Hello eveyone, hope you are doing well. Just wanted to say thank you to the people who have favorite/followed, reviewed it or just read the story so far. In this chapter, Damian reach the end of the Anchorage simulation. How will he handle the final trench assault? Find out below.
All the US soldiers generated by the simulation were gathered in the trench. The trench looked like an open coffin. A wide elongated ditch, reinforced with wooden planks and sandbags, where the men and women generated by the simulation were piled up, all wading through a mixture of snow, water and mud, clinging to the boots and the armor. The Americans had tried to make the place more pleasant to live in. Small alcoves dug into the ice, where small bunks, tables and stools had been set up, hot plates connected to a fission battery by cables or were transformed into firing posts.
As Damian entered the trench, he was greeted by a macabre scene. Lying on the ground, wounded soldiers were examined by a small group of medics. The head medic would cast a cold glance at a man, or woman, lying in front of him. He would comment on the wound and the affected body part and another medic would record it in a small notebook. From time to time, he would give a brief wave to one of his subordinates, who would remove the soldier's ID tag, and then the medic party would resume its examination.
A silent sentence, for a bad stroke of fate. A wound on one part of the body might be worth evacuating to a hospital, or at least to the tent Damian had seen in the American camp, while a wound on another part of the body was worth a simple blank glance from a doctor, before the dog tags were removed from the still living soldier, to be recorded. Then the family would receive a letter, indicating the full name of the deceased and the words "Killed In Action".
Damian was confused. The Battle of Anchorage simulation was so strange that he lost his bearings. The computer could make him experience a real descent into darkness, either through scenes like this or by tearing apart the soldier next to him in a sheaf of blood and guts, before the tiny, still-identifiable pieces of the soldier disappeared in that little blue flash. Damian could feel the bite of the cold on his limbs or face, the recoil of his weapon and the butterflies in his stomach, which had never really left him since his exit from the Vault. All that was very real.
On the other hand, the simulation, apart from its scandalous Manichaeism, seemed totally out of place. During History classes in the Vault, Damian had learned that the real Battle of Anchorage had cost the lives of many soldiers on both sides, but he could hardly imagine that the real soldiers had thrown themselves at the enemy machineguns, as some of the Chinese soldiers in the simulation had done with him. Likewise, the invincibility of some of the sub-programs like Montgomery was ridiculous and had led to delirious situations, such as the destruction of the artillery guns on the mountain, where Montgomery had been standing on a staircase being shot at by a dozen enemy soldiers who, miraculously, all missed their targets.
It was as if in the midst of its development, the simulation, intended to be as realistic, violent and brutal as possible, in order to prepare a soldier for the horrors of war, had turned into a cheap pre-war action movie. Damian favored this hypothesis because, in his opinion, no sane person would have agreed to return to a battlefield after participating in this simulation.
This simulation, once completed, would undoubtedly leave its mark. All the shootings Damian had been involved in in the Wasteland were nothing compared to the simulation and he began to wonder what the assault on Project Purity might look like when the time came. The only good thing was that if Damian survived the simulation, he would have gained some semblance of military and combat experience that might be useful in the assault on the Enclave.
Damian looked at the watch hanging on the soldier's wrist next to him. It read 1:12 pm. Three more minutes and the assault would begin. He raised his head to the sky. Through the clouds, he could hear the shells whistling before they finished their deadly fall course and exploded.
Some explosions were closer than others and Damian could see the apparent imprecision of these bombing campaigns, designed to destroy a large area and instill fear in the enemy. One of the shells exploded not far from them and Damian could see some of the soldiers next to him jumping out and tucking their heads into their shoulders.
Damian looked at the soldiers around him. Montgomery was frantically chewing gum, a nervous look on his watch and his ear attached to a radio. Sitting in the snow, or standing against the trench walls, the men and women in combat armor were giving each other nervous glances or trying to comfort each other. Some chatted quietly, others checked their ammunition pouches for the umpteenth time, while one soldier with a flamethrower lit his companions' cigarettes with the small blue flame at the end of his weapon.
Damian was listening distractedly to the conversation between two soldiers when he noticed that his right leg was shaking uncontrollably. He thought back to the last time he had shaken like this, when he was locked in the Super-Duper Mart with the Raiders on first days in the Wastes. That day now seemed so far away, even more so now that he was taking part in a simulation of a war that occurred more than two centuries ago.
"One minute," Montgomery announced as he looked up from his watch.
"One minute," a soldier next to Damian nervously repeated.
The soldiers threw away their cigarette butts and got up, stopping their discussions at the same time. One of them stood in the center of the trench. He looked at the soldiers gathered in the trench, tilted his head slightly back and joined his hands together to amplify the sound of his voice.
