The Hero of Varalon III

BancTank's Stand Against the Terminid Horde

The Birth of a Warrior

Nervously he sat in the briefing room of the Helldivers' outpost on Super Earth. At Level 7, BancTank was one of the most junior members of Fireteam Zulu. Around him, grizzled veterans checked their Paragon assault rifles and nova bombs with practiced efficiency. BancTank fumbled with his standard-issue rifle, nearly dropping it.

Their commander, a scarred woman they called Raijin, paced at the front of the room.

"Listen up Helldivers," she barked. "We've got a top priority alert from the Federation. A vital refinery on Varalon III has gone dark, presumed overrun by Terminid forces. The damn bugs have been hitting our oil supply hard and we can't afford to lose this one. Fireteam Zulu will drop in, clear out the xenos, and get that refinery back online. Any questions?"

BancTank hesitantly raised a hand. "Um, will there be any backup...or air support...or anything?"

Raijin fixed him with an icy glare. "This is a quick strike operation, Cadet. We drop fast and quiet, just us. I hope that's not a problem?"

BancTank swallowed hard. "No ma'am."

As the fireteam locked and loaded into the hellpods, BancTank's unease grew. He wasn't ready for real combat. He'd barely passed basic training. Super Earth needed warriors, not some kid from the slums still learning which end of the gun to point.

With a pneumatic hiss, the pod doors sealed. BancTank's stomach lurched as the pod dropped like a stone towards the war-torn surface of Varalon III. He was hurtling towards his destiny, ready or not.

Baptism by Fire

BancTank's hellpod slammed into the fetid swamps of Varalon III, throwing him hard against the crash restraints. Groggily, he kicked out the door and stumbled into the murky water, gripping his rifle.

Towering mushrooms and strange twisted trees loomed over him. Curtains of mist drifted across the bog. There was no sign of the rest of Fireteam Zulu. BancTank checked his HUD - no friendly IFF tags. Comms were jammed with static. He was alone.

Growing up in the underlevels of Super Earth, BancTank knew a thing or two about scary places. But this was something else. Every instinct screamed danger. He wanted to crawl back into his pod and wait for evac.

A guttural shriek pierced the gloom, making BancTank's blood run cold. He'd heard that sound before, in all the briefing vids. Terminids. A lot of them, and close.

Heart pounding, he splashed and floundered through the muck, away from the noises. He had to find the rest of his team. But as the sounds grew louder, one terrible thought crystallized in his mind. The bugs were already here. And he was the only thing standing between them and the refinery.

Forcing down his fear, he sloshed towards the sounds of battle. The swamp gave way to the oily permacrete of the refinery complex. BancTank gazed up at the immense storage tanks and processing towers. If the bugs took this place, thousands would die from the fuel shortage back home.

He gripped his rifle tighter and fixed his bayonet with shaking hands. He had to hold the line. Alone. It was crazy, it was suicide. But he was a Helldiver. He had no choice. With a mumbled prayer, he charged into the fray.

The Burden of Duty

BancTank burst into the refinery yard and straight into hell. Towering Terminid warriors and skittering hordes of bugs swarmed over the complex. Fireteam Zulu was scattered in pockets of resistance, horribly outnumbered.

BancTank froze, overcome by sheer terror. He watched a bug warrior impale Raijin, hoisting her kicking body into the air. He saw another Helldiver torn apart by a seething mass of bugs. This was beyond him. He was just a scared kid. He couldn't do this.

He turned to run, but a strangled cry for help stopped him. Across the yard, his teammate Juno was down, crawling away from a looming Terminid. Howling, the beast raised its scythe-like claws for the killing blow.

In that moment, staring into the elongated head that served as a Terminid head, BancTank overcame his dread and self-doubt. Something snapped inside him, a dam bursting. He couldn't run. He wouldn't. His friend needed him.

Screaming incoherently, he raised his rifle and charged. A sustained burst stitched up the bug's armored thorax, sending ichor spraying. It bought Juno a precious second to roll clear and bring her flamethrower to bear. Together, they hosed the bug down with fire and lead until it collapsed with a rattling hiss.

Juno grabbed his arm, her eyes wide. "Nice shooting, Cadet. I owe you one."

He nodded, swallowing hard. Looking around the chaotic battlefield, he knew the fight was just beginning. But for the first time, he felt a sense of purpose, of belonging. He was a Helldiver, and he had a job to do.

