Freya lifted her head from her scope and smiled at her target, who was 3.4 miles away. She hadn’t had that hard of a shot since she left Earth. Granted, she had never fired at a target that was more than a mile away on Earth. Still, she couldn’t call this her hardest shot. That had been a bear she had taken down with a gun with iron sights.

“Hey, new fish, if you’re done admiring yourself, we could use some help.” The sergeant said over the radio, bringing her back from her memories.

She turned around to see the others had not stopped like she had to admire her shot. She saw two marines taking apart the active camo generator while the others were guarding them. The sergeant, who’s name she still didn’t know, had climbed out of the foxhole along with Jesus and had a shovel in his hand. He held it out to her and nodded towards the hole. Jesus, she could see through his face shield, was smiling down at her. He also had a shovel in his hand.

He held out his hand and helped her climb out of the hole. As soon as she had found her footing above the hole, he started pushing the dirt back in, filling the foxhole. Freya joined him. It was quickly apparent that he was much stronger than her, as her piles of dirt were much smaller than his. It didn’t take all that long to fill in the foxhole and, when they were done, Jesus went over the freshly packed dirt with some kind of device that turned the dirt’s color to match the color of the surrounding dirt. Seconds later there was no trace that there had been a foxhole in the playground.

She looked down at the school and saw that the kids were completely oblivious to what had just happened. She even saw kids singing in the closest class room to where she was standing. That made her worry about the impending invasion. This wasn’t a sim. This was the real world. Would those kids be ok in the school when the bombardment began? To her shame she didn’t bring it up to the others. She followed along with the rest of the spec ops platoon as they ran away. It stuck in her mind though and wouldn't go away.

They ignored the truck they came in on and kept on running through the suburban streets. They were all dressed in enemy camo so she didn’t expect them to be stopped. The problem though was they were running really fast and Freya struggled to keep up. While the others seemed to be running at a relaxed pace she had to nearly run full sprint to keep up. She vowed to not complain. It would be too embarrassing. The platoon ran for what felt like forever to Freya but couldn’t be all that long, before the land between houses slowly began to spread out. They kept on running until Freya started seeing what looked like was once farmland between the houses. The farms looked terrible. The land looked like large patches of dirt with a few greenish-brown bushes here and there. The platoon ran right for a small house that had a very big, tan-brick barn, at the end of a street. Everyone ignored the house and ran into the barn through a set of huge, double doors.

Freya raised her arms and put her hands behind her head to catch her breath as soon as she passed the barn doors. It took her a few seconds to realize she was the only one out of breath. She quickly dropped her hands, but the others noticed.

“Damn, new fish, what is your strength at?” One of the corporals asked, as Freya tried to slow her breathing down.

“Enough of that.” The sergeant said as Jesus and another guy closed the huge barn doors. “Bitters, take the new fish up to the loft and keep an eye on our rear. Everyone else, pick a corner. Jesus, with me.”

“Come on, new fish, with me.” Bitters, who was also her shot caller, said, waving for her to follow him.

Freya took a second to look around. The barn was dark, but her amor had already turned on her night vision so she could see. The barn itself was filled up with a massive green tractor. It was by far the largest vehicle outside a spaceship that she had ever seen. There was a ladder that led to a wooden catwalk that ran around the outside of the truck by the ceiling. Bitters was already halfway up the ladder by the time she finished looking around.

“You coming, new fish?” He asked, as he paused near the top of the ladder.

“Just making sure the ladder was sturdy enough for me to climb up. Thanks for that.” Freya replied, surprising herself with the witty comeback. At first she was horrified that she had said that but, as she waited to be yelled at, no one yelled but she did get a few people laughing at the joke. The sergeant, she was grateful to notice, ignored her comment.

She climbed up the ladder and followed Bitters towards the back. “I got this corner, you take that one.” He told her, pointing towards the left hand corner. “Keep an eye out. Toady was masking our trail, but you never know if they cracked his drones or not.”

