by Ivan Kal
“I’m in, I’m shutting down the cameras throughout the ship and no one is coming down through here, unless they drop down the shaft.” She said.
“Good, Sakura, Marcus, and Ana you stay here and make sure that if anyone tries that regrets it. The rest, move.” Paul said.
Alexander again took the lead, with the rest following in formation, weapons ready, they all knew the plan. Rather than taking the ships command center, they would take control of engineering. According to schematics there was a secondary command panel located there, if something happened to the command center, the control of the ship would go to the secondary panel. Their plan was to storm and take control of engineering, and take the control of the ship through there. The mission parameters stated that they needed to take control of the ship, and to eliminate the pirate threat. The Cargo bay had an access hatch leading to the upper deck, from there they had to pass through a hallway leading directly to engineering. They opened the hatch and started climbing the ladders one by one, the last one closed the hatch behind them, and Paul instructed Ana over the comms to seal the hatch from her side so that no one could get to the hangar bay through there. When Alexander reached the end he sent a ready signal over their comms, once everyone responded affirmatively he reached to his belt and unhooked a flash grenade, he opened the hatch and threw it out, then quickly closed it. A moment later they heard it go off and he threw the hatch open and stepped out, immediately Adrian heard gunfire as the rest of his team followed Alex. Adrian was the forth in line after Helen and Tania. This was the riskiest part of their plan, because the moment one of them exited the hatch they would be vulnerable as there was no cover, they had no way of knowing how many hostiles would be in the hallway. Adrian finally exited the hatch, his implant feeding him information about enemy positions from his team mates that were already in the hallway, he immediately pointed his rifle down the hall from engineering as Alex, and Helen had already taken care of those on the other side. As soon as he aligned his rifle with a red dot on his HUD he fired taking a pirate in the head, Tania took the out the last one, leaving them with no immediate treat. Adrian moved forward taking a knee with his rifle pointed down the hall, while the rest of his teammates entered the hallway. Paul then instructed them to cover Helen as she opened the panel to the door that lead to engineering. They moved back closer to the door, with Paul kneeling on the right side of the hallway, his rifle pointed in the same direction as Adrian’s and Alexander standing behind him, while Bethany stood behind Adrian. Noah and Tania were standing on opposite sides of the door ready to deal with anyone inside.
“I got it, ready?” Helen said a moment later.
Two pirates rounded the corner from the other side of the hallway as she waited for a response from Noah and Tania, Adrian and Bethany took care of them before they had the chance to respond.
“Ready” They said.
Helen taped the datapad in her hand and the door slid open. The moment they opened Tania and Noah were inside, with Paul instructing Beth, and Alex to follow, leaving him and Adrian to cover their entrance. Another three pirates came around the corner these shooting the moment they cleared the corner, but in their aim was poor, and Alex and Paul took them out a second later. As Noah gave the all clear, Paul told Adrian to move through the door with him covering him, Adrian stood up turned and ran the four meters to the door, where he took position inside concealed by the door and now covered Paul as he made the run inside. When he passed the threshold Adrian accessed the panel on the inside and closed the door. As Adrian turned around he saw seven pirates lying dead on the ground, and Helen working furiously on the panel in the middle of the room.
“There, I got control over life support.” Helen said over the comms.
Paul’s plan was never to take control over the ship from the engineering, the drives, weapons, maneuvering, all those systems were behind powerful firewalls, by focusing only on one system they could take control over it much faster than if they tried to take control over everything. And by the time they did manage to take over everything the pirates would have reorganized and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers.
“Went the air from all compartments save this one and the cargo bay.” That would take out any pirate not in the command center because the controls for the command centers life support were separate from those that controlled the rest of the ship.
Helen taped the screen a few times and several compartments started turning red. They waited a couple minutes making sure that enough time passed for those pirates unlucky enough to be outside of the command center to suffocate.
“Sakura, bring back the camera feeds.” Paul said over the comms. A moment later Helen accessed the feeds and they looked at the various parts of the ship. Most every camera showed pirates lying on the ground dead or unconscious. Then she brought the feeds from the command center. There were 12 pirates left. 6 of them were working on panels trying to get back the control of life support, and two were yelling at them. The rest had positions around the room. It was strange seeing fear on the faces of what Adrian knew were simulations, programs. But they were made to be as life like as possible, their programing was adaptive. Though it was nowhere near the level of Iris, these simulations were only barley semi-sentient.
