Gamma Nine (Book One)

by Christi Smit

  Chapter Zero.One

  Rise

  “They were the tip of the sword. They were the first to deploy and last to withdraw. They made the best of a dire situation, achieving victory where most could only see defeat. They numbered only a few thousand, yet their bravery never wavered in the face of evil and insurmountable odds. Because of them we were given more time, because of them we were able to rebuild. The Titans were the hammer and shield of humankind, but as history taught our race - all Titans must fall.”

  The great minds of our time spent every waking moment after Subjugation Day - the name we had given the day the Beast had awoken - trying to find an answer to the Beast. Intellectuals, engineers and tacticians worked tirelessly for decades, scavenging for resources to build better weapons, and research new ones. There were many new breakthroughs in the fields of weapon development and soldier enhancements, but none of them were enough or viable on the field of battle against the Beast.

  Chief Scientist Thomas Wexler from the planet New Horizon P-SEP research centre gave us the answer we had been searching for. He brought together multiple fields of research and made them all work in unison to create what he named The Titan Project.

  The Titan Project consisted of a new type of mechanized suit, manually operated by its Operator from within. These suits were named Articulated Refuge Constructs, or ARC suits as the Operators called them. Operators were enclosed by the strongest materials known to humankind. Anctinium armour plating covered an Anctinium-mesh suit, and beneath the mesh suit the liquid nanites protected the outer epidermis and internal organs from within. The Liquid Nano Robotic system was injected into an Operator’s body when interfacing with the ARC suit. The liquid nanites healed any damage an Operator could sustain during operation. Interface plugs were surgically implanted into all Operators in the limbs and spine, with the most important plug situated at the top of the spine just below the nape of the neck. Without these plugs, Operators could never control the ARC suits to their full potential. It is said that the surgery to implant the interface plugs for the ARC suit was excruciatingly painful.

  Only the bravest and the best soldiers that could be spared from the armed forces were recruited and put through trials. The Titan Trial was the worst kind of military training known to man, gruelling and sometimes just cruel. Recruits were stretched mentally and physically beyond what could be considered acceptable levels. Out of over ten thousand recruits less than half survived the trials, and implantation and calibration with the ARC suits claimed even more lives. By the time the few thousand Titans that survived the trials were ready, more than sixty years had passed since Subjugation Day. The Titans were broken up into smaller squads before deployment and Operators maintained their former armed forces ranks.

  Their first deployment would be on the frontline, on the planet Arkelis in the Iona sector. The Beast and soldiers from the armed forces had been waging war for over a decade on that planet. Arkelis was on the verge of being overrun by the Beast, the soldiers stationed there were barely holding out against our tireless and ravenous enemy. It was on the surface of Arkelis that the Titan’s metaphorical and literal metal would be put to the test. Arkelis would be the ultimate test for our new weapon. Humankind’s future sat on a knife’s edge. Win or lose, our hope rested solely on the shoulders of the Titans.

  The years had not been kind to the mutations of the Beast. On the surface of Arkelis our race saw what time had done to the infected. With every passing decade the Beast had evolved into more vicious and less recognizable monsters. What was left of the human templates underneath the mutating flesh and bone was now completely gone, soldiers facing them on the battlefields throughout our star kingdom could not discern if these creatures were once human or of alien origin. It seemed that a new race had been born into the light decades ago, a race born to consume every living thing in the universe.

  Humankind stood in the Beast’s path. We could have left the rest of our universe to fall under their claws and teeth, running and surviving for as long as it took for the monsters to find its prey. Or we could fight; stand against it while we were still able to, and stop the tide of nightmarish fiends assailing our kingdom’s walls. We were after all, at least in some way, to blame for what happened.

  Our resources were limited, our soldiers tired and our hope almost depleted. The fleet that was still available for military action were mostly made up of infantry carriers and cargo haulers. Very few battle ready cruisers and scout ships were left, and almost all of them were now on patrol between the safe zone and the highly contested dead zones. Subjugation Day had taken its toll on the fleets and the military docking facilities situated in the dead zones, most of them now only derelict ghost ships hanging in the void. Only three capital ships still remained, these armoured and deadly behemoths were assigned to the defence of Earth and its solar system. After Subjugation Day, Earth’s solar system entry points were blockaded by P-SEP and its military wing to protect our home planet from whatever threat was able to reach it. Nothing was allowed in or out of the solar system, Earth and its sister planets were all isolated from the rest of the star kingdom. Like a king going into hiding during a siege, the councils and leaders of those planets closed the doors on the rest of us. The rest of the star kingdom could only communicate with the outer nodes within our home solar system and report progress on the war with the Beast.

  Circumstances were grim, but we still had a tiny spark of hope left that we had not used yet. Our experimental weapon was about to join the war against the Beast. Two cruisers named Hammer Break and Hyperion were loaded with battle ready Titans and all of their supporting crew and gear. On the eve before they would take to the field of battle, the Hammer Break and the Hyperion entered the space around Arkelis unannounced and unnoticed. The deployment of the Titans would be a surprise to all that fought on the planet’s surface. It ensured tactical advantage, something we desperately needed.