Freya got to her corner then looked around. There was nowhere to look out. When she looked back towards Bitters she saw him using his knife to carve a hole in the brick. She quickly took out her knife and did the same thing. To her surprise, the brick was very brittle and she quickly made a nice fist-size hole to look out of. She took a few steps back and raised her gun so that the barrel was not sticking out of the hole, but her rifle was too long. She had to switch from her Desus to her DMZ, which had a shorter barrel.

She sent a private message to Bitters asking why they were calling her new fish. His answer made her flush with embarrassment.

“Fishermen use small, live fish to attract bigger fish. New people are like that. They tend to be bait whether you want them to or not. They do stupid things like stand around and admire their kill which draws the enemy fire.” He replied. Freya remained quiet after that.

After a few minutes of scanning the empty landscape around the back of the farm, she realized that she never got an objective update telling her that the objective had been completed like it did in the sims. She wondered if that was just a sim thing or if it was because the Monarch was gone she wouldn’t be getting the notifications. In the end she decided to not bring that question up. She was already acting too much like a brand new marine fresh from boot camp.

Time slowly passed. Freya waited breathlessly as the time when the Raja was expected to start its bombardment arrived. The time came and went without any bombardment. She started to get very worried as the time crept past thirty minutes and no bombardment came. She wanted to ask the sergeant, but, since no one was talking on the radio, she kept her worries to herself.

Thirty-two minutes past the expected time, the sergeant finally broke radio silence. “Orbital bombardment has started.” He told them and Freya smiled in relief.

She looked around waiting for the bombardment, but nothing happened. There were no explosions. No lights in the distance. No signs of any explosions whatsoever. She only saw the dead landscape around her and the cloudy sky. She started to worry that something had gone horribly wrong when, about ten minutes later, the sergeant spoke once more.

“The invasion has begun.” He told them. “We have orders to wait until they have respawn pods on the planet, then zero ourselves. Not sure if we will have any missions afterwards. If we don’t, then it’s been a pleasure to work with you all. Magic, hell of a shot. You’ll be welcome in any platoon that I command in the future. Just do yourself a favor and up your strength mods.”

She heard a couple of laughs at that and she smiled inside her helmet. She looked up from her scope and over towards Bitters who was looking at her. He shook his head then nodded before he turned back to look out of the hole he had made. Freya smiled and turned back to her scope. She took Bitters’ body language to say that he thought she was still a fish, but she was alright in his book.

It took ten minutes for the command to zero themselves out to come across the radio. She was a bit late in activating her mod, so she got to see Bitters take out his sidearm and shoot himself in the head. His body dropped bonelessly to the ground then her mod activated and she found herself looking out of a respawn pod door.

She recognized what she saw through the glass door. She was inside a dropship respawn pod bay. For a second she thought she was on her dropship, but then she started to see the differences. For one thing, the pod bay was slightly wider than her ship and the ceiling was taller with three hand rails hanging from the ceiling instead of the two that she had. She was still spotting all the differences when One suddenly appeared in front of her door and banged her fist on it, startling her.

“Come on Magic, we ain't done yet.” One yelled at her. Her voice was slightly muffled coming through the door. Freya nodded in reply and One disappeared from her view.

She quickly opened the door and stepped out. She found herself in a large dropship pod bay full of naked people. Ignoring the people, she did a quick count of the pods which told her the ship carried six pods on each side, and they were all occupied with BatK fluid. She quickly turned around and found a locker. She equipped her armor and shivered as the warm spray hit her and formed her armor around her. A couple of seconds later she pulled out her weapons from the printer and put them on. By the time she was done, several more pod doors opened up and more marines came out.

As she was pulling her sidearm out of the printer she saw that she had a message waiting for her. She opened it up and frowned. It wasn’t a message that she was expecting. It was a bill telling her that her one hundred and thirty-two credits had been deducted from her account for the respawn. She rolled her eyes and headed towards the back of the dropship where the ramp lay open.

