The short war

The "short" war.

Sam Michelson could hear the waves pounding the aluminum hull of the AAV. The old metal creaked and groaned under the stress. Occasionally the hull was shaken by loud explosion, that would pelt the hull with fragments of tungsten fragments.

This was a war Sam shouldn't have been in, due to his diabetes and other health issues, but the United states government was running so low on manpower that anyone with a pulse was considered good enough so after 5 weeks of basic and being hopped up on enough Human growth hormone, dextroamphetimines and other wonders of the pharmaceutical industry Sam found him self at war.

As his heart rate soared he clutched his M4 carbine ever tighter, in response the smart drug distribution system he was wired up to released a small dose of an anti anxiety drug, thus calming him down.

His tension eased as the drug kicked in leaving him feeling oddly at peace in his hectic surrounding.

As he observed his surroundings his gaze fell upon the squad leader LT Dan Smith.

>> "Hey LT what are the Chinese Augs shooting at they don't seem to be hitting us."

The LT stared at the new recruit as if he had just asked the most retarted question in the universe.

" Well shit for brains they are shooting at us. The only thing keeping them from blasting us out of the water with a guided missile is some fairy magic ECM and the navies suicide LOCUST drones."

As Sam digested the fact that the only thing keeping him and the rest of the 21 men on the AAV from being incinerated in hull of burning aluminum was essentially just a good deal of luck with regards to the ECM his heart rate rose once more.

"Aw god I hate this new guy can we just tie him to the front of this damn floating coffin. Mabey he can serve as spaced armor.

That voice belonged to SGT Kyle Smith, a grizzled veteran of the 2040 war.

Suddenly another voice cut into the conversation
"Hey maybe the new guy isn't totally useless after all. I heard the Chinese pay top dollar for boi pussy, being that they are short on women. Mabey we can bargain his ass and get some booze. "

That was the voice of lance corporal Arnold Sutterland. Mike couldn't see his face beneath his fragmentation visor and air filtration system but he could tell with out a doubt this man was smiling.

A voice that seemingly came from nowhere chimed in
"Says the faggot who spent a whole 5 days banging tranies at a brothel in japan"

Arnold shouted back
"Hey at least I get something unlike you Chris you god damn Christ fag, I swear upon all the STDs I have had that I will kick your teeth in if you try speaking about god one more time."

Slowly the AAV was filled with chatter.
The insanity of the situation fell heavy upon Sam's shoulders.
Here they were sailing into the most heavily defended place on earth and their very existence being threatened by the Chinese missiles and artillery and what did these marines do.

They argued about who banged the hottest chick and which one was banging tranies.


Looking towards the LT Sam meekly asked
>>"Isn't this against the policy of the marine corps to talk about sexuality in the work place?"

Immediately the AAV went quiet only the hum of the engine which was occasionally disturbed by an explosion from a shell or missile could be heard.

LT Dan spoke
"Well it looks like we got our selves a cherry comedian here why don't we pop his cherry for him or should we let the AUGS do that?"

Sam could tell he made a mistake as all the men's eyes looked upon him.
Suddenly one shouted
"We would but we all know those chi com augs don't got no dicks."

As soon as the man finished his sentence there was a sharp crack on the side of the hull, which shook the entire craft about throwing the men
in their safety harnesses.

As the lights came back on the Lt shouted

"God fucking damn this old bitch has cracked."

As Sam turned his head he saw the fine crack that ran along the wall that took the blow. Water was starting to pool at the base of their feet.
The LT shouted in to the com system
"What's the ETA"

The pilot replied " Roughly two minuets sir. Don't worry the navy is sending some support our way."

As soon as the last word left his mouth a loud buzzing that sounded like the mother of all angry bee swarms became readily apparent.

A few of the marines shouted excited whoops and hollers.
The drones quickly passed over head and swarmed the Chinese defenses.
Despite the best efforts of the Pantisar anti aircraft guns the first wave of drones with HEAT war heads made contact with both bunkers and armored vehicles alike.
Creating numerous holes for the next drones to exploit.

The second wave came in a lose pattern formation that was meant to maximize the blast from their thermobaric warheads.

