Audio Transcript from Peshawar Highlands, 23/9/97, Sgt. Murray Dunham

[Orwell]

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On earth,  the 22nd of September signalled the coming of Autumn. On Castillo, however, the planet's seasons are much shorter and drastic, punctuated with tropical storms in the wet season and droughts in the highlands in the dry season. It was during this wet season that Rico fell under siege.

 

On the 22nd, we were camped out on the western flank of the foothills to the Peshawar Highlands. The air was heavy with the stench of burnt plant matter. The insects that had survived the bombardments were chirping in the night, clinging to whatever was left of the ravaged jungle. The twisted metal of buildings down below the plateau was washed in a thin orange haze from the distant fires. We were taking shifts, sleeping. 
Our legs ached, and our muscles were tired. None of us had ever expected things to unfold the way they did, I suppose.

 

In our tents, we could hear them. Just over the top of the ridge.
The wounded that were left behind were moaning and shouting for help on the other side of the mountain. We could hear them screaming when the bugs came to finish them off. Grown men making horrible cries that made you shiver in your boots. Guys that we known for months, sometimes years. Every faint tremor underground kept you awake. Half-awake, half-asleep, ready to spring at a moments notice when the bugs would either push over the ridge, or tunnel straight through to our encampment. This was par for the course, those last few days.

 

The past few days had been spent in the eastern quarter of Rico, repelling Arachnid offensives from the Highlands we were currently stationed on. By then, the civilians that hadn't been killed in the inital attack were long gone. You seldom forget the visceral experience of seeing a single warrior shred throngs of men, women, and children. Their lack of discrimination, their lack of mercy or hesitation. Behind those eyes, there's nothing but animalistic bloodlust. God knows I was never supposed to know what the insides of a troop of traffic cops looked like. This was supposed to be a safe place, far away from the bugs.

 

The beaches were turned into killzones, where we had guys imapled by their ankles and dragged down under the sand. When the tide rose, water tigers would position themselves for attacks to execute when the tide receded. We held the sandbar, and managed to hold the beach in time for Fleet drop depth charges to close the underwater holes, but not without taking casualties a fair share of casualties.

 

We had heard that the boats heading to Fort Metzinger for evac were cut open from below. Whole scores of folks were tossed into the ocean, and ripped apart right before they could've fled. Those on the eastern quarter of the city got hit the worst. By the time the planet was in a state of emergency, the majority of civilians had been evacuated further west, or to Ottokar and Wenceslaus to the north. It wasn't a clean getaway by any means. Simultaneous oordinated attacks on several highly dense points in the eastern quarter fragmented the local police, and got a lot of civilians killed. Captain Nima managed to organize a defensive line on the border of the eastern quarter; from the beachheads to the northern industrial quarter of Rico. Those first few days of pushing back and forth into the east were probably the bloodiest.

 

Our efforts weren't in vain, however. We've stemmed the offensive, and have pushed them back to the Peshawar Highlands proper. Fleet's been hammering the range for days, but we'll have to mop up per usual. That's the way of things, here.