Locking a fresh clip into his rifle, he thought of an old saying his sergeant used to chant during training. The only easy day was yesterday. Ain't that the damn truth, BancTank thought as he prepared to rejoin the battle. The only way out was through.

Forged in Battle

With Juno at his side, BancTank plunged back into the fight, determined to reach the rest of the fire team. The refinery had become a charnel house choked with Terminid corpses and smoldering wrecks. But for every bug they killed, three more took its place. They were being overrun.

A grenade burst nearby, knocking BancTank off his feet. Ears ringing, he looked up to see an immense Terminid bearing down on him, claws raised. He fumbled for his rifle, but it was hopelessly jammed. This was it.

Suddenly, the bug's head vaporized in a blue flash. As its carcass toppled, BancTank saw his savior - a lone Helldiver standing atop a storage tank, wielding an arc thrower. He was a legend among the fireteams, a warrior known only as Prophet.

Prophet leapt down, blasting charging bugs to atoms with shots of ball lightning.

"On your feet, Cadet," he growled, extending a hand. "You aren't dying on my watch."

BancTank took his hand and rose unsteadily. He'd heard the stories about Prophet. They said he'd killed a Desecrator with nothing but a combat knife. That he'd once called down a shredder airstrike on his own position to wipe out a swarm. That his whole fireteam had been killed by an Illuminate Council, yet he'd survived and won the battle singlehanded. Some thought him more than human.

Prophet shoved a bulky weapon into BancTank's hands. "Stalwart LMG. Recoil's a bitch but she'll chew bugs like no other. Stick close and do as I say, got it rook?"

BancTank nodded vigorously. Finally, someone who knew what the hell they were doing. With Prophet leading the way, they fought through the seething hordes to the rest of the fireteam.

They found Raijin and the other survivors hunkered in the wreckage of a powerplant. Down to five men, they were cut off and pinned by Terminid fire.

Prophet took charge effortlessly. "Bugs are thickest to our south. I reckon that's where they're coming from - some kind of tunnel or spawning pit. We plug that hole, we stop the tide. Simple."

Raijin shook her head wearily. "Not enough manpower. We'd never reach it. Best to hold until evac arrives." Prophet met her gaze. "There won't be any evac. Bugs will shoot down any transport. This is the job." He turned to BancTank. "Me and the kid'll flank around and blast that pit to hell. Buy us time."

BancTank gulped. Him and this super-soldier, against untold thousands of Terminid warriors? One look from Prophet's steel gray eyes made it clear this wasn't a request.

Prophet stood and chambered a grenade in his launcher. "Time these bugs learned that Helldivers don't break, and Helldivers don't run. Not ever. Ready Cadet?"

BancTank rose on unsteady legs and revved the LMG. No, he wasn't ready. He probably never would be. But he was a Helldiver, and he had a job to do. He met Prophet's eyes and nodded once. "Ready."

Into the Breach

Hours later, or maybe days - time had little meaning on a battlefield - BancTank leaned against the twisted stump of a gutted processing tower and tried to catch his breath. The hulking weight of the LMG had long ago become an agony, but he didn't dare let go of it. Sweat and worse smeared his face as he reloaded with numb fingers. How many times had he reloaded now? A hundred?

Beside him, Prophet scanned the blasted landscape, looking fresh as if he'd just stepped out of the hellpod. Nothing ever ruffled him. He was made of steel and ice.

They'd fought through what felt like the entire Terminid horde to reach the southern edge of the refinery, leaving mountains of twitching bug corpses behind them. Only there was no bug tunnel, no spawning pit - just more Terminid warriors, as far as the eye could see. It was hopeless.

"We have to pull back," BancTank croaked, his voice an alien rasp. "Regroup with the others at the powerplant. We can't do this alone."

Prophet was still for a long moment. Then he turned to BancTank, and there was something like a smile on his angular face. "Pulling back? Kid, we're already through."

He gestured with his arc thrower, and BancTank turned to look. His heart nearly stopped. The wall of Terminid warriors...there was a gap in their lines, narrow but clear. The bugs were so focused on the powerplant that they'd let their flank drift open.

BancTank turned to Prophet, eyes wide with sudden understanding. There was no pit. Prophet had made that up, knowing the bugs would mass to protect it. He'd threaded the eye of the needle, pulling the Terminid forces out of position. They had a clear shot at the refinery's nerve center now, a chance to end this. Prophet had known that all along.

