The Outrider

A shadow stretched across the field of virgin snow, it was an intimidating humanoid form that made smooth deliberate movements. The humanoids legs converged to a pair of boots, and the very source of the shadow itself. The young soldier glanced down at his shadow, barely recognizing the form of his own body. Wearing the powered suit and carrying the assault laser, he appeared much larger than he really was. His eyes lost focus as he continued to gaze into the ground that was eclipsed from the sun by his body. An old memory began playing in his mind, and a slight smile stretched across his face. Although it had only been three years, it felt like an eternity to him.  He was running barefoot through the warm sand back home on Platon, with his girlfriend in hot pursuit. She called out “Nate…stop it! I can’t catch you!” as she came to a slow trot. He continued for another yard and came to a halt, a wave crashed at his feet and the cold water sent a chill through his body. The girl came in close and as they embraced they peered out onto the oceans hazy horizon. He looked down at the sand and two formed the shadow conjoined at the hip. That moment was one of his favorites, him and this beautiful girl on an empty beach, enjoying the crisp sea breeze. It was a true paradise. The smile on his face eased away as he remembered that was the last times he saw her.
A different memory popped into his mind, one from the basic course on Amerigon; the drill sergeant yelling how complacency kills on the battlefield. Snapping back to reality his eyes refocused on the tree line ahead and the buildings beyond it, and his HUD showed nothing when he flipped to the thermal lens. The Leper’s were perfect at camouflaging their positions, and many a legionnaires never even saw the enemy who shot them. He kept his head on a swivel as he continued trudging through the deep snow, making constant visual scans of the area. His partner was 34 meters to the east, the two would converge paths at the tree line to his front. The 34 meters was just far enough for the two to keep in thermal sight of each other, and one could cover that much ground quickly in the suit if caught in a hard spot. The two were a scouting team for the 3rd Century, 2nd Cohort of the II Legion, which had been given the cognomen Praetorians. He had volunteered to be a scout just prior to the invasion with youthful bravado, and now he regretted that decision every minute of the day. The invasion was only 45 days old, and his century had already lost six of the original ten scouts. One unnerving fact about scout fatalities was the Leper’s tendency to remove the human victim to their underground network of tunnels before more legionnaires could come to the rescue. Nate shivered in his suit at the thought of being dragged underground by those beings and having them experiment on him.
His mind continued to race with thoughts of his beloved, all the while knowing he needed to focus on the mission at hand. Nate flipped the thermal lens down and focused on the buildings just beyond the tree line. He caught the fleeting glimpse of a Leper moving through the building, as he raised his laser to take aim a green globule slammed into his chest plate. His body crumpled to the ground gasping for air. His fingers searched franticly for the wound, and he could hear the sizzling of his armor melting away. The impact had taken his breath away; panic set in as he felt like couldn’t get enough air. As the acidic globule kept eating away at his suit, his flesh became exposed to the frigid ambient air for the first time. With eyes wide open gazing into the heavens his breaths grew shallower. He wished he was home, closing his eyes he tried picturing that memory of him and his girlfriend on the beach again. A smile stretched across his face as he slipped into unconsciousness.