Chương 6: Arc 0 - Chapter 6 - The Western Front

After roughly fifteen minutes of brisk walking, they finally reached the western side of the outpost and emerged from the underground tunnels. Thea's visor darkened automatically as the sudden change in light threatened to sting her eyes. When she looked around, she found herself standing atop a fortified hill. Dozens of trenches had already been dug and reinforced, with half a dozen more still under construction.

Layers of sandbags formed pillboxes across the area, and she could quickly identify six heavily fortified heavy machine gun emplacements.' There's probably more than that, though. Doubt they're all obvious like this.' Four lookout towers were spread evenly across the position, each roughly twenty metres tall and offering an excellent view of the surrounding terrain.

'Don't even think about setting up there,' she told herself.' Once the shooting starts, you'd be stuck with nowhere to fall back to. And those things are going to draw enemy fire like nobody's business.' At a glance, she could see well over a thousand UHF Marines moving about below. Some were digging trenches, others hauling sandbags or ammunition crates, while a few took short breaks. No matter where she looked, they were everywhere. She had never seen so many people in one place.

'The undercity could never sustain this many people in such a small space…' Even the marketplace—the largest open space she knew—only held around six hundred at most.

"How many marines are stationed at Theta Outpost, sir?" she asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice.

"How many?" Captain Sable shrugged.

"Thirteen thousand? Fourteen, maybe. Somewhere around there. I'd have to ask logistics to be sure. This western section should have about two or three thousand." His tone carried no sense of awe at all.

'I've been thinking way too small,' Thea realised as she watched him speak so casually about those numbers.' This is what war actually looks like.' She stopped herself from doing the math on how many marines the planet might hold if one minor outpost could field that many. A small chill ran down her spine—not of fear, but pure excitement.' The UHF is even more impressive than I thought.' Captain Sable's voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Alright, we're here. I've just sent my comms details to your helmet, so you'll be able to ping me when shit hits the fan. Don't let me down, Private. I'm counting on you."

"Yes, sir! I won't disappoint," she replied, snapping into a salute. She held it until the Captain turned and disappeared back into the underground tunnels, leaving her alone atop the fortified hill. She spent the next few minutes getting her bearings, scouting for good places to set up, and marking possible fallback points. As she moved through the trenches, she was once again struck by just how many people were around.

Everywhere she went, there were dozens upon dozens of Marines—standing ready, working on the fortifications, or taking short breaks. More than once, she accidentally stepped into someone's path.

'There's some kind of rhythm to this,' she realised after the fourth time.' Everyone else seems to know it.' No one she saw seemed to have the same problem as her.

'Alright. Focus…!' She forced herself to stop trying to do everything at once and put all her attention on her movement alone. Once she did that, the flow of the trenches slowly started to make sense. She adjusted her pace, learned when to stop and when to move, and stopped getting in other Marines' way. With that small win behind her, she continued her search for the perfect place to set up… Another twenty minutes passed before Thea made her way back to the hilltop where she had started.

She checked the primary mission timer and saw that there were still a little over nine hours left before reinforcements were due to arrive at Theta Outpost.

"Huh… these fortifications are no joke," she muttered quietly.

'Breaking through all this won't be easy, even for those freaks,' she thought as she sorted through the locations she had marked as possible setup spots.' Either west or east,' she decided.' That covers the most ground. Most of the fortifications are built to stop frontal attacks, so flanks are the weak point. Extra eyes there matter more.' Her gaze shifted westward.

'We're the western outpost. There should be more positions to the east then, backing us up. Less chance of surprises from that direction… Hopefully.' Decision made, she headed for her chosen spot along the western edge. Once there, she set her backpack down and pulled out the trench shovel along with a stack of synth-fabric bags. She dug a small foxhole, reinforcing the western and northern sides with filled bags.

The position sat roughly twenty metres west of the nearest trench, close enough for a fast retreat if things went bad. It was about four hundred metres up the hill, near the seventh line of trenches carved into the slope.

'This'll work,' she thought, taking in the surroundings. The slight elevation gave her a better angle on anyone pushing uphill from the west or north. It was also far enough from the centre of the outpost that it didn't draw attention.