For the Augs there was no reprieve from the blast as the drones suicidal    charged in through the holes and blanketed the battle field in a thick fog that promptly exploded.

Shortly after the AAV was on in Shanghai and the troops poured out of the back of the AAV and ran to the cover of a near by warehouse.

As Sam ran out the back of the AAV he saw the composite armor had been completely detached on the right hand side, showing the power of the missile that had hit them.

As Sam followed up behind the group the lead marine used his underslung shotgun to blast the look off the door and tossed a flash bang in.

Luckily the warehouse was empty of enemy targets so the men took up position on the second floor.

As Sam entered the barren sheet metal building and took up a position on a window, some one gruffly pulled him back and said
"What the hell you want to get spotted you have to put up some cheese cloth by a tack here take this."

the individual wearing the name tag Ryan Mc miller hand him the cloth and some duck tape to put it up with.

Wasting no time Sam set up the blind as he was told.

" I swear to god each new guy knows less and less and is more pumped up on drugs then the last one."

Sam, ignored the comments made by the lance corporal.
" Look kid we have some sensor bots set up to detect any enemy movement in a 500 meter radius, always use your thermals the augs are deploying some sort of fucking active cameo and its damn good nearly got myself fucking punctured by one of them sneaky bastards. If you don't have your thermals and you see some strange visual distortion that looks like heat rising from the ground shoot it its probably one of them."

>>" Alright I will will take that into consideration."

Once again the drug implant system had to prove its value and inject Sam with another dose of mind altering substances to help him keep his cool.

Mc Miller grabbed two chairs and pulled them up to the spot where they would be shooting from.

Sam looked at them in confusion.

>>"Shouldn't we be standing to see out the window?"

Mc Miller laughed
"Well only one of us needs to look out the window, the other can sit we will take 30 min shifts on and off."

This only deepened Sam's confusion.

"Look new guy we do things differently in the field then we do in training alright. Your back will thank me later alright."

Sam only nodded as he took his position watching through the blind they had set up.

He his thermal view on and the Augmented reality system displayed a the thermal view on his visor.

His visor was a militarized version of the old Microsoft HoloLens, compared to the newer versions it was bare bones but it was EMP hardened and had a highly encrypted communications network and the military wasn't concerned with things such as visual fidelity past 1080p.

As he watched the alley Sam nervously said
>>"So does the ballistic visor really stop 9mm ap rounds."

Mc Miller chuckled and said
"Do you think the Augs are going to shoot you with 9mm ap rounds? Yeah it stops 9mm ap rounds fine but its doesn't stop their rifle rounds or anything that you actually get shot with."

Suddenly An alert notified him that something had tripped a the sensor 500 meters down the road from Sam's current position.

Mc Miller got up and grumbled
"Shit looks like the enemy came in early, lets make sure to give them a warm welcome."

Sure enough 10 Chinese Augs were making their way down the road fast. They were hunched over running much faster then any normal human had the right to be..

Mc miller emptied his XM 25 on the Augs he took down the 3 in the center but the rest of the group continued unfazed.

At the same time Sam opened up with his M4 carbine. His rounds that contacted center of mass didn't seem to do anything.

>> "WHAT THE HELL MY ROUNDS ARENT DOING ANYTHING"
Sam said in the com

Mc Miller reloaded his XM 25 and replied
"Yeah the M4 cant pen their god damn body armor past 100 meters reliably that's why every one else has a SCAR in 7.62 or an XM. Don't bother wasting your ammo until they get closer."

Suddenly MC Miller dived on Sam knocking him down and there was a blinding flash.

Sam struggled to his feet to find that only half of Miller was on him  the other half of his chest had been torn open by a large round.

>> " We have a man down hostiles incoming from the south east corner I need support."
Before Sam could finish that sentence 3 more marines had arrived two of whom provided suppressive fire, the third dragged Mc Miller out of the line of fire.

"What the hell are you doing stop staring at Miller and shoot the bastards"

One of the marines yelled.

Pulled out of his trance sam fired round after round at the Augs who were now advancing behind the cover offered by concrete road blocks  a mere 50 meters away.

