A Lake in Juno Forest

amart29 (68)in #esteem • 5 years ago

Greetings to everyone, the following story was inspired by the digital art of @xpilar, I invite you to visit his blog. The picture that motivated this story is the following.

Fuente

A Lake in Juno Forest

Bruno's unit had been designated along with two other platoons to take positions on the shores of a lake in Juno, one of the moons of Cepheus, a place where a rebel cell of this planet had been tracked, during the night two furtive ships dropped the three pods in which the members of the platoons were contained.

The objective of the operation was to cut the possible escape route of the rebels, when in the morning the attack began on their positions in the middle of the forest. They had to fix six plasma cannons to attack the armored transports and enemy combat pods and stop them preventing their escape.

The transport pods were opened shortly before midnight, allowing the thirty-six infantry soldiers to leave. The pods, a type of bullet-shaped capsule, were simply containers with two rows of seats and space needed to house the soldiers, dressed in exoskeletons and armor, along with all their equipment. They were designed to be thrown into the water a few kilometers from the coast and once submerged, release their locks and then open like pea pods, letting in the water and leaving the soldiers who would move underwater to reach the coast.

Bruno, one more soldier of one of the three platoons assigned to the mission, advanced using the thrusters of his exoskeleton, along with the other twelve members of his group, his platoon was to be stationed in the central zone of the beach, weakened by the other two platoons, however, when he began to emerge on the beach, the scenario was different from what they had expected.

Somehow the operation had been discovered by the rebels, days later it would be known that there was an agent infiltrated in the war office of the ministry of security of Cepheus, who was in charge of giving notice of the plans.

As they emerged and began to position themselves, ten combat pods began to bombard from low altitude the unsuspecting soldiers, who had not yet deployed the plasma weapons, the platoons were forced to retreat to the central area of the beach where they resisted the fire of the pods for several minutes until, from inside the forest, they began to fire plasma bomb bursts at them.

The armour and exoskeletons could not withstand the attack for long and one after the other the soldiers were torn apart by the violent explosions, as the deflector shields of their armour gave way to the impacts.

Bruno, located in the middle of the mass of piled soldiers, shooting without ton ni son, to the pods that, first they made them group and then they cut the escape to them, counted on the luck of not being reached by the impacts of the bombs of plasma the beginning of the bombardment, while the bodies and the mass of parts of armor and exoskeletons piled around him, preventing him the exit and at the same time, luckily for him, keeping him partially protected of the explosions.

By the time a plasma bomb finally exploded just above his head, causing him to lose consciousness, the attack was almost over.

Bruno awoke from his lethargy, when his armor released the locks that kept it closed, when his cargo reached a critical level, he felt his ears ringing and his head throbbing. Luckily for him, the deflectors of his armor, which had received almost no impacts, were able to withstand an explosion which, if it had not been for them, would have torn off his head and part of his torso.

As she managed to get out of the sparkling remains of her armor, she looked burned and aboyed, but still whole, all around her the ground was stained by puddles of partially dried blood, as the sand had absorbed it. Members and parts of the body, still stuffed in scorched and sparkling pieces of armor, were scattered all over the place.

With the exception of Bruno, all the infants in the three platoons had been torn apart by the blasts. The pods and troops of the rebels had left the beach leaving behind that carnage, to face the attack that by another flank would be carried by air and land units, loyal to the government of Cepheus.

Bruno would remain for a week outdoors in the middle of the remains of his fallen comrades, he was found when finally the rebel cell surrendered and the terrain could be retaken. He was dehydrated and completely disconnected from reality.

According to his own account, some time later, he felt he was in a kind of transept, simply lethargic, morbidly enraptured observing the slaughter that had happened there, he remained seated in the same place and the same position during the week that he spent in that place, without eating, drinking water or sleeping, simply observing day and night that scenario.

Text of @amart29 Barcelona, Venezuela, August 2019

A Lake in Juno Forest

A Lake in Juno Forest

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