Chapter four: the front
Caleb had only been in Alaska for two days, and he already hated it. The first thing he had noticed upon landing was the bitter cold, accented by brutal winds and heavy snowfalls. He was used to a cold climate, but not with this much snow and wind. The terrain he saw before him as he looked out from the Russian military encampment was rough and hilly. In the distance he saw some small mountains, and the ground he stood on was rocky and uneven. He didn't like the idea of having to fight here, because of how unpredictable and chaotic the terrain was. He had heard that Alaska was a tough place to fight in, but he had always pictured it differently. The town he had lived in hadn't been so rugged, and his vague memories of it seemed only to include buildings and pine trees. It all reminded him how big Alaska actually was, and that in turn disgusted him. So much land in the hands of Americans was depressing for Caleb, so he tried not to think about it, and instead focus on the task ahead.
That task came the very next day, in the form of a radio for reinforcements.
"our comrades are pinned down about ten kilometers from here; they need fire support," the major said to Caleb, pointing him in the direction of the supply tent.
"I'll get it done sir," said Caleb to the major, who clearly resented how young Caleb was. Over the past three days, Caleb had ignored the glares and things said behind his back by the other soldiers, reminding himself that he was supposed to be there, and that he deserved a place in the military just as much as any of them. The truth was, he could outshoot any of them.
Soon after receiving his first assignment, Caleb boarded an armored personnel carrier along with his armor, and an assortment of weapons. after a bumpy ride along an old dirt road, the truck stopped, and Caleb, along with the five other soldiers got out. About three hundred yards away, in a trench filled hilly clearing, an intense battle was raging. He began to sprint to the battleground, and was noticeably slower in his armor, despite the fact that Caleb needed only to push on the sensors inside the suit for it to move.
When he finally got to the fighting, he dove into a trench with several pinned soviet soldiers. They looked extremely surprised and astounded to see a large metal man wearing a polarized helmet, and were audibly relived when they noticed the soviet insignia below Caleb's shoulder. With his allied soldiers in awe, Caleb took command. He was nervous, but also exited that he would finally get a chance to fight back against America. He was ready to be what the Soviet Union needed him to be. A weapon.
Sergeant McClellan moved up to another foxhole, shooting in bursts of three with his semi automatic rifle. He and his company finally had the Russians on the run, and were not about to let them escape to fight another day. Inspiring his troops, McClellan continued to move forward, pursuing his retreating foes, and picking them off one by one. Suddenly, on the horizon, six figures appeared, and the remaining enemy soldiers all began to dig in. noticing that they seemed to be more organized, McClellan concluded that the reinforcements he had seen must have included a commanding officer. He thought a Russian lieutenant's uniform would make a nice souvenir to bring back home. Using his incredible knack for staying collected an logical even in the most stressful situations, McClellan divided his men into three teams, a group of sharpshooters, a group to lay down suppressing fire, and a strike team, to advance and gain ground.
It was then that he saw something he had never seen in his life. A metal man who had waited for his allies to suppress the enemy to leap from his trench was now firing on the sergeant's team. Taking cover, McClellan peaked up from out of his trench ever so slightly to assess the situation. The metallic soldier was firing in short bursts with an AK47 and was constantly on the move from one trench to the next. What was interesting however, was what he was shooting at. Instead of going for the machine gunners who had been suppressing the soviets, he was firing at the sharpshooters who were two hundred meters away. Even more interesting was that he was hitting them all. The sergeant saw four men go down in four seconds, and realized he needed to retreat and regroup. Ordering the retreat, McClellan fired five shots at the metal man, and watched four of them bounce off, as the fifth missed.
Caleb was breathing heavily, and had lost count of how many men he had shot. The whole thing felt so different than his exercises and games, but at the same time, real combat seemed to have the same mechanics. The kick of his gun, the sound of his metal boots packing the snow, and the sight of his enemies falling to the ground all felt distant and surreal. He was barely thinking about what he was doing, and was letting his training command his body. He felt like
Keeping his form as compact as the suit would let him, Caleb rolled into an enemy trench and picked off the survivors that his recently thrown grenade hadn't killed. Implementing the simple flanking tactics he had been taught wasn't hard, but the enemy was putting up a good fight, and combating each individual was. He knew that if he kept this up, they would all either retreat or be killed, there was no way he could lose.
Suddenly, as he leapt from a trench and ran across the frozen ground, Caleb's metal shell froze. He fell forward and rolled down a hill, laying motionless at the bottom. All Caleb could see now was the white sky, as he desperately tried to move.
"no no no! this can't be happening!" said Caleb to himself, flailing around franticly inside iron skin. Caleb couldn't see how this was possible, considering he had only been fighting for twenty minutes, and the suit was supposed to have power enough for two hours. He could hear the sound of an American shouting at his men to advance, and the sound of many gunshots. Moments later, he heard someone scream retreat in Russian. His allies were abandoning him. The enemy would be coming for him any moment now. "this is it," Caleb thought to himself, "I'm going to die now." Caleb felt sick. His mind was immediately drawn to all of the things he would never get to do. He would never learn to drive. He would never see the end of the war. He would never liberate the people of Washington D.C. Each of these stabbed him like daggers, and each beat of his heart seemed to pump more sadness and pain into his body, but what saddened him the most was that he would never see Eva again. He had always thought that someday they would get married, but now he knew that he would die alone and scared in a metal suit. Caleb had never felt worse in his life, and he began to cry bitterly behind his thick metal helmet.
McClellan tried to take his breaths slowly and deliberately, but his heart was beating like a drum roll. He had just seen a man in a metal suit decimate half of his unit, and he had barely made it out alive himself. Now, the soviets were retreating, and the metal man laid in the snow, probably dead. McClellan vowed to himself that if he wasn't, he would do the honors himself. At the end of that ordeal, all he wanted was to murder the man responsible. His very being cried out for revenge.
Approaching the motionless suit with the remainder of his team, the sergeant pulled out his four inch buck knife, and told his squad to stand by with their guns if something went wrong. Poising himself to stab the man behind the suit, McClellan pulled the helmet from its wearer.
What he found surprised him. All of the anger that had been seething inside of him suddenly dissipated upon seeing the face of what would be his victim. It was partly because Caleb was American, and partly because he was so young, but the main reason was that he looked so much like the sergeant's son, back in the states.
"Stand down," he ordered.
"It's just a boy," one soldier said.
"I think he's American," another said.
Caleb was still in tears, but understood the conversation. The words sounded strange to him, but he still understood the meaning.
"Let's take him back to camp for questioning, and then we'll sort this out," suggested McClellan.
Caleb knew exactly what that meant. They were going to torture him. The stress of the situation overcame him, and before he knew it, he had fainted and was out cold.
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