God Complex (1)

Anne's POV

The year is 2131 and right now, I'm sitting huddled in a foxhole in one of the high-rising hills of the moon Europa along with my twin sister Marie and my little cousin brother, Ave. Right now, I'm drinking hot coffee from my heat-flask while being wrapped in a medium-bulky exoskeleton and two thick white blankets but even then, I was shivering to my bones. Across me was Marie who was snoring lightly in her bulky sub-machine gunner exoskeleton, catching her precious afternoon nap, if it's afternoon, I guess.

As for my little cousin brother Ave, he is currently sitting like a statue in a corner while peering through the scope of his sniper rifle, 'Requiem' which was a stupidly long sniper rifle.

Ave is a cadet of the Mirkwood Sniping School in Luna and is one of those rare prodigies of the school. To his enemies and competitors, he was a 'slimy' bastard because of his short height and seemingly inhumane way of dodging and escaping from danger. Many in his sniping school would gawk as he would evade grenade blast and other explosions with uncanny agility and athletics but since I'm his elder sister I know very well how much grandpa Ayer and great-gramps/gramps trained him to do such moves.

He is a monster of sorts.

And when he's on duty, he is the most patient hunter out there. He doesn't even blink his eyes while peering through his scope since he considers that a dereliction of duty and a chance missed. But that's not all. Even in the frozen -182 degree Celsius of Europa, he still lies patiently in his slim exoskeleton suit without a single piece of cover. The only that would qualify as a cover is his ghillie suit which he always wears.

Compared to him, my twin sister, Marie is nothing more than a sloth bear. She's just a newly promoted sergeant in the heavy armored infantry division and she's becoming more and more like a side-character compared to me or Ave. The only thing which differentiates her from her peers is her big boobs! I'm not jealous of her, I-I—okay, maybe I'm a little jealous but really, she has nothing more than big boobs. She's the big-boob-no-brain type of girl and I hope she stays that way. I don't want her to become all intelligent only to end up dead in a corner of space.

As for me, I'm one of the cadets in the special officer training course from the Imperial Military Intelligence and I'm currently here because the HQ thought that giving me sniping training along with actual battle experience is good. Thank goodness uncle John was able to pull some strings and get the three of us in the same base or I might've just died of boredom.

…

Anyway, after finishing my coffee, I crouch and lightly touch Ave on his shoulder.

"Have some rest brother, I will keep a lookout."

He doesn't reply immediately instead, he pops a small customized clock on his sniper rifle and looks at the time. It was still a few minutes from his pre-planned shift was over so he simply shook his head.

"Not now." He says in a stern tone and I heed his word but after five minutes, he automatically moves from his position and smiles at me, "Thank you, sis, for covering me."

I wave my hand as I pick my sniper rifle, a standard military-issue Nova Arctica sniper rifle which is customized for below-zero conditions. I take my favored position in the foxhole while cruelly kicking the sleeping Marie awake before aiming.

"Wha! What happened?" she asked in a dazed tone but Ave grins while pointing towards me! Bro, don't sell your sis like this!

Marie looked angrily at me and kicked me hard on my hip but I didn't retort.

"Hmph! asshole! Hey, Ave pass me the coffee cup. Also, if you don't need those blankets, can you please give them to me? It's a little cold here!" She asked and like any good little brother, Ave handed both of them to her without a moment of hesitation. And I couldn't help but chide her.

"Aren't you shameless, Marie?! Look at Ave! He's been in the cold for more than three hours while you were sleeping all cuddly-cuddly in your big fat exo and now you dare to ask for the coffee flask and blankets! Shameless!"

But Marie only pouts at me, "Muu! I can't do anything if both of you're so good! There's nothing for a big lug like me to do here except sleeping!" she retorts.

And I was just about to rebut her when I saw Ave looking sternly at me, "Pay attention to your sectors."

"A-ah! Yea, yea." I said as I peered through the scope of my sniper rifle. Ave, beside me smiles and says, "You don't need to stay silent like a log, it's alright to talk but don't take your eyes off your scope."

"Roger!" I took his advice seriously, after all, he's the real sniper here and I'm here to learn sniping skills. I'm not gonna be angry even if he scolds me now and then since this is all a part of my mission. But I gotta say, he's kinda cute like this.

