Officer Training, the Eraser, the mission

It was the middle of winter, and for me, I suppose Christmas came early for me that year. I would go through several more successful hunts and earn my place as an Initiate in the Legion. The standards are a little higher for those with my background because we have the numerous advantages of being something more than human.

I was judged by those higher up to have "leadership potential" in some form instead of just being a regular line trooper. I proved that I could fight and win, and on a few occasions, I also confirmed that I knew when to run instead of making the Last Stand.

I'm not going to go into the details of Officer Training School. It was a lot like basic training had been during the morning and afternoon. Still, too many afternoons were spent in a classroom in lectures and learning everything from mathematics, physics, and interrogation techniques to more esoteric subjects like "magic," psionic powers, heretic spotting, xenobiology and more.

I think the best summary of Officer Training School was made by one of the instructors early on, "We're teaching you how to be a one-man catastrophe to the enemy while keeping track and directing 49 other one-man catastrophes into the enemy."

I remember that almost every instructor except the combat instructors were disabled: Missing eyesight, a leg, an arm, ruptured eardrums, and sometimes worse. The Legion wasted none of its abilities, skills, or talent. None of it. Every drop of it is precious. It's not a wonder that so few of us have reached retirement age.

Casualties are an unfortunate part of life in the Legion, and we could never get enough people to fill every void. But then, I knew that the Legion's near desperate need for manpower resulted from the Decimation.

The Decimation, causes, and loss of 2,000 personnel are available to those with the rank and clearance at or above Carmine Upsilon Magenta. I would suggest reading it if you can.

For the moment, my main focus, having survived Officer Training, was filling in a blank file in a unit tasked with taking down the serial killer stalking Lausanne. Whoever, or whatever he was, had upped the stakes.

He had taken his first "official" victim on May 4, 2004. However, Legion's historical records and support cadres believe that Lausanne was the chosen hunting ground for at least a decade longer. His twelve-year killing spree left a trail of fifty disappearances, all of whom are deceased. No remains recovered.

Our serial killer had picked his victims wisely, ensuring that their passing would not greatly slow the hustle and bustle of daily life. That was until September 2006. It was more than one person, but their attempted cover-up had been amateurish at best.

The tragic bus accident failed to account for the fact that out of 50 tourists, the only ones missing were twenty women. The men and children? The fortunate ones died. The surviving handful of adults and seven children were traumatized to the point of catatonia or psychosis. They were cared for, and The Legion kept a careful watch, but they succumbed to their broken minds in a few years.

Naturally, this moved the "Eraser," this cult, to the top of the Legion's priority list.

The Legion had maintained an active hunt for this particular serial killer, and it involved the power of modern technology to make the breakthrough. It's no secret that we will use everything we can get our hands on. In this case, Kirsten Ammer, a technophile and one of the many support assets that the Legion employs, worked her brand of techno sorcery, getting a fix on so many missing cellphones.

Said signals were clustered in the forested outskirts of the same village where their bus had overturned and gone over the side of a hilly road. If the bus had caught fire as it was supposed to, things might have turned out differently for many.

The individual Legion Operation Centers tend to number between fifty and a hundred individuals, including several Initiates like myself. I'd already proven that I could handle myself in a fight. Still watching over me like a mother hen, Tamara decided this was my chance to lead a live op as her second in command.

It was a team of fifteen composed of six Legionnaires, a medic, two shapeshifters, and six Initiates. Our orders were simple: Threat Level Assessment, secure, contain, and neutralize. Search and Destroy authorized.

We fight the war in secret. Legion sends its best and brightest scraped from the bottom of the barrel with the best possible training, offensive armaments, and defensive protection.

Mark VI Dragon Scale Combat Armor comprises hundreds of two-inch titanium scales overlapping like scale mail armour. Titanium thread holds the scales to a partly elastic stab-resistant undershirt. The result is body armour that allows for greater ranges of motion and flexibility without compromising protection. It's like wearing a suit of ultralight chain mail armour.

Offensive firepower comes from a mix of Swiss Sig 551 SWAT, French FAMAS, German-made GC3, and AG36 with 40mm underslung grenade launchers and British L85A2 assault rifles.

My Brugger and Thommet MP9 submachine guns are small, compact, and rode in their holsters on my hips. I preferred to fight up close with claws and a handgun. Tamara, by contrast, is a believer in overwhelming firepower. Enter the LX -27 Land Hammer. It fires a 5.56 mm semi-armour piercing, a twelve-gauge under-barrel shotgun, and a 40 mm over-barrel pump-action grenade launcher. The steroid-enhanced version of the American Objective Individual Combat Weapon.

It was a support weapon that needed a team of two to operate because of its fully-loaded weight and the ammo weight for its three weapon systems. The box magazine held two hundred 5.56 SAP rounds, and the bullpup style clip held fifteen shotgun rounds, with a grenade in the pipe.

She, like me, could carry its fully loaded 40 pounds with one hand.

Armed and armoured, it was a short air trip via CH-53 Sea Stallion – call sign Pharaoh - to Froideville; this tiny patch of Switzerland measured just a hair over 7 square kilometres, with more than half of it forested with a population of fewer than 2000 souls. Imagine the stereotypical small town that appears in a horror movie, and you wouldn't be far off imagining what this small Swiss municipality is like.

From the moment I stepped aboard that chopper, the nerves hit me in the gut like a baseball bat. I stumbled into my seat, sat there, and waited. Before dusting off, I'd already checked my weapons, personal radio rig, and the pockets of my webbing jacket – worn over the body armour – twice.

I think everyone on that chopper could see my nerves working me over, and it became apparent the second time I cracked my knuckles. We were flying low over some forest when Tamara finally broke the silence, using a private radio link, "Are you ready for this?"

The radio channel was riddled with static, and I nodded, thankful that the enclosed helm hid my face from view, "Real battle, with people counting on you to protect and cover them, just as you depend on them…" she glanced over at me. I'm sure she wondered if I was paying attention to anything she said, "Are you ready to kill?"

"It's what has to be done," I tried to keep my voice level, even though I doubted she could hear the shake over the drone of the rotor blades, "Killed quite a few… things already, plus if it serves the will of the Darkness, it's not human anymore."

"Remember that," she said quietly, "Those ascended, turned or embraced are not human. What you face here is potentially still human. Not fully corrupted, but also unsalvageable." It felt like I'd been punched in the chest. I felt every fear and doubt engulf my heart as I looked around.

The chopper's interior was tomb silent, and I realized this was just how Legion went to war. There was no shouting, no war cries. Just cold, reserved, professional silence. I was sitting amongst these men and women, the wind whipping through the cabin.

Somewhere during that last thirty seconds, my throat had swelled and closed, cutting off my ability to speak and breathe as I nodded, seconds before a deep red light flooded the cabin. We moved like a single organism, all of us snapping hooks onto the line before I glanced out the window. The terrain below matched almost perfectly against the satellite imagery I'd memorized just hours before.

The red glow turned amber, and the chopper dropped into a steep dive, levelling off at what pilots call the "nape of the earth." Treetops brushed against the chopper's skids before the ground, ten meters below, started to rush past us. The roar of the rotor blades, the smell of fuel, and green trees mingled together.

Then a green light flashed with an alert tone, and we jumped.