'Most of the important stuff is up there,' she reasoned.' If I'm lucky, they won't even bother with my area and I get to have some free shooting time.' As she continued her work on the foxhole, she ran through her escape plan again.' If I get overrun, I bolt for the trenches to my right. Twenty metres. Two, maybe three seconds. That's a long time in a firefight, but I've got grenades to cover the retreat.'

She glanced into her backpack, already packed full with energy cells and grenades she'd loaded up earlier at Captain Sable's insistence.

"We've got more ammo and nades than anyone could ever use—throw the whole damn backpack at them if you have to," he'd said. She'd taken that advice seriously and filled it to the absolute brim. Twenty-two energy cells for the Mjollnir, each good for roughly sixteen shots at standard settings. Twelve shrapnel cluster grenades. Six sonic burst grenades. Two EMP grenades. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.'

EMP's probably useless against those freaks, if what Captain Sable said about their lack of high-tech equipment is true,' she thought.' But 'probably' isn't good enough. Better safe than sorry when it comes to consumables.' After another fifteen minutes of work, she finally finished the foxhole and sat down for the first time since stepping into the crystal cylinder back in Lumiosia's undercity.

"Man… this has already been an absolute ride," she muttered.

"Doesn't even feel like a simulation. I really hope I can do this more than once. If this is a one-and-done thing, that'd fucking suck." Her frown deepened.

"Actually… shit. Everything else at the arcade is going to feel empty after this, isn't it? Wouldn't be the first time a great game ruined all the others for me…" She'd always talked to herself when she was alone like this. It helped her organise, as her mind was a chaotic mess of randomly sprouting up thoughts otherwise. Regardless of where she was, she always tried to find a quiet place for herself, to get her thoughts in a line like this.

"Ahhh, maaaan… now my excitement's all gone," she groaned softly.

"Really hope this cube thing sticks around." She clenched a fist and nodded to herself.

"I'll grind this simulation until I know absolutely everything about it…!" Roughly an hour had passed since Thea finished her foxhole and set up overwatch toward the north-western hillside. She scanned the horizon through the scope of her Mjollnir, the rifle resting on a pair of sandbags for stability. The bipod's grav-tech was already engaged, locking the weapon in place so stray vibrations wouldn't throw her shots off once things went loud.

Whatever Theta Outpost's surroundings might have once looked like, nothing of that remained. Blackened artillery craters scarred the ground, burnt-out tree husks jutted from the soil, and the same red-brown dirt stretched in every direction as far as she could see. To the west, a deep valley dipped below her position. The slope leading up toward her was steep, far worse than the northern approach.

'Yeah. Good call to set up here,' she thought.' Climbing that under fire would be downright impossible. So I should be pretty safe up here.' She'd barely need to check the western side at all barring some cursory glances. Still, she made sure to make those glances a habit at regular intervals.

'Assumptions get people killed.' To the north, the land dropped into a shallow valley roughly five hundred metres out, stretching another four hundred metres before rising into a steep hill.

'That's their staging ground,' she realised.' Everything's been coming from over there.' The evidence was impossible to miss—bodies piled at the base of the slope, left where they had fallen. The hill itself had been torn apart by UHF artillery and mortar fire. Entire sections of the hill had already collapsed inward from prior bombardments, turning the approach into broken, uneven ground.

'They're going to have to crawl over that mess to reach us,' she thought grimly.' Good. Let it slow them down...' One thing struck Thea as odd, however. At roughly ninety percent up the enemy's hill, all signs of artillery and mortar impacts stopped dead. The rest of the slope was pockmarked with craters—one or two every few metres, no matter how far east or west she looked—but the top ten percent of the hill was completely untouched, as if the shells had simply avoided it.

'Some kind of energy shield. If those actually exist,' she decided.' But definitely some kind of countermeasure. No way that's natural. I'll ask the Old Man about it later.' Truth be told, a lot of questions had piled up during her time in the simulation. For example, why were they all in trenches? Why weren't they just wiping each other out from dozens of kilometres away with long-range weapons? And why was the intel about the enemy positions so vague? Were there no satellites? No proper drone coverage?

None of them had good answers yet.'

This war's been going on for what—eight, nine centuries? Of course countermeasures exist by now,' she could infer that much—but that answer wasn't enough for her.

