Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) (4 page)

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rocessing data. The subjects are working well together and are aware of what is going on. Subjects have clearly been through previous missions and are not new. This is evidenced by the rapid assault and immediate shifting to a spearhead position on the advance. The few defenders that were on guard are down, and other forces are being reorganized for more effective counter of the assault. Automated defences will be activated as an additional hindrance.

Data will continue to be gathered and evaluated.

My weapon is up and I’m covering my arc. I’ve got Jeff on the left and Steve on the right. Tina is covering our six and we are moving fast. The corridor is wide and gives us lots of space to move, but not a lot of room for dodging. The timer is running down and if we don’t move fast, the device will trigger and it’s game over. We started fast and took the enemy by surprise.

The second we hit the ground from the assault shuttle right outside the massive alien command centre, we were moving. We all ducked and Tina launched six short-range missiles, blowing a large hole next to the front door and popping their defenses. She also blew the security force that was on duty there to bits.

We still have over eight minutes to get to the objective and destroy it, taking out as many of the enemy as possible so that the main planetary invasion can come in. If we succeed, the alien defences will be down. If we do not succeed, then we die and the invasion force behind us dies as well when the surface-to-air missiles and lasers sweep the assault shuttles out of the sky.

A recessed door ahead opens and two security guards in medium armour pop out from the left. Jeff pops six rounds into the two guards and they literally explode. He has to practice better trigger control. We have no idea how heavy the defences are going to be in this facility. It’s a primary planetary defence node for the entire continent. They should have an army here.

Behind me I can hear Tina firing slow, measured rounds, and the sensors indicate that she is taking out an entire reaction force on her own. Tina always does a good job. She’s kind of cold and a real bitch, but when it comes to gunning down stuff, she gets it done.

The corridor is featureless and all doors are flat against the wall. Every few metres are shallow alcoves with some sort of alien art. Statues and shapes that make no real sense to us, but are there. Sensor scans indicate they are solid and inert. Just alien art in the blank halls of the complex.

The enemy should be disorganized; there were two EMP bombs detonated in-atmosphere to mess up the civilian networks, and a kinetic weapon dropped on their main military base. Then, as we came in hot, the shuttle fired a scratch box. All electronic communications are now down to a distance of feet instead of kilometres.

But electronics still work. Especially military-grade, hardened ones. I discover that as two automated sentry weapons appear. One drops from the ceiling and one pops up from the floor just off to the side.

My sight carat slides on target for the one above and I pop three rounds into it, smashing it to pieces. The medium laser sparks and is useless. Jeff also put three rounds into the turret in his arc and it’s smashed to pieces as well. From the little I could see, it looked like a heavy slug weapon.

Jeff pops his magazine out and reloads on the run. It’s smooth and he can keep covering his arc. I’m thankful that Steve hasn’t had any contact yet. He is heavy on the trigger and terrible to reload. Every time we run through training missions, Steve is the first to go down and doesn’t pay enough attention to his sensor feeds. We are here now, though, and this is what we have to work with.

We are at the end of the long corridor that we initially entered. The T-junction ahead is another good ambush spot. In fact, we don’t even enter the intersection before laser blasts and streams of slug rounds are burning past the opening in a carefully coordinated pattern designed to cut anyone to shreds, with or without armour.

All the fire is coming from the side that leads deeper into the facility.

I pull a sensor ball and roll it out into the hall in the middle of the intersection. I scan both ways because this is a perfect ambush point from both sides. I bounce what I see to the other armoured members of my section.

The side blasting fire at us has four enemy soldiers with a projectile weapon hooked up to a huge ammo supply. The medium laser next to it has three barrels and is connected to the building for its power supply. The slow rate of fire means that the weapon does not need to go onto internal batteries for the power, and the single shots coming from each barrel means that none are over-heating.

Worse is the other side. There are two more automated defence weapons tracking the corridor entrance: a heavy laser and another projectile weapon.

We move. Jeff throws a nasty grenade down the hall on his side while Steve does the same on his side. Tina is still covering the rear and we are almost ready.

The sharp detonation of the explosives is nasty. Our armour dampens the noise and other effects, but I can still feel the overpressure from both sides. The sensor is still working. Jeff took out the two weapons, but there is still movement. Steve did not take out both of the weapon systems, but they appear damaged.

I yell, “GO!” and lunge out into the corridor with Jeff on my left. Our weapons are up and as we cover the aliens, still trying to pick themselves up and deal with us, we fire individual rounds. There were three survivors when we leapt out. Three shots later, there are only bodies.

Steve and Tina went on their side and I can hear too much weapons fire. The heavy laser that blasts a shot down the hall past me is not appreciated.

I hear Steve scream and then the firing is over.

Jeff and I move down the hall to just before the weapon systems and stop. Tina and Steve follow. Now we only have to worry about covering two sides, not three. Steve is showing as injured and he has taken damage to his armour.

I have to call it. “Okay, we take fifteen seconds to patch up, rotate reload to full mags, and move out again.”

Jeff turns and checks Steve’s armour while Tina covers the rear and I cover the front. The corridor ahead of me is huge and stretches into the distance. This facility is huge and covers more than a city block. We have to move fast to make up lost time.

Processing data. The subjects are continuing to work as a team but functionality is now affected. Cracks are showing in how they work together. With additional stress, the weak members of the team will be eliminated and the survivors will not be able to continue on. Training does not overcome ability or the lack of that ability.

Further evaluation is required to judge subjects for feasibility of program inclusion. Subject 4 is showing potential but none of the subjects understand timings or how important it is to meet them.

Increasing sensitivity of automated defences and rerouting security forces.

We are set and we can go, and it’s only been twenty-two seconds where we were stationary. Ammo is redistributed and everyone checked over. Steve took a glancing hit on the left arm, but he is still functional.

