1 Chapter:1 Echoes of the Battlefield
The shrill sound of an alarm clock sliced through the foggy silence of the JMM's (Japanese Mountain Militia) Barracks, shattering the fragile veil of dreams that all its inhabitant had been enjoying before the day that would most likely be their last day alive. Nearly two dozen women woke up from their bunks and groggily stumbled to the common lavatory.
Amongst these women was one Renko Ivanov, formerly a teacher and now a conscripted mountain guerilla. She blinked away the remnants of sleep in her eyes and blinked yet harder to get them to adjust to the morning light filtering through the rags they called curtains. The digital display on the clock hanging over the barrack's gate read 7:00 AM, jolting her awake at once.
"Move yer ass bitch!"
She, in a rather un-ladylike manner, kicked the one standing in front of her who stumbled into the shower followed closely by Renko herself who stripped without shame and groaned as the warm seawater washed away the grime on her body.
Yes, seawater. No clean water source for anything less than direct consumption. Offenders caught red-handed would be court-marshalled and most likely be executed.
This was the modern world of 2200, where fresh water was a commodity quite on par with gold itself. One may wonder what these soldiers drank. The answer is,
'Believe me, you'd rather not find out.'
The world as was known is no more, war wages across the continent, the planet, and the solar system itself. Every day nearly ten million humans die due to war and yet no less than double that number are born in excess. Food is precious, water even more so, and fuel trumps all in the market. Now nations wage war for the slightest bit of reserve found on any planet.
In such a war-torn world, life had become quite... worthless.
Now we return to the soldier in question, Renko Ivanov, an experienced mountain guerilla, who now walks over to her bunk, buck-naked and dripping water all over the place. Her body, quite beautifully muscular and adorned with scars, attracted no attention since most of them were returning to their bunks in similar conditions.
Renko sighed as she fastened the holster around her waist, an antique that went by the name M1911 in it. The weapon might be an antique, but this was all that the army issued them with and they had to make use of it. Not all bad though, a single hit to the face solves the gap in technology quite easily.
The smell of gun oil wafted in the air as the soldiers hastily oiled, cleaned, and loaded their weapons. This was a comforting scent, at least to them it was.
One by one, the women began to gather in a row in front of the barrack's gate, and just when all of them had gathered, a bell rang, prompting them to jog across through it and out under the scorching sun. The clinking of their dog tags along with the slamming of their boots created a harmonizing echo that was broken by a thunderous roar,
"GET IN LINE MAGGOTS! COME AND GET YER' GRUB YOU USELESS PIGS!"
Screamed the quartermaster as she shoved a suspiciously dark bar in the hands of the soldier who past by her. When it was Renko's turn, the quartermaster was out of the dark ones and handed her a transparent one, something that she was quite grateful for.
What was she eating? It is the Universal supplements bar alright, made from the bark of a tree burning in some politician's fireplace. Thankfully Renko got the flavourless one and didn't have to endure the nastily sandy taste of the dark ones.
Moments later, Renko found herself in a relatively secluded corner, behind a broken-down APC and was just about to begin with her meal when,
"Corporal Ivanov?"
Renko turned around and saw a blond woman with a notepad in her hand.
"You and your team are to patrol from point X9910 to X1909."
And without waiting for confirmation, the woman turned around and walked over to another, declaring the fate of them all.
Hastily gobbling the tasteless bar of supplements, Renko made her way to the waiting military vehicle, an M113. Brand new and all, but worth less than the M1911 in her holster.
Just as she neared the vehicle, a soldier handed her a Type20, another antique piece yet there was nothing to be worried about. Not like anyone would attack a guerrilla camp out in the middle of nowhere, at least not without provocation. Right?
Half an hour later the convoy of 15 APCs rumbled through the deserted city of Tokyo, once the heart of a thriving nation, now a deserted outpost.
Soon the mission briefing began through the comms.
Nothing new, a simple routine patrol in the outskirts. From point, X9910 Nippori to point X1909 Sakuradai, old forgotten names for places that are now only distinguishable by the rotten sign occasionally salvaged from their ruins.
But something was odd about the mission, it was awfully specific, usually, it's only points on the map that are to be patrolled, not the whole route. But, that was all. What could go wrong with receiving a little more details right?
