Ghost Platoon

by Xavier P. Hunter

  And this hadn’t been a minor error.

  Getting spotted first was a huge setback. June had been keeping them in the tournament all along—even on her worst days—by locating the enemy and allowing Reggie to coordinate the platoon’s movements with full knowledge of the enemy deployment.

  Now, the tables had turned. Ghost Platoon was on Psychedelic Thugs’ radar, and their destination was clear.

  “We can’t maneuver,” Reggie said. “If they didn’t light the jungle before, they will now. They know exactly where we’re heading, and they have a vested interest in keeping us predictable.”

  Vortex plowed forward, continuing the habit of knocking over trees rather than trying a fruitless exercise in avoiding damage to the jungle. Yulong was too cumbersome to avoid cracking a trunk here or there no matter how much Lin might try, and Frank was a lost cause in Gremlin.

  “Chase, light the jungle behind us.”

  “What if we need to retreat?” Chase asked.

  “Then we’ve already lost.”

  It was a grim reminder, but this was a game, after all. There was—nominally, at least—a 50 percent chance of losing every time out. Lives weren’t on the line or anything, not even digital lives. All that mattered was wringing every addition tenth of a percent chance of victory out of their predicament. If cutting off their only means of escape also meant cutting off Psychedelic Thugs’ only means of flanking them before they reached the temple complex, Reggie had to make the smart play and order a little arson.

  “Visual on the temple,” June reported from the front of the formation.

  When Vortex caught up, the sight took Reggie’s breath away. Towering stair-step pyramids climbed five times the height of the tallest juggernauts. Lesser structures of similar architecture littered the spaces in between, varying in style but carrying the same feel for the primitive culture that’d lived there. Free-standing pillars arranged in double rows provided the promise of partial cover, at least for the medium juggernauts. Frank wasn’t going to be able to hide Gremlin behind one.

  Ghost Platoon charged across the open ground between the jungle and the stone structures as Reggie called out their deployment.

  “Frank, get to the base of that pyramid and dig in. Lin, see if those stairs are scalable and take up a position at the summit. June, get to the smaller temple at Mike-Four-Seven. Chase, see that sunken rectangular area to the west?”

  “The ball court, presumably,” Chase replied. “Yeah. I’m there. Just like a World War I trench.”

  “I’ll be taking cover behind the flat building just north of you,” Reggie finished. He waited a beat for Chase to correct him, to tell him the name of the real place this digital rendition was copying, but the pilot of Diablo kept his mouth shut for once. “Everyone keep your eyes to the east.”

  There was plenty more to the temple complex than Ghost Platoon could occupy. The whole area had the feel of a giant indoor arena for paintball tournaments. Geometric, blocky structures made for ideal cover and terrain. In this case, the architectural stylings were just for show.

  Lin had no trouble climbing the stepped pyramid, even if Yulong’s feet gouged their own footholds.

  June’s Jump Boost made quick work of ascending the smaller pyramid.

  Soon, everyone was in position. The tactical map remained dark.

  They waited.

  “You know,” Chase said, breaking a long silence that had settled over the platoon. “Piloting a juggernaut among all these old stone temples…”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Lin warned.

  Chase ignored her. “It’s got Stone Temple Pilots stuck in my head.” Chase burst into song, wailing lyrics to something Reggie only half-remembered.

  “Can it!” Reggie ordered. “Don’t get that second-wave grunge crap stuck in all our heads.”

  “I don’t know that one,” Frank said. “Unless Chase’s singing ruined it, don’t think I much cared for that one.”

  “Where are they?” June wondered over the radio. If there was a song stuck in everyone’s head, that was the lyric, not Chase’s attempt at a battlefield pun.

  All around them, the jungle blazed. The fire Chase had started was encircling the temple site. It couldn’t be much longer before Psychedelic Thugs emerged to do battle. They were running out of places to hide.

  “June, any chance they’re already here, somewhere down the far end of the complex?” Reggie asked.

  “Shouldn’t be possible. There’s no tech they could be packing that would hide them at this range.”