As Sam exchanged fire with the Chinese augs there was a loud explosion that knocked Sam to his feet. as he felt around for wounds he quickly realized he was okay but the entire wall of the building was gone, instead the steel prefab walls were replaced with the view of the alley way allowing Sam to observe the source of the explosion a heavily modified type 99D.

The Abrams knock off bore little resemblance to its earlier 2000 era parents.
It had its 125mm gun exchanged for a 130mm Electro thermal cannon, along with new nanoscale reinforced composite armor.

As Sam surveyed his surroundings he realized that the other marines had been eviscerated by the round completely.

He felt his mind go numb as time ceased to flow, only the sounds of weapons fire reminded Sam that a battle was going on around him.

The drug pump kicked in once more flooding Sam's body with just about every compound imaginable, this sudden witches brew of drugs snapped him out of his trance and he quickly scurried through the ruble deeper into the building for cover.

As he ran down the stairs he quickly checked his heads up display to see where the squad was located. Sadly the expensive piece  of technology was non functional as the Chinese were jamming the communications systems.

As he rounded the corner he saw a marine opening a case that contained two man portable disposable anti tank missiles.

The marine turned to Sam his blast visor and respirator obscuring his face.
"Come on you fuck we don't have time to fuck around follow me out back we are going to come around the right side of the building and hit that fucker."

Sam hoisted  one of the anti tank launchers out of the crate and followed the other marine through the corridor to the rear entrance.

As they made their way around back they saw another group of marines with 3  Boston dynamics heavy assault drones.

The roughly humanoid frames of the drones was around the same 6foot 2 of most of the marines in their armor although the drones came in at a whopping 400 pounds of carbon fiber and ceramic composite armor Their pneumatic muscles hissed slightly as they sauntered in front of the other marines.

Sam and the other marine didn't even bother to ask what they were doing and continued their route along the back of the building and up the alley way and took up position behind some concrete road blocks.

The other marine faced Sam as he crouched down behind the road blocks for cover and said
" When the Augs come up you will throw you grenade at them and I will hopefully run out and hit the tank. Alright?"

Despite the numerous issues with that plan  Sam didn't offer any input and instead gripped the grenade attached to his belt firmly.

Suddenly Dan heard the sound of the Augs feet smacking against the pavement so he sprung up and pulled the pin from the grenade and tossed it.

As the grenade was aloft in the air a small radar based scanner calculated what would be the optimum height for detonation and then blasted hundreds of pellets of depleted uranium at hypersonic velocity's tearing the Augs apart.

Seemingly with in a split second the other marine jumped over the road block and ran down the road and shouldered his anti tank weapon.

As he aimed down the street he stared face to face with the Chinese tank and pulled the trigger.
That simple action ignited the first motor which gently lofted the tandem shaped charge  war head out of the barrel. For the first 5 meters the rocket glided only carried by its momentum before the main engine kicked on which sent the rocket hurtling towards the sky at speeds approaching Mach 3. Once the war head was 100 meters high it then began its journey downwards its visual guidance system having targeted the Chinese tank by sifting through its databases of enemy vehicles.
At this time the Coaxial machine gun opened fire, its rounds smashing through the marines armor tearing him asunder.

The tanks killing of the marine was a short lived victory as the missile came down at Mach 4 and smashed into the ammo compartment causing a cook off of ammunition that turned the inside of the tank into a human pressure cooker.

Sam heard a soft pop which was the hatches being blown off the top of the tank this was followed by a loud detonation of the highly volatile liquid nanoscale propellant that the Chinese used for their tank ammo.
The resulting explosion launched the turret  hundreds of feet in the air and vaporized the thinner armored portions of the tank leaving a hollow wreck behind.

As Sam stood in awe of the terrible might of modern weaponry the air was once again filled with the buzzing of swarm drones.

As he looked up he saw larger American locust drones being intercepted by smaller Chinese kamikaze drones that would crash into their targets and detonate a small amount of explosives. If Sam were a biologist he might have compared it to a swarm of bees and wasp fighting over territory.
Suddenly there was a sound similar to falling rain, but had more of a metallic sound. It was the bits of drones falling from the sky and impacting the ground below them.

