Ebott Chronicles

Scrimmage

-Jason POV-

I sat among a small squad I personally trained, masked by the darkness we stayed laid up in the brush on the side of a hill. It'd been two weeks since the intensive training begun and we were finally letting the two sides of the force battle it out in a scrimmage. Using red and blue chalk bullets we loaded up our gear and were setting the two forces against one another. Helix lead the opposing blue force and I lead the red team. It was a game of capture the flag, both sides had a file that the other team needed to collect and return to their base which was two two story buildings with built in defensive positions.

I was with a group of four that me and Helix had chosen after many people had complained that I should have a security detail, I disagreed but they apparently chose to ignore my input. So we elected to take four as my personal squad which normally would include helix but didn't now, for obvious reasons. 

We waited for nearly an hour in the bushes before anybody appeared, but eventually nearly a hundred yards out a squad of renegades came into our view. I whispered just loud enough for everyone to hear me. "six hostiles, 100 yards, 10 o'clock. I'll take point man, identify your targets." I waited for them to near silently tell us which they were taking before continuing to follow the point man in my sights.

I waited until the air felt just right and started to squeeze the trigger until a loud bang erupted from my rifle, identifying my hit before moving to the next target as two of us would need to take two of them. Once I'd fired a few more shots rang from my team as the second to fire did the same as me, taking out the whole squad before they had realized they were being ambushed. As there was near constant firing there was no way to tell whether it was you or someone else being shot at.

 Once the entire team was shot they laid on the ground as instructed, when you 'died' in the war game you stayed where you were killed and are not allowed to do just about anything until the game was over. The one thing they could do was watch the feeds from their ally's cameras to keep entertained while dead.

Once the ambush had been completed I stood up and waved for the rest of my team to do the same, beginning to move from our positions towards the objective. As well as the fact a bunch of bodies laying on in one spot would likely give away our position and prevent anyone else from coming this direction anyway. 

We headed north, of us keeping 360 visual at all times as we moved. I stayed at the front of the squad despite how much they tried to keep me in a safer position. my second man was a boy by the name of Robert, a 17 year old who was a private when he was killed by mortar fire before he ever got to see combat. Despite never seeing the front lines I was able to easily recognize his potential. He joined the military when he was 16, lying to the recruiter to get in to serve his country. Even if I didn't support his actions I respected what he did, he wanted to serve bad enough he couldn't wait till he was an adult. It was the kind of dedication I admired.

Our third was Tech, the oldest of the five was a pararescue jumper for ten years. In her early thirties she lost her life in a halo jump accident where both her main and reserve chute failed to deploy, she survived the fall but was unable to move which lead to her being found and killed by enemy combatants after a long firefight.

Fourth was Zak, the cowboy Raguel. Having been chosen because of his combat abilities as well as the fact he speaks multiple languages, a uniquely shocking fact to me. He spoke English, German, Spanish, and French. He's incredibly smart, he just doesn't act like it because and I quote 'If people thought I was smart they'd ask me to do things for them.'