The Cadet (LitRPG. Squadcom-13. Book:1)

by D. Rus

  “Single-stage personnel losses have exceeded 90% - group virtually destroyed. Group leader’s demerit points: -114. Other commanding officers’ demerit points: -25.”

  “You have failed to withdraw unit from battle. Demerit points issued to your RC: -30.”

  “Status alert! Insufficient proficiency level to maintain current rank: Master Corporal. Automatic demotion, personal XP coefficient: 0.9.”

  I merely shrugged. I didn’t get a chance to get used to my new rank, therefore this didn’t feel like a loss.

  Honestly, I was impressed by the event density and the rate of change of situational factors. We 21st century people had naïvely considered ourselves overburdened by mass media, ads, internet, and other junk that we were constantly bombarded with.

  But this general trend had survived into the future – every century, the amount of information only increased. Now, in the 28th century, it had reached the maximum daily amount allowed by the public health ministry - five terabytes per day for category C and D citizens.

  We had an awfully difficult time getting used to it. Our implants were our crutches. By default, we accepted whatever courses of action they generated. It was simply impossible to process the incoming information without them.

  For instance, the simplest action was conversing with a subordinate. During such a conversation, the implant monitored dozens of factors, such as the subordinate’s body temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, and pulse. It watched the direction of his gaze, determining which part of his brain was currently activated. It interpreted his fine motor movements, analyzing his tone of voice and checking his claims against personal and public databases.

  The implant did all this in order to highlight the dialogue window with the appropriate color every time. The color was determined by the validity of the information, its level of importance for the implant bearer, the speaker’s attitude toward the bearer and toward what the bearer said…

  And there were many more parallel processes. They generated reports and required the bearer’s response. There were countermeasures for the conversation: disabling facial muscles, flattening of emotions, etc.

  In short, this future world was a cesspool of information.

  Lina distracted me from my thoughts. She was squinting happily, her night vision slightly illuminating her eyes from beneath.

  “Two medals just like that!” she said. “A ‘David and Goliath’ for the mission victory, and ‘Sergeant Sailor’ for my self-sacrifice that enabled us to complete the mission. What did you get?”

  I checked my personal record tab. “‘Sun Tzu,’ same thing as your Goliath but for the subdivision commander, plus an honorable distinction for the most efficient shooting in the unit.”

  Lina smiled encouragingly, passing a hand over my cheek. As if to wipe some dirt off, right. I could feel all of her emotions. She was a storm on a tight leash. Do we have a parlor around here?

  “You’re my commander,” Lina whispered with a hint of pride, then looked to the side and immediately changed her attitude.

  A worried-looking Murom was hurrying toward us, raising a wave.

  Pouting her little lips, Lina complained fretfully: “I already have 240 Corporal points! When am I going to get promoted?”

  I firmly shook Murom’s hand, nodding in response to her statement, “You need 210 more to become a master corporal. And don’t look at me like that! I haven’t received that promotion either. I mean I did, but instantly lost it. A commander’s responsible for his unit – you take the tops, and I take the roots of the crops. And it won’t always be carrots.”

  Murom nodded understandingly. He too had gotten penalized for infantry losses. Wrinkling his nose, he rubbed a huge crimson spot on his chest – the stigma from the pulse gun that had killed him – and asked, “Paul, we need to capture new premises. It’s getting impossible to breathe in here: there’s a smokescreen, oxygen combustion, and hardly any moss left. The oxygen is disappearing faster than it’s being restored.”

  When he said that, I finally noticed the strain on my lungs. They worked like forge bellows in a frantic rush, trying to process the maximum possible amount of air in order to acquire life-giving oxygen.

  My implant warned me that I had a little over three hours before losing consciousness. We needed to hurry as the others surely had less time.

  Lina frowned in perplexity: “But the bulkhead gate is open. Why’s there no oxygen inflow? Is that another stupid game abstraction?”

