Chapter One: History Lesson.

Mankind has existed for less than a blink of an eye compared to the heavenly bodies and the very ground it currently resides on.
During this time however, it has progressed greatly from the primitive cavemen of the past to the modern man.

Mankind tamed the elements, mastered the beasts that killed its predecessors and ultimately tapped the Saidith, the primal energy that had created the world eons ago.
But for all its greatness, mankind had faltered on many occasions.
Genocides and other crimes against humanity stained the history of man like the stars littered the great vastness beyond the sky. Among those deeds of evil was what most archivers refer to only as ''The twenty fourth''. It was and is to date, the single greatest atrocity in remembrance. It claimed the lives of 4.9 billion people and was set in motion by two men on one fateful night, on the twenty fourth of Ast...

''...can take a break now, it'll be a few hours before we can process these reports. Hey, are you still with me?''
Agustus jerked his head up towards the noise of his comrade speaking. He hadn't slept in a week straight.
''Agustus, get some rest. You're of no use to us in this state. Besides, we have a few hours until we start again.''
''It won't matter, Helum. You know that.'' He said, half heartedly.
''It'll be just like yesterday or the day before that. I'll be dead, enclosed in a wodden chest and five feet underground before I can get some rest''
This was much to Helums dismay. He'd known Agustus was prone to fits of insomnia that often lasted for week and brought the poor man to the brink of insanity.
He raised his hand and gave him a sign with his forefinger and middle one. He twisted them slightly together and tapped his left template lightly. In the Armed Forces of the Tri-continent, is was the known as the soldiers scold. Officers were used to using it on lowly grunts when they refused to obey orders. Today he was forced to use it on a fellow officer, his friend at that.
He wondered what this world was coming to as he watched Agustus's eyes register and recognize the gesture. Agustus heaved a sigh and pushed his console away, allowing it to glide in a circle around the bolt it was fastened on.
  He stood up from the padded chair and gave Helum the mandatory salute as he walked toward the large vault door, away from him and the large screen that took up the entire North wall. He'd spent most of his adult life in front of that screen, at his console. This was the first time he'd been ordered to leave it. It stung him to do so.
As he activated the door mechanism and stepped out, he took a deep breath, the first one since he'd entered through the same door more than seventy two hours ago.
He made his way past the security station and the outfit of armed guards that occupied it. He'd never bothered to learn their names, although his comrade knew them all by first name and could probably recite their life story by memory if asked. The differences between them suddenly became more apparent to him as he made a turn at the tunnel intersection that would eventually lead to the residential and recreational section of the base. Recruits usually lost their way among the maze of light brown tunnels. It had taken him a year and a half to be able to navigate the base without looking up at the digital images of the passage way that were hung up on the walls at each intersection.
He was almost there, less than thirty meters separated him from his quarters. All high ranking officers were given private quarters. The rest of the base personnel shared the barracks, a fifty by fifty meter room filled with unending rows of bunk bed and constantly filled with sweat and other byproducts of the human condition.

His quarters weren't much better. Although he had the privacy that barracks so badly lacked he found it hard to adjust when he was still wet behind the ears. The silence of a room filled with small furniture and only one person was disturbing at best even dementing at times.
As he inserted his hand into a section of the wall that had been cut out to house an ID machine, throbbing pain flared up in his head.
It was an unwanted side effect of a drug named Hemostyra he'd been taking for the last two years or since he first arrived on the base.
The drug was the ultimate pick-me-up for people like him. Insomniacs.
As some author had described in some book that had been written decades ago, he had discovered that when you had insomnia, nothing was real.All sense of time slips through your grasp and although you're never really asleep, neither are you ever really awake. This miracle drug changed all that. He was able to concentrate and function as though he had been sleeping all his life, perfectly rested.
It was however, not without side effects.
Due to the potent ingredients and its intended effects it was high addictive and had severe withdrawal effects. It had been three days since he'd had his last injection and the a withdrawal was hitting him like a brick at 60 mph hitting a pane of glass.
He stumbled through the door of his quarters and towards the bed opposite the doorway. His vision was fading rapidly as he fumbled blindly for his nightstand.
It took him only a minute to locate the nightstand and drag a pressurized injector from the bottom and press it against his neck.
He tightened his grasp on the small metal object and braced himself for the shock. He drove it into his neck and twisted the cylinder.
