‘iColonel Clark, flash message waiting for you, sir,' said a conscript clerk, passing him a 'sheet to view.

'Thank you, Smith, dismissed.' Clark sketched a salute in return and pressed his thumb onto the sheet whilst whistling the opening of Waltzing Matilda. The 'sheet flashed and lines of text appeared.

I D C O N F I R M E D: E Y E S O N L Y

iC N L C L A R K

B R I E F I N G F O L L O W S:

S P E C M I S S I O N A S S I G N E D T O 4 9 E R S R E G T.

T Y P E : S T E A L T H F I N D & R E T R I E V E - I N T A S S E T

L O C: S T. M E R E E G L I S E

R W D: S T E A L T H S U I T S C H I N K O R P A T T E R N, I N T. P T S, D E V P T S.

D I S P A T C H: I M M D T E.

C O N F I R M R C P T. I M M D T E.

Clark frowned as he read the rest of the message. Granted they'd been given a week to get the regiment into shape, but he'd thought that the short timeframe was bluster, but this quicdesperation on Command's behalf following the loss of France.

He flicked a switch on his chair's arm, 'Smith, assemble all 1st Battalion officers in the briefing room and sound 'stand to' for all NCOs and privates. Assembly for the former in five minutes, thirty for the latter.'

He didn't bother waiting for Smith's reply, flicking the intercom back off and pinching his nose as he thought about their destination, St. Mere Eglise, famous battleground of the Normandy invasion and one where many a paratrooper met an untimely demise.

The mission looked simple enough, drop into St. Mere Eglise, retrieve an intelligence asset that was unable to join the evacuation in time, hike to the extraction point and GTFO. All before the enemy forces were able to wipe them out.

Pulling up a map of the area he could see that there were a number of other missions. Most were resupply, helping out the pockets of resistance still fighting against the ChinKor forces. As he watched three blinked off, the blue areas that they had been part of turning red.

Reading through the list he discounted a number of the King Of The Hill missions. He could easily lose an entire company in such a game and there was no point, the rewards were practically useless.

The Bomb Run and Assassination missions were far better with one of each being closer. Looking at the rewards he pulled up a stats programme, looking at how the soldiers under his command would develop if they survived the mission.

If. We’ll have the element of surprise. The Bomb Run and Assassination missions will draw attention away from the main mission, but the enemy just have so many people.

No matter. The order had been sent. Standing, he copied the mission to all of the officers in 1st Battalion, then headed for the auditorium.

*

Hotston sat grimacing as the VTOL – Vertical takeoff and landing - Troop Carrier, 'The Pug', bucked, dropping suddenly as it hit turbulence. Further on down someone vomited, the stench of stomach acid and partially-digested food filling the cabin. Others vomited and he burped, forcing the bile that rose into his mouth back down, desperate not to add to the rivers of puke flowing along the deck.

'I don't feel too good Hotty,' whined Windsor who rolled his eyes as once again she called him by the pet name that he hated. Everyone was taking the piss about their so-called relationship, some more vindictively than others.

'Don't worry, Windsor, it'll be over soon, less than three minutes until we jump,' he checked his visor, watching the plot as the VTOL closed in on the objective, flying as low as it could to avoid detection. It bucked again, violently throwing Hotston against his straps, his legs snapping out in front of him. There was the rattle of metal and something warm sprayed over the parts of his face that weren't covered by his armour.

'We're hit, all troops jump now! Jump now!' The pilot's voice was panic-stricken, the VTOL rolling over as he tried to escape enemy fire.

'You heard him people, jump!' The floor dropped away, leaving the troopers hanging over a sheer drop into night.

'We're too low! We're too low!' French's voice made Hotston wince. His stomach flipped as he saw that they were fifty metres under the recommended minimum jump distance.

This is going to fucking hurt! He slapped the rapid release buckle on his seat, then slapped his 'chute's deploy stud before he was fully out of the craft. Soldiers plummeted past him, some screaming, whether from fear or pain he couldn't tell.

The 'chute deployed jolting him to a stop and the directional landing arrows appeared on his HUD. Gently guiding the joystick using just a thumb and finger, he tried to hit every arrow he could.

Tracers and pulse fire rose from the ground, but it was wild and mostly aimed at the VTOL aircraft, all of which had now broken formation and were using their afterburners to get away from incoming enemy fire.

'All troops, follow the markers. Each squad has its own LZ. Get there, regroup, then follow the map to the next navpoint,' Patterson's voice was calm, as if he was on his first mission, life counter full to the brim.

Hotston drowned out the sound of screaming as his platoon mates plummeted to their deaths, their ‘chuts deployed too late to slow them down. All too quickly he landed, his score flashing up briefly, visor showing that he had gained yet more 'chute skill points.

+5SP – GRAVECHUTE

There was a loud thud just behind him. Heart pounding, he spun, cursing as the weight of the disengaged 'chute slowed him down. As quickly as he could he raised his pulse rifle, switching it to full-auto.