  Drop ships descended from the Hammer Break and Hyperion now orbiting the silent void above Arkelis. The drop ships headed straight for the largest land mass on the planet’s surface, Evodus; there the raging battle was the most ferocious. A little over two thousand Titans were deposited amid the frontlines across Evodus, to the surprise of the soldiers already fighting for their lives.

  The Titans stormed out of their drop ships and immediately rushed the Beast, hammering them with volleys of automatic fire while others suited and outfitted for close quarters charged into the Beast horde. Soldiers close to the drop points rallied to them without question, their lustrous new armour like beacons to those around them. Bodies of the enemy were heaped up around the areas were Titans were locked in combat with the Beast. They had little difficulty in dispatching the human-sized infected, bigger and bulkier infected were downed by squads working as one. None fell during the first few hours of the Battle for Arkelis, and slowly but surely they were proving that they could be our saviours. Kill counts and reports flooded the battlefield networks all confirming one thing, that the count of enemy dead was in the thousands and climbing all the time. Soldiers fighting with the Titans witnessed acts of great valour on the battlefield. The tide had finally started to turn in favour of the humans fighting on Arkelis. Within a few hours they had the Beast on the back foot and reeling from their surprise assault. Already they were becoming legends.

  One squad in particular fought tirelessly to break the back of the beasts they faced. They protected the soldiers around them with fervour, not letting one single soldier die while they still drew breath. The officers and soldiers that fought in close proximity to this particular squad all reported the same thing. A snarling white wolf, painted on the upper arm of every member of this squad, could be seen blazing as they fought. These Titans fought in silent tandem as they obliterated everything around them, pushing the beast further back as they were cut down by bullet and blade. They had fought hard and had pierced deep into the Beast’s lines, eventually reaching a plateau overlooking the battle li
nes. From the elevated plateau they had the perfect vantage point of the surrounding areas. It was there that the legend of the Grim Wolves was forged in blood and courage.

  The Grim Wolves, their name bestowed upon them by the survivors of Arkelis, rallied all of the soldiers around them to their new vantage point. They fought off wave after wave of Beast assaults, their elevation making them a prime focal point for the enemy’s wrath. The dead piled up as the Titans fought on, normal soldiers were dying as the Grim Wolves could not protect all of them while trying to keep the monsters from overrunning their position. Dead soldiers and Beast alike heaped up on all sides, yet they fought on. The Grim Wolves were reaping the mutated lives of the infected as easy as smothering a candle’s flame, their kill count now lost in the fury of battle. When their ammunition was no more they fought with blades, when their blades were broken they fought with their armoured hands.

  They lost all sense of time as they fought the enemy, not realizing that the battle around them had begun to wind down. They never heard the scream that had spread through the Beast horde signalling the time to turn and run. Other squads were now converging on their position as well, squads that were able to move more freely now that the Beast was in retreat. The Beast had been broken by our new weapon. By the time the surrounding Titans had reached the top of the plateau eight of the Grim Wolves still stood, one knelt and another had fallen. Silence gripped the squads that found them, as the dust settled the true carnage that the Grim Wolves had inflicted became clear. The height of the plateau had been raised by a dozen or more feet, the dead forever tangled together to form a new mountain peak on the continent of Evodus.

  For eleven hours they had fought without pause, without rest. From the moment they had deployed, they had slaughtered their way through the Beast horde, killing thousands in their path to victory. Of over the two thousand Titans that fought during the battle on Arkelis, only three hundred had fallen, with half of that injured or incapacitated. Deaths recorded by regular military units were deemed within acceptable levels by military command. The number of soldiers that lost their lives on Arkelis was never released, it was rumoured to be close to four million lives spent defending that planet.

  The Titans were now a proven concept and P-SEP military command ordered more to be trained for the war against the Beast. Resources from all planets located in close proximity to New Horizon were requisitioned to help further the Titan Project. Facilities on New Horizon would create and train new Titans as resources allowed. These requisitions rendered economies in required materials and resource trading obsolete in most of these neighbouring sectors. Sectors that had only limited resources descended into poverty and chaos, piracy was rampant and entire sectors went dark as they tuned on each other or refused to supply any more resources. Civil wars broke out across the star kingdom as sectors declared their independence, distancing themselves from the war with the Beast and the rest of P-SEP owned sectors. The war with the Beast had drained P-SEP and humankind, and we were forced to turn a blind eye to these rebellious sectors. Sectors that had broken away from the star kingdom would have to be dealt with at a later time, when resources allowed it.

  The Titans that were still operational after the Battle of Arkelis had no chance to recover, they were immediately sent on new operations within the dead zone. It was during these operations that a weakness in the Titan Project was discovered. The success of the Titans on the field of battle was a double-edged sword. They called it Nano-sickness, but it was much more complicated than that. Those that fought for extended periods of time relied more and more on the Nano machines to repair muscle damage from battle strain, and protect their vital organs from complete failure. As they fought the Nano machines supplied them with vital fluids and nutrients, which is why they were able to fight without rest for weeks.

