assigned sergeant, who some days had trouble counting his fingers, knew more about combat and warfare than I could ever hope to learn.
Sergeant Hardenust (everyone called him Hardass) had seen more action than a Taiwanese prostitute on a military base. He joined up at 15, lying successfully about his age, and from that time to the day I met him was deployed, as he put it, ‘an imperial fuckton’. He couldn’t think his way out of a cardboard box, but he could people to follow him and was like the eye of the storm in any emergency.
There were ten others after the two of us. Twin brothers who called themselves Dee and Dum made the scout tank look like it was running itself. The heavy driver, a skinny 5 foot nothing walking proof of small man syndrome, we called Giant and his controller we called Tiny since he was of course pushing 7 foot. Our heavy gunner was Hawkeye after that stupid military show, well, that and he could hit an apple on someone’s head from six kilometres.
I rode the Titan along with Hardass, which was nicknamed the ladies room by the rest of the crew, although they didn’t dare say it out loud. We had four with us, our driver, Ceilidh was a red-haired Scottish demon, quick to laugh, quicker to anger. No one dared nickname her although Mestopheles was thrown around; never around her. Communications was Gaga (as in Radio, not Lady), tough chick, built like a cliff in body and face. The tank controller, Amazon, rivalled Tiny in height and had a buzzed head. Amazon was the only one who could give Hardass a run for his money, especially during… well, let’s just say for about a week a month, I pitied the enemy. Then the gunners, Snow White and Twinkle. The first was a model ripped right out of any man’s wildest dreams but cold, calculating, with better aim than Hawkeye; the other a good time girl with a twinkle in her brown eyes, always up for it wherever with whoever. Of course, I once watched her get out of the tank after an all-clear and kick the absolute shit out of pile of flesh that had once been a man.
We trained together for a full six months, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses and during that time I like to think they came to respect me, albeit begrudgingly. I don’t want to brag, but we never lost a competitive exercise; my strength in strategic thinking ripping apart the plans of our adversaries. Of course, it helped that Hardass hated to lose and had the squad training to their absolute physical and mental limits.
During the East Asia conflict after the successful invasion of China by Japan, about a month after our training finished, we were deployed in South Korea to keep the Donkeys at bay. (Some gamer kid read NK as DK and started calling North Korea, Donkey Korea and it stuck) It wasn’t a hard assignment. We sat at the border and watched the missiles streaking into the sky before the anti-air field blew them up well above the country. Occasionally an order would come through to send them back a present and Hawkeye and Snow would let it rip, but we really never hit anything which pissed off Ceilidh to no end.
“Nae fakin’ drivin’, nae fakin’ hittin’ shit.” I can still hear her grating voice echoing around the Titan. No one told her to stop. She was just giving voice to what we were all thinking. No one liked being cooped up in a giant metal sweat machine. That’s when we really got to know each other, when heat and boredom have set in and it’s only 11 in the morning. On those days we settled into something of a routine. Dee and Dum would start singing across the radio with Twinkle joining in. Amazon and Ceilidh would play cards with Snow while Gaga usually just rested with headphones blocking out the out of tune renditions of pop music that the twins belted out. Tiny and Giant would work out together, taking turns doing callisthenics with Giant trying to compete. Hawkeye. Hawkeye sat at his gun, reading out of a tattered old book with some strange writing on the cover. I’d never seen the language before and he certainly wasn’t talking about it. We asked him a couple of times but he just winked and said nothing.
After a few weeks of firing uselessly across the border, we got stood down from high alert and could actually leave the tanks during the day. We had a half decent camp site set up for our use and a communal tent that everyone sat in during the day. That was when we had our first indications that something was wrong.
–
“Tha fak are you doin’?” Ceilidh’s voice hit the ears like a cheese grater, still harsh after nearly a year.
Dee and Dum stopped their two man attempt at a human pyramid. “It’s called fun.” “Yeah, try it sometime!” they switched places, one standing on the other’s back.
“Give it a rest you two,” Amazon said before Ceilidh could really get into cursing. “Go outside if you want to do that crap.”
The twins shrugged and throwing a quick salute ran out the tent flaps to burn their vast expanses of energy. Amazon went back to studying the maps on the table in front of her, while Ceilidh lit a smoke and starting muttering under her breath. Snow and Hawkeye were sitting at the end of the table, and he was showing her the outside of his book, a glimpse of white symbols that almost appeared to be glowing in the light barely visible on the cover.
“We need some fucking action,” said Giant beside me, “The whole battlegroup is just sitting here picking our noses while the Japs are burning through China. Shit, it’s not like the fucking Donkeys can do more than spit. They’re the military equivalent of a fucking water fight.”
“Until they decide to bring out the nukes.” Tiny suggested. “Detonating those in the air wouldn’t make any difference, we’d still all melt.”
“Fuck nukes!” Giant exploded. “It’d be better than doing fucking nothing.”
Hardass looked up at that. His stare hit Giant like a slap. “Hold your tongue soldier, that’s an order.” As Giant began to protest, Hardass raised a single eyebrow, daring him to continue. He didn’t.
A piercing scream rent the air followed immediately by a yell of pain. Gaga had thrown off her headphones and collapsed on the ground, rocking back and forth with her hands over her ears while Hawkeye had thrown his book to the ground where it was smouldering, burning orange, while he held a blackened hand, his face white.
Twinkle jumped up and grabbed a water bottle, throwing it to Snow who skillfully picked it out of the air and opened it over Hawkeye’s hand in one quick motion. I jumped up and barely beat Amazon to Gaga’s side. She was crying and there was a thin stream of blood leaking from each ear. I immediately stepped back and let Amazon take over. Tiny had grabbed the medkit and dropped it at her side, before going outside with Giant to get the twins. I called to them to create a perimeter around the tent which was acknowledged with a quick salute. Hardass was holding his rifle and standing by the door, shouting orders out of the tent, securing the area.
Hawkeye caught my gaze and nodded once. Both Snow and Twinkle helped him over to the washing basin to get his hand in the cold water. I scanned the area. Everything secure, everyone doing their jobs. That’s when the book caught my eye again. It had stopped burning but what had once been a midnight black cover was now a deep green. I moved to it and knelt. The sand around it had swirled into strange forms in the centre of a double circle that contained a warped five pointed star. The book was in the middle of the star and the symbols that had been on the cover were now gone, replaced with a single blood red eye, orange and yellow flames coming off of it.
That was when I made my mistake. The mistake that would haunt me to the end of the world. I picked up the book.