Outside, she found herself in the middle of a huge and very busy Federation base. The dropship she had just climbed out of was one of five that were lined up, with three on one side and two on the other. The ship she just walked out of was not even the largest ship among the five. That went to a beast of a dropship that was easily the largest dropship Freya had ever seen. The thing was so big that it had three weapons systems on it that she could see and that was just from a quick inspection. A look at the rear of the ship made Freya want one just like it. The engines were huge and nothing like she had ever seen when she was looking for one when she redesigned her ship.

“Magic, over here!” Toast called, using his speakers. She turned around and spotted her platoon huddled up on the opposite side of the landing zone. She held her Desus rifle tighter and ran towards her friends.

“Now that we are all here, we just popped a rescue mission.” Sergeant Torres said as she came running up. “We have a downed assault ship that is under heavy fire. It’s in a mountain range where there is a suspected fort somewhere along the range. When we… Nevermind I just got the message that our ride is ready. I’ll outline the plan on the ship.”

Freya followed him as he started to jog away from the dropship and towards a lone assault ship that had just landed. Torres didn’t slow down and ran up the ramp into the ship. Freya was one of the last ones onto the ship. As she found her seat and strapped herself down, she promised herself that she would definitely get more strength mods as soon as she could.

She hadn’t even finished strapping herself in when the ramp slammed shut and the gravity increased as the ship lifted off. She finished strapping herself in as the G’s slowly tapered off.

“Ok, the ship will drop us at the bottom of the mountain where the crash site is at. Intel suggests the fort is build right into a mountain just like everything else on this stupid planet. We have a twenty-mile hike up the mountain, where we will contact the platoon that is under fire. Our objectives are to rescue the platoon and then find and destroy the anti-ship weapons on the mountain. If we need it, I can call for two more platoons for help, but I really don’t want to, because they are needed elsewhere.” Sergeant Torres said over the radio, as the assault ship shook under turbulence.

“This mission apparently has been a crap show since the beginning. It seems the population is actively fighting us and aiding the enemy. I’ve been informed that we have been in storage for about a week. They pulled our First Division out because they are short on troops and don’t want to use their Fourth Division. We are the only division from the Monarch that has been respawned, so don’t screw this up.” He told them.

“When we land, Toast, take your squad up the mountain and get some eyes on what is happening up there. Tater and Ed, up the middle. Done, take your squad up the west side. Dusty, your squad has the east. One will follow in the rear. Time is marine lives saved. The faster we get up there, the more marines we will have to search for those anti-ship weapons.” Torres told them.

“Oorah, Marines.” Sergeant Leni yelled over the radio. Freya replied along with her platoon, getting excited, but that slowly waned as the flight continued. It took them forty-five minutes to get to the mountains and another five for the ship to find a place to put down.

Freya was one of the first ones out of the ship. She looked around and frowned. The mountain range looked huge and rugged. It was covered in loose dirt with sharp, jagged rocks all over the place. Toast ran past her and started running up the mountain. She quickly followed.

“There is no cover here.” Freya remarked, as she ran behind Toast.

“Yeah. The only thing we have is speed. Now shut up and save your breath. We have a long way to go.” He replied.

Twenty minutes later, Freya found herself behind Patterson, who overtook her after Tike passed her. They weren’t even halfway up the mountain yet, and she was having problems already. Her legs were killing her and she kept tripping and sliding down in the loose dirt. The only thing that made her feel better was that the others were having a harder time than she was. Well, everyone but Toast, who was about fifty feet ahead of them. He kept on having to stop to wait for them to catch up. He didn’t seem to trip or slide nearly as much as the rest of them.

She was also starting to hear the sounds of fighting near the top of the mountain. There were sharp cracks or explosions every now and then. They were usually followed by a couple of minutes of repeated gunfire before it tapered off. She did spot some smoke coming from the otherside of the mountain they were running up, so she guessed that the fight was being fought there. They were about halfway up the mountain, when they got a feed from Knowles’ drone that had finally made it up the mountain.

