SG Vol. 1 pt. 41

“The objective is simple,” I tell the cadets over the comms from within the simulator pod. “An FOB set up at Fort Bragg has been under assault for the past ten hours and is struggling to hold off the demons, and the carrier that we’ll be departing from is the only one in the area able to immediately send relief forces. Naval bombardment is out of the question because of how close the fighting is to friendly forces. We will be taking off from the carrier, proceeding to the FOB at full speed, and eliminating any and all demons close to the base.”

“Why can’t guided missiles hit the VRAG outside the FOB?” Shitger asks.

The honest answer is because that’s just not part of the simulation, but I would hate getting such a shitty answer. “Missile destroyers have been bombarding the coast all night and are the only reason the FOB is still standing. The overwhelming amount of VRAG means that they have run out of ammunition, and that is why we are being sent in.”

The lifts bring our VSUs onto the carrier’s deck. We can see the rain from the storm clouds above us splash onto our external cameras before our displays autocorrect for the rain and edit it out of what we see.

“Our fuel and ammo are low?” Valkyrie asks.

“Logistics fucked up. We have to make use of what we’ve got and that’s all there is to it,” I answer.

“VARG composition?” Samurai asks.

“At least five hundred Forager-class and an estimated thirty Cutter-class, but the Cutter-class are staying hidden and interfering with any air support. Finding and eliminating them will be our first priority. If we can do that, we can call in bombers for support as we take care of the Forager-class surrounding Bragg.”

“Thirty?” Muscles asks. “Isn’t that too high, sir?”

“They can’t wait to get blown to shreds, so they all decided to come and surprise us. Be grateful that so many demons are there waiting for us.”

“I feel bad for not getting them anything in return, sir,” Shitger jokes.

“The fuck do you think your bullets are for? If you run out, feel free to give them your blade as a present.”

“Sir, yes sir!” the cadets shout at once.

“By the way, Shitger,” I call out.

“Yes, sir?” he answers.

“You’re leading this operation.”

“Woah, wait, seriously?”

“Do you think I’d fucking waste my time lying  to you?”

“No, sir, but… Val has more experience and I haven’t had any classes for—”

“I don’t give a shit, Shitger. Keep up the showing off you’ve been doing lately and lead us to success or else you can be sure you won’t be piloting a VSU any time soon.”

I look up at the display and see him mentally preparing himself. With his head slightly lowered, he’s taking deep breaths and calming his shaking hands on the simulator’s controls.

“Sir, yes sir! I won’t let you down,” he declares.

“Good. Now, give us your orders,” I order.

“We’re going to split into flights of two. Breeder and Worm, you two head for the FOB and take care of the VRAG there. Samurai, I want you to be our forward scout and Muscles will back you up. I’m going to depend on you two to find out where the Cutter-class are. Me and Val, and uhh—”

“Just call me Lance.”

“Ri-right, sir. Me and Val, and L-Lance and Filly will be the final two flights. We’re going to assist looking for and taking out the Cutter-class, but we’re also going to be on standby for backup at the FOB.”

Looking up at the monitor, Filly is looking at me with wide eyes that immediately look away as soon as she notices me looking at her.

Putting the strongest with the weakest… that’s one good fucking way to hold me back, but it’s also the best chance of ensuring Filly’s survival. That, plus she’ll be working the closest with me and she is probably the one who needs to learn the most.

Objectively, I would have sent Filly, Breeder, and Worm to Bragg while dedicating the rest of us to hunting down the Cutter-class, but this isn’t a bad plan for what intel I’ve given them.

Shitger continues to impress since I half expected him to turn into a stuttering mess when it came to giving orders. He only stuttered a fraction as much as I expected him to.

“We’re cleared to launch,” Shitger says. “Muscles, Samurai, you two first. Then Breeder and Worm, and then the rest of us. Launch!”

The brat could learn what to say and how to be more concise, but that can come later. Leading a successful mission is the most important thing. What he says during it, as long as the orders are clear and decisive, don’t matter.

The thrusters on the back of Muscles’ and Samurai’s F-16 VSUs come to life and boost them into the air. Any water on the deck around their units gets blasted away or evaporated in a flash of heat underneath the blasting heat of the thrusters.

“Keep your eyes open and good – no, I’m not going to say good luck. Relying on luck will get us killed, so even if this is a simulation, fly like your lives depend on it,” Shitger tells them.

