A shockwave of dirt covered Remmon’s face and torso. The artillery shell had landed barely fifty yards from him, sending grime in all directions. Remmon wiped his face with the back of his sweaty hand and continued forward, his advanced now cautioned by the sudden force that danger now surrounded him like senators around a dictator perpetuo. Overhead loomed the Coalition battleship Ismene, the flagship of 7th fleet. The sight of the ship gave him comfort. Her massive figure was the size of an eagle in the sky; she couldn’t possibly leave the planet’s upper troposphere, not while the great Volos monoliths in the distance stood poised to turn anything larger than a troop transport to shreds. A lack of larger transports resulted in virtually no ground based vehicular support, so the brave brothers of 7th fleet had been forced to cower in makeshift hovels on the planet’s surface while the birds above reduced the once gorgeous landscape of the world to a muddy, crater-ridden wasteland. The commissars who called themselves propaganda officers had promised that every Volos across the planet would get blown apart into pieces more numerous than the stars, or be buried by thousands of pounds of concrete and rocks which once served as their protection. Yet when the bombardments had stopped, the naked eye could detect the great spires of rippling metal towering out of the ground like the fingers of a long-buried titan. The bombardments had either failed to notice their significance, or failed to breach their erratic hulls, and the cost had been paid for dearly. Two cruisers and a frigate had been torn to shreds by those spires as they slowly descended from the heavens to the earth, and the landscape had been transfused into the scenery of tartarus itself. 7th Fleet Command found the truth of this war by then; those towers had to be destroyed manually by ground troops.
The air itself was darkened with ash and soot, clouds of the stuff tossed into the open by every explosion, human and Volos alike. Around him, Remmon could see his fellow Marines, their Las-Rifles gripped tightly in their hands. The soldiers wore body armor, for what little it did them. Suppressing fire from Volos turrets manned around the nearest monolith could put a hole in a fully armored man’s chest the size of a fist, not to mention what a man fully exposed to that damn artillery would suffer. The noise was maddening, the sounds of explosions and screams muffled by the persistent sound of Volos turret fire. That sound was perhaps more haunting than the other two most common noises combined. The turrets didn’t crack like a normal Las-based weapon, but instead make a buzzing sound, like a wasp threateningly close to a man’s ear. The sound vibrated in your whole body, and combined with the adrenaline of battle your mind could play tricks on you; you see things that aren’t there, or hear voices of men that haven’t spoken. It could give you headaches after a while. Remmon scanned around him, watching as streams of hundreds of bolts of dark red, molten light burst from the faraway Volos bunkers and slammed into the ash-covered ground, or a handful of Marines. Or both. Usually both.

Remmon found some safety when he spotted a group of Marines who had made good progress towards the nearest spire. Carefully striding through the dusty air he joined with them, though he didn’t recognize any of the soldiers as members of his squad. Remmon and the other troopers advanced cautiously, but with steady pace, barely a few hundred yards away from the Volos line. It was clear that the soldiers were moving towards a turret in a vulnerable link in the bunker chain, which had been focusing its fire on the waves of troops pouring at the primary Volos lines to the north. Advancing at an angle, the Marines could make well placed shots through the narrow opening the Volos used for firing their turrets, disabling the heavy gunners before running towards the bunker while the Volos were still replacing their losses. The thick air provided cover for the men as they jogged for their target, but at the last second they must have been spotted. Remmon instinctively went flat on his stomach, stuffing the right side of his face into the soft floor of ash as he heard the muffled sound of the Volos turret firing at full burst. He could see with his only uncovered eye as the Marines most immediate to the bunker were cut down with the speed of near instance. A few raised their Las-Rifles in defiance, but they were cut down just as swiftly. The last few men in the former cluster of humans had enough time to fire a single shot each before half a dozen holes as large as baseballs ripped into them, and they tumbled to the ground. The turrets scanned the corpses, checking for movement or other groups of humans, before refocusing to where the bulk of the troops were attacking, to the north.
Remmon kept himself still in the dirt for what felt like an hour. Finally, he crawled on his stomach, his rifle now holstered over his back. He found his way to a small crater, barely 8 feet deep, but wide enough to provide more shelter than the bodies of comrades. Remmon sat himself inside the hovel, resting his rifle on his lap. He looked towards the monolith, close to two miles away, yet still ominous in design. At the tip of the spire the air clouded as a red tinted miasma, slowly circling above the tower.  Far above, Remmon found that the Ismene hadn't moved from her position in the sky, watching silently from above. Remmon wiped away sweat from his forehead, clenched his stomach, and let out his lunch in a gap in the floor of the crater.
He still heard the buzzing of the turrets, although much of the enemy line had died down. It was clear to Remmon what that meant; the attack had failed. He wondered if the second wave would attack immediately, or if they would bombard the Volos before attacking again. If the latter was the case he would have to crawl back to Coalition line before he was killed by the Ismene's elegant array of voidguns and las-batteries. Remmon’s hands were trembling, and he tried to calm himself but couldn't. The buzzing of the turrets left a throbbing pain in his head, and he used his thumbs to rub his temples. Resting his head, Remmon realized just how tired he was. War was draining business after all. Remmon closed his eyes for a moment, and then looked to his left. Sitting in the crater, much like himself, was another marine, only this one was dead. His lower jaw had been ripped off by a turret, with the top row of the soldier’s teeth exposed beneath lips that had been torn to bloody ribbons.

