by Nick Cole
An attack that is now clearly blown by the useless cav charge against the giant robot guarding the back door.
That giant mecha surely made short work of the Calistani armored cavalry charge. There’s no denying that.
And that AA alarm is shrieking bloody murder.
That’s when I realize it. We are the diversion. Our assault is a diversion. Enigmatrix and her engineers are blowing the main door on the city above and going for the glory all on their own.
I switch over to the group leader’s feed and watch the Calistani clans attacking in force. They’re engaged in running gunfights up along the mammoth battlements of the city’s defenses. Where they were thousands in the initial attack, now tens of thousands are streaming toward the city, leaving great dust storms as they come at the Japanese gaming clan SuperMecha from out of the Martian desert.
The armored ground attack on the back door was definitely just a diversion. And my team was sent in to reinforce the lie, to make the case for the Japs to switch primary defense assets to the back door. Rashid and his generals probably even paid to boost a stream on social media showing something like Super Bowl winner PerfectQuestion launches surprise attack against the SuperMecha.
Fun times.
Smart play, Enigmatrix, I think. Now she’s moments from taking the doors off and going in for the victory. We, on the other hand… are getting slaughtered before we’ve fired a shot.
The ground-to-air missile hits us and we crash down into the sands in front of the base.
Chapter Sixteen
On screen, inside the crashing dropship, everything goes to hell in a handbasket in the space of less than a second. My in-game POV spins as the pilot fights to auto-rotate the falling dropship into the sands with little room and altitude to do so.
“We ’bout to go EVA, folks! LZ is on fire like a Fourth of July barbecue!” shouts MarineSgtApone over the chaos. We slam onto the digital surface of Mars. Hard. I get nailed for twenty-five-percent health damage.
A moment after hitting the ‘E’ key I’m outside the smoking wreckage of the downed dropship and taking fire from the fighting positions that surround the enemy clan bunker. Scattered mechanical parts and dead Marines are rendered in graphic detail. Civ Craft has paid big bucks for top-of-the-line visual effects because they have the streaming audience numbers to support the expense. The wrecked dropship rests in all the crashed starship sci-fi glory and grandeur one could possibly expect. Smoke drifts away from the shattered engine in the bare Martian atmosphere, the forward section buried in the sand.
Enemy fire slams into the Marines trying to seek what little cover they can find.
Calistani close-air-support dropships are making runs on the giant mecha that looms over our heads just a few hundred feet away. But the monster machine doesn’t seem too concerned with that, and I watch as it almost casually butt-strokes one of the attacking fighters like it’s nothing more than an angry wasp. The fighter explodes in a thousand hot pieces that rain down across the pink sands of the Martian canyon, causing small dust fountains that drift away within the action of the battle.
It’s a good thing the mecha is distracted by us and the destroyed Calistani armored cavalry; otherwise it might be up there stopping the main assault, I think bitterly. Yeah, I’m getting paid no matter what. But that doesn’t mean I like to lose just so someone on my own team can upstage me. Especially without cluing me into the plan.
“Uh…” says PVTHudson. “Anyone got something big enough to kill that thing?”
We’re down behind a dune. MarineSgtApone has formed the platoon up into a defensive perimeter surrounding the smoking crash site. We’re still taking heavy fire from everywhere and not inclined to move much.
“Negative,” I reply.
Heavy machine gun fire from one of the towers guarding the bunker entrance chews up the sand in front of us, sending volcanic plumes of pink dust along the low ridge of the crash crater we’re covering behind.
“Y’know,” says PVTHudson, “someone really should have thought to give us a weapon that could kill giant robots seeing as the name of this Japanese clan means giant robots.”
He’s right, but the Calistanis are basically incompetent, so it’s hardly surprising they’re clueless about who they’re dealing with. I think once more about the five million in gold I’m earning.
High above us, the giant mecha is sweeping the remaining Calistani armor from the board with a series of rocket strikes via launchers located on its shoulders.
