Martyr

Just like that, the war was over. 

     Officially, it had been over for years. But the occupation, the one thing that had kept the smoldering cinders of war extinguished for the past four years, was ending. 

     We were going home.

     Snow swirled around me as I walked the familiar streets of Prince George, settling on the patchwork road as I passed makeshift shelters and flickering open-air cookfires. The cold air was unusually still, no blistering winds whistling through desolate streets, sweeping sheets of ice off the mountains and in through hinges and bullet-riddled walls.

     Familiar faces lifted as I walked. Some smiled weakly and murmured a greeting, while others looked away, indifferent. Still others only watched in silence, their sunken eyes tracing my every move with vicious intensity. Their stoicism wasn’t fooling anyone; they were thrilled to see us go. But they’d be happier to see us dead.

     I turned down an alley and dodged a group of soldiers lugging crates and equipment in the opposite direction. 

     The orders had come without warning. We knew it was inevitable—the occupation was never intended to last more than a few years—but I never expected it to be so sudden. The politicians had been bickering over the terms of surrender for years. Everyone wanted a piece of the Regime; after all, they were the bad guys. 

     I turned and jogged up a set of narrow stairs to a rusting steel door. Hinges shrieked and cold daylight flooded the dingy stairwell as I stepped out onto the icy terrace that had been my post for the past few months. 

     The open space was cluttered and cold, far from comfortable. Then again, no post this far north was comfortable. But what it lacked in comfort, it made up for in the view. I settled on my favorite crate next to a homemade stove and gazed out over the city one last time.

     The final snowflakes of winter fell heavily over the sprawling ruins. It wasn’t the oppressive, biting snow that plagued us in the dead of winter. This snow fell in graceful silence, dancing its way through the ashy smoke of a thousand chimneys and the oily haze of smoldering wreckage. It blanketed the dirty, refrozen slush, masking the ravages of war. 

     It made the city look whole again. I’d never seen Prince George before the war, but I could imagine. The past two years had given me plenty of time for that.

     I tapped my heels against the floor to keep the blood flowing, then swerved around the last pair of ammo cans waiting to be packed away and stepped out from under the makeshift awning. Trekking across the roof, I leaned on the dilapidated railing and scanned the landscape. 

     Prince George had been the Regime’s seat of power for more than 100 years, a stronghold shaped by necessity and the harsh environment. Nestled into the foothills of the Canadian Rockies and bordering the icy waters of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, the city was naturally entrenched and defended even before Impact. 

     As the Old World fell and the Scourge rose, Prince George became a safe haven from the monsters of the North. Survivors came together. People helped people, and through that bond, humanity survived the night. 

     The city grew. Step by step, battle by bloody battle, it was reclaimed. Walls were built. Trenches were dug. Fortifications were laid. The fires of industry reignited, and soon, the mismatched handful of survivors became something more.

     But that was before the war. That was before the Regime rose. Before the Regime forgot where it came from and turned on its own people. It was before they embraced oppression and corruption, slavery and violence. 

     That was before they crossed into Alaska, butchered their way through Tok Valley, and set the oil fields alight. Before they attacked Kodiak Island, killing thousands of civilians and unleashing the Scourge on the Bastion. It was before the trenches, the Wall, the prison camps and human experiments. 

     Before the Regime became the Regime, Prince George was a place to behold. But now it was just another burned-out city devastated by 50 years of war. 

     The jagged, snow-dusted cityscape was like a tangled web of clashing shapes and industrial refuse, like a dozen different styles had been tossed into an arena and forced to fight to the death. Regime cities were always marked by the harsh contrast between the old and new. Boxy high-rises studded with barred windows and radio towers jutted out of the ground throughout the densely packed city center. To call them plain was a gross understatement, but “brutalist” was an honor I wouldn’t dare grace them with. 

     Behind the eight-story abominations, a mess of industrial towers, smokestacks, and cranes fought for control of the skyline. The East Bank Commercial District had been spreading through the city like a disease right until we knocked on the gates. Wartime demand was always good for business. Here, it justified an industrial revolution that saw miles of housing bulldozed to make way for new factories and plants. 

