Day 1, 22:31 Mar Sara Standard Time.

I shivered as I put the Marin suit back on. It was no longer a question of just where the bodily waste that a Marine discharges when he pisses himself, or shits himself goes. A catheter and a shit bag. A small tear was all the accompanied the realization I was no longer pure as well as the tube slid its way inside me.

Shaking myself a moment, ignoring the twinges and the sudden height gain with the armor being placed back on me. I moved back out, all through the night the Zerg had tested out defenses. I’d begun moving the Marines in batches of ten to rest for an hour.

It wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot, but with the constantly growing waves of Zerg as well as the frequency of hits throughout the day I had no choice.

As I stepped outside of the command structure that served as a temporary barracks, I saw the compound that was our single line of defense lit up like a Christmas tree. I’d ordered it after I started fearing drop pods launching singular, or small groups of Zerg behind our lines. It turned out to be the correct choice as well. We’d stopped two attempts so far from the Zerg to hit our Civilians.

I frowned at the screaming that was the newest Zerg wave, heard well above the constant shooting that was going on. They really were getting worse, and it was just the first day. How the hell were we going to survive three damned days of this?

Hell, an entire third of our ammunition had been used on the first day alone as roughly two thousand Zerg. That may not seem like a lot, considering it was only three days I had to stay here. But the waves were only going to get larger, it took anywhere from twenty to thirty bullets to take down five Zerglings as they charged forward. It’d add up quicker. I imagined that by the end of tomorrow we’d end up having used over half of the remaining rifle ammunition.

I’d taken the precaution of having a few of the quicker moving Marines rig the second bridge up to blow like the first. A measure made in the extremely likely event the Zerg waves reached over a thousand each wave.

We’d be down a kill zone and have to deal with air units and more of those fleshy drop pods. We had dealt with a few of the Mutalisks, but only around ten throughout the morning. Nothing had shown up in the skies during the night yet, the Missile Turrets that lined the cliff edge there were more than enough to take them down quickly.

I was also very thankful the missiles were seeker missiles because those fucking things moved in highly quick erratic patterns. It made it hard to hit them with standard munitions.

I saw as the Zerg wave finally ended, and the rested ten went to the line and the next batch went to rest. They were slumped, several only walking a few feet and collapsing where they stood, rather than walk to the makeshift barracks.

This wasn’t working, they’d die from exhaustion before two days went by, let alone three. I had to move more men out to rest each time while maintaining the defense. There had to be a way that didn’t involve taking out the bridge yet.

I was racking my brain for a method, not seeing Reynolds as he moved in to stand before me, saluting slowly. “Sir, we need to rest the men. Somehow, there has to be a method!”

His sudden appearance, from my perspective, and his words made me jump a bit. “I know, Reynolds. I’m trying to find a way. But the waves are coming every half hour now, and I don’t trust the cunning fuckers not to try something between the waves. For now, tell the boys to rest until we see the next wave coming at us. I need at least one of the fresher men to stay on full alert at that bridge though.”

He nodded before hobbling off, he was just as exhausted. I’d doubted the kid had even taken his turn to rest yet. That made me frown, he was the closest thing I had to a veteran in terms of the Marine Militia.

So, I had to think of a way to do this. I had no ability to build new defensive structures, no automated turrets to by my men at least an hour or two of very needed rest, limited ammo, limited weapons. More importantly, limited men. The civilians, I imagine I could gang press them into the line too by time. But we had no other armor to equip them with.

The boys wouldn’t even remove their armor any longer, some of them couldn’t remove them because of a few times when the Zerglings had made it to the line itself and mangled some of the seems that allowed us to take them off. The guns were too big for them to use outside the armor as well, so that wasn’t an option.

I spent another half hour just thinking about that when the first shout of the Zerg wave arriving was heard. Yelling out I rushed to the firing line, picking up my rifle and taking aim. Only half an hour of rest for everyone currently on the line, minus the latest batch that technically received an hour and a half of rest. They were the freshest I had at the moment.

