by Tom Germann
My HUD switched from the active setting to a more sedate orange glow and I could see my suit was recharging.
The flight back to the ship was uneventful, if a bit long, and everyone around me became involved in different conversations. None of them tried to include me and I accepted that. I was the new guy.
We were on the final approach to the ship when Two’s voice came over the command channel. “When we board, everyone will work on armour, eat, get some rest, and work on the after-action review. We will hold the AAR in our meeting room in twelve hours. After that, we move back to normal training run until the next game. Eight, you’re new. What I mean is no time off or downtime until your armour is back to operational readiness. One hundred percent.”
I could see her looking at me from across the small lander.
I clicked my comms on. “I understand, Two, and will get it done.” Then I clicked off.
Someone else clicked on. “You better, newb. We don’t want to have to carry you the whole time you’re here.” Then it clicked off again.
I could feel everyone looking at me and that no one was talking to or at me became even more apparent.
I had to grit my teeth the whole way back until we docked. I was the new one here. I had to fit in with these freaks.
I could do it.
Post-Operation Debrief
Twelve hours later my armour was clean and the minor bashing it received while I went through combat had been fixed. My weapon systems were up and running. All the hours in practice meant that I had been able to finish the work just in time to eat something, work up the AAR points, get myself cleaned up, and then take ten minutes of quiet time before reporting to the meeting room.
I felt like I’d been chewed up and spat out. I looked like it too. On the positive side, my armour was hanging up in its work bay sparkling and looking brand new. I knew that I had to get faster because I spent almost two hours longer doing maintenance than anyone else.
I was the first in the small room that all the debriefs and meetings were run in. As everyone else filed in I could tell that they had a lot more time to relax. They all looked rested and ready to go out again.
Five and Ten filed in and I saw they even had the chance to shave their heads again. I always thought that the girls at school looked good with longer hair. Even better with some of the fancy semi-shaved looks that they did for some of the gangs. But when I looked at Five and Ten, the cropped hair looked right on them. One and Nine already had stubble forming, and they were shaved down during our prep to drop.
Everyone grabbed seats and ignored me. Most walked in together. I had seen them eating in the mess while I ran down to the meeting room and I hadn’t had time to join them.
Two walked in with the ship’s captain and she moved to the head of the table. On the wall behind her a screen came on and a two-dimensional image of the system we were now heading out of came up. Captain Kergan moved to a seat at the side and sat down. He had no pad or anything but he must have been using his implants for tracking during this debrief.
Two didn’t sit down but simply stood there and pulled out an arm from the wall with a keyboard mounted on it. She tapped a few keys and the lights dimmed just a bit and I saw and heard some sort of projectors coming online on the wall higher up. She looked around at us sitting there, staring at her, waiting for her to speak.
Then she began. “This debrief will be for the last training sim that we have just completed. This will be recorded by Jane for later analysis and then uploaded to the training matrix at Corporate headquarters. I will run the play-by-play and point out what went right and what was screwed up so that we can fix that. Keep comments and questions to yourself for now and we’ll go into that later.”
The overhead lights dimmed further and then the wall-mounted projectors came fully online.
A holographic image of the battle formed on top of the table and we all watched, cutting between the screen behind Two that showed our ship, the Nameless Stranger, as it moved in-system and then launched the lander, then back to the table where the assault lander hit the ground and small blue figures dismounted and began the assault.
The entire scenario was in time dilation so that we could get through the long hours quickly. When the blue figures hit the ground the timeline changed back to normal speed as the operation was now underway and our parts were relevant.
All the figures froze and Two turned to the captain, who has been silently sitting there, and nodded at him. “Thank you for coming, Captain.”
The captain stood up, nodded back at Two, and departed.
I wasn’t sure why he had been there. The ship did what it was supposed to do and there were no real points to improve on for him or the crew. Maybe it was just the way these debriefs were supposed to be run. Or maybe not all insertions went that smoothly.
As the door closed, Two turned back to face the table and the small blue soldiers started moving.
I couldn’t stop staring at the terrain and then Two started speaking in short, sharp sentences. “Final drop of the second assault team was scrubbed when it became obvious that defences were online and had been improved substantially. The lander sent a short burst comm up to the ship then that the target was much more heavily defended than anticipated. They then began to prep the second lander for extraction.
“We moved out as per direction. Assault team moved out for the dome.”
I could make out myself and Two as we ran at an angle from the ship toward the large domed target. The figures started moving slower and a missile came zooming in from the side and hit the blue soldier that was Two.
The hologram was tiny at this scale but the detail was incredible. The missile hit sent Two flying in two different directions.
Red enemy soldiers were moving out from all over. I could see the heavy-armour unit loading into their armour and powering up as the structures were mostly transparent frameworks.
