[ WP ] You were a soldier in a future conflict , until your heroic death . Now you face the battlefield of the Ragnarok of Nordic myth , with your full war kit .

In the year of our Lord, thirty-one hundred and sixty-seven, twenty Terran ships, bearing the finest warriors the Old Earth could produce, set off for the distant world around the white-blue star Vega. Like the Greek heroes of old, we were on our way to a distant war, a distant world. No matter what they said, the training never prepared you for the realness of war - no training could ever have been enough for that. 
 
 Faintly I remembered what became of Earth's finest. We had laughed and drank our way through hyperspace, as only spacers could do - as only spacers knew to be necessary. There might have been prudes back on Earth who appreciated the straw-sucking crushingness of hyperspace, but not us. Sixty thousand kilometers above the rocky, icy world, we came out of hyperspace, and instantly four of our ships were hit with ice mines. 
 
 `` Mines! Mines!'' I heard the cry come up from the deck. 
 
 Instinctively my hands snapped to my plasma rifle. The thing was about a meter long and the width of my flexed arm, and it could melt through any conceivable thing in the universe. I adjusted my armour - composite fiberglass - and I looked around myself. 
 
 Across the ship, maybe forty paces away, I could just about make out the helmeted form of my battle buddy Mark. Smiling, I put on my helmet and keyed the intercom. 
 
 `` Hey, Mark,'' I said. 
 
 From inside my visor I could see Mark visibly jump as my voice appeared in his headphones. `` Callum!'' he squeaked back. `` Man, you gave me such a shock, you loveable idiot-'' 
 
 `` You know I love you, bud,'' I replied. `` Alright, armour - check?'' 
 
 `` Two G- setting, set-'' 
 
 The ship rocked again beneath our feet. I thought I heard a small hissing noise, and I willed myself to believe otherwise, because that meant one of the ice mines had hit; we were depressurising... 
 
 *Focus! * 
 
 `` Plasma rifle?'' I asked levelly. 
 
 `` Burst fire mode, five shots,'' Mark confirmed. 
 
 `` The right attitude?'' I finished. 
 
 `` You know it,'' Mark said. I thought I heard a small crack in the facade. `` C'mon then, let's go kill some Vegans.'' 
 
 The ship continued its descent through the ice mines. 
 
 -- - 
 
 The battle began with the squeal of alarms. Mark and I moved through the ships, finding our way to our cruisers, but then suddenly our path was blocked when the tunnels collapsed. 
 
 `` Hold on!'' I roared. 
 
 Mark did n't need to be told twice. He held on to the rails as the shattered bits of the tunnel blew out into interstellar space. All the while, I was thinking, this was n't the actual attack, this was the *precursor* to the attack. 
 
 `` Alert. We are getting boarded,'' the intercom came over. `` All soldiers report to stations. All-'' 
 
 The voice cut out with a deafening screech. Mark and I looked at each other, blasters at the ready. 
 
 And then all at once they came. 
 
 I saw them first, and yelled out for Mark to duck as I let off one plasma blast. The Vegans - the six-legged ant-like insects that stood as tall as any man - they feared the blast. But they kept coming, eating through the metal walls of the spaceship like it was soft buttered toast. 
 
 Mark and I fired back, but it was no use. They were in front of us. Then I realised they were *behind* us too- 
 
 `` Mark, look out!'' I screamed. 
 
 Mark turned, out of time, looking at the gaping ant-jaw of the Vegan come to kill him, but then I shoved him out of the way. 
 
 I knew I was dead. I felt the ant-jaw pierce my armour like tissue paper, and I felt the venom paralyse me, and slowly I started to drift... 
 
 Then I woke up again. 
 
 -- - 
 
 Achilles was standing beside me and offering me his hand. I goggled at the Greek, spear still in hand - this must have been before he used it on Hector - and I rose. 
 
 `` What's going on?'' I asked. 
 
 Then I realised I still had on my full kit. My blaster, my armour, miraculously repaired. Achilles nodded at my apparent confusion. 
 
 `` There is a place for you in Elysium,'' he whispered softly. `` But... not yet. There is still one more battle to go.'' 
 
 I took a look out at the barren, volcanic landscape. A single oak tree stood next to an oasis, which stood in a blackened and cracked landscape. The sun was not at all visible through the orange clouds. `` What battle is that?'' 
 
 `` Rag-Ragnarok,'' Achilles spluttered. `` The twilight of the Gods. Have you met the others yet?'' 
 
 `` Others?'' I spluttered back. Thor's hammer was nowhere to be seen, and Thor himself - well, I could only suppose he was getting stuck into Loki. `` What others?'' 
 
 Achilles turned away, and I saw the most extraordinary thing ever. 
 
 Behind him there was an assortment of warriors from all different time periods. I saw Pheidipphides, the runner at Marathon. A Turkish sailor from Lepanto. An American revolutionary. A Confederate soldier. A Russian sniper from the battle of Stalingrad. And then there was me. 
 
 `` All the warriors... past, present and future... all are gathered here today,'' Achilles explained. `` All will fight the war of the Gods, and the heavens and the earth will be burnt to a cinder... but we will live on. We are warriors... we will survive. Are you ready?'' 
 
 I nodded, shouldered my blaster, and Achilles gave the signal to go to war. 
 
 -- - 
 
 /r/KCcracker 
 