"Fix bayonet!"
The order was repeated elsewhere in the trench, and Damian heard a concerto of blades drawn from their sheaths. The soldiers attached the bayonets on their rifles and turned to the top of the trench. There were several ladders to climb out of the trench and a few steps made of wooden beams also led to No Man's Land and the next trench, about 20 meters further on.
"Thirty seconds!"
Damian checked his assault rifle and turned towards the edge of the trench. The explosions were becoming rarer and the last shells were whistling over their heads.
"Ten seconds!"
Damian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The echo of the last detonation evaporated into the air and Montgomery's voice echoed, repeating the order from the radio.
"Charge! Over the top guys!"
Like one man, the soldiers rushed out of the trench, using the ladders or climbing the small staircase to rush to the enemy trenches.
As soon as they came out, a series of explosions shook the ground around them. The Chinese still had artillery and had adjusted their bombardment to perfection.
The ground that separated them from the Chinese trench looked like the Moon. A field of shell craters dotted with small wooden pillboxes and destroyed sandbags and a maze of barbed wire where the soldiers hung on and got stuck.
Damian ran in a zigzag around the large shell craters with his head tucked into his shoulders. All around him, shells rained down and shrapnel flew in all directions, tearing flesh, clothing and armor apart.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see flashes of light from the enemy trenches and the infernal staccato of the machineguns.
An explosion sounded behind him and he felt the blast propel him forward. He landed a few meters further into the Chinese trench. As he got up, he looked over his shoulder. About ten US soldiers were with him. One of them was leaning against a wooden panel and was firing blind bursts towards the rest of the trench.
The infernal concerto of explosions was ringing in his ears, and Damian had to bite his lip to force himself to move. A mixture of snow, earth and pebbles, from time to time accompanied by human limbs, fell back into the trench or No Man's Land as the shells rained down over their heads.
"Fucking Chinese," spat out Montgomery who was next to him and wiped the mud off his face. "Those bastards have perfect timing. At least bombing their own positions will make our job easier."
Two soldiers equipped with flamethrowers passed them and rushed into the trench, followed by the rest of the surviving soldiers. Damian followed them. The soldiers with the flamethrowers aimed their weapons at the corners of the trench and let out long burst of flames.
Three Chinese soldiers sprang from a corner of the trench and were immediately engulfed in the brazier. They fell on the ground, gasping for air, as their bodies were eaten by flames and the smell of burning flesh was added to the smell of gasoline.
The trench ended with a small wooden log staircase in the frozen ground. Sheltered by a rocky pass, Damian and the American soldiers reached a third trench.
Wading through a mixture of mud, blood and slush, Damian arrived in a small wooden shelter. They crossed it and arrived in front of a rectilinear trench guarded by a concrete pillbox.
Two American soldiers ran into the trench and were soon targeted by the Chinese machineguns in the bunker. One of the soldiers with a flamethrower tried to reach the bunker but was also killed.
"What do we do?" asked one of the soldiers of the battle group hysterically.
"What do you think we do?" answered Montgomery. "Let's shoot them!"
All the American soldiers started shooting at the bunker, but the defenders were dug in and none of their shots would pierce the concrete wall of the pillbox.
"Ramirez! Rifle grenade!" yelled Montgomery.
A US soldier next to Damian grabbed a strange looking explosive device and fixed on the barrel of his gun. He then removed the 5.56 cartridge and put a fake bullet inside it.
The soldier jumped from his cover, his rifle on his hips, pointed toward the Chinese concrete fortification.
"Fire!" shouted Montgomery.
The soldier pulled the trigger and Damian heard a metallic sound. The grenade at the end of the rifle flew toward the bunker and exploded on the wall.
"Flamethrower! Burn 'em!"
The second soldier with the flamethrower moved towards the bunker, which wall had was carved by the grenade explosion. He stopped a few meters from the bunker, raised his weapon and a long tongue of fire spurted out of the nozzle of the flamethrower, rushing into the bunker's opening.
Despite the surrounding din, Damian could hear the agonizing cries of burned Chinese soldiers rushing out of the bunker. The concrete structure exploded, allowing the Americans to move on.
The trench was swarming with Chinese soldiers and it was impossible to take a step without hearing a scream or seeing one come out of nowhere or shoot at Damian and the others.
Damian arrived in one part of the trench, covered by wooden planks that were partly destroyed. Several Chinese soldiers rushed towards him and the members of the Strike Team. Out of the corner of his eye, Damian saw one of the American soldiers bayonetting one of the enemy soldier into the chest.
A bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued, with each soldier grabbing whatever he could get his hands on to fight and kill his opponent. Some American soldiers had given up their rifles for their pistols and trench knives or fought with a small chainsaw sword, while the Chinese wielded pieces of studded wood, swords or used their rifles with bayonets as spears.
Damian heard someone shouting in an unfamiliar language and turned around. One of those Crimson Dragoons was running at him wielding a sword. Damian pointed his weapon at him, but the Chinese commando deflected his rifle and snatched it out of his hands.
Damian jumped back to avoid being cut in half and tried to grab his pistol. The Chinese soldier struck again and disarmed him. He delivered a vertical blow, but his sword got stuck in a beam in the dugout.
As he tried to pull his sword out of the wood, Damian grabbed his trench knife and rushed to the Chinese commando. He punched them in the face and the spiked knuckle guard broke the orange visor on his helmet. The Crimson Dragoon staggered backwards before Damian stabbed him in the stomach with his dagger. The Chinese soldier collapsed on the sticky ground of the trench and his body disappeared in a bright bluish light.
Damian turned around and saw another enemy soldier come at him, this time with a bayonet. Damian, in a reflex, parried the blow with his hand. He felt his body tremble as the blade pierced his hand. The Chinese soldier grabbed his throat and began to squeeze. Damian stuck his knife into the soldier's chest and then smashed his face with the knuckles.
By killing his opponent, Damian had also made his weapon disappear. Where the bayonet had entered, only a large and painful bloody wound remained. Damian put away his knife and picked up his pistol. He also wanted to pick up his assault rifle but using it with only one hand would be a handicap. He could always count on Montgomery and his invincibility and unlimited ammunition, but something told him that the simulation wasn't going to let him.
All the Chinese were dead and only Damian, Montgomery and two other American soldiers remained. The ground in the trench was covered in blood and mixed with the soup of mud and slush in which the soldiers were wading.
The trench came out inside of a small ruined town. A labyrinth of rubble, barbed wire, pillboxes, tank traps and concrete blocks.
A pillbox guarded the entrance to the trench, and from the opening Damian could see the flashes of Chinese machinegun fire. A new wave of American soldiers arrived from the side, and the newly arrived flamethrower soldier fire his weapon to the bunker.
Damian raised his head. Seeing that the bunker was destroyed and that no more shots were coming from that direction, he stood up and walked out of the trench. The only way forward was through a small ruined house occupied by several Chinese soldiers, including a sniper.
Damian took cover behind one of the anti-tank concrete blocks, immediately imitated by the other soldiers. Amidst the gunfire and artillery explosions, Damian could hear the roar of an engine. He looked up again and saw a Vertibird passing over them. The aircraft turned around and fired a series of rockets at the Chinese position.
The American soldiers around Damian got up and rushed in. On the other side, Damian could see the Vertibird slowly approaching the ground. The aircraft remained about two meters above the ground and the side doors opened, revealing a row of soldiers in T-51b power armor.
The soldiers, all equipped with heavy weapons, jumped into the snow and the Vertibird rose again into the sky.
It was impossible for Damian to reach them due, to a large row of barbed wire and he had to pass through another ruined house and reach the destroyed pillbox.
Damian came up against the blue wall of the simulation, which separated him from a large snow field, where several pillboxes had been built and where small mounds of snow had formed too evenly to be natural. On each mound, Damian noticed a small bluish lamp flashing at regular intervals and the field was sometimes lit by electric arcs. The field ended at the foot of a large, partially unscathed industrial compound where several Chinese flags were fluttering in the wind.
Damian joined the soldiers in power armor. Equipped with flamethrowers or miniguns, they sliced through the Chinese ranks with great ease. Damian had the opportunity to observe them in a little more detail. Their shiny new armor would have made the armor of the Brotherhood or the Outcast look like antiques or pieces of scrap metal recovered from a dump.
Seemingly impervious to bullets, the soldiers advanced with their heavy footsteps, while firing at anything that looked remotely like an enemy soldier. Damian thought back to the soldiers of the Enclave and their model of power armors. He had to fire several rounds of ammunition before he could hope to break through the thick layer of steel. In the simulation, the soldiers in T-51b seemed invulnerable, but Damian suspected that it must have been a script in the simulation to make it easier for the subject to believe that one of these soldiers was worth an entire army on its own.
Damian noticed that the owners of the power armor had all been given nicknames, willingly or unwillingly, each one more poetic or ridiculous than the other.
"Creeping Death", "Sledgehammer", "Widow Maker", "Conqueror", "Mr. Sandman" or "Frosty the Snowman", all names and nicknames that would have been easy to find their way into a lousy pre-war action movie.
