主题：【原创】<巅峰之战》英译版Demo-1 -- 本嘉明

Benjamin Sci-Fi Series: Chapter 7, Battle of the Peak-1

<Benjamin Sci-Fi Series> is an unpublished science fiction by Benjamin. This Chapter (Chapter 7) is about a virtual battle between Army of Qin Empire and Legions of Roman Empire in an Virtual Reality battlefield.

In 2200,there is only one government rules our whole mother planet, and 3 space fleets protects the earth,2 of those 3 Fleet commanders are: Marshal Su(Su Shuai, likes as General Omar Bradley of WW2 ),and Marshal Meng (Meng Shuai, likes as General Barton of WW2).

Character:

Ben : a scientist in year of 2200.

Su Shuai: Marshal Su

Meng shuai: Marshal Meng

Donghou: Duke from East, one of 5 Cyborg leaders on Earth.

Notes:

The Neptune Server: the server of “Wuji Sea(source of Tai Chi) Virtual Reality”

Western Queen(Mother Queen): mother of all Digital Gods, the owner of The Neptune Server

Marshal Su invited Ben to attend a top secret Summit Among Marshals and earth government top leaders. All attendees will go to a Virtual Reality (likes in movie <Matrix>),and more than 60,000 Marines went to same virtual Reality “Middle Land” to protect the leaders, they acted as best soldiers of Qin Army in that Virtual Reality game.

Summit just began, some uninvited guests hacked into this Virtual Reality site, and sent Legions of Roman to attacked Qin Army, tried to kidnap Earth leaders.

……

Suddenly, Ben felt that First Emperor of Qin’s(Qin Shi Huang) greedy ideas shrouded, over millions of people disappeared, replaced by some huge fear. This virtual world paled, the wind and clouds rose sharply, and the white mist enveloped the ascension platform, as if Ben himself was in the eye of a tornado. And, everything around, including the distorted and frightened face on the stage, turned into quicksand and gradually blown away. Amidst the chaos, only Su Shuai's calm voice came: "Another friend is coming from afar."

<Benjamin Sci-Fi Series>: Chapter 7, Battle of the Peak

(1) Eagle flag

The hurricane ceased, the dense fog dissipated, and the digital world was no longer what it used to be. The illusion passed away with the wind, and the only black colour army formation remained on the vast ground, with sharp edges and corners, as solid as some rocks.

On the ridge in the distance, a metal rod sticks out its head, and on the top is carved an eagle that spreads its wings, shining in the bleak sunlight. That is the flag of the Legion of Ancient Rome----the Eagle (the flag of Rome does not use cloth, it is just a javelin pole, it is the sign and command signal of the legion, and it is also the honor)

Accompanied by the clanging sound of armor clashing, one Legion after another one flashed out:

The Third Legion, nicknamed “Gallica”, was awarded the honorary title as "Augusta".

The Fourth Legion, nicknamed " Macedonica (Macedonia)"：

The Fifth Legion, nicknamed " Alaudae (Skylark)", Caesar built it in Gaul War.

The Sixth Legion, nicknamed " FERRATA FIDELIS (Iron Wall)", Caesar built it in Southern of Gaul.

Eighth Legion, another "Augusta".

Ninth Legion, " Hispana ", was conscripted by Caesar in 46 BC, of course in Spain.

Tenth Legion, " Equestris (Knight) ", Caesar's personal legion.

Twelfth Legion, the " Fulminata (Lightning Thrower/ Thunderbolt)".Actually Caesar’s 12th legion whose nickname is Victrix. Mark Antony named another 12th legion as Fulminata,but in this story I will use Fulminata for Caesar’s boys.

Fourteenth Legion, "Gemina".

That is dictator Julius Caesar, the great man blessed by Roman gods. These Roman legions which was cultivated by him in ten years when he started his conquering of Gaul from 58 BC, were invincible kings in mankind infantry history!

Now, the Romans crossed the ridge in rows, rolling and rolling in like wave by wave.

……

In another side, the Qin army protruded a fleet of military chariots passed by all blocks.

