The bazooka weighed on Max’s back like a sin.
He sighed to himself laying on the damp forest floor. Wearing olive green camo, Max was overlooking a dirt road on a spring morning. He shuffled around on the ground so the bazooka would be less uncomfortable.
Technically it was an RPG-28 as the officers liked to remind him. They didn’t like it when Max called it a bazooka.
A torture machine would be another apt description. It weighed a whopping twenty eight pounds, a fact that would make Max’s life miserable for the next nine months, two weeks and four days. Yes he was counting.
“Just nine months and two more weeks,” Max muttered to himself as he kept shuffling his prone body to find a configuration where the damned bazooka didn’t press on his back.
“Shh,” the petty officer next to him hissed. Petty indeed.
Nine and a half months until his compulsory military service would end. He would be a free man, ready to face the well-treaded path of education and a career. Ugh… That didn’t sound very appetizing, truth be told.
Become a corporate monkey for the next forty years. Or just ditch education and languish in some dead-end job until you get sick of your alcoholism and find rope.
Yeah, Max wasn’t exactly thrilled at his future prospects. He had tried a bunch of stuff and nothing seemed to click. He could get occasionally excited by something for even several weeks, but nothing stuck with him. His family called him a “serial quitter” as some missent WhatsApp messages had revealed. That hadn’t done wonders to his pride.
What pride?
It had all gone downhill when his mother died when Max was fifteen. She had always been that one person who had encouraged him. She had been a high school physics teacher and she taught Max physics, hoping he would become an engineer. It never came to be. Cancer did though.
The funeral was followed by a sequence of delinquent years of rebel grandstanding in less than savory company. He had managed to scramble through high school, but the grades weren’t exactly savory. No good university would take him.
At that point Max just kind of… Gave up. His father never got his “World’s #1 dad” cup. After Max’s mom died, he cared about Max's affairs even less, and just focused on work. Max became an unwanted roommate. Video games and on-and-off jobs had filled his time. The conscription mail from the military had come every year, but Max managed to put it off. Free counseling for having a caretaker die. Max got a hall pass of clinical depression. Until he didn’t.
Being a few years older than the other kids made army less fun than it could be, but it had still been pretty decent. At least there was always a clear objective. Max always knew what to do. In the end it was as meaningless as anything else, but it kept him occupied. What was meaningful was the comrades. Max hadn’t had friends for a couple of years. If you didn’t count the increasingly passive-aggressive father as a roommate. Max didn’t count that.
So in a way, joining the military service had been a positive thing. If only he didn’t have to be lugging around a heavy ass bazooka on his back. Carrying the cursed thing on top of the standard issue assault rifle made Max feel like a walking weapons rack. A constantly aching weapons rack.
Despite the endless purgatory of carrying a bazooka for a better part of a year, there had been some upsides. Max had lost a good fifteen pounds carrying the monstrosity on his back. He’d started transforming from a pudgy guy to a reasonably fit one. Not too bad. His mind had also started to clear up. He wasn’t exactly depressed anymore. Just empty inside. Progress!
What had helped most to improve the state of his mind was definitely the army buddies. It felt good to have people around him again and army had a way of making fast friends. The sense of camaraderie from shared misery was a powerful thing. Max hoped he had made more than just army buddies, though. Max hoped at least two friendships would continue after the service.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
There was Johnny, with whom Max liked to spend his evenings at the barracks. He was a simple guy, but friendlier than anyone. Honest, straight forward, reasonable. The kind of person you wanted on your team.
There was also Kat. She was a badass, like most girls who joined the military service. It was voluntary for them, and that usually meant that the tough ones were self-selected in. A decent amount of young girls joined the military every year regardless. Some wanted to beef up their resume and some wanted to prove something.
Max didn’t know which camp Kat belonged to, but she sure had a chip on her shoulder. She took no shit from anybody, which got her in trouble oftentimes.
Being a pretty girl with raven hair and slender body she had her share of issues, not only relating to her attitude. With a ratio of one girl for ten guys, she got a lot of attention. Most of it unwanted.
