Free Cartlidge: Rise of the Imperfect Flame by Devon Loos Page B

firefight continued for several minutes. Occasionally someone would
fall over, stunned unconscious by the training weapons. The recruits training
to be medical officers were not allowed to help any of the soldiers who were
hit. Often the potential medic would flinch when they saw another soldier fall;
they consciously forced themselves not to intervene. This test was meant to
test not only our own strength, but theirs as well. Roughly twelve minutes into
the fight our commander was hit. Another member of my squad moved to reach for
his communicator, and was struck in the leg. He gave a cry, but quickly
recovered.
    “How bad is it?” Someone shouted.
    “It stung at first, but then my leg just fell asleep. I
can’t move it.” He tried to shift away, only to be struck down by another
round. I attempted to track the angle of the bullet. It seemed to have come
from the trees, rather than the cover on the other side. Tek quickly made his
way to my spot.
    “I think there’s a sniper over there.” I shouted over the
gunfire.
    “A what?”
    “Sniper. The …
human term for a watcher.”
    “Oh. I’ll see what I can do, but you need to point him out.”
I nodded then carefully scanned the trees. Another shot ricocheted off the
rock, centimeters away from my head. I hid, my heart
racing.
    “Eleventh tree.”
    “Got it.” He shifted to move but
stopped. “Sorry for fighting dirty during our match.”
    “Hey, we both made it didn’t we?” I laughed.
    “So far.” He rolled away, dodging
another round from the sniper, and shifted himself to fire. He fired two
rounds, then ducked behind the large decaying log. He
looked at me and nodded. As the battle continued, two more of our squad members
fell. An enemy squad was starting to use the cliff as cover, and the nearby
lookout squads were engaging them, preventing them from moving forward.
    “Cartlidge! I think we’re running
out of teammates.”
    “What am I supposed to do about it?” I turned, fired, then hid again. “I’m not a medic and our actual medics
aren’t allowed to help.”
    “I have an idea. How about we use your arena tactic on their
general?”
    “There’s no way we’d make it that far!” I shouted.
    “Our team’s gone, so why not?” He began to move from cover
to cover.
    “This is never going to work.” I complained, but reluctantly
followed. We made our way to our end of the cliff. Several of the lookout
soldiers were gesturing for us to move away. We ignored them and began climbing
the rocky stairs. We slowly, silently continued until we reached the top. After
crawling across, we fired at the squad that hid below. Surprised at our
advance, three of the remaining five fell before they realized what was
happening. One of the soldiers took cover behind an old log. The tree had been
long dead and the log was in poor shape. I smiled and aimed at the log itself.
I fired three rounds into the log, causing it to fall apart from the concussive
force. The third round crashed into the back of the soldier, stunning him. The
other soldier turned to fire at me, only to have the rifle shot out of his
hands by Tek. I then stunned the soldier myself. I took a moment to examine the
battlefield. We were losing, badly. Tek’s plan had to work, or we would fail
the test. After taking a moment to reload, we snuck into the enemy forest.
    We continued walking, carefully scanning for movement. We
stopped just before the clearing and separated. Tek climbed a tree with a good
view of the opening while I moved behind another nearby tree. Tek’s plan was to
have me distract the general while Tek stuns him with his rifle. The general
stood at the center, guiding each of the commanders with his communicator.
There was only a single squad guarding him. I sat for a moment, trying to think
of a way to distract the squad long enough for Tek to fire. The general stopped
for a moment to say something to two of his soldiers. If I attacked now I could
catch two or three of them