Thea's vision blurred, and she found herself back in her own body, falling forward. With a quick step, she caught herself just before reaching the point of no return, but a massive pang of nausea and head pain hit her. She immediately ripped off her helmet and toppled onto her knees, vomiting violently onto the ground of the trenches.
Behind her, the medic that had helped her with the vision, was also stumbling backwards in a daze.
"…Ahh… What in the fucking void is wrong with you?!" he muttered between groans of displeasure, as he tried steadying himself with the help of the nearest trench wall.
“Just what in the Emperor’s holy name did you do?! I’ve never seen anyone use up this much Focus for anything, I thought I was going to die!” the medic complained in a voice filled with utter confusion and exasperation, after getting a grip on his unstable footing.
In the meantime, Thea had finally managed to stop violently throwing up, having emptied the entirety of her stomach onto the trench floor. The unease and nausea in her body however, had not dissipated at all.
As she quickly turned towards the medic, spurred onwards by the abject terror that the vision had instilled, her eyes widened as she saw the medic bleeding from his eyes, nose, and mouth. He was frantically applying med-gel to staunch the flow, his quiet curses revealing the severity of the problem at hand.
Their sacrifice however, had not been in vain.
She had gained invaluable intel through the vision, if it was actually a representation of her real memories. But in order to pass along the intel, she needed to confirm it first-hand.
‘You can act cautiously on a single confirmation of intel yourself, but you always need at least two, to get others to act.’
Old Man James’ Golden Rule #4 had been drilled into her mind so many times, there was no chance she was going to ignore it in such a pivotal moment. If she wanted to report this issue, she needed to confirm it first-hand!
“... he… help me. You need to get me to… the western edge of the hill... To the slope!” she barely managed to squeeze out between bursts of nausea and pain.
She was hoping beyond hope that the medic would still trust her enough and help her out, for she had no chance of getting there herself in her current condition.
She was afraid the medic might end her life for her previous actions, but she knew she had to get to the slope, no matter what!
The medic stopped applying the med-gel, as he heard Thea’s plea and simply stared at her with bleeding eyes for a few seconds. He started slowly stepping towards her, eyes affixed to her meak, hunched over body.
Before reaching her, he hesitated, his eyes darting between her and the direction of command. The heavy backlash from the amount of Focus she had used had left him even more suspicious, but the desperation and horror in her voice had seemed genuine to him. With a heavy sigh and a pained expression on his face, he had made up his mind.
Just as she was certain she would get killed or dragged off to command, he suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled it over his shoulder, steadying her back up to her feet.
“Just for the record, I feel like I’m dying. This better be worth it or I swear to the Emperor himself I will Zero you out…” he complained grimly in a weak voice, as he started moving them towards the western edge of the trench line.
Logically, he concluded that a single spy could not do much damage, even if he unintentionally aided her in her efforts. Additionally, the fact that her body was utterly ruined made her a low-threat investment, further easing concerns about helping her and ultimately tipping the decision in her favour.
After all, if she was not a spy and she had truly glimpsed some kind of intel that caused such strong emotions to show even in her voice… He simply could not afford to leave her!
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“.. faster… don’t worry about my injuries… just get us there… quickly!” Thea meekly pleaded with the medic to hurry up. She felt like she was about to pass out at any second, but she needed to warn the UHF, if what she had seen was true, no matter the cost.
To her surprise, the medic managed to pick up the pace, despite his own, significant injuries.
Thea promised herself she’d someday make it up to him. The amount of trust he had put into her, on the words of Kellerman alone, had been beyond her wildest expectations.
Glancing at the bottom right corner of her vision, to check the HUD her armour provided, she realised that her health had dropped down to 16%. She had no idea what that actually represented in terms of physical damage, but she definitely felt like a 16% at most. It was as if her entire body had been continuously doused in acids, as every cell in her body was simply screaming in pain.
She silently cursed at the simulation for providing such a double-edged method of getting an advantage.
While she appreciated the chance to prevent whatever event would be triggered by the weird moving valley, the amount of agony and unease it had created were nearly enough to make her want to quit.
If it wasn’t for her stubborn personality, mixed with the promise she had made to Old Man James the same morning to do her absolute best, she would likely have quit the challenge by now. This Deep-Dive Simulation was simply too ruthless for a normal human being to endure!
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After what felt like an eternity to Thea, but in reality only represented about ten minutes of their times, they finally got to the western-most edge of the trenches they had been stumbling through.
During their hectic march they had drawn a lot of attention, as they were clearly heading away from the medical facilities, rather than towards them. As a result, they had been stopped three times by different squad medics, who tried to chaperone them towards the field-hospital once they had seen their substantially bad physical state. Despite their, in one case quite rigorous, attempts, Thea and Kellerman’s squad medic had continued to press on regardless of the various medic’s opinions and pleas.
