War Eternal Book 1: A LitRPG Military Space Adventure, page 1
Yuri Vinokuroff
War Eternal
Book 1
A LitRPG Military Space Adventure
Published by Magic Dome Books
War Eternal
Book # 1
Copyright © Yuri Vinokuroff 2023
Cover Art © Linni 2023
Designer: Vladimir Manyukhin
English translation copyright © Mikhail Yagupov 2023
Editor: Neil P. Woodhead
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2023
ISBN: 978-80-7693-087-2
All Rights Reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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Table of Contents:
From the Publisher
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About The Author
From the Publisher
It’s not often I write prefaces to books. Not as a publisher, anyway. But this is different. This book is about army life... no, scratch that. This book is about all the soldiers, sergeants and officers who... how can I make myself clear? There’re a couple of them in every army. Sometimes more. They serve with gusto, never losing heart, always cheerful and resourceful, finding a special delight in faithfully performing their duties — and still they manage to get themselves embroiled in the funniest of troubles which you can’t watch without either crying or bursting into laughter.
But they still overcome all odds to complete their missions, they honor their oaths, and most importantly, they know the true value of combat brotherhood. Think Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow, or Jim Abraham’s Hot Shots!, or Demobbed by Roman Kachanov, or even Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. I could name at least another hundred titles like these. But better still, simply read the book, even if just to disagree with me, as the case may be.
Chapter 1
THERE’S A BLACK SCREEN displaying lines of text, one after another, right in front of me. The characters look strange, but their meaning is perfectly clear.
ACTIVATING RESURRECTION PROTOCOL…
STATUS… ACTIVATION SUCCESSFUL…
LOADING SAVED DATA…
ERROR… ERROR… ERROR…
SAVED DATA NOT FOUND…
PROTOCOL CHANGE
ACTIVATING REBIRTH PROTOCOL…
STATUS… ACTIVATION SUCCESSFUL…
MEMORY BACKUP… SUCCESSFUL…
CLEAR MEMORY…
ERROR… ERROR… ERROR…
CLEARING FAILED…
ACCESS RIGHTS INSUFFICIENT…
SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION… PROTOCOL DATA LOADING…
LOADING…
ERROR… INSUFFICIENT SPACE…
SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION… SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION… SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION…
REBOOTING…
The text collapsed into a white dot in the center. The screen flickered and went out.
* * *
“Get those eyes open, recruit! I can see you’ve come to your senses already!”
The room was all spick and span. I was sitting in something that resembled a hybrid of a dentist’s chair and a spaceship control cabin. A man of an indeterminate age dressed in a medic’s whites was scrutinizing me with his glass eye. And by “glass eye” I didn’t mean him wearing spectacles. His right eye was made of actual glass and had a red pupil glowing inside. His left was gray and looked absolutely normal. What didn’t resemble normalcy in any way, though, was the line of green text above the man’s head.
DC.Gamma44.10-24 (“Nobel”)
And yet, my only reaction to a situation this freakish was mild surprise, which vanished completely the very next instant when I turned my head and saw my reflection in the mirror wall on my right, to be replaced by a state of profound shock. I leaped off my cot, making Nobel recoil, and gaped as I stared at my reflection. Although the possessive pronoun “my” would be a misnomer in this case.
There was a man staring right back at me from the reflective surface of the wall. I didn’t know him from Adam. Young, judging by his skin. The body looked fit and even sported well-defined abs. There wasn’t a single hair anywhere on his body, which didn’t make him look repulsive. In fact, you could probably call the man attractive if it wasn’t for the glaring absence of any male parts.
“What the hell?” My hand couldn’t feel anything, either, so the problem wasn’t with my vision. “Where the hell am I, and what in the name of everything unholy is going on with me?!”
Nobel let out a laugh behind me.
“Judging by your personnel file, you used to be male.” He sniggered. “Anyway, you have no use for that appendage now. They’re considered a waste of resources. I don’t think yours was anything to write home about, but a wiener here and a wiener there add up to a whole body. And the Army doesn’t ever waste resources! They don’t appear out of thin air, you know!”
Having found nothing in my crotch a moment ago, my hand seemed in need of something else to grapple. Nobel’s scrawny neck appeared a fitting substitute. He must have sensed the change in my demeanor, for his tone immediately shifted from mockery to sympathy.
