by Tom Germann
If the charge didn’t destroy the elevator, we wouldn’t be able to get down the shaft.
The troop by the shaft was done with the spray can and came running over, as did the other two troopers. The three grabbed one of the vehicles and flipped it over, and then grabbed me, pulling me behind it for cover.
I was still trying to get my balance as there was too much going on to process. This was a war zone, not a raid.
The blast should have been small and muffled with no atmosphere; we didn’t need the cover. It wasn’t. It was huge and sent us flying back as the vehicle was picked up and smashed down.
One of the team ran forward and secured the one end of the rappelling rope to another vehicle.
I looked at the explosives expert. “How much charge did you put down?”
A word popped up on my HUD in red. “ALL.”
I knew I should have programmed the team to speak, but I hadn’t had time. The mission was supposed to be an offensive raid where smash-and-grab worked, not the second invasion of Earth. I couldn’t even yell at the team.
Back on my game. I had to get back on my game.
I took off at a run for the open pit and stopped at the edge. I grabbed the wire with one of my rappelling grips and, with rifle ready in my one free hand, I leapt off the edge and slid down into the darkness.
I must have been getting paranoid. I felt like someone was watching from just over my shoulder the entire way down. That only took seconds, and during the descent there were two more buzzes. The rest of our cover team was gone.
This was a problem. We weren’t line infantry like the Kah-Choo that were deployed to meet us. We were rare and expensive. We weren’t going to make it out of here. This was completely wrong, and I had no clue what was going on.
These mission parameters had been messed up somehow.
I hit the bottom and knew that the rest were right behind me. Ahead of me was a large door. It wasn’t even really armoured, but it was locked. The other smaller door to the side must have been for individual Kah-Choo to go through. They were much smaller than a human.
I needed to get into the larger access hatch. The maintenance tunnels would be huge and fit us. We would have to crawl on hands and knees to go through the Kah-Choo personal tunnels, and that wasn’t ideal.
I pulled several small charges around the door over the locking mechanism and whatever mechanical stuff I thought would be there. I threw myself to the side and detonated it just before the next troop came down the wire behind me.
We both grabbed the door and started trying to roll it into its niche. It didn’t roll; it just started wobbling back and forth. We jumped out of the way right before it clanged down into the shaft.
The passage beyond was large and poorly lit. That didn’t matter. Atmosphere was escaping past us as the last troop hit the ground. We advanced into the passage.
I had dropped a sensor ball off to the side to send any basic information when we were followed. Given how this scenario was playing out, I knew I’d be thankful to know how far behind us the reaction force was.
Down the passage we came to another door. It rolled open as we were coming up to it. We started firing almost immediately. The space behind that was full of Kah-Choo workers. They were armed with mining tools and breathing masks.
As soon as the door was opened enough, they threw themselves at us.
It was a slaughter. Unarmoured and with basic mining tools, they had no chance against us.
We kept moving and were heading in roughly the right direction. It was a nightmare operation with the poor lighting, and anywhere there was a door there were more Kah-Choo waiting for us.
It was bad when our rear guard went down. A mining team had come out and used some large cutting device to first pin and then cut him down.
We started running faster then. If you saw movement, you shot at it once. We were almost out of ammo when we came out of the passageway and emerged into some sort of large area full of machinery. It was also full of Kah-Choo workers, and they were all armed with tools.
The door behind us clanged shut and they charged.
It was like a wave of rats running at you. As you fire, they go down, but those behind simply picked themselves up and filled in the gaps. I couldn’t understand the suicidal nature of the workers, but they had us pinned and we were out of ammo for the rifles. Rifle grenades would have done as much damage to us.
It was hammers and picks coming at your head over and over. Grabbing one at a time and crushing a throat and using the body to smash those around you.
My HUD started flashing and several points in the room were highlighted. Targets. I had no ammo.
My teammate to the left of me collapsed with a laser cutter through the chest. My other teammate went down with dozens of Kah-Choo on top, smashing away with their tools.
My armour was bent and damaged. When they breached it I was going to die.
I guess it didn’t matter. I brought my rifle around, smashing the butt into the heads and bodies of those nearest rats. They fell and their blood, along with that of the others, was all over me. I brought my rifle up and fired rifle grenades into the targets until I was out.
It was fast. Then the explosions started. I must have hit fuel lines because the small fireball grew big fast. I threw myself down into the carpet of bodies and tried to burrow into them.
A massive ball of flame rolled down from the ceiling. I couldn’t see it but I could picture all the flammable gas blowing out so fast that it was atomizing and filling the room. Instant thermobaric bomb.
The blast picked me up and threw me around. My HUD popped off and then came back on. I was lying on my stomach and my suit sensors picked up nothing from around me. No movement and no more screaming aliens.
I struggled onto my side and then pushed myself up to my knees. Then I just stayed there. Everything hurt.
My sensors could pick up the ping! of superheated metal cooling at a different rate than the surrounding air.
