Facet of Truth

Obligation and duty are lies made to encourage the binding of one generation to the next, because humans all inherently do their utmost to take as much as they can. While other species must attempt to change over thousands of years, the human race cultivated itself ideas, which became beliefs, and then truths, all of which are merely fictional, but from which eventually came civilization. As other species had to forge instincts from nothing, the human brain is innately malleable at birth, as to accept norms and truths, gilded by smiling faces, thus binding babes to ideas they never had a say in creating.

The sciences which humanity uses to discern reality, to learn facts, can be attributed to both obligation and duty. However, upon erasing romanticism and  prose, all that the logical mind will see are lies forged by humans to suborn other humans. What is the factual value of blood relations? Why is another human being lesser in importance to my sibling? How is that a man can command me to give to him what I worked for? 

This must be done because it is right, one says.

Why, another asks.

Because it is right, the first says again.

If why cannot be answered, then the results are inconclusive. If results are inconclusive, they are negative and more tests must be taken. Continuing to believe in inconclusive results, which cannot be validated, is inherent faith. So, what if all of humanity, all across Earth, at every time period has put value in obligation, duty, family, and othersuch things? That is not evidence. That isn’t a fact.  That is saying that an innumerable number of people cannot be wrong.

Which is outright, utterly wrong. 

However, even though I believe in such things, here I am.

Going to another battlefield, to risk death at the hands of monsters, because I am a human being capable of fighting for other humans beings who cannot. 

At the very least, if there’s anything to thank the amalgamation of lies that humanity has chosen to sit itself upon, upon which civilization was born, raised, and nearly broken, it would be the fact that I have arms and armor that’ll help me not die, while I fight for a fatass behind a screen, a glutton barely able to get out of a booth, and a grandmother who’d piss on my grave for daring to fight against some diety’s will.

So, in short, Humanity thanks for the big gun, but please go fuck yourself for making me do this and pretending I had a choice.

…

The defensive line was breached.

The reaction force was half an hour away.

And, the enemy?

Some would care about the fact that they were from beyond the stars. That they were out to turn the world into another planet inch by inch, if left unfought and unkilled, and they naturally wielded technologies and weapons that humanity can only reverse engineer. Some would care about such things, even though it’s been centuries since they came, and allow the fact that humanity was still warring against them to put fear in their heart.

I only cared about the shitshow I was diving into.

I’ll leave the strategy and philosophy to people smarter than I’ll ever be.

I wanted to know what broke through a five layers of tungsten-alloy plating, slapped onto a wall bristling with enough firepower to everything between it and the horizon into glass, which was also protected by a whole armored company.
Whatever that thing was? 

That was my problem.

Every other concern, issue, and worry can wait its turn, until I’m the shower ready to have my existential crisis. I have two open slots everyday to worry about the lot of you. Take a ticket. Sit the fuck down. Let me worry about bigger, worse problems that send a whole a armored company running away with their tails tucked between their legs. 

Thankfully, I wasn’t speeding down from low orbit yet, so I had time to internally panic, before I externally panicked. 

“Scan.” The command was simple, but it gave me access to a satellite in low orbit. In my cockpit, if I left a book open at the roof of my apartment, I could read it line by line via the transmission. It was marvel of science, which I had personal control over, a literal eye that can look down from the skies and discern everything as a supersized, superhuman eye can. “Oh, fuck, stop scanning that’s absolute horseshit.”

I absolutely fucking hated it.

There’s few things worse than going in blind into a fight.

One of those things is going into a fight knowing you’re going to have to fight for your life just to not die.

Not come out uninjured. 

Not lose a few pieces of your Facet, thus knowing you’ll be getting stink eyes from maintenance for days.

Not even fighting to just retreat.

Really, actually, going into fight at your absolute hardest just to come out able to just breathe and think.

Why?

Because the extraterrestrial invaders, with all the unknowns they had left to throw at us, along with all the wisdom they had, decided to make a living, breathing battering ram the size of a skyscraper, which covered in emitters, launchers, and thousands of tendrils meant to grab, crush, and provide locomotion. Not only that, but it was moving at an easy forty kilometers of armor, was using parts of the wall as ablative armor, had its own cragged, layered armor beneath all the weapons, and was surrounded by a whole invasion force.

