The Retribution Saga: Chapter 1: Initiation

[Archmagos Issac]

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[Archmagos Issac]

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The planet was designated by the Alliance officially as "Ares-36B" but to everyone else it was known by a different name entirely. The troops of the Alliance knew it as "Hell's Gate", the ideal training ground for the Alliance's troops. Hell's Gate was a planet similar to Earth.....if Earth had heavier gravity and less oxygen. The air is breathable for sure, but it's thinner. Simpler tasks require more effort and combined with the heavier gravity, one has to do even more. Many who join the Alliance military are shown the door and that was before the Swarm became a threat. Now, they needed soldiers who were better than ever and the only way to make soldiers that were tougher than nails was to put them through Hell's Gate. The official motto for those who had trained on Hell's Gate was simply: "Charge and attack, to Hell and back"

Now more than ever, soldiers were needed to fight. Humanity was facing an enemy unlike anything it had ever faced before. An enemy that struck out of nowhere and killed worlds in a matter of days. It was.....monstrous. Horrifying how efficiently they tore through worlds. The Alliance needed soldiers to face this threat and now more than ever people were stepping up to be recruited into the Alliance's military. Every few weeks, a ship would arrive from one system or another. Each ship contained potential recruits who would get the chance to prove themselves as members of the Alliance's armed forces. Those who survived training would be given the opportunity to go to the front line and fight the Swarm first hand.

Of all the systems that sent recruits, Thora had some of the most tenacious troops the Alliance had ever seen. Why shouldn't they? The Thoran's had some of the worst casualties seen on any of the worlds. True, the worlds hit before Thora had worse casualties but they also had no survivors. Completely dead worlds were now all that's left in the Swarm's wake. Thora had been hit and nearly wiped out. 2,000 people managed to survive the invasion. In the 2 years after, their population had begun to grow but it wasn't the same anymore. People had lost their homes, their loved ones, their very way of life. They now lived as refugees on countless worlds, trying to piece together their life somehow.

How does one piece together their own life when they have seen the threat that waits beyond? A threat that can't be reasoned with, bargained with, and seemingly without end. An enemy that only believed in 2 things only: Rip and tear. The answer is you don't. You exterminate them with extreme prejudice. Ships arrived at Hell's Gate every few weeks from all corners of Alliance space. As the ships landed, officers were there and barking orders immediately as they directed troops to their barracks and instructed them to stow their gear and meet in the center courtyard for initiation. What that implied was rather simple: they were about to meet the commondant, their instructors, and separate the wheat from the chaff.​