u/BrokenOldBastage

For the sake of keeping all my writings under one account, here is another one. From ages ago. Enjoy...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lieutenant Commander Hoshiko Redwolf groggily woke to the sound of alarms blaring, hurting her ears and making her splitting headache worse. She didn't want to wake up and swatted at where she normally kept her alarm beside the bed. She was surprised to find her hand stopped by a barrier and opened her eyes, trying to find this damned alarm, and was momentarily confused when she found herself in the cockpit of her attack craft, twisting through space in a free rotation, bouncing off of debris. Realizing her headache was getting worse and finding it difficult to breathe, her training kicked in and she took stock of the situation.

"Alright, Hoshiko, you can't breathe, you can't really think straight, and your head really, really hurts. Why? Shit. Hypoxia."

For the first time in the thirty seconds since waking up, with difficulty focusing due to a reddish haze in her eyes, she examined her cockpit. As she turned her head to look around, she began to smell and taste an acrid, iron-like flavor and realized her face felt wet. Must've hit her head pretty hard. Thankfully the ALON on her helmet wasn't cracked. Taking stock of that, she quickly looked at the controls in front of her.

"Instrument panel working, engines one and three down, eighty percent of RCS thrusters damaged. Internal gyro stabilizer malfunctioning, zero psi of atmosphere in the bird. Fuck. Hole burned through the upper right canopy, the reinforcement beams melted through as well."

She struggled to take a deep breath as all the skin on her body started to feel like her lips did when she played that stupid suction game with cups as a kid, and sharp stabbing pains started to pop up in her joints and abdomen.

"Okay, that explains the lack of atmosphere in the bird, but you are in a pressure suit and still getting the bends. Figure it out."

Looking at her pressure gauges, she noticed that her suit's O2 regulator was registering a slow leak. Starting to panic, she quickly examined her arms and torso and found no damage. Closing her eyes, she realized she didn't hear any hissing, so there was no leak in the helmet. Tracking her vision down her legs, she almost vomited in her suit at the horror she saw. Her left leg ended abruptly just below the knee, and she saw between the left RCS control pedal and her seat another large hole, melted through the fuselage, through where her leg used to be, and then out the canopy. "That explains the red mist," she thought, as the memory of what her DI had drilled into her training class during weapons qual popped into her head.

"Lasers are not clean weapons, cadets! They do not disintegrate flesh like the classic science fiction novels would have you believe! Lasers are messy! Lasers are dirty! Lasers are nasty! Any photonic weaponry capable of burning through hull plating is hot enough to flash-boil water! Expect the water inside whatever body part is hit to vaporize, causing the surrounding tissue and bone to violently explode! If you are lucky, you will die instantly. If you are unlucky, I would not want to be you!"

Gasping for air in the rapidly depleting atmosphere of her suit, Hoshiko saw a steady stream of gas escaping from near the wound, where the auto-sealing mechanism of her suit had failed to fully engage for obvious reasons. Reaching above her head, Hoshiko quickly removed the emergency pack from its Velcro housing and tore it open. From the pack, she removed an emergency suit patch. Its inner layer was a chitosan dressing for trauma, and the outer layer was a flexible high-density polyurethane slathered in a powerful quick-bonding adhesive. As the chitosan dressing touched the small amount of exposed flesh and bonded to it, Hoshiko felt it for the first time and screamed in agony as she struggled to apply enough pressure over the rest of the patch to seal the leak. She fell unconscious from the pain.

Ensign Hoshiko Redwolf was at home on her husband's ancestral lands on some well-deserved shore leave after going through the grueling two-year training and acclimation program that all United Solar Nations recruits went through. She enjoyed the mild Dakota sun beaming down on her as she watched her new family speak in their native Oglala. She didn't mind, as she was a newlywed, and her own family had flown in from Okinawa to attend the wedding, so she didn't feel left out. She smiled and waved as she saw her new husband, Michael, a medical officer, jogging towards them.

LT, Junior Grade Hoshiko sighed with dread and absolute exhaustion as she sat down in her and her husband's couples berthing. A small nook in the ship that they hot-bunked with another married couple who worked the opposite shift. They had been drilling the battle group hard these past few weeks because the Eridanan Colonies had been pretty antsy lately, and being able to pilot a combat craft effectively in pseudo-Newtonian conditions was paramount to success on the battlefield. Having access to an effective gravity drive helped mitigate some of the classical problems with void combat and made piloting a void craft more akin to piloting a classic atmo fighter on Earth.