Sam thought to himself that man has truly made a war that a singular human could not even hope to comprehend.

Suddenly the communication system was back on line as the Chinese jammer had been taken out.
He was informed by the HUD that around 35 percent of his squad  was KIA or combat ineffective and had been given an order to advance to  a building  900 meters north east.
Sam quickly jumped the road blocks and ran down the road following the directions of the HUD.

As Sam made his way to the destination he  heard a tremendous roar and looked upwards.

It was a pack of JSF with an escort of high velocity swarm drones that formed a protective shield around  the fighter jets only opening up a small gap for the jets high powered laser to fire a short burst at either Chinese drones or  ground based AA systems.

Despite the awesome sight Sam continued towards his target eventually seeing the small dockside building with a group of Marines in front of its sand bagged entrance.

As Sam made his way to the marines he observed the corpses of the enemy soldiers. Metal and wires came from their wounds as naturally as flesh and blood.
What was clear was that the Chinese were willing to take drastic measures to improve their soldiers performance morals be damned.. As he made his way to the American marines he over heard some of the marines talking

" You see all the cool shit those Chinese have. Fuck they started the war with cool gear for their grunts and now they are losing it with cool gear for their grunts. Why the fuck cant we get funky particle lasers or what ever the fuck that mounted thing was."

"Come on frank you know the reason the civilians  don't want to pay for shit and even if they did it would get sucked up by some ones pet project."


As Sam walked by listing to the two marines talk about politics he saw his groups Lt.
The mans armor was covered in blood and had some damage from metal fragments.

Sam saluted the Lt.
>" Sir where are we going now?"

The Lt. chuckled
"You don't need to salute me what the hell drugs is that thing giving you. Use your brain and stop going by the books were in a war zone. The only thing you need to do is listen to me. "

Sam dropped his salute and stood at ease.

"Good that's more like a real marine. Hq is giving us 2 hours to get the AAV patched up and fixed after that we are going to assist in an armored push through a choke point in the city. The guys behind us will fortify this place with AA and a shit ton of patrol drones to make sure we can sleep at night without the damn augs ripping our throats out."

As Sam contemplated what getting his throat ripped out in his sleep would feel like an alert message came up on the HUD informing him that the drug pump was low on chemicals.

> "Excuse me Lt. Do we have any more refills for the drug pump.. I just burned through my entire supply."

Dan let out an exacerbated sigh.
"God damn what the fuck did they set your pump to? That supply last most men a month. Here take mine I never use that shit anyways."

Dan popped his pack out from its armored case in his bag and handed it to Sam.

Sam made sure to see that the new pack was inserted tightly into the unit.
Once that was confirmed he felt the tension release as the compounds flooded him once more.

Dan looked at the new marine with some concern and said
"Look kid I know the scientist say that shit isn't addictive but that doesn't quit fly with what I have seen you might want to lower the setting."

Sam scrolled through the virtual heads up display and lowered the drug dosage to a more reasonable setting, as he did that he took time to observe the water and saw numerous debris fields from sunken AAV and planes.

>"Sir how many of our landing craft did we lose?"

Dan sighed.
"To many. Too fucking many. It was estimated that out of the 300 AAV we would lose 75 of them. We lost 100. Out of the 100 SSC we lost 30 to hostile fire. Hell don't even get me started on the losses suffered by the paratroopers.. Poor fucks were almost completely annihilated."

Sam didn't even want to think of the human cost involved. It was just easier to think of it as vehicles lost.
As he looked out to the ocean a wave washed up against the break water gently rolling a body into the concrete barriers.
The marines lifeless body merely rolled with the water bobbing much like a balloon.

Sam pointed to the location of the body and said
>" Dan there's a marine in the water."

Dan  looked over and saw the body before radioing in.
"Some one get me a rope  I'm jumping into the water."

He took off dropping his weapons and bag and jumped into the polluted water and swam over to the body.
Sam ran over only seconds behind him and watched from the dock as Dan held on to the body.

Sam watched Dan take the dead marines weapons and let them sink to the bottom of the  murky water.