Two’s voice continued. “Defensive weapons and structures were already spooling up, cutting the section’s initial advantage. The lander must have been picked up shortly after launch as we were in transit for under a minute. I was ‘killed’ almost immediately as I had knowledge of the defensive situation we were facing and I was going to be viewing the section’s operation from outside the combat envelope.”
I was off to the side shooting wildly and enemy soldiers were going down—at least the few right in the area.
I saw what the rest of the section was involved in, though, and it looked bad. Several defensive weapons had come online. A few had soldiers on them, likely techs doing maintenance that were caught out in the wrong spot at the wrong time when we came in.
An enemy patrol of eight medium-armoured troops was coming from the side, advancing quickly behind cover.
Missiles and lasers started firing. Most of the light defensive weapons were taken out almost immediately as they were just sitting out in the open.
“The enemy’s response was incredibly fast. The high number of troops on the defensive weapon line were primarily technicians that were sighting weapon systems that had been placed recently. They were in the middle of correcting minor faults that had been found. They were able to bring those weapons online up to forty seconds faster than the command AI would have been able to.
“The section failed here as the assault never happened. The optimal solution would have been to immediately start the assault with the overwatch firing out their support weapons as fast as possible.”
There was a grunt and One sat forward, looking like he was going to speak. Then, his face a mask, he sat back.
Two continued. “Additionally, the lander should have gone to rapid fire and saturated the core area to take out the enemy weapons and slow the enemy’s preparations.”
The image froze and then reset. Two was still dead, but most of the section started assaulting forward and
the lander behind seemed to light right up, firing off all the weapon systems that were on board. Landers do not carry a lot of ammo or weapon systems. The ship was empty in less than twenty seconds. But the area in front of the assault squad was a mass of explosions, and no defensive weapons were functional in that narrow arc. The dome itself had also taken several hits.
Red soldiers were scrambling for cover all over the area.
The imagery shimmered and it went back to what had really happened.
The section was taking cover and trading shots with the enemy troops that were filtering into the area. There must have been over fifty troops in light armour advancing on them. There were dozens more in heavy armour starting to move out of the further domes. Many of the red soldiers were going down as the firefight raged. On the side I was blowing a hole in the outer dome wall and then several heavy-armoured troops peeled off a main column and started heading for me.
“The section, by allowing themselves to be pinned down and engaged in a firefight, allowed the enemy forces to have a focus point. They were deploying 90 percent of their available manpower to counterattack. Ten percent were sent after Eight after he blew the outer dome wall open. The section lost mobility. We lost our biggest advantage on the battlefield right there. That was never recovered.”
The rest of the section’s debrief carried on the same way. It seemed like they—I mean, we—hadn’t done anything right. I could see most of the decisions that should have been carried out. But in the middle of combat, it wouldn’t be that easy to see. With all the fire coming in, it wouldn’t have been possible to identify better options.
While I was considering this, Two wrapped up the rest of the section’s debrief.
I looked up from the hologram and she was looking at me.
“I will now review Eight’s actions during the assault.”
The scene shifted and zoomed in so now my figure was twice as tall as before and I couldn’t see the rest of the section.
My icon started over again from when Two was initially taken out. I hadn’t noticed her arm flying away from her torso and legs earlier. I also had missed all the rounds and laser shots that had missed me. I did find out that the initial damage to my back wasn’t from the demo charge on the outside dome wall but a grazing hit from a laser rifle from the main firefight.
Then I was entering the dome and everything froze.
I looked over and Two was staring at me. “You went into the dome without backup. Survivability of a Marine in combat drops by 80 percent when you are on your own compared to when you have a partner. That’s why we always work with fire team partners.”
I couldn’t say anything to that so turned back to the images. I advanced into the dome and then the combat began. While I was advancing there were ten soldiers in heavy armour trying to catch up to me outside the dome. By the time they made it to the hole I was halfway through my route inside. I had just entered the large open space and been ambushed.
Watching this all brought back the memory of the combat itself. The adrenaline flowing, the fear, and anger. I could see all the little mistakes that I had made.
I remembered that inside I had become less disconnected and I had just cut through the enemy soldiers.
In that large open area there had been nothing but targets. Now I could see that I had actually gone into a main area of the dome. I was gunning down civilians and anything in my way.
I remembered firing. But I couldn’t remember most of what I was actually seeing now in the sim. It was like that wasn’t me.
The heavier weapons that were hitting me were all used by soldiers. A lot of the civilians must have grabbed weapons from somewhere. They all were armed now.
I made it through the room and then I was firing grenades back to cover my movement farther into the complex. I had hit the emergency bar, which closed the hatch, and I had continued in.