Looking at the object in her hand slowly change, Hoshiko felt both excitement and extreme disappointment. This was going to change everything. Nothing would ever be the same.

"It's probably for the best, though," she thought to herself as her husband stepped into the room, the exhaustion in his face fading as he saw her.

Walking up to her, he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "How was your day, love?"

Holding up the small white stick with two pink lines on it, Hoshiko shrugged. "It looks like I am going home for a bit."

Hoshiko woke to searing pain in her leg and sweet, sweet oxygen and pressure inside of her suit. Her joints and abdomen were still stabbing her, as the nitrogen bubbles in her body had yet to be reabsorbed. Looking at her gauges, she saw that her suit had one atmosphere of pressure. Closing her eyes again, she depressed the button on her suit containing painkillers three times to ensure its activation. Feeling a pinprick in her glutes as the medicine was injected, she sighed in relief some thirty seconds later as the ketamine took effect and the pain grew distant.

"Alright, Hoshiko, you are mentally impaired. Make sure you double-check everything that you do so that you don't fuck it up," she told herself as she began assessing the situation she was in. Her craft was in a low-g free rotation in a debris field. "Okay, why is there a debris field, why am I in my fighter, and what the hell is going on?"

Turning off her cabin lights so that she could better view the situation, she used what remaining RCS control she had to retard her free rotation. Then she began slowly panning her craft and examining the debris field. There were a lot of dead craft here, and pieces of capital ships as well. Much of it was the remains of USN ships, but there was something else there as well. A dark, chitinous metal, edges spiked like an insect's, as though the hull had been grown rather than constructed. In the distance she could see her fleet, still engaging, firing their rail guns in her direction as she watched the white streaks flying overhead, engaging something behind her. And as she watched plasma firing in a return arc, she also saw visible lasers that burned her retinas to look at and was sure there were several not on the visible spectrum that were even deadlier. Turning her head away from the laser fire and looking to the left, she saw home. Earth. And remembered what had happened.

Lieutenant Hoshiko Redwolf was working as a void combat instructor at the naval yards on Luna, deep in describing to the cadets how void combat worked without a working grav engine, when one of her colleagues burst into the room.

"First contact! Fucking first contact out in the Epsilon Eridani system." The man seemed panicked, his eyes wide as he very loudly relayed the information. "Just had a fleet runner skip into system. They said that the task force assigned to pacify the Eridani colonies had come under attack by an alien force. Huge fleet. The entire task force is destroyed. They were the only surviving ship."

Hoshiko sank to her knees and went numb. Her husband had been part of that task force.

Seven years had passed, and the USN forces had been slowly pushed back. Each of the colonial systems falling to this relentless force, at great cost to the attacking aliens and humanity alike.

Hoshiko had stayed behind on Earth since the onset of the war, training thousands upon thousands of new pilots to serve the war effort. Sending all of these young people to their deaths, fighting a force that did not communicate and only seemed to want to destroy. She had trained so many faces. Most of them never came back.

The aliens had started with a massive fleet. Six motherships, each with hundreds of supporting capital vessels, each with their own retinue of corvettes and fighters. They didn't seem to be getting any reinforcements as the war went on, however, and they slowly lost ships until there was only one mothership left, with only a handful of its own capital vessels remaining. This one. Here. Attacking Earth and the last of humanity's beleaguered defenders.

The USN's fleet of thousands had been reduced to nearly nothing. Only one supercarrier and six battlecruisers remained, holding position with the static defenses around Earth after even Mars had fallen. Mankind was determined to make sure these invading bastards paid for every inch of territory taken.

But they were at Earth, and Hoshiko had a duty to her people. She and the rest of the pilots had launched in their Lancers, sleek craft about the size of an old P-51, wingless, with only protrusions for the weapons systems, RCS control, and the four large thrusters on the rear of the vessel. Each was loaded with two antimatter torpedoes and four micro rail cannons. Each torpedo carried about 2.3 kilograms of antimatter. About a hundred megatons of destructive power.

As fifty thousand fighter and attack craft launched from Earth's defensive hangars and the supercarrier, the alien vessels responded in kind, their own swarm of fighters flying out to meet humanity's last bastion of defense. When the forces merged, it was hell. In an instant, thousands of lives on both sides snuffed out, little pinpricks of light as ships were destroyed, antimatter charges going off prematurely when the magnetic housing on the torpedoes was damaged. Ships detonating or drifting away, still powered but dead as the pilots inside them.