Having arrived at their tentative destination, she felt that, for the first time since she had awoken in the field-bed, her anxiety level dropped by a small amount.
“... We need to… get to the edge…” she pressed out through gritted teeth towards the squad medic at her side, fighting with all her might against the encroaching darkness of unconsciousness.
As before, the squad medic practically pulled her towards the location she indicated. Without him, she would not even have made it a third through the trenches before simply fainting.
Finally reaching the western edge of the hill, they both simply collapsed on the ground, taking heavy, rugged breaths to recoup.
“Alright, Private… this better be worth all this shit,” the squad medic said after a few seconds, in between two laboured breaths. “What now?”
Thea forced her entire body to struggle onwards, despite the incessant pleading of her very being to find some rest, and crawled towards the very edge of the hill.
Looking down towards the valley, she took a few seconds to fully take in everything that she saw.
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The valley had remained as barren as ever, but now she viewed it from a slightly different perspective, approximately 300 metres higher up the hill than her previous viewing angle.
The monotone landscape of the red-brown dirt was ever present, only broken up by some larger rock-chunks every once in a while.
It was these rock-chunks that Thea paid particular attention to in this situation.
They had been her self- designated distance markers for her rifle as seen from the position inside of her foxhole.
The general idea behind these distance markers was to make reporting intel easier, in case of an attack. If the UHF had come under attack from this western valley while she had still resided inside her foxhole, she could have simply looked for the rock-chunks that she had pre-designated as 100 metres, 200 metres, etc. away from her to gauge the rough distance to any potential attacking force.
For non-laser-based weapons, these markers also served as zeroing helpers. Correctly zeroing a scope for greater distances was crucial for projectile-based weapons to counteract the bullet-drop experienced in a non-zero-G environment.
Properly adjusting her mental image towards the new viewing angle, she felt both elation and terror overcome her once again.
“...fuck… I was right,” she muttered underneath her breath.
The image of the valley in her mind was now severely different than the one currently in front of her. The vision she had seen was correct. The valley’s rock-chunks had slowly been moving towards the UHF fortifications, and were now only around 100-200 metres away from the beginning of the steep slope...!
She tried moving her arms to pick up a nearby red-brown, medium-sized piece of rock, but she immediately knew there was no chance that she would have the strength to toss it far enough for her purposes.
Thea once again turned her head towards the squad medic and asked him between silent groans of pain, “...take a rock… medium-sized or bigger… toss it towards the centre of the valley… as shallow and far as you can…”
Giving her another look of pure exasperation, the squad medic got himself back up on his feet with a groan. He picked up a fairly large rock and readied himself for a throw.
Before Thea could interject, the squad medic easily chucked the rock with a speed and accuracy towards the valley that seemed frankly impossible to her. She had wanted to stop the squad medic and ask him to take a smaller rock, for the rock he had chosen had been way too large and heavy to properly be thrown accurately. Evidently however, she had once again misjudged the physical abilities of a UHF marine.
The rock flew in a nearly perfectly straight line toward the centre of the valley, about 4 metres above the ground on the steep slope, for roughly a second before what Thea had hoped for came to pass: The rock simply vanished in mid-air, as if it had never existed in the first place.
Wide eyed, the squad medic turned towards the still prone Thea.
“Did… did you just fucking see that?! What the fuck was that?! AM I LOSING IT?!” his voice rising with each sentence, any thoughts about his body’s state lost in utter disbelief.
“...call up Kellerman… tell him to fall back towards the tenth trench line… bring as many as he can… it’s an ambush,” she spelled out the next steps for him, her voice laced with as much poise and stoicism as possible.
Without waiting even a second for the squad medic to acknowledge anything she had said, Thea herself reached over to her wrist and activated her armour’s comms, dialling for the only person that she knew could react fast enough with the proper authority to matter…
As the comms tried to connect her, she quickly gathered the last ounces of strength in her body. She did not want to fail reporting this vital intel, by simply passing out mid-report. If she could just get through this last part, she would finally be able to rest!
“Private Thea…? You calling me does not bode well, what do you have to report?” came the inquiring voice of Captain Sable over her comms.
With a sigh of relief that the Captain picked up her comms request so quickly, she started her report, speaking firmly but fast, as she did not know how long her body would still function.
“Captain Sable, I have personally just confirmed intel that the Stellar Republic is employing some kind of illusion-tech at the steep western slope of the west-front. They’re still inside the valley, but parts of the illusion-tech are already reaching around a third up the way towards our fortifications.