Placing them on the flanks to shoot the outer edges of the wave, and take out the stragglers I went to the center and found Goose there. “Howdy Boss, enjoy your beauty sleep?” Right, he was the jokester as far as I could tell. Hell of a shot though, him and Reynolds were certainly the most veteran of the men here. Made me wish I had more like them both. But I’d learned in the first few hours that every other Marine here was titled ‘Militia Marine’ with no name, though they had a kill counter under the name, kinda like that game.

Gave me hope that they might increase rank, maybe the amount of damage they could dish out would increase as well. Doubtful that this was that much like the game, but you never know.

We opened fire once the Zerg wave hit the middle of the bridge, taking them down by the dozen as they inched forward over the dead bodies of the previous Zerg that weren’t hauled off, likely to be fed to their Creep, or reduced to organic matter for them.

A bit into this wave, explosions were heard. I looked up, seeing the skies held a few dozen Mutalisks, and our Missile Turrets were taking them down. A small sigh of relief escaped me as I turned my attention back to the wave of incoming Zerg, at least no major air incursion had occurred yet.

Once the wave ended I all but collapsed. It had lasted almost an entire hour. My legs were sore, my heart was still thumping from the adrenaline, and the mental and physical strain and hit harder. Around me, the Marines were the same. I moved to turn to Goose only to be interrupted by a box showing up in front of me.

System Announcement!

Congratulations Player: Damian Fern! You have survived your first day in the Tutorial! We acknowledge your decisive actions in destroying the bridge to limit ammunition expenditure!

The system verifies all Marines have survived the first day with no major ill effects. System rewards Player: Damian Fern with restocked ammunition piles for the second day.

-WARNING- Zerg waves will be set to two thousand, sent every hour without stopping on day two.

System Advisement - Additional units and equipment will begin showing up across the gorge, obtaining these units or items will grant Player bonus rewards outside of mission objectives - Advised, not taking in newly spawned units, allowing them to die, will remove your tutorial bonus mission for all units surviving.

System Announcement! Player: Damian Fern has gained his first subscriber! The player is awarded a few additional items in your tutorial armory, look for them now! Items gained through Subscribers are permanent.

I could feel my eyebrow start twitching at that, not only did they just ensure I had to cross that fucking bridge if I wanted to maintain a bonus objective, they also gave me the incentive to do it with the promise of rewards.

The only plus was that it would give me more men to survive with, but at the same time all but tripled the difficulty because it required me leaving the safety of our defensive line to get them. At least it did show where they would ‘spawn’ in. The upper right portion of my display had a minimap now, showing their location and a timer for when they would arrive.

Three hours, so three waves of Zerg set at two thousand, hopefully without increasing in size. We had our munitions fully restocked, and apparently, I had new equipment in the Armory now. It proved my earlier thoughts about the system giving you a fair chance at survival even while increasing the difficulty.

Frowning a bit I moved toward the Armory, shouting at Reynolds as I went. “Get the boys to rest, all of them excluding the last ten that managed an hours rest. Keep them on look-out. I have a feeling we have a bit before the next wave, and this time it’ll be worse.”

He did a salute, shouted out my commands along the line and then promptly fell face first into the ground. The thud and clank of metal as he struck the ground loud enough to echo out. It was funny, in a way, but just showed the strain everyone was under even more.

I had to make sure we made it until the end, regardless of whether I could ensure the new units spawning in making it out alive or not. Keeping in mind it was a tutorial, and nothing here mattered beyond getting additional rewards to help me later on, I entered the Armory.

Upon entering the main Armory room, having looked everywhere else, I saw what I had been gifted.

Hostile Environment Suit

Armor - 4

Upgrade - 1/3

Ability - Allows wearer to cloak for as long as the suit has energy

Energy levels - 100/100

C-10 rifle Mark IV

Damage - 10

Upgrade - 1/3

Ability - Snipe

Automated Turret - 1

Damage- 6

Ability - automatically fires at enemies in front of it.

Ammunition - 4000/4000

Tactical Nuke - 1

Capable of destroying all in its path, high explosive yield will damage allies.