Her ship and five thousand others, closing in on the enemy's main formation, all simultaneously launched their torpedoes at the mothership. She watched the tactical feed as she avoided enemy fighters and saw that the enemy's point defense had destroyed ninety-eight percent of the torpedoes as they approached their target, jinking and moving unpredictably as they flew. The remaining two percent were intercepted by the screen of capital vessels, each sacrificing themselves, getting in the way of the torpedoes that had gotten through the point defense.

Of the ten thousand torpedoes fired, one made it through. One hundred-megaton warhead hit the enemy mothership and detonated, instantly annihilating thirty percent of the ten-kilometer vessel as it shuddered and lurched to a stop. Hoshiko's brief cheer quickly died as she watched the mothership fire up its engines and weaponry again, focusing fire on the capital vessels and defensive platforms behind her. Gritting her teeth, she relayed commands to her flight to get close to the mothership and take out as much weaponry as they could with their rail guns. Hoshiko flew fast and hard, jinking and moving between firing her cannons, trying to do as much damage as possible with her tiny vessel.

Then the flak hit.

Hoshiko watched her tac feed on the HUD in her helmet as the number of friendly fighters rapidly dropped. She looked in the distance, between Earth and Luna, as one of the battlecruisers detonated, having taken critical damage. She looked up as a shadow blotted out the stars above her and saw the enemy mothership. It was a few hundred meters away, slowly, ponderously drifting towards Earth. Towards home.

Looking at her weapon systems, she saw that one of her torpedoes had armed but not fired. Smiling, Hoshiko slowly lined up her nose with the enemy mothership and pulled the launch trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. It did not fire.

Despair hit her hard then. The launch mechanism was damaged. It wouldn't fire.

Looking towards Earth again, Hoshiko saw the sun rising from behind the planet, its light red as it punched through the atmosphere, and laughed at the irony of the situation. Looking briefly at a picture taped just above her, a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Turning her attention back to the enemy ship, Hoshiko whispered one word.

"Banzai."

She set her grav thrust to max impulse, released the brake, and her world went white.

It was sunrise on his grandfather's ranch in the Dakotas as eight-year-old Brandon Redwolf watched the light show in the receding twilight. He stared in wonder as many small lights blinked into and out of existence. Both of his grandfathers were there on the porch with him, Jason Redwolf and Kenji Kido, each with a hand on one of his shoulders.

He watched in awe as a bright flash, briefly outshining the sun, came into view and slowly faded. He turned to his grandfather Kenji and exclaimed, "Look, Grandpa! It's so bright!"

Kenji nodded and forced a smile as tears streamed down his face.

"Yes, grandson. It is very bright. Like a star."

Got the writing bug again. Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The cabin sat up high, past where the roads gave out and the maps stopped caring. It was nine thousand feet up on a chunk of granite and boreal pine. You didn't stumble onto it; you either knew the way, or you had no business being there. Elias didn't like neighbors, so the arrangement worked just fine.

Mornings were always slow on the ridge. The chill seeped right through the floorboards, and the sun struck his windows long before the valley below ever tasted the light. This morning was no different.

Elias sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his blanket to work some feeling back into his scarred hands.

"Alright," he muttered, his breath visible in the cold. "Let's go."

His hip answered first. A deep, grinding reminder of a long career. He stood anyway.

By the time the sun broke over the jagged peaks to bleed orange across the valley, he was out on the porch. He held his coffee in his left hand, watching some junk on his tablet and taking in the crisp air. A heavy dog pressed her side against his leg, soaking up his heat.

"Morning, pup," Elias said.

Valka huffed and made a sound somewhere between a groan and a moo, blowing a warm puff of air against his worn denim. Her heavy ears airplaned out to the sides, a goofy, wide grin breaking the stoic lines of her face just for him. It was the same dumb look she'd given him since she was eight weeks old, tumbling over his daughter's shoes in the hallway of a house that didn't exist anymore.

Ten years old. An Old Earth breed, an American Akita. Her muzzle had gone white, and she was slower to rise these days, but she was entirely solid muscle and loyalty.

Elias nodded once and stood to ladle out her breakfast. "Bet you're hungry, girl," he said, spooning bland eggs and bacon into her bowl before returning to his bench.

