The Silent Conquest

TRIGGER WARNING: EXTREME DEPICTIONS OF WAR, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, SUICIDE, AND PHYSICAL VIOLENCE FOLLOW.

EYES FRONT! KEEP QUIET! MOVE ALONG!

A chorus of chesty coughs echo off the snow capped mountains. The source is a shuffling mass of freezing men, women, and children the state deemed too unfit to defend the homeland. A very thin criteria of the sick, the disabled, or the dying. A once great, and peaceful nation beloved by its people and its peers reduced to a grey-brown blur moving across the harsh landscape in rows of four that stretch back only a kilometer behind. Wiped from the map, to be replaced with some other name. Some new name that would reflect the genius of the warrior who conquered it, but would highlight his humility too. Just because those who resisted are dead, you can't be too careful. The spirit will do strange things when pushed to the extremes.

Such extremes Peter has yet to see, but he feels it in his bones more than he feels the blood in his veins. They are on their way. Many were instantaneous acts of war. The pillage, the rapes, the destruction. All happened while the shots rang out, the liberators wasting no time to reap their rewards. It was only natural for a Nation of Warriors™. But Peter was a mercenary of conflicts on five different continents, he never considered those things extremes of the spirit, just a byproduct of warfare. No matter which country, human activity looked universal in these situations, especially when you had the blessing to view it on the right side of the gun. Brown, black, white, or yellow didn't make much difference, the only changes Peter observed were in the poorer parts of the country. Because people had abandoned dignity long before war was a factor, so the spirit didn't break necessarily, it shattered and those extremes were too hard to witness so Peter never did. This time however, he had no choice. He took the money, made the trip, shot the shots, and was still absorbed by the grey-brown blur. . Shuffling toward the terror on the strength of his own two feet. There was nothing like watching a nation die in the hearts of the living who called it home. Peter only had it described to him by his father, and uncle who both fought in Eastern Europe during the Cold War with the hope that he would never get to experience it. But he was going to.

"I didn't sign up for this." He muttered under his breath without realising. A stocky woman next to him chuckled and shook her head.

"Ya, I thought it would be warmer."

People around them chuckled too, a sound so against the bleak surroundings that it almost morphed into rays of light that shone from people's mouths. A warrior must have seen the light and quickly turned it off with a burst of fire from his M4A1 rifle.

The silence returned with a vengeance. Satisfied, the warrior nodded; and gave his rifle a loving kiss like a couple that's tucked a child into bed. Peter wished he'd done that more. He'd had a child for every war he took part in but paid the people he was fighting more time, and effort. It was too late for such things, Peter had been in binds before but this is different, this crossed a line when he saw the trucks. The people who hired him understood that to disguise control as justice, they had to dominate the narrative thread. Peter was loose, so he had to be cut. His professional instincts were dominating his state of mind for now, it was just a part of the territory after all, half a dozen privately owned properties in three continents didn't come from running a charity. However, soon enough the human being in him would take over, and he would be cursing his captives with the rest of these sad scraps of flesh, all the way to the brig or the firing line if need be. Not that he had many doubts.

The shuffling mass came to a halt as warriors channeled everyone into the trucks based on occupancy limits. Children were torn from mothers arms, old ripped from the backs of the ones tasked to carry them. Compassion didn't make the trucks any lighter after all, and it was snowing. When it was Peter's turn he briefly thought of punching the Sergeant in the face just to see how he felt. However, his inner professional reminded him that he would just be getting more innocent people killed, and Peter lost his appetite for that just before breakfast.

"Second to the right!" Peter felt the spit land on his face from the warrior's yelling maw, even though he got close enough to kiss him. Peter shuffled away and got a rifle butt in the small of his back for his blind obedience. He smiled to himself and wondered if he would act differently were he still allowed on their side. He came to a conclusion he didn't like.

He dumped himself onto a cold wooden seat in the back of the truck, his backside began to freeze, but that was of no discomfort when the engine came to life and the truck rolled away. Looking around at the pale and pink faces with their unmoving eyes and their tense frames, he saw the extremities of the spirit he had been avoiding in all his years. What he saw was worse than death, worse than the suicides he'd stumbled across or the gore after an artillery barrage, or even the mass graves he'd help fill in another life. Peter balled up his fists till his knuckles went white and his pulse quickened. His eyelids flickered uncontrollably and he looked at his boots.

"I didn't sign up for this."

He looked out of the truck at the many faces still to be loaded and saw it happening to them too. He saw hope leave these people. It was the loss of the spirit, the ruin of identity, the killer of the soul, the silent conquest.