“So,” continues PVTHudson, “according to some quick research, this clan, SuperMecha, is allied with another clan called ShogunYojimbo. And they’re like the best. They really work together as a team and they’ve developed their whole tech tree in Civ Craft based on mechs. I highly doubt our pulse rifles are going to do much more than annoy them… sir. We’re dead, man. Game over.”
Someone laughs over the chat. But there’s little enthusiasm in it. That we’re seconds from getting annihilated—game-overed, or owned as some liked to say—is apparent to all.
“Apone!” I shout. “Any artillery from Calistani fire support?”
“Negative, sir. Not at this time. Enigmatrix is calling in fire missions for the next ten minutes. So we’re blocked out for all intents and purposes.”
We’re taking casualties. The heavy machine guns in the nearest tower have found their range on us. Marines are being cut to shreds. The HUD roster is graying out in large sections.
“Explosives?”
“Uhhhh… not any that’re going to do anything to that thing… ’cept maybe scratch the paint a little.”
More casualties. Two dropships manage to avoid the enemy AA along the wall and swoop in to hit the mecha with rockets. Which do nothing. Seconds later, a blur of projectiles from the giant’s rifle send both crafts into the sands. Secondary explosions result.
This is going from bad to worse.
The entire assault is in complete disarray. Not good. Especially if I want Rashid and the generals to be real happy about paying me my gold and all. Instead of…
Instead of…
What, I wonder. Prison? Death?
I haven’t really thought about that until now… but yeah… they have absolute power in Calistan. They could do all those things if they need a scapegoat… especially if Enigmatrix set me up to be that goat. Any one of them could pull those kind of shenanigans if the long knives were out.
And ask yourself, who ever handles absolute power well?
“You ever watch Star Wars?” someone asks over chat.
“What?”
It was the player tagged Frosty.
Yeah, I’m familiar with Star Wars. It’s an old run-down movie franchise that interested me on some level I could never quite articulate. Like something that had all the potential in the world, and never lived up to it. Each movie is like that. Like a star high school athlete who can never quite get their life together in the real world. It’s supposed to have really been something a long, long time ago.
But I know he’s not asking me for my thoughts on washed-up sci-fi. So over the staccato thumps of machine gun rounds pounding into the Martian sand all around us, I ask him to explain.
“Well it was one of the old ones…” he begins.
A rocket streaks overhead with a sinister hiss and whoosh.
“Quickly, please,” I prompted.
“Listen. One time they had to fight this giant robot. Except it was like a dog. Four legs. They shot harpoons with cables, tied its legs up. Tow cables.”
“Pretty sure we can’t haul tow cables around that thing’s legs fast enough.”
“No, but the platoon APC can. ’Cept it’s got no tow cable. So… not much of a plan. Just thinking out loud… sir.”
We’ve lost twenty percent of the platoon.
“Sir,” says MarineSgtApone from somewhere along the line. Marines are now firing back at the towers. Apone’s voice is frantic over chat. But still in control. “We need to move
now, sir. We won’t last much longer out here in the sand with little to no cover.”
“Dropship has a tow cable,” volunteers the pilot. CPLFerro. She has only a sidearm and her flight helmet for any kind of armor. It’s a miracle she survived the crash given the nose canopy of the ship buried itself in the side of a dune. I look back at the dropship. Black smoke is billowing from it, and flames pulse from the destroyed engines in sudden spurts.
It takes a few seconds, but a plan comes to me. I relay it to the squad.
“We’ll use the tow cable from the dropship, attach it to the APC. Frosty, you’re in charge. Get a team together and get it hooked up.”
“And what are you going to do?” Frosty asks.
“Drive the APC out of the wreck and try your plan out.”
Then I’m out of prone and running full bore to the wrecked dropship.
“Covering fire!” yells Apone over chat.