A small ''clack'' noise could be heard as the two vials within it broke and the drug mixed. He then tapped a small button on the side to open the floodgates to his system. He felt as the fluid streamed into his blood, mixed and made its way throughout his body. He threw the cylinder on the bed and collapsed to the floor. He'd been through this countless times before but the rush never wore off.
He closed his eyes slowly and curled into a ball on the cold concrete floor. He was counting down the seconds and then it hit, a few seconds earlier than usual. His eyes shot open and every single muscle in his body stretched and tightened in rhythm as he rolled around in spasm of pain. He felt as each vein in his body became visible by the increased blood flow to the point where he'd have thought they'd surely give way to the pressure and burst.
Then it suddenly stopped. His eyes refocused and he could see with perfect clarity again as he heaved himself up from the floor, using the frame of the bed as support. He noticed that a small light at the far end of the room, near the door at turned on. He was a little more amused than surprised when it started to blink. He composed himself and took a few deep breaths before rushing out the door and into the hallway knowing that he was needed back in the Control room.
The flickering light was a sign of emergency, something was up and it was by all accounts, something unusual. That same light had only been lit once before and that was during a drill back when he was still new to the position. But this time, it wasn't a drill.
The main power had been redirected and the emergency lights bathed the tunnel path in red light just bright enough for him to see the outlines of the walls.
As he reached the security checkpoint, the guards were on full alert. They acknowledged him with the business ends of their automatic weapons. He could hear one of them screaming commands at the rest to hold their fire as Agustus recited his Security number.
He fumbled halfway through and the guards seemed posed to riddle him with holes as he started over. The adrenaline rush was getting to him as he finished reciting the sixteen number combination.
The guard that had been shouting orders tapped the shoulder of the man next to him and the rest lowered their weapons and made way for him.
As he walked passed the men, he was sure he'd at least heard two of them sighing. Two more men he'd cut from his Christmas card list, no doubt.

The control room was alive with noise. Although it was only made to be manned by two people, himself and Helum, the room had more gear than every other section of the base combined. He made his way towards his station and sat down, swinging the consol back from where he'd pushed it away from earlier.
It was only once he had sat down that he noticed that Helum was not here. He was probably still on his way.
The large screen in front of him sprang to life and the picture of man loomed on it. He recognized him straight away, although he knew nothing about the man.
He had no name, nor rank or designation. He was voice of the Tri Continent council, an illusion created to give orders from the crippled old men that pulled the strings of human puppets. A small section of the screen blanked out and a video started playing.
''Tactical Operations, section 01 report in''.
Agustus thrust his hand into the console and maneuvered his fingers until he found the correct combination of movements. The voice continued.
''This video feed is live from the Dytara Base in the Abandoned Zone''
The abandoned zone was a large section of land that the separated the Tri Continent from their counterparts, the Coalition of the Free or freebies as the soldiers in that zone referred to them.
No one remembered why the fighting had started. It had spanned for generations, decade upon decade for almost five hundred years. The two opposing factions were in a permanent state of war, each hovering their fingers over the large red button, just waiting for the other side to give them a reason.
The video was from a high vantage point and showed the base courtyard. In the distance, he could see the courtyard wall, boxing in a small section of concrete covered ground. A line of soldiers were in formation around the center. Although he could not zoom in, he could see the men shivering and almost smell their fear. Something had broken these men and whatever it was, their continued shivering was evidence that it had not left.
Finally, one of the men lost control, threw down his weapon and made a run for the far side of the yard. His comrades screamed after him and their hand gestures motioned him to get back. He had not made it to the wall sooner than a shadow had dropped from the top of it and down upon him. Although Agustus had no audio feed, he guessed that based on the reaction of the rest of the soldiers, the man had screamed horribly as he crashed to the ground.
He could not make out the figure but its silhouette was different somehow from that of a normal man. The shape was all wrong and...
He had not finished the thought when the shadowed figure lounged toward the formation and they prepared to shoot it down.
As the unknown being closed the distance, the soldiers collapsed when they discovered that they were not alone. All around them similar shapes dropped from the wall, some of them even jumped straight of the wall at them. For the first time, he caught a good look at the enemy.
Agustus had seen Freebie soldiers before along with countless factions of mercenaries during his combat years. This foe was not a Freebie.
