Ghost Platoon

by Xavier P. Hunter

  Lin had scored a series of torso shots on the vainly dodging Jackal[2] that had eventually just brute-forced their way through its armor and took out its engine.

  “The rest of us gonna play?” Frank asked.

  “Looking like maybe not,” Reggie replied.

  “There they go!” June shouted.

  Diligent Squad bolted for the water. They headed not directly away from Lin’s line of fire, but on a southeasterly heading that tracked well with the topographical map of the seabed.

  Chase broke out cackling. “That’s where the Otsu went. They didn’t know where the safe water was.”

  “Move out!” Reggie ordered. “Frank, fire, punch, or grapple at will. This is a beat down now. We outnumber them 5 to 3, and one of those is their Otsu.”

  “Dibs!” Chase called out.

  “There’s no dibs!” Reggie snapped. “First come, first serve. Nice job forcing them to flee, Lin.”

  The chase went on longer than Reggie might have liked. Artemis was the fastest Ghost Platoon juggernaut, but June didn’t have the firepower to take on the remaining Diligent Squad alone. They reversed course and intercepted her, with the Demon and Jackal double-teaming her before Ghost Platoon could save her.

  That made catching the Jackal and Otsu all the tougher. They caught the Demon right away, giving Frank something tender and juicy to sink his fists into. The enemy heavy had already taken a beating from Lin’s Anti-Matter Projector. It didn’t last long once Gremlin arrived.

  [Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 3/5]

  But with Chase’s Jackal being the only one able to keep pace, it took forever to hem in the last of Diligent Squad’s threats. Eventually, pinned against a drop-off to crushing depths of ocean water, Ghost Platoon caught up. Faced with going down fighting or denying Ghost Platoon the satisfaction, the pilot stepped off the continental shelf, sinking to depths that even a juggernaut chassis couldn’t survive.

  [Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 4/5]

  Reggie sneered at the pilot’s trolling. Maybe he’d reconsider going out for beers with these guys.

  The Otsu became a game of hide-and-seek. It was so much faster than the Ghost Platoon juggernauts that even once they spotted it, the pilot could often get his juggernaut out of visual range before anyone could close in on it. Twice it found spots between the scattered Ghost Platoon juggernauts and slipped past their snares.

  Eventually, Reggie worked out the ideal spacing for them, and he, Chase, Lin, and Frank swept the battlefield until they ran the Otsu out of places to hide. Its last-ditch escape plan was to come out of the water and run across open ground on one of the mid-sized islands to get past them, challenging Chase and Frank to put in a shot before it escaped weapons range again.

  Frank fired and missed with his Beam Cannon-L. Chase clipped it in the leg with two shots from his Beam Cannon-Ms. The Otsu flopped to the sand like a soccer player looking for a foul. It regained its feet and attempted to hop away.

  Gremlin swept a gentlemanly hand in the direction of the limping juggernaut. “My dear sir, I believe you called dibs.”

  Reggie couldn’t begrudge the kid his kill after finally crippling the annoying final enemy on Diligent Squad.

  [Sole Objective Complete: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 5/5]

  Reggie didn’t even pay attention to the announcement or the fireworks. His mind was already on the final battle of group play.

  Here we come, Spiffy Exterminators.

  Matching 5-1 records. Each only lost to the undefeated Lucky Outlaws. Only one would make it to the finals.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  After too brief a time resting in the green room, Ghost Platoon was called back to the battlefield. This time, it was against a 1-loss platoon that had given Lucky Outlaws a better showing than Ghost Platoon had. Their battlefield was a rural village of modern design, tucked away in a mountain valley and straddling a muddy stream. Dirt streets ran in and throughout. Outdated vehicles littered the streets. Corrugated steel rooftops were topped with satellite dishes, giving one of the only signs of technology.

  “Power station on the outskirts look like the best cover,” June said within seconds of the countdown beginning. Heavy gray smoke coughed from a smokestack jutting from the city like a cigar smoker lying on his back. “Might be the only solid structure around.”