When my icon had first moved into the dome there had been dozens of soldier icons scurrying around. After I made it in and started shooting, dozens more had shown up. That had to be the civilians picking up weapons and joining in.
My icon moved ahead quickly and then was blown sideways. Forward and into that room. Gunning down the enemy combatants. There were dozens of figures converging on my location now, with light weapons to medium one that would open my armour up like a tin can.
Some of those weapons would do serious damage inside the outpost. I guess they were upset enough that the AI figured it didn’t matter at this point.
I had moved over to the side and fallen down. Even with the accelerated viewing of the scenario, this was taking a while. I felt like it had been maybe a minute of combat from the landing until I blew that charge. I was wrong.
My icon sat up and struggled to pull out that last demo charge. Outside the hatch the enemy prepared to enter through the door. The door blew out and an enemy soldier stepped in with his weapon up. I slammed the demo charge against that cell next to me and detonated it. . . .
The scene froze.
I looked up to see Two watching me as well as most of the others. Her tone was flat. “So inside on your own, with no backup, you continued trying to complete the mission. By moving into the dome instead of falling back, the enemy force commander—in this case, Jane—decided that you were an increased risk. The chase force was decreased in size and several of them went back to take you out.”
Two slowly looked around. “The section had no chance at escape. There were too many weapon systems that could track on the lander. Eight, by advancing, caused the AI to split its forces. Killing a defeated force was irrelevant. Stopping a heavily armed invader from doing serious damage to the base, possibly causing the destruction of that base, was a higher priority.”
She met everyone’s eye in the room and most of them acknowledged that. Except for One. He was the obvious exception.
Two looked at me and continued. “So by assaulting on your own, you saved the remnants of the section. Plus, you at least partially met the mission objectives.”
The image on the tabletop shivered and kept moving forward in real time.
The demo charge went off. Whatever that fuel cell was, I must have been lucky. The fireball blew out and into the passage. One of the feed lines for the cell blew out as well and there was a series of secondary explosions.
The image zoomed out so that the entire facility could be seen. It looked a lot larger than I thought it would be. The domed portion on top was very small and the dugout portions underneath were huge. It looked like an iceberg.
Parts of the iceberg were flashing red. Overall, not that big a portion of the structure. But much more was now flashing yellow.
The estimated target area was in one of the red areas. Had I taken out the objective?
Two spoke quietly. “You died in the process, but you took out a portion of the research. Given the nature of the work, the AI judged that most of it would be secure. Estimates are that the research survived, but some was corrupted and some outright destroyed. That data can be recreated, but the AIs and specialists that were working on it are dead. It would take them a while to fix this.”
Her face was hard as she looked down at her hands, which were steepled in front of her. “We have the mission partially successful; several casualties, including the loss of a lander. The section would no longer be effective and it could take months to get the reinforcements needed and get them worked into the section.” She looked up at us all and her voice was cold. “This was a failure. This is not an adequate trade-off for me. However, the AI evaluation was a bit different. After all, the AI is following the needs of the Corporation and humanity, not just the needs of our section. I knew that the mission was meant to be almost impossible and we did well to get as far as we did. But I am not happy.”
Now Two was looking at me specifically. “I’m not sure if you were grandstanding or if that was just ho
nest luck and the way the mission played out. Eight, you need to put more thought into what you are doing in the future. You were lucky that you completed the mission. But you ended up dead.”
The images of the site disappeared and the lights came fully up. Two stood up. “Thank you everyone for taking the time for the debrief. Good job on the mission. We’ll do even better next time, and the scenario will probably be even harder. I’ll see you at dinner.”
We all stood up to leave and Two looked at me with that blank face. “Eight, stay behind for a minute.”
Everyone left, with One as the last. He looked back over his shoulder at me and was smirking. Why the hell did this guy have it in for me?
I didn’t know what to do so I sat down again.
Two was up at the head of the table and came around, taking the chair next to me. She pivoted it around so that she was facing me and leaned back in it. All of the chairs only rotated, but somehow she had moved hers back. I guess the room could be modified.
While I was thinking that, she was just staring at me. I felt that she was judging me.
She didn’t say anything and I didn’t feel like I could say anything either, so I just stared back. The short fuzz on the top of her head was maybe a dirty blonde. Her blue eyes were cold as they looked at me. I swear that she would be attractive if she only wasn’t watching me like I was a slab of rotting meat.
She just sat there. Sitting back in the chair, she crossed her legs. “Well, Eight, did you evaluate your stats after the sim?”
I nodded, “Yes, Two. I checked out my kills and damage rates—”
She was shaking her head no. “I meant the real stats. How many rounds fired versus hits and kills. Time on contact and those stats.”
I knew my face was blank. I shook my head no. “I didn’t know that I could do that.”
Two considered me. “Jane, are you there?”