It wasn't even human.
Although it had the ability to walk up straight, it had the characteristics of a large cat, glimmering claws, fur and ears to match. It carried no armor nor weapons, not counting the ''natural'' ones it had. Too describe what he was about to witness as a battle would be incorrect.
It was a slaughter.
The men’s morale had been broken and two of them even tried to shoot themselves in the head in an attempt to escape a much crueler fate. They were out of luck, before they could so much as grasp the triggers of their guns, the savage attackers had gotten to them and ripped them to shreds. They were armored, but the attackers seemed to disregard that fact.
Instead, they went straight for the open parts in the soldier’s suits, the face and joints, clawing and in some cases biting deep into their flesh, stripping the meat from their bones with their jaws. Agustus felt the bile rise in his mouth.
''We have uncovered'' the illusion continued ''...that these creatures are the result of the Coalition genetic splicing program. We have had reports of their interest in genetic manipulation but this newest aggression and use of illegal combatants is a violation of every pact and convention of weapons and tactics ever written''
''Therefore, we have concluded that the use of Biological warheads is called for. You are hereby given authorization to arm and launch every available missile in the Tri Continent arsenal. You are to attack military installations and Major cities as well as the Dytara installation''
''Major cities...''Agustus mumbled under his breath. To him, it was one thing to attack and obliterate an enemy that wanted you dead and had willingly entered a theater of war knowing the consequences, but civilians...
There was no honor in killing innocent women and children, thousands of miles away.
His moral dilemma seemed to unending when suddenly another segment of the screen blacked out and was replaced with another video feed.
Then another and another
Two minutes later, he was watching over sixteen different locations under attack by the new and horrible foe. Some managed to fight them of, others were pulling back. It wouldn't matter soon, they would eventually deplete their ammunitions and then the killing blow would come crashing down on their heads.
He needed to launch those missiles; it was their people or his. He did not doubt that these creatures would not spare the villages and cities that lay beyond the bases they were attacking.
A sudden realization dawned on him. He was alone. Where was Helum?
He should have been here by now, even if he hadn't seen the light in his quarters, the emergency lighting should have been hint enough that something was wrong.
Agustus retracted his hand from the consol and watched as the lights of both it and the screen dimmed significantly. He pushed it away, stood up and walked towards the vault door once again. It occurred to him that Helum might have gone to sleep after he dismissed him earlier.
As the large metal door opened, the guards gave him a nod as he passed through.
''Has Helum been here recently?'' Agustus began.
One of the guards raised his hand and pulled down the lower half of his Combat Mask. He could see his reflection through the lenses on the upper half.
''Officer Helum departed just before the red lights kicked in'' he started.
''Do you know where he was heading?''
''No, sir. We did see him running down to the intersection and to the left''
Agustus was slightly releaved. There were only a handfull of areas on the left side. The Power room, the armory and the surface elevator.
Luckily, all three required clearance to access. He could just access the consol of each section to check if he'd been through recently.
He gave the guard a pat and on shoulder and told him to sit tight. The guard took the pat at face value and sat down with his back against the vault door, wondering how long until all this would return to normal.

Helum had indeed rushed out of the Control Room just before the bells went off, so to speak. He'd wittnessed a similar attrocity as Agustus, only he'd seen the first aggression. When he'd opened the channel and seen the illusion on the other end, he'd also gotten the same video feed as him. It was, however, a taped feed, not a live one.
When Helum saw the courtyard, it had been in perfect order. Not so much as a crack in the gray ground and the battlements on top of the wall were devoid of the blood of soldiers. As the minutes passed, he began to wonder why he'd was looking at the video. Suddenly, it all became clear to him. One by one, he'd seen the soldiers marching on the wall fall to the enemy as they were either pulled over the side to a cold death at the ground below or been disembowled as the wall was flooded by waves upon waves of the animalistic creatures. After the dust had seattled, he'd seen the troops marching in, bearing the Freebie symbol on their shoulders.
At that moment, he shut off the feed to the screen and had the transmission recorded. For a moment, he was dumbstruck, an unusual thing to happen to him. This was the first time in over two hundred years a major aggression had taken place. Why now? Why attack at all? What did they hope to archive?