  Reggie’s mouth went dry. He’d been here. He’d seen this place. It was an amalgam of every shit hole third-world wart on the map of every backwater failed state he’d been deployed to. It was the kind of place filled with friendly, smiling locals who spoke a language he didn’t understand but generally appreciated the safety Reggie and his unit provided. And mixed in among them were anywhere between a pair to a dozen people who lied through those smiles and hid stockpiles of weapons and improvised explosives to murder Reggie and his buddies.

  “Um, your thoughts, big guy?” Chase asked, snapping Reggie from his deployment down memory lane.

  :16

  :15

  He blinked. “June’s right. Power plant is the obvious control point for the village. Avoid it at all costs.”

  :14

  :13

  “What?” Frank asked. “We can’t just go giving them the best cover.”

  “If they cluster there, we’ll surround them,” Reggie said. “But they won’t. It’s too small for a whole unit. We need to keep out of range of that power plant. We’re heading for the mountains.”

  Frank’s voice was quiet. “I always hated mountain engagements.”

  “This isn’t Little Big Horn,” Chase scolded. “Keep your head in the game.”

  “June, I want you at max scanner range, keeping an eye out for them to occupy that village. It’s winter. There’s snow up in the mountains. I have an idea.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Got it.”

  “You bet.”

  “Hope you know what you’re doing.”

  So, did Reggie.

  :03

  :02

  :01

  “And the battle commences!” Chase shouted over the radio, drowning out the official announcer, drawing snickers from Lin and an amused snort from Frank.

  [Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/5]

  Spiffy Exterminators consisted of two Tigers, a Shinigami, and two Wolverines. Once again, that meant that Ghost Platoon was outgunned but had the superior maneuverability. It was up to them to control the time and place of the eventual engagement. It was incumbent upon them to make damn sure that time and place was a decisive advantage.

  Anything less, and the tournament was over.

  “June, how much you remember from Airborne School?” Reggie asked.

  “This better be relevant,” June replied as Artemis blazed a trail into the mountains, leaving the village behind them. “Plenty.”

  As Vortex climbed the rocky slope at the back of the formation, Reggie glanced up at the snowy peaks rising on all sides. “How do you trigger an avalanche?”

  “I think you mean not trigger one,” June shot back. “One false step up here and we could all be… wait a minute. You’re not—”

  “Yup,” Reggie said. He studied the map as it populated with the locations of peaks and passes from June’s sensor package. While he could understand the logic of other teams optimizing for firepower and brawling, he couldn’t imagine getting back a return on investment in weight and space in a chassis that June put into Artemis’s top-end recon gear. “Maneuver us to Alpha-Charlie-One-Three-Niner.”

  Chase whistled, causing ear-piercing distortion over the radio. “That’s a hike.”

  “We in a hurry?” Reggie challenged.

  “No, sir,” Chase replied with sarcastic military polish. “Not at all, sir. I may be a couch potato, but Diablo isn’t.”

  And so, Ghost Platoon took a mountain excursion with June at the fore. The scenery was breathtaking. As always, Reggie was in awe of the skills of the Armored Souls development team, specifically the
terrain designers. He knew that they had to be clipping and modifying scans of real-world mountain ranges, but it still took talent to get results like this.

  Towering peaks dwarfed the juggernauts, making three- and four-story behemoths appear as ants below the shoes of gods.

  “No sign of them yet?” Chase asked.

  “If there were, I wouldn’t have kept it a secret,” June radioed back.

  “Think they can track us audibly?” Lin asked. There certainly were echoes amid the mountain trails.

  How was Reggie supposed to know? “Well, we haven’t heard them yet.”

  “Hopefully, they’re camped out at that power plant, all watching to the south,” June said.

  Reggie hoped, but nothing seemed to turn out that easy for them. Sure, their plan had worked great against Diligent Squad, but if it hadn’t, a straight-up brawl would have favored Ghost Platoon. This time, a miscue at the outset would be doom.

  TARGET DATA ACQUIRED.

  Reggie opened his eyes in panic. Artemis wasn’t within sight of the village yet. They had another two mountains to round before a pass opened up that would expose it to direct observation.

