Entry One: Dead Men (Three Years Previous)...

Untitled Project.

By: Sean McGovern

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

-Nietzsche.

Armies: (Notes – only armies that play a part in this story are listed, color schemes of armor is main color, followed by trim)

Angels, The – [disbanded] ranged combat, mostly composed of devoutly religious members.  Colors: Red and white.

Core, The – rumored to be combat veterans.  Tend to use heavy weapons. Colors: Olive drab.

Corsairs, The – surprise/terror tactics, propensity for explosives.  Colors: Crimson and dark blue.

Demons, The – ranged combat, known for a “rock star” mentality.  Colors: Red and black.

Dragons, The – developed the equivalent of flamethrowers. Colors: Red and green.

Furies, The – only all female squad, ranged combat.  Colors: Orange and blue.

Horde, The – melee specialists, known for chanting “‘ere we go” throughout any conflict.  Colors: Hunter green and red.

Knights, The – melee/mildly ranged combat.  Colors: Grey and red (officers replace red with black)

Needles, The – rumored to be community outreach and team building program set up by half-way houses in the tristate area.  Ranged combat.  Colors: Yellow and green.

Revenants, The – [disbanded] melee combat and surprises/terror tactics.  Colors: Dark Blue and black.

Tigers, The – melee combat. Colors: Orange and black.

Entry One – Dead men. (Three Years Previous.)

House to house fighting was their specialty – it was what they liked best.  The darkness suited them, the quiet, the waiting, all of it.  That and, since scare tactics depended upon the tension and terror of the quiet moments, it meant that they didn’t have to talk to one another – which was the biggest appeal.  This was their last showing, and they knew it.  They had known it before they suited up into their blue armor, each having to connect their own suit sensors to the helmets – the lights winking on once and then returning to the red visors that – more than the dark blue armor – were a signal of the army known as the Revenants.  When they took enough damage, when their suits locked up and the three bulbs in their visor cracked on, they would appear, to the outside world, to be drowning in blood within their suits.

A final ‘fuck you’ to whomever took them out of the match.

The Revenants had fractured, that much was true.  They were now two groups – the Bastards, and the Nulls.  The Nulls thought that they were the originals.  It didn’t matter if this was true or not, because the Bastards thought the same thing about themselves.  The Nulls were mostly there for fun.  Yes, they wanted to win, but they seemed to have a sense of pride in the fact that they didn’t play to win.  They played to not lose, which could be a confusing distinction for those not on the to not lose side.  The Bastards, on the other hand, not only played to win, but wanted the losers to know they had lost.  Their ringleader – The Bastard, as it were – had once begun corpse humping like the player under him had been a just a sprite in a videogame.

N. Garret Turla – a name that sounded way too impressive to the person who owned it – hated the Bastards.  He hated the fact that most of the younger kids – at twenty-five, he had started thinking of anyone under it as “younger kids” – had sided with them.  Fuck, most of the Revenants had sided with the mother fucking Bastards – it was no wonder that the team had been going down the shitter, how it seemed that all of Deathmatch was going down the shitter, emptying into a hand basket with a “Hell or Bust” bumper sticker.  The three matches today were being filmed for the web, for crying out loud.

Garrett leaned on his claymore/spear thing – the blade didn’t start until halfway up, allowing it to be either a bigass sword or a long bladed/short hafted spear.  He also had a gladius strapped to his shin, next to the shin guard, and his paintball riffle, which looked weirdly futuristic, but with a recognizable clip.  For most of the house to house action, he’d have to rely on the gun and gladius.  He wished he would have worked out more.  The claymore/spear thing could be used with momentum and fury.  The endurance factor was negated by the sheer thrill of combat.

But the guns and gladius combo took skill (which he had some of) and patience (which he was working on).  Unlike some of the other teams – the Knights and Dragons – the Revenants didn’t use axes.  They barely trusted one another with the original weapons of the game – something that had (on occasion) actively put people in the hospital would be a bridge too far.

Garret watched the Bastard lead the Bastards towards the alleyway that would serve as the street they would fight over.  He sniffed, slipping on his helmet, and glairing through the red visor at the little shit who was turning to look at him.  The body type was obscured, but it was short enough to be a teenager, which made sense.  All the kids just loved the Bastard.  Garret would have spit, but he was in his helmet.  He had made that mistake once.  Instead he cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and went back to where the other Nulls were located.  For most of them, this was not only a last hurrah as Revenants, but a last hurrah period.  No more Deathmatch.  Maybe as trainers, but nothing more.  He banged fists and gripped forearms.  He doubted they would want to talk afterwards.