“Nuke it. Now. Everything you got, before I land.” I’m sure someone in the higher ups wanted mobile, weaponized, and living skyscraper to not by atomized. New enemies meant new technologies. Since what i was seeing existed, and isn't collapsing under its own weight and breaking down due to its speed, there was a high probability keeping whole and intact could get humanity some sweet, sweet insights into gravity manipulation. That meant that I’d probably get myself a prototype of a gravity emitter for my personal use. However, that wasn’t enough to stop me. “Please, turn as much of that thing into salsa. The less chunky the better.”

“Order acknowledged. Indirect fire support order has been approved. Mission parameters are unchanged.” My partner-in-crime, the number 2 to my number 1, and the brains that operated most of the heavy lifting of my job, while I provided some chaos was… a sentient robot. Once upon a time, I had a living, breathing operator/battle-buddy/co-pilot. However, I’m so good that I’m given experimental pieces of hardware that can change the tide of war. Hahaha. Just kidding. They all hated me and transferred out, because I have the emotional intelligence of a cucumber. Watery, but with an off-taste that you hate even if you pretend to like it. “We are launching. Bombardment will cease five seconds before landing. Data regarding enemy composition has been processed and forwarded. I recommend delaying tactics until reinforcements arrive.”

So, the supercomputer has recommended running away and not dying. 

Against a living, breathing superweapon that tore through a defensive emplacement that stood for almost a decade, with tens of thousands of auxiliary units escorting it.

What  wonderful, original, and helpful advice.

Truly, the wonders of science never cease to amaze.

“Pilot your current thought processes correlate with those during moments where you think ill of others. I am forwarding them to your therapist.”

“Please, don’t. I hate her. She’s a terrible human being. Don’t do it. I don’t want to see her ever again, even if I have to die.”

Maybe, this giant superweapon on its way to ravage an Arcology filled with millions of people is a blessing in disguise?

“Thoughts of suicide are to be reported immedietly--

“Launch. Launch right now. We’re going to use the dust storms as cover. It’s the perfect plan!”

“Complying.”

…

There’s a lot of romanticization regarding the military. Not that it’s difficult when its fighting aliens out to kill every last human being on the planet, but the PR department’s gone overboard. No matter the fucked up algorithm deciding what you’re supposed to see from all the private information you’ve accidentally sold/told about yourself, there’s always going to be an ad or two about the military, about how you should join, and how you should be a hero.

It’s very clean, inspirational, and a total bag of utter lies.

They show off hordes of aliens being wiped out in one pass by orbital kill-sats. Armored units descending from the sky, pulverizing everything beneath firepower and fusion-powered, mechanical limbs. Technicians drinking coffee and having cookies, while the drones they oversee vaporize armies of aliens, and call in nuclear weapons when the insidious, flying, mechanical pigeons can’t hack it.

The truth is kill-sats get plucked from the sky after they lose one salvo. Drone swarms are a waste of resources against an enemy that can endure damage, while nukes wipe out too many corpses and make battles a net-loss in resources. 

Then, there’s an mechanized corp descending from the sky and landing without being turned into scrap metal lightly salted with burnt human bits.

If humans can drop down machines almost two stories tall, bristling with weapon onto the enemy via the air, we’d drop bombs or missiles instead.

However, the truth of it is mass-deployments like that just provides a target-rich environment for the particle-based point-defenses the aliens like to lug around. Saturating an area with artillery or energy-based weapons works, but missiles, bombs, and fancy, walking tanks? 

Yeah.
That would be suicide, even with processing power out the ass and  the most advanced fly-by-wire systems available.

In terms of computational power, processing speed, and target acquisition, humanity’s machinery and technology was beat… unless a human being augmented into a being a pseudo-quantum computer was welded into the machine itself. 

Thankfully, there were plenty of people who could take the augments with rejecting them, so there were plenty of pilots that could integrate with a machine, so that it could be more than a just a predictable target for creepy crawly from the cosmos with a cannon. However, again, most of those folks are going to stay on the ground, work behind defensive cover, and get supported by other arms of the military. 

Then, there were people like me, who could take more than the usual amount and be capable of dropping in squads into armies of aliens, suffering only a handful of a casualties, and halting a whole offensive.

Then, there was me.

