Pinned Down
[3 o’clock! Heavy weapons spotted at 3 o’clock!]
[Last magazine!]
Gunfire and shouted orders crashed in from every direction.
The firefight was frantic, a chaotic exchange with enemies in sight, yet I was, to my own surprise, perfectly calm.
Keeping my body low so I wouldn’t get killed by a stray round, I grabbed ammunition from the supply crate and handed it off to our AI teammate. While my ally fell back for a moment to reload, I laid down suppressive fire through the window, never giving the enemy a chance to answer.
When I ran dry, I ducked back into cover, swapped magazines, and immediately moved to another position to fire again.
If you kept popping up from the same place and shooting, the enemy would naturally begin to predict your movements.
If I didn’t want to die, I had to make my route as tangled as possible.
- Damn, look at that peeking.
- Moo.
- Bing.
- Moo.
- Bing.
The chat was racing up the broadcast monitor, but I didn’t even have time to check it.
Even after several of them had already gone down, the enemy still outnumbered us, and with the odds stacked against us, our side was gradually being pushed back.
Weapon malfunction!
"Ah, seriously—who was the idiot who serviced this machine gun? Why the hell does it keep jamming?"
"You fucking—"
The machine-gunner’s panicked shout as she tried to lay down suppressive fire set my temper flaring, and I muttered a curse under my breath.
This was nothing more than a war simulation game against fictional enemies.
That was an obvious fact, and I knew it better than anyone.
The machine gun kept jamming because the developers had clearly set it up that way to heighten the tension for the player.
And yet, the chaos and violence raging across the monitor kept pulling me in, deeper and deeper, until I was too absorbed to pull away.
For someone who had experienced the real thing, a war sim was no different from forcibly dredging up buried memories and stirring them into a bloody mess.
In every possible way, it was a miserable, fucking awful feeling.
While I was sprinting to fill the firepower gap left by the machine gun, Natasha’s voice came crackling down from the floor above.
[Yuri, bad news!]
[What is it?]
"I’ve got a bad feeling about this."
I muttered it under my breath as I ducked behind a wall and picked off an enemy crouched behind cover with just his head exposed.
Usually, bad news in a situation like this meant one thing: enemy reinforcements had arrived.
"Oh, fuck."
Just as I’d expected, that was exactly what Natasha meant.
Three infantry fighting vehicles, plus mechanized infantry...
"We’re screwed."
We didn’t have a single weapon on hand that you could honestly call anti-tank.
Infantry small arms were basically useless against armored vehicles.
Sure, if you aimed for a relatively thin section of armor, you might be able to penetrate it, but to do that, you’d have to throw yourself right into the middle of the enemy’s fields of fire.
We were already struggling just to handle the infantry in front of us, and now BMPs were rolling in?
Anyone who stood against the enemy in a situation like this was either a hopeless idiot or a goddamn patriot.
"Then why the hell are they not talking about retreat?"
The situation was obviously and overwhelmingly in our enemy’s favor.
The moment infantry fighting vehicles entered the picture, the balance of the battle had already tilted completely.
And yet those damn squad members—supposedly veterans, every last one of them—were blinded by patriotism and chose to defend the objective.
Common sense said they should abandon this building, which looked ready to collapse after a single shell hit, and fall back slowly while limiting the enemy’s movement from the rear.
There was no way the squad members—who were set up as men who’d seen it all—didn’t understand that.
"What a bunch of fucking patriots."
In a situation this lopsided, the proper move was a tactical withdrawal, then reorganization, then pushing the front line back up again.
What exactly were we supposed to do against infantry fighting vehicles?
Trying to hold here would only end in a pointless death.
It would be nothing but a waste of ammunition and lives.
Kwaang—!
"Fuck!"
With a thunderous roar, the squad members standing by the windows were blown apart.
I crouched low, dodging the chunks of flesh and bone spraying everywhere, and rushed toward the back door.
The BMP was definitely firing its 30mm autocannon.
Kwaang—!
The machine gunner, shouting as he sprayed rounds wildly beside the assistant gunner who had been knocked flat by the shrapnel, had his upper body sheared away by the BMP’s return fire.
With the greatest threat neutralized, enemy infantry began pouring in, and the battle instantly degenerated into a vicious melee.
Ratatatat—!
Through the cloud of dust kicked up as concrete structures collapsed, flashes and sprays of blood glittered in the air.
Soldiers who fled the building and tried to reach the road were hit by the BMP’s 30mm cannon and turned into a red mist of vaporized blood.
One soldier, her right hand blown off, shoved the rifle’s grip into the stump of her arm and kept resisting, using her left hand to pull the trigger.
Another, out of ammunition, drew a bayonet and hid behind a pillar before driving the blade into the neck of an enemy who came too close.
Then the merciless fire from the soldiers behind that enemy caught her too, and she became a sieve along with her killer.
Behind them, a different soldier who had been about to pull a grenade and throw it was exposed to the same barrage, took a round through the neck, and dropped.
The grenade slipped from her hand and rolled under the feet of one of our own.
A comrade beside her lunged forward and threw himself over the grenade with the pin already pulled.
Bang—!