“It is impossible to gauge the exact size of the illusion, but it covers at least a third of the entire valley, enough to hide a force as large as their main-attack one, which has been slowly pushing towards us from the front.”
Before she could continue, she suffered a massive coughing fit, which resulted in her spitting blood, bile and saliva on the ground next to her. With a ragged, deep breath, she continued her report.
“I recommend an immediate evacuation of at least the first nine trench lines. The tenth and beyond are far enough up the hill, that the steep slope should not be usable as an ambush location. I will not be able to report this to local command with any haste. Please, Captain Sable, save them—!” she ended with an uncharacteristic request.
Silence followed her report for over a minute, but in her current state, she could barely comprehend the passing of time. To her, it felt like an eternity, but also no time at all had passed, when her comms chimed up again.
Captain Sable’s voice held a hint of admiration as he replied, “Well done, Private. I will take care of the rest, get yourself to a medical facility ASAP, that’s an order. We will still require your skills in the hours to come.”
Of the entire reply, she heard nothing past the point where the captain had stated he will take care of the rest. As her brain barely comprehended the meaning of those words, darkness finally took her, relieving her of the agony and pain she had experienced over the last hour…
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“What do you mean, we should immediately retreat to the tenth trenchline?! Give me some void-damned usable intel, Orion!” Kellerman yelled at his comms.
What had happened to the squad medic, since he had left to the field-hospital with the Private?
The fact that Orion’s voice was laced with sheer horror and an undertone of pleading desperation, was the reason that Kellerman’s blood had frozen to the core.
Orion had always been his most stoic and level-headed squad member. It was one of his best attributes in Kellerman’s eyes, as it allowed him to fulfil his duties as a squad medic with unerring precision, regardless of the situation they found themselves in. This attribute had saved his and his squad members’ lives more times than he could reasonably remember.
Yet after only being away for, what— an hour at most?— with the weird Private, he sounded like a downright lunatic, calling for them to immediately evacuate everyone from the trenches up to the tenth trench line.
“Sir— I don’t know how, but the Private used a ton of Focus. I linked with her, because she was adamant about it being something important— She was right! The Stellar Republic has some kind of stealth-tech in the western valley!
“It’s fucking huge, Renzak—! It could easily fit the entire main-force down the hill inside of it. They’re coming up the western slope! Get our squad out of there, right the fuck now!” came the lengthened report from the squad medic over the comms, followed by a coughing fit that sounded like Orion was spitting out one of his entire lungs.
In the middle of his rapid-fire report, he had even resorted to using Kellerman’s first name, something that the squad medic knew would get Kellerman to perk up. After all, nobody in the squad but Orion knew about it— and only because he had access to the squad leader’s medical records.
Hit with the intel inside of the extended report, cold sweat broke out across Kellerman’s entire body.
“Everyone, pack your shit, we’re leaving. RIGHT NOW!” he immediately commanded the rest of his squad.
While the squad members were surprised by the sudden command to retreat from their position, the voice in which Kellerman had spoken, barred all arguments and questions. They quickly grabbed the nearest thing they could carry, be it ammo cases, backup weapons or grenade boxes, and followed Kellerman towards the centre of the trench line, in order to get to the trenches higher up the hill.
On their way, they saw Kellerman split off from the squad at every squad’s outpost that they came across, briefly talking to the respective squad leaders, only to run up behind them and to the same at the next location.
By the time they reached the middle of the seventh trench line, which also featured a pathway to the eighth, they realised what was happening.
Kellerman was evacuating the entire western side of the trenches!
Taken aback by the realisation, they shared confused stares underneath their helmets, their long years of camaraderie having formed a bond of communication that needed no direct eye-to-eye contact, yet none of them dared question his behaviour.
Kellerman had never led them astray before and he would not do so now, especially when it came to such a huge deal, such as evacuating an entire trench line during an active engagement.
If Kellerman was wrong about this, he would undoubtedly be Zero’d by the military tribunal!
Luckily for them, around five minutes later, every single one of their comms lit up with a series of emergency notices:
[Priority Message: AMBUSH IMMINENT - IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE THE TRENCH LINES NUMBERED 1-9.]
[Priority Message: LARGE ENEMY FORCE INCOMING FROM THE WESTERN SLOPE. SUSPECTED USAGE OF STEALTH-TECH BY ENEMY.]
[Command Message: Fortify tenth trenchline and onwards. Set up additional pill-boxes with HMGs from lower trenches ASAP. Prepare for heavy casualties at western slope.]
Their eyes met underneath their helmets once again. It looked like the battle was about to head into an unexpectedly new and extremely bloody direction…!