This close to the front, every dugout and bunker was filled with more veteran units than us, so we were assigned a barren stretch of thin communication trenches, given sharply-pointed spades and told to make ourselves at home. The only brutally inexcusable flaw of our new 'home' was that we were close to the gun pits (about 400-meters in front of them, as the bullet flies) which explained why no one else had claimed this stretch of line yet. If gunners ever slept, it certainly wasn't on the same cycle as ordinary people. They fired at all hours of the day and night, sometimes just a single shot that'd wake me up and have me cursing them. Other times, it sounded like they were trying to knock a city down.

  Time is a tricky thing. I could spend all day waiting on my hands as seconds crawled by but looking back, it was like I'd just left Primgrofaine yesterday. It seemed like I'd been waiting my entire career (all three months of it so far) and now that I was here, I was still just waiting. Killing time, filling the days, no matter what I called it, it all meant the same thing and I did a damned lot of it. We passed the time as best we could but there was only so much busywork I could tolerate before it got tedious. Since it was a communication trench we called home, there was no shortage of news and rumors to idly talk about— assuming the gunners weren't busy deafening us with their damned racket.

  It was during one of those ridiculous day-long calls for fire that Sargent Murphy thundered down the lines bellowing the company into order before he led us to a staging area of dense winding trenches packed with hundreds of soldiers. Like a delayed echo, I asked what was going on and the question forced its way forward, repeated from the lips of everyone until a reply made its way back down our column.

  "The Greens are making a massive push."

  This was it. No more waiting to be seconded to a veteran unit. No more waiting for an offensive that may never come. No more shelling each other from the relative safety of nice deep trenches. Years of cold war and now borders were being crossed in force. The fighting would turn up close and personal just in time for me to be in the thick of it.

  I chambered a live round and clicked on my rifle's safety. We'd been trained for this. We'd been carrying real ammo for just this occasion ever since AISF made its declaration two weeks ago. Extra ammo and gear were being handed out from the nearby stockpiles and we strapped on the weight without complaint. Our mission briefing came down as we geared up for a shooting war.

  Our half battalion in reserve was being pushed up to plug the gaps and solidify the front. We'd push forward to the front lines, recapture a bunker complex and strongpoint from there while olding for further orders. A more complex plan was undoubtedly being made, but that would come later. We were at the sharp end and we had a job to do now.

  Going into combat, there's no way to fully explain what it was like. Even if I could, I'm sure no two members of my platoon or even my squad would describe it the same. I was soldier all the way through, just going through the motions on the outside and clear empty nothingness on the inside. Sid slowly ran his thumb up and down the foregrip of his rifle in a deliberate motion. I couldn't figure out the meaning of it. Then again, there might not been any.

  Maybe it only had what purpose I assigned it.

  Browne looked me over, giving firm tugs at my laden pouches while Hairy Murphy did the same with the other half of our squad. I didn't know the other fireteam that well. McAllister, Tall Reid, Quiet Smith, Hairy Murphy, they were like distant cousins to me— just faces and names that I could put together at a guess.

  "Tighten your belt." Browne said, moving on to Musty and continuing his inspection.

  We'd already looked over ourselves and each other, but Browne persisted. He didn't fuss, he just spoke with certainty like he knew better than we did— if he didn't, he did a good job of hiding that fact. I set my rifle down, hiked my pants high on my hips and cinched my stiff belt tighter. The four bulky pouches holding three magazines a piece settled uncomfortably on my sides, unlike the sizable pouch of first aid supplies nestled in the hollow of my lower back. I wore a slim backpack filled with a huge, heavy power cell for the repeating lasers we were supposed to recapture once we took the bunker.

  I wanted to move. My body needed motion right now. I shouldered my rifle and did some minor twisting to see how restricted my movements were. My legs had a full range of motion but I was hardly agile with all this weight, especially since I could barely lean my trunk in any direction other than forward. A grim chuckle bubbled behind my lips. As long as I could move forward, I'd just have to make do. I wanted to at least stretch but I just waited, and that waiting was a dreadful thing.

  A loud yet subdued clicking (or maybe it was more of a sharp popping?) sound rippled through the trenches. Corporal Browne clicked his own popper several times and we started towards the enemy. The sound of our half battalion, some 400-strong, moving to combat was lost to the rages of war both above and beyond. We were quieter than we had any right to be as we closed on the enemy. The enemy I hadn't seen yet… The enemy who wanted to kill me.

  Movement felt good, I was like a compressed spring just waiting to burst free. Now that I was moving, it didn't matter what came next, I didn't have to wait and think and be told. I could move and do and react. Some part of me tucked away with the rest of my rational mind was afraid in the same way I'd been during our first missile attack. It abstractly knew just how close death could be and how quickly it could come. That animalistic part of me that everyone liked to pretend they didn't have, didn't care. How could it care about death when it had never died before?

  It was as if I had ceased to be me, not that I became something else per se, but the things that I'd thought made me who I was simply didn't matter anymore. My age didn't matter so long as I could aim and pull the trigger. My size didn't matter if I could follow orders. Being poor couldn't define me from the soldiers all around me, faces set and weapons ready. My background, everything that had shaped me until this moment, was completely unimportant. I was just one part of a team larger than life itself and for once in my life that was enough. I knew with complete conviction that I was where I belonged.