I zig and zag, dodging aimed targeting, the Martian sand exploding all around and ahead of me. I reach the wreck of the dropship, hit ‘E’, and I’m inside. My HUD is red with emergency damage lighting and warnings to evacuate the ship immediately. I scramble through the inventory screen and access the APC. It’s still useable. Moments later I have it off the cargo deck.
“Suppress those MGs on the towers, Marines!” Apone yells while Frosty and the pilot, after a brief dash through enemy fire, grab the end of the downed bird’s tow cable and attach it to the wicked-looking, low and flat, featureless APC. It’s part of the Colonial Marines cosplay loadout ported into Civ Craft.
I run through the controls, quickly familiarizing myself. Standard controls. No weapons. Just an automated turret that can be set to engage target profiles. I set that to any hostiles and throttle up. The thing hums with malevolent power and I roar off through the sand, the tow cable that attaches me to the dropship spooling behind me. I’m headed straight for the looming giant mech, which is still ruining what remains of the Calistani close air support units that swarm it.
The giant robot sees me barreling toward it in the APC. It raises its foot. It’s going to step on me.
“Apone, move out now. Destroy that atmo tower inside the complex while I keep this thing busy!”
I’m probably not going to be in-game much longer.
“Enigmatrix!” I call out over chat. It still feels weird. Wasn’t I just killing her just a few days ago in the Super Bowl?
“Trix here!” She sounds like she’s got her hands full and is less than enthusiastic about taking comm from me.
“If I get killed in the next few seconds, those Marines can take out that tower once they’re inside. I don’t think you’re going to get your reactor.”
“And…” she says neutrally.
I hear tons of chatter coming through on her end. Lots of Calistanis are getting wiped out by auto-turrets and worse. And they’re constantly screaming some nonsensical battle cry. Or mumbling it while she’s trying to give them orders. Or just chanting it over chat, tying up the line.
Apparently, things aren’t going well up there along the rim.
“We’re past the inner defensive works…” Her transmission is beginning to break up.
Five million in gold, some voice inside my head reminds me. Five million in gold and you can get back to playing with pros.
And…
What about that vacation you’ve been promising yourself?
And a drink. Right now I could go for a scotch on the rocks.
The giant foot of the robot misses the APC. Barely. But the shock waves send the APC skidding off through the thick sand. I’d really like to chew her out for setting me up like this. But that won’t help anyone right now in this moment, mainly me, get their five million in gold.
“It’s weirdly quiet in here, PQ,” says Enigmatrix over chat in what feels like a non sequitur. I glance at her feed. She’s taken some kind of overwatch control tower with an elite guard of operators. Chaos and carnage unfold across screens and out beyond the massive windows that look out over the city’s defensive works. She pivots, and I see a Clan SuperMecha Marine slumped against a blood-sprayed concrete wall.
Also, I just barely miss getting stomped by the giant mecha again. Like I said, vehicles aren’t really my thing. I hear the long buuuuurp of the auto-turret at the front right of the APC going off as it engages the giant robot, riddling one of its legs with hundreds of rounds. In the rearview, I see it’s done some damage.
Now I’m roaring past the gargantuan robot. I check the spool on the cable and see I’ve got a thousand feet to pull my trick.
“What’s that…” It’s Enigmatrix’s voice. I left the chat open. “Oh hell no…” Then I hear assault rifles going off like a South American birthday party.
Then nothing at all.
At first I think she cut the chat. But the quick glance I spare says it’s still open. It’s live. And there’s nothing coming from her end. I say her name a few times as I head straight back at the armored giant on the red sands in front of the bunker at the bottom of the canyon.
Still, I get no reply from Enigmatrix.
I engage all four brakes on the APC and power-slide through the Martian dust. Piles of pink sand billow and skirl across the APC’s external view. The giant mecha raises its rifle and I can see the yawning black void at the end of the barrel gaping down at me. Supersonic rounds erupt from that darkness.
They streak toward me like the blur of a thousand determined hornets, their volume distorting the Martian landscape between us. The mecha didn’t find its range with the initial burst, so the rounds begin to chew up the sand between me and it.