  Reggie nodded without reply. That was his assessment as well. But why weren’t they here yet?

  “Options, people. Where are they? What are they planning to spring?”

  “Maybe they’re wary of falling into a burning ring of fire,” Chase suggested.

  “DON’T YOU EVEN!” Reggie bellowed. While he might have heard that Stone Temple Pilots song here and there over the years, it wasn’t like he knew all the words. The last thing he needed was to get a Johnny Cash classic stuck in his head.

  “Sorry,” Chase said meekly.

  “They could be outside the jungle on the other side,” Lin suggested. “Maybe they didn’t leave their spawn point other than that one scout.”

  “Possible,” Reggie said with a scowl. “We’ll be in for a long wait if that’s the case.”

  “Not if they packed artillery,” Lin said. “They might use the separation to play Battleship with us. You know, the one where you can’t see the other player’s ship and—”

  “Even I know that one,” Frank cut in. “Chase didn’t mention anything about them using artillery, though.”

  “You said the kid on the phone sounded awestruck,” Chase said. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “I didn’t say awestruck,” Reggie objected.

  “I did,” June put in. “That was me. But do you think those cadets would abandon a solid game plan for some kooky gimmick?”

  “Dunno,” Chase replied. “Never met ‘em.”

  “The river!” Frank shouted.

  “That’s an idea,” Reggie said. He’d hardly paid any mind to the river running through the complex. There was no convenient cover to make use of it defensively, so he’d ruled it out despite the obvious advantages in free heat dissipation.

  “No!” Frank bellowed. “I see them!”

  TARGET DATA ACQUIRED.

  “Me too,” June reported.

  “Take cover,” Reggie ordered. “Same plan. Just adjust to the new attack angle.”

  “Sure, you believe her,” Frank grumbled.

  “Oh, Kukulcan, great feathered serpent, protect us, the defenders of your holy temples,” Chase intoned as Diablo strode to a different wall of the sunken pit.

  “Might work better if we weren’t trashing them right now,” Lin suggested while gouging up the sides of the largest pyramid shifting from one face to the next.

  Psychedelic Thugs emerged from the fiery jungle along the river, its depth allowing their juggernauts to duck beneath the worst of the flames, its waters helping suck away the heat bearing down from overhead. The four Demons and one Phoenix marched out in formation, Anti-Matter Projectors (and one Beam Cannon-M) at the ready.

  “Get ready, everyone,” Reggie shouted over the radio. “Here they come…”

  Chapter Forty

  Reggie had seen enough tactical drills to know the difference between one executed well and one done poorly. Ghost Platoon had always operated as a loose agglomeration of skilled pilots with varied skills that Reggie had leveraged to best advantage. Psychedelic Thugs was a single machine with five moving parts.

  Two of the Demons laid down suppressing fire as the other three enemy juggernauts rushed in to take up strategic positions. They did so on the move, and by the time their forward units were in place, those juggernauts were able to cover them in return.

  Lin took a hit in her scramble for cover. Yulong was tough, but Reggie hated seeing Ghost Platoon tak
e the first bloody nose of the battle.

  “Dig in,” Reggie ordered. “Don’t let them maneuver.”

  Over the course of the next minutes, the two sides held one another at bay. What Reggie realized was that while there was plenty of cover offered by the sturdy stone monuments, it was too scattered to allow much in the way of maneuvering. Any juggernaut that wanted to advance or flank was going to have to cross open ground. Unlike infantry maneuvering, there was a limit to suppressive fire’s effectiveness. A juggernaut could choose to take it on the chin in return for a prime firing opportunity.

  Reggie hated philosophy during combat, but at times like this with the two sides retrenching for a prolonged engagement, he couldn’t help it. Armored Souls was the bastard child of infantry and armored tactics. These cadets had trained on small squad tactics. Someone had probably even mentored them in their off hours for this tournament—at least, assuming Chase’s theory held water. None of them would have gone through Armor School at Fort Benning. Their instincts wouldn’t be to use their armor as a tactical element even if Armored Souls might have hinted otherwise.