“Helen stay here and keep them from gaining back the control of their systems. Sakura, Marcus, Ana, reactivate the elevator and meet us at the C.C.” With that Paul took the lead, they moved through the decks with pirates lying dead on the ground. Their tanks were good for three minutes of air, but Helen had already started pumping air back in. Two minutes later they arrived at the C.C. doors, Sakura, Marcus and Ana were already there waiting for them.
“They sealed themselves inside.” Marcus said when the rest of them reached them.
“Helen can you open them on your side?” Paul asked.
“One minute.” Helen replied over the comms.
Even though this was a simulation, everything was built to be real, even down to hacking, defense programs designed for their ships systems were used in the simulations. Aside from providing realism it was also a way to test and later improve them, as they could see weaknesses they didn’t anticipated before actually testing them. And recruits had a tendency to find new and inventive ways of breaking through the defenses.
The doors were wide enough for three of them to pass through them comfortably. Paul ordered them to take positions in front of the door, and a minute later Helen gave the go sign to Paul over the comms.
“Open the doors on three. One… Two… Three. Go!” Paul yelled.
The doors slid opened and the team rushed in, Alex and Paul led shooting, one going left the other right, Beth and Noah were next running through the middle to take cover at the panels in front of the door, while Ana and Marcus covered them from the doors, Adrian and Sakura entered next followed by Tania, The 6 pirates that were using the controls were hiding behind their panels, leaving 6 of the pirates for them to take out. One of the pirates managed to shoot Noah’s leg, the bullet hit the armor at the right angle to push through instead of deflecting. He went down, and Marcus immediately moved from the doors to cover him, while Sakura dragged him back behind a panel, Adrian got a clean shot at one of the pirates that he saw previously yelling at the operators, Alex and Paul had managed to move far enough into the round room so that they were in position to shoot at the pirates behind their cover. A minute later all 6 of the armed pirates were down, and Paul order the rest stunned and taken captive. After they had control of the room, they took control of the ship, finishing the scenario. A moment later they got a mission clear message in their implants inboxes, and the walls around them started exploding into blue particles and they were swallowed by darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
November 2102
Team 9 walked out with yet another top score in the capture the flag scenarios, this was actually the last capture the flag scenario and one that gave them a lot of difficulties during the past month. The
scenario was set on a station, and the goal was to find and steal a memory drive (flag) and bring it back to the hangar bay for extraction. The scenario was known as one of the more difficult ones among the teams, as it required a lot of skill, teamwork and luck to actually beat. And then there was the matter of trainers scoring, they only gave a perfect score if there were no casualties, meaning that they needed to use only non-lethal weapons. It took Adrian and the rest of his team a better part of the month to finish the scenario with a perfect score, sacrificing the points they could have gotten by doing other scenarios, but it paid off in the end as the perfect score on this scenario gave a lot more points than the others. They walked to their room in a great mood.
“That was awesome, I really didn’t think we could pull it off for a minute there.” Tania said excitedly.
“Yeah, Noah pulled through at the end.” Ana said slapping Noah on the back.
Noah just puffed up his chest and took in all the compliments from his teammates.
“Well, these points now push us to the second place. A few more and we will take over the top.” Sakura said brightly.
The rest of the room agreed, and immediately their attentions went to planning on how to tackle the next month’s challenges. The next month was actually the last, and the one in which they had to take as many top scores as they could if they were to take the first place. It was also the month that Bethany and Adrian were set to lead, they had agreed on doing the challenges one after the other, with Beth going first. But other than that they haven’t managed to agree on anything else. They clashed on the training arrangements, on who would lead what scenario, they even clashed on who would go first, before the others intervened and they drew straws, with Beth winning. There was a lot of tension between them, and the rest of the team, all of them were aware that they needed victories if they were to take the top spot, they didn’t know the amount of points that was needed to pass, so they aimed at being at the top, so the constant clashes between Beth and Adrian worried them. Things between Beth and Adrian were awkward at best, ever since her apology they tended to avoid each other when they weren’t in company of other teammates, there were no more pokes on the account of Adrian’s age, but there was still tension, they just didn’t know how to talk to one another, and Adrian felt like she had problem with him being there. They tried to be cordial with each other when in group, but they just didn’t mesh when they were alone, choosing to ignore one another. Their teammates noticed this early on and always put them on different assignments during scenarios or tried to limit their contact. Their relationship was something of an elephant in the room that everyone knew was there, but no one commented on.
