As I sat on my bunk in Foreas base and played with my dog tags, one of the new recruits asked me why they looked so different from everyone elses. I told him it's because they were my dog tags from Earth, the only thing physical item I have left to remember home.
"Yea I know they're from Earth, but some of the guy's who were in the U.S military back on Earth have different looking ones" he replied.
I told him it's because I wasn't an American back on Earth, I was a Canadian and they were Canadian Military dog tags.
One of the other soldiers spoke up and said jokingly "wait a second, Canada had an army?".
I let out a long drawn out sigh. Even back on Earth I heard that same joke constantly.
"So how come that's the only thing that you have left to remember home by man?" the new recruit asked me.
I can still remember it like it was yesterday.
We were doing a patrol of the northern sector of Kandahar City, Afghanistan with me leading my 4 man team. Being a section leader at the age of 21 is extremely rare, but I knew my stuff. The streets were really quiet that night, more so than usual. Those are the times that you need to be on your best guard though, complacency kills is what we were always taught.
Then the unexpected happened, Tyson my signaller called me and said, "base wants all units to fall back to Kandahar Airfield immediately".
"You gotta be shittin me, the hell are we supposed to do for transportation?", I replied. We got dropped off by Jeep and then were supposed to radio in for pick up when our patrol was complete, and with the Airfield being miles away that left us pretty much shit out of luck. I told the team to hold and take up covering positions until we figured out what the hell was going on. "Tell them we kind of need a pick up and get a sitrep on what the hell the rush is" I told him. The nice thing about being Special Forces, you can bust commands balls and not receive too much crap for it.
"What the hell?", Tyson replied a few moments later, "all they said was 'look up' ".
The nights sky were filled with fiery streaks of light, growing larger and larger every second as they moved closer and closer towards the horizon. All I could think to myself was "this can't be good". A few minutes later all hell broke lose. We took cover inside the nearest building when the explosions began and listened to the radio. The channel for the Airfield was dead silent, I tried to call in several times with no response. It was then that I heard the strangest sounds I've ever heard in my life. The crackling and hissing sounds followed by faint screams in the distance, growing louder and louder by the minute. I told Palmer to open the door and take a look outside. He flattened up against the wall next to the door, opened it slowly with the 3 of us looking on in anticipation and slowly peeked his head out. The yellowish-green light ball flew past the doorway within a matter of seconds as Palmers body crumpled to the ground, his head taken clean off with the neck seared shut.
We reacted immediately and headed for the stairway in the next room and went to the second floor. I kicked out the window at the back of the house and the 3 of us jumped out. We started running full sprint down the street heading north towards the edge of the city. I figured we'd be safer if we headed for the hills, at least then we could observe the city through the bino's. We had no idea what was going on and I didn't intend on us sticking around to find out after watching Palmers head being taken clean off by a ball of light. We ran until my legs felt like Jello and I had puked up dinner, and then we ran some more. Running in combat boots while wearing 60lbs worth of gear is never easy, no matter how good of shape you're in.
We stopped once we reached the top of the hill and took up prone positions facing the city around a large boulder. No one saw us or followed us. The city was in total ruin, fires burning everywhere, lighting up the night. I turned my attention towards the Airfield, our base of operations. It looked no different than the city did.
"So what do we do now Sergeant, we still don't even know what the hell happened", Tyson whispered to me.
I told them we'd head higher up into the hills, keeping an extremely low profile and to keep roaming the radio channels listening in for any chatter. After 9 hours of hiking we heard a broken transmission. I grabbed the headset from Tyson to listen in and told him to turn it up. All I could make out was 'ASF' and 'position' through all the static. The low ground we were in didn't help so we started jogging to get on top of the hill, the further we went up the clearer it was coming in.
Eventually Tyson said he was receiving clearly and I grabbed the radio.
"Is anyone still alive around here? This is the AFS, give us your position and we'll send in a pickup", what the hell is the AFS I thought to myself. Once I had rough coordinates of where we were I radioed it in.
"We'll have a dropship there within a few minutes" I received loud and clear, and for some wierd reason, all of a sudden I felt a great sense of relief. I had no idea what the hell was about to happen to us, but I felt calm about it.
My dog tags and memories are all that I have left of Earth. I have no idea what happened to my fiancee, my friends or my family and I try not to think about it. There's enough things around here to cause pain without me having to do it to myself. At least Tyson and Collier are still alive and well, speaking of which, they're probably at the Tavern right now. I think I'll make my way over there and have a couple drinks.
British Columbia, Canada
Orion Server