• The sun was shining down onto his armor, but the dull sheen kept it from reflecting off. The black color simply sucked it in, absorbed it. The light was eaten by the suit. It was consumed and then it was gone. Felix had learned that even armor with a slight reflection, shined by proud grunts, could lead to the death of a hundred soldiers. It was a foolish and rookie mistake, but it was still made. The same thing had happened last month, where a soldier thought that if he shined his armor he’d look nice for the cameras when they came down planet side. A stupid, stupid, notion, but he was just a kid. That being said, he was a kid with a hundred corpses weighing on his mind. The armor caught the eyes of an enemy cannon placement, hidden deep in the rubble of one of their destroyed obelisks. They rained hell down onto the human warriors and managed to destroy every single one of them except the one who had actually shined his armor. There were stories going around that they did that on purpose because they hoped he would do it again. But Felix thought it was just God playing one of his tricks on a poor boy who was too stupid to understand the unspoken rules of war. Nobody had told him not to do that, he’d said. Nobody told him s**t. It wasn't his ******** fault. And of course it was true, because every soldier was so used to their battered black armor that they forgot it had once proudly shone a long time ago. They didn’t know that they were supposed to tell the new kid that maybe shining his helmet was a bad thing. Maybe they didn’t even notice until they were in the field. It didn’t matter anymore though. It was just something that had happened in a battle-field where that had become standard.
    Mistakes on the battle-field were common and quickly punished. The kid with the shining armor knew that firsthand now. A single mistake had cost lives. They weren’t expected to be perfect, but they were expected to at least do a damned better job than what they were doing. Not by their officers in space or the generals who commanded them out of their tanks, but by their fellow soldiers who relied on the guy next to him more than his gun. Because when it came down to it, the guy in the foxhole next to you was the one who was saving your life. They provided covering fire; they provided a grenade when a horde of alien Fodder was marching towards them. They provided the voice of comfort in the middle of the night when the only other sound was the sound of the alien winds racing across the wastes. Most of all, they provided the shoulder to rest on when a battle managed to destroy just about every reservoir of strength you had. They gave you a joke when everyone understood that it was needed. It was in this way that they managed to survive the war. What they carried was each other, what they held was their rifle. But everyone knew it was different, even if it sounded the same or similar. It was a sort of bond that couldn’t be broken or understood by the man at home or the officer in space. It was what they had between them, unspoken but noticed.
    In this way, they managed to move on through the screaming wastes and into the firefight where even a single bolt of laser fire could end your life or send waves of agony all up and down your body. Felix remembered when he’d been shot once, a laser bolt managed to pierce the weaker metal that protected his hips. He had reached down and clamped a strong armored hand against the hole, trying to keep the breathable air from leaking out and the alien air from invading and killing him from the inside of a tin-can. A medic named Bentley raced up to his side and taped up the hole, then injected him with a pain-killer from a small port in his wrist. The medic clapped him on the shoulder and made his visor see-through. He was smiling like a maniac and he said: “Looks like you won’t be dancing like you used to, Felix, those spins are gonna be killer now.” The medic retreated away from him and all Felix could do was stare at where he’d been. He found that he was smiling too. No, he wouldn’t be dancing would he? The idea of him swirling like a ballerina managed to dull the pain more than the actual pain-killer that was running its way through his veins, circulating and killing every feeling in his body except the occasional shiver that ran up his spine when he heard a scream come from his side and then the explosive psssshhhhh of air escaping the entire suit. The medic actually came back several times, and he was still smiling. He’d lend the occasional joke at him. “Hey dancer Felix,” he’d said, “gonna miss those twirls, man.” And, “Hey Felix-Holy ******** what’s the matter? Get shot or something?” But every time the medic did come back he injected him with another pain killer before vanishing back to where the rest of the troopers were. Once the firefight with the aliens was over they called down a pod for him and he was sent back to the Imperious for extensive surgery. They had to repair and replace the bone that had been melted and remove part of his kidney that had been blasted to black ink. He was back on the frontline in a matter of weeks. The sheer leaps made in medical science still amazed Felix.
