Published at 10th of August 2023 11:24 am

Chapter 121: Opening Salvo

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A bead of water rasped against the shoddy metallic helmet with a clear thud, prompting Masir to look up to the sky. Above him, a few tendrils of dark clouds drifted over, stemming from mountains of thunderclouds looming in from the horizon.

“PICK UP THE PACE!” The voice that had plagued Masir’s life ever since he had been captured by Nest bellowed out with force. The Versian sergeant marched down through the trenches and fortifications built just five kilometres from Ocra.

Before Masir could even react, a heavy-handed slap from the sergeant smacked him in the helmet, the dull shock rattling his head slightly. “What are you staring idly at the sky for? Those Yual Dominion dogs aren’t going to wait all day! Keep digging!”

The rough jagged wooden surface of his makeshift spade reminded him what he was supposed to do. He grumbled internally but did not retort, instead focusing his attention back onto the slightly muddied surface, where there was a rectangular-shaped hole, dug out over the last few hours.

This isn’t a shell scrape – this is my grave. The hole Masir had dug was no different from the other slave soldiers in his platoon, all of them digging a similar size, equally spaced. Yet instead of a defence fortification meant to stall the enemy, the faces of despair and resignation began to make the place look more like a cemetery.

Masir grimaced as he dug again, his already sore arms’ burning intensely as he struggled to continue shovelling. He grabbed every chance at taking a break in between, acting like he was shovelling whenever a Nest hitman or a Versian sergeant walked past.

Even after he was done with the shell scrape, Masir’s harrowing ordeal was still far from over. He had to dig two more and help out with digging out the trenches. As Masir stuck the blade of the shovel into the mud and looked behind him, the town of Ocra was vastly different from how it used to be just two weeks ago.

Ever since the observation of the military exercise was relayed to the government, the entire Versian society had shifted to a war footing, the defensive fortifications and garrisons of every border town and city with Yual boosted with fresh recruits just like Masir. Involuntary recruits.

“Rotate! 513 Third Platoon; you’re up!”

An order rang out, which only meant one thing to Masir’s tired, famished body. Lunch. He shambled with the rest of his nine-man squad towards the trench behind, shuffling their feet through the tight corners where other soldiers were still digging out emplacements for cannons and mortars and placing makeshift wooden fortifications.

The trenches sloped slightly downwards, revealing an underground mess hall where there were already metal tins filled with what Masir could only call ‘slop’, but it was what he looked forward to every day. The men in his squad sat down in silence, eating the slop by drinking directly from the tin.

“Hey, give that back!” A young recruit wailed from another table as his own squad member stole his tin of slop.

“Fuck off, you scrawny twat. The food is wasted on you – I’ll do a much better job of fighting than you ever will!”

Masir’s eyes squinted in recognition, knowing that the kid was from Ocra as well. “Anyone recognise the other guy?” He muttered to his squad members, all of whom were part of his original gang. They had all been subjugated once by Kyle, and a second time by Nest, enslaved to fight.

“No, boss.” Despite the obvious fall from power, the members were still loyal to the boss. Ocra boys stick together. Shrugging off the obvious muscle ache in his body, Masir stood up and walked over to the unrecognised soldier, who was still laughing as he ate happily from the young recruit’s tin.

With a swift grab, Masir slammed the head of the soldier into the tin, the corrugated edges of the tin jabbing right into the eyes as the soldier screamed out in pain, his face a mixture of gushing blood and slop with gravy.

Immediately, the other members of the squad attacked and stood up in anger. “Hey, fuckface! You think you’re-“

Without warning, Masir punched the closest one right in the face and kicked him right in the nuts, crumpling him to the floor. “Come on, you twats!”

The mess hall broke out into a fight, with the two sides of the rowdy brawl mostly being Ocra residents versus Versians from other towns conscripted to fight at the frontlines. The sergeants and military police soon came in to break out the fight, but they did not arrest anyone. There was no time for that – the Yual Dominion was right on the doorstep; they needed every soldier they could get their hands on.

“BREAK IT UP! ANYONE STILL FIGHTING WILL HAVE FRONT-ROW SEATS!” The sergeants threatened, immediately causing the other Versians to stop fighting. No one wanted to face the full brunt of Count Leon’s forces, reminding them of the impending dread and fighting that was about to break out.

Masir spat out a glob of blood on the ground as he nursed a bruised cheek with an icepack, walking out of the mess hall. The sky was already half covered in grey clouds, the scattered water droplets increasing in number.

His squad walked back in silence, gripping their muskets tightly as their boots trudged through the trenches, moving past machine gun emplacements. Their trench was the first defence line – two more trenches stood between them and Ocra, which was now walled and covered in defensive arctech engravings.

“Are they really going to attack?” One of Masir’s squad members couldn’t help muttering, the tension gnawing away at his heart. “The weather is pretty bad – maybe we’ll get one or two more days.”

“Don’t count on it.” Masir shook his head as he slumped against the wall of the trench, staring at the sky. “Didn’t you hear? We apparently executed the general. The light thrower film was out yesterday. Their forces have already crossed the border.”

“How the hell are we going to fend them off with just our muskets?!”

Masir didn’t know the answer to that either. Repeaters were already in the military, just that they could not mass produce enough to equip all the soldiers. Only the regulars got them, and Masir’s squad was far from being a regular.

