Chapter 6- Shoreleave
Garrus Vakarian aimed down the scope of his rifle. Breathing slowly, he zeroed in on his target's head. Exhaling, he pulled the trigger. The human's head exploded in a shower of blood as the bullet punched through the dome shaped helmet, punching clean through the single white star in the center of it.
"Scoped and Dropped!" He cried, before scoping in again, looking for a second target. Suddenly, there was a loud droning noise overhead. Looking up, he saw a squadron of twin engined aircraft fly slowly overhead, humans jumping out of them, falling towards the ground. Garrus aimed up at one of them. He fired, only to miss as the human activated his parachute at the last minute. Working his rifle's bolt, he took aim again. He was exhaling for a second shot, when the female turian next to him, Nyreen Kandros, suddenly screamed "BEHIND YOU GAR-!" Before a loud CRACK! cut her off. Garrus turned around, reaching for his sidearm. He turned right into the barrel of a rifle, held by a human. There was a loud CRACK! and everything went black. Several seconds later, Garrus woke up inside one of the human's entertainment pods, with a blue counter in front of his eyes reading '10.0 Seconds to Respawn.'
He and a good portion of the turian soldiers onboard the turian fleet were playing a human game, Call of Duty: World at War 23, the first of its series to use Sensovision's new virtual reality entertainment system. The game itself was based off one of humanity's wars, the second world war, if he remembered correctly. The turians were playing as the Germans, while the humans played as Americans. The map they had agreed on was D-Day. The respawn timer ticked to zero, then Garrus was sent back into the game. While his last spawn point was well behind the beachhead, near where, in reality, the 101st airborne had dropped, now Garrus was put into a bunker near the front of the german defensive line. Picking up his sniper, he started to take aim, his crosshairs coming to rest on the head of a human soldier just coming out of a landing craft, but before he could fire, there was a loud screech in the air, before the ground shook as a blast of a battleship shell threw Garrus into the back of his bunker, his arm going dead, indicating that it had been broken. Screaming into chat, "DAMN BATTLESHIP OP," he crawled to his feet, attempting to aim his rifle one handed. A human bullet pierced his skull, sending him back to the pod. Growling in frustration, he waited for the respawn timer to count down. As it hit zero, he re-entered the virtual world. He looked around, seeing himself at the top of a cliff, facing the beach. Perfect. Lying down, he picked a target and fired, scoring another clean kill. Scoped and dropped indeed.
Lieutenant Adrien Victus prowled the human markets, his keen eyes scanning for his target. He saw it, and was over at the shopping booth in a flash. "I would like to buy a few model ships," Victus said to the store owner.
"Would you like the Build-it-Yourself kits or a pre-made model?" The shop owner said.
"I would like a pre-made one, please." Victus said, almost bouncing with joy at the thought of increasing the size of his collection. Several of his crewmates made fun of him for it, but he didn't care. He loved model ships, owning a model of almost every ship class in citadel space. Now, his collection was about to be expanded again.
"Very well, right this way please!" The human said, before leading Adrien into a back room. Adrien's eyes nearly popped out of his head. All around him, on display, were hundreds of models, some of which he recognized, others were new to him. He walked up to one of them, a strange ship, composed of a large disc raised up above a tiny hull, with two nacelles projecting out from it. Across the front of it were the letters: NCC-1701. "What ship is this? Is it some kind of human prototype? I have never seen anything like this in the human navy!" Victus asked the shop owner.
The shop owner burst out laughing. "No, this is a model of the USS Enterprise, a ship from a popular old entertainment vid series back on earth. Its called Star Trek." The human then spent several minutes explaining just what exactly this 'Star Trek' was. Victus decided to buy the ship, if only for its interesting look. He walked over several displays to an odd rectangular vessel. It had a large flat deck, with several small fighters aligned on it. It tapered down from the top deck, narrowing down to a thin keel at the bottom. He pointed to it. "What is this ship? Another fictional one?" He asked.
"No, that's the USS Enterprise, the most decorated ship of the second world war. It was one of only three aircraft carriers to serve throughout the entire war, and was the most decorated american ship of the war. The japanese announced her sunk in battle on three separate occasions, earning her the nickname 'The Grey Ghost.' It has popularized the name Enterprise in our navy. We currently have one of our carriers operating under that name." The shop owner explained.
Victus was intrigued, so he bought one. At the end of his visit to the store, he was down two months' worth of pay, and his collection was up thirty two models. He walked along the promenade, a bag in his hands filled with his newfound acquisitions. As he walked, something caught his eye. It was a small box, in a human display. It showed a human wearing a strange uniform with a chevron shaped emblem on it. He walked over to it, reading the lettering on the casing. It read 'Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation 2 in 1 set! 20% off!' After hearing the human model ship salesman rant on and on about the show, he decided to buy it, as well as several other star trek boxed sets. The human store owner looked at him strangely, but he ignored the look, as he went back to the ship to drop off his new property.
Admiral Hackett's ships moved to engage the enemy. A barrage of golden energy from his ships' cannons carved into the enemy forces. As the opponent's dreadnoughts turned towards him, his own force activated their jumpdrives, jumping back into orbit of the third planet in the system. General Victus' forces had entrenched themselves in orbit of the fourth planet of the system in a ploy to drive Hackett out. They knew that storming Hackett's colony would be suicide, as the ODPs would tear his force apart. So they waited for Hackett to attack. The battle dissolved into a waiting game. Hackett had defensive positions to fall back to, and he had a significant advantage in carriers, but his opponent had numeric superiority, as well as three times as many dreadnoughts as Hackett had. The enemy dreadnoughts had been caught off guard in his last strike, but Hackett knew he wouldn't catch Victus like that again. He did, however, have a plan. He gathered his remaining stealth corvettes and jumped them into the middle of Victus' forces. As soon as Victus' ships engaged, Hackett jumped the rest of his forces in around Victus' inwardly pointing ships. His carriers launched fighters, and he smiled as they began to tear into the enemy forces, antimatter warheads ripping apart his enemy's dreadnoughts. His enemy fought valiantly, but was no match. Every last one of his opponent's ships was wiped out. Hackett stood up, a grin on his face, as he watched his opponent groan at the opposite end of the holotable. His opponent was good, but he was simply better. He extended a hand for the turian general to shake. Victus took it.
There we go. Shoreleave is over, Garrus plays CoD, and Victus got his model ships. Win for everyone!
Tomorrow, hopefully, I will start releasing more serious chapters.