by Aer-ki Jyr
In between the streets were a mixture of barricades and pillars. The barricades were a little over a meter high, looking like solid metal fences, each no more than five meters wide, with staggered gaps in between segments that Paul’s team had to dart across, hoping the turrets weren’t fast enough to catch them in the open…or one of the trainers sitting in the bunker with sniper rifles.
The pillars were wide boxes above head height but narrow enough that only one or a tightly packed two people could take cover behind them. Some of the pillars held hidden turrets, others did not. Some would pop out at knee level, others at face level, and still others would rise up out of the top and fire down on the team from a higher angle, making them skulk down behind the too short barricades even further.
This was the 2’s 17th attempt on this course. Each time they ran it they made a bit more progress, learning where the turrets were and beginning to anticipate the trainers’ tactics…who always tried to outwit and confuse their charges. Director Davis had said they’d been chosen for their adaptive skills, and he’d ordered the trainers to give them as much havoc as possible to learn from.
That they’d been doing in spades…and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the task.
Paul’s team…those that had been assigned numbers 020-029, otherwise known as the “2s,” had gelled well. They were currently the 3rd highest rated team out of 10 and were totally committed to raising that rank to number 1 and keeping it there…but doing that meant passing this capture the flag challenge and catching up with the 7s and 0s who were already several scenarios ahead of them.
Paul waited silently, keeping his two handed grip aimed at the street where he expected the Rover to appear. He, Jason, and Jack were the farthest advanced of the team, thus they would have first crack at the mobile gun turret…as well as being its first targets when it rolled up beside them, bypassing the barricades that they were now cowered behind.
Unlike the permanent turrets, the Rover was treated more like a tank, requiring more hits on its target sphere to deactivate it, leaving the device more than enough time to take out a single attacker. They’d learned early on that they had to combine their firepower to take it out quickly, otherwise it would thin their numbers and deny them any real chance of taking the bunker and the ‘flag’ within.
Just as the leading edge of the Rover came into view, Megan and Kip popped up from behind cover on row 8, one row further away from the Rover than Paul’s group, and fired on it as fast as their triggers would allow. A few of their shots hit the target sphere, but most missed wide or splattered on the front of the small, squarish tank.
The trainers in a nearby chamber swung its remotely controlled quad barrels slightly to the right and peppered the 8th row barricades, forcing them to take cover as Paul and Jack opened fire from the left, blindsiding the Rover. Its quad turret began to swivel towards them when Paul jumped up, his head rising above cover, and ran towards the blasted thing as fast as he could, firing as he went. Jack sidestepped to maintain his line of fire, but Paul was still blocking Jason, who knew better than to risk hitting his teammate in the legs.
Paul put three shots at close range into the target, grateful to see the barrels dip in response, but he knew it’d only be deactivated for a number of seconds, approximately 30 in count, but never the same. The trainers had programmed all the turrets with a randomized downtime to keep the trainees on their toes.
Several turret launched paintballs whizzed by Paul’s head from the direction of the bunker, but he ignored them. He had to take out the Rover for good or they’d lose again. Unlike the turrets who, once they advanced past them, would permanently deactivate, the Rover was never permanently out of the fight and would circle around and attack them from the rear when they neared the heavily defended bunker.
It had also, two weeks ago, nailed Paul in the nuts…which was, even with the numbing charge, extremely painful, and now was time for some payback. They were supposed to learn, adapt, and improvise, so that’s exactly what he planned to do, even if the trainers would throw a fit afterward.
Paul slid down in front of the Rover, using it as cover from the turrets. A few tiny splatters from rounds impacting the Rover’s barrels hit Paul’s face, and he lost a bit of feeling on his right cheek and upper lip as a result, but before the barrels directly in front of him could reactivate and cause him a world of hurt, he jabbed the butt of his rifle into the ‘neck’ of the rover, dislodging the metallic plating. When a small gap formed, he tossed his weapon aside and pried the thin panel back, forcibly bending the metal enough to get at the internal circuitry.
As the whine of the now reactivated barrels rotating to shoot him in the face filled him with a mixture of dread and haste, he reached inside the Rover and ripped out as many wires as he could get his hand on.
The turret froze in place, having lost either power or its control lines.
Paul smiled, still ducking down behind the dead Rover. Now they had a decent chance at taking the bunker. He reached down and retrieved his weapon from the floor…
The Rover suddenly reversed direction, retreating at maximum speed, its treads apparently still retaining power, leaving Paul completely exposed. Realizing his mistake, he jumped to the side, scrambling for cover.
“Umph…” he uttered as his breath was knocked out of him by a little splash of pain square in the chest. The feeling disappeared almost as fast as it began, but Paul fell to the ground, suddenly finding his chest and upper torso numb. His arms also didn’t fully function as his pectoral muscles refused to acknowledge their existence. He fell hard to the ground, his head hitting the slightly soft floor material with a thud.
Next thing he knew, Jack’s face was above him as he was pulled behind cover.
“Gutsy, man. Very gutsy,” his teammate said, eyes darting about ever alert. “We won’t waste it,” he said, making additional hand motions to the others, coordinating their advance. A moment later he disappeared from Paul’s view of the training chamber’s ceiling.