This damn brat is seriously annoying me from how much I’m starting to like him.

“Yes sir!” the other cadets shout back as he looks up at the display to look at me.

“Yes, sir,” I tell him.

Shitger smiles and nods as grips his controls tightly and confidently.

Breeder and Worm are the next two units to take off and fly toward the coast.

The last four of us take off once the space is clear and head toward the coast in a unified group.

“By the way, Shitger. I’m only starting off with twenty percent of my ammo, so you better make sure to use me where it matters the most,” I say over the comms.

“I knew you weren’t going to make this easy on us if you were joining in,” he replies. “Save your ammo for when we find the Cutter-class. Use your sword for the Forager-class in hit and run attacks so that you don’t get swarmed.”

“You giving your commanding officer orders now, Shitger?”

“I – but, sir—”

“I’m shitting with you, Shitger – sir. I’ll do as you say. Filly?”

“Y-yes!” Filly answers, jumping in her seat.

“Pay attention to me. I suggest the rest of you do as well if you can afford to, but Filly, I’m going to expect your eyes on me to cover me and to learn from me. Understand?”

“Ye-yes, sir!”

It only takes us ten minutes at full speed to reach the coast.

The heavy rain is helping to suppress the smoke rising from around the forward operating base, but it can’t hide the obvious signs of battle.

Platoons of tanks supported by machine gun nests are set up around the outside of the base’s walls. Dead Forager-class are piled up on top of each other all around the base other than to its west – facing the shore.

To add some extra horror for cadets new to this simulation, there are some tanks that were caught away from the walls being chewed through by Forager-class, bodies of soldiers bitten in half lying around, and wounded filling up the interior of the base.

Breeder and Worm are flying back and forth between whichever side is being swarmed by the most Forager-class, and they’re making sure not to let a single one of the bastards reach the final line of defense.

“See anything yet, Muscles and Samurai?” Shitger asks. “Remember that the rain should make them even easier to find with infrared.”

“Nothing yet,” Muscles answers.

“Where are they? Shit… stay low – just above the trees, until we find them. Worm, Breeder, land by the defense lines and only fly to switch positions or if you need to.”

Breeder and Worm do as they’re told while the rest of us lower our VSUs to just above the trees.

Though, for me, I’ve got to lower myself a bit more since I’m not allowed to use my gun yet. Instead, I’ll be playing with this F-16’s sword. I’ve got to admit that, as much as I love my A-10C’s guns, the sleeker sword designs of these units feel way nicer to swing around.

And, to give Filly some practice, I make sure to land in the middle of about twenty Forager-class.

My sword sweeps along 180-degree in front of me, slicing the Forager-class there into halves as the sound of gunfire comes from behind me.

Filly is doing her job and making sure that the Forager-class to my back don’t reach me.

However, one Forager-class to my left does try jumping up onto my unit. Unfortunately for it, I’m not fucking blind. I smack it out of the air with the back of my unit’s left hand before crushing it underneath my unit’s left foot.

“Remember, Filly. Your entire unit is a machine specifically designed to destroy. If you’re ever out of ammo and have lost your sword, you use your knife, your hands, and your feet. If you can’t shoot or cut the demons, you crush them underneath you. Understand?” I ask, looking up at the monitor while thrusting my sword down into one of the shaking, halved bodies underneath me.

“I’ll – I’ll do my best, sir,” Filly answers before failing to put a couple of rounds into a Forager-class behind me, but she does nail it in the head with her third shot.

I’ve got an idea.

Only a couple of the Forager-class around me are left, so I kill all but one, sheath my sword, and then pick up that one from its back so that it won’t be able to bite me.

“Sir? Wha-what are you—”

“Think fast,” I say and throw the Forager-class at her.

She lets out a panicked squeak before flying backward and going full-fucking-auto on the Forager-class tossed her way.

“Was the waste of ammo really fucking worth a single Forager-class? You could have easily punched it, kicked it, or sliced it,” I tell her.

“But I—” she pauses and bites her lower lip. “You’re right, sir.”

Huh.

Filly might not be that great of a pilot, but she’s improving her mental state at least if she can admit I’m right without basically crying and stuttering the entire time.

Good job, Filly.

“We need help at the base!” Worm shouts.

“Lance, Filly, support them for now,” Shitger orders.

Filly and I fly over to the base without wasting any time.

“Two tunnels opened!” Breeder shouts.

