by D. Rus
Livia helplessly leaned back in her chair by the control panel. That was it, she had no more reserves. The wretched aristos from the Personnel Reserve College had really taken off the gloves. The jet set, all of whom received officer ranks only to confirm their nobility certificates, had already failed twice at setting course, and were now back in the noob locations for the third time.
As Livia correctly suspected, they had failed on purpose. Why work your ass off and storm Marat’s upper decks? It’s easier to learn the first 50 levels and find all the secret spots. Besides, everyone was already aware of the undocumented bug in the virtual training ground; the stashes and hideouts created by the students during the previous conquest attempts remained in the game.
That’s why the aristos always had a great, fast start. They had off-design implants from the planet’s best hospitals and rich stashes and knew the locations perfectly.
They would wipe out their unfortunate neighbors almost instantly, screwing them over big-time; respawning took 24 hours, and the stasis capsules would be destroyed. Then, a bloodbath for the lower levels. Aristos satisfied their unhealthy instincts and scored thousands of achievements, turning their record cards into heroic iconostases and automatically being awarded lieutenant licenses. This was simpler and more interesting.
“Bastards,” Livia whispered, smashing her fist into the wall. “Platoon six, reduce the front lines, retreat to the deckhouse!”
Tears of anger and resentment stood out on her eyes. It was all useless. They wouldn’t make it. The current situation was nothing more than agony. In a half hour, platoon six would get pushed into the respawn hall in the deckhouse where she sat, surrounded by empty capsules and moaning, heavily-injured soldiers. The minor PSH used a 100 percent of its resources, but this clearly wasn’t enough.
Her interface once again flooded with her soldiers’ statuses: all KIA and WIA.
Livia looked at the tactical monitor and said wearily: “Platoon nine, retreat. Pick up 9-4, she’s still alive.”
She sat for a minute longer, watching as the seventh company’s territory rapidly shrank. Then, sighing, Livia shrugged and reached for her PG.
As a leader, she was now useless. As a sniper, she was worth nothing due to the malfunction of her psi-setting and her lack of the necessary equipment which she had left on her death sites, all on enemy territory now. She couldn’t spare a single infantryman.
One hour later, Livia Cruise once again found herself in the deckhouse. Only now, she had a gaping wound on her head, treated slightly with “freeze” and hurriedly stitched with silver staples from a medical staple gun. The junior sergeant stood on her knees, her forehead pressed against a wall. Her hands were tied behind her back, and the remnants of her armor had been cut off her body.
The enemy didn’t bother to remove her hardware as they didn’t want to stumble upon some intricate surprise weapon in the form of a few ounces of explosives or a capsule with poisonous spray. They had thoroughly perfected their prisoner handling methods.
Thirty more wounded sniper girls were on their knees by the wall along with a dozen girls who had just respawned and were instantly captured.
Standing next to the prisoners, the master hacker was busy overloading their implants’ command chains and blocking any and all suicide attempts. His military silencer seemed out of place in a lower level setting. It belonged on decks 100 and up.
“Fat cat brats,” Livia whispered as she felt the space around her with her psi-ability which she had just regained.
The deckhouse was crowded. Fifty soldiers in medium, heavy, and custom armor took up all the space.
Livia’s busted lips broke into a satisfied smile. Fortunately, as she was facing the wall, no one noticed this. “Either way, we did kill 15 men."
She didn’t consider losing 10 soldiers per a single killed enemy shameful, even though her company was on the defensive. Snipers weren’t made for close combat with noble cybernetic heavy infantry, especially in the narrow halls of an ancient carrier.
A sniper’s element was ambush and a single shot, preferably from a distance of two to three miles. It wasn’t Livia’s fault that the university’s first course was mandatory for everyone.
The K-9 guys were happy to pass on the third try. They had even developed a special strategy that took into account two reboots.
Livia heard armor and ammo being dumped on the floor with a clatter. The aristos had hermetically sealed the module and put drones on exterior guard duty. Now, they were undressing, preparing for the ritual victory celebration.
