[IC] The Dark Side of War (Closed)

[Briza]

Private First Class Esther Rose

"Oh, shit. Kane, you seeing what I’m seeing? Scope glint in the snow..."

"I see 'em," Esther smirked just before Private Webley finished talking.

"...I think there might be a sni-”

As a bullet tore through the wintery air and pierced Private Webley in the face, Esther did not flinch. The knowledge had registered through the back of her head, but she was not about to lose her position. Her eyes narrowed, aiming strategically and quenching the trigger of her Standard M3 Abrams. A small smile tugged the left side of her smirk as she watched the Tellosian sniper collapse. Her first kill. The situation did not fully register. She was completely immerged in the fluidity of combat. One wrong move and she could end up worse than Private Webley.

She shifted the vision on her gear, gazing her eyes at the battle field. Her mask was zeroing in on the enemy, "Bang, bang," she whispered under her breath as she shot two more stentorian bullets into the night sky. Two Tellosian bodies, separate from each other collapsed. She was too far away to see any blood, although she could imagine the halos around their heads bleeding into the snow. She relaxed her shoulders a bit before flexing them, again, ready for another kill--propping the gun into a more accurate position. Her head tilted slightly for a better view.

Her heart was thumping steadily in her chest as she took in solemn breaths. To get too excited, she'd lose concentration. She did not want to get reckless. A breath escaped her mouth before she closed her lips, again and let the smirk remain on her hidden face. This was only part of the first wave. One man down, six to go.

Corporal Craster needed to assist Private Webley. His screaming had died down a while ago. However, she'd heard worse screams before. She hoped he was fine. Although, she doubted it. Her head did not dare turn to look at his unconscious body lying near her.

A small ache ran through her thighs from all the squatting. Her face grimaced its smirk away. She should have worked out more. She let another breath escape through her parted lips before sealing them closed. Her heart began pumping at a swifter pace, feeling her body failing her. The Tellosian army was drawing closer. She wanted to close her eyes to calm herself back down, but that was not an option. She drew in long breaths from her mask. Not now, Esther. Not now. Her eyes widened and then narrowed when she caught sight of the weaponry the Tellosian army was using. Her thighs went numb and no longer posed as a problem to her mentally.

[DJAtomika]

PFC Kane O'Connor

"Yeah just noticed- "

The report rang out half a second later, a sharp crack piercing through the noise. Moments later he saw Callum's vitals in his HUD go haywire.

He'd been hit. Judging by the screaming in the comms network, it was an affirmative.

This wasn't just an exercise. This was a real war.

"F-fuck! Callum's hit! Callum's hit! Corporal Craster, he needs help!"

Panic began to fill his being. His normally steady hands began shaking. Not once during his entire time here had he expected to be at war with Tellosia. Now they were in the thick of it, and one of the men he'd been around with in the loneliness had been shot.

What if he were next?

His scope was already zeroed in on where the scope glint had been, but he lowered it in panic. The enemy sniper might've been doing the same thing.

Just then a round tore through the air, the crack following half a second after. He'd been right.

The panic in him slowly replaced itself with anger. How dare he! The gall of him! To think he could get away with hurting Callum that easily!

"Motherfucker! Callum, I'm gonna get revenge for you! Hold tight man!"

Kane raised a hand and tapped the side of his helmet. His lenses switched through vision modes until he settled on infra-red. A cursory glance over the wall of the sentry tower confirmed his guess: most of the terrain was a nice, dark blue. Cold. And, out in the fields of snow, sat a single, albeit tiny, spot of white.

A heat signature. A slightly man-shaped heat signature.

Apparently the Tellosian snipers didn't have heat-camoflage like the real Interum snipers did. Advantage Interum.

Kane steadied his breathing and gripped his rifle tight, then stood. He turned, sat the bipod down on the ledge and scoped in on where the heat signature was. His scope gave him an accurate distance reading and wind heading, and all he had to do was adjust accordingly.

Then a spurt of white interrupted his calculations. The sniper twitched and slumped onto the floor. He was followed shortly by two more men getting shot and collapsing.

Esther. She was in the same bunker as Cal. She'd been faster.

"Fuck!"

In anger he ducked back down. A fist slammed into the tower wall, Kane's fury evident.

"Mother FUCK! Fucking shit! I did not fucking sign up for this!"

Panic, anger and fear made a powerful cocktail that paralysed the poor scout in his tower. Trembling, he drew his knees in to his chest and held his rifle in his arms.