  “Where are they?” Chase shouted.

  “Incoming!” June barked. Artemis Jump Boosted and spun, bringing her DF Ballistic Cannon-150 around to aim back the way they’d come. “Behind us!”

  “No, no, no…” Reggie muttered through gritted teeth. Had they become too predictable? This was the third time he’d ordered a flanking maneuver in a clockwise direction around the obvious combat site. This was on him. “Keep moving! Get to cover up ahead.” With no time to relay complex instruction, he tapped the tactical map and relayed his proposed rally point.

  Long-range missiles flew past, coming nowhere near Ghost Platoon. From overhead, there was a rumble.

  “Avalanche!” Frank bellowed.

  Nice one, Frank. We figured that out already.

  Their own gambit had been, perhaps, too obvious. Spiffy Exterminators were living up to their name, pulling a spiffy maneuver that looked sure to exterminate Ghost Platoon.

  “Been a good run,” Chase remarked as the snow, ice, and rock poured down the mountainside in quantity too great to avoid.

  Yulong activated Jump Boost, but the heavy juggernaut was too slow to clear the ground.

  Reggie spun Vortex and let the Wolverine fall onto its back. Unbuckling his restraints, Reggie grabbed his infantry gear and hit eject, firing himself skyward while Vortex was halfway to the ground. Up and over he arced, watching a freight train with the mass of an iceberg careen by just below him.

  He activated the human-sized Jump Boost built into his boots and wobbled unsteadily in the air until the frozen debris had settled.

  Up ahead, Reggie saw Artemis disappear around a mountain peak. June, it seemed, had gotten clear of the runout zone. Either she was quicker on the Jump Boost than Lin had been, or Artemis just had a little more zip getting off the ground. Either way, it wasn’t five juggernauts against a lone human. It was five juggernauts against one—plus a lone human.

  Who had recently respecced into Commando skills, including the Demotions Expert perk.

  Who had brought plenty of explosives along.

  Reggie flattened himself against the debris of rock and snow all around him. The ground shook as the juggernauts of Spiffy Exterminators hurried after the lone remaining member of Ghost Platoon—at least as far as they knew.

  As soon as the juggernauts were out of sight, Reggie dug in the backpack included with his survival gear. He fished out a comm headset and slipped it on, then fumbled with the belt-clipped controller until he had June’s frequency.

  “King to June,” Reggie radioed. “Come in. Do you read me?”

  “Reggie?” June replied. “What the fuck? I lost Vortex on tactical. Are you trapped in the snow? Can you get out?”

  “I ejected.”

  “Not helpful,” June replied. “There’s a full platoon left. I was about to head for that power plant to at least make a showing of myself. You know, put a couple holes in these guys to show we were here?”

  “Negative,” Reggie said. He was already digging through his supplies for ideas. Pulling out his grappling gear, he might just have had one. “Lead them on a chase. Circle back around to the peak just south of the one that collapsed.”

  “And do what, exactly?” June asked. “If I stop to pull the same trick, they can do it to me just as easy.”

  “You’re not going to trigger it,” Reggie replied. “I am.”

  “You?” June asked. “How are you even going to… wait, you’re not looking for me to pick you up and carry you, are you? Because that’s crazy.”

  “No. I’m a Commando right now, right? I’m going on foot.”

  “Jesus, Reggie! How far can you possibly get by the time I get back there?”

  He looked down at the multi-function grappling hook in his hand. “Dunno. I’ve never tried to be Batman before, let alone Spiderman.”

  “I don’t think a grappling hook works the way you’re suggesting,” June warned.

  “What’ve we got to lose trying?”

  “Roger that,” June replied with a weary sigh. “I think I have enough leeway to keep these jokers off my back until I can loop around to you. Might not make it if I can’t get them to—”

  “I trust you,” Reggie told her. “You can do this.”

  June’s reply was quiet. It was just the two of them on this frequency, after all. “Thanks.”

