by Kevin Groh
»Damn! That’s unbelievable! These things are usually only given to elite units.«, Carter said. Leena was still silent.
»That’s right, but your special models also require special basic equipment. Let’s say it’s an advantage you have now.«, Kova admitted. She added that Syntech’s multitools had excellent hacking systems even without the add-on module.
Overall, the changes Carter experienced in a week in high-speed would have been too much for most people. But he found most of it enormously practical and useful in everyday life. More power and reaction could never hurt and the HUD was not intended exclusively for military purposes. After Carter returned to the normal routine after the familiarization week, it seemed to him that he was moving more smoothly. It was a Thursday when he returned to regular classes. Rod and Leena were already in the room with Annie where she explained further strategies to them. Rod looked happy, he even got completely new uniforms because he had become too wide for the old equipment. Henry and some of the other recruits had also received their upgrades. Especially those with eye upgrades were conspicuous because they looked around unusually often. Carter liked to play around with the zoom and other settings, which occasionally distracted him a bit.
In the evening he told Kelly everything he had experienced this week and she looked at his new muscles and eyes impressed. During sex, Carter realized he had to focus so he wouldn’t grab too hard. But she seemed even more energetic because she liked the changes. She often asked him how things felt, or wanted to see his holo interface. He spent more time with her again and they almost forgot how serious things were for Utopia.
Ground Warfare Exam
Since the situation was very delicate at that time, no more field exercises were carried out outside Utopia. Many sites were temporarily closed, so there were generally fewer duties for recruits. This led to free hours and idle time. Since they had completed most of the training subjects by now and the final tests were approaching, that was all right with them. On an ordinary Monday Leena came to the others for breakfast and she was happy to announce that she was no longer under observation. She had been lifted from her parol shortly before her upgrade and from that day she was officially rehabilitated again.
»That’s great, Leena!«, Jane said pleased.
The twins and Gina were also happy with her, while Rod stood smiling next to her.
Carter looked more thoughtful and when Kelly asked him why he didn’t say anything, he replied:
»I just wonder. She has committed harmful sabotage and has also been warned several times and punished for rebellious behavior. Such a person is usually not rehabilitated, especially not so quickly. And an upgrade wouldn’t be considered either. It seems a little strange to me that she gets away so easily.«
»Maybe your father has his hands in the game again. He certainly has some possibilities.«, Kelly thought.
Carter shrugged his shoulders and chewed on an apple. Despite his amazement, he was happy that Leena didn’t have to bear any long-term consequences.
They were all correspondingly optimistic when they went to class. Even the sight of Banes and his paintball gun could not take that away from them. The mood rose even higher when they saw how much faster Carter and Rod were due to their upgrades. Meanwhile, he easily overcame the ladder to climb and they almost jumped over the wooden barrier from a standing position. In the beginning, Carter had to climb up the rope with a technique, now he pulled himself up by pure strength without the help of his legs. His reflexes had become so fast that he could balance much more easily on a rope. He and Rod were able to cover free race tracks in no time at all.
When they arrived at the beginning of the hell trail, Tom said:
»Fuck, are you, super-soldiers, now? That was awesome!«
Even Urma wouldn’t have been able to keep up with them in terms of speed and endurance if she hadn’t also been modified with endurance upgrades.
Banes said: »That wasn’t bad at all. But don’t forget that Lorgans are naturally as strong as you are now. And they can run just as fast. For a human being, you have been massively strengthened, but on other planets, this only corresponds to the norm. So don’t become too confident and stay alert and ready.«
During this week, they had several weapons training and sports sessions, more frequently than usual. They asked Dunn about it and she said:
»Is that too much shooting for you? Be happy. You’re right, of course, there’s a reason why you so damn often take up my time. You are shit. That’s the reason. Almost two years of practice with all kinds of weapons and some of you still haven’t hit the mark. Even Sanders, Powell and Palmer have hardly excelled despite their better eyes. And I had expected more from the Syntech eyes.«
She spat on the floor and continued: »The fact is that you morons are still not as good as you should be. In two weeks your final ground war simulation will take place and you’ll have to shoot straight ahead. That’s why you have a lot of close combat and weapons training in these two weeks. Otherwise, you’ll make a fool of yourselves.«
Rod put his hands on his hips and said: »I thought there weren’t any real exams here.«
Dunn sighed theatrically, grabbed a gun from the table next to him and fired right in front of Rod’s feet. He flinched back and looked at her irritated.
»You’re flinched and frozen instead of acting. In a real battle, you’d be dead now. The exams you’re supposed to take here aren’t to give you any grades. You’re not supposed to apply anywhere like a suck-up and crawl up people’s asses with your report cards. They’re simulations that show us if you’re halfway ready for the real world out there. In a way, it’s also a kind of test for us trainers whether our methods work. So don’t cry Tindall, grab a gun and shoot the target back there!«
In the following two weeks they practiced almost exclusively hand-to-hand combat and shooting. Carter was able to practice with his weapon-HUD with target assistance and became a much better shooter. Leena also benefited from her new eyes. She did not become a masterful markswoman, for upgrades could not perform miracles, but she improved drastically. The twins fired synchronously, Gina hit the mark most of the time and even Jimbo had some good hits. Kelly held back a little. Without modifications, she felt weak and useless. Carter, Rod, and Leena cheered her up whenever they could.