My back armour was in bad shape but holding.
I struggled to my feet and swayed. My full sensor suite was coming back online, but I was not operating at full capacity.
There was no more atmosphere in the room. The fuel explosion had used it all up, and I was guessing that fire suppression systems had locked it down.
I was in a coolant room for what was likely the power plant for the underground site I was in. I was about a half kilometre from the target site. I saw my rifle. It was a slagged mess. I was supposed to take or destroy that computer core.
At this point, it wasn’t going to happen. Most of the mechanical systems would be fried in here. The operating systems would be cutting this room out and going to another for cooling. The doors would be welded shut from the intense heat. In fact, whatever forces were chasing me could easily take their time coming for me now. I would run out of power soon enough.
No power. No air.
The entire raid may have cost the site 10 percent of their power output.
I looked around for anything useful. I had the bodies of two of my teammates and bodies everywhere.
Okay. Think. Stop reacting. The purpose of this sim was not to win a firefight; it was to use batteries and create an EMP bomb. To see if a real person using this device could make it operate outside the parameters given by the AIs.
I had decided to make this even harder for myself and, to be honest to myself, realistic. I wouldn’t go into any operation with an EMP bomb on me. If I died, the enemy could figure it out and that little secret would be gone. So I was in the sim without the device. But I had everything I needed to make one.
I went around and checked my teammates over for anything useable. I was able to get eight functional pistol batteries and two backups for the medium rifle. I still had five batteries on me and another medium rifle battery.
; I shoved the bodies aside until I was down to the metal flooring, and then sat down and put all the parts down. I had enough parts to make something larger.
I slowly started assembling everything, making the biggest bomb I could.
It was always easier in a workshop with tools and time. My system would blink off once in a while and I sat in armour while wearing an enclosed metal bucket on my head. Then it would come back on and I could see again.
I was making good progress. Then I heard noises at the hatch behind me. It looked like the commander was done waiting. Foolish, really. They should have come in after me immediately. A trapped enemy with time can prepare.
I put the finishing touches on the device and looked at it. It really shouldn’t be called a “device”; more like cobbled-together junk pile. That’s what it looked like.
My sensor scans, intermittent at best, told me that the main runs were up higher.
The room that I was stuck in was three human stories high with several Kah-Choo walkways going around the outside of the chamber. If I climbed up the outside of those walks, I could plant this near the pipes that let through the wall and into the next room. Close to the power plant and the other cooling room.
Maybe I could destabilize the plant and cause a corruption in the data.
I had to see if this would work. I started climbing.
Behind me the door was glowing and whatever cutter they were using broke through.
It seemed to take me forever to get up to the top. Then I sat down, exhausted and feeling confused. I was supposed to feel like a superman with all the technology and those nannites in my system. But it felt like they were just sitting in my stomach and trying to hold me down.
I could plant the EMP bomb now. But I was in a sim. I had nowhere to go or hide. No rescue. If I let the Kah-Choo come in, they would shoot me and it would be over immediately. I would be out of the sim. If I detonated this, I could be stuck in unpowered armour for a while until eventually the passive systems ran down or, more likely, the Kah-Choo came through and just took me.
I didn’t think Four would let them torture me.
It didn’t matter. I had a point to make.
I set the device down and carefully set it up. Some of my parts were broken so there was no timer. I would activate it by putting the last battery into the device, completing the circuit. Sometime shortly after, the whole thing should overload and then bam! Pulse. I pushed the last battery in and moved carefully away from the bomb.
I was able to get back and around the corner and then sat down. When the pulse hit, it would blow out my armour systems so I needed to make sure I wouldn’t fall over the edge if things started shorting.
In fact, I powered the system down. Better not to get burnt at all when everything fried.
I could hear the cutter working through the metal.
Then there was a small bang, like an old-style hand grenade going off. That was it.
The noise of the cutter had just cut off. I tried bringing my suit systems back online. Nothing.
At least the passive exchange system was still working so I had oxygen. For now.
Everything froze.
I seemed to lift up and out through the rock and the facility until I was standing on the small planet. Everything went translucent and then Four’s voice came to me.
“Okay, Eight. Pay attention to what is going on in the systems with some time lapse. Normal is blue, affected is red. Rolling now.”
Great—so Four had finally decided to step in. I didn’t bother saying anything. Four was in what is still called “God mode” for some reason and was now running things differently. I was so tired, I didn’t care.
I just watched the map of the site. It was way bigger than our intel had indicated. In fact, this was probably going to be planet number four for the Kah-Choo Empire. They must have had a population of well over a hundred thousand in this city. Ten of us had attacked.
As I watched, I was aware that the area around the cooling room was red. The red area was much bigger than I thought would have been affected. It also seemed to be spreading rapidly.
Suddenly damage icons of some sort appeared all over the city. Then everything went red and a blast tore the cap off the top of the site. That cap had to be easily three hundred metres wide, and it was reinforced just in case of accident.