  “Shooting gallery,” Reggie ordered. “Minimal exposure but accept potential return fire to lay some hurt on these guys.”

  “Isn’t that one of those ‘see who’s luckier’ plans you hate?” Chase asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Roger that,” Chase replied. “Getting lucky.”

  For his part, Reggie crouched mid-way, only exposing Vortex from the shoulders up. Both Plasma Launchers poised at the ready for any Psychedelic Thugs popping out of cover.

  [Demon[2] – 45% To Hit]

  Good enough. Reggie squeezed the trigger.

  His shots went one for two, clipping the camo-painted Demon in the arm wielding its Anti-Matter Projector.

  Demon[2] Right Arm: 23/30

  Shooting gallery or not, Reggie wasn’t waiting out the recycle time on his Plasma Launchers with his head up. He ducked back behind the mausoleum—or whatever it was—as a blast of anti-matter crackled overhead.

  On Vortex’s tactical display, Reggie saw the back and forth firefight. A hit here; a blast there. Now and then, a minor critical hit took out a secondary system temporarily. Neither side was taking a clear lead.

  For now, that was great. Underdogs hanging around was practically a win. But Reggie wasn’t hoping to go down putting up a brave show. Better to go down in a crazy fashion trying to pull out a win than let a superior force—on paper, anyway—grind them down toward a workmanlike loss.

  “This is like the shootout at the OK Corral,” Frank remarked after Gremlin’s latest exchange of fire with the pop-up juggernauts of the opposing team.

  “I was thinking: Apocalypto meets Tombstone,” Chase replied.

  “Refresh my memory,” Lin radioed. “Did any of those have a happy ending?”

  The radio went silent.

  “Reggie,” June said firmly. “None of us will blame you if things go haywire, but you need to come up with a way to break this stalemate. Just eyeballing it, this is going to come down to three of those Demons against Lin and Frank if things keep up the way they are.”

  Gritting his teeth, Reggie stayed in cover long enough to validate June’s theories. He could see it. The lighter-armored mediums were taking as much damage as the heavies, and they weren’t handling it well. With three mediums on their side versus one for the Psychedelic Thugs, simple math was working against them.

  “Focus fire on Demon[2] for two bursts of fire,” Reggie ordered. “Then, on my mark, switch targets to their Phoenix. No one take any cover in between. Got it?”

  A chorus of affirmatives answered him.

  Reggie’s heartbeat quickened. There was a calmness during battle that settled in once all the adrenaline had been wrung out of their glands. Fear became background noise. Now, Reggie was wringing those adrenals of his for whatever they had left.

  It was a simple plan, really. Maybe too simple. By focusing on a single target, it made Ghost Platoon look like they had tunnel vision. If the Psychedelic Thugs grew bold enough to take advantage of that, they might not worry about taking cover as they returned fire—well, all except the poor bastard with five Ghost Platoon juggernauts firing on his position from multiple angles.

  [Demon[2] – 5% To Hit]

  Even that sounded generous to Reggie’s thinking. The targeting computer must have been accounting for Reggie putting a shot through the edge of the rocky upper step of the pyramid Demon[2] was using for cover. At 400m range, 5 percent for that kind of shot sounded optimistic.

  Hitting didn’t matter. Reggie fired off his Plasma Launchers alternately, giving the left time to recycle its charge while he fired the right and vice versa. If the Demon popped its head up to fire back, Reggie figured his chance to hit might spike as high as 20 percent.

  The rest of the platoon kept up a similar withering fire on Demon[2]’s location. Lin’s Anti-Matter Projector even forced Demon[2] to shimmy lower down the pyramid as chunks flew, reducing the cover it provided.

  Then Psychedelic Thugs returned fire.

  “Ow!” Chase shouted. On the tactical wireframe, Diablo blinked like a faulty Christmas light. “Permission to—”

  “Denied!” Reggie barked. “Switch targets in 3… 2… 1… NOW!”

  In unison, Ghost Platoon switched to focus fire on Psychedelic Thugs’ Phoenix.