2
With scattered suppression fire from Dan and Brian on the left flank, Jack jumped ahead and skidded behind one of the pillars in between the 4th and 5th row of barricades. This one, as far as they had determined, was a dummy with no turret inside. He took a couple quick breaths then poked his head out for a snapshot look ahead.
A paintball zipped by and hit the barricade behind him where Emily had been crouched…but she was already running cattycorner ahead to another pillar on the other side of the street. Jack circled around to the far side of his and fired two shots towards the bunker as suppression fire.
It didn’t work, and Emily got hit in the quad with a paintball from one of the snipers in the bunker. She went down hard, then got pelted with another three shots by one of the turrets. Once she stopped moving the remotely controlled turrets tracked to other targets. The trainers might have been hard on them, but they weren’t cruel enough to repeatedly pelt a downed trainee.
Jack winced in sympathy. He hoped she was unconscious, otherwise she was laying there fully awake but unable to do anything more than twitch a few helpless muscles. Her autonomic systems would be unaffected…it took an enormous amount of stun energy to shut them down, and often the body would restart automatically, some sort of resistance bred into the Humans by the V’kit’no’sat. It was possible however, according to the data recovered from the pyramid, to kill a Human with stun blasts, though the amount required was beyond any weapon that Star Force currently fielded.
The V’kit’no’sat weapons discovered in the temple were another matter. Those designed for Human use would need hundreds of stun shots to potentially kill, but the larger ones that the dinosaurs carried had considerably more kick, and with a square hit had a 50/50 probability of killing the tiny Humans, while merely numbing the larger reptiles.
Both technologies were far beyond Star Force’s ability to reproduce, but they’d learned enough to create the ‘stingers,’ as the trainees had come to call
the stun-laced paintballs. They’d been told that direct energy delivery weapons were in the early development stages, but so far no viable prototypes had been constructed, though Star Force security forces had been augmented with recently developed ‘stun sticks’ that the trainees were scheduled to begin training with in the coming months.
Jack caught Megan’s gaze and she gave him the ‘leap frog’ signal. He nodded and readied himself, ready to spring ahead to the next row of barricades, which would deactivate the turrets in the pillar row he was currently hiding behind. Thanks to the slight arc of the assault course, the other pillars couldn’t track him if he was pressed up close behind the back side of one…plus the others had already been deactivated by his teammates, who were even now continually adding shots to their target spheres to keep them inactive.
Back behind her barricade, Megan counted down on her fingers for Jack. When she hit one he heard a salvo of paintballs from his teammates, aimed at both turrets and the bunker with the snipers poking their heads up into gun port slits. With their paintball rifle barrels sticking out in front of their faces they were hard to hit, but thanks to the splatter effect it wasn’t impossible to numb their face and hands a bit, so the trainers had to take care not to get too bold in the face of dozens of paintballs firing their way.
Megan’s fingers clenched down into a fist pump, prompting Jack to round the side of the pillar and dive headfirst toward the next barricade row 4 meters ahead, tripping an invisible motion sensor a meter prior that shut down the turrets behind him that otherwise would have had a clear shot at his flank and backside.
“Clear!” he yelled.
A moment later Kip and Brian darted forward to barricades on his left while the rest of his teammates advanced halfway to positions behind the now deactivated pillars.
Now was crunch time, he knew. They were being funneled down into the narrow end of the course, giving them less and less maneuvering room. The turrets were now more closely spaced, with the bunker turrets coming into play when they got up to rows 2 and three. The snipers also became more lethal at this range, though that would change if and when they were able to get up to point blank range on the wall. They’d only managed that once before, with Kip and Paul, before they were mowed down by the Rover from behind. With it now out and 8 team members remaining, he felt they had a good chance this time.
Jack knew the position of the turrets just past the barricades and those behind them, which also were in effective range. He steadied himself then popped up and took a shot at one of them, splattering its target sphere with a satisfying green splotch.
He ducked back down behind cover as three blue globs impacted the barricade just below where his head had been and two more sailed over it and hit the bottom of the previous row, which was already looking like a bad art project. He didn’t know who they got to clean up the mess afterwards, but he pitied them.
The turret received several more hits and dipped in momentary deactivation, followed by Dan running forward and ducking down next to Jack behind the barricade. He saw Megan and Kip move forward as well, coming parallel to his position behind other barricades.
Ivan wasn’t as lucky when he tried to cross the gap and one of the snipers caught him in the gut. He went down hard, ironically falling behind cover, but the rest of the 2s made it up to the 4th row of barricades without taking any hits. He saw Megan faint, firing off two random shots and ducking back down as a hail of paintballs flew her way while on the opposite side of the course Kip, Randy, and Brian came up and took out the turret on the far right side.
When the snipers and turrets adjusted to cover their mistake, Jack and Dan sprayed the distant bunker with shots, some of them coming close enough to splatter into the gun slots and make the snipers flinch…all the while Megan leapt forward and advanced to the next pillar and slid forward on her chest up to the 3rd row of barricades, deactivating the pillar turrets behind her.