The radio crackled faintly from the table inside, static cutting through the air. A frantic, clipped voice he didn't recognize was calling for an emergency evac somewhere far down in the sprawl.

Elias listened for half a second, then reached inside and shut it off.

"Not today."

-------------------------------

It was a simple Tuesday when it happened. There was no warning, no buildup. Just a sudden, deafening crack of multiple sonic booms directly overhead as the alien drop pods and ordnance fell from the skies.

Valka noticed first. Her head snapped up, Spitz ears pricked forward on high alert, white-rimmed eyes focused on the strange new noise. A low, rumbling growl vibrated deep in her chest.

Elias followed her gaze to the horizon.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I see it, girl."

The first deep violet streak came down over the far ridge, the chitinous drop pods tearing a jagged, burning line through the atmosphere. It impacted and the ground shook before it dispersed its cargo. More came, landing in the surrounding cityscape at the base of the mountain and off towards the horizon. There were dozens at first, and the number quickly grew into the hundreds. The screaming streaks of purple fire turning the morning dark with smoke from their descent.

The valley lit up in rolling waves of orange and black, fire and smoke spreading quickly around the impact sites. But none fell towards the mountain. The monolith was mostly uninhabited and not of strategic importance.

Elias didn't move. He didn't reach for a rifle or a go-bag. He just sat there, sipping his coffee and watching the world burn from the nosebleeds.

"Figures," he said.

Valka leaned harder into him, a low whine escaping her throat. Elias gave her a heavy, slow scratch right behind the ear, her mouth opening happily as she leaned into it.

"It's alright, Valka."

He didn't get up. He just watched from his high cabin as the colony burned below.

-------------------------------------

Three weeks passed, and the world ended down in the valley in plumes of smoke and ash. Up here, it remained simple. Wood, water, routine, Valka. It was all he needed. All he wanted. He was content to ignore the happenings below so long as he was left alone.

Elias was splitting kindling one morning. His axe bit deep into the pine, but he paused halfway through the next swing as a distant, unnatural light flashed across the gray horizon. He watched it fade into a sickening green hue.

"Looks like they're still at it," he said, leaning on the handle.

Valka didn't look up from the bone she was working over. Good.

Sometimes at night, things moved across the stars. Things that didn't blink like satellites and didn't fit any Terran profile. They were massive and wrong, large blocky things dominating the skies.

Elias stepped out onto the porch once, the freezing air biting his lungs, and watched a colossal shadow blot out the moon.

"Big fuckers," he muttered.

He stayed there a while, watching it transition across the sky, his hand resting on Valka's broad head. Then he went back inside.

"Not my problem." He lied to himself.                                                                                       

-----------------------------------------------

It happened just past noon the next day. As he was enjoying an afternoon snifter of good scotch, the air went totally silent and far too still.

Valka went rigid. It wasn't curiosity, and it wasn't her usual alert. She was locked in on something in the dense trees. Her hackles raised from her neck to the base of her tail.

Elias saw the shift in her posture and the bared teeth immediately.

"Easy," he said, already moving, his voice a flat, calm anchor.

The rifle stayed on the wall hook inside. It was too far away. His hand slid under the porch swing instead, coming up with something shorter and heavier. Familiar black steel.

"Alright," he murmured, thumbing the safety. "Let's see." He crouched low to break up his figure with the fencing on his porch, his bad hip screaming obscenities at him as he did so.

The woods parted. Three of them stepped through the brush like they didn't care about stealth. They were too tall and too smooth, scaled plates shifting under gray environmental suits.

They spread out with no wasted motion. A group of professionals.

Elias watched from the shadows of the porch. He didn't rush. He let them close the gap.

"Hunters," he said quietly.

Then he moved.

The first one dropped before it knew what was happening, its skull caved in by a heavy suppressed round.

The second turned, alien eyes going wide, but not fast enough. It fell backward, chest plate shattered, dark fluid spraying the dirt.

The third was fast. Faster than the others. Its strange, multi-barreled weapon whipped around, drawing a bead on Elias.

Elias shifted violently to evade and his damaged hip screamed—a blinding spike of agony from an old, deep-set injury.

"Yeah, I know," he muttered through gritted teeth at the protesting joint. He rolled, but Valka was already in the air. Ten years old, and she launched herself like a heat-seeking missile. Ninety-five pounds of protective fury. A guttural roar tore from her throat as she hit the third alien high. Her jaws clamped viciously onto the arm holding the weapon, her teeth sinking right through the suit into whatever meat was underneath.