“Don’t get so upset about it. You can get your junk back. In fact, you can get your entire body back, if you’re so attached to it for whatever reason. It’s all recorded in the database. However, right now you’re the property of the 3rd Army, which has bought you out—or, rather, bought out your mind—strictly for its own needs. But you don’t need me to tell you all this. You can read it for yourself.
Lines of text started to scroll before my eyes.
To Recruit RB13.A3.130013 (ID undefined),
You have been subjected to the Rebirth protocol. As part of this protocol, all your previous memories have been erased. Your personality has been reset. The most likely path of development as a result of the Testing is Military (89%).
The request of the Human Commonwealth has been fulfilled. You have been assigned to the 126th Mobile Infantry Regiment as per the Directive. Deployment location: planet XAZ20405TM34596.
Carry out your duties with honor, recruit!
Universe-13.
Aye aye, Sir. Roger that, Sir. All right, what’s next?
Personnel File.
RB13.A3.130013 (ID undefined),
System Rank: Reset.
Social Affiliation: Humanity. Human Commonwealth.
Free Will: Temporarily restricted.
Current Owner: HC Third Army
Current Status: Military.
Class: Undefined.
Rank: Recruit.
Awards and Privileges: None.
Skills: Not activated.
Enhancements: None.
Reputation:
Human Commonwealth — Indifference.
This didn’t make things any clearer. A familiar sense of panic started to rise somewhere deep inside, but it seemed vague, as if it belonged to someone else. I heard Nobel’s voice again.
“You’re up for initial briefing. Follow the signs. And good luck to you, recruit!”
“Thanks, Nobel…”
A green arrow appeared in my field of vision, and my feet carried me towards the exit as if of their own accord.
“Hold on! I keep forgetting. You can designate an identifier for yourself, and you’re best off doing it now, or the sergeant will do the honors instead. And whatever he comes up with is almost guaranteed to rub you the wrong way.”
I shot him a bewildered glance.
“An identifier.” Nobel grinned. “Although you might be more familiar with the word ‘name.’”
Name. My name. That was simple, right? My name. Suddenly, it was as though something exploded inside my skull.
“Lieutenant! This is the freaking limit!!! Who do you think you are?!” This was from a fat guy in an unfamiliar uniform.
I was standing in the battle station looking at numerous approaching red dots wit
A skinny guy in a tactical uniform smiled with a crooked mouth, casting a sly glance in my direction.
“Our watch boss is a right monster, but folks on this watch duty have your back, so your fat ass is safe. Although you’ll slim down in no time.”
There were two blue moons in the sky. The surf murmured gently, and the see breeze made me feel chipper. The woman next to me shivered, wrapping herself in a blanket tightly. “Sweetheart, are we going to freeze our bums off here for much longer? Why don’t we go inside?”
A blonde toddler was looking at me adoringly. “Hey dad, what cool stuff will you bring back for me when you return from your deep-loy-mint?”
I was walking alongside a military formation, past soldiers clad in a variety of armor and equipped with all sorts of weaponry. However, all the equipment was uniformly painted in black, and everyone in the formation bore the same emblem on their chest and left shoulder. A dazzling green-eyed ginger girl clad in heavy assault armor stepped out from the formation to report: “Commander, the troops are in formation!”
I was surrounded by unbearable heat. The plastic of my jumpsuit was beginning to melt, but there was one of my men somewhere inside. A loud crack came from above as the support beams started to collapse over my head. “Rowan 32, do you copy? This is Eleven to Rowan 32, do you copy?! Rowan 32!”
There was a familiar grunting of someone I knew well. A wet nose touched my cheek, and a rough tongue started its morning hygiene routine. “Elijah, holy crap! I’m awake, hold on… We’ll go for walkies in a moment.”
I shook my head inadvertently, trying to dispel the chaos of sounds and images flooding it. I managed it successfully. Nothing remained but the name.
“Elijah. I choose ‘Elijah.’”
A line of text appeared before my eyes suddenly.
Data updated. RB13.A3.130013 (“Elijah”)
Chapter 2
“NOW LISTEN UP, wimps,” Sergeant RS212.А3.152361 (Whipcracker) addressed the recruits sitting on the floor before him lazily from his comfortable perch on an ammunition container. All my future comrades-in-arms looked similar to me and each other, almost like identical twins. Some faces appeared more feminine, but in terms of their size and texture, they were no different from the rest. Essentially, there were “boys” and “girls,” but only if you looked closely enough. All of us had nothing but smooth skin in our groin area, just like baby dolls.
