Vanguard Word Update

3111 words

Chapter 4: Cohesion

“Headsets on people!” Admaski’s voice blared over the intercom. “Don’t make me start thinking twice about this team, I want to see you beat the par score before you drop.”

They were back in the sim room, the holographic lights built into the wireframes caging the room flaring to life as the projectors powered on, the whole team assembled in their epicenter. Ryan, Dominic and Brindley had their mock weapons in hand, draped with plastic vests that would provide kinetic feedback when they were ‘shot’, the white material contrasting with their blue overalls. Tilu and Samiha were similarly dressed, albeit their legs were uncovered, and on one of their wings they sported a long, sweeping piece of plastic that would register as shields in the simulator. They kind of looked like unpainted surfboards right now, and he wondered just how similar they were to the real things.

“Anyone else think we look like a bunch of toy soldiers right now?” Brindley asked, adjusting his army helmet.

“These model guns definitely sell the image,” Tilu added, checking the mag on her PDW coilgun. “Kith, what’s the par score?”

“Twelve thousand,” Ryan answered, tapping at the display on his wrist. “Looks like we’ll be dropping in to a courtyard first up, so Tilu I want you covering Dominic as he watches our north, that’s where the first wave’s going to come from.”

“I’ll keep our little gunner safe, don’t worry.”

“Think you’ve got that the other way round,” Dominic said. “Overgrown magpie like you has a massive target on your back.”

“Speaking of overgrown, I hear males who carry big guns like to compensate for othershortcomings,” Tilu teased, reaching down and shoving Dominic playfully, the gesture nearly sending the man reeling. It was all in good spirits, as Tilu had more than warmed up to the team since their visit to the rec center.

“Brindley, you take up the right flank,” Ryan continued. “I’ll go left. Watch the rooftops, everybody, you all know how much they like to spawn on higher ground.”

“What about me?” Samiha asked, the team going quiet as she spoke up. They obviously expected a bit of tension between her and Ryan, remembering all too well how he’d confronted her after the last sim. There wasn’t any room for infighting now, and he hoped Samiha thought the same.

“I want you on rearguard duty,” Ryan said. “Keep your head down and save your ammo unless you have to shoot, I don’t want any surprises coming at us while we deal with the first wave.”

Samiha bristled, opening her beak to speak. Ryan could tell she wanted to question his decision, and just when he thought she might speak out, she nodded in deference. “As you say.”

Out of all their reactions, it was Tilu who looked the most shocked, her feathers standing on end as she glanced between the two. “Everyone know what they’re doing?” Ryan asked. Nobody said anything. “Alright, here we go.”

The team pulled their headsets over their faces, Ryan’s world fading to black as the lenses covered his eyes. The world gently returned as his headset connected to the simulation network, the floor shifting into a layer of white material cut into thousands of little squares, like a giant measuring grid. All around him, slivers of the floor began to rise up to a convenient knee-height, spaced far enough apart that a Balokarid could walk between them easily.

Four towering walls constructed themselves in the distance, their grey bulks blocking out the horizons of the skybox, painted a deep blue to simulate a nighttime one would find planet side. It felt like he’d just been dumped in a videogame level.

He watched as his team surveyed the arena, their previous equipment now projected to mimic their real-life counterparts. Their guns were matte black and imposing, their armour full of ceramic plates and inches of thick steel, Ryan glancing up to see an officers beret was projected on top of his head.  Even the giant pieces of plastic strapped to the Balokarid’s arms were gone, replaced with a dim line of energy that served as their deployable shields, currently in their smaller, collapsed states.

“Positions!” Ryan ordered, the team fanning out and kneeling behind the nearest piece of cover. Dominic and Tilu were at the front, as he’d said, the two touching shoulders as the former deployed the bipod on his machine gun, while the latter splayed her shield out to give him as much protection as she could manage.

The simulation wasted no time, a gap in the northern wall falling away, a squad of figures dashing into the arena. They were decked in similar gear as Ryan’s team was, except rather than flesh and bone, the humanoids were covered from head to toe in armour, the faceplates of their helmets arranged like a sort of gasmask, with tubes poking out the chins. The menacing Confederate flag emblazoned on their chest pieces enforced the fact that these projections were the enemy.

Dominic opened up with his heavy coilgun, their enemy scrambling for cover as he filled the air with bullets. As the enemy squad stared to creep forward, Brindley leaned out to fire a burst at the nearest Confederate, the humanoid exploding like shattered glass as his weapon found its mark.

Ryan ducked as the Confederates directed their fire towards him, the bullets leaving red contrails in the air, a subtle advantage to the sim’s participants to find out what direction the fire was coming from. He turned out to drop a Confederate moving from one bit of cover to another, pausing to glance behind him at Samiha. She was peaking her winding neck around her cover, watching the exchange, but holding her weapon down just as he’d ordered.

This was just a light test for the observers to evaluate their performance, and he’d made the right call to hold Samiha off, because after the Confederates were mopped up, another part of the distant walls collapsed while everyone was reloading, Samiha turning her beak on the approaching enemy with a startled look.

