Aciec Aeternam (etarnal Battlefield) Chapter three
Chapter three,
Love to have feedback, let me know if you see any typo's :)
Carlo AKA Faukx
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Chapter three: 'Wake-up call'
"That was some heavy shit." Marvin laid on a bed in the troops barracks, he and the rest of the unit he belonged to where all this barrack. All of them where either sitting or laying on his or her bed. "You can say that again!" Agyl replied, she lay on her back staring at the ceiling of the room. Some of the others mumbled their agreements. They had been here for just a day, fresh from the military academy on Earth they where the youngest trooper squad on the ship. They were all between the age of nineteen and twenty-two, none of them had participated in a holo-battle before and they were all broken from exhaustion. The Junior Troopers, as older troopers and officers liked to call them, and a few other 'junior' teams had the pleasure to meet Sergeant Goodworthy. Jake had planned this holo-battle for some time to test the new 'recruits' their ability's in combat, strategy and initiative. It was a great success, Jake now knew that these newbies did not have any real combat experience. Of course it was not the victory that the 'junior' troops had expected, most of them had build up a bigger ego on the academy, they were the best and were 'not' surprised to end up on the most advanced spaceship of the fleet.
"How could this have happened? We trained for this stuff right?" Marvin said, the young coyote was pissed off about what had happened. "In theory we did, but never in a holo-battle" Kenneth answered. "Well you were not any help anyway, you could have helped us when we were screaming the hell out of our lungs!" Marvin returned with a snarl. Some others agreed with this. When things got hot Kenneth hid in a bunker waiting for the inevitable. But he was not the only one. "We were all scared Marv, I heard you scream for your mommy near the end so don't you dare say something about anyone else!" Agyl rebuked. The female black cat sat upright on her bed looking angrily in Marvin's direction. "Yeah, like you didn't. You probably screamed the loudest of us all!" Marvin yelled. He had risen from his bed and was now standing on top of it. Someone else stood up as well. "She did not! I have been by her side the whole battle and when we all screamed for help and mercy she was the only one that kept on going!" Anouk yelled at Marvin. "So why don't you just shut up about this, it's bad enough that we are arguing about this! We should look at the fact, our big ego's got in the way and we tasted defeat and now we are blaming each other for all the shit that happened." Anouk continued. "Marvin, would you please sit down. We don't have to argue like this" Agyl pleaded. Marvin was staring at his feet, after some moments thought he sat down on the bed. Now everyone was watching their own feet and thinking about what happened earlier that day. Then Kenneth broke the silence. "I'm sorry I hid away like that, I can't explain it, it sort of just happened" He hung his head in shame, Anouk walked to his bed and sat down beside him and an arm around him. "We were all scared, damn that holo-battle felt so damn real, I forgot that it was all fake until it was over, I could feel the pain when I lay dying in that trench we dug, I could hear everyone scream and saw some of you die, and I cried." She told them in low tones. Everyone nodded in silence, Jake's holo-battle did exactly what it was meant to do. Besides routine trainings, Jake designed it to scare the living shit out of everyone who thought that war would be fun and to teach new recruits what it was like to fight for your life. Again the silence was broken. "I'm sorry I yelled like that, I think I'm mad about myself that it all went so totally wrong, I'm just so afraid to lose control over a situation that I blame other for my own mistakes" Marvin said. He looked at the rest of the young furs, they had known each other since they started their training at the academy. But the end of the evening they all agreed, they would come to know each other a lot better now that they knew more about themselves.