The drone’s feed showed what was left of an assault ship on its side. Surrounding it was a bunch of enemy soldiers. The Federation Marines had, for the most part, moved out of the crashed ship and taken up better positions around it. Although the feed did show that there were still some marines on board the wrecked ship. From what the drone’s feed was showing, Freya guessed that they were using the ship as a first aid collection point. Then the feed ended abruptly as someone shot down Knowles’ drone.

“Come on people, move your butts. They look to be in bad shape.” Sergeant Torres commented. Freya forced herself to go faster. Knowles sent up a few more drones, but they all ended up being shot down. The good news was that it took them a minute or two to do so, and they gave them a pretty good picture of where the enemy was before they were spotted and shot down.

Toast was the first one to enter the fight. She saw him stop near a bolder near the top of the mountain that reminded her of an arrow head. He raised his rifle and took a shot. He raised his head away from his rifle scope to look at what he had shot before lowering his head back down again

“That’s a bad habit.” She thought to herself as she forced her tired legs to go faster. “I need to tell him to stop doing that. Trust your scope. Don’t look up from it.” It had been drilled into her by her grandfather when he taught her how to hunt.

Without looking back at the rest of the platoon, Toast made a finger gun then pointed to his right. The finger gun was Freya’s hand signal. She took it that he wanted her to head to the right. As she was figuring that out she saw him make a fist and point it to the left. The fist was Patterson’s sign. Then he quickly opened and closed his fist then pointed down next to himself. The opening and closing of a fist was Tike’s sign. Freya started angling towards the right and, to her relief, Patterson angled to the left while Tike kept on going straight.

She picked out a small depression in the dirt for her position and, as she reached it, she saw that she was not the only one who thought it was a good place to take cover. There were four enemy enemy soldiers facing away from her looking towards the top of the mountain. They were all hunkered down, with one slightly raised up to a crouch position so that he could look at what was happening in front him.

Freya didn’t even hesitate and dropped her right hand away from her Desus and reached down to pull out her pistol. With a quick flick of her thumb, she turned the safety off and switched the fire rate to automatic. Still holding her rifle in her left hand, she waved her sidearm at the people in front of her while holding the trigger down. It took two seconds for her to run out of ammo, but it was more than enough time to kill them all.

Her handgun was not a quiet weapon and it caught the attention of everyone on top of the mountain. She jumped into the depression with the four dead bodies and cowered under the very heavy return fire. She wormed her way between two of the dead bodies and used them for additional cover. There was more than enough time for her to holster her sidearm and wait out the rounds flying all around her. As she lay in between the two bodies she ground her teeth in frustration, as there was nothing she could do but stay down.

Then there came a familiar roar as Patterson opened fire with his huge cannon. Freya smiled inside her helmet as she heard the sound. A couple of seconds later, Freya was thinking about popping her head up to take a look when she heard the loud sounds of Third and Fourth squads stepping into the fight.

“Tate, Ed. Take your squads and push forward. Done, get moving. I need you to flank them now. Dusty, get Magic and move back.” Sergeant Torres yelled over the radio.

“Hey, Magic.” Dusty called over the radio in a singsong tone of voice. “You still alive in there?”

“Yep.” Freya replied, still between the two corpses. She had not moved since she pushed herself between the two.

“Ok, on my mark. Crawl your big butt out of that deathtrap and head straight down the mountain to our position. We will cover you.” Dusty said to her.

“Roger that and if you call my butt big again, I’ll kick your ass.” Freya told him, lifting her head out of the dirt. She looked to her left and saw that she was face to face with an enemy soldier.

The soldier looked young. Maybe her age or maybe a year younger. His face was covered in angry red and purple acne. Here and there she could spot a few milky white pustules. He had really pale, white skin and short, dark brown hair. He also had nice brown-color eyes. Freya couldn’t stop staring at him for a few seconds. Aside from the acne, Freya thought he had been handsome.