'Hotty, it's me!' Windsor's bulk stood before him. From the tone of her voice he could tell she was smiling.

'For fuck's sake Windsor! You scared the shit out of me!' He raised a shaking hand, failing to slap the release button twice before he finally hit the mark, shoulders feeling as if the weight of the world had been lifted from them.

'Sorry,' she sounded anything but. 'Here, ammunition for the gun. It's all I could find. There's a marker showing where the rest of the squad are. Should we get to it?'

I don't fucking believe this! A simple, supposedly in and out mission according to the CO had turned into a right cluster fuck.

'Right, fine,' he said through gritted teeth. As soon as he did, the way-marker appeared on his visor with a quick mission brief, 'You're fucking kidding me. The fucking thing landed us near a suspected fucking enemy position?'

Not only that. It was a mission. A REMOVE THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE mission. And it was right in their path. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a way to rejoin with the squad that wouldn’t take hours they didn’t have.

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'Yeah, looks like it might be a regimental command section. Lots of enemy there. Good for development points! I need to get twenty kills on this new Heavy Pulser, as soon as I do I get a better mount and maybe a set of hot-shot batteries.'

Sighing, Hotston shrugged his shoulders, and gave in, 'Fine. I'll take point.'

*

'They don't know we're here,' Hotston scanned the enemy position through his scope, it only offered 3x magnification, but neither of them had binoculars.

The enemy position looked smaller than he had expected. There was a cluster of wheeled and tracked armoured vehicles, most likely for the Commander's bodyguard unit. Scrappy camouflage netting hung over each one. They were positioned at three points, forming a triangle.

Three squads, up to thirty people.

In the centre of the position were armoured cars, 40mm auto-cannon on one, twin tri-barrel pulsers on the other. The third just had a comms dish mounted the roof, a heavy machine gun the only weapon he could see. A comms light armoured vehicle. Not designed for fighting, the heavy machine gun was more for a last ditch defence than anything.

Tents were scattered amongst the vehicles and despite the distance he could hear one of the ChinKor soldiers snoring.

'They're way too comfortable, understandable I suppose, they think they've won this part of the war,' he whispered to her.

'Can we kill them now?' he could feel her quivering next to him, her oversized adrenaline glands filling her with Bloodrage. She'd be able to move faster, gain a boost to her stamina and be impossible to pin down. INTIMIDATE and PANIC would also have negligible effect.

'Just wait a fucking minute you homicidal maniac.' He scanned the area, tagging any enemy soldiers that he could see. 'Work your way to the right, I'll work my way round to the left. Kill every guard you find and meet me at the far IFV. Okay?'

She didn't bother answering. One moment she was there, the next she was sprinting off into the darkness, moving far faster than he ever could. Sighing, he dropped away from the ridge they had been lying on and headed to the first sentry mark.

Keeping as low as he could, he placed every step carefully, worried that he might step onto a mine at any moment. Gradually the enemy guard drew closer as the pain in his thighs from walking at a crouch built.

Dropping to the ground, he slung his rifle and drew his vibroknife. Thumbing it on, he grimaced as it tingled in his palm. Vibrating faster than the eye could see, the knife could cut through metal, melting its way through with ease. What it did to flesh was horrific.

Slowly, metre by metre he crawled closer. A circle appeared on his visor, marking the sentry's aggro range. It was broken into three sectors. Green was nearest to him, then amber, then red, just a metre or so from the guard.

He paused just within the green sector, heart hammering in his chest, mouth dry. Everything rested on him being able to kill the guard quickly and silently. Continuing to crawl he moved around until he could be sure that he was approaching the guard from behind.

'Hotty!' Windsor's voice smashed his concentration, and a warmth spread down his trousers.

'Shut the fuck up!' he whispered, stopping as soon as he saw the sector flash amber momentarily.

'Where are you?' I'm at the IFV.'

Hotston mouthed a curse and zoomed his map out. Sure enough, Windsor's marker was at the far side of the base, red skull and cross-bones marking where she had killed each of her enemies.

'I ... fuck it. Work your way around, kill my other ones as well yeah?' The development points weren't worth it. With her 'raging, it would be much easier to just have her do the leg work.

'Really? I can have your kills?' He hadn't heard her sound so happy for a while, Patterson's constant bullying having taken its toll.

'Sure, whatever, see if you can do it quietly, get some Skill Kills. Maybe you'll get an upvote if anyone's watching us.' The chances were slim, most people would be watching the surviving troops in France as they fought for survival, or the battles raging along the Spanish border, the Southern Front.

An upvote would give them a better chance of surviving. He just hoped that someone wouldn't give them a downvote just for shits and giggles.

As she giggled in his ear before going silent, he silently closed in on his sentry. From the way it moved he was sure it was 'script, a bot granted to the human players that were the commanders of whatever unit this was.

