The Weapon of the Faithless
Written on May 11th, 2021 by Ethan Zhang
Following the collapse of the world to the regime of the Grand Empire, peace ensued. However, this peace was short-lived, as, within a few decades, many minor rebellions began to arise within the Empire. Many of these rebellions were put down by the Grand Army, but there was one that persisted. This is when the Grand Army sent in Fireteam Delta-6, the most elite squad of the Grand Army, the cream-of-the-crop and most loyal. The operators of our squad’s identity were kept secret and trained in the shadows. This is the story of our demise. I’ll start from the night before that fateful mission.
The night before, we were having a good time after we finished our nightly training, drinking, laughing, and talking about what our next mission could be. Little did we know that our next mission would be the last we ever had as Fireteam Delta-6. There were 16 of us on the fireteam, with me as the squad leader. That evening, we were called into the General’s office to receive a briefing on our next mission.
“Gentlemen, I have your next mission on file. It will be a class 10 difficulty rating, and a class 10 secrecy. Do you accept the mission?” The General paced up and down our ranks as I glanced around and pronounced our acceptance of the mission. For context, a class 10 secrecy meant that only the Generals and the squads involved knew about the mission, and all existence of the mission was undocumented. A class 10 difficulty implied that the mission was near impossible, the highest rating Fireteam Delta-6 ever had was an 8. This mission was something big.
The debriefing gave us minimal info, only that there was a lone soldier in the woods killing Grand Army personnel stationed in the area. Not one member of the fireteam slept well that night, a sense of impending doom awaited us, and our feelings would prove right.
At the break of dawn, Fireteam Delta-6 began to pack up and move into our specialized stealth aircraft for deployment. Our equipment was state-of-the-art, comprised of vests and other armour that no bullet could pierce, rifles and secondary weapons that could put a bullet through any opponent, magical or not (yes, we have dealt with magical creatures, but I digress), and our HUD’s would allow us a full 360-degree field of vision, and a final trump card, a single grenade practically capable of annihilating an entire building, that could be manually detonated, or remotely detonated. With our equipment, we loaded up onto the aircraft, and its silent engines kicked in as we took to the skies within minutes. A few hours later, a mechanical voice called through our operators’ headset:
“30 seconds to drop!”
The team immediately stood up and moved to the doorway, which was already open, and then we filed out, each jumping and releasing our parachutes as we came down. Once we had regrouped, I noticed something was off about the forest, it was quiet, too quiet, especially considering our drop had been near-silent and our cloaking devices should have stopped animals from detecting us.
Suddenly, a single round whizzes by me and slams through one of my men’s HUDs, killing him instantly. My team fans out and returns fire in the direction the shot came from, but no second shot came. I knelt beside my fallen teammate and took his tags, the last thing that identified him, considering his HUD and face were both destroyed. Anguish and sorrow overcame me, but as a leader, I knew I couldn’t dwell on it, my team relied on me to call the shots. I stood up and walked to the front of the formation and moved on, leaving my fallen teammate behind in a bag that would trigger his grenade once we were out of range. It was at the moment the shockwave hit us that we noticed the cave entrance a few dozen yards away. Could this be where the shot came from?
I led the way into the cave as my team followed. The cave was much more spacious than we thought, and as we went deeper we found bullet holes in the walls and helmets and armour of Grand Army personnel, all of them were bloody and there were even bits of decaying flesh in some places. Two gunshots followed by a scream from a person came down the stone corridor of the cave, then more gunshots and screams, and yet more, until eighteen shots had been fired in quick succession, and the cave fell silent. My team stormed down the cave until we entered a large chamber, where nine Grand Army soldiers lay, lifeless, a bullet accurately placed in each of their skulls and hearts (targets that represented their loyalty and faith to the Grand Army). Who could have done this with such speed, precision, and accuracy? It was then that a single mechanical soldier stepped from behind a pillar into our HUD sights. We failed to notice him, or it, because he emitted no heat needed to track humans or animals, this was simply a machine.
<“Stand down, or you will be terminated like your fellow Grand Army soldiers here.” the machine bellowed from speakers that I could not locate. The sound came from everywhere, yet nowhere, yet also from the suit of armour that stood before us. My team pulled out our rifles and emptied our magazines into the machine, but no matter how bright the room got, no matter how much lead was poured into the machine, it remained unscathed./p>
“Impossible.” I whispered as the last of the smoke from our high caliber, explosive, and armour piercing rounds cleared.
“My turn” the machine said, and with a sudden motion a high-caliber automatic rifle appeared in its steel grips and it began to tear my men to shreds, one was cut down, then another. I give the order to retreat, and more of my men fall. By the time we exited the cave, only 8 of us remained, half of our forces had been wiped out by that anomalous creature that could make weapons appear from thin air. As we regrouped outside the cave I detonated the grenades of our fallen comrades, but then I heard something that would haunt me until the end of my days.
“Ahaha, you can’t kill me Fireteam Delta-6, no matter your equipment, I will find you and kill you, one by one, including you, Captain Delta-6-01, or should I say, murderer.” The voice of the machine stopped me dead in my tracks as I was about to ask for evac and declare the mission a failure. My men heard it too, and they turned to me to look for confirmation of what they just heard was real. I nodded, and that was when most of my remaining men realized we were dealing with a unique entity. Suddenly, a blade cut the throat of one of my soldiers, and then he was impaled. As it was pulled out, the same machine appeared before my squad. My soldier collapsed to the ground gasping for air he would never find. While my squad was in a state of shock, the machine vaulted backward and pulled out a scoped rifle, and put lethal rounds into another 3 of my men, disregarding their state-of-the-art equipment.
What the hell was this thing? Our bullets didn’t do shit to it, and our armour was getting shredded by it (despite our armour and HUDs being designed to stop any rounds including those of tanks and heavy artillery). My remaining 3 men and I sprinted away from the entity before I looked back to see the entity’s rifle disappear, and a new sniper weapon appeared. Another two of my men fall, and I turn back and throw my grenade into the entity and detonate it, the explosion triggers my teammates’ grenades as well, and the explosion makes me blackout.
Now I am here writing this story in the very forest of the entity, because that entity is out there still hunting for me and my last remaining soldier, still hunting humanity. So, if you ever find yourself in an uncharted forest in the North of the Grand Empire, run, turn back, and leave the forest. I don’t know if this will reach anyone but I have to try to warn you, this is my final goodbye, I can hear the entity’s mechanical footsteps approaching, its evil laugh coming from its hidden speakers, its pistol priming, ready to execute the faithful, for it is the weapon of the faithless, and it is lethal.