The guy with a brain and spine that’s mostly metal and circuits, who could outright evade a whole army’s death zone, and wreck it all by his lonesome. 

As I fell from the sky, I could pinpoint each and every one of the living cannons lining up to pluck me out of the sky. I read their angles, discerned how much they could alter themselves, and then computed how all 74 that survived the nuclear artillery could coordinate with one another. I saw their patterns. Which ones were going to force me into the line-of-fire for others, which ones thought they didn’t need to deal with me, and the redundant shots that would be sent my way because aliens weren’t cocky and never overextended themselves.

I had to dodge the shots coming for me by a hair's breadth, so that I wouldn’t fall into the firing arc of another canon, while putting tungsten spikes at mach 3 into the redundant attackers, and as I saturated as much of my landing area with blasts from every energy emitter I had all at once. 

One wrong kill of a redundant canon meant that I’d die. 

A meter too far in one direction, in my two-meter wide, five-meter tall mechanized warmachine, meant that I’d die. 

Not clearing my landing area, precisely liquidating and disintegrating all the soldiers from the stars, meant that I’d… 

...wait for it… 

Friggin’ DIE.

I’d very much like to be just an average pilot.

Or, even just a special pilot.

Because, for fuck’s sake, they aren’t expected to win impossible fights!

…

All my machine’s armor was gone. My pressurized capsule was leaking oxygen, while letting in heavy particles from the outside. My unit’s motorized limbs were gone. The boosters got shot off. And, finally, as the shit atop the mountain of absolute, fetid garbage I had no more ammunition for one, single fucking alien.

It was the basic, worthless alien unit.

Just a simple organism, slapped onto some rocks, which it formed into a shell and turned into spikes that it either used as locumotion or sent spiraling into light vehicles.

It was a walking boulder on spikes.

It was fucking stupid, I usually stepped on them, and they were only a threat to normal people who didn’t get to enjoy bipedal weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, it was aiming its rock-spike thrower of a mouth at me, plinking away at the titanium-composite tub of a cockpit that I had, and it was slowly, but surely killing me despite the fact its aim was garbage.

“I would be a fucking happier man, if you were some crackshot, you know?” I talked to it. It probably couldn’t hear me. It only had eyes and some sort of biological radio system. It was about the size of a small car. To reiterate, the thing could probably get killed by overpressure from one of my secondary guns. If I had one bullet left, I could spin up a torso cannon, then kill it with a shockwave. However, I could not, so I awaited my demise… as it had to find a rock to chew on and turn into more ammunition. “I wish you were more than a piece of shit, I really do, because this is just fucking depressing.”

I’d done it.

I’d survived fighting an unknown, alien superweapon that managed to breach a final line of defense, along with most of its army, and by most I meant all of the armor save for the one fucker spitting spikes of rock at me. Even if those spikes were going at Mach 1, wearing away at the final layers of armor in my cockpit, after all I did… I was going to die via someone spitting at me. 

Now, if I was being indulged in a rather fetishistic way, dying via being spat on would be a pretty good way to go.

However, a living boulder with shitty aim, missing every second shot at a stationary target, was not a busty blonde with legs for days who's left me dry and near-dead at a ripe old age.

You know what?

I’m going to encourage it.

I’ve done my part. 

I’ve saved millions of people.

Again.

At the very least, this little shit’s going to escape, leaving me in a broken machine surrounded by a dead army and a fucked-over superweapon. 

Yeah, if i die here, I’ll be a hero.

As long as no one say me get killed by this fucker.

Ergo, it needed to escape, so it needed to kill me fast, and therefore I needed to give it my love and praise.

Plink, went one shot.

“Alright, kid, you’re getting better.” 

Woosh, went the second shot, as expected.

“Please, remember to aim.”

Plink. Hooray. More heavy air. 

“A few more holes in this cockpit and I’ll die from drowning on dry land. Good job.”

Whoosh. And, miss again.

“Maybe, you should stay still, instead of moving around? I would’ve shot you already if i could, you know?”

Anyway, as expected, the reaction force found me alive and coaching an alien to kill me.

It’s absolutely no surprise I was shoved into my therapist’s tender, loving care the moment I was retrieved.

Wait.

Did I say TLC?

I meant bitchiness.

And, did I say therapist.

The bitchiest bitch to ever bitch, bitch.

As per usual, my life sucks.