  But the reliance on these Nano robotics caused damage of their own, once Operators were removed from the suits they would fall into deep healing comas due to the strain the body was under during operation. The comas were part healing and part exhaustion, the body shut itself down to protect the vital organs from burning out. They were never tested for extended battle periods and this weakness had escaped the notice of the scientists and researchers that created them. The Titans themselves never noticed this fatigue during combat as it only occurred after more than a week of suit operation, and none had fought for such a long time before full deployment.

  To combat this weakness, scientists built specialized recuperation tanks to decrease the down time of Titans after missions. Operators were removed from their suits immediately upon operation completion and placed within one of the recovery unit tanks. Operators were drained off all Nano machines and pumped full of stimulants to help recover body mass and speed up the body’s natural healing process. Because of this recovery cycle Titans were used in more single strike operations on planets and void missions.

  There was no visible command structure to the Beast, so there were no valuable targets to use our new weapon against or leaders to assassinate. Instead, the Titans were used on the frontline, commanding and strengthening the soldiers around them. Salvage and recovery missions were standard practice as Titans were the perfect tools to recover derelict ships drifting in the void. The recovery and salvage of these derelict ships were paramount in the eyes of P-SEP, vessels could be used to maintain other vessels, or they could be repaired and used again. Void recovery and salvage missions were the most dangerous, the Beast trapped within the confines of a dead ship were more deadly than those set free on the battlefields. They were also deployed to protect and defend installations throughout the star kingdom under attack from the enemy. Mass Titan deployment was left as a contingency plan should the situation ever call for it. They were helping to hold the Beast at bay, and did so for many years after their deployment. The Titans were spread out across the operational ships within the P-SEP fleet, achieving extraordinary records of missions successfully completed throughout the star kingdom. However, as the universe had taught our race many times...

  Nothing ever lasts.

  Chapter Zero.Two

  Fall

  “The constructs they wore granted them the strength of mythical beings, their courage unrivalled on the fields of battle. But underneath all of the technology and armour plating they were still only human, we were foolish to ever think of them as more than that. Our foolishness overestimated their capabilities, perhaps due to our hope growing in the wake of their victories. In the end, they fell like the rest of us.”

  As time passed after the Battle of Arkelis, more and more isolated incidents of infected humans appeared throughout the sectors. On planets, in colonies and on-board void stations the infected would appear out of nowhere, spreading their infectious hunger and hate for our kind. The Titans were quick to respond to all threats; their efficiency staggering, the speed at which they completed operations was beyond what we thought possible. Together they reclaimed colonies, defended refugees, held back attacks from our enemy and found precious lost commodities. A large portion of the close proximity dead zones to the frontlines were purged of all Beast infections. Our gamble on such an expensive weapon seemed to be justified. We expected losses, everyone did, but we never expected the losses to impact us in such a way. With every one that died, a hero passed from life into history, and we felt every one that didn’t return from an operation, we needed them to survive for the sake of all of us. The Beast somehow sensed this and retaliated in sectors all over the star kingdom, how they knew that we were beginning to show weakness we will never know, but it was not just mere coincidence.

  Following the years of their first deployment only a few had perished during missions, and those ranks would then be reinforced by new recruits from New Horizon’s facilities. For a period all was well with the P-SEP military machine feeding the Titan Project with everything it needed. But out there in the darkness between the stars the Titans fought and died alone, and little by little their ranks thinned. P-SE
P tried to reinforce the squads, but as the number of operational Titans dwindled, so did the resources and man power required to create new ones. Another problem was that New Horizon could not keep up with the demand, fewer and fewer Operators were trained and deployed to squads that needed vital strengthening. The rebellion in the sectors around New Horizon didn’t help the Titan Project either; it had swallowed up almost all of the key production facilities that supplied the project with valuable resources.

  Reserve resources were all that was left, without new sources of Actinium, now a very rare commodity, the Titan Project would grind to a halt. This halt would mean that no more Titans could be trained, and no more ARC suits could be built without the required resources. To make the situation worse, the cargo vessel hauling the crucial Nano robotic systems vanished without a trace before it could reach New Horizon. Its last transmission received moments before it entered the sector, nothing appeared to be wrong before the vessel went dark.

  Titans on operations deep in the dead zones were left to complete their objectives, while others closer to the safe zones were reassigned to secure resource deposits within the dead zones and rebellion zones. Other squads in the safe zone that were on defence duty were tasked to travel to the planet New Horizon to resupply and reinforce. One by one, the Titans expired while fighting the enemy of humankind. Their deaths leaving a gaping void in the ranks of the brave heroes, voids that could not be filled and squads were left understrength.

  Fewer than two hundred of them survived, the fourteen years since the Battle of Arkelis had taken its toll on them. Only a handful of squads still had veterans from that battle in their ranks, others were all veterans of later campaigns. Out of these squads only two squads still had a full roster of Arkelis veterans. The Grim Wolves were down to five members, all of them still bearing the Arkelis Honour Star on their chest, a bronze star inlayed with silver depicting the way Arkelis was before the war. That honour was bestowed upon them by Titan Commander Alder, overall commander and leader of the Titan divisions, what remained of them. Commander Alder’s squad, The Saint’s Templar, was the other squad with seven Arkelis veterans still on the squad’s roster.