(Earth, Sector 7, City Block Designation: 4B - Rubble)(Coalition Rapid Reaction Force Deployment Zone)(Local Time: 19:37 ZULU)
Corporal Roric Vane registered the impact tremor through the soles of his kinetic-dampening boots a microsecond before the sound wave hit—a deep, guttural WHUMP that vibrated fillings. Concrete dust rained down, gritty talc against the already choked air. Across the shattered ferrocrete plaza, the Coalition transport—an eight-wheeled behemoth affectionately nicknamed 'The Warpig'—was now a mangled sculpture of burning plasteel and ruptured fuel lines. Black smoke boiled into the bruised twilight sky.
"Status! Raptor Actual, status on the Pig!" Lieutenant Marius's voice crackled in Roric's integrated comms, tight with static and controlled fury.
Roric hugged the dubious cover of a blasted fountain base, his X-4 Pulse Rifle snugged into his shoulder. His helmet's HUD flickered, tactical overlays struggling to penetrate the electronic countermeasures jamming the sector. Enemy heat signatures bloomed like malevolent flowers in the skeletal remains of surrounding office blocks – Separatist militia, dug in deep. Too many.
"Pig is down, Actual! Looks like a catastrophic hit, multiple casualties visible!" Roric reported, his voice steady despite the tremor in his gut. This was supposed to be a quick insertion, secure the data cache, extraction before the Separatists could consolidate. 'Supposed to be' was rapidly becoming a footnote in their obituaries.
He was nineteen. Or maybe twenty now? Time blurred between the endless sim-drills and the sudden, shocking violence of this first real deployment. All that training, the muscle memory honed over thousands of hours, felt both razor-sharp and terrifyingly inadequate. The sims never smelled like this – ozone, cooked metal, cordite, and something sickeningly organic underneath.
"Damn it! Raptor Team, fallback pattern Delta! Converge on Objective Alpha – the archive building! We blow the cache and pull out on foot! Sergeant Croft, lay down suppressing fire, west flank!"
Roric risked a glance. Croft's squad, pinned down near the Warpig's pyre, responded with disciplined bursts of pulse fire, blue tracers lancing into the shadowed windows opposite. Return fire was immediate, heavier – autocannons stitching lines of explosive rounds across their position. A scream cut through the comms, abruptly silenced.
Move. The training screamed louder than the fear.
Roric popped smoke – a thick, grey cloud billowing outwards – and broke cover, sprinting low across the treacherous pavement littered with debris. His rifle snapped up, spitting controlled three-round bursts at muzzle flashes flickering from a third-floor window. Plaster exploded inwards. He didn't wait to confirm the kill. Suppress, move, suppress. The mantra of urban combat.
He skidded into the relative shadow of a demolished storefront, reloading with practiced efficiency. His hands weren't shaking. Good. But his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He could feel the enemy closing the net. They'd known the CRRF was coming. Ambush. Classic.
"Vane! Status!" It was Sergeant Croft this time, her voice strained.
"Moving to Objective Alpha, south approach! Encountering heavy resistance!"
"Copy that, Corp! Watch the rooftops – they've got RPG teams!"
As if summoned, the distinctive hiss-whoosh of a rocket launch echoed from above. Roric didn't hesitate. He threw himself sideways, tucking and rolling behind the overturned chassis of a civilian electric car just as the warhead detonated where he'd been standing. Shrapnel screamed past. The car rocked violently. His ears rang, the world momentarily muffled.
He pushed himself up, ignoring the sharp pain in his shoulder where he'd landed hard. His HUD flickered erratically, damage icons flashing amber. Non-critical.
Through the settling dust, he saw them – three Separatist fighters advancing across the plaza, using the smoke from the burning Warpig as cover. They hadn't spotted him yet. Textbook flanking maneuver. Suicide for Croft's pinned squad if they got closer.
No time for orders. No time for fear. Just reaction.
Roric rose smoothly from cover, rifle finding its target. First burst caught the point man high in the chest, kinetic energy punching him off his feet. The second fighter reacted, swinging his weapon around. Roric was faster. Another burst, center mass. The third hesitated, scrambling for cover behind a shattered barricade. Roric shifted his aim, squeezed the trigger again. The pulse rounds chewed through the thin plasteel barrier, silencing the threat.
Three down. He scanned the area, breathing hard. Clear for now.
"Vane! Nice shooting! Keep moving!" Croft's voice, tinged with grim approval.
He pushed forward, crossing the plaza towards the looming silhouette of the archive building. Objective Alpha. Its reinforced plasteel doors were scarred but intact. Raptor Team needed to breach it, plant the thermite charges on the server racks, and get out before the entire Separatist garrison collapsed on them.
He reached the relative safety of the building's entrance alcove, slapping the wall beside the door. Two other CRRF troopers materialized from the gloom, nodding curtly. PFC Miller, face pale but determined. Corporal Thorne, a wiry veteran with cold eyes.
"Breaching charge?" Roric asked Thorne, his voice rasping.
Thorne held up a shaped magnetic charge. "Ready. On your mark."
Roric checked the tactical feed. Red icons swarmed the map, tightening the cordon. They had maybe two minutes. "Do it."
Thorne slapped the charge onto the door seam. Miller primed it remotely. A sharp crack, followed by the groan of tortured metal as the lock mechanism vaporized. Roric kicked the heavy door inward and plunged into the darkness beyond, rifle sweeping.
Emergency lighting flickered weakly, casting long, dancing shadows. The air was cool, stale, smelling of old paper and ozone from damaged circuitry. Rows of server racks lined the main hall, their indicator lights mostly dark.