Then his head came back online and a plan started hatching. He would have to act quick for this to work and recording the message for Agustus would buy him some time until the council tried to reach them again, that is, failing to get an answer from the first time when he answered..
He left his station with a remote consol he detached from the side of it. At first, looked like a slab of metal. Anyone inspecting the metal closer would have noticed that it had etching on it, etching that appeared and disappeared as part of read out displays. When he first touched it, the monotone etching exploded into color and lit up the surface.
He put it under his arm as he close exited the vault door. He contemplated what he was about to do.
The presence of Freebie soldiers meant that the counsel would probably order the deployment of arms against military complexes and cities.
And although he had roots on the Tri-continent, he had family back in Freebie territory.
Family that would die horrible, painful deaths if the deployment was followed through. He intended to stop this, to rewrite the launch protocol to target Tri-continent cities and bases instead of Freebie ones.
He could then somehow negotiate a deal to stop the attack even if he had to do so by threatening every player in the map. It was the only way he thought had a chance of working.
Just as the guard had said, he made a turn at the intersection towards the armory. He triggered the large, re-enforced metal door to open and stepped inside.
The armory had a surgical feel to it. No outside air when not in use, completely drained of air to prevent massive munitions explosions in case of fires or explosions. He paced to a cabinet to the left about a meter from him, listening at his footsteps echo as his feet came down on the tiled floor. He picked up a scatter hand gun. It was a small version of a much larger and powerful counterpart. Although reduced in size, the hand gun version still packed enough punch to knock a full grown man clad in armor down.
This would be the first time in five years he'd held a weapon ever since his time in the trenches at the frontline. He'd met Agustus there, back when they were both ranked low. He'd been an tech engineer, responsible for bringing down enemy defenses, both consol and physically controlled ones. Agustus on the other hand, had been a private assigned to keep his ass alive.
The two had fought at first, failing to see why they had been assigned each other. Within a week of active duty, they were already lighting each others filters on cold, snowy nights with backs again the trench walls. He prayed that he wouldn't have to use a weapon against him later on.

Agustus sprang down the corridor panting and wheezing as he passed the occasional red lamp that littered the tunnel walls. Although he worked out on a regular basis, the emotional offset he was experiencing was bearing down on him like a backpack of lead, slowing him down significantly.
As he reached the section of tunnel where the main passage split, he wondered which way Helum had headed.
He could cross out the Power room, seeing as the base alert ment that it would be locked and dead bolted shut to prevent hostiles entering from planting charges and the like. He decided that the Armory would be the best place to start.
He saw the large metal door in the distance, straight forward from the main tunnel. He came to an abrupt halt and grasped the metal outlines of the ID machine to the left of it. He tugged it and the front of the casing gave way.
He'd remembered that he requested that ID machines be fixed with better protection last year. He still hadn't heard back from the head office and didn't expect a reply to show up any time in the next few years or when who ever got the request form heard of his funeral. Whichever came first.
The exposed circuit board behind the casing reflected the dim red light as he tilted his head in an effort to spot the correct place he needed to fix.
He reached into the pocket of his pants and retrieved a small multi-tool. As he flicked the blade of the tool into the locked position, he ran the edge of it just above the side of the board and stopped about dead center. Under the knife was a small bulge of silver tinted material and a wire the ran out of it into the another bulge above it.
He gently cut the wires and wrapped them around the bulges, satisfied as the small screen within the sea of circuits grew dim and flared up as he reconnected the wires. On the small screen, a row of numbers could be seen, descending in a neat row of organized digits.
The top one had a number similar to his. The first five were identical but the rest was a mangled mess of randomized numeral generation. He saw the time stamp attached to it. It dated back to about half an hour ago. He'd been here but was probably gone, since the door registered an inside opening without a separate entry. He fixed the casing back onto the machine and triggered it with his hand.
The machine instantly reverted to normal operations mode and sent the bolts of the armory door flying back into their housing and the door itself upwards. Once again, oxygen flowed into the room and Agustus stepped in.
It was hard for him to tell exactly what Helum had been doing in here, as almost all base personnel, with the noticeable exception of those working inside High Security areas such as the Vault, were duty bound to carry a weapon.
He glanced around the room, rack after rack of weapons, ammunition packet after ammunitions packet. He'd never liked guns.
