Ghost Platoon

by Xavier P. Hunter

  But the battle ended. Round 1 was over.

  [Diligent Squad 1-0]

  [Eminent Deadly 1-0]

  [Ghost Platoon 1-0]

  [Lucky Outlaws 1-0]

  [Acceptable Devils 0-1]

  [Pale Veterans 0-1]

  [Spiffy Exterminators 0-1]

  [Tough Occupation 0-1]

  Chase sneered at the leaderboard. “Fucking alphabetical order. It looks like we’re in third place, not tied for first.”

  “Well,” Reggie said, “we’ve got our fate in our own hands. Another couple rounds and those ties will break up. We’ve just gotta take it one match at a time.”

  Chase snorted. “Our next match is against those beasts from Lucky Outlaws. Don’t let the name fool you; there’s nothing lucky about their wins. That match against Spiffy Exterminators wasn’t close, and Spiffy was one of the teams I identified as Valhalla West ringers.”

  “Shit,” Reggie muttered.

  With a shrug, Chase headed for the buffet to reload. Reggie hadn’t realized until now, but it was stress eating. And in a world where there were no consequences for pigging out, Reggie figured there was no harm.

  “Well, this was never going to be a cake walk,” Chase replied without looking back. “You got any fancy ideas for how to get through this?”

  Reggie did, but he wasn’t sure how it was going to help. He headed to the open bar and ordered himself a drink. It was the best plan he had until he saw the battlefield.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  This time, there was no down-to-the-last-second drama over whether Ghost Platoon would field a full squad. As the timer ticked down the final thirty seconds until go time, Reggie, Chase, Frank, Lin, and even June were all present and accounted for.

  Not that it made much difference.

  The arena was unlike any that Reggie had ever seen in Armored Souls. The crater and mountainside had been plausible locations for an actual planetside battle on the galactic map. Now, Ghost Platoon stood within handshake distance of five Titan-class heavy juggernauts, each a different color of the rainbow. The only thing keeping them separate was a force field that shimmered a translucent blue in the space between.

  “You think the force field is going to drop the second the timer ends?” Frank asked.

  :25

  :24

  “I can’t imagine they’d do that to us,” Lin replied. “Bad ratings. They want a show.”

  :23

  :22

  “Boxing’s been a thing for a hundred years,” Frank argued.

  :21

  :20

  Reggie tried to think. If that force field came down the instant the battle began, it would be a scramble to get Ghost Platoon’s three medium juggernauts clear of the fray. Frank and Lin would have to hold out in Gremlin and Yulong with Artemis, Diablo, and Vortex adding supporting fire.

  But would the Lucky Outlaws go 2-on-2 with Frank and Lin while their other three hunted down the mediums? He realized it didn’t matter.

  Reggie squeezed shut his eyes. “We can’t plan for that. If the force field goes down, we’re toast. Look at the rest of this arena. It’s a maze of force fields and force field generators. Valhalla West didn’t go to all the trouble of designing a maze to pull the walls away the second the battle starts.”

  “You don’t know those guys,” Chase said glumly. “Plenty of the dev team would find that hilarious.”

  “But not the marketing team,” Lin put in. “Bait and switch would be horrible PR.”

  :10

  :09

  “At the starting gun, scatter,” Reggie ordered. “We’re going to react the whole way. Worst case, the maze might shift mid-battle. Best case, Jump Boost works, and Lin and June can pull some surprise flanking maneuvers. Don’t use Jump Boost until you can use it to launch a surprise attack.”

  :02

  :01

  “Roger!” Lin and June replied in unison.

  :00

  “And the battle commences!” the announcer shouted.

  [Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/5]

  The force field remained in place.

  Reggie released a captive breath and headed left along the separating wall. The rest of Ghost platoon scattered into the maze, as did the Lucky Outlaws.

  “Anyone missing a tactical map?” Chase asked.

  June answered immediately. “Yeah, me.”

  “Same here,” Lin reported.

