STEELSTORM

*FINAL CHAPTER/EPILOGUE*

SORCERER

‘’You have never lived until you have almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a special flavor the protected will never know’’. - Unofficial motto of MAC V SOG

‘’Its not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes’’. - Joseph Stalin

‘’No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War - it was misreported then and its misremembered now’’. - Richard M. Nixon, March 28, 1985

II.

LOCATION: Quantico, Virginia

YEAR: 1970 AD

DATE: February 15

Sorcerer was never moved by patriotic mythologies, nor was he susceptible to being swept up in the catharsis of war fever. No such puerile and easily understood motives explained how he - at 32 years of age and having no military experience - had found himself at Quantico. Standing on the bank of the Potomac River, beyond the presently disused Marine Corps obstacle course within the thickly wooded preserve, Sorcerer felt pangs of emotion welling up in his heart and belly. Virginia and Maryland reminded him of greater Chicagoland; and he had never realized how much he loved his birthplace - and up until the present moment, the setting of Sorcerer’s life. A great sorrow swept over him as he contemplated the similar features of the Potomac and the north brook of the Chicago River.

Under ordinary conditions, Sorcerer was hyper attuned to his own psychic and emotional states; the abrupt orders that arrived in the middle of the night three weeks prior had disoriented him. In moments of calm lucidity, months and years later, Sorcerer would realize that he was mourning his own very probable death and lamenting that he would never again look upon the natural beauty of the Earth that sustained him.

Sorcerer, mused his colleagues, had taken leave of reason approximately eighteen months previously. It was during this period that Sorcerer had developed an obsessive fixation on epigenetic memory; and most significantly, the potential to access, decipher, and ultimately reveal at will the body of inherited memories that every man and woman was said to carry with them, somewhere amidst the densely coiled latticework of ganglia, neurons, and dull gray tissue. This was, Sorcerer was absolutely certain, the house of the human soul.

The key to this inner sanctum was the duplication of experience - a strategy of tricking the mind and thus precluding it from orienting itself temporally. Such was the reliance upon rite and ritual of Roman and Byzantine faiths and the memorial aspects of belief structures like Shinto - identical practices, carefully and diligently practiced, allowed the supplicant to transcend time - the worship event took place outside of temporal categories. More significantly, such practices awakened fragments of inherited consciousness that endured beyond death.

If the sensory and psychic facsimile were profound enough, and adequately severe, the conscious mind would draw upon - and release - this bounty of ancestral memory. Sorcerer would, he was quite certain, stare upon antediluvian vistas through three thousand year old eyes.

**EPILOGUE**

‘’No mercy for the apostate - Allah be praised. Hail Huber’’. She was older - her voice was husky, layered. It was that of a mature woman. Victor had noticed as the Platoon had boarded the MAAC-II that her Oriental eyes were marred by crows feet at the edges. Even the harlequin war paint adorning her face could not hide it. The toll of a lifetime of secondary radiation exposure, viewed through the shock screen of the cockpit. A matronly Kabuki player who was witness to a thousand Armageddons. She was probably beautiful once, especially when her eyes blazed with nuclear artillery fire, reflected in her black pupils.

‘’Long live death!’’ Came the refrain, in perfect unison.

‘’Allah be praised’’

‘’Long live death!’’

The MAAC-II dropped altitude rapidly as it breached the atmosphere. Decoys and surface to air missiles were released all at once. The ship jutted and dived evasively.

The Multirole Aerospace Assault Craft II (reporting name, ‘’Vampire’’) was brutally utile in design and concept. It had an unloaded weight of 81,000lbs - with a full compliment of weapons and Executioner platoons (92 persons), that weight was increased by one third.

Lurching downward towards deployment altitude, the blighted surface of Triton came into view of the men situated in the pre-deployment drop bay.

The illuminating lights mounted adjacent the retractable landing skids along the undercarriage of the MAAC-II revealed the terrifying landscape of the surface below - an endless field of nitrogen tundra. In staggered deployment, approximately 50 yards apart from one another, ancient auto-cannon batteries - repurposed as anti-aircraft artillery - came to life; spitting 30mm uranium rounds at a rate of 6,000 per minute. The landing craft lurched abruptly amidst a chorus of thudding impacts. A tiny shard from the plasticine layer of the bay floor sliced Victor’s chin; prompting him to lower the faceplate housed in the helmet of the SCOMSE (Self Contained Oxygenated Mobile Survival Environment) body armor suit he wore.

The craft lurched upward, indicating to the men in the pre-deployment bay - all veterans of many Zone Assault operations - that the matronly Vampire pilot had just fired the ship’s complement of nuclear weapons at the defenders on the surface. As the 25 kiloton rockets met their targets, the plasticine observation portal immediately dimmed to a protective blackness; the secondary functions being programmatically tethered to the shipboard weapon command and control apparatus.

Amidst a succession of silent, yet blinding, flashes - discernible even through the blackened observation bay portal - the staccato chorus of ground fire slamming into the ship abruptly ceased.

Victor’s left hand trembled as he slammed a magazine into his flechette rifle and snapped back the charging handle. Something was wrong - a profound psychic disturbance was enveloping him; separating him from his fellows, from the rapidly descending assault craft, from the world (and life) itself.

Forcing his hand to steady, Victor retrieved an ampule of synthetic endorphin and a single use syringe of amphetamine from his survival satchel. Administering the amphetamine to his - still exposed - neck, he felt the familiar heat and simultaneous flush of blood throughout his body; concomitant with the onset of rapid respiration and heart rate, moments before the onset of physiological stasis and a deep psychological clarity and sharpness of perception.

Slowly and deliberately, as Victor slid the endorphin ampule into the dosing chamber - which was built into the left forearm gauntlet of his SCOMSE armor - he awaited the blissful relief that the precious compound would provide; yet no such relief was to come. A sickly and frantic terror subsumed him as the interior of the ship abruptly went dark; save the glow of a single red light - which indicated when lit that terminal approach was underway, marking 30 seconds until reaching the assault zone.

The voice of the harlequin-matron invaded the silence;

‘’Go with God and grant no pity to the apostate’’.

‘’Allah be praised!’’, came the congregational answer in strict union. With exception of Victor who could not find the words. Instead, he whispered silently to himself, and to the recording equipment embedded in the helmet of his SCOMSE armor, a phrase emergent from his tortured subconscious. Something singularly terrifying for pre-rational reasons Victor did not fully understand.

‘’Death is god…’’