It was torn away like tissue paper. Then, in accelerated format, a huge mushroom cloud rose over the site.
The timer at the side indicated that it was fifty-six minutes and eighteen seconds after the detonation of the device. Everything froze. I could see a small shuttle flying away and several ground vehicles moving away from the site as well. I didn’t think they would make it. That blast was just too big.
The sim ended and I was sitting in the same seat wearing that metal mesh helmet. I was soaked in sweat and shaking. Damn, that had been so demanding. I lifted my arm and felt my cheek. It was cold.
I stank. Four was sitting across from me in another chair. He looked fine.
Before I could say anything he started talking. “You lucked out. You detonated the EMP device in a perfect area where the rock provided even less shielding, and in a true fluke, the metal content with the structure and rock acted as an antenna and transmitted the pulse throughout the site. In fact, the shorts you caused took out the coolant system for the main reactor in the city. With the additional damage done to the computer control systems, the main reactor went critical and it started shorting out.” He winced at that term. I guessed that was just unqualified talk and it rubbed him the wrong way.
He continued. “Well, you took out the other three reactors in the city. The main one blew out first and took out the others with sympathetic detonations. At least that’s the simple way of looking at it.”
I glared at him. I could feel myself shaking. “What the fuck was that, Four? We attacked a city! They had a standing army and it really felt like they were waiting for us!”
I could feel the guilt kicking in. I had gotten an entire section killed.
Four nodded. “The scenario needed to be desperate. Honestly, no matter what, as long as you tried, you would have made it to one of three locations that I had set. You were right. The EMP device does have a bigger use than we thought. But you were also wrong. The only time it is worth it to deploy like that superweapon you built is when you are out of options and it’s game over.”
I just stared at him as it clicked in. “You already knew this. Why go through the sim if you knew I was right?”
Four just smiled at me. “I train every newb that comes to the section. Experienced members of the section figure it out, usually. But some don’t. If you figure out that you could make a bigger one and have the personality type that would build something bigger to see the effects . . . well, we run this scenario or something similar. You need to know when to use that bigger device. If there were any survivors out there or anything else would have worked as a plan, then that should have been tried first. We do not kill off cities unless those are the orders. The other side would retaliate if we destroyed a planet. We also know that other races would join up in fighting us then.”
He tossed me a towel and I wiped my face and neck. I waited a few more minutes before standing and stretching, then left for my next duty station. I still had twenty minutes before I had to be on armour diagnostic. Just enough time to grab something to eat.
As I was about to leave, Four stopped me. “I have to tell you one more thing, Eight. We never use these devices randomly or when we have other options. That way, when we have to use it one day, the other side has had no advance warning, and that means that they likely have no defence set up against it. Remember that when you think about using it for something minor. Knowledge is power. The other sides have no knowledge that we can do this. Or that we have.” He smiled. “At least they don’t know as far as we know.”
I agreed with him about that and then headed off.
After we were finished I spent an hour before bed researching what information was available on the price of laser batteries. There was no specific information available to the public, but there was some information available to me. The prices were insane. I didn’t think we should ever use the batteries that way. Then I realized I would do whatever I had to, to win.
I still thought that lasers were a mature technology and good within their limited use. Energy weapons now were the wave of the future. Energy weapons, when developed and made portable, would be able to do a lot more than a laser. Most of the known ways of countering lasers wouldn’t work as well against an energy weapon.
More things to worry about in the future, when our technology was more advanced. Say like in a hundred years. . . .
After
After Eight had left the workshop, Four sat at the computer console clearing the sim out and resetting it at an easier level.
There was a chirp and the comms line flashed to get his attention.
Four sighed and then his face lit up with a grin. He opened the secure comms line with his implants. “Go ahead, boss.”
The voice was flat and seemed preoccupied. “I see that you still have that informality that makes my job so much easier. Is this line secure?”
Four’s face dropped and he considered the monitor in front of him with distaste, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Of course the line is secure. This is being run through my implants, so even if someone walks in and sees me, they wouldn’t hear anything. Stop being so paranoid with people that know their job, boss.”
The voice snorted. Then it continued. “You noticed me in the system watching?”
Four nodded to the unseen visitor. “Of course. I take it you were calling me to ask for evaluation?”
The voice sounded exasperated. “Yes. Give me a full evaluation. I also want to hear your gut instinct.”
Four nodded again. “He did poorly. He was able to get the entire section dead within minutes. He cost the Corporation several billion in lost assets. Given his lack of concern when it came to his teammates, I am certain I don’t want him to be on any deployment with me. My gut says that he would hang anyone out to die in a second to accomplish the mission.” Four paused. “On the flip side, from a purely mission-oriented perspective, well, he won. The new recruit, fresh out of training, and in a single sim training session with the section was able to load out the section, lead the attack, and then destroy the target as per mission parameters.” Four paused again.