  “Huh,” Frank said. “Lookie there. Ain’t got one, either.” Reggie didn’t want to know why Frank hadn’t noticed until someone else mentioned it.

  “Looks like they’re jamming us,” Reggie said. “Valhalla West, at least. I don’t think there’s anything allowed on a player-driven juggernaut that can jam a basic tactical map.”

  “How are we going to coordinate without map hexes?” Lin asked.

  He’d trained them too well for this one tactical model. Armored Souls had been his home for years, but Reggie had been on real battlefields. Smoke, dust clouds, and inclement weather could all foul visual contact. Not every mission was GPS-coordinated clockwork. Hell, he wondered whether it was even a majority. But how could he condense years of military training for combat at visual contact range on the fly?

  “Keep your head on a swivel,” Reggie ordered. “That means don’t get caught staring and let someone sneak up on you. I want comms cleared except tactical chatter. Watch each other’s backs. We’re going to rely on five sets of optical scanners here—the ones staring from your skulls? Got it?”

  A rough garble of affirmatives came back over the radio.

  “Lin, June, keep to the center of the formation,” Reggie radioed. He wondered whether calling a scattering of juggernauts lost in a translucent force field maze could be considered a formation, but this wasn’t the time to get hung up on the lingo. “Be ready to respond with a Jump Boost intervention.”

  “Incoming!” Chase shouted.

  Reggie reacted even before he looked skyward to note the missile barrage inbound on his location. There had been no computer alert.

  Luckily, Reggie’s instinct had been to press close against the force field wall. Sized to tower over even a heavy juggernaut, the missiles didn’t have the maneuverability to arc down and strike him full on. Point defense lasers crisscrossed the air above, taking out most of the incoming volley. The few that got past time impacted the steel floor of the arena. The battlefield took no visible damage, and Vortex barely noticed the scratches on its leg armor.

  No one else’s damage flashed on Reggie’s platoon tactical computer. Not that it surprised him at this point. It appeared that, aside from radio contact, he and the other juggernauts were unable to communicate at all.

  “Damage reports!” Reggie barked.

  “All clear,” Frank said.

  “Nothing got through, here,” Chase reported.

  “Minimal damage to torso and head armor,” Lin radioed.

  June didn’t answer at first, then added a perfunctory, “They didn’t fire at me.”

  This was the strangest encounter Reggie had ever fought. That included Silent Shuriken, where battles could take place perched on bamboo shoots that sagged beneath the weight of the combatants. Never before had he been lost in a maze within full view of his opposition. Never before had he been forced to abandon everything he knew on a sudden disabling of technology.

  Wait. The first half of that thought might have been true, but the latter half certainly wasn’t.

  Images flashed through his mind. Caught out in a desert sandstorm in a remote village east of nowhere, Afghanistan. Trapped in his Abrams. Two other tanks in convoy, protecting an infantry transport and two civilian supply trucks.

  They’d been unable to hear one another on the radio. Some improvised jammer rigged by insurgents had proven surprisingly effective. Reggie had popped the commander’s hatch and bellowed orders over the howl of the storm winds as sand tried to burrow through his skin and fly up his nostrils and into his open
mouth.

  God, that day had been hell.

  But it gave Reggie an idea.

  “Blanket the area,” Reggie radioed. “Lin, Chase, you’ve both got smokers.”

  “I do?” Chase asked. “Huh. Go figure. I never unequipped them after Gildanneth VI.”

  “What good’s that going to do?” Lin asked. “The smoke wafted over the force fields. They’ll be able to track us by the shape of the maze in the… shit, you don’t want us screening ourselves, do you?”

  “Negative,” Reggie radioed back. “Disconnect your smoke modules, and lob them at the Outlaws.”

  “What if we miss?” Chase asked.

  “I won’t miss,” Lin promised.

  With that challenge in the air, Chase didn’t protest any further. The two juggernauts discharged smoke-generator units like hens laying eggs—or something less savory that Reggie didn’t care to contemplate. Both had wisely already activated the units, saving them from having to figure out how to hack into the controls remotely—if that were even possible.