Ave gives me a best-of-luck smile before going about his usual routine, cleaning and defrosting his rifle. With deft hands he opened the ballistic rifle piece by piece and starts cleaning and defrosting them. He was extremely meticulous and even though he just told me to keep my eyes on my scope I couldn't help but admire his cleaning skills. Snipers from the well-established sniping schools are way different than normal sniping schools in the HQ.

Marie rolls her eye at Ave and asks in a baffling tone, "Oye, Ave! Why d' ya' always open yer rifle like 'at? Ain't ya worried that yer rifle wu' fail o' ya?" her speech was thick from drinking the hot coffee and I can't help but sneak a laugh.

Ave smiles and replies, "Well, from my limited experience I know that if you care and love your rifle like a lover, give them regular cleaning and keep them tip-top they won't ever fail on you. If it does fail on you that means what you were doing was all a faux and only for show." He replies which instantly gets an eye-roll from Marie.

"If what ya say ish true then we heavy gunners are constantly rapin' a' weapons, wouldn't we?!"

Ave grins cheekily at her and replies, "That's why we like to target heavy gunners before everyone else. Lol!"

Marie pouts but could only retort, "Not cool, man!"

Time passed slowly but surely for us. Sitting in one position for hours made a sore spot on my sides but I couldn't complain. The military isn't a place for complaints. The scenery through my scope was almost constant with the frozen scape of Europa but once in a while there would be alien life that would pop up from under the thick sheet of methane ice. Sometimes, while looking at them, my finger would itch to squeeze but all my sniping training until now would shout in my ear not to do that.

But after an hour of nearly no activity, Ave suddenly springs up from his place and points towards a certain location and asks, "What's that?!"

I turn towards where he was pointing and see a small waft of smoke rising. Zooming to the max, I see a three-military-car convoy rushing through the snow desert of Europa.

"Three bogeys…speed…nearly 50 kmph… can't identify the nationality…" I say after observing them for a little while.

"A'right!" Ave says as he pats my shoulder before lying beside me and looking through the scope of his sniper rifle. After a while, he removes his eye from the scope and says with a baffled expression, "…They are from the caliphate…"

I look back at the convoy but by now it was well hidden behind a snow wall.

"Marie, inform command about this. Asap!"

"Roger!"

"This is Wolverine 3 reporting to Alpha Station 06, we spotted a caliphate convoy. I repeat, we spotted—what the!"

"What happened?"

"The radio's broken! There's only static coming!" she replies as she bashes the radio on her exo mercilessly.

Instantly, I left my position and dashed towards her. Operating with a deft hand, I connected the radio attached to her exoskeleton and contacted the command but, as she said, all I got was static.

"Bzzzzz…stshasfche…over….kkkaskkkakasskk…"

I frowned for a second before something hit me. "Ave, look for a jamming device."

"Roger!" Ave says without turning around. After a while, he gets up from his position. "I will get a better vantage point and check our surroundings. Stay here until then."

We nod solemnly.

He returned 15mins later with no news of the jamming device. "There is nothing that could qualify as a jamming device in the vicinity. There were a few devices and pieces of metal but I don't think they are the one."

"You should've put a bullet through them anyway." Says Marie but her heavy-gunner logic doesn't work with the snipers.

"We need to move back to base." He said in a worried tone and like a domino effect, his worry transformed into mine. But orders were orders.

"We can't move back if we don't get the order. What if it's just a faux?" I argued but Ave was adamant.

"Is the radio not working a faux?" I shook my head. "Then we need to go back. It doesn't matter whether we're in mission or not if the radio doesn't work. We're working as scouts and radio is the second-most important device in our inventory. Without it, we're tourists!"

My will wavered but I still wasn't ready. It was still 2 hours before we are allowed to leave our post.

"Guys, you might wanna listen to this," Marie said as she passed the headphones to us. She increased the volume and the loud static blasted the usually silent foxhole.

"Bzzzz…Em-bzzzz...Repeat…Emergency…bzzzz…Retreat…bzzz"

My heart plummeted to the ground. What does this mean? Is the base under attack? Did the battalion retreat without us? Are we stranded in the fuckin' snow!?