Prophet thumped him on the shoulder. "That's the job, kid. Adapting, overcoming. Seeing the mission through, no matter what. Now let's move. We've got a refinery to liberate."

BancTank took a deep breath and followed Prophet into the gap, LMG blazing. The swirling melee and storm of tracers felt distant now, unreal. He felt outside himself, above himself, like he was standing on a high peak looking down at the battlefield. He wasn't a scared kid anymore, or even a soldier.

He was becoming something more. A Helldiver in truth.

The Fires of Liberation

The nerve center had been a command post once, before the Terminid corruption had twisted it into a fleshy hive. Mucous-slick eggs the size of tanks pulsed with unspeakable life. This was the heart of the infestation.

"Purge it," Prophet said, voice muffled by his rebreather against the choking stench. "Burn it all."

BancTank pulled the trigger on his incendiary bombs without hesitation, painting the neurocenter with billowing flame. The Terminid structures blackened and flaked away like dead skin. Egg sacs popped like obscene balloons.

It was almost too easy. Then the real owners of the neurocenter arrived - an immense Terminid Guardian, shuddering with hideous life. Every step shook the ground.

Prophet and BancTank opened fire together, pouring everything they had into the beast. Armor-piercing rounds took chunks out of its fleshy plates but didn't slow it. It bellowed and lashed out with barbed tentacles, smashing Prophet and sending him skidding.

Then it turned to BancTank.

Guardian of the Federation

BancTank rolled desperately, barely avoiding a hammering tentacle that cratered the deck where he'd stood. His clips were dry, his bombs and grenades spent. He had nothing but his Paragon and his wits.

It would have to be enough.

The Guardian reared up on segmented legs, its lidless eyes fixing him with alien hunger. BancTank noticed a glowing fissure in its underbelly, oozing fluids. An idea sparked.

He sprinted between its legs, sliding under its bulk. He jammed the Paragon into that wound and held down the trigger until the barrel glowed white. Boiling innards geysered over him as the creature shuddered and thrashed.

With an agonized scream, it collapsed, yellowish ichor spreading across the deck. BancTank sagged against its bulk, every muscle on fire. It was over.

"Knew you had it in you." Prophet was back on his feet, arc thrower dangling. "Think the LT will want to hear about this one." He looked almost proud.

BancTank just sat in the bug guts, astonished at what he'd done. He'd face the mother of all nightmares and lived. Maybe he really could do this Helldiver thing.

But the battle for Varalon III wasn't done. Raijin's voice crackled over the clearing comms: "All callsigns, fall back to the powerplant! We have incoming hostiles...my God, it's a Desecrator! All forces-"

The signal dissolved into static.

Prophet and BancTank stared at each other, expressions grim. They both knew no Helldiver had ever killed a Desecrator and lived to tell of it. Those towering horrors were the stuff of hushed barracks tales and panicked battlefield rumors.

Prophet cracked his neck, face hardening into something more than human. "Always wanted to bag me one of those." He looked to BancTank. "Time to finish the job, Helldiver. Don't wait up."

He sprinted for the powerplant. After a moment to steady himself, BancTank followed. He wasn't ready, could never be ready to face death incarnate. But he was a Helldiver, and he would see this through to the end.

Embrace the Void

The Desecrator moved through the swamps like a nightmare made flesh. BancTank crouched in the mud and ruined foliage, trying not to breathe. Even a hundred meters away, he could feel the psychic miasma that rolled off the creature in anesthetic waves, attempting to lull its prey into an opium languor before the killing stroke. He could barely hold his rifle.

Prophet knelt beside him, sighting through the scope of a railgun salvaged off a dead specialist. "First team will hit it with demo charges, try to draw it off. Second team puts an AT barrage up its backside while the third keeps adds off us. When I give the word, we hit it from the flank with everything we've got left."

It was barely a plan - more a final spasm of defiance before the end. The Desecrator was death, indifferent and inescapable. But they would face it like Helldivers - on their feet, their teeth bared.

"BancTank." Prophet's voice was low and urgent. "When the time comes...don't hesitate. And if it goes south, you run like hell, ok? Get back to the fleet. Tell them what happened here."

BancTank met his eyes, feeling a sudden tightness in his throat. "I'm not leaving you-"

"You'll do as you're damn well told, Cadet. I mean it." Prophet's scarred face softened for just a moment. "It's been an honor. But it ends here, one way or another. Now get ready."