"Objective Alpha secured! Planting charges!" Roric relayed, moving deeper into the hall, covering the entrance. Miller and Thorne hurried towards the main server core, pulling thermite packs from their webbing.
Then, the ceiling exploded downwards.
Not an RPG this time. Something bigger. A bunker-buster? A targeted orbital strike? The concussion slammed Roric against a server rack, driving the air from his lungs. His helmet's visor spiderwebbed with cracks. Alarms shrieked in his ears, a cacophony of critical system failures.
Through the ringing and the swirling dust, he saw Thorne vanish in a flash of blinding white light and pulverizing force. Miller was thrown back like a rag doll, hitting the far wall with a sickening crunch.
Pain flared along Roric's left side – searing heat, immense pressure. He looked down. A thick shard of rebar, dislodged from the collapsing ceiling, protruded obscenely from his side, just below his body armor. Blood bloomed dark and hot against the grey camouflage of his fatigues.
Shock numbed him for a moment, a cold tide rising. Then came the agony, white-hot and absolute. He tried to raise his rifle, but his arms felt like lead. His vision swam.
"Actual… compromised… objective… lost…" he managed to gasp into the comms, unsure if anything was transmitting. Static hissed back.
He could hear shouting from outside, heavy boots pounding closer. The Separatists were entering the breach. His rifle lay uselessly a few feet away. His sidearm… he fumbled for it, fingers clumsy, slick with his own blood.
The world narrowed to the pain, the dust motes dancing in the emergency lights, the approaching footsteps. Nineteen. Or twenty. He'd never know for sure. He'd never see his sister graduate. Never taste real coffee again. Never feel the sun on his face without the acrid tang of war hanging in the air. All that training… ending here, bleeding out on the floor of some forgotten archive.
A shadow fell over him. A Separatist fighter, rifle leveled. The man's face was obscured by a gas mask, the mirrored lenses reflecting Roric's own shattered visor.
Roric met the reflection, a flicker of defiance sparking through the agony. He tightened his grip on his sidearm, hidden beneath his body. If he was dying, he wouldn't die helpless. One last round. One last act of resistance.
The Separatist's rifle muzzle flashed.
Impact. Not pain, this time. Just… pressure. A final, crushing weight. Darkness swallowed the edges of his vision, rushing inwards. The sounds of battle faded, replaced by a profound, impossible silence. The cold deepened, leaching the last warmth from his limbs.
This is it. The thought was surprisingly calm. Zero point.
Then, nothing.
***
…Pressure. Immense, crushing pressure, squeezing him from all sides. Not the impact of a bullet, but something vast, cosmic. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear. Only the suffocating weight and a dizzying sense of non-being. It felt like eternity, compressed into an instant. Was this death? The void?
No.
Sensation returned like a physical blow. Air – thin, cold, and screaming past him at impossible speed. Vertigo slammed into him, a nauseating lurch as gravity clawed inconsistently. He gasped, choked, his lungs burning.
His eyes snapped open.
Not darkness. Not the dusty archive hall. Sky. An impossible sky, churning with colours he couldn't name – bruised purples, sickly greens, angry reds – all swirling around vast, fractured landscapes that hung impossibly in the air. Islands of rock and earth, some immense and forested, others shattered and bare, drifted like colossal ships on an ocean of violent light. The Maelstrom.
And he was falling.
Tumbling end over end through the chaotic sky, wind tearing at the remnants of his CRRF gear. His cracked helmet was gone. The pain in his side… gone. He instinctively checked – the fatigues were torn, bloodstained, but the wound itself had vanished. The rebar was gone. He felt… whole. Shockingly, impossibly whole.
His training kicked in, overriding the sheer, mind-breaking impossibility of it all. Assess. Orient. Survive.
He flailed, trying to stabilize his fall, using his body as an airfoil. Below him, maybe a thousand meters down and closing fast, was one of the larger islands – a colossal shard draped in thick, emerald-green jungle. Strange, colossal trees with luminous blue crowns reached towards the chaotic sky.
But the immediate threat wasn't the ground. It was the battle raging around him.
Bizarre flying machines zipped through the air. Sleek, angular interceptors gleaming with metallic blue light traded energy blasts with rougher, cobbled-together skiffs bristling with cannons and spiky protrusions. Explosions blossomed silently in the thin air, followed by delayed shockwaves that buffeted him. Figures clung to the railings of the skiffs, firing handheld weapons that spat bolts of crackling energy or streams of solid projectiles.
One of the interceptors, trailing smoke, careened past him, close enough for him to see the pilot – encased in sleek, form-fitting armour, face hidden behind a polished visor – desperately fighting the controls. Then, a Corsair skiff, painted with a leering crimson skull, swooped in, cannons blazing. The interceptor erupted in a ball of blue-white fire.
Roric flinched away from the heat wash, tumbling again. This wasn't Earth. This wasn't any conflict zone he knew or could even comprehend. This was… something else. Something alien, terrifying, and utterly outside his experience.
The Shardfall. Rebirth. He didn't know the terms yet. All he knew was the impossible reality assaulting his senses and the rapidly approaching jungle canopy.
He twisted, trying to aim for a denser patch of foliage, hoping it might break his fall. The wind howled past, ripping at his torn uniform. The sky battle raged above, oblivious to the lone, falling figure plummeting from one war into another.
His training gave him reflexes, tactical awareness, the will to fight. But it hadn't prepared him for this. Nothing could have.
The ground rushed up. The luminous blue trees became distinct entities, their bark like scales, their leaves like shards of stained glass.
He braced for impact, muscles tensed, mind racing. What is this place? How did I get here? Am I dead?
The last thought echoed as the canopy swallowed him whole. Darkness, the snap of branches, and then, finally, impact. Not zero point. Point one.