    Felix and his battalion was now in a broken down alien city. Obelisks were toppled over like dead snakes, broken pieces of the strange mineral used to craft them lay in huge heaps made to be barriers. The tanks were in the front of the line clearing out the main road. The troops had been calling it ‘Satan’s a*****e’ for as long as they’d been in the city, which was seventeen days counting today. Felix watched the huge obelisks, expecting a sniper to send a laser bolt through him or the soldier next to him. It would be a split second and it’d be over. But Felix realized he only acknowledged this in a way that a child might abstractly acknowledge that he might get in trouble if he stole a cookie. He knew the danger was there, but he didn’t care. If a bolt did kill him, then he’d die. It was simple. It was something that made sense to him at least. And it made sense to all the other soldiers. Not many still cared about death if they had been planet-side for more than a month. They had seen their share of it. They had watched it happen to their friends and maybe even family. They had gotten so used to it that it didn’t seem like death anymore. Felix distantly remembered when his grandfather had passed away that he’d been furious. He’d hated God and himself and even his grandpa for it. Why did he have to die he asked God, himself, and his grandfather? Was it destiny or was it just something that happened? Felix had since grown accustom to the latter. It just happened. You couldn’t do anything about it except accept it. s**t happened and sure, it sucked, but if you were still kicking than you better be thankful because at least that let you keep moving your legs in the way you knew how up and down the city, through the streets and maybe around that corner you’d get shot to. But would it matter? No, because you’d be too dead to give a s**t.
    The soldiers had since stopped noticing death. If someone fell over in their armor, they’d throw jokes at it or ask if there was a soldier in there or a sack of bricks. Both they would all reply, and then someone would ask if they should go through their belongings and they’d all call the pictures of his girlfriend or family. Man, they’d say, maybe I’ll pay his sister a visit or maybe it was the mother. It didn’t matter because he was dead and who was there to give a s**t? Just a sack of bricks in an army suit, and that couldn’t speak up much when they said that his sister had great tits or an a** that blew their minds out sorta like the bolt blew his brains all across the street. Then they would move on and they’d keep walking and they’d keep laughing. The jokes would eventually subside and someone would ask if they remembered the time Johnson saved their lives or maybe talk about how Johnson had a girlfriend he’d been eager to get back to. Maybe I’ll pay her a visit instead, one of them might say, and the jokes would start up again but this time more fervently because they hated how they were reminded that the suit full of bricks had once been a person they trusted and cared about. They all had to cope with it someway. The more religious folks turned to prayer and God, a thing that Felix couldn’t understand no matter how hard he tried to. He asked that if there was a God, why would he let s**t like that happen to all of them? And they’d reply that it was God’s strange sense of humor or maybe that he had big plans for all of them after this. The more zealous said the aliens were the minions of Lucifer and God was sending them on a holy crusade across the planet to wipe them out. Whatever reason it was, it never made sense of Felix. That wasn’t to say he didn’t believe in God, he just didn’t think God cared anymore about them than they did about gnats. They were a science experiment and when God got a C+ he put them in his closet.
    The city structures reached higher into the sky as they progressed through the blown-out streets. Every time they came across a building with a door open they invaded it and searched for anything in their without a human face. Most times it was like walking into your own grave because the aliens would cover the building in traps or maybe there would be one waiting around the corner expecting you to run right into them so they could blow you straight to Hell before you could say “oops.” Since they all understood that it was a death sentence most of the time they drew straws or took turns. They even used use the online gambling system and they’d all roll dice and whoever got the smallest number was the first one in. They stopped this after Jeremy Franklin managed to cheat and get the dice to roll sixes every time. He was chosen for house-sweeping duty for three weeks after that. It was during one of these house raids that he got his arm blown off.
    “Shows him,” someone would say, “cheaters never win. That’s what my momma told me.”
    “Yeah,” someone else would say, “he got too comfy waiting on the sidelines. Forgot how to shoot his damn gun. I mean, you shoulda seen the look on his goddamn face when he arm was blown out the damned window, man. The damned window!”
    They took Jeremy’s arm and passed it around all the ranks. They gave it a high five for ‘good luck.’ Then they packed it into the body bag with the rest of Jeremy. They went through his pockets and pulled out a war diary that he’d kept in one of his pockets. They read a few pages, but when tears rose in their eyes they all said it was ‘pansy bullshit’ and threw it into a fire. Nobody questioned why their voices struggled to get out the words clearly. They all understood, they also knew that if you pointed it out you didn’t belong with them. They’d all recommend you to another battle group and you’d be gone. But it was the same there too and you never really got to understand because nobody told you s**t, like the kid with the shiny armor. Nobody told you s**t, you’d say, it wasn’t your ******** fault.