The day of the exam was a rainy Tuesday. They were all quite nervous this morning, although they had already experienced several simulations and completed them quite well. Nevertheless, the word ›test‹ was enough to intimidate them.
Nambur said: »Oh people, why are you so quiet? That’s the official assessment simulation today, but our bracelets always measure how good we are anyway. They don’t just use today’s training for their evaluation, they use all our performances.«
»I wonder anyway why such openly communicated tests are carried out at all. Our wristbands have all the data. I can even see my hit rate in weapons training here.«, Jane said annoyed.
Jimbo interjected: »I think this exam thing is about making us nervous. We’re supposed to be insecure so that we’re under pressure. Real missions are about life and death, where failure means death. Then there is always pressure. Presumably, we should learn to deal with it and still act wisely.«
This view seemed plausible to them, even if it didn’t take away the nervousness. They made their way to the simulation hall. Banes, Dunn, and Jazzir waited for them there. They went into the changing rooms and equipped themselves. Even after two years, the standard equipment still felt impractical and awkward. They ran into the hall and grabbed weapons. Pistol, assault rifle and shotgun were Rod’s equipment, while Leena only got pistol and MP. Each was equipped with the armament that, according to the records, they could handle best. Carter received the pistol, the assault rifle, and a sniper rifle. He wondered how a sniper rifle could help him in a ground battle.
Banes stood in front of them and announced loudly:
»Today is the day of truth. Almost two years of tr
aining culminate in these exercises and us three here ...«, he said with a view to Dunn and Jazzir, »... have put a lot of our time and effort into you to survive out there and do your job. Now we want to see how you behave in a realistic fighting situation.«
He switched on the simulation and suddenly they found themselves in a swampy jungle area, where isolated trees stood at large puddles, the grass was partly knee-high and flames blazed in several places.
»What you see here is the representation of a tribal region on Halog. Imagine if we had pushed the Lorgans back to their homeworld and involved them in a ground war. Battles are raging all over the planet, while fighters are flying around in the sky above you, battling against the Gumai squadrons. It’s hot, humid and dark. It’s raining and you’ve been in action for ten hours. Just before you can rest to eat and sleep, you’ll come across an enemy camp of Lorgans, who will immediately notice you and attack you. About one hundred soldiers fight alongside you against almost seventy lizards. Your goal is to take them all out and secure the area so the supplies can land. Let’s go!«
All of a sudden over eighty Utopia soldiers appeared next to them and seventy huge lizard men in front of them and both groups stormed towards each other. The noise of the roaring warriors was deafening. Leena stood there completely perplexed and would have been overrun if Rod hadn’t grabbed her and pushed her aside. Carter waited a moment with bent legs and watched his enemies. Since they were simulations, his HUD didn’t help much as it couldn’t detect any life forms. The Lorgans were indeed large and looked desolate and deadly with their war paint. Only about half of them had armor that looked like crafted bones. The armored enemies carried firearms, heavy-looking rifles with wide or multiple barrels. The other Lorgans were just painted and had clumsy bone axes and metal axes that they swung angrily over their heads. Carter pulled out his pistol and remembered that the lizards‹ weak points were in the finely scaled areas under their arms and joints and on their necks. Chest and head had particularly hard scale armor. So he fired several triple salvos and hit an enemy below the neck, killing him. He rolled to the side when a bullet struck next to him. The shotguns of the Lorgans were a mixture of a military shotgun and a grenade launcher and one did not want to be hit by those things. Carter used his newly gained strength and jumped onto a nearby tree, where he was well camouflaged thanks to the green armor color. He switched to the sniper rifle and aimed. He had a good view of the situation through the visor. Leena had retreated a bit and coordinated some clever feints of the holo soldiers against the Lorgans. Meanwhile, Gina and Nambur fired from elevated positions at several enemy groups, with Jane keeping an eye on them. Jimbo had been surrounded by Urma and Tom, but they held their ground as holo soldiers supported them from all sides. Tim was hit by a hatchet in the leg and leaned against a tree where Rod defended him.
A Lorgan struck an ax at Rod, but he stopped it with the shaft of his shotgun, grabbed it by the handle and pushed it against the lizard’s head. He tore it out of its hands, pressed the gun against the enemy’s throat and shot. Tim distorted his face in disgust as Rod, meanwhile, sank the ax into the shoulder of an armored opponent. Carter found that the three encircled ones needed his help the most, so he aimed and his HUD calculated the best targets and angles. In a short time, together with the holo soldiers, he managed to open a breach through which the comrades could leave the danger zone. Carter saw from the corner of his eye that his fire had caught the attention of some Lorgans. He could just drop off the branch he was sitting on before the trunk got hit. His attackers were two armed lizards and three axes.
