NOVEL SIMPLE Arc 0 - Chapter 9 - Survival I
Back at her foxhole, Thea took a couple of minutes to organise her thoughts.
Too much had happened in the past hour, too much information had been disclosed and too many questions had arisen in her mind, for her to simply continue on.
She got her breathing under control and entered a sort of meditative mindset, allowing her tired mind to relax, even if just for a few moments.
Being thrown into such a high tension scenario right from her cosy little undercity that she called home, was definitely a lot more taxing than she had expected. The Deep-Dive Simulation was also adding to the exhaustion, as it was simply way too realistic for its own good. Games shouldn’t completely drain someone, after all!
After spending about five minutes meditating and collecting her thoughts, she turned her attention back towards the mission at hand.
Her primary mission objective timer indicated that there were another 8 ½ hours to go. For Thea, that simply meant she had plenty of time left to score some points!
With fully renewed vigour and energy, she set up her DMR again and scoped the horizon for targets. Now that the UHF had calibrated their countermeasures accordingly, the cease-fire had been lifted and she was cleared to take any shots she deemed viable. She wasn’t going to let anyone else get more of her kills, this time around!
A couple minutes into her new session of overwatch, she spotted another scout creeping along the hill-tops of the Stellar Republic’s side.
She gauged the distance to be around 1.6km from her. Once again, for the third time that day, she aimed carefully at the upper-jaw of the scout with her Mjollnir and focused her attention entirely on the weapon, herself and her target.
Slowing her breathing and remembering the drills that Old Man James had imparted to her, she waited for the perfect opportunity to squeeze the trigger.
In between two heart beats, with her breath held around halfway through an exhale, her gun finally loosened its first laser.
Through the scope of her weapon, she observed as the laser melted straight through the jaw-bones of the scout and vaporised the brainstem, along with portions of the spinal cord behind it, in an instant.
The scout dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
He had died before he even realised what happened, as the weaponized laser travelled at nearly the speed of light, giving him no chance to react.
With a sense of elation and reprieve, that she was in-fact not unable to properly pull the trigger, Thea jumped out of her foxhole, weapon in hand, and sprinted towards the nearest trenchline.
Despite the countermeasures supposedly being set up and working, she did not want to risk them having been wrong and getting vaporised herself for no reason.
Seconds later, a massive explosion occurred hundreds of metres above her foxhole, as the GOG shell was once again intercepted by the UHF defensive systems.
Seeing the system work without a hitch for the second time in a row, Thea started to trust its protection a lot more. It did not appear to have been a fluke the first time around, that it managed to catch the GOG shell mid-air.
Returning to her position, she eagerly got to clearing out any and all scouts she could find…
Half an hour later, she had successfully shot another four scouts, her kill count rising to a total of five. Each shot had been perfectly placed, which Thea was very happy about.
She also noted that the scouts had stopped appearing in the last ten-or-so minutes. She figured they had learned their lesson after losing so many scouts in a row with no discernable gains, due to the GOG shells being intercepted every single time by the UHF defences.
When sniping the first two scouts, she had still sought cover in the nearest trenches after taking the shot, not fully trusting the countermeasures quite yet. However, for the last three, she simply stayed inside her foxhole, letting the - now definitely fully functional - counter- measures protect her from the GOG bombardment that inevitably followed each of her shots.
Now that she had more time to properly focus and observe her surroundings, instead of frantically running for her life after each shot, she noticed audible shockwaves following the GOG shell explosions high in the air above the UHF lines. These were most likely sonic booms trailing behind the shells as they descended from orbit toward the UHF lines, which she hadn't been able to discern before due to the overwhelming force of the explosions themselves or her desperate sprint to the trenches and back.
Thea had finally been able to gain some of her confidence back, after losing most of it from the constant fumbling of her emotional state, the ludicrous amount of new information she was ingesting throughout this entire experience; and her inability to pull the trigger during the initial two spotting incidents.
Content with her work, she allowed herself to relax a bit. After all, the Stellar Republic had likely realised by now that their current modus operandi was not going to work any further, which would explain the absence of any further scouts for the last dozen minutes.
She pulled one of the nutrient packs from her backpack, as well as one of the water rations, while making herself a little bit more comfortable inside of her foxhole by placing some of the left-over synth-fabric bags on the ground as makeshift pillows.
While sitting on the ground and chowing down on her rudimentary lunch, she once again spent some time going over everything she had experienced in the past couple of hours.
