VR WARS Volume II - Coalition Army

COLATERAL DAMAGE

Forming in the lead and covering the rear were the only five Panzer IVs in the entire UAT, with the mechanized 1st Company occupying the formation's center. At Angelo’s request, Marco had detached the squadron under squad leader Rafael to join Cristina’s troops and provide support as they underwent their new mission. Incredibly, Rafa complied with his new task without so much as a grump; this proved a pleasant surprise to Marco due to his classmate’s resistant nature towards Angelo and always enjoying being at the front where, according to Rafa’s upfront vocabulary, ‘that’s where things get nastier.’

Small changes of behavior such as the one made Marco believe that Rafa, Vera, and most of the Elite population had, at last, come to acknowledge Angelo as the Commander they so desperately needed and deserved. But while many felt overjoyed about their situation, he was also confident that others silently cursed from the bottom of their hearts.

There was something about modern warfare that really exhausted the Azorean students who were used to fighting in ancient scenarios; the constant running around to dodge bullets or shrapnel while trying to fight an enemy that most of the time was hidden from sight took a bigger toll on the UAT than initially anticipated.

When she sat inside the vehicle, Mara noticed a young man staring right through her like she wasn’t even there, dismissing her presence completely. So this is what they refer to as the ‘one-thousand-yard stare’…an early stage of PTSD. This f*****g game will put us all in therapy sooner or later…Mara’s reflection betrayed her calm composure by giving a whole new look to her, one defined by bitterness. Anger flowed through her veins as it had never before, anger at human nature for devastation and, at the same time, sorrow for the sacrifices she and her classmates had to endure to see a prosperous future. f**k, f**k, fuuuuuckk! Why us?! Why me?! I can’t deal with this s**t anymore!! She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists to hold down her voice from bursting out in screams, regaining it briefly when thinking of how selfish she was being. Suffering comes in its own way to everyone, even for him…Mara’s mind strayed in time to when she first saw Angelo, not in the virtual world, but in the real one when he first came out of the hospital still enveloped in bandages. If anyone knows what real suffering is, it is him…

“Mara? Are you okay?” Her best friend, Gizelle, grabbed her clenched hand to bring her back from her introspective state, a gesture that succeeded in getting a smile through Mara’s otherwise desolate expression. “Yeah. I’m fine, thanks.”

Taking one last look at the shocked student, Mara noticed her image being reflected through the man’s glasses and nearly jumped up in aversion. Her greyish hair that cut straight across the eyebrow, stopping at the shoulder level, was smeared with dust and dirt. If not for her helmet covering the better part of her hair, it would’ve given her a completely new dye. Though the light brown colored dust and vividly red liquid stuck like glue to her face, obscuring any feministic look she might’ve had before, her eyes remained glowing with conviction. The color of which was the crystallization of a perfect blue midsummer sky.

Regardless of the blood and dirt stains that nearly painted a brand new camouflage on her uniform and brought a sense of disgust to her, to all others around her, those were badges of honor she had accumulated by risking her life to save everyone else’s. Something that should not be seen with repugnance but with pride.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem lost in thought,” a concerned Gizelle doubled her efforts to make Mara speak whatever it was that troubled her. Her friend's perseverance worked remarkably well, relieving the pressure tensing up her body and mind. Gizelle’s disquieting expression made Mara lean back on her seat while breaking into a smile; she felt blessed in having such a friend to rely on. “I’m glad you’re still here with me.”

Mara’s earnest admission nearly made Gizelle’s cheeks burn in embarrassment. “Heh-heh, what are friends for,” she giggled in response. “Get some rest; it’s going to take us a while to get there. Don’t fall asleep, though! You’ll be logged out in an instant.”

“Geez, you sound like a broken record….”

“That’s because I know you well enough…how many times did you get schooled for taking naps during classes?”

“…Ha-haaa…right…”

“Listen up,” The radio suddenly came to life with Lieutenant Cristina’s voice. “The IF has mostly retreated from this sector, so we should be okay for a time…I want everyone to do an ammo count and check on your water levels, too; I don’t want people giving extra work to our medics because of dehydration, Cristina out.”

“Bossy…” someone burst out, incidentally making everyone break into a laugh.