  Browne led by example and we did our best to keep up. Our squad was screening the leftmost edge of the company's advance. Our months of training showed here, not a one of us flagged too far behind. We followed in Browne's shadow, pushed onward by the eyes of each other. No one wanted to be the weak link dragging the rest of us down. We reached a collapsed portion of earthworks and gathered in close around Browne.

  "Spread out some you idiots!" He hissed and we obeyed. "Tall, periscope."

  "Why do I have to?" Tall Reid complained— he'd always been a whiner, I knew that much about him.

  "Because you're the tallest, and if you don't you're on point."

  Tall Reid slung his rifle, clambered up the splintered retaining wall and crested his head above the dirt as he took in our surroundings. Hairy bent a knee and offered better footing than the blasted, squealing planks.

  "There's a crater on the other side of this," Tall said softly while pointing to the loose earth that had filled the trench. "Little ways after, far side, there's five greens. Wounded I think, another two guarding them."

  "We'll have to go through them," Browne said. "Hairy, get your fireteam on that berm ready to shoot. Tall are they close enough for a grenade?"

  "Musty, you've got a strong arm. That way about seventy feet, big open square." Musty nodded and primed a shard grenade.

  "Regi, Sid. Standby to assault, we'll support by fire if needed." Browne ordered.

  The grenade arced up, a cry went out from the greens, there was an explosion, gunfire roared, and death reigned. It was all over so fast I didn't even have time to blink.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Sid took off first. If I was tightly wound, he was practically explosive by comparison. I caught a faceful of loose, gritty soil as I scampered up the mound of dirt behind him, and I returned the favor when we slid down the slope's opposite into the crater. Shards of serrated metal tugged at pant legs and scraped fingers whenever I reached out to steady myself.

  The crater was slightly lopsided, mangled soldiers and four split metal tubes littered the space in piles of pieces mixing with groups of gore. I saw a set of steely legs standing amidst the carnage and realized that this was a mortar pit— it had been anyway. Sid and I kept low, we weren't rushing but we moved quick and with purpose.

  Sid reached out and patted my shoulder. My rifle was level with his when he pointed a pale, clean finger at a writhing mass of red-stained clothes next to streamers of shredded flesh.

  Sid gave me a quick glance and mouthed the words, do we get a medic? We lingered for a moment, it twisted and twitched and shuddered like a salted worm the entire time. I wasn't even sure if it knew we were there, if it could understand what was happening to it. Could anything that damaged?

  I thumbed off the safety of my rifle as I walked towards it. The sound echoed in the crater like another grenade had just cooked off. White flashed as its ruptured eye rolled to find the source of that impossibly loud sound. A knowing pinprick of blue from the field of white met my gaze down the length of a rifle. Its mud-brown eyelid closed. My rifle bucked once in my hands, and I took my first life.

  I'm a killer now, I thought. Pulling a trigger was such an indifferent affair; a twitch here, and sudden death there. But seeing that ember of life go out, watching a body still as it went limp, that was an affair of such intimacy nothing in my fifteen years could rival. At this range of no more than ten feet, I saw that moment in a serene null.

  I couldn't help but think, a normal person would be devastated. I guess that made me abnormal. After all, shouldn't I feel something after killing someone, no matter how I did it? All I felt were the tight straps of my belt and pack. When I looked deeper inside for what I was missing I found a hollow, empty place instead. Knowing that I had that void inside me did more to unnerve me than looking at the still corpse I had made.

  I turned from the death I had dealt and saw the emotion I was lacking on Sid. A silent but oh-so-apparent expression of morbid curiosity mixed with horror and tinted in hues of something entirely foreign to me too. His emotions faltered under my scrutiny, uncertain judgment replacing them.

  "Are you okay?" I asked. He worked his jaw twice before answering.

  "Just… Are… I'm not hit."

  "Good," I said to him, then louder. "Clear!"

  The rest of our squad crested the loose earth and descended into the pit with us. Hairy had a twitchy, unsettled air about him. The others in his fireteam wore a mix of expressions as they marched on the far side of the mortar pit to join us. They'd all pulled triggers too, but somehow they seemed different from me. From start to finish, our ambush had taken less than two minutes— hell, it might have been less than one. It was all over so quickly.

  "Grats Regi, you're a man now." Browne said with a firm pat on the shoulder as he advanced to the front of our column and set pace.

  No one questioned him or what we had just done. We obeyed and followed his lead, there were things to do and places to be. Soon after that we stopped again, small arms fire popping nearby but not overhead. Another collapse in the soft loamy soil blocked our path.

  "Tall, you're up." Hairy said without delay while offering a knee. Tall Reid climbed and poked no more than his eyes above the turned earth. "What do you see?"

  "The bunker's just a littl-" A whizzing bullet buried itself in the dirt to my right, a thin mist of blood splattered me from the left.

