[GZG] RE: [GZG Fiction] Dear Ma.... 4 of 5

Toodei, bayldagch (able seaman) on MMN Sakalin, to his fiancée
September 10th 2196

My most delightful Alma,

Hello darling, just a few more lines, hoping they find you healthy and
happy. It warms my heart to know you are safely posted to logistics and
are far from the front line, even if you find it boring or frustrating.
Before I go further, I want to stress how much I love you! Today I can
make this letter more interesting than my usual blather about the
weather and cooks latest culinary disaster, as we have been given
permission to let you know at least something of what is happening here.

As you already know I am stationed in the Kolyma More, off the northern
coast of the Tokalau Isthmus. I meant to find out why it is called an
Isthmus for you didn’t I? Sorry I had completely forgotten until now.
It still mystifies me, peninsular I could maybe understand (though even
then it would be a stretch), but isthmus?! Sorry I have wandered quite
far from my original point, which is that we have been taking part in
the liberation of the alien’s Martian holdings. We are doing
remarkable well I think, especially when you take into consideration the
opposition the aɣur niɣur (raging face or Kra’Vak) are putting up!
The weather was reasonable the day we set sail, but it dropped off and
was quite poor by the second day. In fact it was a little too rough for
comfort, but we still got everything across OK. The greatest incident of
note was that we narrowly escaped being sunk by a aɣur niɣur missile
barrage. We had to draw in close to drop off a load of marines and
commandos and we were fired on by shore launched missiles. We dodged
them all fairly well, though we must thank luck as much as Yenisey, our
defensive AI. Yenisey drove us full astern, barely missing a bar, and
the main barrage slipped harmlessly across our bows - missing us by
about 3 or 4 metres, though in an engagement like this one it might just
as well have been 3 or 4 kilometres! The more frightening was when a
force of 10 or 12 aɣur niɣur grav tanks flew out low and engaged us
with their main guns. It was quite nerve raking labouring away below,
feeling the shudders and groans from the old girl as she took shot after
shot. Yenisey (supported by quite a few flesh and blood crew) fought
them off with our guns and machine-pods. Not without loss however, we
took water on the port side engineering ports, though in a way that was
a stroke of luck as it helped put out a fire that the shells had started
down there. We lost 15 dead and 35 wounded though; grisly stuff, burns
and haemorrhaging amputations. Nevertheless I can honestly say it was a
 marvellous achievement to get the whole of the force across, the entire
3rd and 4th Divisions, with only the lightest of losses (numerically, it
certainly does not feel so light to know Sengelen, Irkut and Gurme
won’t have me laughing over dinner anymore). I don't want you to think
it was as simple as a dumpling, because it was far from it! I am just
proud to see such a stream of troops landed and the torrent of
reinforcements and stores following them in. What a difference it has
made to have the aɣur niɣur gone from orbit. Now we needn’t fear
their bombardment. As you’ve not doubt been briefed yourself, sadly we
can not count on precision orbital strikes from our fleets over Mars
either though, as Mar’s atmosphere and climate has been judged to
badly wounded to stand anymore of that kind of support.

One a sight I will try to convey from that heady time, however, as it
was almost unbelievable. As we drew to our station on the first day, we
were called to the main deck to prepare the launches. I saw a dark cloud
closing fast and feared it was some mighty squall. When it drew nearer
though I realise it was the airborne. It is utterly impossible for me to
describe my exact feelings at seeing them, but my gut felt tight, my
heart was pounding and I had this thrilling strength shooting up my
spine. From one horizon to the other, as far as I could see by eye, the
sky was blacked out by troop transports, drop ships, VTOLs, gliders, and
bombers. Hundreds even besides the fighter cover that accompanied them.
I do not know of any other site like it.

There is little else to say for now and my watch starts in 10 minutes,
so I had better sign off. Remember you have my heart. I love you so
much!

Yours as long as the stars burn

Toodei

>>>>>>

Alma, baga türüüch (junior sergeant) in the 3rd Martian Division, to
her fiancée Toodei September 21st 2196

My own Toodei,

I was astonished and delighted to receive your letter today and to see
how fast it had reached me, never a sure thing even when we are so close
by! I can only guess that Baikal, who was post master in Tonopah last I
heard saw your letter and personally made sure it found its way to our
Colonels packet.

How I have missed you! Especially today. After weeks of hard fighting al
of a sudden there comes this two-day break with almost nothing to do but
unwind, stretch out and try to get some rest, although that is not such
an easy thing in our present location. But I am quite getting ahead of
myself. I did not get a chance to tell you before I left, but I was one
of the troops your taskforce took across! I do not know what I would
have done if I had been put on your ship, as I would have had no time to
have searched you out and I do not know how you would have taken the
shock of the news besides. You see at the last they judged they were
short a battalion and put one together from our logistics group and
trucked us down to the transport fleet before it sailed. So here I am
back in the frontline press. You never can tell where fortune will land
you in this mess of an army. I know it was some comfort to you to think
of me safe in support, but in all honesty I think I prefer to be in the
thick of it, rather than simply packaging boxes and thinking of you
sitting by the teeth of this alien maw. This is what I have been trained
for afterall.