  Reggie headed for the best angle he could find at the highest peak he could target. Not that he had anything like the range he’d need to reach the next mountain—that was crazy. But in two or three shots he ought to be able to make it higher up this one, and more importantly, to a face of the mountainside still covered in snow.

  He was breathing hard but still functioning at top efficiency by the time he reached an outcropping near the summit where he could take a seat and dig into his pack again. There was something about the 25 points he’d stuffed into Toughness as part of this build. Despite Frank’s assurances from his Toughness-based Guard build, Reggie had never been sold on the subsystem durability gains that a juggernaut saw as a side effect of the stat. But when it came to physical exertion—flexing those digital muscles that June seemed to think were decorative—nothing beat Toughness.

  Reggie would run out of mountains before he ran out of stamina to climb them.

  Finally, he found them. Fishing toward the bottom of his pack, he found a stubby pair of skis. There were no poles. Nor had Reggie ever skied in his life. This was going to be an adventure.

  Donning the flat, slick-bottomed deathtraps, Reggie stowed the rest of his gear, tucked into a crouch, and let gravity hurtle him down the mountainside.

  This is nuts.

  I’m skiing for the first time ever.

  I’m preparing to ambush FIVE juggernauts by dropping a mountain-load of snow on them—snow that I’ll be standing on.

  What a rush!

  Icy winds tore at Reggie’s cheeks. Flecks of ice stung his eyes, still swirling after the avalanche. He wobbled, but digital Reggie had a higher Agility stat than flesh-and-blood Reggie ever possessed. He made it to the valley floor only spilling to the ground when he ran out of snow.

  As it turned out, skis didn’t slide on rock no matter how well waxed they might be.

  He left the skis behind. Time was of the essence. Scrambling to his feet, Reggie dug the grappling gear back out on the run. Let the outdoorsmen climb mountains because they were there. Reggie had a job to do. He wasn’t too proud to let the equipment do all the work hauling his bulk up the mountainside. All Reggie needed to do was aim true, sink the end of the line into solid rock as high as he could aim it, and repeat at the next ledge.

  “Reg, you in position?” June asked.

  “Yeah… almost… gimme… another minute,” Reggie said between panting breaths.

  He could see her. Artemis was down the valley with its back to
Reggie. He heard the concussion of the main gun firing. Well, it was Artemis’s DF Ballistic Cannon-150, but to Reggie’s ears, it always sounded like a tank’s main gun. Not an Abrams’s gun, exactly, but close enough. But having a visual on Artemis meant that the Spiffy Exterminators wouldn’t be far behind.

  After all, June was firing at something back there.

  Reggie ascended the snowy peak of the mountain next to the one where Vortex lay buried. It was weird being outside it in combat. The fanciful part of Reggie’s mind imagined him falling in battle and one of his kidneys ejecting to carry on the fight. When he considered it further, he realized that in a digital playground like Valhalla West’s extended universe, it was even possible.

  “No time,” he muttered to himself, hoping he was too quiet for the mic on the headset to pick up.

  Unpacking charge after explosive charge from his pack, Reggie used the grapple and swung along a length of snow-capped ridge, setting his trap. All the charges were set to manual detonation. All of them were linked to a single, hand-held trigger.

  With a jerk, the grapple pulled Reggie up to the summit or at least close enough for him to scramble the last few meters and run.

  Thunderous footsteps echoed, not only June’s but the whole of the Spiffy Exterminators’ platoon as well. Artemis was missing an arm, but it wasn’t the one she used for her main armament. A panic gripped Reggie’s heart as a blast from an E-M Cannon tore a chunk out of Artemis’s gun shoulder.

  Would Ghost Platoon lose when Artemis fell, or would Spiffy Exterminators have to hunt down Reggie on foot, as well?

  Flattening himself on the mountaintop, Reggie hoped he didn’t have to find out. Artemis strode by full steam, to all appearances in a desperate search for the next spot of cover from which to fight back. What must those other guys be thinking, just then? June was a pest, probably not on the level of that Otsu from Diligent Squad, but they must have figured she was wasting their time, prolonging the inevitable.