     Now, most of those plants sat empty and idle. Those that weren’t outright flattened during the bombardments had nearly irreparable damage. Steel skeletons collected snowdrifts, while any building that still boasted a roof collected refugee camps and violent drifters.

     My eyes followed the shabby remains of the East District to the inner wall that encircled the city. Much like the walls I grew up with in Republic strongholds, the walls of Prince George were just 50-foot slabs of concrete and steel—or they used to be, anyway. They’d taken a serious beating in the war. Before the Republic even got close, the Freedom Army’s artillery had shelled Prince George’s final defenses into oblivion. I rather enjoyed the irony of that.

     Now they were battered and worn, with ragged craters and piles of rubble. In sections that had collapsed entirely, the breaches were patched with scrap metal and stacks of cargo containers. It didn’t look good, but it kept the Scourge out. Scaffolding and ladders crawled their way up the fracturing ramparts, while makeshift catwalks bridged gaps across the top, re-forming what was once an unbroken path around the city.

     I traced the crumbling silhouette through the snowy haze as it snaked northward around Prince George, severing the city from the outside world. The harsh artificial horizon overshadowed the hidden beauty of the cityscape it was built to defend, and a diverse cityscape of ornate brickwork, chiseled columns, and heavy timber lurked in the frozen shadows of the walls.

     The unyielding defenses skirted the Nechako River west before turning southward, mounting the steep ridge that defended the city’s western flank, where the sprawling ruins of Prince George’s primary military complex were slowly being buried in undisturbed snow. Freedom Army banners hung from rusting poles the Regime’s bloody fist once occupied.

     Rising hundreds of feet over the city and bristling with artillery, the Ridge was the sole reason the city hadn’t fallen only weeks into the siege. Locals recounted it as a fortress of legend. But now, like so many parts of the city, it crumbled away in silence.

But now it would be theirs again. 

     I pushed off the railing and turned back to my disassembled post. For better or for worse, the occupation was ending.

     Just like that.

     My armor creaked and ground at the seams as I lifted the remaining ammo cans. I pulled the door open and hurried down the narrow stairwell, careful to avoid the crumbling rust patches I’d watched widen over the past few months. Icicles hung from the steps overhead, dripping on the already treacherous stairs. 

     Echoing voices and the growl of distant engines filtered through the fissured brick walls. Glancing through a fist-sized hole, I caught a glimpse of the blasted-out building across the street. A tattered group of civies huddled in the gap, staring absently at the falling snow. 

     This was one of the worst parts of town. While I knew it didn’t represent Prince George as a whole, it still felt like we were leaving the city no better off than it had been.

     As I reached the ground, dozens of rapid, half-muffled footfalls cascaded past my meager shelter. Voices echoed through the narrow street outside, nearly drowned out by the building growl of distant engines. The speakers in my helmet crackled with static, picking up stray frequencies and ghost signals. 

     Today, the city’s familiar morning symphony was replaced with a disjointed anthem of chaos, as it had been many times before. 

     I’d woken to the echo of gunshots dozens of times. Scourge howls. People screaming in the dead of night. Explosions ripping through buildings months after the last bomb fell. 

     This time, the low roar and plumes of black smoke weren’t from an attack. It was the roar of boots stomping through the mud and ice, of steel armor clattering against crates and weapons as thousands of Republic soldiers prepared to leave. It was the smoke from hundreds of armored trucks, tanks, and transports idling in the alleys—the sound of an army in motion, but not an attack—the very opposite, in fact. 

     But maybe, in the end, it would prove just as destructive. 

     I winced as my comms crackled and plain English broke through the interference and chatter. 

     “Let’s go, Ditch Dogs! Bravo Company’s rolling out, and I still have half a squad missing,” Sergeant Helmick hammered into my eardrums. “Ramp’s up in five, and I’m not waiting on nobody’s ass. If you’re late, you’re getting left behind. And the locals look hungry.”

     At least I wasn’t the only one missing, then. Determined not to be last, I gave the rickety stairwell one final glance, then stepped out into the street.