Garrett knew endings, and this had all of the earmarks of one.

Walt Quaker nodded to him.  Walt would stick around.  He looked like a young bear shoved into the sausage casing of the battle suit, the impact sensors straining against the fabric.  They shook, hands on forearms, a move that was probably more inspired by the movie 300 than any actual warrior ethos.  Walt’s helm rose slightly.  “They’re off,” he said into the com.

Garrett nodded.  “Yeah,” he said, “off to go talk to the Judges, God help us.”

Walt shrugged, but then, there was more bastard to him than he let on, even – Garrett guessed – to himself.  “They seem to like him,” Walt said.

“That they do,” Garrett said.

“One thing he had going for him – I’ll give him that,” Walt said.  He checked the hopper on his gun.  “How far up can we go before the whistle?”

“Three houses, one floor,” Garret said, shifting the claymore/spear thing onto it’s maglocks on his back, and hefting the sidearm and gladius.  “Shall we?”

“Oh my, yes,” Walt said, picking up a bandoleer of smoke bombs, then a second one for Garrett.  They worked them over their shoulders, and then head out, not slinking in the shadows, but staying close to the walls to the third building, and entering it, each pausing to point the red lens of their helmets down to where the Needles waited.  “You take up top,” Walt said.

“Done and done,” Garret said, leading the way through the third building back to the second.  “Front left,” he said into his com, “come around the outside.  No alley.”

“Whatever,” a voice responded.

Garrett bit back a ‘go fuck yourself, TJ,” and accepted a boost up to the rafters by way of Walt’s hands.  He had to hunch over, and slipped the claymore/spear thing from its maglocks, placing it at his feet and then performing an animal jump to the next rafter, catching one of the supports and then letting his feet touch the rafter itself.  It was all timber, and spacious enough for him to move around provided that he remain posed like Spiderman.  He accepted the gun and gladius from Walt.  Then he began unplugging all of the lights.  The building went dark.  “Center left, dark.  Check in.”  He braced himself against the rafter, his palms resting on the planks on the ceiling, and pushed while standing up.  He listened for the sound of nails sighing, and paused to say, “Front left check in.”  He went back to pushing.  “For fuck’s – someone punch TJ in the fucking helmet or get him to kill those lights and get those boards up.”

“Fuck off,” the voice said.

“TJ – go with the plan, please.”

Silence.  The two boards popped up, and Garrett paused.  He left them loose, spidered back to his main weapon.  Spidering to the loose boards, he raised them up, and maneuvered the claymore/spear thing to lay against the roof/floor.  He slid the planks back into place without letting them settle all the way.  He strapped the gladius to the maglocks on his shin, and took up his gun, checking the clip.

The Bastard’s voice, a laconic drawl, came across the com.  “Check in.”

TJ was fist to follow.  “Front left, dark.”  The others followed, letting the Bastard know they were ready.  Walt chimed in for the center left, now filled with five more – two in the rafters with Garrett, three on the ground, in the darker portions, with Walt.  The Revenants’ battle tactics were well known – their opponents tended to have flashlights somewhere on their person – sometimes in a clip on their suits, or taped to their guns.  “They’re coming,” the Bastard’s voice says, “first smoke.”  The smoke grenades when out – through the doors, out the glassless windows.  They do not drop them in the buildings – but outside, before hunkering down slightly deeper into the shadows and cover.

Garrett felt alone without his weapon, but the size of the thing would have ruined his positioning.  He had nicknamed it “the overcompensator” to the other Revenants.  Now though, squatting on the rafter, he wished for it.  “Vents closed,” he whispered into the com, and closed his own.  Air could still get in and out, but most of the smoke would stay away.

“Contact,” said a voice on the com.  “Front right, entering…fuck.  Not yellow.  Not needles.”

There were mutters before the Bastard’s voice came over.  “Copy, Nat, what markings?”

“Orange and blue, sir.”

Garrett looked down at the dark figure of Walt, whose head turned, their unseen expression mirroring each others.  Sir?

“Furies,” the Bastard said.  “Front left, confirm targets.”

“Copy sir,” TJ’s voice said, “orange and blue confirmed.”

“Moving to phase two,” Garrett said, and stood, popping out the planks and rising up to the roof.  He took up the claymore/spear thing, maglocked it, and then helped the two other Revenants up.  He slapped the planks back into place, took up his gun, and crawled to the lip of the roof.  “Smoke first, then fire,” he said.  The others agreed.  “Walt, how is it?”  There was silence.

“They’re here,” said a voice on the com.

