Sempkin - 005

Sempkin had this romantic view of war. He was one of those types who would pick a flower and wonder what had occurred to get him to that point in time. He wanted to write for the State someday; you know, those motivational pieces.

Sempkin died on the Lagos Moons. He rounded a corner and was obliterated by auto cannon fire. No flowers, no music, just a staccato retort of a burning maw of death.

There was a girl that he had known while we were stationed there. The fighting was brutal and gritty. Nothing like what you see in the Holovids these days; thousands of men thrown into dense corridors fighting tooth and nail, gnashing and gnawing to gain the upper floor of some tenement. She, this girl he knew, was only ten or eleven at the time. Her parents had been dissidents and had died in some God forsaken fight on a street no one knew. He took her under his wing and cared for her. He would save knick knacks that he thought she could use, I mean absolute slag and rubbish, but he did it for the "sake of doing something right" he’d always say.

Sempkin wasn’t soft as you’d think. He was just sentimental. He cared about each soldier in the Surface Force. He’d fight tooth and nail for anyone if he believed they were Human somewhere deep down inside our frail husks.

She turned us in to the dissidents and rebel forces. We had lived in her company and we awoke one morning to the sound of large bore artillery incoming. The girl was gone, the knick knacks left neatly piled on her bunk.

Sempkin refused to believe it. We evacuated the building under heavy fire. Our unit moved to a secondary line a few hundred meters behind the main line of our current engagement. It was on that last block that the heavy emplacement started to open fire. He just dropped, face torn open and blood sprayed the side wall like a orange being smashed by a mallet. Jenner was the first one to react, a well placed grenade crumpled the enclosed position and we moved safely back to the secondary line.

I often think about Sempkin, about how he died and the meaningless death that contrasted his view of war and people. It’s in those brief moments when I realize I died on that moon too. I just haven’t caught up with Sempkin yet.