My name is Marcus, I was for twelve years a soldier in the imperial army, in fact an officer at twenty five, and I am now a veteran of the Eastern wars. I am now thirty two, but I look somewhat older, because my face, and my entire body are covered with scars.

Very young, when I was still at college, I volunteered for the army, just a year before the first war. Shortly after basic training I was sent to a special school for airborne troops, and graduated with honours, just before being sent to the front. For the following four years I was posted to different parts of the front, and was several times wounded and decorated. Then, as the war was going badly for us, I was given the command of a unit that was tasked with defending missile battery units close to the line of battle. For two years I successfully beat back enemy’s attacks on some of our most advanced positions. At the turning point of the war, my luck left me. I and my men had been posted very close to the enemy’s line, in an exposed position. One night, we were subjected to an intense mortar attack that threatened the lives of men and machines. I resolved to take with me a platoon of my most experienced men and, with a lightly armoured APC, attack the mortar position. At the dead of night, constantly under fire, my driver missed a line of landmines. One of them, perhaps even more than one, exploded under our APC. In a tank we would have survived, as it was, the mine obliterated the armour, and most of us.

I still don’t know how I could have come alive out of the burning wreck . Indeed was I? And I did not come out: I was extracted from the mess of body parts and burning steel by comrades who had come to the rescue. I was in a black hole, unconscious, my body in tatters.

I stayed for a year in a military hospital for extreme cases. Later, I was told that the doctors had been very interested in my case, the way the explosion had left some parts intact, and shredded others. When I became conscious again, a young doctor in an immaculate uniform explained that I was to receive the Cross for Merit in Battle (then the highest imperial decoration for battle bravery). He then listed the damage. The surgeons had done their best to save what could be saved, he explained. I had lost my right arm, and had been lucky to keep my legs, although one was partly artificial. In the burning wreck my manhood had been incinerated, although, miraculously, my penis was still there, patiently reconstructed by an artist female surgeon, the doctor explained with pride. I had multiple injuries to the chest, back and neck, and my face had been badly burnt, although, again, the surgeons had succeeded in restoring it human-like.

I was fitted with an artificial arm and hand, a marvel of engineering, and spent several months in rehabilitation. Once I could stand on my own, I started retraining in all the things I used to love, spending time in the dojo, and resuming swords play, to which I had excelled in the early years of the war.

One fine autumn morning, in the hospital courtyard, and in the presence of a company of the my old regiment, a young general pinned a black cross to my (new) uniform jacket . I was now a hero, a cripple, and a eunuch. I was discharged.

Back home, my parents did not recognise me. To this day I am not sure my dad believed that the creature that was sent back to them was their son Marcus, but instead a cyborg of sort.

Picture: Adobe stock

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