I guess she likes spending time with me, because I’m not constantly breathing on her neck. Not that she isn’t pretty… Maybe I’ll gather up enough balls to ask her out once the service is over.
Max gave a glance to the right and saw the pensive faces of his squadmates under their green helmets. Kat sensed his gaze and gave Max a blank look. He smiled and turned back to watch the road.
Despite it having been hell physically, the military had helped him with his less than stellar mental state. Max was ready to get out, but he feared he would fall back to his old ways. There wasn't anything waiting in the outside world and there wasn't anything Max wanted to achieve. No matter how much thought he gave to his future, he couldn't imagine one he would be content with.
And you get a lot of time for thinking in the military service. They were always in a rush to wait. Now they were waiting for a convoy of armored tanks to use the road they were watching. It was part of their final field training exercise. Max and his fellow servicemen were all carrying live ammunition, which did make the whole exercise more exciting and stressful at the same time.
Even his bazooka contained an actual armor-piercing grenade. Usually he would carry blanks or nothing at all. This was an important exercise, so he would shoot a blank from another bazooka that was placed next to him. Why did he have to carry the one with live ammunition when he would never get to shoot it? Welcome to the army.
His job in the military was to shoot through a tank’s armor plating after it was crippled by a mine. From twenty meters the odds of his grenade actually piercing the armor of a modern tank, equipped with reactive plating, was around twenty percent. In those remaining eighty percent of cases, the RPG would glance off the plating, giving Max a solid 3.6 seconds to live on average, before the heat-guided aiming system of the modern tanks blew him and his squad to smithereens. Max really hoped his country would never face conflict.
Max shuffled again. It was an early morning and the ground was damp from dew. The cool sun cast its rays through the forest canopy, painting a pretty view of golden green from the top of the hill. Things could be worse. It could be raining.
After an hour more of waiting, Max could start to hear and feel tremors of an approaching heavy vehicle. Their squad leader gave a hand signal to prepare for engagement. Promptly, four tanks rolled into view from around the corner on the road.
They rolled forward idly, heavy motors giving out a low rumble. After they passed a certain point in the ground an officer in charge of the exercise stood up from the ground and waved a red flag. It was a signal for the tanks to stop. The first one had hit an imaginary mine. It was Max's squadron’s cue.
But something strange was happening. Even though the tanks had stopped, there was still a tremor running through the ground. In fact, the tremor was growing. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Then a loud resonant sound, like the cry of an ancient warhorn, filled the air. The tremor kept increasing, already visibly shaking the ground.
“Abort exercise!” The officer with the red flag yelled. “EVERYBODY STAY DOWN!”
What the hell is happening? War? No, that can’t be it. Earthquake? What is that sound?
Max looked around. His comrades were holding their helmets, huddling to the ground. Their eyes shifted between looks of concern and panic.
The warhorn sound grew louder. But as it did it changed from a low rumble into a thin whistle that attacked the ears. Everyone gasped and blocked their ears. Then the air-piercing sound reached a crescendo and everything went quiet. Dead quiet.
And that was when the rift opened.
Above the treeline, on the blue sky a big black rift in space spread open. Strange shapes swirled on the surface of the opening, like oil on water. It started pulling. First it was a tug. Despite the shock, Max had the presence of mind to try to grab onto a rock that was next to him.
It held him in place until the force of the gravitation grew into an insistent pull, before it escalated into a violent drag that took Max’s body and dragged it forcefully in mid air. As Max flew towards the strange black rift in the air, he screamed in pure fear. He saw everyone else had been pulled up and they were all heading towards the terrifying blackness with an unstoppable speed. It sucked Max into a complete, utter darkness.
Am I dead…?
That had been quick. If he was dead, it wasn’t so bad. As long as he wouldn’t be trapped floating in total darkness for all eternity. Then Max suddenly heard a calm, robotic voice.
[Initializing Cosmic Games protocol… ]
What?
[Assigning system compatibility to subject #266830151…]
[System compatibility assigned]
[Assigning randomized spawn point…]
[Randomized spawn point assigned]
[Initialized]