  Murom shook his head, nodding at the gate, “Take a closer look. There's a light heat haze distorting the objects; means there’s a force field. An emergency pressurization backup system has turned on because the habitability index of our quarters is lower than on the other side.”

  I rubbed my hands together with delight. A high HI, working systems – all this made the new room even more exciting. I doubted that it was another stump of a reserve hallway for technical servobots.”

  I nodded to Muromets, “Put your men on it. Take some girders and squeeze the shit out of that shield. Macarius!”

  “Yup?” the messy-haired technician dove out from under a huge hatch in the Crab’s rear.

  Brightly colored stains covered his hands. I couldn’t tell if it was oil, hydraulic liquids, refrigerating fluid, or nanite compound.

  I snapped my fingers, “We need weapons and power. What can you get from that junk?”

  Macarius scratched his dirty nose, then enumerated with a serious look, “The Crab has a standard wartime design; 40-megawatt battery kit made of 1,500 elements. I checked, and some are beyond repair as they have exceeded the number of maximum recharge cycles. But most are usable. We have all the power we need. As for weapons, the localizer laser’s inaccessible because of its non-standard unprofessional design; it’s simply welded up. The right-flank turret looks repairable, but I don’t know how long the repairing will take. The back turret is gone; the barrel bundle’s melted. The one on the left flank is fine. It was the one firing at us, and when the Crab rolled over, the turret assumed its resting position to avoid damage.”

  I smiled, We’ll kick the enemies’ asses! Having rapid-firing pulse guns of company caliber – one tenth of an inch – was a serious advantage. We could even waste someone in a combat armored spacesuit. It would take an outrageous amount of firing units, but still.

  I asked, “How long will it take to reconfigure the pulse guns to hand-held weapons?”

  Raising a brow, Macarius kept reflexively removing screw bolts from the Crab and hiding them in his pocket. “Hand-held? Well, the total weight of two pulse guns is about 90 pounds. We’d need to put it on wheels, a tripod, or even a flat-bottom boat. But other than that, to extract the main block and the munitions supply system, unplug it from the onboard circuit, and connect it to a local power circuit… I’d say I can do it in about three to four hours. If…” Macarius paused as he cast an unkind look at the group’s other mechanics creeping up to the Crab. “If I’m not interrupted. They’ve extracted only six percent of the archives, and already they have swelled heads like they’re experts! Buncha clumsy beavers!”

  I smiled, “All right, chill. No one will get in your way. On the contrary, take anyone you need as your assistant. Just get it done asap.”

  “That’s exactly what I want. My lifecycle in this environment is 32 minutes, and getting lower still. Wanna let me get to work, Commander?”

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. I kept forgetting about how elite my implant was. I alone had three hours of life left. The rest would go to the purgatory a lot sooner, and for a much longer period of time.

  To boost the group’s morale, I allowed them to open ten food rations ancient as dinosaur eggs, but not any less tasty because of it. For the next five minutes, the group was extremely excited as they traded and raffled off the food items: jam for stewed meat, chocolate for creamy chicken soup. We had taken out the cigarettes and vitamins beforehand and distributed them between the leader’s reserve stocks a
nd the meager pharmacy goods.

  A heavy infantry work team squeezed by, heading to the large girder that had utterly failed as a trap. We would use it as a battering ram again.

  In a minute, the boys started rhythmically pounding away at the soft force field. It was an amusing sight; my implant assessed the situation, measuring the force of the blows and adorning the view with a game-like interface.

  The force field slowly faded as the girder knocked virtual HP points out of it. A shirker was highlighted with a low productivity marker. My combat Alpha-prime implant was any foreman's dream come true.

  I looked around. The group was becoming better organized. Everyone knew their places and no one tried to take a vote regarding orders. The group has accepted the hierarchy, at least temporarily.

  The girls quickly and skillfully sorted out the mess the Crab had made. Each one tried to get the heaviest possible chunk in order to improve her stats at least a little. Even those most unfamiliar with online games and futuristic nano-medicine understood the leveling up system.

