Lucid

Chapter 40

POV: Fixer (Y/N)
I lean against the barricade as I reload my rifle. A few shots fly past my shoulder as I glance to my left, seeing Leeseo sheltering behind a car. She looks at me, and I shout "Ready? I'm going to go forward, cover me!" She nods.
"Ready!" She calls back, and turn around to prepare to shoot.
"Go!" We both rise out of cover. Leeseo fires wildly at the six soldiers, while I dash towards the building in the center of the street. Landing in a slide behind it, I turn and put a stream of bullets into the two on my left, before Leeseo fires and takes out the one on my right. Taking a deep breath, I shout, "I got you! Get up here!" As she gets out of cover, I turn and spray at the three in cover as Leeseo sprints to me, sheltering behind the guard post.
"You still have those grenades?" I ask, looking at her equipment belt to see she does.
"Yeah, should I use them?" I nod.
"Let em have it." I reload and fire a few more shots as she throws a shrapnel explosive grenade around the corner, landing it smack behind the enemy's cover. A blast, smoke, and a marker of three "+100 points" markers, and we both stand.
"Nice work. You're getting good at these simulators." She smiles, taking off her glasses as the holographic room shuts down, revealing the inside of my simulation chamber. "Thanks." We stroll out, as she's happy to take a moment to catch her breath. "I can tell you're taking it easy on me. I saw you take down ten guys with your bare hands, you should be better than me. But we're about the same." I chuckle.
"A team is about working together. If I killed everyone in seconds, it wouldn't be fun for you." She rolls her eyes, but she's still enjoying herself. "So, enough guns." She seems surprised when I say that. "Any true combat expert needs to understand more than just themself. You need to know about your team, and your backup, and your entire army. So let's go do something new." I waive my hand to shut down the simulation.
"What are we gonna do? Play a board game?" I smirk.
"Pretty much."

A three square mile expanse of hills, rice fields, and wooden villages sits below Leeseo and I, floating at about waist height. The half-inch tall soldiers and the tanks the size of (object) move down the tiny holographic roads. "Alright. You've got a bunch of different setups here. Infantry, grenadiers, medics. Vehicles, you've got APC's, MLRS's, and MBTs." She nods, only understanding half of it. I'm impressed her effort to learn so much, so fast.
"So what does each one do?" I move to the center convoy, pausing the sim and pointing at each one in turn.
"Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank, MBT. Got a main cannon that can destroy armor, plus 2 machine guns. It's got some heavy armor on the front, but it's weaker from the back." I zoom in on it, and she nods. Scrolling down the line, I point at the APC. "Bulldog. Armored, but not impervious. It'll die to a shot from a tank or a missile. But it carries 8 troops, and has a gun. Better for flanking and maneuvering. It also has two missiles, which you can use to destroy tanks or other APC's." She nods again.
"Whose tanks are these?"
"British army. Same with the army uniforms. It's all off the British army files. I'll be playing with the German army." I tap down to the last set of vehicles. "Here you've got M270 rocket launchers. 12 227mm rockets, high explosive unguided, 20 mile range. Takes a while to reload and it's got basically no armor. So keep them at the back, and let them do work at a distance. Then you've got infantry here, too." I zoom closer at three infantry standing in a cluster. "The circles are basic infantry. They can engage other infantry best, and can dig in defenses. Then, you've got Grenadiers, who carry missiles to destroy tanks and APCs.  Lastly Medics, who can help patch up your injured troops. Sounds good?" She stares at them all.
"Uhhhhh...." I tap each one and a small info screen pops up, explaining everything I said.
"Just tap them, and it'll tell you." She nods, relieved.
"Don't worry, I'll go easy on you. You've got a computer to give you advice as well, if you want it." She starts looking over the troops, as I walk around and take my position at the other end of the map. I watch as she starts maneuvering, although the hills block my view of what she's doing. I reorganize my troops, making a simple protected column to move forward as I format the artillery behind the hills.
"How do I tell them to change how they're arranged?" She asks from the other end.
"Tap them then draw out a shape on the ground and they'll reorganize automatically." She nods and starts drawing new shapes for her troops. Impressive, she's already getting new ideas. This will be fun. I begin a slow move forward, my group moving down the narrow path between the two hills at the back of the map. Once they've made it through I begin to spread them out, dismounting and moving my infantry in wings, sweeping through the forest to check if she's sent scouts. Luckily, I don't see any. Finally, I reach the center- a large open field, with a river running through it. There's only one bridge, which crosses in the center of the field.
"Hey, Leeseo!" I call to her.
"Yes?" She asks, not looking up.
"How about we make this interesting?" She looks up, curious.
"How so?"
"I'll give you more units, but in return, I don't have to hold back. We'll see if you can beat me with a much larger force." She thinks for a moment before smiling meanly.
"You're on." I tap the computer commands, and at her staging ground materializes another 2 tank companies, 3 more infantry companies, and 2 more artillery batteries. I hear her laughing, confident in her numerical advantage. She continues preparing at the back, but I don't worry about it. Instead, I move my APC's across the river, having them slide into the forest subtly. Meanwhile my tanks begin to position them surrounding the single bridge between the two sides, while my infantry fortifies their postion with dugouts, blinds, and mounds.