Livia shuddered and bit her lip. I’ll survive! she told herself.
It’s possible to live through any day from dawn to dusk. The aristos would rape the snipers even though the latter were commoners. Then, they would torture the prisoners until reality and the virtual purgatory became one and the same for them. After they will have played with each prisoner to their heart's content, breaking them like dolls, the aristos would simply kill them. And this would go on and on until the respawn timer reached 24 hours.
The arbiter would register the complete destruction of the seventh company. The aristos would receive yet another four-digit bonus and continue roaming the lower decks, looking for new victims.
Through the heavy air of the aristos drunk on blood and anticipation, Livia’s psi-ability detected a fresh wave of male aura. It was painfully familiar, evoking a yearning in her for the beloved man with whom she was once close.
Lucky? Group 13? But how?! flashed across Livia’s mind.
Livia wasn’t the only one to feel the new aura. The other snipers started looking around. Two guards raised their mass-neuroguns in alarm. Livia was forced to snap at her snipers via their mental channel, demanding that they stay still, listen to the astral plane, and be ready for action.
“Eleven,” Livia whispered, having counted the number of mind energy lights.
They posed almost no threat, still being rookies even though they had gained some experience in Marat's bilge. Livia wondered if they had already acquired their first gun, or if they still ran around with sticks like her seventh company had during their first month in the virtual world.
She told herself that these rookies wouldn’t help, that they would at most have fun looking at the aristos dissecting the sniper girls.
To the aristos’ loud laughter, the pretty Victoria, the commander of platoon 2, was dragged into the middle of the group. Her blood purity was questionable, but not her beauty. The rapists weren’t even turned off by the fact that she was missing her right hand.
Behind the surprisingly thin interior bulkhead wall, the astral plane boiled with hatred. It was a wonder how anyone could’ve climbed in there given the ship’s monolithic bearing structure.
The hatred was understandable. No normal person would have liked the “conversation” the aristos were starting with Victoria.
The clang of iron sounded behind the wall, and some small items fell. Livia frowned; the rookies really sucked at keeping quiet. But the aristos, carried away by the activity forbidden in the virtual world, ignored their implants’ alarms. They decided it was the creaking of rusty hinges. Only one of the guards stared at the bulkhead wall in perplexity, slowly raising his gun.
Thanks to their highly developed intuition, the snipers hit the deck a mere half a second before a hail of supersonic balls literally knocked down the bulkhead wall.
The shells quickly took out the guards who had thoughtlessly opened their helmets. They were still in armor and posing the biggest threat. Half a second per guard, and the balls flew crosswise through the hall, drawing spurts of blood from the dumbfounded skinny aristos.
Livia rolled on the floor, easily guessing the inexperienced PG operator’s actions. Her psi-spark flared brighter than ever before. She could see two seconds ahead into the future, as per the household troops standard.
Judging by how her subordinates also danced with death, they too had suddenly developed a perfect skill of adju
sting to the astral.
In short lunges, Livia moved toward a plasma gun left on the deck. She could think very clearly: The rookies have a heavy company PG. Or two PGs, most likely. Set to maximum fire rate, 50 shells per second. Holy Juno, where did they get such guns?!
Her level of control over her psi-energy was amazing. Picking up the PG, Livia started firing short double shots at the aristos shrinking into the corners. At the same time, she felt her friends’ minds, synchronized thought processes and built a perfect twelve-edged psi-star. It was practically a single organism, accessible only to experts and grand masters.
This hell lasted twenty seconds. The double PGs emptied their thousand-shell mags into the enemies. The dancing psi-star finished off the wounded and those who pretended to be wounded. Even though all bodies looked alike when seen through a gun’s thermal imager, you couldn’t hide a living brain’s energy by simply not moving.
Livia sent thought glyphs to the unknown PG operator: “Friends! Cease fire!”