“South, south!” Samiha squawked, the team reorienting themselves in her direction. Seven or eight Confederates were moving to engage, pouring fire on her position, the Balokarid deploying her shield as she repositioned, the bullets sparking off her protected wing. She fired blindly around her shield, a pair of Confederates dropping to the ground, Samiha puting her backside against a white column as she collapsed her shield.

She drew enough fire for the rest of the team to get into position to assist, Tilu advancing down the middle with Dominic following, the two ducking behind her shield. Ryan ordered Brindley to flank with him, the two getting an angle on the enemy while the Balokarids took the brunt of the return fire.

The lenses in Ryan’s helmet fogged as he rushed behind a column, leaning out to empty his mag at the Confederate ranks. The room the simulation was built inside of felt a lot bigger now that he couldn’t physically see it, but he knew that if he got too close to the actual walls, the projectors would build up a barrier in the sim to ward him off.

After the initial surprise wore off, the team quickly finished off the remaining Confederates, Samiha dropping the last one, riddling its cover full of holes, the white barrier mending itself after a small delay. The sound of reloading weapons filled the area as a measure of quiet settled over the team, interrupted by a victorious woop from Brindley.

“There we go! They need to up the ante on the AI or something, that was a sinch,” he jeered.

“You shouldn’t have any problem with your next objectives then, Private,” Adamski’s voice answered through their headsets. “Coordinates sent to your squad lead.”

“What have we got, boss?” Dominic asked, the team rallying up around Ryan, waiting patiently as he tapped at his display.

“We got two capture points, one on each side of the map,” he explained. As he talked, the arena they were standing in began to change, the distant walls closing in, Brindley wincing away as they sandwiched the team into a corridor with a dead end on one side. A top-down map of the level was downloaded onto his display, the little map reminding him of a labyrinth marble maze, the little blue marker in the middle representing his current location. “Damn,’ he grumbled.

“What’s wrong?” Tilu asked.

“We only got three and a half k points for that last objective,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the score meter. “and we only get three thousand for each completed objective.”

“So?” Brindley asked. “That sounds pretty good to me.”

“There’s only three objectives per sim,” Ryan explained. “If you do the math, that’s another three thousand points we gotta make up for with kills, accuracy, and not being shot. That last one will bring our score down the most.”

“What about time?” Samiha asked. “Does that play a factor in our points?”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied. “There’s a small multiplier if we finish under a set time, why?”

“Then shouldn’t we split up, and take both objectives at the same time?”

“I don’t know if you realised, but we’re an odd number,” Ryan said. “One of you would have to cover two of us if we split you and Tilu up.”

“We can do it,” Samiha insisted. “It would half our time at the least, that would certainly give us a passing score.”

“Assuming one of our teams doesn’t kick the virtual bucket,” Brindley added skeptically. “Any idea on how many baddies we’re up against.”

“None. There’s too many risks,” Ryan decided. “We go together. We’ll move to the north marker first, then loop around to the south. Let’s move, Tilu you have point, Samiha take the rear.”

“I can handle the front,” Samiha said before the team got moving. “Tilu trade spots with me, I don’t want to be forgotten back here.”

“This isn’t up for discussion, Samiha,” Ryan snapped before Tilu could reply. “Watch our backs.”

He wanted to add or else to that sentence, but realised he’d be repeating history if he did, so he held his tongue, praying that Samiha would take the hint and just drop it.

He breathed a relieved sigh when she nodded her feathery head, probably snarling behind that headset of hers, but she held her tongue, and that was good enough for Ryan, gesturing for the team to move.

Since he was the only one with access to the map, Ryan called out what direction Tilu should head, the rest of the team following from behind as she led with her shield, poking her coilgun round each corner to check for contacts. They didn’t have to wait long for some action, the Confederates spawning in groups of two and three, some set up and waiting, others standing guard. The team cut them down with quick bursts of coilgun fire, Brindley and Dominic firing around Tilu’s shield, while Samiha and Ryan held their fire, as the risk of hitting their teammates in the narrow hallways was too great.

After a few more turns, they reached the next objective, the hallway branching into a wider area with a suspicious amount of cover covering the whitewashed floor. The room was rectangular in shape, maybe thirty meters long and half as wide, way bigger than the sim room itself, but probably there to add a bit of scope to the otherwise claustrophobic experience.

Centering the room was a pillbox, its facades painted over in an ocean grey, making it look like an eight-by-eight meter brick of concrete. Thin slots were cut into its sides at around eye-level, just big enough to fit the barrel of a gun through, which was exactly what happened next, two rifle muzzles poking through the slots, taking aim at the approaching team.

They threw themselves behind anything they could find, while Tilu planted her shield into the ground in front of her feet, the shimmering wave of energy disintegrating the bullets as they travelled through the protective layer. Brindley and Dominic took up firing positions to either side of her, while Ryan crouched at their rear, feeling Samiha’s presence to his left as she relocated.

