This is a work of fiction, which takes place in a fictional version of the near future. Any references to names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, government and military entities, are fictitious. Certain long-standing institutions, agencies, and public offices are mentioned, but the characters involved are wholly imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Project Jotnar (hereafter “Jotnar”) is a joint venture project founded by the National Reconnoissance Office (“NRO”, an agency of the Department of Defense), developed in coordination with private contractors recruited from leading game design companies. The goals of Jotnar are threefold:

Provide participating select elite combat troops (“PSECTrops”) with enhanced training via virtual reality (“VR”) immersion experience, in a digital environment hosted on offshore servers situated between 3 and 12 nautical miles from the territorial sea baseline of the Atlantic coast. Said extraterritorial virtual environment is referred to as the “Nine Mountains” and all activity conducted therein is subject to the judicial conditions established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”). Alter the sensory experience of combat to the extent that PSECTrops will be severed from the biases of modern culture and political correctness that have eroded the warrior ethos—and thereby combat effectiveness—of American military-age citizenry. Create new intellectual property to further the interests of the NRO and add value to investors. Carry out Jotnar in a manner which develops both revolutionary combat capabilities, as well as long-term sources of private funding with independence from normal government procurement and financing channels.

Currently, four marines of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force (”II MEF”) 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, as well as one Air Force airman and one Navy corpsman, are assigned as PSECTrops to Jotnar. These six military personnel are collectively referred to as “PSECTrop Squad Durnir” or “Durnir”. They are hereby listed by rank, first and last name, comms handle, and military occupational speciality (“MOS”):

USMC Private First Class Peter Kowalski (E-2, “Cowcatcher”), Cryptologic Linguist USMC Lance Corporal Janice Ozdemir (E-3, “Janissary”), Machine Gunner USAF Senior Airman Annika Helvig, (E-4, “Hellchik”) Combat Controller USMC Corporal James Wells (E-4, “Shakewell”), Scout Sniper USN Hospital Corpsman Second Class Casper Lin (E-5, “Doc”) Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman (SARC) USMC Staff Sergeant Rokuro Silva (E-6, “Roku”), Infantry Squad Leader

The following chapters detail the experiences of Durnir within the Nine Mountains. Note that, in order to effectively communicate the vigorous and highly charged nature of Jotnar’s training regimen, the coarse and sometimes grotesque descriptions of events—and occasional profane nature of the language shared among the PSECTrops—has not been adulterated.