'But what kind? How do they work? How do you get around them?!' Without solid data, there was no way to crunch the numbers and figure out the best path forward. The lack of information gnawed at her, but she wasn't about to distract local squad leaders with questions in the middle of a live combat zone.

'I'll ask the Old Man once I'm out,' she resolved. Just then, suddenly, she spotted something. A shadow on the opposite hill that didn't belong. She adjusted her scope, smoothly pushing past her usual five-times zoom all the way to the full sixteen. For the first time, she got a clear look at the enemy. A man crouched near the top of the hill, holding some kind of device up to his eyes. It reminded her of old long-range binoculars she'd seen in undercity antiquities shops.

He wore composite armour, almost hidden beneath dozens of layered cloth rags. The few parts of exposed skin carried a faint red tint—' Planetary exposure,'she figured.' Living on this dustball would probably do that to you… Just like people down in Fairharbour have that sicklish gray-green tinge to them.' She couldn't spot a weapon on him.

'Scout,' she immediately decided. Instead of shooting right away, she decided to watch his movements, to try and figure out what he was doing or potentially scouting for. He stayed low, only peeking over the hill roughly one and a half kilometres out, binoculars raised. To her, it looked downright clumsy—almost like a kid trying to play hide and seek. Frowning, she pinged the nearest squad commander through her armour.

"Sir, I've spotted an enemy scout on the opposite hill. Bearing one-one-four, moving east. He's holding what looks like some kind of old-tech binoculars. Any guidance on what to do with him?" Her comm crackled briefly—the UHF's signal for message received. A few seconds of silence followed as the squad leader likely tried to confirm her report.

"Private Thea, right?" the voice came back.

"My scout doesn't see anything over there. You got a clear shot?"

"Yes, sir. On both counts," she replied.

"I should be about forty metres to your left. I'm not sure why your scout can't see him. Could you ask for a re-check?"' Please don't tell me I'm seeing things,' she thought, a flicker of unease creeping in after staring at the same stretch of red-brown nothing for over an hour. Silence again—then her comm lit up once more.

"Private, my scout still doesn't have eyes on the target. Might be behind a rock or something. Who the void knows. If you've got a shot and you're confident, take it. We can't afford to give the freaks any intel on our positions." There was a hint of frustration in his voice.

"Roger that, sir. Taking the shot," she replied, already slowing her breathing. She slowly lined up her sights on the upper jaw of the man on the opposite hill, who was still scanning the horizon through his old-tech binoculars. The target was more than one and a half kilometres away, but Thea wasn't worried about the distance. She was using a laser weapon. The shot would travel almost at the speed of light—there was very little that could interfere besides her own aim.

She slowed her breathing and let everything else fade away. The rifle, her body, the distant figure—all of it lined up into a single, clear focus. Her finger began to squeeze the trigger—she stopped.

'What the fuck did I do that for? The shot was perfect!' Annoyed at herself, she reset her grip and steadied her breathing again. She aimed at the same spot and felt herself starting to pull the trigger. The man's head exploded into a red mist. Flesh and bone sprayed outward, and the old binoculars shattered into fragments." Who?!" Thea shouted before she could stop herself.

"Who the fuck just stole my kill?!" she hissed under her breath, frustration tightening her voice. Her rifle was still cold. She hadn't fired. Someone else had taken the shot before she could finish pulling the trigger.

'That was supposed to be my damn warm-up kill.'

"Great work, Private Thea," the squad leader's voice crackled over comms.

"My scout saw the mist. Still no body, but that was one damn fine shot. Didn't think you'd land it, not gonna lie. Keep it up." Before she could respond, a massive explosion suddenly tore through the UHF fortifications. The shockwave threw her flat into her foxhole.

"What the fuck was that?!" she muttered, scrambling back to her feet and peering over the edge. A fresh crater yawned open on the eastern side of the hill, easily fifty metres across. Orders and shouted commands rang out from nearby squad leaders and command staff as they tried to make sense of it.

That kind of blast took serious firepower—far more than the Stellar Republic should apparently have been able to deploy against this position, if Thea was making proper sense of the sections of conversations she could hear in the chaotic command channel. A knot of anxiety formed in her chest as she swung her scope back toward the enemy hill. To her surprise, no enemies were in sight. If the Stellar Republic was responsible for that explosion, they—for some unknown reason—weren't using the chaos to push forward…