What was most unnerving about the scene was that a spider web was in the works, with a black, eight-legged monstrosity weaving a bed of silk diagonally from the back of the marine’s teeth to the base of his throat. Remmon covered his mouth so he wouldn’t scream, but it was as though the spider sensed his fear, and began crawling towards him. The creature barely grazed his hand before Remmon let out a scream. He had always been afraid of spiders, terrified even, and this scenario was certainly not a means to defeat his fears. Remmon shook himself violently, using his hands to dig himself out of the crater as fast as possible. He realized what a terrible mistake he had made when one of the turrets suddenly fluttered to life, the apparatus shifting to mow him down.
Remmon froze with fear, he didn’t know what to do. If he tried to run he would be shot in the back, and if he tried to lunge for the crater again he would be shot facing the turret. The muzzle of the turret suddenly flashed, and Remmon went down. A chunk had been torn from his right shoulder, another ripped into his stomach, and a third shot had hamstrung his left leg. The sheer force of the las-shots had slammed him to the ground. Spasms of pain rippled throughout his body as blood began to seep out of his partially cauterized wounds and through his cracked body armor. For minutes he lay there, screaming and writhing in pain. Finally, after some time, the wounds began to go numb, from shock or blood loss or both. Remmon slowly used his free hand to produce a picture he kept on him at all times. It revealed the face of a beautiful woman, twenty three at the time of the picture’s taking, Her blonde hair and kind smile, sharp features compiled with a general sense of affection being the only beauty on this ugly planet of his. Remmon found tears in his eyes, and wiped them away.
He wanted to return to the world he was from. To be with her. To start a family, not needing to worry about these alien Volos or the politics of Earth, thousands of lightyears away. And he would return! A few wounds couldn’t stop a man as determined as him, could it? Remmon tried to rise, but the god of eternal agony gleefully reminded him that he had a hole the size of a ripened pear in his upper intestines. Remmon suffered through the painful spasms as he set himself back down. He didn’t need to get up and walk anyway, the second wave of Coalition troops would be here any minute anyway. A medic or… Or someone would surely find him and fix up his wounds, and he would be home this time next month.
Remmon waited, staring up at the Ismene. Waiting. Waiting. What the hell was taking so long? “I’m waiting!” he found himself shouting, in spite of his wounds. After a while it finally hit him that a second attack wasn’t coming. And if they didn’t come now it could be days before 7th fleet decides to try again, or months if they decided on a stalemate. Remmon knew he would die in an hour at most if he didn’t receive medical treatment. “Help!” he shouted as panic set in. “Help! Medic! Medic!”. It was a stupid thing to do. All the medics were dead, and anyway he was too close to the Volos line for anyone to safely extract him.

They wouldn't waste good soldiers for one wounded conscript. He sat in silence for a time, this new reality sinking in like a stone. Remmon stared at the picture, thinking. Thinking of fond memories, of first kisses and time well spent. His memories turned to those of basic training, of target practice and disciplinary punishments, of days spent running and lifting and shooting when they should have been with her. This wasn’t his war. Why had he volunteered at all? What good was patriotism for a war he didn’t belong in? Had he been silent, like the smart boys, he would be home, while the men who felt like dying for their rulers could do so as they pleased. “It’s your fault!” Remmon shouted to the heavens, directed to the ever silent Ismene. “The propaganda, the speeches. You tricked me, and now I’m dead!”. The ship miles above him beckoned no reply.
Sitting alone with his bitterness, the anger left Remmon as his eyes refocused onto the picture in his hand. Remmon remembered the last time he’d seen her. He was in full uniform, proudly displaying himself. She had been crying until he kissed her and reminded her of his promise, that he would marry her after he returned. Walking down the driveway to the craft that would take him to his frigate, Remmon realized he’d forgotten something. Turning around and racing to the door, he planted one final kiss on her lips, explaining that he needed “one for the road”. The memory was fond, and he found himself smiling. The pain had stopped; he had lost too much blood. He could feel the strength leaving him as he kissed the picture and raised his right arm, wounded as it was, in one final salute to the Ismene. There would be no more pain in a few seconds, no more spires or the humming of turrets. Just… Silence. And he could finally rest. Rest forever. He closed his eyes, and they never opened again.

The war for this world had lasted weeks, but finally the spires had been destroyed, thanks to the sacrifice of so many. The chink that had broken the chain was two thousand Dabvolathi screamers, who had used their savagery and brute strength to destroy one of the spires, allowing the CS Ismene to land and deploy thousands of heavy vehicles that had broken the Volos line. Admiral Panoptes stood on the ashen surface, surveying the battlefield. His gaze finally fixed on a small, empty crater, a skeleton in the final stages of decay resting nearby. It clutched a picture of a beautiful girl. A group of soldiers had been wiped out fifty yards from the crater. Admiral Panoptes figured that this one had ran for the cover of the hovel and succumbed to his wounds before he could take cover. There were no identifying features; the dog tags must have been shot off at some point. There was nothing that could be done but reluctantly leave the body. The other bodies of fallen Marines were being shipped to their homeworld, so this one was alone. The area the Admiral stood within had once been a human village, a single paved street being the only human structure remaining. The body of this marine rested atop it. Just one for the road.