It felt like a lifetime ago that she had been in the arcade, despite only 2-3 hours having passed since she entered the crystal cylinder.
She did realise, however, that she did not hate the experience. Rather, she felt exhilarated beyond anything she had ever felt before. Yet… despite this exhilaration, there was also something decidedly horrifying about the whole situation, which would not let her fully relax.
The Deep-Dive Simulation provided an amount of realism that was impossible to compare with anything except “reality”. Nothing felt off, despite trying her hardest to find the cracks in the simulation.
Everything felt like it was part of a living, breathing world, as if she truly had been teleported millions of lightyears across the universe, into the body of another Thea, living through this exact scenario at this exact moment.
Slowly, a feeling of existential dread had accumulated inside of her, that was continuously growing stronger as she continued to fail in finding any indicators for the “gameness” of the simulation.
The only evidence suggesting that this was not her real life, was the tiny primary mission objective timer in the top-right corner of her vision, which unerringly continued counting towards zero…
As Thea was about to finish her rudimentary lunch a couple minutes later, her comms activated and the voice of a slightly on-edge-sounding Kellerman rang through:
“Private, you seeing anything over there? It’s been too void-damned quiet ever since they stopped sending those scouts. Please tell me, you got something?”
She scrambled back to her feet after closing up her helmet again and did a cursory sweep with her scope. Doing a second, albeit slightly slower one to confirm her intel, she replied.
“Negative, SL. Nothing out there. Maybe they gave up?”
“Ha, as if! Reason the UHF absolutely hates fighting these freaks is because they are the masters of attrition. While the UHF originally dominated those kinds of battles, the Stellar Republic seems to have made it their life-long mission to be a pain in everyone’s asses…” came the exasperated reply of Kellerman.
He sighed heavily and continued, “I’d recommend you set yourself up for some extended shootouts. I have the feeling they’re brewing something up for us. If the recent engagements are anything to go by, there’ll be some massive push sometime soon.”
Pinging her comms once for acknowledgement, she got to doing exactly that.
She took out a handful of energy cells for her laser-rifle and placed them in easily accessible places around her foxhole, in case she needed to reload quickly, she’d be able to rapidly grab the nearest one without having to first rifle through her backpack.
Next, she dug out three tiny spaces at around chest-height in front of her, in which she placed two of her grenades each, for easy access. She did not want to place them somewhere in the open, in case any stray ricochets or shrapnel ended up flying into her foxhole and setting them off.
With her preparations done, she returned to her overwatch duties, anxiety slowly starting to build in her chest from the ominous predictions of the squad leader…
Another fifteen minutes passed in which Thea stared out at the hillside with nothing appreciable happening.
She had never expected a war to be so… quiet and boring.
In all the games she had played up until now, there was always something going on. All the boring parts were generously skipped over by the developers, in favour of adding more action set-pieces or sequences.
Only now, that she was directly experiencing a fraction of the reality of war herself, did she realise how much of the heavy-lifting was done by those skips, as nobody in their right minds would want to play a game that consisted of mostly waiting…
Before these thoughts could mature further however, all hell broke loose.
Over the hilltop of the Stellar Republic’s side came hundreds, no... thousands of black, cylindrical objects flying at high speeds. Before Thea could even react to the sudden change, they started boring themselves into the ground around 200 metres in front of the first trench line of the UHF.
As she zoomed in on the objects, she noticed that they all stopped boring once they properly anchored themselves around 10 cm into the ground. The cylinders themselves were painted matte black, around 30 cm long and had a diameter of around 15 cm. She could not make out any other discernible features on the fly, as she tried to figure out their purpose.
As if not wanting to give her the opportunity however, all the cylinders’ backs suddenly exploded, releasing a thick, black-purple coloured smoke at a rapid pace. The smoke quickly covered the surrounding area and rose high into the air, completely obscuring the view of the hill on the other side, much to Thea’s horror.
Adding to the feeling of utter chaos, her comms unexpectedly activated as well.
“This is western command. The Stellar Republic appears to be going for a push on our front. Do not let them gain any ground. This is not their first push, nor will it be their last. Don’t let it be our last, either. Wait for them to clear the smoke, then blast ‘em to the void! Good hunting, marines!” sounded the reassuring voice of Captain Greysmith over the local command channel, successfully clearing parts of Thea’s mind fog and allowing her to focus on the task at hand.