Turns out, an awful lot can.
Not much after they reached the spot and started to disembark, a loud *BANG* echoed through the ruins, and one of the soldiers was missing her head.
Chaos erupted as everyone ducked or dived for cover, Renko found shelter under the rubbles of a building and began frantically scanning the horizon for snipers.
*BANG*
Another shot and yet another woman, hiding beneath an overturned and rusted vehicle lost most of her torso. The blood splattered across the road and the rest of them began to shoot wildly into the distance, hoping against hope for a lucky shot to reveal the sniper's position.
But Renko was different, she had spotted the sniper from the second shot,
"7 O'CLOCK! 75 DEGREES UP!"
The random fire concentrated on the location pinpointed by her and surely enough, a stray shot found itself buried in the skull of a soldier perched on some thirtieth floor or maybe higher. Who knows? The splatter made by the corpse as it hit the ground didn't reveal that detail.
Even with a downed enemy, no one moved. There was an absolute silence throughout the ruins safe for the echo of a drum. Or maybe it was something else entirely, no one could distinguish it until it reached where they were hiding.
An ARR-1090.
An attack helicopter designed specifically for the task of hunting down guerillas in forests and ruins.
They were all doomed.
The patrol commander tried to encourage them to retrieve the fire and forgive salvo from the APC but none of them budged from their spot. They were simply... overwhelmed.
Why had they been attacked? What could be the motive for someone to mount an assault on a dilapidated military patrol in the middle of an old ruined city?
No one answered their questions and soon gunfire rained down on their location, setting the APCs aflame and killing a majority of the soldiers who chose to hide beneath the ruins.
"RETREAT! RETREAT!"
It was the patrol commander. Somehow she had survived and was now ordering a retreat.
*Scoff*
'Retreat?' More like, 'Be the bait so I can escape with my life.'
But she was the higher-ranking officer and they had to follow through. One after the other, the hidden soldiers crept out of their hiding places and made a run for it in random directions.
The Attack Helicopter followed after a group of four, allowing the rest of them to escape. At once Renko dashed over to the ACP, trying to see if any warhead could be salvaged but there was nothing there and she was forced to follow after the commander.
"*Crack**Crack**Puff**Crack*"
Great, just what they needed.
An infantry unit, most likely sent to weed out the survivors of the gunship's attack.
Cursing under their breath, they ran. That was all they could do in a hopelessly outmatched and gunned battle, their death was inevitable. So they fled, they fled as gunshots rang out behind them and one by one, their comrades in front of them fell.
In the heat of the escape, Renko tumbled over an outcropped stone jutting out of the ground. The tumble caused her to stagger behind her for cover as more and more gunshots followed.
They were doomed.
No matter how much she repeated that sentence in her head, Renko just couldn't take it anymore. Lying flat on the ground was not her style. The survivors rushed, panting and trembling as they left that hell behind. But their troubles were far from over. The ground beneath their boots betrayed them and multiple telltale clicks of the mines' triggers caused them to shake even more wildly.
And it seems that even Renko's boot betrayed her because she too had just stepped on a landmine.
"*Puff**puff**crack**Puff**crack...*"
More gunshots and they were getting closer. The commander had already decided to run and got herself blown to smithereens by a mine.
"*Puff**Puff**Puff**Puff*"
It hurts!
A bullet tore through her shoulder and yet she didn't move. Moving now meant that not only herself but most of the other soldiers would die too. So instead of moving, she crouched down close to the floor. Many mimicked her behavior but some were too dense to do so.
A stray bullet tore through the head of one of their own and the mines began to do their job which was to scatter each and every one of the soldier's body parts fifteen feet high in the air.
As Renko desperately tried to find a way to survive the impending explosion, a hail of bullets rained down upon her. The impact of a gunshot sent her sprawling, her body tumbling away from the top of the mine. And just like that, she was splattered over trees in almost all directions. The deafening chaos of the explosion, followed by a blinding explosion engulfed everything in flames.
And then, silence.
An empty void, devoid of anything and everything except for an endless darkness that stretched into the depths of eternity.
Time passed.
Or maybe it did not.
Who could tell when one floated in the sea of darkness?
Seconds passed, minutes followed, and the time mounted to hours, then days, weeks, months, years, and maybe even decades.