  The enemy juggernauts were still wending their way through the maze, content to abandon their fruitless efforts at missile bombardment. Quick contact favored the team with the bigger juggernauts—which certainly wasn’t Ghost Platoon this time. What Reggie and his friends needed was to work some trickery. It was smoke and mirrors without the mirrors.

  Chase got his smoker into the general area of two of the Lucky Outlaws. Lin struck the red Titan a glancing blow off the head that made Reggie wish his tactical wireframes were online.

  Trails of smoke lingered from the launch sites. Billowing clouds expanded from the destinations of both.

  “What now?” June asked.

  “Keep moving,” Reggie ordered. “We’re taking eyes out of the game. We want them to lose track of us. Just don’t let them close in.”

  It was the best plan he’d come up with. Reggie wasn’t overly proud of it since they hadn’t managed to capitalize yet. But at least now Ghost Platoon had a clear tactical edge to leverage. If that only put them on equal footing, it was still better than what they’d had before.

  “I’ve got two closing in on me,” Frank reported. “Got myself down a dead end and I think these two yahoos caught on.”

  Reggie sought out Gremlin and spotted the orange and purple Titans zeroing in on his location. “Anyone got a clear line to Frank?” Reggie asked.

  “Negative,” Chase replied. “I wouldn’t get far enough in time.”

  “Not on foot…” June replied, dangling the aerial option without saying it.

  Reggie knew it was time to pull out the ace up their sleeve. With three of the Outlaws blundering around in the smoke, it was time to isolate the two that weren’t. “Lin, June, use your Jump Boost and get in there.”

  It was a slim advantage. Two heavies against two heavies, with only Artemis to swing the balance in Ghost Platoon’s favor.

  Then Reggie’s world turned smoky.

  “What the—?”

  He saw it. A smoke generator, still spewing away, had landed just around the corner from Reggie. Either one of the Lucky Outlaws had been carrying one and pulled the same trick, or they’d thrown it back. Well, not back exactly, since Vortex hadn’t thrown one but back at Ghost Platoon, at least.

  “I’m blind over here,” Reggie reported as the smoke rapidly filled the corridor between force fields. He shuffled forward, hoping Vortex could kick the smoker to help locate it in the blinding cloud.

  “Engaging,” Lin reported.

  “I got this,” Frank said. “You just keep ‘em from ganging up.”

  “ETA ten seconds,” June radioed.

  At least they were keeping in voice contact without Reggie to help coordinate.

  “On my way to you, Reggie,” Chase said. “Be just a bit.”

  An explosion nearby had Reggie checking his damage reports in a panic. But Vortex was unharmed. What had happened became clear when the heavy smoke billowed away as if a dam had burst.

  “Force field down,” Reggie shouted into the radio. “The generators aren’t immune to damage!”

  How much help that information might be, Reggie couldn’t say. Ghost Platoon had played their gambit, but it hadn’t won them any kills. Now, Lucky Outlaws had come up with a trick play of their own, and Reggie gazed up out of Vortex’s front window at the looming hulks of two Titan-class juggernauts.

  “You didn’t see those two coming?” Reggie barked the question but realized at once that the Titans had come from the far side of the smoke. Not only had they used Reggie’s trick against him, they’d adapted and improved on it.

  Vortex’s damage reporting system went on an instant spree of alarms as Plasma Launchers bit into armor all across its chassis. Reggie gamely tried to return fire.

  [Titan[4] – 90% To Hit]

  Titan[4] Leg Armor: 63/70

  Titan[4] Leg Armor: 56/70

  Well, that made him feel a little better, dealing an ineffective amount of non-critical damage to one of the heavier armored portions of a heavy juggernaut.

  A titanic fist descended. Reggie cringed, watching its approach through melted window glass. The already damaged head of Vortex couldn’t protect him from the blow.