From her slightly elevated position, she could see how the entire UHF side of the hill sprang into action as one.
Ammunition boxes were opened and prepared for easy access, heavy machine guns uncovered, emplacements prepared and weapons double-checked wherever she looked.
One thing that immediately caught her attention was that none of the marines seemed flustered in the least. While they all worked at a brisk pace, none of them were rushing to get things done. Like a well-oiled machine, the entire UHF hillside prepared for the inevitable clash of their respective forces.
The UHF marines’ professionalism once again reinforced Thea’s opinion of them and alleviated some of her concerns about the upcoming battle, which had inevitably surfaced as she was faced with such an overwhelming situation.
Gripping her Mjollnir with renewed poise, she waited for the Stellar Republic to make their appearance through the smoke, which was continuously billowing out of the cylinders around 900 metres down the hill from her.
An eerie silence overcame the UHF fortifications, as everyone waited with bated breath for the first Stellar Republic fighters to pass through the smoke. The UHF marines had quickly finished their preparations and were now simply waiting for the enemy to come to them.
To Thea, the moment seemed to drag on forever, as everyone simply waited for the inevitable battle to start. She wished there was something she could do, but outside of being ready, there was nothing to be done…
Then, finally, she spotted the first fighter break through the smoke and a cacophony of sound erupted along the battle-lines of the UHF, causing her to flinch from the unexpected assault on her eardrums.
The projectile-based HMGs that she had spotted being uncovered earlier were the loudest of the sounds that she could identify. They were spitting dozens of rounds a second towards the billowing smoke, each accompanied by a muffled “pop” as the explosive rounds found their targets and evaporated both itself and the target alike.
Kellerman’s squad, which was still the closest to her at this moment, was also firing with everything they had.
She could briefly catch the squads’ two heavy-armour wearers snapping their massive grenade launchers to different targets, blanketing whole areas of the smoke-screen in violent detonations of fire and death, leaving nothing but charred body pieces behind.
Realising that she had done nothing but observe the initial seconds of the battle, she snapped her focus back to the scope of her weapon.
Just like she had done with the scouts before, she aimed at the upper-jaw area of whatever fighter she could get into her sights and pulled the trigger. Again and again.
Each shot resulted in a kill, but Thea felt no elation at that fact, for there were simply too many enemies to really feel like she made an impact at all. No matter where she looked, hundreds upon hundreds of Stellar Republic fighters were charging up towards the first line of UHF trenches, despite the absurd amount of firepower being wielded against them…
By the time she had killed her 36th enemy for the day, including the five scouts from the early hours, she replaced the first energy cell on her rifle. She also tried thinking of a way to increase her capacity to thin out the ranks of enemies, as they had started inching closer towards the first line of trenches, step by step.
She had no idea how many enemies the UHF had killed since the battle had started, but she estimated that it had to be at least a couple thousand. Just the little area that she could cover from her foxhole had seen so much death, that the dead bodies of the approaching fighters had essentially created a trench-line of bodies to hide behind for the ones that followed.
Many of the UHF’s massive grenade launchers were desperately attempting to vaporise those concentrated spots in order to blow apart the enemy’s cover, but there were simply too many dead bodies to be an effective solution.
Thea had quickly realised that her approach of killing one enemy at a time was simply not feasible in the current situation. She had attempted to search for high-value targets, such as commanders, squad leaders or the like, in order to make the most use of her extremely high accuracy and kill-potential, but she had failed to find even a single one.
She quickly surmised that this first wave of enemies were simply the ‘grunts’ of the Stellar Republic. Bodies, to carve a path towards their enemies, with no regard to the cost of human lives. There simply were no squad leaders or commanders necessary, when the only command was “run forward”.
Having made that realisation, she decided to set her laser rifle’s settings to overcharge.
While this would inevitably deplete her energy cells faster, she would be able to shoot straight through multiple enemies with each shot. It was a trade-off that she deemed utterly viable in this scenario, although she also silently thanked Captain Sable for telling her to pack a whole backpack full of ammunition on the way to the western front.
With her rifle on overcharge, she continued her grisly business. Quickly she felt that she had made the right choice, as she observed how each shot easily felled three, four or even sometimes five enemies. Since there was a veritable sea of enemies, but only a certain number of viable routes towards the first trench line, they ended up clustering into large groups, which proved exceptionally useful for her penetrating laser shots to do their utmost.