The ground shook as the Desecrator lumbered into the clearing, a chitinous tank of destruction. BancTank gripped his rifle with slick palms and prepared to die on his feet, like a Helldiver.

The world exploded into shards of fire and shrieking metal.

From the Ashes

BancTank came to in a crater of blasted meat and broken chitin, his whole body one solid ache. The last thing he remembered was the flash of demo charges, the Desecrator's unearthly scream, then a shockwave that turned the world white.

He pried his eyes open, fumbling for his rifle. The clearing was a glutinous abattoir, melted Terminid flesh sloughing away to reveal splintered exoskeletons and broken fangs. The reek of cooked meat was suffocating.

And in the middle, the Desecrator. It was dead.

Its immense cranium had been cored by a railgun round, the edges of the oozing tunnel still crackling and spitting blue sparks. There was only one thing in the universe that could make a shot like that. Prophet.

BancTank stumbled to where Prophet had made his stand. There was surprisingly little left - a scattering of bloody Helldiver armor shards, a blackened railgun barrel. No body. If it hadn't been for that impossible shot, there wouldn't have been any trace at all.

BancTank knelt in the muck, grief and exhaustion dragging at him. Prophet was dead, or so far beyond anything BancTank could help with that it didn't matter. The legend had given his life to put down a monster. He'd saved them all.

Raijin found BancTank there some time later, still staring at those charred armor fragments. Around them, the surviving Helldivers were gathering Terminid corpses into mountains of chitin for incendiary burnoff.

The LT laid a hand on BancTank's shoulder. Her face was battered behind her visor, but her eyes were bright. "Prophet?" BancTank could only shake his head.

Raijin sighed, the sound heavy with sorrow and old pain. "He died like he lived then - saving our asses." Her grip tightened. "But it wasn't for nothing. Look."

She pointed to where the fireteams had shoved the Desecrator's shattered carcass aside. The refinery's central control hub stood beyond, miraculously unscathed. They'd done it. Against everything, they'd held the facility. Varalon III, and the war, weren't lost. Not today.

"Prophet wasn't the only hero today," Raijin said softly. "We all saw what you did, BancTank. Couldn't have done this without you. You're one of us, now and forever."

She pressed something into his hands. BancTank looked down to see the dull gleam of dog tags. Prophet's tags. There was an inscription stamped along the edge, worn but legible. BORN HELLDIVER, DIE HELLDIVER.

He closed his fist around them, feeling the weight of the metal, the weight of the man who'd carried them. Prophet had seen something in him, something BancTank hadn't known was there.

He would carry that faith with him, and those tags, for the rest of his days. Because he was a Helldiver, and that was the job. No matter what.

The Long March Home

The journey back to the forward operating base was a blur of exhaustion and painkillers. BancTank remembered only snatches - the HUD of a medivac shuttle, the babble of voices and equipment in a triage ward, the tremors of the base's shield wall repelling Terminid artillery. He dreamed of gunfire and flame.

He woke to white sheets and the hum of a field hospital, his body swathed in bandages and dermal patches. Juno sat dozing in a chair beside his cot, her arm in a sling. She looked as bad as he felt.

"Welcome back, Cadet," she said as he stirred. She tossed him a ration bar. "You've been out for about 38 hours. Docs fixed you up pretty good."

BancTank levered himself up on his elbows with a groan. "The team?"

"We lost Dzinski, Karhu, and Merino." Juno's voice was heavy. "Along with Prophet, of course. But the rest of us made it, thanks to you."

BancTank let out a long breath. So many dead, and for what? One refinery, one tiny strongpoint in a war across a thousand worlds. But Helldivers didn't deal in scales or odds. They dealt in the mission. And this mission had been fulfilled, at great cost.

"Raijin put you in for a commendation," Juno said. "Helljumper's Bronze, for conspicuous gallantry." She smiled faintly. "Get used to being a hero, BancTank. You've earned it."

But BancTank didn't feel like a hero. He felt hollowed out, scoured clean by the horrors of Varalon III. He looked at Prophet's tags, still clenched in his fist. The older warrior had known this feeling. He'd stared into the same abyss, and made his peace with it.

If Prophet could shoulder this weight, then so could he. For in a war that never ended, that was the only choice any of them had. To endure, to fight on. To be Helldivers, until the end.

Rebirth of a Legend

Two months had passed since Varalon III. Two months of new worlds, new battles, new pyres for the fallen. BancTank had spent those months burying himself in the Helldiver life - training until he dropped, learning every weapon system and ordnance load, joining every strike mission he could get. Anything to not dream of Prophet's last charge.