“Where,” Garrett asked.

Then the shooting started and that was really it.

The opening stages of Deathmatch used to not matter – it had been a whistle from the judges, then one long middle and a short end.  Once the different armies had begun solidifying their personalities, though, it became less a frenzy and more of a full contact chess match.  The opposing armies knew what to expect of one another, and how to respond – and vise-versa.  The Revenant had been expecting the Needles, who, while individually unpredictable, were known for unit cohesion until a unit’s breaking point was reached.  They had planned for the Needles – their disbursement and plan of attack based around getting the shambling idiots to break without exposing themselves too much to the flood that would happen afterwards.

The Furies, though, were a different story.

Second only to the Demons in terms of willingness to get shit done, they rushed.  And the buzzing of weapons was already in the air, voices on the com calling out targets and then degenerating into a slew of curses and silence and percussive notes melee weapons.  “Front right – they’re here, they’re” the com went dead as the suit locked up, signaling a kill.

Garrett and the two others leaned over the side and began firing at the shadows in the smoke.  “Back right and left,” Garrett barked into the com, “they’re using the smoke as cover and heading for the base – do not pop smoke!”  The front buildings were blocking his view, but he could hear the units within calling targets in a wild frenzy, their patience snapped.  “Well…fuck it.  We’re done anyway.”  He switched the gun for the claymore/spear thing, maglocking his rifle, and then stood.  And lept.

“Surprise, fuckers!”  He landed swinging, catching the first Fury in the stomach and barely taking note that one light went on in her helm.

The claymore/spear thing relied on momentum.  He had to be in constant movement with it, and its weight took a toll faster that he was comfortable with.  He turned the first swing into a kind of pirouette, ducking his body while leaning back and sweeping the blade around and up, before bringing it down and turning his wrist slightly to avoid having it strike the ground should he miss.

He didn’t.

The blade struck the winded Fury across the helmet and back.  He rushed her, bashing the pommel into the top of her head, ignoring the lessons his family had taught him about hitting girls – lessons that meant a quick loss against the Furies, who had no male members.

He kept in motion, turning aside blades with his own, dodging when he could, and keeping the blade spinning and singing.  The weight of the blade, and his willingness to move with it and control it by letting it loose, made him seem preternaturally fast, and his arms vibrated with the blows his landed.  A sword caught him down across the back, and he brought his blade around in a murderous back swing.  One light flashed on in his visor, and the rate of fire from the guns would soon bring on a second light – and with that an “oh fuck” sensation.  He didn’t want to end with a locked suit for his last match with the Revenants.  He wanted to win, and to be there at the end.

The smoke wasn’t dissipating fast enough and the dirt and dust was getting churned up in the dry autumn air and the one light was blinding him further and the Furies kept coming.

“Walt, the fuck are you?”

“They’re in the fucking buildings!”

“Who’s in the fucking base?  This is Garrett – who the fuck is in the base?”

The com filled with the hiss and thwump of paintball fire.  “Ian and Quint,” said Quint’s voice.  Two of the Nulls.  Garrett found himself smiling grimly as he switched hands on the run, catching the wrist of a Fury and bringing the blade across into the arm.

“Ian, make a play for their base!  Quint, you have enough to hold the fort?”

“Copy,” Quint said.

Garrett’s grin grew wider, his sword claiming a Fury and the light in his visor growing dark.  Once enough time had passed without serious damage, the suit would return to full power, a nice conceit to the videogame crowd.  Another way though was to score enough points with your melee weapon, letting the brawlers have a somewhat fair chance against those who had sensible ideas like “cover” and “not standing there like an asshole getting shot at”.

Other Revenant were coming out of the buildings, but it looked more like they were getting forced out by the flood of orange and blue.  “Yo, Garrett!”  Ian’s voice on the com.  “Coming up behind you!”  Garrett gave a glance and nodded, then began running with Ian.  Ian was in siege mode, a shield braced on one arm, and the equivalent of a shotgun in his free hand, and Garrett ran, switching from the claymore/spear thing to his riffle and gladius on the fly.  The moves had been practiced, worked until he could do it without missing a step.  “I’ll go first,” Ian said, both of them firing into the press of bodies.

“Duh,” Garrett said, slipping in a fresh clip.  “What’s happening back at the base?”

“Quint has it covered,” was all Ian said, and Garrett hoped that it wasn’t yet that bad.  “Why the fuck are we fighting the Furies?  I thought today was the fucking junkie assholes!”

“I thought so, too – they got the drop on us.”

“Aren’t the Judges supposed to warn us about this shit?”