The body armor plate was shattered, but the soldier lived.
A medic sprinted over to save her.
To cover her, I sprayed rounds at the silhouettes of people moving through the dust cloud.
"Aaaaaaah!!!!"
At some point, I realized I was the one screaming.
"Aaaaaaah!!!!"
Fear.
Chaos.
Rage.
Exhilaration.
To shake all of it off, I screamed.
"Aaaaaaah!!!!"
The muzzle flashed, shell casings clattered and bounced across the floor.
Blood sprayed. Intestines spilled out.
Click.
I heard the sickening sound of a jam in my rifle.
An enemy was right in front of me, aiming his muzzle at my face.
I didn’t have time to shout that it malfunctioned while I tried to yank out the stuck casing.
"Die!!!"
I lunged at the enemy in a sudden charge and thrust the rifle forward like a spear.
Thud—
"Ghk..."
The muzzle smashed the enemy’s teeth and drove deep into her mouth.
Ratatatat—!
Enemy soldiers, not missing the opening, opened fire on me.
I used the body of the enemy with the rifle in her mouth as cover and blocked a few rounds.
"Fuck!"
Fortunately, the enemy firing at me seemed to have run dry, because she stopped shooting and started changing magazines.
Lucky break.
"Huff... huff..."
I grabbed the bolt release in that tiny opening and violently yanked it, extracting the jammed casing.
"Uuugh!!! Uuuuuugh!!!"
The enemy, blood pouring from her mouth and still clamped around my rifle barrel, seemed to realize her fate and made one last desperate effort, grabbing the barrel with both hands and trying to shove it away.
Bang—!
Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger and drove a round straight into her mouth.
The enemy whose throat was torn apart collapsed the moment I tore the rifle back and pulled the blood-smeared muzzle free of her jaws.
Bang—!
I swung the muzzle around and fired into the face of an enemy who had just finished reloading and was turning the trigger on me.
Her face shattered as she dropped, and I felt a crushing impact in my abdomen as I toppled backward.
An enemy bullet had struck my body armor.
"Hah... hah..."
I couldn’t catch my breath.
But I couldn’t just lie here, sprawled out.
Clenching my teeth, I forced myself upright.
The medic who had saved the wounded soldier came over and supported me.
With her help, I took cover behind a pillar for a moment and checked my remaining ammo.
"Fuck..."
The last magazine I’d tucked into my chest rig was torn to pieces, barely recognizable as a magazine at all.
The round that hit me had clearly struck this one by sheer bad luck.
"Haah..."
Once I fired the eight rounds left in the rifle, I would have to decide—either fight with a bayonet or run.
If I had my way, I’d retreat, but the squad members didn’t seem to share that idea.
And if I tried to keep fighting, I had no bullets.
Kwaaaang—!
The BMP’s autocannon blast brought the ceiling down with a deafening crash.
Through the rubble, I could just barely make out Natasha’s bloodied sniper rifle and the faint outline of her hand.
"Hahaha..."
Once fear and rage passed, all that remained was despair.
After I put the last round in the magazine into the enemy’s face and threw the rifle away, I drew my bayonet and faced the BMP turret rolling toward me.
The moment flame erupted from that black muzzle, I would die.
There was no way out.
Thinking that, I squeezed out the last of my strength and tried to butcher as many of them as I could before it ended.
"Everyone, be careful!"
"!"
Some projectile flying in from somewhere...
"Direct hit!"
...didn’t stop until it had blown the BMP’s lid clean off.
Pow—!
The turret, belching sparks around the bearing assembly, split away from the hull and tumbled off.
It was an ammunition cook-off.
In the blast’s aftermath, the enemy infantry standing nearby were showered with sharp steel fragments and screamed as they soaked in their own blood.
"Reinforcements! It’s our anti-tank missile!"
"A tank’s here too!"
As the enemy began retreating in a hurry, I cautiously stepped out toward the road.
I let out a dry, incredulous laugh at the sight before me.
On the street stained with blood and brass casings, a beast of steel stood in all its imposing grandeur.
Now, after all that.
After so many comrades had died.
Now, after all that.
Overwhelmed by a sudden wave of emptiness, my strength gave out and I collapsed where I stood.
I was just so tired.
Physically. Mentally.
Watching the support troops running toward me from far away, my vision slowly blacked out.
In the silence and darkness, a message window appeared.
> Mission Complete
It took me quite a while to understand the meaning of the pure white letters floating on the black background.
Mission complete.
At that brief, simple message, the tension locked into my body melted away, and my blurred focus settled on my own face reflected against the black screen.
I was just sitting in front of a computer.
The cold, damp sensation of sweat trickling down my forehead.
The ragged, panting breaths of someone who’d just sprinted a hundred meters flat-out.
The frantic pounding of my heartbeat, as though it might burst from my chest.
I couldn’t possibly check the viewers’ reactions.
More accurately, I didn’t feel like it.
"I’m ending the stream..."
With trembling hands, I hit the broadcast end button and collapsed straight onto the bed.
I didn’t even have the presence of mind to make sure the stream had actually ended.
Face buried in the pillow, I closed my eyes.
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