Saving Corporal Charlie

"Those turrets must have some kind of motion sensors or whatever." Adriano guessed aloud.

"The plan is simple. Just throw anything you have over the side. This will occupy the sensors; meanwhile, I'll roll the mortar on the floor. Being slower, it will hopefully not attract the turret's attention." He explained quickly to the survivors of Team Charlie. Some seemed to have objections but kept them shut to save time.

"Oracle, when I say shoot, activate the mortar, ok?" No response came from Oracle other than a silent mental nod.

The men and women behind him started throwing random stuff and debris they found over the floor, and just as planned, the turrets moved to intercept.

Anything that went over the ledge became ashes before they made it halfway to the floor.

As the turrets played skeet shooting, Adriano pushed the mortar, and it rolled slowly over the floor. He looked anxiously at the small tube crossing the wall and prayed in his head for the turret not to notice it too early.

It kept its momentum, almost halfway through the corridor under a hail of lethal fire when Adriano couldn't handle the tension anymore and ordered Oracle.

"SHOOT!"

A small self-propelled projectile shot forward. Before the automatic turrets could even move to intercept, it hit a small gap in the barricades where they met the wall and slipped behind the fortifications.

The whole crossroad shook from the explosion and triggered a chain reaction, detonating the ammo stored and sending the whole fortified position to kingdom come.

A deafening shockwave echoed in the corridors, shaking the ship and bursting the eardrums of everyone in team Charlie, sending them sprawling on their backs, eardrums busted.

Overpowering his dizziness Adriano got up and peeked behind the corner seeing blazing fires devouring everything in the enemy position. Ignoring the screams of burning aliens, he went to Charlie.

The barricade had melted into a pile of slag. The tech had luckily survived without a hair out of place. Charlie, unfortunately, hadn't been so lucky.

A stray shot had bypassed the defenses and hit his right side, leaving behind fatal injuries. Adriano kneeled next to him and gently raised his hand under Charlie's head.

"Don't worry, Team leader, I still got the Panacea. You are gonna be alright." he took out the black vial and pressed the top, revealing a needle. However, Charlie placed his hand on top of his.

"It's alright, kid, your heart's in the right place, but don' go wasting a second life on a half-man."

Before the ECP, Charlie's life hadn't been easy. When doctors had told his mother that he would be born affected by dwarfism, she went to a clinic to have him aborted. It was a hard decision, but she felt justified that she would be sparing him a life of pain.

However, the abortion didn't take. 99% chance, and she was unlucky enough to land on the 1% failure chance.

After he survived, his parents took it as a sign of god and brought the pregnancy to completion. However, for his whole life, they could never hide the disgust they felt towards him, both in words and actions.

He grew up with no confidence, being punished everywhere he went for the simple crime of being born different.

In the end, he decided to put an end to this cursed life on his terms. He sat on a bridge, and as the sun went down, so did he.

Fortunately or not, depending on whom you ask, he survived the attempt, and when next he reopened his eyes, he was on Mount Olympus, still in his cursed underdeveloped body.

As he learned about the alien menace, he wasn't as scared as others. He embraced it, the fight, the glory, the purpose, and finally the death, on his terms, in a war he chose to join, albeit after being forced into it.

But reality is what you make of it, so what if you made a choice after being forced to? According to Sartre, choosing in itself had intrinsic value. Even choosing to live in chains had its inherent freedom.

So he fought, day after day, month after month, and started taking a liking to life. The men he served with treated him with respect. In front of death, who dares claim to be superior?

Finally, today he would exercise his right to choose and die on his own terms after fighting and valiantly falling in action.

"Half man? More like a quarter man after that shot, and I guess you must have gotten a concussion because you forgot what I said." mocked Adriano with a smirk. "I'm not going out of here without you!" He injected the Panacea, a substance worth more than what an average Folgore would make before falling, and didn't regret it for a moment.

"What have you done?" Charlie asked in surprise as the Panacea made its way through his body. The flesh started to mend, blood replenished as if coming from an infinite spring, and even damaged, or missing bones and organs grew back.

"You said it earlier, half to me and half to you. Don't worry. You can pay the difference in alien skulls." Adriano smiled and gently laid him to recover as he checked the blazing fires.

"Oracle, the defenders, are neutralized. However, the access to the objective is neutralized." Adriano reported to Oracle, awaiting further orders.

He wished the bot in his head would just congratulate him and say, "It's alright, come back to Hq. We have hot cocoa and a hot bath waiting for you."

"Hot cocoa and a bath? After what you did, that can be arranged." Instead of the familiar voice of Oracle, a man's voice rang in his ear.

Oracle had replaced his ears by transmitting the feed of a microphone on his suit, thus giving back his hearing. However, Adriano couldn't locate the voice as he looked around in confusion.

"Behind you." Adriano turned and saw a team of those superhumans in power armors walking over from the direction Charlie's team had come.

"You made quite a show. If only the rest of your generations were as resolute and selfless as you, maybe earth would have been saved, and my ancestors wouldn't have been forced to escape to space." The man spoke slowly. In the beginning, he sounded as if he was congratulating Adriano, but his tone turned grim as he progressed.

"You saw everything? How long have you been here? Also, did you just hear my fantasy?" Unfazed by the herculean figure after his blood and death baptism, Adriano challenged the man, standing toe to toe, but not quite eye to eye because of the half a meter height difference.

"Enough to see your performance. A few more like these, and people will start remembering your name." The man replied, ignoring the latter questioning, and advanced towards the fire.

"Wait, you didn't answer my question! And if you saw everything, why didn't you intervene?" Adriano moved to intercept and stood right in front of him, unflinching.

"I think you got something mixed up. Let me clarify." Ricardo cleared his throat, a dangerous light in his visor hidden eyes.

"You are a Folgore. I am a Republic Special Operator. You don't get to ask questions. I don't have to answer back. Clear? Great, now let me pass."

Adriano didn't move. "And what if I don't?" He challenged.

"Obstruction of a Republic's soldier is a crime punished by death. Your lad has been armed." The flat voice of Oracle chilled Adriano.

"That, now step aside." The Special Operator asked in an icy tone but didn't move to avoid Adriano, waiting for him to step aside.

Adriano even considered punching him just to vent his frustration, but in the end, he took a step to his left and let the Red Team pass through.

They walked into the fire as if it didn't even exist in their eyes and didn't bother looking back at him.

"Your Lad has been disarmed." Oracle took off the finger from the 'Game Over' button, but Adriano still felt humiliated.

------------------------------

The Red Team crossed the ocean of fire fed by alien corpses and fancy electronics. The high temperatures were not enough to penetrate their power armors.

A dozen steps later, they arrived at the door of the life support systems. With a swoosh, it opened, revealing various types of machinery and tanks of liquids hard at work to keep the ship functional and the crew alive.

"No enemy signs. Wolfhard, proceed with the havoc." Ricardo ordered, keeping his guard up.

Wolfhard nodded and went to a particularly busy twist of pipes and machines. He dismantled something and replaced it with a box that they had brought with them.

When he finished the installation, the twist looked exactly the same, no one would be able to spot the difference, except it looked a little less worn out.

What Wolfhard had just placed would soon spell doom for millions or even tens of millions of aliens.

"I hope they all suffer and burn in hell." Ricardo said with a disgusted tone.