Various thoughts flashed across my mind and I couldn't help but droop down, like a deflated balloon. But Ave had a different thought. He immediately rushed to the corner and started pushing the 40cal sniper bullets into the magazines.

"What are you doing?" I couldn't help but ask. He smiles at me and replies, "Getting ready for danger."

"What?"

"In our sniping school, we're taught never to trust the Command in its ability to hide. So, if the command goes dark, we go dark too. Get ready for battle, we're going back. If the battalion has already fallen back to the next defensive lines, we will move there. If it has fallen further back, we will go further. It's either we make it or break it, so get ready for a long trek."

"This is not the time to lose hope." He sighs as he pushed the bullets faster into the magazine.

"He's right!" Marie pumps her fist, "It's either we make it or break it!" she says with confidence as she fastens the settings on her exoskeleton as well as for the first time, check her machine gun.

I smiled inside and thought, 'That's right. We're the Chowdhurys! We can't lose hope just like this.'

After ten minutes of checking and preparing, we're finally ready to move out. But before we do, Ave looks back and says in a stern tone, "Do not fire the first shot. If you see the enemy, ignore it. Do not give away our positions, is that clear?"

"Roger!"

"Good, let's move out!"

…

Three days. We trekked the icy hills of Europa for three whole days before getting the first sight of our battalion station. Station Alpha 06 as it was called, was situated in the valley between two huge hills. It was one of the frontier posts of the Europa expansion and one might think that setting up a station in a valley between two huge hills is a disadvantage but they would be so wrong.

Instead, the valley is the most defensible position since there is only one entry point and three Heavy Laser Cannons and a dozen 300cal ballistic cannons aka 'Bulldozer' cannons were aimed right at the mouth of the valley. Any party having funny thoughts about this base would get a slap so tight that their teeth would be knocked out. And that would've been the norm.

But what we were seeing shocked us to the core.

Looking through the scope of our sniper rifles, we saw smoke rising from multiple points in the station, half of the dozen ballistic cannons were broken and in-operational while the other half was unmanned. The three laser cannons were also deactivated and nearly a hundred small vehicles and a few tanks were situated right at the front of the station, blasting and tearing it, section by section. Not to mention the immense amount of gunfight that was going inside the base itself.

"What the hell…" I couldn't help but mutter. The situation was direr than expected.

"What do you want to do?" Ave asked me as he looked through his scope, watching the enemy with far more detail than me with his specialized sniper rifle.

"If there's gunfight going on then that means there are still friends in the station. We should help them."

"But we would be risking our position." Ave pointed out, "We don't know whether the whole base has retreated and it's just the last ounce of resistance or not. Also, these scums of the caliphate like to blaze their rifles after a long win."

"Guys, I just checked with the high command but there's no retreat from station alpha 06. I think the battalion hasn't retreated yet." Marie pointed out as she surfed through her radio and I chided her.

"Don't just surf on the radio! The enemy can pinpoint our location!"

"Calm down, with so much chatter, they can hardly hear us," Marie says as she kept on going through her radio channels.

I looked at Ave and saw him smiling wryly at me, "Seems like we gotta take the risk."

"Yes, but we need a plan—"

"And I have one." He interjects as he crawls down from his vantage point. I follow suit.

Opening a map of the terrain, he points to three locations and says, "So, here's my plan. I will rotate through these points while providing sniper cover for you guys while you guys take down those tanks. As you can see, those tanks are tearing down our base and we need to catch them by surprise if we want to make it alive. Now, since Anne is from the IMI, she surely knows how to deal with those caliphate tanks, doesn't she?"

"I do. As long as I have some thermites and some cover." I reply and Marie instantly smiles and shows her full bag of explosives to me. "Don't worry, sista! I got ya' covered."

Ave grins and replies, "After killing the tanks, comes the fun part. Sis Marie, without their tank supporting them, their infantry are too vulnerable. So, take the chance and finish off those in the backlines. They are the easiest and then we can slowly move forward and capture the rest in a fishing net. Is that clear?!"

"Crude but clear!"

"Good, let's move out!"

…