Author's Note

Any speech in orange text is spoken over Hanz and Blackjack's radio.

This is what I’ve been working on, I know I should be working on An AI’s tale, but I had to get this down... I really need to rethink my priorities.

Introduction: Operation Apex

"Hey Hanz, you see the guy manning the .50 cal on the balcony?" I asked over radio.

"Yeah I see him, want me to take him out?" Hanz responds, clearly eager to get this fire fight started.

"Not yet, once you hear shots start to ring out, or he points it in your general direction, then you take him out. Copy?"

"Copy that."

I quickly moved out of the building I was occupying, and ran into they alley, where I could get a clearer shot on the Syndicate guerrilla soldiers guarding the entrance. There were two of them by the front entrance, one with an AK-12 and the other with a Lee-Enfield Mk. III. Aiming down the holographic site, I aimed it at the one with the AK, as he is more of a threat than the one with the bolt action. I really hope the A.I doesn't immediately drop me, but this is Arma, I can't really expect anything else than getting snipped from 7 km away by a dude with an unscoped rifle. I fire a three round burst into the first guy and he drops down unconscious, shortly after I heard the retort of Hanz's Enfield. The trooper with the Lee-Enfield goes prone behind some sandbags before I can take him out. Another shot rings out as I see the ragdoll of the trooper fly a few feet into the air.

Arma never change, this is too good to fix. Tossing a couple of white smoke grenades up to use as concealment, I quickly advanced across the grassy field in between the Town Hall and the alley, taking cover behind a Syndicate supply truck. I ducked behind it just in time as a storm of rounds goes flying in my general direction, the pinging of rounds as they hit the truck made it hard to hear anything. "Hanz, I need help, can you hit what ever is pinning me?"

"I can get one of 'em, but I can't hit the other, I'll need to reposition."

"Just hurry your ass up!" Another shot rings out, and the incoming fire stops for enough time to get a bearing on the remaining trooper, I fire a burst at him and he drops down dead. "Grenade out!" I shout out, tossing a frag through the window the machine-gunner was in. I rush up to the sandbags in front of the building, a guy i didn't see opens up on me, hitting me twice in the arm before I drop him with the rest of my magazine. The A.I is being smart for once, how great. Dropping to a prone position, I open the medical menu and select my left arm, I ended up getting 1x minor avulsion, and 2x medium velocity wounds. I start to bandage my arm, using the elastic bandages for best effect, then I administered morphine to deal with the pain, "Hanz, I've been hit and I'm applying medical, hurry up here so we can breach."

"I'm moving up now, how bad is it?"

"Not too bad, just an avulsion and two velocity wounds." After a few minutes, Hanz comes up behind me and he takes cover next to me, "Glad you can finally make it."

"Shut up, I had to walk down the stairs because you can’t get the damn mods straight." He responds, annoyed as we move to either side of the door. Opening the door, I toss a frag grenade into the hallway, bouncing it off the door, it explodes, wounding a few people and... the game freezes. Great, what broke this time.

“Blackjack what did you do?”

“I don’t even know, maybe something cooked off and destroyed a lot of things, causing the game to break trying to render what the fuck even happened.”

“I guess, that or you...” Hanz starts to say before being cut off by my computer blue screening.

“Fucks sake! Why can’t Arma just be normal for five god damn minutes?” Sighing, I reach my hand out to restart my computer, before quickly pulling my hand back, feeling how hot it is. Damn, that’s fucking hot. Was I seriously playing Arma for that long?

My vision suddenly flashes white, and all sense of feeling disappears. What feels like hours pass as I sit drifting through a white void, not feeling anything or hearing anything other than my own heart beat. My vision flashes again, this time black as I slowly opening my eyes, and I find myself looking up at a cloudy sky, with rain hitting my goggles and pooling on it’s flat surface. Groaning, I slowly sit up , wiping my goggles and taking in my surroundings, on the ground next to me is a Tar-21 with a holographic sight... just like the one I had in Arma. In the distance I can see the burnt out ruins of a city, sitting there lifeless like the bones of a long dead creature. Everywhere else is in sight is just barren, lifeless ground with the occasional dead tree, shrub or hill to break up the other wise mostly flat terrain. Fuck... where am I? This looks nothing like where I live.

Taking a quick chance to look at myself, I see that I’m wearing a light green uniform that has a black chest area, with a darker green carrier rig over that. Checking my side, I see that I have a medical bag, presumably full of medical supplies, I open it and I find a fuck ton of bandages, morphine, epinephrine, and several Saline IV’s. Doing the same with my carrier rig, I find seven Tar-21 mags, and three 1911 mags. I also find two white smoke grenades, a single frag grenade, and two WP grenades. Picking up the Tar-21, I slowly make my way towards the city in the distance. Knowing that this will be a long walk, I start to hum It’s a long way to Tipperary. I don’t know why it’s the first marching song that came to my head, but it did so... “It’s a long way, to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go...”