The first chariot , the driver was dressed in exquisite armor, and the fine copper armor even extended to the back of his hands, he stood in the middle of the car. On the right side is a burly man, armed with armor. On the left of the car is that famous general, with a humble cloth robe.

The scooters passed by the front of the Qin army, and all 9 divisions immediately cheered and thundered. The 7-meter-long spear(mao), the 3.5-meter heavy halberd (bo), and the 3-meter halberd (ji/ge) formed a huge forest of killing tools. At this time, they are shocked sharply, as if the storm passed by. The dense forest is extremely intimidating.

Donghou chuckled: "As soon as Mengshuai came out, all boys will act like tigers-----honesty this is true."

Su Shuai said with a smile: "our partner Meng, well, looks will have a nice battle today. The sixty thousand Marines here are also the elites of his Second Space Fleet. What's more, he ‘accidentally’ brought his boys to my territory to play this naughty game. Now, Although the uninvited guest who came here looks a little bad, it seems that there is still going to be a man-to-man fair play, so let our old fellow greets this guest."

"That guys hacked ‘The Neptune Server’, and settle the battle game to give us a good lesson. Alas, the Wuji Sea is not in our control, we are guests in Wuji Sea too, so we are better to accompany the tricks, of course smashing the Western Queen’s digital garden will leave us some trouble, I can say it’s not very small one."

Listening the chatted by them, Ben was relaxed, but he had new questions : what, the Wuji Sea does not controlled by the "Ten fellowship Summit"? It sounds like they were still quite fear of this real owner ?

Wuji Sea is of course not only a database, but tons of online entertainments. For online warfare, usually someone takes the leader’s job and applies the topic and "battle space" to the Wuji Sea Administration, and the Administration will build up the digital terrain/historical background. Both offensive and defensive parties will drum up fighters online. Participants inject their souls into the Internet, to pick up equipment at the specify digital location, incorporate themselves into army units, and start the war as scheduled. The Administration provides a "virtual safety airbag" protection program that stops for 0.06 seconds when your virtual body receive a fatally hit, and automatically sends your ‘soul cube’ out of the battlefield to returns to the "origin bio-body". Some game veterans regard the "airbag" as a burden which reduces their fighting sensitivity , so they remove the "airbag" illegally and become the “digital ronin”, the real online desperadoes. Once the Ronin is "killed", the ‘soul cube’ will be shattered, that is, "the soul is scattered", and the data fragments will wander as garbage in the Wuji Sea forever. The physical body in the real world is in coma and can be legally sold to the "homeless-soul" in the market.

Now in this game, there are tens of thousands of real-people on both sides, which is totally different story from any ordinary street gang fighting game, and more, it is unscheduled. The Wuji Sea Administration of course has no any reason to approve this crazy application, so the server has to be hacked and changeed mode into privately- operate. Due to innate rules, any side cannot carry machine guns ,cannons or digital nuclear bombs to kick another ancient legion , so both of them can only choose the strongest opponents in the same level to play. Such an opportunity is really rare. It's no wonder that "Ten fellowship Summit", even it always stand with Law-and-order, still pleased to jump into this illegal boys’ game.

(2) Legions

Now the 9 legions of the Romans deployed along mountain slope:

In first stage of Roman Empire period,the Romans had 10 cohorts in each legion, each cohorts had 500 or 600 men.A cohort was divided into three 160-member detachments, and each detachments had 2 centuries (equivalent to a modern army company, actually each legion had 59 centuries, the first regiment only have 5 double-size centuries). A standard centuries have 80 legionaries,and double-size centuries have 160 men each.

The most brave and outstanding centurion in the whole legion is the chief centurion, which is equivalent to the deputy commander of the legion, he assists the legion commander (mostly the politician nobles selected by Caesar from Rome city. Each legion has 6 nobles, taking turns Command for 2 months). The legion commanders assisted Caesar’s lieutenant commander Rapinus, who had served his entire life in Roma army.

A legion usually form a big phalanx, generally divided into three rows, with 4 coalitions in the first row, and 3 coalitions in the second and third rows. Three rows are arranged into a checkerboard pattern:

In this way, the second and third rows are easy to move forward and fight shoulder by shoulder with the first row, or, the first row is also convenient to retreat to the backside of the legion block when they are exhausted.