I wait a while, as my APC's spread themselves out through for forest, and my tanks and infantry fortify themselves at the river crossing. Finally, I see Leeseo moving, as she walks to get a better view of her army moving out of her staging ground. I don't wait, instead immediately firing at the small exit of the pass with my rockets. I smirk as the toothpick sized missiles streak past my face, and come flying down onto Leeseo's emerging army. It strikes true.
"What? No! Already?" She shouts as I bombard her clustered troops.
"Don't bunch up." I say calmly. I watch as a very lucky rocket strikes one of their tanks, disabling it in the pass. With one hit, I've now halved her ability to deploy her troops, because there's 60 tons of armor parked on her only roadway. She sighs. I keep waiting, confident in my own abilities. "So are you going to move with your armor first or your infantry first?" I ask innocently.
"Why do you want to know?" She fires back.
"Just... curious." I chuckle a little. She's nervous now, and while it's mean of me to do psychological warfare on her, I'm not sure if I have much of a chance here. All I can hope to do is buy enough time to deadlock her. Finally, she gets her first company of infantry through the gap, and immediately deploys them. That's... not what I wanted. My first 3 APC's can see them, but I'm not sure if I want to try and attack her when she's leading with infantry. It's risky. Instead, I stop and wait, letting them progress down the main path through the forest, towards the bridge I've got my soldiers surrounding. Looking back at my own formation, I see the platoon of armor and the platoon of infantry I have saved as a reactionary force. I take a few deep breaths, reminding myself this is a practice game against a 16 year old, and I don't need to be hyper-focused. In fact I should probably loose. I mean, 3-1 odds aren't really that bad, but she's got better infantry than I do. And it would be kind of mean. But enough talk. I vector 2 APC's, and they open fire upon her infantry. She seems and reacts, her forward troops engaging as she moves a group of armor down the path. Falling nicely into my trap, I move the 3 APC's by her staging ground into postion, and they fire missiles at her tanks. It takes her a moment to notice, as she's too focused upon her flanked infantry to notice the missiles opening up against her supporting forces. She looks back to see seven burning wrecks- 5 of her tanks and 2 of my APC's, while her other 3 tanks move forward and my last APC slinks off into the forest, out of missiles. One of my infantry attackers goes down, hit with a missile from a grenadier, and I pull my other one back before I loose it as well. On one hand, I cost her a section of infantry and 5 tanks at the cost of 3 APC's. But now she knows that I have APC's in the forest, and she won't fall for it again. So it's time to reorganize strategies. Her small remaining force meets, 2 tanks and some infantry advancing further. At the back, she finally gets the broken tank out of the way, and gets the rest of her units onto the battlefield. As I expected, this time she sends her infantry sweeping through the forest, checking for my APC's. Luckily I expected that, so I start sliding them slowly inwards, gathering them back into sections. Her brow is furrowed, watching as her small scouting force keeps moving. At least, it does, right up until 3 more missiles strike her tank while 8 APC's open fire upon her infantry, shredding them from all sides. I chuckle, because the classics never die. She sighs, because her infantry does.