  [Phoenix – 61% To Hit]

  Luck, skill, or some combination of both was working in Reggie’s favor. Both his shots struck the Phoenix in the exposed head.

  Phoenix Head: 33/40

  Phoenix Head: 26/40

  June put in a shot, and Reggie watched the juggernaut’s hit points as he ducked behind cover.

  Phoenix Head: 23/40

  Chase got in on the action, tapping the Phoenix twice before dropping out of the line of fire for all of the enemy squad.

  Phoenix Head: 19/40

  Phoenix Head: 15/40

  Lin’s shot connected, and with the Anti-Matter Projector’s punch, that was it for the Phoenix.

  [Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 1/5]

  “Bah, first blood, and I missed out,” Frank groused.

  “First Blood. Solid movie. Highly recommend,” Chase said.

  Reggie took stock of their situation. Everyone was banged up on both sides, but Chase was in dismal shape. The fact that he put two accurate shots on the Phoenix in Diablo’s condition was a testament to his skill at this game.

  “We have a tactical advantage,” Reggie said. “That’s one fewer firing angle they can cover. June, I want you moving up to November-Five-One and see if we can start enveloping them.”

  “They won’t respect my gun,” June warned. “They might rush me.”

  Reggie wanted to say all the better, but he held back. They were all pawns in this game, all disposable. Even him. All that mattered was that one of them was left standing once the last of the Psychedelic Thugs went down.

  Through habit and training, Ghost Platoon covered Artemis as June piloted for November-Five-One. The smaller pyramid had been the enemy Phoenix’s cover just moments before, and its far side would be June’s temporary shelter and firing position.

  The Thugs couldn’t allow her to keep that position, not unless they were willing to either fall back and give ground or ignore her firing at their exposed flank. As Reggie had quietly anticipated, they counterattacked.

  But instead of engaging in melee combat, which would have been Reggie’s first guess, Psychedelic Thugs ran a complex support and cover maneuver to shift their entire formation to box June in.

  “Frank, advance to Tango-Five-Four,” Reggie ordered. “Lin, cover him.”

  A frown fixed itself on Reggie’s face. This wasn’t the way he expected cadets to respond. They’d given up a better tactical position than the one they’d lost to June. Gremlin lumbered over to take up a position behind a low, flat-topped structure whose square-cut stairs ended in a plateau with a long building dominating th
e top. Reggie couldn’t imagine how much worse it was for the all-Demon squad to have Frank there on their flank, intractable, unable to be ousted by mere muscle than to have left June be or sent a single Demon to counter her.

  All for one… one for all?

  These five had drilled in so many group tactics that it was ingrained to act together. They must have counted on overwhelming June and redeploying their forces immediately after.

  “June, fall back,” Reggie ordered. “Lin, advance behind Frank’s position. Head over to that giant statue at November-Five-Niner.”

  “Roger that,” both women responded. The tougher the situation, the more military everyone’s responses.

  June scrambled and Jump Boosted. She dodged Anti-Matter Projector fire as she retreated. By the time she reached cover at one of the large pyramids, her armor had been shredded.

  But by then, Frank and Lin were in position. Artemis might not have been the most fearsome of juggernauts, but June was equipped with a gun that had a frightening potential for crits that didn’t care about armor. And if Psychedelic Thugs wanted to rush her position, they’d be exposed to all of Ghost Platoon’s guns.

  “This was sloppy,” June said. “Too sloppy.”

  “But this trap only worked because I knew how they’d react,” Reggie said. “They’re thinking like foot soldiers. Frank would have been dog meat if this had been an infantry operation. He crossed so much open ground they’d have made hamburger of him.”

  “Not my Gremlin!” Frank protested.

  “Right,” Reggie said. “They knew that a couple pot shots at a Tiger wouldn’t do much. But the tactic they were using counted on you not being able to make that advance. They didn’t adapt it to juggernaut maneuvers.”

  “Hah!” Frank cackled. “Another point for us tankers. Take that, ground-pounders!”