Damian stood back with Montgomery and watched the carnage that these real human tanks left in their wake.
They eventually made their way out of the ruined city and arrived in front of the Pulse Field. Sheltered in a small ditch, Damian looked around him as the T-51b soldiers finished destroying an enemy pillbox with a flamethrower.
One of the soldiers in power armor came a little too close to the Pulse Field. Several electric arcs sprang from the ground and fell on him. Caught in the lightning storm, the soldier was shaken with spasms and jolts before collapsing into the snow, smoke billowing from his body.
"We've got to destroy that damn Pulse Field, or all the guys we lost today will have died for nothing," cried Montgomery.
Damian noticed a small metal tower with several antennas on the roof of a steel bunker. He headed there with Montgomery. Around him, other American soldiers were coming and taking up positions in the ditch. The Chinese artillery fire was weaker than in the initial assault, but the shells continued to fall on the trenches behind them.
The bunker served as a command post for the Pulse Field and was guarded by two Chinese soldiers, quickly eliminated by Montgomery. A large console with inscriptions in Chinese had to regulate the power of the impulse field. Not seeing an "on/off" button, Damian grabbed his pistol and fired several rounds into the console, which lit up in a shower of sparks.
Damian heard a rumble and looked through one of the opening. The entire snowfield surrounding the refinery and industrial complex lit up blue as small explosions accompanied by electrical arcs spread.
A series of shouts of joy from the ditch reached Damian and he turned his head to see the American soldiers charging towards the industrial complex. Several sporadic shots emanating from the walls surrounding the refinery hit some of the soldiers but the advance continued until they were within a few meters of the surrounding wall.
Damian left the bunker and headed towards the Chinese HQ. He had expected more resistance from the simulation. He perceived a white flash from the refinery walls and saw a small nuclear mushroom appear where the heavy steel door was supposed to be. Soldiers in power armor had blown the entrance with a Fat-Man and were rushing into the enemy headquarters where gunfire exchanges were beginning to take place.
Damian in turn entered the industrial complex. He entered a small inner courtyard at the foot of a large concrete building, next to which were fuel tanks and red and white factory chimneys.
All the soldiers present were unaware of this and were fighting all over the courtyard. The soldiers in T-51b had traded their heavy weapons for gigantic steel sledgehammers and used them to hit the Chinese soldiers.
In front of him, next to a metal pole with a red flag with a small yellow star, Damian noticed a Chinese soldier who was different from the others. He was wearing a Chinese camouflage outfit and several stars had been sewn on his shoulders. He wore a large khaki cap stamped with a red star.
The Chinese commander, whom Damian identified as General Jingwei, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Army in Alaska, was fighting with an American soldier. He pierced him with his sword and withdrew the blade in an overly theatrical gesture and turned to Damian.
Jingwei pointed at him and began talking to Damian in English with a strong Chinese accent. Damian raised his pistol and shot him in the head. The Chinese commander collapsed backwards before disappearing in a blue flash. If, as Damian suspected, the simulation would end when the Chinese commander was dead, then he would not wait for the Chinese commander to start yelling at him.
All activity around Damian ceased. The American and Chinese soldiers stopped fighting and stood still, like robots in a standby idle. The shell explosions and the exchange of fire in the trenches had ceased. Only the slight whistling of the wind and Damian's footsteps in the snow that looked around him remained.
"Well done soldier. A damn fine job."
Damian turned around and saw Chase, his cigar at the corner of his lips, flanked by two soldiers in power armor, which had just materialized behind him.
"Am I done? Damian asked. "Am I done with the simulation?"
Chase's face showed a stern expression and he quickly took his cigar out of his mouth and waved it authoritatively in front of Damian.
"Sounds like you have a slight problem with your attitude, soldier. And the simulation's going to kick your ass to fix it. But yes, it's over."
At these words, Damian let out a sigh of relief and a smile appeared on his face, reinforcing Chase's displeased look even more.
"Anyway," the General continued. "You have completed your training. Now report to your unit leader. Dismissed."
Chase's speech was barely finished when Damian's vision became blurry. A blinding white light forced him to close his eyes, while the industrial complex, the ice and snow fields, the trenches and soldiers around him, slowly disappeared.
The Anchorage Reclamation simulation is finaly over.
The chapter title is a reference to a Sabaton song ("Fields of Verdun"). The rifle grenade I described works like the M1 Garand and MAS 49 (the french M14 for those who don't know what it is). No idea if the FO3 assault rifle would be able to work like that or if it would be an underbarrel GL like an M203.
Next time, we will see the Operation Anchorage DLC ending.