To him, a gun was just a tool, one that he'd rather not use. To him, guns were the coward’s weapon of choice; the weapon of someone who chose to hid in the rubble of collapsed buildings and took tags from the enemy from miles away, hardly ever looking his opponent in the eye. He had no objection to combat and war, but once you got the point where it was just a matter of pressing buttons from bunkers miles away from ground zero, what was the point?
He walked along side the row of racks stationed against the walls. Most of guns were rifles, used by the looks of them, dirt having imprinted a scent that not even the oxygen free environment of the armory could get rid of. He recognized the stench by instinct.
As he passed each rifle, he smelled blood, sweat and gunpowder from each one, although the smell differed somewhat each time he passed one.
Regardless, the room stunk of death and decaying metal.
He could feel the bile rising from the pit of his stomach as his mind flashed the memories attached to those scents, he hurried over to the handgun rack.
The selection was massive. Everything from small concealable pistols to large one that you needed shoulder reinforcers to fire safely. He couldn't afford to fight Helum in close quarter combat for the simple reason that he might need to bring him back to the Vault forcibly, if he couldn't been persuaded.
This time, and this time only, a gun wasn't an option. It was a must.
He pondered what to pick out for an instant and finally grabbed a small Fletcher gun. It was low profile and had a large clip, two characteristics that he liked in particular. He tightened his grip around the handle and lowered himself to the bottom of the rack where he slid out a shelf. As the light hit the insides of it, he could see all sorts of small boxes.
They were ammunition for the Fletcher gun. The gun didn't fire regular bullets, but instead fired small darts about the size of the average joe's pinky.
Below him, he could see everything from armor piercing fletchets and poisoned ones to exploding and knockout ones. He snatched a box of knockout fletchets and pulled a clip from the box, slamming it underneath the handle of the gun and cocking it back, the trigger now as brittle as newly formed ice on a pond.
He put the box back into the drawer and pushed it back in, rising up and heading for the exit, intent on hunting his friend down.
Once he passed the final rack, it occurred to him that Helum had undoubtedly also picked up a weapon here. He noticed a small stand in the corner of the room that was strapped with small upper body armor.
He walked over and inspected it. It was old, probably from the times when the base had been close to the trenches, before the territory that spanned over the next 500km west of here had been taken. He stripped of his shirt and unbound the armor from its stand. The armor was a three piece strap on.
Two slimmer pieces were meant to placed over his back and converge near the neck, splitting over his shoulders and just bellow his arms. The third piece was a tad heavier, meant to be attached to the two slimmer ones at the arm and shoulder segment to form a protective wrap around his ribs and stomach. He slid his shirt back on and looked at his chest. The outline of the armor was barely noticeable. The element of surprise would be on his side if he had to engage Helum.

Helum had left the armory thirty seven minutes before Agustus had arrived. He'd stumbled towards the elevator, his mind and eyes focused on the terminal
in his hands. He'd accessed the missile control interface by using the authorization the council had granted him.
The hard part wasn't getting access, it was maintaining it while making changes. He glanzed up from the slab and hit the small button for the elevator.
He wouldn't be able to exit to the surface. He already knew that the ground floor was sealed off with large blast doors. There was one place that wouldn't be locked. Or at least, wouldn't be locked soon.
As he entered the elevator, he focused back on the slab, fiddling with the controls of the elevator control until finally he could unlock the shutters that sealed the shaft itself. The blast doors were still a problem.
They had been deliberately placed off-grid to prevent hacking like this from happening. Realizing that, he hit the Observation Pad button and the doors of the elevator shut with a clank. The small metal cage shot upwards at knee bending speeds, passing through the base levels like lightning through a metal bar. The cage came to a sudden halt when he reached the top of the shaft.
The shaft didn't end at ground level, instead it continued on and ended at the top of a large tower of the above ground base.
At the top of the tower, was an observation pad. It was old, even by the bases standards.
It was little more than a small floor overseeing vast fields of grass, inside a sphere of metal and see-through glass. The sphere stretched from under the pad to the very top of the tower and looked like a wart from the vantage point of a foot soldier down below.
He walked onto the pad and to the edge, stopped only by the railing that prevented one from falling over.
As he peered through the cage of steel, he could see the sun was about to rise from behind a mountain range miles away. He crouched down against the railing and returned to working on the protocol.
