Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Developing a new story. what do you think so far?


CHAPTER 1
COURAGE ONLY GETS A MAN SO FAR
F-DAY -15





The sky began to melt into an elegant orange sunset, the most beautiful array of colour that had been seen on Syrius in the past two years. Cities fell, valleys flooded, the population massacred and its survivors thrown into slavery.
What was it now? The two hundred and sixty-first day of vanquish? Danny Lander’s didn’t know. He’d lost count. Danny was drowsy, hungry and covered in murky swamp water that darkened the remains of his trousers. His young arms and spine ached in pain from the endless weeks of slave labour to the chaos loving Zyfarians.
It had been seven days since he escaped. Seven miserable days surviving off black swamp berries and water that gave him diarrhea. They pushed on without hesitation, through the harshest of conditions. There was only one option. Survival was it. He gripped tightly around the body of his acquired las-rifle as the sound of gunfire echoed blindly through the setting sky. He made his way through the thigh-deep swamp, kicking the water into the air, splashing and sending ripples. He breathed in heavily, sucking in the smell of the dead and decaying as if it were the air that he’d lived with for his whole life. For the last few months it was true.

He looked around him. The last ten of his tiresome moved quietly, weapons at the ready. They looked to him like he was a father, making him quietly in charge. Maybe it was because he was ex-military or because his unit was the one that held out the longest against the enemy before being captured. Where was the rest of the Syrius resistance now? Probably wasting away under a rock.
He recognised the area well now. He’d spent a lot of his youth hiking through the swamps doing junior scouts. A lot remained the same, except for the smell and the destruction of the native forna. It had once been a beautiful place looked after by the local Commercia. Now, it had become a graveyard for the fallen, human, animal and plant alike. Swamp reeds the size of an overgrown trees grew on the waters edge and weeds the size of a fully grown man created paths and mazes through the enchanted swamp. It was like moving in-between two buildings, perfect for an ambush.
The body of a fallen comrade floated passed him in the murky water. He was littered in bolt wounds across his body as a slimy shield of blood engulfed the water around him.
A war cry spat out and was followed by a psychopathic man charging blindly out of the plantation. Gunfire hissed out of the reeds and from behind the trees. Lander ducked and fired blindly into the bushes, spending his entire power-cell, cutting three Zyfarian men down. The men around him followed his lead like dogs.
“What do we do sir?” whispered his closest ally, Timmothy Rangler as he took cover behind a rough blood-covered rock.
“Stay alive!” Lander’s muttered silently, directing the men down a fork in the swamps flow. Three men moved ahead of him and the others fell into position.
Out of the reeds, gunfire ripped through the air, rippling the murky water as it did so, carving holes through the reeds and through the tree vines that hunched over the swamp. The enemy slowly revealed themselves to the men. Lander’s watched as two of his men took up cover, firing blindly into the reeds.