She blinked then forced herself to look away and found herself looking at the dead boy’s chest. More importantly, at the single remaining grenade left on his chest. She smiled, unsnapped the button and pulled the grenade off his chest. She got her first notification then. It asked her if she wanted to pay for the one-time copyright usage for the grenade. She sighed in frustration at the notification and agreed to pay the ten credits. Silently cursing corporate greed, she pulled the pin, but kept her hand on the arming bar. She looked up from the dead man's chest, but this time forced herself to not look at his face. It was an ugly reminder that this was not a sim and the people she killed were real people. She had forgotten that somewhere along the line.

“On the count of three, start crawling your way towards us.” Dusty said after a few moments.

“Will do.” Freya told him as she rolled over onto her back. She held the grenade across her chest in her right hand while she held her rifle in her left hand by her side.

She heard the sudden loud sounds of gunfire as Dusty’s squad opened fire. She waited until she heard his calm voice counting down. As soon as it reached one, she tossed the grenade and rolled back over onto her stomach. She arm crawled over the lip of the depression and down the mountain. Behind her she heard the grenade go off with a loud boom.

She saw Dusty’s squad as they covered her - filling the air with both ballistic and energy rounds that flew over her. They were spread out, slightly down the mountain, behind a few solid rocks and a few piles of rocks. She kept as low as possible crawling towards them. Going down the mountain let her go faster than she normally could go as she slid in the loose gravel more often than she actually crawled. She could hear the snap-crack as ballistic rounds passed over her.

She found herself falling towards a pile of smaller-sized rocks that Dog was taking cover behind. She saw him stop firing and reach out as she slid past her. Freya felt his strong hands grabbing her backpack and pulling her behind the pile of rock. As soon as she was safe, Freya looked up to thank him, but her friend had already picked his heavy weapon back up and was returning fire.

Freya crawled around Dog and to the other side of the pile of rocks. She switched out her Desus for her GMZ and peeked around the rocks. What she saw nearly made her laugh. She saw enemy soldiers not ten feet from where she was. That wasn’t what nearly made her laugh. It was the way they kept popping up from behind whatever they were hiding behind and shooting blindly towards them before running out of ammo and popping back behind cover.

She picked her target and waited for him to pop back out. As soon as his head entered her cross hairs she pulled the trigger and he dropped. She moved towards her next target. Two more dead enemies and the return fire slowed and stopped. She saw flashes of the enemy retreating as they ran from cover to cover away from them. She got lucky and got one more kill as an enemy ran from a large pile of rocks towards a smaller one. He didn’t make it.

“Tater. Ed. Move up. Dusty, keep going in your direction. Force them back toward the crash. Toast, join up with Done and circle around the crash. Push them into one group. We’ll push them off the mountain.” Sergeant Torres told them on the radio. “Don’t shoot the surviving marines. That would defeat the purpose of being here.”

“I thought we were here to kill the enemy and use our fellow marines as bait?” Bob asked over the radio.

“That’s true, but you don’t kill the bait on purpose.” Dennis, one of the new guys, replied.

“Focus, people.” Sergeant Leni said, cutting the banter off.

“Thanks, Dog.” Freya said softly over her loudspeakers.

“No problem, Magic. I just wish I did this during the tournament. Imagine the clip that would have made.” He said with a smirk on his face as he flexed a little bit.

Freya shook her head in reply. They departed in opposite directions. Dog went off with Dusty while Freya went looking for Toast. She quickly caught up to her squad and fell into her position in the front, while Toast stopped to let the others pass him. He gave her a smile and small headshake as she passed him. She in turn gave him her best ‘I’m sorry’ look.

Freya passed Done’s squad, took the lead position and sent out her sensor alert drone which, she admitted to herself, she should have had running in the first place. Her mind kept going back to her mistake, but she forced herself to be in the moment as she scanned the area for either the enemy or her fellow marines from the Raja.

