Christopher Wright took a drag of his cigarette before dropping it on the floor and stomping on it. He only had... What? A few hours left? It seemed about that. He checked his marksman rifle again. It was a few minutes before the battle would start, he could already hear the pounding of artillery like a dull throb in the back of his head.
Everyone could and it didn't exactly steel their nerves.
Chris looked to his team leader out from the window of the chow hall practically yelling at the Commander. A few others had done the same, gone through bouts of anger, some just accepted they'd die. He didn't care and he didn't have to look far to see another example of how order had fallen apart.
Half of the teams were sitting drunk and the other half were gearing up with anything anyone could find in the armory. He could already see some of the heavier ordinance being distributed amongst them. Anti-tank launchers and rifles, grenade launchers, fifty cals in all shapes an sizes, and, he supposed, most dangerous of all, the cluster missiles.
Often reffered to as bunker buster's they would launch into or onto a site detonating upon impacting spreading dozens of smaller charges everywhere. The initial explosion could be described as problematic for any regular tanks and infantry, the smaller explosives could be described as catastrophic, ripping apart armor and infantry in the process, well... They were designed to be shot at or into bunkers to shred them to swiss cheese. They weren't always used for that however with their affinity towards killing anything ground based.
The smaller missiles were being loaded into laser guided launchers and the larger ones were being loaded into their own larger launchers. He almost felt sorry for the enemy pounding at their front door.
Almost. But, not after they had bombed his life and everyone else's here out of existence.
Chris shifted his focus to his gear. He was wearing the standard multi-camo shit they distributed amongst the common soldiers, it really wasn't that very effective either, they were either fighting in towns and cities or strongholds and forts so having camo mean't for anything but that was just a tad bit annoying.
He checked his chestplate and his mag pouches attached to it. The army had switched out the older stuff into ballistic resistant, gel layered, and fully sealed armor with the bells and whistles they could get at a reasonably decent price. A large chunk of the military budget had went into overhauling just the U.S. arsenal. His marksman rifle was actually a offshoot of the M4 platform, it fired .308 rounds and used a simple design to allow it break into 3 different pieces just by twisting and turning a few things, that was mostly for just for transportation though. It was slightly longer than necessary and that's why they gave it the whole portability bits. For attachments he had set up his rifle with a scope, foregrip, and a flash hider.
There wasn't much else really, anything they were instructed to carry that was non-essential except for ammo would be left out, even if they had specifically been instructed to carry something if it wasn't useful, no one brought it.
Rules had broken down that way and they were stuck in the western half of the U.S. with half of the countries in the east beating at their door, Command had practically gone silent, and anyone left hadn't had much left in ammo or support.
It was a shit show and everyone knew it.
It started because some people decided hey let's fucking insult Russia because it was becoming more a dictatorship than anything. It all started over common disputes and nothing more, it then turned into political fighting, and then actual fighting. Soon enough everyone was in the thick of it, no one could trust anyone else and everyone was lying in some way. He wasn't even sure how the U.S. go involved and fighting. Although, China and Russia did ally with a few other countries to push through Asia and Europe. Chris was also pretty sure Australia was nuked a few times, but, he really didn't know for sure.
Fuck. He needed to de-stress.
He looked down and pulled a cigarette again from the pack he'd had in his pocket. He only had a few left now. He might not need them after this though so that was a plus.
"Yo, Can I have a cig'?" Chris looked up to find a younger guy probably in his 20's across from him reaching his hand out, he was a team leader as far as he could tell. He took out his lighter before wordlessly handing him a cigarette and lighting his own. The team leader pulled out his own lighter and lit.
They sat there for a moment and merely prepared themselves. The chatter had stopped. No one moved. The artillery had gone silent.
The artillery had stopped, that meant the enemy was too close to fire at with friendlies at the farthest positions.
Everyone got up eventually, little by little they trickled out of the mess hall and outside into the fortified positions.
Everyone here knew there would be no mercy from the enemy and no less would be had from them.
No matter how hopeless the fight was.