After the first couple of shots in overcharge mode, she quickly lost track of her kill count, completely unable to confirm many of her kills. It took her a bit to get used to not counting her kills mentally, as it was an ingrained habit of hers since she had first started gaming, but with no other option, she doubled-down on firing faster to make up for it.
When her third energy cell ran out, the battle had reached its first milestone.
Despite their best attempts at stemming the tide and keeping the enemy at bay, there simply had been too many of them. She watched with a sense of abject horror, as hundreds of Stellar Republic fighters swarmed into the first trench line of the UHF.
Many of the marines stationed in that first line had already evacuated a couple minutes earlier, but some brave marines had stayed behind to cover their comrades’ retreat.
Those few remaining marines were being torn apart by the Stellar Republic fighters’ gunfire, as they got pincered and hit by dozens upon dozens of projectiles and lasers at the same time. While the Stellar Republic’s weapon technology level was decidedly inferior to the UHF and they struggled to score kills at longer ranges, it didn’t really matter when one got struck by hundreds of them at point-blank range.
In an instant the entire first trench line broke apart, claimed by their enemy. An earth- shattering cheer of thousands of Stellar Republic fighters rippled over the hillside, as they staked their claim on the first win of the battle.
Shortly after that setback, which had seemingly reinvigorated the enemies’ ability to ignore their dead comrades and push on with vigour, Thea started to recognise a weird pattern.
As her scope was always zoomed to a level that made accurate shots easy, she had a fairly good idea of the Stellar Republic fighters faces, their rough ages and genders. At first, she had paid no heed to this information whatsoever, but after hundreds upon hundreds of shots, her brain was starting to try and distract itself from the monotony with new information.
Due to this, she realised that some of the fighters of the Stellar Republic looked similar.
No... not similar. They looked identical!
Taken aback by this sudden and weird discovery, she stopped her rapid firing and instead carefully aimed at the faces of different enemies in her field of view. While many looked completely different from one another, she could definitely tell that some were identical!
She counted over four different copies of the same man, in a small cluster of enemies that were currently trying to clamber out of the first trench line towards the second. Not only did they have the same face, they even wore the exact same clothes, had the same shabby rags that were customary for the Stellar Republic fighters; and even the same guns!
Unsure what to do with this information, she activated her comms and rang up Kellerman.
“SL, I’m not sure what to make of this information, but some of the Stellar Republic fighters are… identical. Like down to their very rags, guns, faces, everything! Do you have any idea what’s going on with that?”
After a short wait in which she killed another dozen-or-so fighters, Kellerman replied.
“Private, this your first time with the freaks, eh? That’s one of the reasons we call ‘em freaks in the first place. The Stellar Republic has this weird ability that allows their soldiers to duplicate themselves up to a certain point. Make no mistake however, these duplicates are fully real, like you and me, not some kind of illusion-tech. They can and absolutely WILL kill you, if you let them.
“They suck at thinking, tho, so they need to be directly ‘controlled’ by their original body, so to speak. Problem is that those are usually also in the midst of battle, which makes it impossible to specifically target them. On the other hand, every time we get one of them, you’ll see the rest of the duplicates simply drop like some disconnected bots.
“‘Tis why our heavies like the grenade launchers so much. Makes it easy to collateral one of the originals by accident, taking care of the whole squad.”
While the answer was way more comprehensive than she had expected in the middle of battle, it had also sparked tons of questions in Thea’s mind.
How did the Stellar Republic have this duplication technology, when they were otherwise completely devoid of any advanced tech?
Did the duplication have a limit outside of how many there could be at any given time per person? What if they simply continued to attack with the duplicates, replacing them with new ones, keeping the original bodies hidden?
Also, how had she never even heard of an insane technology like this? Perfect biological and mechanical duplication? If it was that simple to duplicate any person, weapon or armour that the Stellar Republic used it en-masse for war, why was it not more widespread?
And most importantly, why did the UHF marines seem so nonchalant about the whole deal?
An enemy that could simply duplicate its soldiers and gear at will? This seemed like an absolutely massive issue to her, yet Kellerman had stated it so matter-of-factly, that it felt thoroughly at odds with Thea’s strong opinions on it.
Unfortunately for her however, she did not have the luxury of time to ask all these questions, much less find her own answers to them, right now.
With the information relayed and new intel gained, she went about coming up with a new battle-plan as she loaded another energy cell into her rifle:
If she could find a way to distinguish the original bodies from the duplicates, she could very simply take out entire squads of enemies…!