• I woke up, stiff back rebelling against all efforts to move. I shifted in my chair, an antique made of authentic leather long hard. The soldier had taken my bed without so much as a considerate thought to me, I stretched and wandered into the kitchen, only to be greeted by that same weathered visage from yesterday. "Morning." His voice was more like a grumble than a greeting. "Coffee?" He tilted the again antique ceramic cup, one that I had under lock and key to prevent such use. I nearly lost my head, the worlds tumbled out so quickly. 'You! How dare you come in her and force me to make room and board for you, how dare you drink my coffee, and you damn well better set that china down right this instant!" My voice held something of a father scolding a young child. The soldier instead flipped the cup to view the bottom. "Made in occupied Japan. That was the mid Nineteen Hundreds, wasn't it?" I stopped, my mouth agape. "How did you...?" He finished for me, and quickly. "I was always a fan of the time period. If I'm right, which I usually am, this cup was made in Forty Six or Forty Seven, sometime before the MacArthur constitution."

    I paused once more, reassessing my ideas of this strange, old veteran. "Ah, just forget about it. Where were we?" He took a second to review his memories. "Oh, yes, I had just been contracted, and well, I was summoned to Terra. Not just any city on Terra, the fralling capital, High Terra. That place is either a nightmare or a man's best dream come true. The whole city is one big temple dedicated to the original founders, massive cult of personality. How they managed to stick so much marble on a planet that had none, I'll never know, Probably imported from one the various Hive planets, the bleedin' cybernetic monsters. But, I'm not going to bore you on the Hive. There a part of humanities past that is best left forgotten. Anyway, in complete awe of the temple, I nearly got my head torn off by the Imperial guard, apparently, too much gawking means you want to blow the place higher than it already is. So, I flash my code, get swept off to an audience with the High Father himself. Yes, Terra is stepped in tradition, but who was I to argue, I was getting paid the guy. He stresses how important my mission was, and this single act of retribution will bring Nippon to its knees and beg, blah blah blah. Typical ruler of an aggresively expanding colony barely complying to the Colonial Charter." I noticed his laugh held bitter irony. "If the EDF wouldn't have incinerated that miserable little ice ball the second it tried anything against the Sol system, chances are Terra would've suplanted Earth as the focal point for humanity."

    "But, then I got to meet my squad. All from good old Earth. I'll refer to them by callsign, there was Doc, Red shepard, hell of a guy, crazy callsign, I'll refer to him as Red, Slant, that was an abbreviation from one of those crazy Mars names, and me, Chief. Red shepard was the only one of us who actually had any experience as an actual soldier, not just a Merc. Was part of the Breton Colonial Legion, or so he said. But, when I got around to asking them all why they got stuck here, well, they're just like good ol' me here." His voice swelled audibly with pride. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. "They got stuck, and got out, usually by themselves. So, we're all happy, hunky dory, and avoided the city. We'd heard horror stories about what the Black Guard did to people that were caught outside a safe zone after curfew. See, High Terra has these safe zones, highly monitored, pretty much everyone and their mother is an informant, and connecting Zone tunnels, so the High Father can keep track of who's where, and why. So, we crashed in our bunks, swapped war stories, and waited for the next day."

    He sighed, so quietely, I had to p***k my ears to hear him mutter "What a big mistake." He stood shakily and hobbled over to my liquor cabinet. To my horror, I discovered a multi-tool was sticking from the old fashioned cylinder lock. "We need drinks for this next part. We deployed aboard a Battle Cruiser, think it was the TNS Baldur. FTL jump was smooth, and, I gotta say, Nippon is a pretty little emerald jewel from space. Nice, wide forrests, not a whole not of salt water, more freshwater, though. When we dropped, we had orders to escort our unit to the target sight to begin 'Relocation'." I noticed he used air quotes, and took note of it in my pad. "Well, turns out relocation wasn't the only thing on mind. We encountered light resistance, nothing more than a couple guys wearing several hundred year old armor from before they were cut, swinging pecuilar single edged swords of poor quality iron. Well, first guy they with a sword, thing shattered, like a snap. Our unit went beserk. Tore through the entire village, shooting anything that moved. Even women and children. The survivors, they rounded up inside a communal hall, barricaded the doors, then tossed incendiaries through the window." Tears welled up in his eyes, eyes that I thought could bear no tears. "I still remember the screams. Everything in there begged to be let out. The doors swelled as bodies packed against them. Our unit responded by spraying it with bullets." His head hung low as he recounted this. "It turns out our entire objective was not relocation. The entire campaign wasn't about relocation and revenge. It was pure slaughter. Everywhere we got reports of villages being depopulated, what locals survived fleeing into the woods." His voice broke at that last line, his hand shot to his eyes. "I need some air. I'm going out, I won't be back for some time." The chair creaked as he pushed back it's worn wooden frame, I watched, helpless, as his frail form stumbled for the door.