Mistake (3)
In the pale hour before dawn, when the first greenish light began to bleach the city’s concrete walls, a soldier who had been dozing fitfully inside her sleeping bag woke with a start.
Because she had been lying on unforgiving hard ground, the moment she sat up her lower back gave a crackling protest, as if it had been beaten with a club.
The pain throbbed dully through her body. Muttering irritably, the soldier smacked at her waist, then pulled her bulletproof helmet onto her head.
She slung the rifle that had been propped against a building pillar over her shoulder and stepped outside into the cold wind, where her blond comrade greeted her.
"You awake, Yuri?"
"Yeah. Miserable morning, Natasha. Nothing happen overnight?"
"Not a rat in sight. I’m going to catch a little sleep inside now."
"Good work."
Yuri patted Natasha on the shoulder as she trudged back into the building, her eyes red-rimmed from a night spent on guard duty.
Natasha was half-shuffling, half-crawling back toward her sleeping bag when she suddenly remembered something and called over to Yuri.
"I boiled some water, so heat up your combat rations yourself."
"Got it."
Yuri nodded at the groaning woman, then checked her wristwatch.
5:40 a.m.
It was a little early for breakfast, but in a situation where no one knew when the enemy might launch an attack, worrying about meal times was a luxury.
She took a combat ration pack from her backpack, poured hot water from the kettle over it, then set it aside and scanned the street.
After months of the same dreary urban fighting, the city had been reduced to something so ruined that it was impossible to imagine what it had looked like before the war.
Abandoned civilian vehicles had been shredded to rags by gunfire and shellfire, and the buildings had lost their outer walls, their paint stripped away to leave the cold concrete naked to the air.
Humanity had endured two world wars, and everyone had seen the horrors of war with their own eyes.
To make sure such a catastrophe would never happen again, the United Nations had been formed, and for a time the world had regained peace, except for the limited conflicts that flared in Third World countries.
But too much time had passed since then. The people who remembered war’s atrocities had grown old, and the world had convinced itself that this peace would last forever.
It had placed far too much faith in a false peace sustained only by national interest and convenient pretexts.
Then, with a sudden enemy assault, Yuri’s homeland had become a battlefield overnight.
She had fought as hard as she could on the front lines as a soldier, but the gap in troop numbers and armament quality was nearly impossible to close.
They were only barely holding the line thanks to international support.
It was a miserable, hopeless thing.
"Well, there’s nothing special about today’s scenery either."
And yet maybe it was because she had been rolling around the battlefield for so long that her mind had worn down. Yuri merely picked up the heated ration pack with a flat, indifferent look.
Tak-!
"!"
For an instant, the sharp crack of gunfire rang out, and Yuri hurled the ration to the ground and dropped low.
Concrete dust billowed white from the wall near where she had been sitting.
When she spotted the fresh bullet marks scored into the wall, Yuri immediately screamed at the top of her lungs toward the comrades inside the building.
"Enemy! Everybody, combat stations!"
"What the hell?!“
"Ambush! Ambush! Move to your positions!"
Startled by the sudden shouting, the soldiers sprang out of their sleeping bags and hurriedly armed themselves.
The initial chaos lasted only a moment; by the time their faces had settled into tense focus, they were already racing to their assigned positions. They were all veterans, after all.
Tak-!
Tak-tak-!
As the enemy’s volley grew more intense, Yuri’s impatience sharpened and she yelled at Natasha, who was staggering along with tired eyes.
"Natasha! Get upstairs and grab the sniper rifle, now!"
"Damn it all... I was trying to get some sleep..."
After confirming that Natasha had gone stomping up the stairs while grumbling in annoyance, Yuri carefully leaned her upper body out near the window frame and tried to peek.
Tak-!
"Shit."
A bullet snapped toward her immediately, and Yuri flinched and ducked back behind the safety of the concrete wall.
The timing had been pretty damn close, but it was still enough to confirm the muzzle flash.
"Enemy spotted beyond the hospital wall at eleven o’clock! Return fire immediately!"
"Reloading!"
"Yelena, if you’ve got the machine gun, start spraying!"
"This damn piece of junk, it jammed again!"
Inside the building, where gunfire and shouted orders echoed back and forth, Yuri drew in a deep breath to settle her churning chest.