  Tall Reid toppled from his perch until his ankle snagged between two planks of the retaining wall. If I ignored the surprisingly small amount of blood pouring from the two holes in his head, he might have been drunkenly attempting to do a handstand. We all just stared at him for a second and slowly realized what had happened.

  Tall Reid had died. Just like that. It was all over so quickly.

  "Get on that wall and fire!" Browne yelled. "We cross this dirt in twos!"

  This time I was the one who burst into action first, Sid following a second after. I was on the wall looking onto No Man's Land in the distance for the first time. I was unimpressed. It looked like a cratered shitehole of no value whatsoever.

  Three whole seconds later, incoming fire began kicking up dirt all around me. The puffs of muzzle flash caught my eye and I returned some shots of my own, forcing a mud darkened face down while others finally registered to me.

  My 20-round magazine was spent in seconds. I ducked down, stiffly ripping the magazine free in what felt like twice the time. Sid was down and up in half as long, his shots slower but if they were better aimed, I couldn't tell.

  "Get your arses over here! We're covering!"

  I ducked and slid my feet from the planks. Sid was taking too long for my liking and a firm yank of his pant leg got him to follow me. The loose dirt was already furrowed by the passage of the others, which slowed my climb. A bloodied hand reached out to me from over the berm so I took it. The rest of the arm followed when I tried to pull.

  I threw the severed mass away on reflex and scrambled against the thin bloody soil as it slipped away beneath me, losing more height than I was gaining. Sid's hands formed a step for my boot and I crested the slump, coming face to face with the dying eyes of Musty.

  Something refused to click in my brain as blood gushed from his neck and chest in powerful spurts. He was full of holes and missing pieces. He wasn't dead, he was dying. It wasn't over so quickly and that was- I couldn't stop. I had to keep moving.

  I plowed the earth with my body, keeping as low as I could and hoping it would be low enough. Something poked me, tugged at my clothes just under my belt, before burying itself to my right and peppering me with splinters of wood. I came down the berm hard, barely spinning around so I'd be face up with my feet under me when I stopped.

  Sid crested the mound just as I reached the bottom, but he froze at the top, staring at Musty.

  "Sid, come on! Let's go!" I roared, but he didn't move.

  With a running start, I got four steps up the mound before I lost my footing and ate a faceful of hot blood-soaked soil, bullets zip-cracking overhead all the while. I flailed out with a hand grabbing onto cloth, hoping it was the right person—the right body—and pulled.

  Again I was at the foot of the slump, now with a still body lying atop me. I reached up to clear my face of gore but only succeeded in adding more gritty dirt into the mix. A grenade exploded nearby before I finally pawed the filth from my face after repeated attempts. I'd grabbed Sid, but he wasn't moving. I pushed him off of me and rolled atop him, patting at his bloody clothes for holes and tears.

  "Is he hit!?" Browne barked.

  "I'm not seeing anything." I answered.

  "Get him moving, Greens are trying to surround us!"

  "What about Musty?" I asked.

  "He's gone, leave him!"

  I could still see Musty moving up there. He wasn't gone, not yet. It wasn't quick for him, not like for Tall Reid. I couldn't help Musty, but I could get Sid out of here. Sid wasn't much help initially but he took most of his own weight once I got his feet under him.

  The sound of gunfire already came from all sides. How Browne knew we weren't already surrounded was lost on me. Quiet Smith was propping up a sagging Hairy with a bloody gut ahead of us. McAllister and Browne unloaded their magazines at the enemy before following us. We came around a bend in the earthworks and found a half dozen rifles pointed our way.

  "Med CZ is that way." One of the soldiers pointed, and we trudged in that direction. I spared a glance at Sid. No wonder they'd challenged us. At a glance I couldn't see any grey on either of our uniforms.

  "I'm not hurt Regi." Sid said as he shoved us apart.

  "Gobshite, I'll believe that when a medic tells me."

  "I'm not. It's just… seeing Musty. I choked. I'm fine now."

  "If you choked there, you've got no place taking the bunker. Just sit this one out. I can watch my own back."

  Quiet shuffled past us, dragging Hairy with the help of another grey. It sounded like they were having a similar conversation to ours. All around there was work that needed doing. No one wanted to sit it out, to force their pals to go in alone. I couldn't just stand here humoring Sid.

  "Dumbass," Sid cursed. "You couldn't even climb some dirt, so how the hell are you going to watch your own back? Besides, I'd feel like shite if you ate it out there."

  "You sure you're good?" I asked.

  "Don't have a choice not to be." Sid said with a hollow smile.

  "Fine, let's find Sargent Murphy and the rest of our company."

  Browne stopped me before I'd gone two steps. "Regi! Are you hit?"

  "I don't think so." I answered.

  "Your leg looks pretty fresh, hold still." A dozen firm pats proved me wrong. "Adrenalin, it's a hell of a thing. You've got a cut on the calf and a graze on your arse. You good to fight?"

  "Yeah." I answered instantly.

  Browne's forceful gaze met mine, the unspoken offer stood if I wanted it. Sid wouldn't sit this out and neither would I. I wouldn't abandon the squad, not now and not ever.

  "I'm fine." I repeated. "I can still fight."