Basically, the only thing he needed to do was re-write the designated touchdown coordinates of the missiles. At his moment, the memory inside each missile should be empty and should have remained so until Tactical Control had sent out a template of coordinates.
According to that template, each missile would receive a different set of instructions. The only problem was that in such a high state of alert, a redundancy safe guard was in place.
There were five Tactical Control rooms similar to the Vault all over the tri-continent. During pre-emptive strikes, Tactical Control 01, his base, would decide upon a template and contact the other control centers with the authorization keys.
When an on-the-fly strike was ordered, such as this one, all of the templates were loaded into the memory module to save both time and in case the main control center was captured or destroyed.
The preloaded templates didn't require launch codes from Tactical Control and could be fired at a moments notice locally.
What Helum had to do was enter the coordinates of each friendly city he intended to stick up and feed those coordinates into the protocol file, replacing the old ones.
After that, he had to broadcast that updated protocol through an unplugged hole in the Tri-continent network and make each missile memory module update the plans manually, no more than five changes per broadcast so the weight of the transmission wouldn't raise a few eyebrows if they were detected.
He was about halfway through the list of coordinates when the elevator started moving downwards.
An old friend found his way back into Helums body. Fear.
Not the kind of fear you feel when you drop a glass but the really primal fear that every man, woman and child would feel at some time or another.
The primal fear that his ancestors had felt when they were faced with a gruesome death by a blunt weapon wielded by some competing tribe.
This fear flushed down his body, sending each hair rising up and both arms shivering.
He put the slab down and walked toward the corner of the pad, scattergun drawn. He fell down on one foot into a firing position, his right hand on the trigger and his left arm supporting the gun. He could hear the growing sound of grinding steel cable as the elevator heaved upwards at dangerous speeds.
The suddenly, the noise stopped.
Time stood still for but a single breath as Helum cocked the gun and prepared to shoot.
A scraping sound could be heard as the elevator doors slid away from each other and a figure rushed out.
There was no time to think. Only act. Only to shoot. Only to kill.

A veteran from the Trench frontline, Agustus had on more than one occasion been shot. As evident by his lack of a final resting place six feet below ground level, he'd survived. In fact, he'd almost grown accustomed to pain of a flesh wound, as far as you can grow to like such a feeling.
He had however, never been shot with a scatter gun. In comparison to the rifles he'd taken slugs from back in the day, rifle rounds felt like a sudden loss of breath accompanied by burning pain and a heap of blood whereas a scattergun round felt like a train had hit you, accompanied by either instant death or broken bones in the dozens.
As Agustus had ran out of the small elevator, he saw nothing. As he turned his head away from the crouching Helum, he had felt what he could only describe as a herd of cattle stampeding into his left arm and torso. He didn't stand a chance.
His upper body was swept aside while is lower body remained oddly stationary. He came crashing into the ground, head first. His vision was blurred and bloody. The shell had hit him right in the shoulder, probably shattering it.
He could hear the sound of someone dropping down to their knees close to him, as well as another small sound. He felt as this someone turned his body carefully upwards, moving the broken arm as little as possible.
Agustus would have to make is move now.
Through the blood that was rapidly pouring out of his arm and the adrenaline rush, he managed to speak coherently, if only slightly.
''Helum..''
''Dear sweet gods, what have I done?'' He could hear from above him. The voice was not the one he usual associated with Helum. This was the voice of a broken man, sniveling in regret, the polar opposite of Helums' usual cool and controlling voice.
''Authorize the launch, Helum'' Agustus began.
''It's the only way to save the soldiers''
''..but..''
''No buts or maybes or anything!'' Agustus erupted, the pain obviously not contributing to the diplomatic side of him.
''I can't. You know they won't just attack bases. They'll be shooting those things at cities! I have a family, a little sister that's only nine years old...I can't seal her fate, you know that''
''Pull your damn head out of your self rightious ar..'' Agustus stopped halfway through the sentence to cough. He was bleeding internaly and the free flow of blood was already making its way into his lungs.
''Think about the hundreds of men that will be torn to shreds at the hands of those freaks you saw! Do you think they'll stop once they manage to solidify a line? You know they'll keep marching until they reach the cities.''
''at least'' he continued ''...at least we'll we know how many perish with the missles''
''I can't...''
Agustus realized it was futile. The man was hell bent on saving his family, even if it meant causing the gruesome deaths of innocents.