Once the fire stopped, she rose and looked at the blood-stained deck. She saw 56 aristo corpses and seven dead snipers, he latter being either friendly fire or ricochet victims. It was a great victory that would surely become the university’s most discussed legendarium.
The thin PG barrels disappeared back into the hidden passage. Judging by the distinctive oblique cutoffs on the barrels, Livia identified a Dual Stationary Droid PGx2. How did they modify it to be a handheld weapon? she wondered. It has electronic controls, completely lacks human engineering and any homing-guidance systems. Did they really shoot using the open barrel sight, like in the ancient times of continental wars?
Tearing down the rest of the wall panel, a tall, broad-shouldered warrior clad in a regular spacesuit burst into the hall. Livia’s heart beat faster. Her implant informed her of a myriad of different hormones released into her blood.
Lucky stopped for a second, surveyed the neat piles of gear left by the aristos, and rubbed his hands together. This was excellent loot.
Tearing his burning eyes away from the epic spoils, the commander glanced over the girls who stood in the middle of the hall full of corpses. They didn’t feel threatened. On the contrary, they smiled timidly yet invitingly, daunted by the gazes of true men. Primeval, aggressive men who retained an ideal genome and hadn’t gotten damaged by centuries of skillful brainwashing by politicians, sociologists, image-makers, and other such parties that loved to tell people what they should buy, love, and value, and where and with whom they should live.
Recognizing his old acquaintance, Lucky rushed over to Livia, hugged her, and showered her cheeks with kisses.
The girl moaned softly as something stirred in her lower abdomen. A storm of psi-energy expanded an entire 100 feet as if Livia were an expert preparing to become a grand master.
She barely perceived Lucky’s words: “Hey, Livia! Have we made it on time?”
Regaining control of her limp limbs, the junior sergeant gave a forced smile. Catching the ironic, jealous gaze of the girl who stood behind Lucky, Livia straightened her back with an effort and nodded gratefully, “You have indeed. I’ll transfer the entire reserve pool of leader prize points to your account. It’s not much, around 2,000, but still. And the loot is yours, of course. I will request the right to barter for a part of our gear…” Livia blushed and added quietly, “On credit, with interest.”
Seeing that Lucky pulled a face, the junior sergeant tightly clutched her PG to her chest and started jabbering, “We’ll certainly find something you guys need. You had a boarding platoon? I know a repair complex on deck 43 where they used to service heavy CASs. Just give us a little time to recover, and we’ll get them for you.”
“Livia,” Victoria interrupted quietly. “They don’t need interest rates. They’ll let us have our gear back for free, right, guys?”
Livia frowned knitted her brow with a puzzled look, and only then remembered about her talents. An impermissible negligence.
Pulling a psi-layer over her eyes, she took another look at the warriors before her. She felt joy, sympathy, a desire to protect, passion, power, confidence…
Her belly started to ache again as she gasped for air. Lucky smiled amicably and nodded: “Sure we’ll let you keep your gear. A soldier won’t hurt a child. And maybe…” he looked at his friend, exchanging a dozen thoughtforms with her.
Despite their low level, they had amazing mental power and private channel shielding degree. Livia even sighed, feeling jealous. Her whole life, she relied only on her psi-mastery, as her own astral reservoir was quite modest, barely enough to get accepted into a second-rate college.
Although now, surrounded by wild male energy, she felt that she was truly a mighty psionic, the legendary Lera from the popular virtual show, the one that allowed the viewers to enter it and influence its events.
Lost in thought, Livia habitually decreased her perception range. She wished she hadn’t done that, as Victoria got brazen.
Lucky’s girl replied to him, “No ‘maybes!’ Definitely yes!”
Instantly, the miniature, fair-haired Victoria slung the trophy batch shotgun on her back and decidedly approached the short young man huddled up to the dual PG. Standing on tiptoe, she threw her arms around his neck and awkwardly yet passionately pressed her lips to his.
Victoria said, making the young man blush and proudly straighten his shoulders, “With this hunk as my number three, I’ll be able to crush a heavy storm-drone with a single mediocre psi-wave.”