After traversing the undulating plains peacefully for half an hour under the scorching sun with the only sound breaking the silent landscape coming from their vehicles' engines, the battered 1st Company began unexpectedly taking fire from the flank. Puffs of smoke rising from the ground could be seen at a distance; ordinates were discharged in succession from the barrels of their cannons in the form of a series of anti-tank rounds aimed at the column. The high-velocity shells traveled right past the formation, barely missing the lead tanks and finding no victims but alerting everyone to the danger that hid in the field adjacent.

Proactively reacting to the menace, Rafael’s tanks immediately faced sideways, their cannons pointed in the direction of the white smoke that came from the enemy’s barrels. A few seconds after rearranging their formation, the Panzer IV’s guns rained death on the IF students, sniping them from afar, with no effect on them whatsoever. Their Iberian counterparts simply outranged the UAT’s tanks.

It was the basic principle of AT (anti-tank) weapons to destroy tanks, and Nazi Germany was no stranger to the task, for they produced some of the best tank killer weapons at the time after encountering the soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks whose armor they could not punch through in those early years of the war. But the soviets had deadly toys of their own, making the most revered German tank aces come up with an unofficial rule to target any AT gun they found first and then engage the enemy armor; that was how dreadful real tankers saw them in reality.

Sticking her head from the cover of her half-track to better ascertain the situation, the commanding officer of the 1st company scanned the horizon with her binoculars, stopping her moving head when she spotted the puffs of smoke rising into the sky. The enemy position was two hundred meters away.

“I thought you said this area was clear, lieutenant!” A disturbed student shouted from the vicinity without revealing himself.

“...That’s what Ricardo told me!" She screamed back. "It looks like they're dug in good.”

A couple more shells landed closer to the convoy, covering the closest vehicles with dirt. The IF students on the other side of the field had almost finished narrowing down the distance.

“We’re sitting ducks here!” “For f**k's sake, let’s go,” “What do we do, lieutenant?!” Were merely a few of the voices mixed in with the hot summer breeze that suffocated them—the anxiety perpetuated by a looming death moved closer by the minute.

“Our orders were to bypass any stronghold we encountered and proceed to our primary objective!”

Faced with not only the decision of attacking or fleeing but the pressure her comrades were exerting on her as well, made Cristina clench her fists in rage. The never-ending sweat pouring from her face stained her uniform, and the incoming enemy shells reaching ever closer to her unit made her tremble in anticipation of what was to come. The decision was hers to make, and so was the fallout if things went wrong, not to say the least.

“…O-or…orders are…orders,” she repeated after a moment of eloquent pondering. “Move away from their AT range capabilities first, then proceed towards our objective!”

The conclusion Cristina had arrived at was a relatively simple one; she already had a company at half strength; any more damage to them would effectively put them out of the game. Worse than that, it would force Ricardo’s hand to spread her surviving students as reinforcements to the other companies, as Angelo had done to the 6th Company at Teutoburg. Incidentally, just as she was about to give the order to fall back, the radio from her vehicle cracked a bit with an incoming transmission.

“f**k that,” the voice came from none other than the squadron leader in charge of the five tanks, the proud Elite Phoenix member, Rafael. “I’m not gonna let those assholes ambush the next unit that comes through here…All tanks on me!”

“““Following you squadron leader!””” The other crews reacted in unison.

Strangely enough, every single tank protecting Cristina’s unit, as if their minds were linked, pressed the ‘gas,’ igniting the engines to push the 25-tonne beasts forward. Former Elite members worked differently from the regular students in several ways; once a single member committed to something, everyone else pitched in, and that fervor went double if that someone was one of their core officers. Angelo tried to bring that camaraderie feeling to the rest of his students through multiple attempts and failed miserably at that—no matter what he did, the regulars' bond just wasn’t as strong as that of the Prodigies, also known as Elites.

“What are you—?!?!”

“Those 47mm guns can’t penetrate our armor, but they can hurt lightly armored vehicles, so stay here and enjoy the show, Rafael out!”

Before Cristina could say anything more, every tank that was previously protecting her company broke formation and began advancing across the open terrain at top speed with their guns blazing against the enemy as they went. The bravery of the Phoenixes made every bystander jump up from cover to watch the spectacle in envy.