If I turn and run, the thing’ll lead me and I’m finished.
But I don’t even think about doing that. Not in the least.
I’ve already mashed the accelerator full forward and I’m flying straight at the giant titan. Passing through the bullet storm with some damage to the outer hull. I pull tight turns just hoping somehow this cable is doing something as I circle the feet of the killer warbot. I also hope the physics processors inside Civ Craft can handle this maneuver. They should. This is, after all, a game about crafting and salvage. About building empires through ingenuity and resources. About cobbling things together.
And… come on! I need a break!
A moment later the APC is jerked off its fat ceramic wheels and into the air. I go way up and the external view inside my HUD spins loftily. For a brief moment I see small attack fighters swooping in to hit the mech. The face of the giant Japanese robot rushes past my view. Then the walls of the canyon whip past the forward viewport, the vehicle scrapes along the side of something, and the sound effects let me know that whatever it is… it’s not pillowy soft.
I have no idea what’s happening. I have a queasy moment to wonder if somehow the robot has turned the APC into the ball part of a ball-and-chain type weapon. I sense that at any moment now my health is about to zero out as the robot smashes something—like my Colonial Marines—with an APC on a string.
The vehicle slams into the sand and goes skidding, then flipping, and finally rolling away from the iron giant. I have to close my eyes because it’s making my eyeballs scream, but just before I do I see the giant mecha crashing to the floor of the canyon. Chest first.
I keep my eyes closed. Click off sound. And meditate.
Just for a second. I’m resetting.
Pausing.
Breathing.
For just a moment.
I feel the world spinning behind my eyelids, but I know it isn’t. I interlace my fingers and fold them across my chest with my thumbs sticking out. I crane my head down and look at my thumbs below the horizon of my VR helmet.
And the world stops spinning.
It’s an old trick.
There’s a headache there that I’ve been ignoring for longer than I can remember. So I ignore it some more and bring up the in-game sound.
Battle chatter. The Marines are breaching the gate towers in teams. And getti
ng killed. And… getting through to the bunker.
The tower guns have gone quiet.
I roll my shoulders. Then my wrists.
If that giant mecha isn’t out of the action…
I open my eyes and settle my hovering fingers above the keys. The only view I have is of the inside of the smashed APC. Warning icons are flashing, indicating the APC is toast. I hit ‘E’ and I’m out.
That’s when the mecha explodes.
My avatar is knocked to the sand. The accompanying EMP knocks out my HUD and weapon optics. Above me, along the canyon wall near the bunker and the towers that guard it, the Marines have miraculously smashed their way in. But the EMP has knocked out all of our electronics.
So… it’s iron sights from here on out.
Fine. Game on.
Chapter Seventeen
The Marines are waiting for me on the platform outside the twisted metal flower petals of the destroyed main entrance to the bunker. I join them at the top of the ramp just as a heavy cargo lifter dropship, tagged as friendly blue and not enemy red in our HUDs, courtesy of some Russian mercenary clan, drops a Behemoth infantry support tank in front of the entrance. Then the cargo ship flares its hover engines and climbs into the Martian atmosphere once more.
It seems the Calistanis have managed to do one thing right today—they’ve knocked out the AA along the canyon walls. And they’ve done so in order to deliver… this.
The Behemoth is the size of a small city block, with massive treads and a chain-gun barrel the length of a redwood tree trunk. Three of them in fact. All linked via rotating cylinder. Its tri-barrel configuration can vaporize most ground units and structures. In WarWorld only one team has unlocked the Behemoth. It’s a special research upgrade. It’s slow, ungainly, and utterly lethal. JollyBoy knocked one out for the win against the ChiliBees corporate team at Blizzard Stadium last fall. But not before it devastated my platoon.
Now its twin waits above us, rumbling ominously.
“They say they’ll cover us, sir,” Apone reports. “They’ll guard the entrance from counterattack while we’re inside breakin’ stuff.”