“What?!” Shitger shouts now as everybody turns their attention toward the base.

“Cutter-class emerging from the tunnels!”

“Concentrate fire on the openings! Use half your missiles if you have to!”

“Cutter-class spotted,” Muscles says.

It’s only a few more seconds before shots of burning plasma fire into the air.

“Val, back up Muscles and Samurai, I’m heading to the base,” Shitger says.

Valkyrie looks hesitant on the display, but she listens nonetheless and flies to meet up with Muscles and Samurai while Shitger graces us with his presence over at the base.

Breeder and Worm have been concentrating their fire on one of the tunnels, shooting missiles at it whenever some demons slip out of it, while me and Filly have been dealing with the other tunnel.

All I’m doing is standing behind it slicing anything that pops out of it while Filly shoots into it with her gun, staying low enough to the ground that the Cutter-class can’t hit her without first exposing themselves to us both.

Now, there’s an easy way of dealing with these bastards and putting the tunnels out of commission for a couple of minutes, but are any of them smart enough to think of it?

“Sir!” Worm says. “I have an idea.”

“What?” Shitger asks.

“What if we break open a Cutter-class while it’s climbing out so that its insides spill out and melt through everything under them? Only a few parts of Cutter-class are able to resist melting under the heat, right?”

She’s right. The shit that gets converted into plasma shots will melt right through any Forager-class and most of a Cutter-class’s body before it cools and hardens.

“Let’s try it,” Shitger says.

Good call. I’ve seen others offer that sort of solution before only to get rejected because they didn’t think that it would be possible in a simulation.

Dumbasses.

“Kill any Forager-class climbing out, but spare the Cutter-class until we have a chance to – shit, what are their weak spots?” Shitger asks.

He’s gone from being impressive to a damn disappointment, but at least he’s willing to ask that question instead of hiding that he’s forgotten.

“Their undersides,” Breeder answers.

“Thanks. Then… I’ll get into position like Lance behind the hole you two are shooting at. Next Cutter-class that comes up at each hole, me and Lance will try to grapple them and aim them so that their undersides are exposed over the holes for you to open. You’re probably going to have to sacrifice your swords to cut them open enough for it to matter.”

That’s one way of doing it. Personally, I just flipped them over onto their backs, sliced open their undersides, then tossed them back into the hole that they came out of.

Then again, if there were more than two holes when I did this mission solo, I would have been fucked since I melted my sword on the first bastard and then melted my digger and hand on the other one for the second opening.

“Here!” Shitger shouts and sheaths his sword and gun.

A Cutter-class climbs out of the opening in the ground only to immediately have its back grabbed onto and lifted up to expose its underside while aiming it away from the rest.

Worm flies down with her sword ready and slices open the entire underside of the Cutter-class from its head to its abdomen.

Shitger quickly aims it back down into the opening before any of that molten liquid has a chance to spray onto her and her now-melting sword.

As the liquid drains into the tunnel, the demons underneath it try to get out of the way, retreating back into the tunnel, and any corpses already piled up underneath the Cutter-class melt from its spilled insides.

This gives them the perfect opportunity.

“Now! Fire your missiles into it; shut the tunnel!” Shitger orders, flying up and hovering over the opening.

Breeder, Worm, and Shitger fire all of their missiles into the tunnel to create a large explosion that caves it in.

That’s one tunnel dealt with. One to go.

“I’m going back to the others. Help Lance and Filly with their tunnel,” Shitger orders before flying off.

Looking in the distance, beams of red plasma are rapidly being fired into the air to try and take down the units skimming above the trees.

Occasional declarations of, “Got one!” and “More over here!” fill the comms as they concentrate their hardest on surviving while eliminating all of the Cutter-class.

But this mission isn’t over yet.

By the time we finish dealing with the second tunnel, they’ve only managed to take out ten Cutter-class spread throughout the forest and they’re all running low on ammo.

I was hoping they’d be smarter and conserve their ammo, but they haven’t been.

The simulation’s most challenging trial hasn’t even appeared yet.

“Seismic activity detected!” Valkyrie shouts.

And here comes that challenge now.

Not far from the base opens up a massive tunnel in the ground that pulls a large patch of trees down into it.

“Flak-class emerging from the tunnel! At – at least ten of them, and hundreds more Forager-class!” Valkyrie shouts.

The Cutter-class in the forest haven’t finished being dealt with yet and now they have to deal with Flak-class coming to fuck our days up.