  The mechanics wrinkled their noses and grumbled, but nevertheless obeyed Macarius’s orders. With ten mechanics, things went faster. I could already see a pile of composite armor units growing next to the Crab. The mechanics disemboweled the munitions supply assembly belt line, loading the pulse gun with fresh balls.

  Macarius looked unwell, his face turning green as he greedily sucked in air to no avail. He had either breathed in too much chemicals while inside the Crab, or he was just a weak fellow.

  Without hesitation, I gave the go-ahead to use the emergency oxygen cartridges. The group really needed them, and this was no time to be greedy. I used to finish videogames with a bag full of elixirs and scrolls, wondering afterward why I had been so frugal, obsessing over every vial.

  Explosive expansion, swiftly moving toward better loot, rooms with higher HIs, battling real enemies. Could we not handle a face-off with the first-year cyber-infantry girls? Were we men of the primitive 21st century or trembling stinkers?

  The brainwashing on this matter was conducted as regularly as possible. The soldiers weren’t very fond of the Amazonians to begin with, and their desire to put the gender pyramid in its correct position comforted them.

  The 7th group psi-sniper girls were the only ones whom the boys felt affection for. It was nearly impossible not to fall in love with someone who has transmitted their first orgasm ever into your brain along with the excitement of possessing a man's body.

  Only those whose brains could generate epsilon waves were recruited as snipers. Aristos weren’t admitted on principle, and the subsidized housing girls would never be able to afford a real man from the Lupanar.

  My interface gave a ring, distracting me from my thoughts. It informed me that our quarters had expanded a little, which resulted in a few points added to my record card. Apparently, a work team of ours had successfully finished the quarantine bot’s work– breaking the door of another cabin.

  I hurried over to the cabin. New rooms were like a lottery. You could get an indestructible virus and take eight hours to die of a terrible diarrhea, or win a jackpot and find wonder boots and a TT gun and defeat a Crab.

  Judging by the enthusiastic gasps of the crowd and the sunlight seeping into the dead ship’s morbidly dark interior, this new cabin was very valuable and unusual. The boys were disciplined enough to stay out of the cabin until I gave an order. But it was still hard to force my way through the crowd in the doorway.

  Once I reached the doorway, a rapturous gasp escaped me. The system was clearly responding to our group’s increased rating and improving our chances of finding new “drop” items as the former gamers termed it.

  It looked like we had found the medical module's recreational area. The expensive synthesis panels on the ceiling still emitted a soft, calming light. The walls and floor were overgrown with verdure. It wasn’t that annoying moss this time, but a mix of grapevines, flowers, and even a tiny yet wide birch tree. Judging by the sniffling, some of the soldiers felt a little nostalgic.

  The soft couch and lordly armchairs were most enticing, promising heavenly pleasure and zero-gravity awesomeness. Holopictures adorned the walls, emitting sounds of rustling grass, breaking waves, and majestic waterfalls.

  There was also a small bar, meaning we would have a drunk party soon. We drooled at the sight of the class “deluxe-limited” food synthesizer.

  “We’ll live, boys!” someone behind me whispered enthusiastically.

  Our Medic replied condescendingly, with irony and his usual skepticism which made him quite intolerable; “We have invaded a closed ecosystem. Look; the habitability index of our old quarters rose by four percent just now. Now think how much the HI of this paradise has dropped. It surely had a model 21 percent oxygen before. So, we better make a salad out of these plants at once before they wilt away.”

  I frowned. The Medic was a huge pessimist, but he was right this time.

  I took off my boots, not wanting to bring dirt into the recreational area. Taking a step forward, I waved a message off my interface, which notified me of a “newly located increased regeneration point.”

  Surveying the area, I took a note of all the goodies and small items, including a porn mag on the couch. The naked beauties no longer moved, nor whispered invitingly, and had ceased to produce large doses of pheromones. The disposable battery sticker on the mag had died after the first two years of continuous use.

