8

{Handwriting almost incoherent. Paper crumpled. Some words may be reinterpreted as necessary.}

I remember the ground was cold. Rock-cold. It trembled every few seconds, often enough that you didn't notice it, and when it disappeared, it was scary, it was terrifying, it meant something big was coming and you were going. to. die.

I remember the radio crackled and hissed. All this technology, and we can't get a goddamn radio to broadcast through a battle zone.

The signal wasn't clear - so there's no way his voice could have cut through it. It's not possible. My memory can't be right.

The first time I heard his voice, did it really feel like that? Like someone slipped a hook into my stomach and pulled, not painfully but insistently, irresistibly. Barely even a conversation, and I can still feel the floor trembling under my feet, the gravel dotting the map in the center of the table, the earpiece hooked around my ear.

"This is the commander of Martian ground forces, speaking."

- my throat was dry.

"Is there a name to go with that title?"

"No." I straightened - the rest of CIC was watching me. Jerricks, Whitman - oh, god, Derian and De Marco, I remember what their bodies looked like. "Just a rank," I said. "Colonel."

"How's a colonel in charge of the Martian ground forces?" he asked, then.

"Well, General." I looked away from the other Martians in the room. "I think it happened when you killed all my superior officers."

Why, why why why in God's name do I remember this - like it was yesterday?