units. When numbers are negligibly large, and enemies comparably limited, why care about acting as a team? They only kept tidy lines because the field commanders needed for whatever reason to be able to estimate how many soldiers were in play at a time. Squeeze the trigger. They did not fire in unison. The Grand Infantry did that, thanks to years of training and experience. The antithesis of the indentures. Get good enough at fighting, he thought, and you don’t see so much of it anymore. Survive to young adulthood, and get to live to retirement. One in five, was it? Pull it back. He watched the edge of the entrenchment grow close, the whites of his enemies’ eyes narrowed in anger or precision, both of which were oft punctuated by the crack of a rifle. How soon before the handler spurred them into a charge that could only end in death? Line it up. “Move the fuck up! If you don’t get up there and clear the hill, I’ll shoot you myself!” It was an idle threat. Though the handler thought nothing of their lives, to waste a bullet like that would leave him open to the defenders. Squeeze the trigger. The spatter of blood across the ground this time was all telling. A lucky hit, perhaps. He was grimly satisfied, as the ancient wood and metal husk in his hands was not accurate. It didn’t matter if it was a vital hit. The Lexian military’s fondness for chemical warfare was a doubleedged sword. Pull it back. They were close enough that he could make out the fog on their masks, like miniature ghosts peeking out of a mass grave, ready to be put back to rest. He waited for the order to charge, as they had practiced so many times in the months before. But the order never came.
Line it up. He looked over towards the handler, only to realize the handler wasn’t there. Inspector Jabreau lay on his back several paces back, a tear in his mask the size of a fist. He stood alone, a rage building inside of him. Squeeze the trigger. So he fired. He didn’t have a target this time. Just a direction in which someone probably was. There was no response, so either he had fired at nothing or a target had died instantly. Pull it back. He found it funny that they called it the heat of battle. The air was cold as so many soldiers found eternal rest beneath it. Line it up. The first trench was stilled when he leapt in. The liveliest person aside from himself was the soldier who tried to moan but had a darkening splotch where his lungs were. Squeeze the trigger. All alone now. Pull it back. He didn’t know if he had any rounds left. If he did, they had a place where they belonged other than in his gun’s internal magazine. Line it up. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know if there were any targets left. But he continued just the same, because he couldn’t see well enough to make that call. Squeeze the trigger. The bolt clicked against an empty chamber, and he made an addendum to his routine to replace the clip. It too resisted his efforts, more reused equipment that should have long been discarded. And as he reached for his munitions pouch, he saw for the first time the slick upon his own uniform.
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