Livia tensed up. Victoria was violating all social norms. Men set aside for fornication were priceless, usually couldn’t be touched, and were almost never ownerless. Refusing to take mandatory drugs that suppressed the menstrual cycle and obeying your own lust could lead to quite a few bad consequences: the imposing of a monetary and social fine, revocation of certain rights, or even being summoned to a duel.
But the men only smiled, said “ooh la la,” and applauded. They liked what they saw and approved of it. Livia couldn’t believe it. To her, it was like a bedtime story about the distant past; a dozen males oozing testosterone and free energy.
More warriors stepped out of the chasm in the wall. They looked around like they owned the place, choosing firearms from the ones on the floor, and reflexively cast eager looks at the slender sniper girls in nothing but cut-up underwear.
May Juno have mercy on all of us, what’s going on with my girls? Livia wondered. They sucked in their stomachs, threw out their chests, made eyes at the men, and assumed sexy poses as if they had been practicing in front of mirrors in the barracks bathrooms.
Lucky approached Livia and held out his hand to her, puzzling her. “My group doesn’t mind,” he said. “We won’t survive on our own in here. We’re very low on time, and still infinitely far from our goal. So, partners?”
The standard one-year contract form appeared before Livia’s eyes:
“Status alert! Group 13 is offering to temporarily unite.”
“Accept or decline?”
Livia heard Lucky’s voice over the pounding of her heart in her ears: “And what did you say about military CASs? We could really use those. We also need clear stasis capsules, controllable drone stacks, heavy and stationary weapons…”
Seventeen days later.
HSC Marat. Flight deck 190. Alliance flag: technosentients; threat level: red.”
“Omega in position,” I heard formation 13-7 report in my head.
I mechanically sent them the “OK” glyph and continued surveying the giant hangar’s territory. The staff had the perfect location, atop the technical gallery, right under the ceiling, 100 feet above the deck.
The rare module Chameleon covered us on almost all the frequency ranges, including the entire light spectrum. But getting too comfortable was unwise, so we communicated via the psi-channel only.
We were too few. Our target was so powerful that my implant saw no chances of winning unless we utilized a heavy infantry battalion. Even after two weeks,
the stupid thing still didn’t understand the full potential of psi-snipers united with a male division with perfect genes.
We weren’t about to put down our guns. We had multiplied in numbers. The girls bloomed, hormones raged, the storm of energy was strong enough to tear down the bulkhead gates.
As Livia said, her company would go like hot cakes not just when applying to a guard division, but even to the Imperial Safety SWAT. It was odd that they hadn’t been disconnected from the simulator yet.
The girls refused to part with their men even if that meant getting themselves fired. Firing the seventh company girls, however, would have been difficult; after our groups united, the snipers too were transferred under the Russian Empire Space Force jurisdiction. The girls’ faces filled with shock and awe once the golden eagle stretched its wings on their virtual profiles.
By now, they had gotten used to it and were secretly proud. As group leader and officer implant bearer, I saw all the inquiry stats and time spent by each member admiring their avatar.
“Group Sigma, fall in!” another order came in.
I hit OK again. Our circle around the flight deck shrank slowly, one foot at a time. We utilized all the camouflage available to us. Not without reason we had surrounded the EW storages on deck 112 and taken out the third-year operators stationed there. It was a marvelous fight. The all-female operator team defeated all stereotypes. They were no four-eye staff officers with fat mugs, but seasoned she-wolves who had seen life. If I ever meet them in the real world, I will gladly shake their hands and have a beer with them.
Ahead of the sniper trios were the Poltergeist and Banshee terror hives. They spied on enemy communications and switched security systems data. At any moment, they were ready to falsify our location and make the enemy headquarters fall into chaos.
Nika and Stella, our bot masters, kept their pack of elite drones on a tight leash. These drones could initiate a deadly dummy attack to distract the enemy. Alas, we had not been able to obtain heavy bots despite our huge potential; we were simply low on time.