We are in the same formation and take off down corridor again. The time we lost has allowed the enemy to get ready for us and I don’t doubt that the defences up ahead will be even worse.

We are going at a slow run and come to the next intersection. We stop and I throw a sensor ball but there is nothing down the corridor that I can see. The range on them is not very long though. Steve is at diminished capabilities so I leap out while he stays back. There is nothing there. We reform and head on down the corridor. Sensors are indicating that we are almost five hundred metres from the target. There appeared to be lots of movement somewhere ahead of us.

Just ahead of us two more doors pop open and I know there is movement ahead of us. Before we can move the statue in the alcove to our right explodes. The shaped charge that was in it blows straight out into us. Steve takes most of the directional blast and turns into a cinder. My armour takes some of the blast but holds up. Jeff and Tina are both fine but suffering from degraded sensors. I am the team leader I should have anticipated something like this. I would have done it.

Jeff and I are firing and they all drop but not before Jeff takes a shot to the leg. Again the armour holds but his mobility is down four percent.

We slow down and then shake out into a formation of Jeff and I up with Tina still covering the rear. Then we are off at a run again. The odds of successfully completing this mission have just increased against us by 10 percent. With the damage we have taken so far, the odds of our survival have dropped from 50 percent to 3 percent. I don’t know if we are going to make it.

But we are going to try. I can hear Steve’s voice in the back of my mind griping over and over about how it isn’t fair.

I shut him out. He’s dead.

More security and some military pop out from different doors ahead of us. They aren’t very good and we take them all out.

The kick of my rifle is hard and keeps me grounded in fight mode. Jeff forgets to reload once. We are all pretty shaken up at this point. But we can do this.

Then we catch a break. There is a series of explosives on the floors and running up the wall ahead of us. I open fire and am lucky enough to detonate it, which drops the floor into a basement and shatters the local walls.

We are far enough back that we take no damage, but if we had been closer, that would have finished us.

We can’t pass the large gap in the corridor. It looks like we are closer to the outside on the left-hand side and the wall is destroyed there, so we carefully jump into the open space. But there is no way to carry on and we don’t have the explosives to crack the wall open. We hit a door that leads outside, with Jeff in the lead.

He runs outside, weapon up, and starts shooting while he moves down the wall. I come out next and there are laser blasts striking all around the door. Jeff is only a few feet down the wall, moving fast toward another door that is in the distance when he gets plastered by laser and projectile weapons.

His weapon drops and he is hit over and over. He takes a tank round to his upper half, which tears his head right off and he collapses.

I can track four military vehicles and a lot of soldiers.

Tina is out and moving as well, taking out soldiers that are threats. A heavy weapon team is cut down. She is a blur of motion and is reloading on the run.

I take a round in the leg and several shots in my chest. I can barely move, but I keep going.

Processing data. Subjects have made suboptimal decisions and are clearly finished. Heading into a mission without every piece of equipment allowed them to move faster but did not give them the flexibility to deal with changes in mission parameters. The last member of the team will be dead within ten seconds.

A rocket grenade comes in from the side and catches me in the head. I’m dead. I can still see Tina moving like a blur. She has been hit, but only with hand weapons. She’s gone through three magazines and all her rifle grenades. She is moving so fast that she can’t reload the grenades.

She takes out one of the armoured vehicles and is moving toward the far door. If she made it, they couldn’t all fire on her as she would be in the building corridors.

It doesn’t matter; there are over a hundred soldiers firing on her and more armoured vehicles roll up firing on the move. Hits are striking the walls all around her and I’m amazed that she can keep dodging given all the light grazing hits she’s taken.

She lasted a lot longer than I did, and as the individual weapons take their toll on her, a tank round hits her in the chest, killing her outright.

Everything fades and a large red “GAME OVER” flashes in front of my eyes.

I take my helmet off and look at Jeff, Steve, and Tina.

The VR room is kind of dull-looking, with grey walls and a black grid pattern over the floor, walls and ceiling. The AI that runs these games needs those grids to make sure everything is to scale. Sometimes, even with all the programming, something will be weirdly shaped, like a squarish tank when they are supposed to be all rounded. The four harnesses that we are in are spread out in the room on the running system.

It’s a twenty-foot by twenty-foot room and all this gear, is mostly attached to the ceiling. It smells like sweaty socks in a gym bag. Reasonable, for the amount of use the system gets.

When I look at anyone wearing the outfit, I feel like I am looking at some sort of messed-up bug in its web or nest. It looks stupid, but I’ve been playing VR with my friends since the system was released and it is the coolest thing around. Two years on and it’s still awesome.

There have been several new missions added and there are rumours of hooking systems up across the country and of making the national and international game rankings and competition real.

We gotta play now, though, because we paid for this time. The timer is running and there are dozens of people waiting outside.

Steve is grumbling. “They should fix these guns of theirs. Mine keeps sticking, you know? I swear that I don’t really feel it kicking back either when I fire. I don’t think their recoil system is working.”

Jeff’s eyebrows are up. I know exactly what he’s thinking:
Your crappy gameplay is because you are a crappy player. NOT because your trigger is sticking or the recoil system isn’t working.
If it did work properly, I doubt that Steve would even be able to hit anything.

Tina just watches Steve with a look on her face that says exactly what she thinks of him.

I wave at her. “Hey, come on, Tina. You’re right by the reset button. We have almost six minutes left and we can get at least partway through. Let’s see if we can do better. Everyone ready? Hit it, Tina.”

I put my helmet back on and the boring, small grey room with the body harnesses fades away and the inside of an assault shuttle reforms. I can still see the faint shapes of the others around me, but I stop thinking like a high school student and start thinking like a Marine on a raid.