  I looked behind the bar, took five alcohol bottles and ten pouches of nuts off the shelves, and passed them along through the doorway. I added a chocolate bar to the holiday basket to make the girls happy. Then, I carefully returned using the exact same route - treading on the still unripe grapevines would have been utterly barbaric.

  I ordered in a dictatorial tone of voice: “Give me a large oxygen cartridge. Calculate the delivery volume taking the area’s cubic capacity into account. Temporarily seal the recreational area. Use plastic, mud, anything. We can’t let these plants die. Move! We’ll celebrate our victory in the evening.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Two hours later, I stood in the middle of the main hall with my foot on the armored mug of the Crab. I looked like an ancient hero worthy of a statue. Judging by Lina’s proud and approving looks, she agreed.

  Mechanics bustled nearby, attaching the heavy pulse gun bundle to an improvised sled. The sled consisted of a capsule lid, pipes for runners, optical fiber traction belts, and a camouflage woven out of moss and mud. Our available tools and materials were limited, but we compensated for it with our enthusiasm and our Russian keenness of wit.

  The rest were jealous of the mechanics; the latter worked in the very center of the hall where the ribbed regenerative cartridge consumed carbon dioxide and produced oxygen. They could breathe easily, almost comfortably.

  The habitability index rose by nine points, but the cartridge burned away incredibly fast, lasting only two hours.

  The rest of the group had a more difficult time. Even moss died in the most faraway corners, peeling off in layers, rolling up into airtight tubes and hibernating until better times. Our alchemist was already studying this new lifeform, admiringly cutting the colorful tubes and stuffing them with any and all available ingredients.

  It turned out that the pupated moss was edible. Moreover, it had a rather pleasant flavor reminiscent of lightly-salted raw potatoes. It was delicious given our circumstances. The girls carried rolls of moss and plastic on trays to all the working soldiers.

  The group cast greedy looks at the improvised minibar as they chewed. There were five round-bellied bottles comfortably hiding inside the safest niches. Two contained whisky, the rest contained cognac, vodka, and something called “Martian Elitic.” I had no idea what that thick blue liquid was, but I saw the percent on the label and the ad slogan proudly stating that the liquor is produced from real Martian dry field and that its surrogate mass percentage is no more than 98 percent.

  The 3D quality mark
spun in circles, occasionally unfolding into an ad window and promising a lifetime discount on all of the brand’s products for those who voluntarily installed a third-degree hypnotic suggestion for “slight cravings for all things MarEli.”

  One soldier sat under a wall with a glassy stare. He had carelessly connected to the dangerous label and downloaded the “cravings” script. By law, voluntary downloading was considered consenting to the installation. Now, the soldier’s military firewall was barely holding back the onset of the commercial mnemoprogram. Corporations were able to hire the best psi-programmers, so the threat level of ads couldn't be overestimated.

  The girls hammered away on the leftovers of the emergency pressurization force field. The guys had been dictatorially relieved of the ram girder. Now, the heavy infantrymen exchanged puzzled looks while the logistics girls carried armature to and fro in an orderly fashion. No one wanted to fall behind in leveling up.

  The force field had mere minutes left. My implant measured the force field’s strength in key points and quite accurately assessed the effector overload along with the generator failure during the next ten minutes.

  Boom... Boom… Boom…

  Wiping sweat off their brows, the girls blew their bangs out of their eyes, and charged again and again, ignoring the men sitting by the walls.

  Finally, the force field blinked and vanished. The girls didn’t slow down in time and tumbled into the new hall illuminated with red emergency lights.

  Rat-tat-tat! came the sound of a rapid-fire plasma gun, creating a bloody haze and sending lumps of charred flesh flying back into our hall.

  The logistics unit status markers all went out, except for one which now had a WIA (wounded in action) glyph blinking over it.

  Bang! went the sighting shot, putting an end to our female unit.

  The girls received five to forty minutes of respawn time. Boy, was this their unlucky day.