When the cold dawn air slipped into the heavy weight pressing on her chest, as though a stone had been laid there, it felt as if she could breathe a little easier.
"Hell with it. Let’s do our best to stay alive."
Just as she always had, stubbornly surviving by any means necessary. Today too.
.
.
.
.
"Oh, it started."
After a brief cutscene and a bit of setup explanation, the game began at once.
Short, fast-paced progress. I liked that a lot.
I’d suffered through so much in the tutorial that now, if a line went on even a little too long, I was ready to curse the screen.
"Ah—focus. Focus!"
Since the game had started, I figured I’d stop complaining and concentrate on the monitor.
There was no way I was going to die zoning out in the first mission. Too embarrassing.
"Looks like I’m controlling Yuri."
From the dialogue, it seemed the game was progressing with me in control of the black-haired soldier from the cutscene — Yuri.
I immediately moved the character, took cover behind the thick concrete wall, and checked my weapon.
"What kind of rifle is this?"
Judging by the shape, it looked like some kind of AK variant, but that series had so many offshoots that it was hard to tell exactly which model this was.
Maybe the developers had modified the design based on a real firearm.
"Ah."
Still tilting my head in confusion on my own, I heard the viewers immediately supply the answer.
It must have been no easy task to collaborate with a firearms company and get the modeling exactly right for a game.
As expected, the developers were a bunch of maniacs obsessed with authenticity.
"Let’s keep going for now. I’m guessing I just return fire from here?"
"All right, then here I go!"
Deciding to answer the enemy with gunfire, I leaned my upper body out boldly and pulled the trigger.
If an ordinary infantryman wants to survive urban combat, the answer is simple: the moment a tactical thought occurs, act on it immediately.
If you hesitate, fretting over every possible variable, you end up surrendering the initiative to the enemy, and that in turn lowers your chances of survival.
Above all, in infantry-versus-infantry fights, victory usually comes down to how many muzzles are spewing lead.
In other words, firepower superiority is everything.
To avoid the worst possible outcome — freezing up and losing the initiative — I sprayed rifle fire straight down the alley where the enemies were visible.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-!
"Okay, pull back for a second."
Most of the chat was stunned by my wild spray, but I didn’t have the luxury of caring.
An allied AI who had finished reloading ran over to my position and opened fire, and I fell back briefly to assess the situation inside the building.
None of the allied AIs had been wounded yet, and all of them were still pouring steady fire from their assigned positions.
What about the enemy side?
Three soldiers had already been cut down by machine-gun fire as they tried to cross the road.
The rest couldn’t even dare peek over their cover under the constant suppressive fire from our side.
"Okay. My turn."
The instant the allied AI with the empty magazine pulled back, I leaned out from the side window to fill the gap.
It didn’t matter if every round failed to hit its target.
So long as bullets kept flying toward them, the enemy couldn’t move carelessly.
Even simple, continuous fire could exert enough suppression to pin a person down.
That was the core of infantry tactics: relentless pressure that denied the enemy any chance to counterattack.
"All right... let’s see here..."
While the enemy was still reeling under our suppressive fire, I decided to hit them with precision shots.
I switched to semi-auto, shouldered the rifle, and carefully searched the wall where the enemies were hiding.
"Bingo."
It didn’t take long to find a target.
I didn’t hesitate when I saw a boot sticking out from the end of the wall and squeezed the trigger.
Tang-!
Rat-tat-tat-!
The enemy soldier, with toes blown off, lost balance and went down, his entire body suddenly exposed.
I seized the opening and put three rounds into him with quick, accurate shots.
The enemy wore body armor, but there was no way he could tank three rifle rounds in a row.
[Nice shot, Yuri!]
"Yep. Double tap included."
I tossed back a lazy response to the enthusiastic praise from the allied AI, then planted one more round into the face of the enemy soldier lying on the ground.
Tang-!
Even from a distance, I could clearly see his face collapse and flesh spray everywhere.
"Okay, now I get why this game’s rated adults only..."
The developers were dead serious about gore effects, too.
Just how much did they love military games?
"...Hmm."
The realism was far stronger than I’d expected, and a faint sense of danger was starting to creep in.
This might be a little risky for my mental health if I kept playing too long.