It occurred to him that what he was doing wasn't much better, but there was no telling what would happen if the invasion went unchecked. For all he knew, freebie soldiers could be marching towards the larger cities right now.
His strength dwindling away, Agustus turned to the last measure. The gun.
Without warning, he pushed Helum away causing him to loose equilibrium while at the same time, causing himself to fall to the floor again.
His right hands sprang towards where he assumed he'd dropped the Fletchet gun. Sure enough, he found the handle.
Laying on his side, he grasped it with is hand and swung his arm around, aiming at Helums chest and firing.
As he pulled the trigger, two things became apparent to him.
One, the gun was abnormally heavy.
Two, a fletchet gun doesn't normally generate 90db of sound when fired.

The sudden realization had almost caused his heart to stop. For about a minute, he'd just lain there hoping against hope he hadn't done what he though he had.
He'd just killed his best friend.
He released the handgun and used his right arm to get up. As he stood over Helums' corpse, his fears were confirmed.
The shell had hit him right in the chest, ripping and tearing through his the flesh between the upper part of his chest and his throat.
Emptyness formed in his mind, blotting out the pain with overwhelming grief. They say that in moments like these, your brain shorts out and reboots into automatic mode. A defense mechanism that mankind developed to cope, causing the consciousness to shift.
He could see as he bent over to investigate the silvery block of metal that lay on the floor, close to the railing but he couldn't feel his feet coming down, nor his fingers as he picked it up. He hardly even noticed when the front of the slab had flashed in multicolored light when he touched at, a sign that he'd logged onto it. He haltered towards the corpse with the terminal in hand.
He fired up the missle control interface and pressed his hand against the screen and observed as small etched rings formed around the fingers before flashing in green, showing that his fingerprints were recognized.
He reached over and picked up Helums hands and pressed it against the slab. The smooth surface had become stained with blood when he removed it.
The fool had had time to touch his gashed chest before he died.
The screen started flashing with light as the countdown timer for launch had been started. In one minute, the missiles would shoot up from hundreds of silos, mountain sides and even through the canyons to the south.
He set the terminal down and heaved a sigh. It was out of his hands now.
Once the countdown had started, it was impossible to stop it.
It wasn't until he had breathed in deeply that he noticed something. Something that had eluded him before.
Helums fingers.
If he had tried to apply pressure to his throat wound, why hadn't there been more blood? Why were only his fingertips soaked in the red goo?
As soon as he turned around to investigate his fingers again, he saw it.
A message on the floor written during Helums final breaths with his own blood. The writing was shaky, a sure sign he'd been on the verge of going into shock when he scribbled it.
''P.ot.ol al.er.d''
The letters were hard to make out, unsurprisingly, even unreadable at parts.
Rays of the light jumped over the mountain peaks, crawling towards the metal cage, hitting the glass panes and blinding him. It was the sunrise, no doubt.
It might have been ocular pain of flaring light or maybe just life delivering a swift kick to the balls, but for a few seconds, it all made sense. Why Helum hadn't been in the Vault when he arrived, why he was armed, why he had a terminal and why he'd retreated to the top of the tower.
The realization faded as he craned his neck towards the terminal besides him. It seemed to have taken on a foreboding aura after he found out what Helum had been doing with it.
He reached for the corner, about to pick it up and inspect it when suddenly he stopped, his hand hovering a few inches above one of the corners.
He moved his hand over to the cold dead hand of his comrade and placed it over the center of the surface. Once again it flared with light and the work of its previous user became visible.
The half completed words Helum had scribbled suddenly became fully fledged ones. ''Protocol altered'', it had read.
He knew this, because he was looking at a half completed edit of one of the touchdown coordinates. He lifted Helums' forefinger and moved it to close the edit screen, revealing the overview of the updated list. He dropped the dead hand and disconnected once again, his vision receding and blurring rapidly.
As he looked through the glass cage, he realized that the sun was still not up. The flare of light that had struck his eyes hadn't been the first rays of sunlight on what would be a cloudless day. It was the exhaust of a Genifare class missle speeding towards the tower, carrying a Biological warhead he'd authorized to be launched.
Its tip was also the last thing he saw before the missle struck the middle of the tower and scattered his body to the four winds faster than the full extent of what he'd done had managed to reach his concious mind.