The alien staggered and thrashed wildly at the unexpected canine. It let out a sharp, clicking shriek, trying to shake her loose.

Valka held on. Shaking her head, ripping, throwing her entire weight around to pull the thing off balance. Refusing to let go.

"NO!" Elias yelled.

Too late.

The alien brought its other arm around in a brutal, sweeping arc. The sound of the impact was sickening, and Valka hit the cabin wall. She hit it hard enough that the wood splintered behind her.

The sound she made was devastating. It was thin, high, and pitiful. It cut through everything Elias had left in him.

The alien turned, ripping its torn arm back. It grabbed it, using its other arm to support the damaged limb, its mandibles clicking in furious, wet spasms as the wounded creature slowly brought its weapon to bear.

Elias stood. It wasn't fast, but it was efficient, and the cold hatred in his eyes gave the alien pause.

He closed the distance before the alien could draw a bead on him, ignoring the gun entirely. He grabbed the creature by its throat and armor plating, squeezed, and slammed it into the dirt. He beat it with his free hand until it stopped moving altogether.

He didn't check to confirm the job was done. He had other concerns. Kicking the thing in its head, he quickly turned and dropped to his knees beside his dog.

"Hey," he said, his voice stripped of its previous calm. "Hey, stay with me."

Valka's breath hitched in a bubbling, ragged gasp. The angle of her ribs was wrong. The way she lay against the cold dirt was wrong.

Although the situation had him panicked, Elias's hands moved fast and practiced, carefully working through the blood and fur.

"Easy, girl," he murmured. "Easy. I've got you."

Pressure first, then find the break. Keep the airway clear. Wrap tight enough to hold, loose enough to let her breathe. Hands that had patched up worse running on pure muscle memory.

Valka's golden eyes flicked toward him. They were cloudy with pain, but focused. She was still there.

"That's it," Elias said quietly, pressing his palm over her racing heart. "Stay with me, darlin'."

"You ain't dyin today," he whispered.

---------------------------------------------------

By the time the sun dropped and the cold truly set in, Valka was inside, wrapped tight in gauze and Elias's heavy shirt. Her breathing was shallow, but it was steady. She was holding on.

Elias sat on the floor beside her, one hand buried deep in her ruff. Listening to the wind howl outside. Counting her breaths.

"Good girl," he said softly.

He looked at the old dog, stoic as ever even in the face of death. Then, quieter, laced with something heavy: "I should've been faster."

He didn't get an answer, but he didn't expect one. The single, slow thump of her tail against the rug was reply enough.

When he was absolutely sure she was stable, Elias stood up.

He checked Valka's water bowl. It was full. The passive melt from the snow tank on the roof dripped steadily into the basin beside it. She wouldn't go dry.

The heavy oak table screeched as he pushed it aside. He pulled up the floorboards, the wood groaning against the nails, to reveal the long, dust-covered case waiting in the dark.

He stared at it for a long moment, the silence of the cabin pressing in around him.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Guess we're doing this again."

The latches snapped open, sounding like gunshots in the quiet room.

Inside was everything he used to be. The dull gray powered armor of his Sirius Wars days. Environmental seals. Heavy ordnance. Ammo was sparse, but it should be enough.

He meticulously checked the contents of the box, piece by piece. Diagnostic checks, locking seals, loading. He didn't rush, but he acted without hesitation. He checked the action on the old mag rifle. The muscle memory was perfect.

"Still works," he murmured, cycling it.

From the other room, Valka made a low, pained sound. Elias stopped, walked over, and knelt beside her.

"Gonna step out, hun," he said. Calm, normal. Like he was just grabbing firewood from the porch. "Just for a bit."

Valka's tail thumped again. Weak, but there.

Elias leaned down and rested his forehead against hers, feeling her body heat, listening to her breathe as he gently scratched behind her ears.

"Hold," he commanded quietly. "Watch the house."

He stood and stepped outside into the freezing dark. He didn't notice the cold; his suit was already powering up with a low, sub-audible hum, keeping back the chill with environmental conditioning.

The mountain waited. Down below, in the valley where the world had ended, something moved that didn't belong. Fires stretched for miles, burning in careful, methodical grids.

Elias adjusted the heavy rifle in his gauntlets, letting the suit take the brutal, familiar weight of it.

"Alright," he said, his voice flat and certain. "Let's go talk."