It is still hard to believe we have only been here a little over two
weeks. These past fifteen days have been filled to bursting with sights
and sounds that I'll probably recall always. I can’t claim I found any
of it the kind of enjoyable you’d seek out at your leisure, but it was
most certainly exciting, if pretty nasty. For the greatest part we
haven't actually been close enough to catch the leading edge and impact
of the assault, but we have had more than enough to do in the clear-up
and the glimpses we've had of the thicker fighting have been enough. We
landed north of Ariza and fought south along Gurderain Way for the next
three days. Since the Krak too it a bit of a year back they have been
busy building what appears to be breeding ranches for those cavalry
beasts they ride and what appears to be mariculture pens and spa and
sauna comlpex of all things! What did they think the place was a
resort?! Some of the guys reckon that the Kra’Vak are party amphibious
or something and need these structures for food husbandry and shelter
and what not. They’re weird enough that could be true, but I’m still
sceptical.

The Torguud (commandos) basically ran on ahead taking the edge off for
us, while we cleaned out the pockets they’re missed. We lost Manzan as
we reached the northern suburbs of Ariza, he was chopped in half by
concentrated RG fire. It will take weeks to fully secure the island,
though it seems there wasn’t as many Krak here as we thought, that or
the majority of them scampered back to their mainland haunts to prepare
ahead of us jumping there, leaving only a painfully tough rear guard to
bloody us up and make us pay for this toehold. We have cleaned up enough
of them at any rate that we can have the odd break between bouts, at
least for now. I do not know when we will be thrown into the main fray
around Orduna.

We have done much talking about our feelings of late. More so than I
would’ve expected given our tendency to usually duck the issue and
laugh instead. Its as if the alien nature of our enemy and the threat
they pose has focused the mind more seriously. Others, who knew they
were coming, claim they have been under growing tension and doing a
great deal of self-searching. For myself, we were thrown into this so
suddenly that I could do nothing but ride along and make myself set for
anything. I have this sense of completeness, a security of knowledge
that there is reason in my living up to this point. A lot of that has to
do with you, Toodei. I am overwhelmingly grateful to you and for you;
this encompasses my entire feelings and burns brightest in my thoughts.
Above all else I pray to the ancestors that I live to make you happy. Of
all I want to do, that alone is yet to be done. I want to live, darling.
Live with that sense of wonder that has always been like a new spring
day, a new revelation, a new childhood toy for me. I wanted to live for
you and with you. The promise of our tomorrows stretches ahead of me and
is delicious just to contemplate. For all of these reasons and millions
more I love you, darling! Every hope and desire I have for the future is
ours, just as we must stay resolute in the knowledge that every agony
and desperation that this war brings now is ultimately for our benefit.
Everything is twice as hard, while also being twice as easy and a
billion times more consuming and wonderful than anything that's ever
been in this galaxy or any other. Hold tight to our faith in us Toodei.
Call on our love as deep as you need, as it is unending. Live for us,
live for me darling. I love you something wonderful and all I want is a
chance to show it free from this alien scourge.

Stay safe and strong my angel, my guiding star. Stay well, for me, for
us.

I love you, darling.

Always your Alma

>>>>>>

Major Marcello Minte-Vera 35th (Brasilia) parachute regiment, to his
sister
September 23rd 2196

My dear Hem,

I hope Mamma and all the little ones are fine. Have you had word from
Rodrigo?

Thanks ever so for your letter. I received it while I was in hospital,
but have not had much time to write until now. As you can see, I’m out
now, thank our Lord. I am more or less all alright again. I have a very
fetching scar that runs up my forearm and a bit of a dent above the
elbow, but it’s nothing really and I’m sure the girls will swoon
over it. Yeah in my dreams, I can hear you saying it now. I’ll be the
first to say the Lord smiled on me that day. The shrapnel missed
everything important and really did little permanent damage. It went in
about 10cm below my left shoulder on the inside of my arm and stopped
just as it was breaking the surface above my elbow on the other side and
diagonally downwards. Managed to miss the biggest blood vessels and
didn’t break anything too badly. I got a bunch of bruises and
scratches beside, taking a nice blow to the head which finally did me in
as far as our medic was concerned. One moment I’m in the thick of the
biggest not to be missed party on Mars and next I’m looking into the
big blue eyes of Sven the Swedish nurse back in Nirgal. As you guessed
in your letter it something I wouldn’t have missed for the world
though. I was in it barely 28 hours but what I saw, it just takes the
breath away. Listening to the reports and talking to some of the others
around the hospital, for everything I saw that first part was a picnic
compared to what came after. It feels like some bad dream or over the
top VRexe, somehow so big it can’t be real.

