2025-09-26 19:35:56
Neo MoroengThis chapter is built as a breath between storms, yet it is no reprieve. After the twin assaults, the firebase is less a sanctuary than a fracture-point where men and women stumble through exhaustion, ritual, and absurdity. Their conversations are not digressions, but survival tactics, schemas by which they make the unbearable livable. The title reflects this: a schema is both a mental pattern and a military plan, and here both collapse under the weight of battle. The General’s walk through the base flows from trauma to gallows humor to private farewells. Even the duel deferred into kinship, and Nancy’s reminder to see Ka!ri as a woman, not a soldier, underline the fragile human core struggling to persist within the machinery of war.
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Chapter 141: The Fire in the Dust
The hum of the repair bay still clung to my ears when the call came through. Olympus never waited for silence, it always pierced through noise, the way gods cut through prayer. Helene was already there, her visor reflecting the pale green shimmer of the command-link. I joined her reluctantly, my body heavy from Aftermath Schema, but there was no time for weariness. The hologram unfolded in the center of the chamber, Adebayo’s silhouette framed by the polished obsidian glare of her council. Her voice was calm, almost bored, which made the words that followed colder. “A technosignature has been detected,” she said. “Patterned. Non-random. A vessel, or what remains of one, sits beneath the desert haze. It emits across spectrum bands. Ordered energy. Not natural. This cannot be ignored.” Helene stepped forward before I could answer. “Then we will not ignore it. My unit will investigate immediately.” She didn’t even look at me, but I could feel the weight of her challenge, the way she ma
Chapter 140: The Aftermath Schemas
The firebase smelled of burnt hydraulics, blood, and dust. The kind of smell that got into the back of the throat and stayed there no matter how many times you swallowed. I pushed through the pressure lock into the main hangar, where the exos lined the floor like broken giants waiting for surgeons. Their limbs sagged, hydraulics bleeding fluid onto the grit. Armor plating was charred black or scored with claw marks. Men and women crawled out of them like molted insects, faces pale, eyes sunk deep.The battles had hollowed us. Everyone walked slower, spoke softer, as if the air itself had grown too heavy to carry words. And yet, when men are broken, they still find ways to patch themselves with jokes. That was what I heard first.“Hell of a great day, wasn’t it?” a corporal rasped, peeling his helmet off and revealing a face so raw it could’ve been carved out of leather. His laughter was sharp and humorless.Another soldier answered, “Great day for Olympus maybe. For us it was suicide
Chapter 139: Confrontation with Gods
The air was still bitter with smoke when I bent to Van Wyk. He had crumpled under his own weight after the fight with wave of the infected, half-man, half-ruin, veins glowing like fissures in volcanic rock. His breath rattled in short, broken bursts, every inhale a gamble. I caught him beneath the arms, his body fever-hot, slick with ichor and sweat, and hauled him upright. For a moment I thought he would collapse again, but his legs found purchase, trembling, refusing to betray him entirely. His eyes met mine, pupils ringed in that impossible green, and there was no plea in them—only a strange, stubborn loyalty. It unsettled me more than despair would have. I turned him toward the horizon. We both saw it. Not a storm, though it looked like one: a long, rising wall of dust rolling across the Martian plain, stretching from one jagged ridge to the next. The sun, low and pale above the desert, caught the edges of that dust and set it alight as though a fire moved beneath it. Then came t
Chapter 138: The Great Day
The chamber smelled of steel, disinfectant, and fear. Van Wyk sat strapped to the hover-gurney, his veins glowing faintly green in the half-light, the infection pulsing just beneath his skin like molten glass waiting to break through. His eyes were wet, too human for what he was supposed to have become. Guards stood at the corners, rifles tilted, exosuit hydraulics sighing like beasts in the dark. I stood over him, arms folded, the General’s weight heavier tonight than on any other night. The gamble was in my bones. “We’ve tested you in the cell,” I said. “You answered. But this is different. Out there it’s chaos. Can you follow a command? Without hesitation?” Van Wyk swallowed hard, his throat working against the collar of his harness. He nodded, but the nod wavered. “I can,” he said, his voice thin but steady. “If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop. If you tell me to call, I’ll call. I still know who I am.” Helene’s arms were crossed tight, her jaw set in disdain. “This is madness,”
Chapter 137: The Gods of War
The dust had now settled from the breach when Amani found me. His face was streaked with grit, his armor dulled with soot, but his eyes carried something sharper than exhaustion: recognition. He had seen a pattern, and in this war, patterns were as dangerous as blades. He had the kind of eyes that caught things others missed, details carried in the quiet margins. His voice was low, almost conspiratorial, but in the tense air of the command deck it landed like thunder. “General,” he said, his breath fogging against the visor of his helm, “the infected—when they froze under Van Wyk’s call—it wasn’t random. Their clicks… they followed cadence. Not frenzy. Obedience. He steadied them. Even when Helene broke it with that shot, they hesitated first.” I turned to him, the weight of his words pressing harder than the alarms. “You’re certain?” Amani nodded. “I’ve listened to beasts before, sir. The sound of a pack is different from the sound of prey. Those things weren’t hunting. They were…
Chapter 136: In the Dust, Through Amani’s Eyes
The firebase still rang in my bones. Not in my ears — that shriek of sirens had finally dulled into silence — but deeper, in marrow, in blood, as if the alarms had rewired me to always be on edge. Even after the guns went quiet and the infected scattered back into the Martian dunes, the air hummed with phantom panic. We sat in the dust after the slaughter. Soldiers dragged the wounded to medical pods, black ichor clung to armor like tar, and the towers burned red against the desert night. No one spoke above a murmur. Even the veterans — Ka!ri, the General, Rachel with her restless eyes — looked hollowed. I kept replaying the moment. The gate opening. The desert yawning wide like a mouth. Van Wyk glowing green in his veins, strapped down like a sacrifice. The infected bowing before him. And then Helene’s shot — a crack across everything. The memory tasted of ash. I had fired too. My HK416 had bucked against my shoulder, its AN/PEQ-15 lasers slicing lines across infected flesh. I rem
