A cybernetic organism created in the image of it’s fallen brethren,
flexes it’s fingers, pupils disappearing after a shot of adrenaline.
He coughed and heaved, still hearing the beast screech as it stomped and cleaved,
took a couple of steps with frozen knees, mind awoken while slowly leaving,
the last instance of his existence created in a web they’re slowly weaving,
through worlds rich in rare Earths and precious metals, their reapers harvest,
when kill rates equal margins stock markets leap, reflecting frequent progress.
After every time awoken, we swear allegiance to the Astral Corporation.
Formal stations picked after forms are filled out about our fatal situations.
I calmly wrote about how I screamed while smashed to pieces,
before my nano-treatment’s defenses engaged their activation sequence.
The last moment I remember’s reaching for my particle beam’s battery,
I wake up from a dead sleep with my hand seeking the same place naturally,
it’s a motion I’ve been practicing. Flipping the latch, slapping the cartridge in.
The repeated catharsis keeps me sane until the carnage begins.
You could feel the tension through the ship like an energy of it’s own,
in the dark corners of weary eyes and the absence of talk about home.
We gather in a deployment chamber, a void devoid of noise or hints of danger.
I wink at a stranger before the flash hits. He’s three feet away as we splash in,
I’m laughin’. You need a distraction if you’re to make it out alive,
he’s cut to a thousand pieces by clashing teeth of the Zergling hive,
while my thrusters guide me to the top of a mound of corpses, I sheath my knife,
forget to breathe as I see the light, bodies evaporate in a disgusting cloud of evil strife.
Seize the night. A demon three stories high shits this bastard scourge to amass his herd,
blood splashed and burned my feet, my last concern. A grenade left my hand undeterred,
cleansed a third of the forces we hadn’t purged before I led the surge..
My feet sank into crimson puddles, boots sizzling as we charged their spawning beacon,
their fickle frontline crumbled under an alien sun and our legions of fawning demons.
I marched over their crawling tentacles and sharpened limbs to test the line,
in the first wave of a dawning spectacle that will seize their mines for the rest of time.