The work paid off. His efficiency scores climbed, commendations accumulated. The Helljumper's Bronze gave way to a Crimson Skull, then a White Sword. BancTank stopped being surprised when seasoned Helldivers started deferring to him in the field.

He was making a name for himself, the only name any Helldiver needed - a soldier who got the job done, who never left a man behind, who would march into hell itself if the mission required it. Just like Prophet.

Then came the day that would change everything. They were laying down HE mortars on a column of Terminid armor on some methane ball called TC-914. BancTank was coordinating the fire mission when Juno's voice crackled over the command channel.

"BancTank, we have a situation at the east hardpoint. You'd better get over here."

Her tone made him move fast, vaulting barricades and sprinting past startled troopers. He skidded around the final corner to see Juno and a fireteam in a loose cordon around a battered Helldiver. The armor was scorched and pitted, covered in the unmistakable acid scoring of Terminid warrior-caste blood.

The Helldiver raised his head, and BancTank forgot how to breathe. It was Prophet.

His face was a welter of fresh scars, and there was an unfocused glaze to his eyes that spoke of one too many unshielded blasts. But it was him, alive, impossibly here. BancTank crossed the space between them in two strides and pulled the other man into an embrace that would have cracked ceramic plate.

"I thought you were dead," he rasped into Prophet's shoulder. "Varalon III, the Desecrator..."

"Takes more than one bug-queen bitch to punch my ticket," Prophet growled. His voice was the scrape of tank treads on gravel. "Besides, I had a promise to keep. Had to see my rookie make ace, didn't I?"

And just like that, the months of grief and doubt fell away. Prophet was back. BancTank's mentor, the lodestone of his Helldiver existence, had returned from hell itself to fight at his side again. Suddenly, anything was possible.

He stepped back, matching Prophet's feral grin with one of his own. "Welcome back, old man. Just in time, too." He hefted his arc thrower. "What do you say we go show these Terminid bastards what a couple of Helldivers can really do?"

Prophet's bark of laughter was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.

Eternal Vigilance

The Helldivers' last push to secure TC-914 would be forever remembered as the stuff of legend. BancTank and Prophet fought like men possessed, hurling themselves against Terminid positions with a ferocity that bordered on madness. Troopers whispered that they had to be more than human, that nothing mortal could wade through so much fire and death and come out unscathed.

And everywhere they went, victory followed.

With BancTank's strategic acumen and Prophet's savage tactical genius, the two Helldivers broke the back of the Terminid occupation in a whirlwind campaign across the planet's warzones. They became a talisman of inevitable triumph - where they stepped, the enemy fell.

The day came when the last spire of the planet's central hive shattered under a salvo of singularity bombardment, and the remaining warrior-castes fled into the poisoned wilds. BancTank stood with Prophet atop the debris, watching the sun rise through the haze of dissipating toxins. They had won. The planet was theirs.

Prophet clapped him on the shoulder, his eyes gleaming with more than reflected sunlight. "Hell of a thing, kid. Helldiver in full, no doubt left. How's it feel?"

BancTank considered. He thought of the warrior he'd been on Valadon III, so unsure, so lost. Baptized in the fire of countless battles since, he had to reach to recall that scared recruit. The man beside him now was a veteran, a champion forged in the most terrible crucible war had to offer. He had walked through the flames and come out transformed.

The weight of Prophet's tags in his pocket was a comforting anchor. They were a piece of the man who'd shown him the way, an unbreakable link to the Helldiver creed. Born Helldiver, die Helldiver. And everything in between was the job, the mission. His mission, now and always.

He smiled, letting the truth of it settle in his bones. "Feels like home."

Prophet nodded, satisfied. "Knew you had it in you from the start. Question is, what now? Got a whole universe of enemies out there needs killing."

BancTank looked out at the blackened horizon, already itching for the next drop, the next battle. The Helldivers had given him purpose, a calling higher than any other. As long as there were innocents to protect and enemies to destroy, he would be there. They both would.

"I say we get back to it," he said, hefting his rifle. "The bugs won't purge themselves, you know."

Prophet's grin was a slash of white in the gloom. "Damn right they won't."

He raised a gloved fist, and BancTank bumped it without hesitation. The two Helldivers, master and student, legend and disciple. The galaxy would tremble at their passing.

It was time to get back to the job.

THE END