“Eleven o’clock!”

“See ‘em – also, where are those fuckers?”

“Rooftops of the bases – do you even read the e-mails they send oufuckers!” He sprayed round to his right, forcing the Fury back behind cover.  “Taking it,” he said, and charged.  He ran, hunkered low and leading with the rifle, the gladius flat against its length.  He held fire, trusting his armor to take the first rounds without a light coming on.  The orange helmet appeared, and he let a three round burst out, blinding the visor and forcing the fury back.  He brought the gladius forward – only coming out of his crouch to vault the cover that the Fury was hiding behind.  He lashed out with the gladius, the rifle rising to cover his right flank.  He slammed the gladius against the impact padding on the Fury’s armor, slashing until the other grew rigid, and finally fell over.  Garrett blind fired in the direction of shadows in the smoke.  “Coming back,” he voxed.

“Taking fire from the objective,” Ian said, “can you please shoot these bitches?”

“On it!  Walt, where do we stand on taking the buildings?”

“Walter’s down,” the Bastard’s voice slinked through the com.  “We’re making our way up the right, but the Furies are mirroring us on the left.  I’m in right-holding-two.  I have visual on you.”

Garrett held back a curse.  “Take r-h-three, get someone covering Ian between l-h-two and –three.  We’re taking the objective.”

“Coming up behind you,” said the Bastard.  And then, there he was.  His gun was designed to look like an M-60, with a magazine larger than any others in the Revenants.  “Opening up,” he said, and began blasting the windows of the second building, the one to Ian’s back.  “Move you shits!”

Garrett and Ian moved, staying low and firing.  Ian had the shotgun wedged into a break in his shield – chugging out shells each time he rammed the pump through the wedge.  Garrett had no cover, and the press of the orange paintballs made the first light go on again, his right eye closing even as his left began to twitch.  He had never been completely comfortable with the Revenants’ preference for house to house fighting – he preferred the melee press that let him use the overcompensator until it sung.  And he wanted it to sing now, as his eye began to twitch.

He saw the flash of orange in the doorway of the objective, the Fury leveling her weapon at him before taking the full brunt of Ian’s shotgun blast, her chest turning the midnight blue and purple of Revenant ammo.  Garrett fired, exaggerating the recoil so the muzzle rose.  Her visor flashed blue, the paint mixed with the lights as her suit locked and she thudded to the ground.  “Entering,” Ian called, and Garrett covered the other corner as Ian vaulted in.  Garret heard the crunch, but wasn’t sure if it was Ian crushing the prone Fury or smacking his shield into another.  “It’s empty!”

“What,” Garrett asked, entering behind him.  To his amazement, Ian was right.  “Up,” he said.  He followed Ian up, taking stairs backwards to provide cover.  The only person at the top was the Judge.  “Nyle Turla and Ian O’Brian, of the Revenants,” Garrett said.  The Judge nodded, the silver battle suit seeming to shimmer in the diffuse light.  There was a mutter behind the helmet, and then the blat of a horn.  Below them, the battle ceased.  Garret put his gladius back on his calf’s maglock, and held his rifle across his chest in a non-threatening way.  “That’s it, then,” he said, reaching up to close his sending com.  Ian said nothing.  Then Garrett joined him in silence for a moment.  “The fuck are you doing?”

The bastard stood over the Fury, his back to Garrett and Ian.  Then they heard the sound, and followed it to the Fury’s visor, where a stream of urine impacted and ran along the seams, finding its way in.

Garrett felt some chain in his mind snap, and he dropped his rifle.  He tackled the Bastard, carrying the two of them through the doorway.  He held the Bastard down, his hands clawing at the helmet while slamming it down against the dirt.  He felt hands on him, and he thrashed them off, never letting go of the helmet, twisting it so the visor was down, taking the impact.  He didn’t know how long he did this, how long it took for the others to pull him away.  He didn’t care.  His helmet was wrenched off, and he felt hands on his throat, but he head butted them away, only for them to return again.

Finally he relented.  Finally he stopped.

Ian, Quint, and Walt herded him towards the parking lot, some of the other Nulls carrying his kit, along with a few of the Furies – silent, their visors dark and revealing nothing.  Garrett was forced into back of his own car, and he sat stock still, looking at nothing, while Quint talked to the Furies, Ian adding details.  The Garrett could barely hear them, only picking up on a few notes of the conversation.  Finally, Ian got into the car, Walt taking the passenger seat, and Quint the back passenger seat.

And that was how the Revenants ended.  And from there, they joined new armies.