The three-rows method was produced in the 4th century BC (China's Warring States Period). In China there is indeed a long-snake array that has the exquisiteness of "hit the head and the tail will bit you", and Roman array also has depth in each block. The infantry formation of Roman is extremely flexible, and the distance between each soldiers is 1.8 meters, forming a sparse lattice for each others.

Each alliance then forms a small phalanx, with a hundred-man-centuria as the most basic unit. Previously, the smallest unit of the legion was a centuria of 120 people (Manibles). When the battlefield situation changed rapidly, each company could take the initiative and respond independently. Therefore, the Roman tactics were also called "Manibles tactics". Their efforts in geometry and engineering made the Rome’s army engineer-squad very developed, skilled enough to make the barbaric Germans regarded them as gods.

The essence of Rome is the heavily armed infantry which is composed by martial and proud noble youth and tough peasants. They wear a bronze helmet and armor, carry a 0.5-meter wide sword "Gratis", and carry a 1.2-meter-long, 0.8-meter-wide large shield "Schutom" (wooden) on their left arm. Two shot spear/javelins, the heavy javelin "Pirum" or the light javelin "Pira". Heavy ones can easily pierce the shield 8 meters away. Due to the special design of the iron spear tip, the spear head will bend once it is stabbed. This was originally designed to prevent the enemy from picking it up and throwing it back. As a result, the entire javelin was stuck on the pierced shield. Many barbaric Germans had to throw down the shield to fight, and suffered serious injuries without a shield.

The Romans had a few cavalry but they are not outstanding. Each legion was equipped with 128 horses for reconnaissance. Stirrups were invented by nomads hundreds of years later. Before that, it was difficult for cavalry to fight with both hands free, and it was inferior to chariots. However, the European chariots were small and the horses were poorly mounted. They lag far behind the Qin army's chariots. The Romans' horse belts only held the horse's neck, and high-speed running often suffocated the horse to death.

Therefore, any legion, like a big crocodile, crawls stubbornly on the ground, has no mobility, and despises bows and arrows. But its flexible and mobile squad's autonomous tactics were inherited from the most talented Alexander the Great in the West. Once it is bitten by the sharp teeth of this giant crocodile, everything will be wiped out.

Among these great legions, we would like to talk about the Tenth Legion, Caesar's treasure and personal guards. In the first volume of "Wars of Gaul" written by Caesar himself, when Caesar first time tried to attack the Germans who had been used to live out doors for 14 winters and were good in bowing and riding, the whole Roman army was frightened. Caesar rebuked the cowering officers and soldiers, say: “even most people will retreat, Fortunately, I still have Tenth Legion, just with this Legion alone as the guard, Caesar will also move forward. I loves and trusts them most.” From then on, the Tenth Army became the most loyal and proud in the lines. Ten days later, Caesar negotiated with the German king Ariovestus, and Germen asked Roman to send only cavalry to the meeting location. German king was also afraid of the Roman infantry and knew Caesar haven’t strong cavalry. So Caesar ordered his mercenary, the Gallic cavalry, to hand over their horses to the soldiers from the Tenth Army. The brothers from the Tenth Legion took the opportunity to show off: Caesar is doing far beyond his promise. That means he had only promised the Tenth Legion to serve as his guards, but now he has made them, Opps, the knights. At that period, knights had to prepare their own horses/armor/servants before they could join the army, only wealthy nobles had this capacity. So that’s why the nickname of the Tenth Legion is "Knight".

Another interesting thing is that the tenth legion sometimes is like a naughty young boy ,or acting like a baby to his father. One day Caesar came and promised to pay the wages later, but disbanded the legion and called them QUIRITES(Citizen, means coward who is an outsider of army) as soon as he spoke.

This was the greatest insult and contempt for a legion, so the entire legion immediately wept bitterly and pleaded Caesar because of this shame name. Therefore, whether the Tenth Legion had a second nickname as “Citizen", even not been seen in any official file, I still guess about it.