[Pirouette]

Collie Craster

The Long Watch III

---

"Quite the misfortune for us, wouldn't you say?" Collie said in reply to Yvette's comment about the Tellosians. She was speaking in general as all of herself and her allies were heavily outgunned at the moment, but she was really thinking about herself. About one more year of service, and she would have been honorably discharged and allowed to continue on with her life. Granted, nothing was ever going to be the same after the military, but at least people won't be shooting her anymore...

The moment fire erupted, Collie dropped low to make herself harder to hit. She was at greater risk than her companions due to her EHCS being lightly armored with nothing more than ballistic fibers and a few pieces of metal plate. Sure, Collie had a thin shield layer that provided some protection but those things were always unreliable at best. Nonetheless, Collie kept up with Yvette as she continued her progress only stopping to occasionally spray fire in a direction. There wasn't much rhyme or reason to her shooting, it was just something that was an instinct. She wasn't there to kill but to save, although she has done both.

Collie must have been preoccupied as Yvette entered a scrap when she was ambushed by a few Tellosian. She was lucky to get out of that fine, save for some apparent psychological distress. Collie was grateful that the Staff Sergeant ended up putting a stop to that. Speaking of which, the man seemed to have gotten out of that crash unscathed. Lucky him. Judging by the man's isolation from the other reinforcements, Collie could presume that most were dead or dying. Unlucky them. "With you, seven." Collie chimed in to answer the man's question. "Anyone else survive that crash? And what about yourself? Feeling alright?" She'd wait only a moment for the man to answer before turning and heading back to the bunker as the man could clearly walk and fight.

She managed to make it only about a hundred yards before a sudden eruption on the comms alerted her to the status back the bunker. Screams of agony screeched into her earpiece. Since they had such a small outfit here and Collie was rather experienced in the matter, she picked up on it being Cal's screams. He only screamed for a moment before subsiding, likely passing out from whatever happened to him. He probably wasn't dead as men on death's door sit in a quiet, tragic disbelief. Regardless, she had to hightail it back to the bunker. "Cal? ... Cal?" Collie called out into her allied airwave in between breaths but found no response. ".. Anyone near Cal .. that can tell me what happened?"

Collie sounded remarkable calm and collected despite everything going on, but that's the result of being a battle-tested veteran for a few years. She couldn't afford to panic during this time as someone's life always depended upon her. She wasn't immune to it, though. There were many sleepless nights, horrifying memories, and a constant fear of death. She can understand it so when Kane's frantic cries came over the comms and she pretty much agreed with his frustration. She wanted to curse the world out for this shitty luck but she didn't have the luxury of that so she always kept her head straight. No matter the cost later.

[agentmanatee]

Lieutenant Mika Delouse

This was bad... this was very bad. Not long after Second Lieutenant Slade and Craster had left before the outpost was under attack. Where had they come from? Suddenly what seemed to be lightly armored Tellosian scouts had oppened fire on the base, luckily it appeared at first that they had no way of destroying it, so the occupants within were largely safe. That was until Webley got hit that was. Mika had been braced against the wall next to the machinegun mount at one of the vision slits of the glorified concrete pill box when he went down, he saw Webley grasping at his face screaming. The Lt. quickly made his way over to the Private, trying to see just what damage had been done. It looked like a grazing wound, lots of blood and pain but nothing serious... but he wasn't a medic. He was relieved when he heard Craster over the comms and responded to her as best he could, "Ccccc-c-c-cc-C- ff--ffuck IT- COLLIE! I-i-i-iii-I'm next tttttt-o him, l-loo-looks like a g-g-g-GRazing wound n-not sure... we n--nnnee-eed you b-bbb-b-ba-ack here now!", with that he decided he couldn't do much else for Webley... but he could help the others.

He made his way to the machinegun, a .50 caliber MG, the only one the base had. He checked it, the belt of ammo and the box, satisfied, he turned it to the small bodies on the horizon. Private Esther was doing work... Kane not so much, "K-k-kane... ss-s-s-sna-snap the f-fuck out of it! Shhhhhh- do your job y-you fff-ff-f-f-fucking c-cc--coward!", with that Lt. Mika Delouse laid down suppressing fire with the MG. The thick tracer rounds flew from the barrel, and he thought he saw a few bodies go down, but he was shaking to much to tell. The heavy gun spat death out across the field, no doubt driving more than a few Tellosians into what little cover they could find.

