"Memoirs of a Warrior" by Matthew T. Summers

There’s something to be said for cowardice.

Yes.  Yes, I said it, and I’ll say it again.  Sometimes, being a coward means that you live when no one else does.  It’s not a popular opinion, not by a long shot.  

Sure, I was trained.  I was trained just like all the rest of them.  I spent my six weeks in the hypnotic training areas.  I did my four weeks of reconstructive surgery, I had my muscular implantation and my electronic reflex controls installed just like everyone else.  I was a soldier, a front line bullet catcher, ready and willing to die for my government.

Except that I wasn’t quite ready.  Some part of me remained in control above and beyond the programming, some last shred of humanity and self-preservation that they weren’t able to rip out of my psyche with their damnable methods of instruction.

Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been a coward all of my life.  Hell if I know.  Either way, I’m alive, which is more than I can say for a lot of my so-called comrades-in-arms.  Which would you rather be, the bravest person in the cemetery or the coward that’s burying everyone?

The day they dropped us all off into the hot zone is a day I’ll remember all of my life.  I came to my senses just as my feet hit the ground… god, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I lost all control of my bowels at that moment.

Sixteen of my team died in the first sixty seconds.  Do you know what it’s like to watch the men you’d spent over a year of your life with implode?  It’s very disturbing.  Within a matter of seconds, your arms are pulled forcibly into your center mass, followed by your legs and lower torso.  You live up until the last possible second, when the head finally implodes into the torso, and then the breath escaping rapidly shrinking lungs makes for a damn girly death knell.  

The worst part is their eyes.  By god, the eyes… the look of sheer pain and torture will haunt my dreams for eons to come.  

My programming snapped, and the humanity returned to my soul.  Do you know what man’s first thought is when presented with an enemy that’s nearly indestructible and odds that are almost laughably impossible?  

You run.  And so I did.  I ran like a little girl, screaming and flailing my hands around like an absolute idiot.  My weapon was discarded somewhere behind me, tossed aside like so much useless fodder.  My force field remained active by the grace of god, though we’d been instructed that the shield would not hold under prolonged running.  Yet another lie, I suppose…

I could feel the rays of the enemy passing just over my head.  Around me, soldiers continued to kill in the name of the Centiuram, dying for a cause few could remember and fewer still would live to retell.  My own people turned and fired at me on occasion, unsure whether I was allied or aligned against them.  Still my field held, and onward I ran.

Cowardice is not only a powerful motivator for living, it also is a darn good way to get adrenaline working overtime.  My blood was singing in my ears as I ran, the sounds of death and dying around me feeding my fear and speeding my steps.  

I reached the outskirts of the city in contention, miraculously achieving a goal none of my brethren had been able to do yet to this point… no human had set foot in ancient Cincinnati for over sixteen hundred years.  I suppose that, had the people in charge known what I would have been able to accomplish, they would have implanted massive amounts of explosives within my body and detonated it remotely from the safety of their orbital warships.  As it was, I made it safely to a burned-out shell of a building and was able to obtain shelter within.

I do not know what the chamber I crawled into was called in ancient Earth times; all I know is that it was below the level of the ground, and immediately dropped me off of the heat sensing technology on both sides of the warfare.  I fell down rotted stairs and collapsed in a quivering heap of fear and feces, curled into a fetal position for the longest time.

The war continued unabated around me.  I do not know how many days I’ve now been inside this walled prison; I cannot escape the same way I came in, as there is no way to navigate back up the collapsed stairwell.  No sunlight filters down this face of the planet anymore, so my suit has been working overtime keeping me at proper living temperatures.  My supply of nutrition has been depleted, and I am now slowly starving to death.  I have been steadily growing weaker, and even now the mere act of speaking is taking more energy from me than I have to spare.

I only hope that someone will eventually find my body and be able to understand and decipher the electronic recording of my voice.  I… I did not want to be a coward, I swear.  I wanted to fight with the rest of my brothers and sisters.

I just… I just didn’t want to die.  

I’m growing weak.  I still don’t want to die.  Please…