Still, it looked like a human, even smelt like a human, as he got closer, the body odour and smell of stale cigarette smoke making him want to gag. Slowly he gathered his knees beneath him. The guard was less than a metre away, muttering to himself. As he moved in for the kill, Hotston decided to go for a Skill Kill of his own.

Thumbing his knife off, he placed it carefully on the ground. The guard continue to stare out into the darkness, oblivious to the fact that he was there. As slowly as he could, Hotston rose, hands reaching out.

'?' The guard's red sector flashed and Hotston leapt forward. Both of his hands reached over the enemy soldier's head, grasping his helmet brim. Yanking back on the helmet he dropped to his knees as quickly as possible. There was loud crunch as the rear of the helmet dug into the guard's neck and Hotston's weight snapped the bone. The guard crashed backward, the dead weight taking both of them to the ground.

KIILL! +10DP

+1SP - STEALTH

It was his first STEALTH kill, and it made him sick. All of his previous kills had been at a distance, rifle, or grenade kills. None had been this close, this visceral, this cold-blooded.

'Coming in now, Hotty. Good kill. You got an upvote!'

He'd been too busy trying not to puke at the smell of freshly-loosened bowls and the guard's appalling body odour to see the notification.

'Jesus, we got a fucking missile strike!'

'Can I call it?' She was like a child with a new toy, her joy infectious.

'Yeah, let me laze it, you call in the grid okay?' It didn't matter who got the kill, as they were both on the same mission they would both get development points. The thought struck him that the same applied for all of her sentry kills. Checking, he was shocked to see that his STEALTH rating had improved to the point that he would be able to run for short distances without the enemy being able to hear him no matter how close he was to them.

Taking aim on the command armoured car, he switched on his rifle’s laser, 'Target's lased, call it.'

She giggled again before going silent. A warning flashed up that a missile was incoming. A large red zone appeared on his HUD, his tacmap showing two blue markers will within its bounds.

'Shit! We're in the fucking kill zone! Get the fuck away, now!' The counter was down to ten seconds as he leapt to his feet and sprinted as fast as he could from the enemy position.

There was a shriek, louder than anything he had ever heard before, a bright light and then he found himself cartwheeling through the air. The ground raced up to meet him and he slammed into it with bone-crushing force.

*

'What the fuck was that!' The sky had flashed, a loud roar thundering over the ad hoc squad that Patterson had managed to pull together.

'Missile strike iSM, 5 kays to the north. Looks like someone got another mission,' Corporal Morton was limping, an injury picked up from the jump. So far they'd not only failed to locate the enemy, but they were also struggling to actually link up with the rest of the battalion.

'Well, at least someone's doing something. Keep moving people, let's find this fucking asset and get the hell out of here.'

Pushing to the front of his people, he set a punishing pace, ignoring their complaints and the pain in his own ankles. None of them had landed safely, picking up injuries as they slammed into the ground.

'Listen up, we've got to move around the town first, see if we can find the asset there. If we can't, we're going to have to move into the town. I do not want a fucking war to break out. We sneak in. We sneak out. Clear? I will personally kill any cunt that fucks this up.'

Popping a stimpill to get rid of the exhaustion that was already starting to set in, he pressed on to the objective, determined to be the one that succeeded.

I've been a bloody NCO for too long. Get a promotion, push for a clerk's job somewhere, anywhere, that isn't in the middle of a bloody warzone!

*

Hotston shielded himself from the heat of the burning command platoon. Bodies, and parts of bodies, littered the entire area, some naked from the power of the blast. Pain wracked his whole body and he called up his stats, popping a stimpill in an attempt to heal himself.

'Hotty, you okay? That was fucking amazing! We've levelled up!' It was true, he looked at the large + sign blinking in the top corner of his visor. He was now eligible to be promoted to Corporal, having just over 3000DPs. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the breakdown of the kills. Aside from roughly 600 he had gained from destroying the vehicles, the other points had all come from killing human beings, and NPCs.

As quickly as he could he called up the sub-screen, allocating the bonus skill points he'd gained to increased stamina and health. It wouldn’t make a massive difference as they only improved the stamina, for example, that he’d built up since basic training. But it did mean he got an extra second’s worth of sprinting.

Selecting confirm he sighed in relief as his body points maxed out and his injuries completely healed

'Remind me to never fucking do that again, Windsor. That bloody hurt!'

'Roger that, Hotty, bet everyone's talking about us now!'

He joined her as she laughed, making his way over to her, finding to his surprise that he was actually glad that she hadn't been killed. 'Have you found the crate?'

'Yeah, it was a few hundred metres past the enemy position. Seems we could have probably got the ammo without ever doing this. It was fun though!'

'That it was, that it was. How about we get the hell out of here before the enemy come to see what happened to their commander?' Stepping around the shattered hull of an LAV, he joined her as she headed away from the position.