  Reggie’s adrenaline spiked at the crash of metal and glass, but in an instant, he was standing in the tournament green room, completely unharmed.

  As for Ghost Platoon, Reggie turned his attention to the video monitors, where the announcer was just catching up with the death of Vortex.

  “Oh, ho-ho-ho, what a massacre!” the announcer reported with ghoulish glee. “And it’s battlefield-wide now.”

  “No… no… dammit, NO!” Reggie seethed, watching as Lin took on two Titans in melee by herself as Frank tried to coax a limping Gremlin toward the fray. Artemis hung back, taking pot shots that would never swing the fight in time. Chase blundered into the path of the two Titans who’d taken Vortex out of the action.

  Of small graces, Reggie had this one to be thankful for: at least it was over quickly. Well, four of the deaths were, anyway.

  Lin was finished off. Reggie’s killers dispatched Chase. Frank got ganged up on and got a few good licks in before being removed.

  Then it was down to June. Artemis was far faster than the Titans, and with Jump Boost lending her even more mobility, it became a game of cat and mouse. 1 versus 5, June couldn’t possibly win.

  Or could she?

  Every close call, every near miss had Reggie’s heart racing. “Come on… come on,” he said beneath his breath, neither addressing the rest of Ghost Platoon in the green room with him nor trying to keep his words from their ears. “You can pull this out!”

  June dodged. She jumped. She fired off shots like an avatar in Close Quarters Combat, mid-air acrobatics only spoiling a fraction of her shots with her DF Ballistic Cannon-150. Sub-caliber rounds poked holes in the Lucky Outlaws’ Titans here and there.

  “The final Ghost, Artemis, is making trouble for the Lucky Outlaws,” the announcer reported. But that wasn’t news to anyone paying attention.

  As Titans closed in, trying to use the edge of the arena to hem her in, June took a bold path right between two of them, vaulting overhead in the space their ensnaring net left open. Both fired at her.

  And missed.

  Free and in the open again, June had three-quarters of the arena to herself. She headed for the region where smoke still lingered.

  “We’ve just passed the fifteen-minute mark,” the announcer said, attempting to inject excitement into a chase that had just gone from near-resolution to hide-and-seek. “This will be the longest match yet in group play.”

  At the edge of the smoke, June turned into a sniper. She caught the Lucky Outlaws on long straightaways and dodged out of sight. Other times, she leaped from smoke, firing at the height of her Jump Boost’s arc, and landed elsewhere in the haze.

  It was thrilling to watch, but Reggie wondered at the damage the Titans were taking. None of them seemed impaire
d. Still, so long as they weren’t hitting June and she kept picking away at them, there was a chance.

  Then June landed in the smoke and disappeared from view. Unlike all the other times, this time there was no emergence elsewhere. Even the announcer seemed unsure what was going on.

  “We saw Artemis enter the smoke screen not far from Demeter. What’s going on in that smoky cloud of doom is anyone’s guess!”

  Well, the mystery ended not long after. The force fields vanished, and a strong wind swept the battlefield air clear.

  One Titan—presumably named Demeter—knelt over the wreck of Artemis.

  The television screen flashed with fireworks. A graphic sprang up for the viewers.

  WINNER: LUCKY OUTLAWS.

  June appeared in the green room at the same moment. She took a stumbling step before orienting herself to her new surroundings. “Sorry, guys. I just ran out of luck.”

  Chase shook his head. “Nothing lucky about those Lucky Outlaws. Those guys kicked our asses.”

  Now Ghost Platoon was 1-1, and in all likelihood, they’d need to win all the rest of their matches to escape group play.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Without any need to wait around for another match that day, Reggie and the rest of Ghost Platoon headed back to Nibelheim. They arrived neither as triumphant heroes nor as downtrodden failures but rather some middle ground that still held hope. The five of them reappeared in the main juggernaut hangar, receiving greetings from NPC maintenance staff, which they all ignored as a matter of habit.