The sergeant stood out from us. He resembled a normal person. His build was significantly stronger than ours. There was no hair on his head, either, but that seemed to be the result of shaving in his case, as his eyebrows were intact. His face also differed from ours. It had the look of an ordinary, mean-spirited scoundrel. At the moment, the scoundrel was smirking. Perhaps not all recruits had the privilege of going through Nobel’s hands, or perhaps Nobel had forgotten to mention the possibility of changing their identifier on their own to three of those who’d ended up in our unit. The sergeant gladly exercised that right, and now we had recruit RS224.A3.476398 (“Beanpole”), recruit RS224.A3.476185 (“Clown”) and recruit RS224.A3.476956 (“Cowgirl”). None of them seemed to appreciate the hilarity of their new monikers.
“You may have heard the phrase ‘cannon fodder.’ Well, ‘fodder’ is still a long way to go for you. You’re not even a proper ingredient yet. You’re the manure that fertilizes the field, which is where the grain grows. The grain gets ground into flour, kneaded into dough, and shaped into rolls. They freeze them and send them light-years away to our mess hall. That’s where we can start talking of ‘fodder,’ or, rather, a crisp and fragrant roll to be enjoyed by the officers in our case. As for you, you’ll keep lapping up your protein slop as you inhale the scent of baking wistfully, in full realization of your own absolute insignificance.”
He fell silent, his eyes scanning over those seated. The individuals beside me hurriedly turned away as their gazes locked. As his eyes brushed past me, I held his gaze without flinching or turning away. The sergeant slid away in passing, but soon returned, his eyes fixed on me. I maintained my steady gaze upon him, and he reciprocated with a smirk curling his lips.
“All right, listen up, you bunch of walking abortions. Let’s open up those skills of yours. Are they open? If the Angels didn’t mess up—and they can’t mess up because they’re Angels, right?” The sergeant chuckled briefly at his own joke and scanned the group once again. When some timid smiles appeared, he nodded with a satisfied expression and continued. “You should have the following skills with the following levels…”
“Marksmanship — Level 1. See it? I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, Sergeant!” came the dissonant shouts.
“Good. Melee Combat — Level 1. See it?”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
“Explosives, Light Armor, Medicine. All at Level 1. See them?”
“Yes, Sergeant…”
“All of that is how it should be. Because you’re all zeroes. And the Army has given you a gift. And it’s free. Because it’s a gift!” The sergeant was about to laugh at his own joke again, but suddenly grew serious and continued, “Everything else costs money! You’ll get paid for missions. The missions are assigned by command. Take a look at your balance. It should be minus one hundred fifty thousand credits. See it?”
"Yes, Sergeant!" There was a hint of contemplation and concern in everybody’s voices this time.
“Now, why minus? That’s easy. All your skills and equipment cost money, and the same is true for your bodies, although they’re cheaper. The Army has footed the bill for all of the above. Which means you got it on credit. Moreover, there’s no interest on it! This is your chance of a new life! A chance to prove you can be useful to the Army! You are at the very beginning of your path, though, and the way you develop depends on no one but yourselves. However, let’s get back to your skills. You are infantry. Well, no, let me rephrase that. You are the embryo of infantry. And so you have a handful of relevant skills. The numbers next to them represent your level, which is currently at one. That’s the basic value.”
A screen lit up behind the sergeant.
“This is the MK17 assault rifle.” A 3D picture of the rifle appeared on the screen at once. “This is your new best and closest friend. This is the TK2 trench knife…”
We saw a series of pictures. There was the assault rifle, the trench knife, as well as armor and grenades. My head was beginning to spin, and I was finding it hard to follow the sergeant’s narrative.
“Thirteen! Over to me!”
I got up and approached the sergeant.
“If your mental image of myself as a real nasty bastard still remains incomplete and if my introductory speech hasn’t inspired you enough, allow me to introduce the final touch. Recruit Thirteen will now demonstrate his hand-to-hand combat skills to all of us. Skills that are no different from yours. As for me, I will demonstrate my hand-to-hand combat skills, too, which, in my case, will differ from yours somewhat. I will even give Thirteen a real combat knife. My very own blade, in fact.”