What...in...the...fuck! My mind went blank at the items I was given. It also set me into a spiral of worry. If these were given, knowing how much simpler it could make matters, then the difficulty had gone up a lot more than I thought. Unless the rewards were random and had no effect on difficulty.

Lack of information made me assume it was the first option. Ok, first off. This gives me a chance, though small. I looked at the automated turret. It was roughly my size, without the Marine armor on, massive barrel and two ammo boxes. Each would hold two thousand rounds, and likely spend them at an accelerated rate.

That meant I needed to be careful with its use. I’d haul it out in a bit. The other items, the Nuke being the most self-explanatory, would allow me a chance at bringing in those men, and maybe take out two Hives. That was not a priority, but if the chance arose I’d take it. That had always been the hardest part for me in the actual game, so I imagined it’d give the largest reward.

The Ghost armor and weapon were another matter entirely. Only the one set each, so not a squad of Ghosts to go pick up and lead back the newly spawned people or gather the items. That also meant that my lily white ass had to be the one to put it on and walk out there to get them.

The cloaking and snipe abilities would help as well, though I was surprised the equipment had the abilities tied to it and didn’t need special training. It helped these two items had one of the standard upgrades for weapons and armor the game provided. Interesting to note that it seemed to apply individually, and not all around. Maybe it’d be different with produced weapons after research? Fuck I don’t even know how that would happen. I’ll have to figure it out later.

For now, I grabbed the C-10, and the Stealth Suit before moving back to the armor equipping area to remove my Marine gear. Ignoring the discomfort of a catheter being removed, and doubly ignoring the long thing being removed from my ass, I slid into the Ghost gear, hoisting the large Rifle, capable of semi-automatic fire and single shot, according to the game, it was the single highest damage output for infantry based units on the Terran side.

Ok, this is amazing! The vizor for the Ghost gear had a shit load of neat things, including infrared vision, and that I KNOW wasn’t in the game, I could detect hidden enemies with this. Following that, it showed me that the energy consumed per minute stealth was one, giving me a little over an hour of stealth.

I had no clue just how far out the incoming men and equipment would be, going off the map. I never really was the best at reading the damned things.

I went further over the gear, the C-10 rifle mark VI held a magazine of about fifty bullets, and shot in three round burst on semi-automatic. The suit allowed me to hold three additional clips, so I needed to be more careful with my ammo. The bonus to the limited ammo was the increased damage output, from what I remember reading about the different weapons the Terran used, this was a high powered rifle, the Mark VI more so with a magnagrid addition increasing accuracy as well as augmented recoil absorption so I could fire multiple single shots back to back without the kick one would expect from a high powered rifle like this.

I was pretty happy I’d be taking this baby with me when this was over. If I survived this shit to do so, I was naming the beauty in my hands.

The next three hours went by in a blur, I had set up the automated turret, which did the work of all my Marines, letting them get some much-needed rest. Though I maintained half of them at the line on the off chance those fast little jumping bastards made it to the turret. I knew from the game the thing had absolutely no defense against Zerglings when they swarmed it.

From there, the real ‘fun’ began. The system notified me that three clicks from my position the units had spawned and were pinned in by burrowed Zerg. The fact it gave me those details had me instantly believe that there would be dozens, if not more, of the fuckers ready to spring up and rip me to shreds.

“Reynolds, Goose, hold the line. I’m heading out, got word there are other boys out there needing help.”

I didn’t explain the intel, I mean, there was a com station in the makeshift command center. They would probably assume that just like the new get-up coming from some supply drop, that the information came with it somehow.

Reynolds did not like the idea though, made a point of stating it again. I was beginning to believe he was a worry-wart. “Sir! I cannot express the number of reservations I have with this plan. You should not go out there, we have the means to survive now, with this turret and our backup plan with the bridge. I feel for those men...but…”

He cut his words off when Goose placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, silencing him. “Get the boys home, Sir.” was his only reply before barking orders to the other men. I just smiled at the retreating Goose, and visibly distraught Reynolds before lowering the visor and activating the cloaking function.

I took a deep breath, really hoping this wasn’t something I would quickly regret, and took my first step onto that bridge.