For the first challenge Beth chose a standard, team vs. team. A scenario where the goal was to “kill” the opposing team. They spent three days watching the videos of other teams fighting against each other, formulating different tactics for each one. The teams were paired by their trainers, and unlike other scenarios wining these didn’t give a fixed amount of points, the trainers were the ones who decided how many points the winners would be awarded based on their performance. A few hours after they entered team vs. team queue they got a response informing them that they would fight against the team Viper, from room 4, currently ranked fifth overall, and fourth in team vs. team. Team 9 had a slight advantage over team Viper, as they hadn’t entered a team versus match before, and therefore team Viper couldn’t study their tactics. Adrian’s team on the other hand studied records of Vipers matches in detail. They tended to use head on attacks. Matches versus other teams were different from the rest, they weren’t held in simulators, but on physical terrain. There were many different arenas which were randomly chosen for each match. The one that was chosen for their match was, a forest setting. The arena was of course aboard the station. It was big at least five hundred meters in width and twice that in length. The terrain was dirt, brought from earth, with live trees, the celling simulated the sky. The armor they wore, or rather suit they wore was specially made, that looked like armor but in fact didn’t offer any kind of protection against real weapons, it was designed to register hits from the weapons used in versus matches, which fired a small projectile made out of a thin layer of rubber that contained an electrical charge, upon impact the rubber ball shatters and the charge is released into the suit, the suit then send a charge into the wearers body which causes pain, the suit also locks up and based on the position of the impact the wearer losses the equivalent amount of mobility to the damage done, up to being completely frozen inside the suit. The weapons they carried looked like the N22 rifle.
After they put on the suits, making sure everything was properly secured, they signaled that they were ready and then waited for the match to begin.
A minute later the doors from the waiting room opened and they stepped inside the forest. This time they were in direct contact via their implants, and since this wasn’t a simulation it meant that Iris was there with Adrian. Bethany immediately instructed them to separate into three teams of three with Adrian left as a rear guard. They moved in a V formation with Bethany’s team being the center and behind, their tactics were to encircle the opposing team and take them out, which left Adrian with nothing to do as he was far behind them. He made the point when Bethany told them the plan, which she of course rejected as nonsense, he was to protect their rear, no matter that with their wide formation there was no way anyone could get behind them. But Adrian finally conceded not wanting to fight with her. The rest of his team advanced quickly and soon were out of his sight, he could still follow via his implant. Adrian moved slowly following Bethany’s instructions to the letter, keeping a 200 meters gap between the rest of the team and himself.
“The two of you need to work this thing out.” Iris told him.
“What thing?” Adrian asked her, playing ignorant.
“Don’t be like that with me Adrian. I know you.” She said.
“Fine, what would you have me do?”
He heard a sigh. “Talk with her, find out what is the problem, both of you are only hurting the team with your feud.”
Adrian elected to keep silent and focused on moving through the tick forest. He knew she was right, but he just didn’t know how to approach Bethany, nor how to make things right between them, he wasn’t blind, he knew that she had some problem with him, he just didn’t know how to deal with it.
A rapid exchange of fire startled Adrian, and he took cover, he focused on his HUD. The rest of the team had meet with the Vipers, there were more sounds of fire, and he could hear Bethany instructing the team to fall back, but a few moments later she and the rest of the team grew silent. Their blue dots on his HUD changed into red ones, indicating that they were down. Adrian looked out of his cover. He didn’t see anyone, but he knew that the enemy team was approaching, by now they would have realized that they were one enemy short. Adrian looked at his options, he could just walk out and let them shoot him, since their team had already lost. But he didn’t want to just give them this win, he remembered Bethany, and suddenly he didn’t want to be defeated without a fight. He quickly turned back and went to a tree he noticed a few meters back and he climbed it. He found a spot four meters from the ground and trained his rifle to in the direction the other team was most likely to come from, he didn’t have a lot of visibility, only a couple of meters in front of the tree, but that also benefited him, they wouldn’t spot him easily. The Olympus rifles, unlike the ones from Earth didn’t have scopes, they relied on their wielders implants to aim. When the rifles line of fire aligned with a target the crosshair on the HUD would rotate, at least that was what it did for Adrian, the HUD was fully customizable.