“That’s our target!” Ryan called out, peeking over his cover to survey the room. The bunker was surrounded by knee-high walls and columns to help break up the sightlines, but they began to diminish the closer they got to the pillbox, leaving a nasty kill zone for anything that got too close.

He turned to see Samiha shoulder her PDW, the weapon barking as she sent a burst into = this side of the pillbox. “Save your ammo,” he chided. “Not even coilguns could break through that much concrete.”

“What’s the plan, boss?” Brindley asked. “Send the meat shield – I mean Tilu – up first?”

“How much charge you got on that thing?” Ryan asked, directing his question at Tilu.

“Sixty percent,” she answered. “Could reach the pillbox if I sprinted, but it’s a stretch.”

“Mine is fully charged,” Samiha interjected, but Ryan shook his head.

“Too risky, I have a feeling this is the Captain’s way of countering your shields. We’ll go with plan B. How’s your throwing arm, Brindley?”

Before he could answer, the startled Brindley reached out to catch something Ryan tossed his way. It looked like a miniaturized paint can, with a capped nozzle on one end, the Private turning it over in his hand to read the label.

“Once the smoke’s out, gun it to the pillbox,” Ryan said. “Get out of the line of fire as soon as you can. On my mark, Brindley.”

“One pitch, coming right up Sir.”

Ryan counted down from three, and when he hit zero, Brindley thumbed the nozzle and chucked the grenade in an overhand throw, the plastic can bouncing off the foot of the pillbox with a clang. It spun like a top for a few seconds,  a grey mist spewing from the nozzle, a cloud of swirling smoke soon forming in front of the pillbox.

“Now!” Ryan said, dashing into the open, his team following suit. Boots and talons clicked against the sterile tiles as they advanced. Muzzle flashes created points of light in the smoke screen, Ryan sprinting towards them despite part of his brain urging him to take cover. The fact that this was simulated did little to calm his racing heart, everything felt so real, from the tiny whistles the bullets made as they passed his face, the displacing air, even the taste of smoke, it was all just enough to trick him into thinking he was in a real fight.

As they ran into the obscuring mist, the fire from the pillbox began to subside, and then disappear entirely. Real soldiers would just keep firing, but maybe the sim was rewarding him for his approach, the team putting their backs to the concrete as they crouched below the slot.

“Everyone good?” he asked, the team sounding off. None of them had been hit.

“We got more spawning in on this side,” Dominic warned, angling his heavy coilgun round the right side of the pillbox.

“This way as well,” Samiha added, keeping her feathery head down as she peeked to the left.

“Split up,” Ryan commanded, seeing they had no choice now. “Samiha you’re with me, the rest of you clear the right, we’ll meet on the other side.”

The humans and Tilu nodded, the three of them forming up as they rounded the corner. The sound of weapons fire erupted on that side of the pillbox, the signature crackling of energy suggesting Tilu had deployed her shields to draw the return fire.

“Will you finally let me do something now?” Samiha asked when they were alone, readying her weapon.

“Sure, let’s see if all that time in the range taught you something,” he challenged.

They turned the corner, Samiha taking a slight lead as they stalked alongside the pillbox, Samiha doubling over so that she didn’t get shot in the face. After a moment, a pair of Confederates rounded the bunker on the other side, crouching down and levelling identical rifles. There was no time to deploy her shield, Samiha firing from the hip with her PDW instead, bringing one down while Ryan took the other.

Movement to the side drew his attention, Ryan glancing over to see the wall of the arena part, another pair of Confederates joining the fray. The angle of attack put Samiha in his way, her tail brushing against his chest as he tried to get around her bulk. Just as he was about to level his rifle, Samiha fired her weapon, pulling the stock into her shoulder like she’d done back in the range, riddling the chests of the two Confederates with holes. Ryan lowered his gun in surprise as the alien grinned down at him.

“It certainly did,” she chirped, slamming a fresh magazine into her weapon.

They encountered no more hostiles as they reached the far side of the pillbox, raising their weapons in alarm as a couple of figures stood there waiting for them. They lowered them as they realised it was Brindley, Dominic and Tilu, set up on the far side of the pillbox’s entrance, which was just a giant outline of a door cut into the concrete.

“Dominic you wait here,” Ryan said, knowing the heavy cannon wouldn’t work so well in an enclosed space. “Ladies, after you, we’ll follow behind.”

The two aliens crept into the bunker, the ceiling just high enough to accommodate them, an intentional design on the sim’s part no doubt. The pillbox might have been tall, but it was very narrow, the two Balokarids having no room to stand side by side.

“Tilu I want you up first,” Ryan said, the aliens rearranging at his order. That put Samiha right in front of him, who raised a brow at him over her shoulder. Her question was obvious enough, why her and not me? But there wasn’t any time for explanations.

They made two turns into the bunker before the confining walls opened up, Ryan catching a glimpse of the room beyond the bulky aliens. The right wall had a long slot built into it, artificial light from outside bleeding through the gap. There was a small bench at the foot of the wall where the occupants could stand to fire through the gap, and it was currently in use by a pair of Confederates, their eyeless gazes falling on the intruders.