The main landing was a dawn raid, with full engagement by midday. It
still seems so unreal to me that we stand our best shot against these
alien monsters in broad daylight. I feel most for the leading teams, all
NSL. They had to go in by night, when the Krak are at their best, and
clear the shoreline LZ and harbour for the main assault. We were
supposed to be close in behind, but due to a screw-up in the orbital
support we ended up coming in hours behind them. They did a stand out
job, but it was still a close run thing as we hit the ground. It’s
never easy to land in an area swarming with the enemy, whose one
objective is to liquidate you before you can do it to them.

Some of the younger guys kept commenting that it was like some exercise,
but I’ve been in this game too long for that. I was chewing my lip
before we left Harper, that tingling rush in my fingers making it hard
to sleep. The doors of the dropship opened while we were still over the
Binzert. I was sitting first in the row, still holding number one jump
spot after 45 jumps, well I was until I got winged. Now I’ll have to
work my way up again. Anyway, I had a grand view as the coast rolled
past below us. I couldn’t see a hint of those alien bastards, thanks
to the RNAAF and the Swabians. A few shots were fired at us, but not so
many it was ever a worry. I remember Cisco, who jumped number two,
exclaiming "Look at those craters!" as we flew in over the beachside
suburbs. We were soon past those and close to our drop zone. In no time
the red light was on and then the green. Out I went. My mind its usual
whistling blank as I watched the ground race up at me. I remember almost
nothing of my descent. It didn't take long at any rate. My landing was
pretty poor. No one’s was outstanding, with all the craters and broken
ground, but mine could still have been better; my fault entirely. Too
fixated on the view and didn’t kick in the brakes until real late. I
got bruised knees for good measure, which made crawling into position
from then on a painful reminder to be more careful next time. It was
only something I did about a 1000 times that day! Anyways, I scrambled
to my feet and unhitched from my chute pronto before rolling down into
cover so I could take a look around.

I called up a HUD overlay as I wasn’t exactly sure where I was. I knew
I was more or less in the LZ, as Felipe, Ernesto, Chico, Raul and Tulio
had come down around me.
The Krak had some heavy weapons firing at the dropships and planes to
our east and north. Quite a lot of what I think was flak was being
thrown up to our south, but at least there was no sign of any enemy in
our immediate vicinity or behind us, between us and the water. I called
the men around me to order and we headed for the rendezvous, more greens
registering on my HUD as we moved closer. Turned out the battalion had
made it in fairly untouched and it wasn’t long before I met one of my
platoon commanders. Then as I ducked into a busted out warehouse, there
was the colonel and another captain. We checked our position and then as
if from some maniac’s version of a war movie the commandos came in,
replete with piper! He was dirty and had a bloody cut to his forehead,
but was in full blow. A surprisingly pleasant sound, and I have
completely revised my view of bagpipes!

I know the majority of what I've given here is rather sketchy, but I can
not give you full details; and using only these simple posted media I
could never hope to give you any sense of the true atmosphere, it is
really quite indescribable. The smell of broken hab-domes, burnt out
air-scrubbers, hulled buildings and the sharp tang of explosives is
extraordinary. In many ways the countryside is much as you would
remember it from our summers here as children, though it is now torn,
reverting in places as the violence tears up what terraforming had put
in place. It is also littered with broken vehicles and parachutes and
old equipment crates. Debris everywhere, in the open spaces, in the
streets, even in the fences and xerophytic hedges. A number of the jump
harnesses look badly broken, to the extent that it is hard to believe
anyone could have survived the landing. Yet it is only in a very few
cases that anyone succumbed on landing. Many have died, but nearly all
in the days after the landing. It was a really amazing, but very
unpleasant and tragic two days. Guido, my company 2IC, never turned up
at the rendezvous. His body was found four days later, in the leading
edge of the LZ, he must have been killed soon after landing. He was an
amazing man, as evidenced by the three dead Kra’vak found littered
around his body. It appears he took them down in hand-to-hand! Sadder
still, Alano is still missing, as is everyone from his dropship. Mrs
Vasconcelos must know by now, but please go see her and pass on my
sorrow, tell her how we tried to find him. I was desperate to find him.
We really don't know what happened to him. Losing your best friend of 25
years is a pain that both cuts and numbs to the core.

Having heard this you probably find it is hard to imagine that after I
left they had an ever sticker time, but I assure you it is true. Most of
the officers were killed or wounded. Our colonel amongst them, the
announcement was in today's gazette.

I have rattled on for some time now and must get back to my chores.
There is much to be done before I meet up with by battalion again in a
week.

Look after Mamma.

Marcello

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