That left two rows and six pillars, three of which were sporting turrets, as well as a fourth that the 2s knew contained a hidden panel at ankle level. The bunker just past the 1st row of barricades contained four trainers and four turrets of its own, one at each corner standing taller than the two meter high walls, able to fire both out on the course and down into the bunker if the 2s got that far.
Jack signaled for Randy, Kip, and Dan to become their own snipers, holding position in the 4th row to take down turrets from afar while the rest of their teammates leapfrogged forward. Given the closing distances, reaction times would be ever more important and even poking up out of cover for a faint could spell a very painful headshot.
When he had confirmation that the others were onboard and in position Jack scurried his way down the barricade row, hopping across the street junctions with paintballs hitting at his heels until he got to the far right side, providing the maximum spacing. The outside street that ran along the wall led directly to one of the bunker’s front turrets, but the wall blocked the firing arc of the back turret while the rightmost pillar in the 1st row blocked most of the gun ports. It was the best available cover he had, despite the fact that it put him right in line with the closest turret.
Now he waited. With three of his teammates sniping the remaining pillar turrets, the other two were narrowly advancing up to the third row with Megan under a hail of paintballs, catching a few splatters from the top of the barricades. They couldn’t move up much further, but it was imperative that the enemy fire was split and varied, both in firing arc and range. Jack was going to be the rabbit and the key to their advance…but he had to wait for the opportune moment.
When the four pillars directly past Megan and Dan temporarily went down they repositioned exactly behind the center two to block some of the incoming fire and started taking chip shots at the last pair of pillars closest to the bunker. Their three snipers kept the closest pillar row deactivated while adding some distant shots of their own to the mix. Careful to keep their heads down, Megan and Dan slowly started popping off random shots at the bunker, hoping for a lucky hit.
Suddenly a hail of paintballs tracked up high and over the inhabited barricades. Jack wondered what the trainers were doing when Jason slammed down behind the barricade next to him.
“Welcome back,” he said, grateful for another man on the field.
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said, cradling his right arm precariously.
“Can you use that?”
Jason moved his elbow joint experimentally. “Not much, but I can still fire one handed. At the least I can be a decoy.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Jack said, flexing his muscles in anticipation.
“You the rabbit?”
“As soon as the turret goes down.”
“Good luck.”
“No kidding,” Jack said as the friendly snipers scattered more and more paint in the direction of the bunker. Most of them missed, and they had to keep putting hits on the deactivated pillar turrets to keep them down…but the stun charge was gradually building up on the four-barreled turret standing guard over the side street Jack was poised to run down.
“Hold onto this,” he said, sliding his weapon over to Jason. He couldn’t see ahead of him, not only because he wanted to keep from getting hit, but the longer he was out of sight the more likely the turrets and enemy snipers would forget about him or assume he had repositioned, which meant that he had to trust his teammates to signal when it was time for him to make his run.
All of a sudden Dan pumped his fist and forearm up and down three times in a hurry, prompting Jack to jump out of cover and sprint forward, bumping into the wall as he drove hard for maximum speed.
The turret he was now staring at had drooped down, deactivated, but as soon as he had taken three steps he opened himself up to the gun ports and the other two bunker turrets…who at the moment were firing at his teammates on the opposite side of the course.
That didn’t last long. As soon as Jack popped up in their peripheral vision they tracked
his way, opening an opportunity for Dan to jump out of cover to advance to the next pillar as both distraction and utilizing the opportunity for advancement. Jason also took the cue, standing straight up behind the barricade and started blasting away at the bunker, daring the trainers to shoot at him instead of Jack.
Jack ran past the line of four pillars but didn’t bother to stop behind cover. He ran past the 2nd row of barricades and up to the last pillars, diving forward as he got shot in the left shoulder, which spun him around to land on his side.
His momentum tumbled him forward head over heels, coming to a stop with his legs in the air and his feet sticking up over the first and closest barricade to the bunker. His back was to the metal panel and he was staring up at the ceiling as his foot got hit with another paintball.
Jack twisted his body around enough that his legs slid down behind cover, but there was little more that he could do besides that. His entire left arm and most of his left torso was numb, and while his shoes provided a bit more insulation against the numbing effects of the paintballs, he couldn’t feel his foot either…meaning he probably wouldn’t be able to walk.
The good news was, he’d tripped the sensors for the last two pillar lines, permanently deactivating those turrets…leaving only the four at the bunker active, now that the front right turret had reactivated.
The three snipers abandoned their posts and spread out, moving forward individually as Megan and Dan also advanced up to the 2nd row of barricades. Jason advanced to one of the pillars and took on lookout duty from a standing position.
It wasn’t long before the 2s had advanced up to the 2nd row of barricades and taken down the front-most bunker turrets, with them now beginning to splatter the gun ports with too many shots for the trainers to stand their ground. With only the rearmost turrets firing back the team leapfrogged up to the 1st row of barricades alongside Jack, who was still lying on the ground trying to shake off the stun effect. Thirty seconds later and the back turrets also went down.