[beyond visions]

---

---

2nd Lieutenant Yvette Slade

---

---

With a swift cock of the blade, a bloody spurt slid against the surface of her helmet along with pervious stains adorn in the mere slaughter of the scout. Yet, it was at that instance of the Staff Sergeant confirming the causality that Slade had seen a lifeless body. "Agreed...," was the only word spoken in response to him. With one last glance at the body buried in both blood and snow, Slade sprung from the guts of it all.

Slade heard screams, and it was not the cries of her victims. No, it was the Private, Webley. The same man who she had casually spoken to hours earlier over a pool table with the tunes of rock instrumental music playing in the background. He had cooked her day's meal before terror struck. And now because of that terror, because of those Tellosians, he was hurting, hollering in the pinching agony that pried his peace. If having an itchy-trigger finger was a disease, she was direly infected, but also certain it is contagious.

Busting into the presence of her Lieutenant once her, Jacobson, and Craster returned, Slade noticed O'Connor's panic following Delouse's commands for composure. Slade firmly laid her hand on O'Connor's shoulder, wishing that he would just stop shaking, trembling, because up until this point to her, O'Connor was the most annoying among the unit. He was an irritating know-it-all, but now he was vulnerable, scared even. Thus grabbing his shoulder, the Second Lieutenant pushed him against the wall, with both hands now on his shoulder, briefly saying, "O'Connor! Listen, listen to me. I'm giving you an order- grow some balls. I am not going to let you die today!" Her words were harsh, yet at the heart them, Slade was comforting him, not cursing him. She let go, "Death's going to have to take me before it takes you. Remember that." Slade cared about him to the degree that she was not going to lose him to the Tellosians or to fear. And that went for the rest of the team, because her blood lust was their insurance.

"If anyone wants to join me, so be it. But I'm going to move out and spread out, hold them off from a different position." If they were going to survive, being back up in one area was not going to make it happen. They had to be flexible, secure the premises. So, Slade sprinted off towards the front entrance of the outpost, an obvious place that perhaps enemies may flood through when forces start springing in. Charging through, taking cover to cover for safety's sake, Slade was given another surprise attack for the day- they were no longer alone. Tellosian infiltrators breached through the BGO, she got the memo with the butt of a rifle bashed against her helmet, she tried coming back with a swing of the elbow but that follow with her taking a heel to a joint of the leg, feeling the breaking of her own bones. But that feeling was numbed by the anxiety of the death that beckoned against her shoulder. Slade whipped out her sidearm, putting an end to her bone breaker and gunning down the few remaining Tellosians that crawled their way inside the post. "Grgh!" She cried into the comm as each step stung trying to find cover. "Got into another scrap, and a broken leg-- AH!," she cried into the comm. We've been breached, managed to splatter some heads, but--" She was cut off by the sound of gunshots. "I NEED COVER NOW!"

@agentmanatee
@Pirouette
@DJAtomika
@Briza
@Nevix
@Eisenhorn

[DJAtomika]

PFC Kane O'Connor

"K-k-kane... ss-s-s-sna-snap the f-fuck out of it! Shhhhhh- do your job y-you fff-ff-f-f-fucking c-cc--coward!"

"O'Connor! Listen, listen to me. I'm giving you an order- grow some balls!"

His superiors blared in his ears, but Kane still trembled. He gripped his rifle tighter, trying to slow his breathing, even as LT Yvette continued.

She was right though. He needed to suck it up.

Taking in deep breaths, he made himself relax and stood back up, bipod braced on the tower ledge.

Ahead of him, Yvette screamed into her comms. She'd been caught breaking across the main gate and the enemy had gotten in while they were all occupied with Callum.

He saw her go down amidst several Tellosian soldiers, but they all dropped immediately after as her sidearm barked and blew holes in their chests.

Anger bloomed inside him again, and as she hobbled to safety, he trained his scope on the gate.

"Yes ma'am! I have you covered, ma'am!"

Just as he finished his sentence, another squad of Tellosian fighters broke round the corner, fanning out as they began peppering the gate with fire. Kane's scope found one that had a machine gun trained on his officer and teammate. Before the gunner could even open fire, his head had a hole in it, punched by a molten slug of magnetically-propelled metal.

Kane adjusted his scope and moved on. With almost clinical precision, he began zeroing in on enemy positions to snipe them. If they were dug in too well, he shot at their cover instead, making them duck down or hide.

He'd be damned if he let another of his teammates take another hit.