The conversation was cut short by a sergeant walking briskly through the trenches, shouting. “This is where the Yual Dominion forces will be held! We shall not give them a single town, a single city, nay, not even a single inch!”

The motivational speech has started – it means the enemy is approaching.

“The dogs of the emperor think they can subjugate the Versian spirit; well, we shall make them think twice! It is here that they shall be turned back! For Versia!”

“For Versia!” The soldiers chanted back softly.

“That’s all you got? Scream with all your might! Today you live as men of Versia – as free as the day you were born. FOR VERSIA!”

“FOR VERSIA!”

“FOR VERSIA!” The sergeant screamed once more, his face nearly red.

“FOR VERSIA!”

“That’s what I like to hear! Now hold this ground unt-“

Masir watched the entire scene play out in front of him, the sight of a mortar projectile hitting the sergeant right in the face as it exploded in a brilliant explosion, tossing and levelling the ground up. A fountain of dirt began to pelt Masir’s face as the burnt body of the sergeant was blown to bits, along with the arm of a nearby soldier being caught in the blast, turned into a scorched stump as his wailing screams pierced the air.

“GET DOWN!”

The soldiers cowered in the trenches as a withering barrage of mortar strikes from afar was launched towards their position, pounding the mud and dirt as the rain began to pick up in intensity.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR? ACTIVATE THE POINT DEFENCE SYSTEM!” Masir roared at a stunned soldier who was still standing in shock. Instead of waiting for the guy to shake out of his stupor, Masir crawled over through the trench to him, shoving him aside and working the arctech machine shaped like a metal sphere, placed right in the middle of an open pit connected to the trench.

Activating the machine, five spindly metal pillars jutted out towards the sky, the engravings glowing green. With a rapid pulsing sound, the point defence projectiles screeched towards the incoming mortar strikes, causing them to explode in midair.

The billowing smoke of interceptions filled the horizon as fragments fell from the sky; burning pieces of magnesium and iron sprinkled the trenches. Masir rushed back to the front-facing wall of the trench with his squad, all of them already propped up and aiming their muskets at the front.

He glanced at the strewn body parts of the former sergeant, noticing the arctech repeater had survived the blast. Dusting away the strings of flesh and dirt coating it, he hefted it, noticing that with the death of his sergeant, the platoon was in clear panic and shambles, with no one to coordinate them.

“Squad 1, man that fucking machine gun!” Masir bellowed out, earning a few confused stares from the squad. “What the hell are you waiting for?! MOVE!”

“Squad 2, get on the communication radios and get ready to call out targets for the artillery crew!”

“Squad 3 and 4, shore up the frontline! Get all those ammo boxes opened and ready; I want non-stop fire, you hear me?!”

Masir filled the spot of the deceased sergeant, issuing orders and helping the men to set up. Like hell I am going to die in this war! I still got a grudge to settle!

The mortar barrage ceased as abruptly as it began, the Yual Dominion forces no longer testing the point defence capabilities of the defence. Instead, a low rumbling sound could be heard, the tremors spreading through the ground.

“Whatever comes, we can handle it. Ocra boys stick together, ya hear?!” Masir roared.

“Yes, sir!”

“HERE THEY COME!” A spotter in Squad 1 yelled.

From beyond the trenches through the spare forest that surrounded Ocra, Masir could spot a few specks of metal in the tree line. “HOLD YOUR FIRE! WAIT TILL THEY COME IN RANGE!”

Yet those specks of metal began to grow larger and larger; Masir’s eyes widened in disbelief. What the hell is that?

Out from the treeline burst forth five defensive barriers, seemingly pushed forward by a modified arctech wagon engine that rumbled on tracks. Yual Dominion arctech knights jogged in synchronisation with the speed of the defensive barrier, using it to shield themselves from the trench line.

A machine gun mounted right on the top of the barrier fired with impunity, prompting the squad members in the trenches to take cover, the pellets singing above their flimsy helmets. One failed to take cover in time, earning a pellet that sheared through the side of his head, lobbing off an entire ear as he screamed.

“SQUAD 1, OPEN FIRE!” Masir ordered.

The machine gun burst into life, a hailstorm of pellets attacking the barrier shaped like a snow plough with a deafening roar. The barrier began to be pockmarked with holes as a few stray machine gun pellets managed to get through and hit the knights behind. The storm of pellets also knocked out the enemy machine gun mounted on the top of the barrier. However, it could not get through the thick armour plating that the Yual Dominion soldiers had as well.

Barrelling right towards the trench, the plough hit right into the trench, allowing the arctech knights that were attached to it to leap off and enter the trenches. Covered from head to toe in mud-camouflaged metal armour, the sight of the Yual knights induced fear and panic in the squads, prompting some of them to tremble and scream.

Before their flight or fight response could kick in, Masir was already ahead of them, attacking the nearest knight with an entire clip of the sergeant’s repeater. The flurry of pellets overwhelmed the knight’s point defence system, immediately denting the armour and eventually piercing through, riddling the knight with holes.

Masir gasped as his body began to feel the arcia exhaustion, the repeater taking a toll on his entire body. But his mind was focused on the fight, the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Only the screams of fighting and the screeches of artillery fire could be heard through the rapid thumping of blood in his ears; his eyes locked onto the dead knight as he screamed with all his might.

“FOR VERSIA!”

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