Suddenly Dan's radio came on.
"Alright I'm 5 seconds away  hold on."

Dan barely had time to turn around before the marine with the rope arrived and tied it to the  cleat hitch and did a figure 8 loop and threw the other end with a carbineer into the water.

Dan quickly attached his armors harness system to the carbineer and the other marine motioned Sam to grab the line to help pull up both Dan and the fallen marine.

It didn't take long for them to lift up both Dan and the dead marine who was gently placed on the ground.

Any blood had been washed off of his armor by the water but jagged shards of metal jutted out from his soft armor and joints. His visor was shattered and had water dripping out from the cracks.

Dan quickly looked at the mans dog tags. He was registered as a Christian.

Dan turned to face the marine who had brought the rope and said
"Do we have a Chaplin ?"

The other marine responded quickly.

"No sir we lost our Chaplin to mortar fire, shortly there after. Same goes for the rest of the religious personnel.."

Dan merely looked at the dead marine and slowly clenched his hand before growling.

" Do we at least have another Christian here. I know its a god damn warzone but can we get the boy a proper god damn send off."

The other marine froze and thought for a few seconds trying to come up with a response that wouldn't anger the Lieutenant any further.

"I think Jacob was practicing to become a priest before the war he might know something I will get him."

With that said the other marine radioed in for Jacob to meet them at the dock.

As soon the marine finished his call Dan spoke solemnly and pointed towards the newly captured building.
"Can you three help me carry him over to the building over there."
 Sam and the other marine nodded their heads and grabbed the fallen marine by opposing sides of his waist and waited to lift until Dan had the mans shoulders. and then walked him over to the building.

" Alright put him down slowly."
Dan sighed as he and the two other marines gently lowered him to the ground.

They carefully laid the marine on the ground and Dan took off the mans helmet and breathing system which caused the remaining water to pour out on to the ground.

The mans black skin and hair  was the same color as the asphalt on which hey lay. Despite the damage to his visor his face was fine. If it wasn't for the shrapnel sticking out of him one might have thought he was staring at the sky thinking about getting back home.

As Sam stared at the dead man he had a sudden sadness and spoke.
>" How will we collect all the bodies."
Dan slowly shifted his gaze to the new marine and replied.

" All of our armor has a locator chip in it that goes off when it detects that the individual is deceased. We have drones that pick up the bodies... Or what's left of them. Suffice to say most guys will be recovered.."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam barely had time to think about the machines given the grim task of reclaiming war dead before a general alert came up on his HUD along with a narration.
"Nuclear cruise missile detected. Take shelter."

Before Sam could even finish reading that there was a bright flash in the distance that caused his visors system to auto darken blocking some but not all of the detonation. Seconds later a large rush of air swept by kicking up dust and debris temporarily obscuring his vision.

As the  gust of wind died down  Sam looked up in the sky and saw the infamous mushroom cloud, which ominously expanded in size as it rose menacingly in the sky.

Sam suddenly felt a hard knock on his shoulder . The arm belonged to Dan.

" Look kid we aren't going to gawk at that god damn mushroom cloud, they used tactical nukes 300 times in china. Luckily it looks like they were forced to detonate it before it reached the target because of our missile defense systems."

As Sam slowly composed himself  a thought entered his mind and he spoke.
" What were they targeting?"

Dan with a single word.
"Us".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam's first day in combat had been a brutal introduction to Modern war . The night wasn't any better, spent in a shallow ditch  that had a thin ballistic liner over it to stop fragments Sam spent the night listing to the C-ram system intercept the  near constant barrage of enemy fire. Despite men needing to sleep and rest the machinery of war never did. As Sam stared at the thin strip of fabric that was supposed to stop artillery fragments his com system let out an alert which was soon followed a familiar voice.
"This is Arny here to any and all men in our group we are having  a game of poker near the AAV pool... Those cheating bastards  from Squad  10 don't bother showing up unless you want your asses kicked. Also a shout out to the FNG for being a moron but not getting us killed, if you don't show up we will make sure that you go the rest of the war without a fresh pair of socks."

As much as Sam desperately wanted sleep the thought of having no socks was enough to convince him that he should attend this poker game.