“Air support is out of the question,” Shitger says. “Anybody with missiles left, fire them at the Flak-class!”

Muscles, Samurai, and Valkyrie still have most of their missiles, but the rest of us don’t save for the two I have left.

“Wait! Save your missiles,” Shitger shouts.

This is the kind of indecisiveness that can get people killed, but…

“Lance, handle the Flak-class. Muscles and Samurai, keep hunting the Cutter-class. The rest of us will support Lance and keep the Forager-class off of him.”

“Am I allowed to use my gun now?” I ask.

“Feel free to, sir.”

About time.

“Flak-class fi-firing!” Filly shouts.

Dozens of plasma beams fly through the air before bursting and shooting off in every direction.

Breeder and Filly both get hit on their arms and legs, but neither suffers serious enough damage to knock them out of the fight.

Meanwhile, I’ve already blown the head off of one Flak-class with my gun in my unit’s left hand as I charge in with my sword drawn in my right hand.

Their beams won’t burst at this distance, so all I have to do is put minimal effort into evading their predictable shots while shooting at them and closing the distance.

The Flak-class won’t be a problem now that I’m this close to them. They’re some of the deadliest demons out of them all, but only when they’re surprising their targets or hidden. These demons are standing out in the open for us at the exit to the tunnel as hundreds of Forager-class pour out around them.

So, I won’t be able to land since I would get covered in Forager-class before I have a chance to do anything, but I can stay hovering above the small bastards while taking out the annoying ones. They won’t risk hitting an ally as long as I use their bodies to line-of-sight each other.

The real problem is the rest of the Forager-class.

Without more missiles, taking them all out before they reach the base is going to be a challenge. I wouldn’t even be able to on my own at this point without more ammo, especially missiles.

Three Flak-class down.

“Breeder! Worm! Val! Fall back to the base and cut those Forager-class off!” Shitger orders.

All the Forager-class care about are attacking their priority targets. If they can’t reach those of us in the air, we’re not their priority.

The base is.

With their numbers, they will be able to easily overwhelm the fortress and kill every last one of the unlucky, virtual bastards in there.

Seven Flak-class down. Four killed by my blade and three by my gun. Thirteen percent ammo left and my blade’s structural integrity is starting to fail from having to cut through so many of the hardened exteriors of Flak-class.

I sever one more Flak-class’s head off before throwing the sword and then swing it down against the next demon, but it cracks and breaks against its exterior. So, instead of cutting its head off, I shoot at its face until it no longer has one.

Nine Flak-class down.

There are two left, and each is far enough away that they can comfortably shoot at me now that their friends here are dead.

They don’t care about all the Forager-class between them and me.

And that’s exactly what we need.

“Tell me! How do you kill a mass amount of Forager-class when you’re low on ammo and have a broken blade?” I ask the cadets.

None of them give me an answer.

“This is the kind of thing that the brass think is too suicidal to teach you cadets, so make sure you pay attention.”

Instead of taking out the last two Flak-class, I fly far enough away from them and hover over the legions of Forager-class rushing toward the base.

I wait until the second they fire to evade to the side as far away as I can before the plasma shots burst over the crowd, covering the Forager-class below in their insane heat.

One volley from the two remaining Flak-class has taken out roughly twenty Forager-class on its own, and another volley has just been shot.

I’m even able to land at one point right before they shoot to get them to shoot into the Forager-class rather than over them.

Between the three girls killing any stragglers that make it close to the base, me luring the Flak-class into killing the Forager-class, and Shitger giving me support from above, all of the Forager-class that pour out of the third tunnel die without a single one reaching the base’s walls.

“All Cutter-class killed,” Samurai says.

I check their statuses on the display real quick and see that Muscle’s unit lost its left leg and Samurai’s torso took a hit but is still functional. They’re lucky.

“You can have the honors, sir,” I tell Shitger as the last two demons standing prepare another volley of plasma to shoot at me.

“Thanks, sir,” Shitger responds before flying straight at them.

One of the Flak-class notices his approach, shoots at him, and he evades.

Then the other one notices him, shoots, and nails him.

The plasma tears right through the center of Shitger’s VSU and explodes. He was dead without the explosion, but the explosion ensures that not a single part of his VSU will be salvageable.

“Damn it, Shitger,” I say into my palm before finishing the job myself.

If you want it done right…