She didn’t find either until she got closer to the crashed assault ship. There were a bunch of bodies lying on the ground. They wore both the Federation Marine’s colors as well as the enemy colors. She did put a round from her GMZ in each of the enemy bodies she came across. The last thing she wanted was for one of them to pop up and kill one or more of her squad mates. She already made one big mistake on this mission. She did not want to get the bonehead award for making another.

As she got close to the crash, a voice called out. “Raja.”

“Monarch.” Freya replied over her loudspeakers, not knowing their pass codes.

“Good to see you guys.” The voice came back and a Federation Marine stepped up from where he had been hiding about five feet or so in front of the crashed ship. “They’re bugging out that way.” He said, pointing towards where Sergeant Torres had wanted her squad to push them towards.

Freya stood up and let the man see her before ducking back under cover. He nodded his head at her and dropped back under cover. “Gunny Cane is over there. He’s hurt, but I’m sure he would like to talk to you guys.” The guy told her.

“We;ll pass the word. You guys stay under cover and protect your wounded.” Toast said, breaking into the conversation.

“Will do.” The man replied. “Thanks for the save. The Raja is an asshole when it comes to failed missions. Really likes to stick it to your mission points. Hey, also, sorry about your ship.”

“Thanks. Stay safe, Marine.” Toast replied, then motioned for Freya to move ahead.

The battle ended before they were able to circle around the fallen assault shuttle. There was a sudden, but brief, sound of an intense gunfight that ended with a few loud explosions. Toast motioned for her to start running as the gunfight broke out, but by the time she made it around the crash the sounds faded away. Her platoon had killed most of the enemy in the initial rush, but had taken several wounded soldiers captive that remained alive after the firefight.

Torres had them set up guard positions as he went to talk to the Gunny of the platoon that was from the Raja. Freya’s position was on the far side of the crash site, where the least of the fighting had come from. She settled down and switched out her rifles once more so that she could use the better scope off of her Desus. She told herself when she got done with this mission she would get a better back-up weapon or maybe just a better scope for it. It wasn’t a bad weapon except when it came to long-distance shots at heavy armor. That and it had a two-times scope on it, and she could not manually alter the scope to her liking like she could with the Desus.

The rest of the mission was anti-climatic as the enemy captives gave them the positions of the anti-ship weapons. Using that, Torres called in an artillery strike on the anti-ship weapons’ positions. They did have to go and make sure that they were where the captives had told them they were at. It was a lot of walking around the mountains, but the captives hadn’t lied. All they found was broken and burnt out anti-ship weapons. Once they found the last anti-ship weapon, they were pulled off the mountains and the Raja leveled the mountain range with an orbital bombardment. They did learn that the reason they had been put into cold storage was because the Colonel in charge of the Raja’s marines didn’t want to share the credit with anyone from the Monarch. That only lasted until Freya’s Colonel’s message to Federation Command came back forcing the other Colonel to use the Monarch’s Marines. It was the first time Freya and a lot of the Marines from the Monarch had been a victim of military politics.

Less than a day later, the Founding Families surrendered. There was a broadcast that was shown all around the world telling the military and civilians alike to lay down their arms and surrender. There were still some pockets of resistance, but the Colonel from the Raja was able to keep the marines from the Monarch out of the fight. The next day, Torres ordered them into the pods to despawn as they would not be part of the occupation force that would be set up until the Federation Army got to the planet to take over.

Freya’s last view of the planet was from a respawn pod door before she closed her eyes to despawn. She could see out the back of the dropship bay door. It was midday and the sun was shining through the cloud cover. Outside the dropship, she could see both the Marines and Navy personnel as they went about their duty. She was one of the last people to despawn from her platoon. Torres pulled rank and let the command staff remain until the last marine from the platoon had despawned. Not knowing what would happen, Freya had climbed into the pod and awaited her fate. She was surprised to find that she was scared.