»Guys, it’s getting a little rough here!«, he shouted into his microphone.
Out of nowhere Kelly suddenly appeared and fired across into the enemy crowd to distract them. She slipped underneath the legs of an ax wielder, disarmed him with her melee skills and finished him off with her assault rifle. Unfortunately, she stood between the enemies and realized that she couldn’t get out. Carter switched to the rifle, shot two distant enemies about to join and approached Kelly’s position firing. More Lorgans joined in, targeting him. Several of them were distracted as holo soldiers moved toward them from a flank.
»I sent you reinforcements!«, Leena sounded from the headphones.
Rod also came along and rammed a Lorgan with his shoulder, whereupon he crashed into his comrades and knocked them over.
»Do you need help?«, he asked grinning and shot an enemy to pieces.
»Good to see you, Rod!«, Carter replied gasping.
Back to back, they shot all around, but the armor of the Lorgans was hardly penetrable.
»How are we supposed to crack these bone armors?«, Rod asked.
Meanwhile, Kelly tried to avoid ax blows and shot whenever she could. Leena rushed into the field and had a package under her arm. She avoided several bullets and approached Carter and Rod ducked.
»Hey! The others are holding the position in different places, but I found something in our forward camp!«
She gave each of them a rifle magazine. At one glance, Carter recognized it as piercer ammo. He changed the type of ammunition on his rifle and the energy lines on the side changed from orange to blue. His HUD also changed color and showed new tactical options. Rod immediately fired with the piercers and didn’t have a bad hit rate, but although the projectiles did a lot of damage to the ax bearers, they also bounced off the bone armor.
»Fuck! What kind of armor are these? Nothing gets through.«, Rod cursed loudly.
Carter’s HUD didn’t show any details about the holo opponents, but the target systems captured the shapes of the environment and marked the best hit angles for heads and other unarmored areas. He explained to Rod what he saw and the two of them passed these clues on to the group. The melee units were quickly destroyed. The result, however, was that a transporter of the Lorgans came to drop off additional units. This time Gumai-tripods were part of it. These were battle walkers for uneven terrain. They were as high as five humans, had three strong legs and a closed dome with sharp edges in which a Gumai sat and operated the controls. The ›tanks‹ used a double-barrelled gun that could even fetch fighters from the sky. Four of these mighty constructs now stood next to a group of about forty armed Lorgans with ax rifles. The lizards had attached ax blades to the lower parts of their weapons in order to have an advantage in close combat.
As soon as the last of the first enemy wave had fallen, about thirty of the holo soldiers were still alive and Tim and Henry were eliminated. »What do we do now?«, Jane asked by comms.
Carter called up the database entry for the Gumai’s tripods via his multitool. A 3D representation appeared and he, Leena, Rod, Kelly, and Nambur, who were nearby, looked at the image. These runners had only one known weak point, located on top of the roof, where the hatch was visible.
»There’s not much we can do about them.«, Jimbo stated frankly.
»Do we have anything useful in the camp? Maybe a rocket launcher?«, asked Rod.
Leena shook her head. »There are only ammunition dumps and a few rifles. But it seems strange to me that there are no weak points. We have three legs in front of us, all of which should be equipped with joints and motors.«
»Yes, but they are equipped with protective caps, we can’t reach them.«, Tom commented.
Before they could talk any further, the opponents started their attack. The recruits had completely forgotten that they were on an active battlefield. Carter sent Leena to the camp to continue coordinating the holo soldiers and to think of a strategy. Meanwhile, he went on to attack with Rod and Kelly. Rod roared and fired to attract the enemy attacks as she tried to sneak up on a tripod from behind and get a better view of it. Carter used the resulting freedom to precisely eliminate some of the new Lorgans from a distance. This was much easier with the piercer ammunition. They heard Nambur getting caught by a tripod.
Carter saw how one of the things had placed itself near a big tree and of course, he wanted to take advantage of that. He went o
ff and Rod followed him because he suspected his buddy had an idea. Carter found a group of two Lorgans with rifles, which he and Rod took out together with a coordinated hit from behind. They grabbed the weapons with the hatchet extension and asked Leena to send some of their allies to occupy the tripod. As the metal monster fired wildly into the area, Carter and Rod hacked into the trunk of the tree with their amplified power, and after a short while it crashed into the vehicle and trapped it. The tree trunk wasn’t heavy enough to destroy the tank, but it was immobile and useless.
The cheering of the others was loud, but it didn’t last long because Jimbo was hit. Shortly after the first tripod had fallen, the second one was destroyed by a fighter just passing by. This distracted the Lorgans so much that they could kill several of them. The two remaining Gumai tanks were standing a little apart next to each other. Far and wide was no tree or other aid to attack them.
»Leena, we need a plan!«, Kelly shouted into the microphone, who had narrowly avoided an ax blow.
The reaction was: »Okay, I might have something. Gina, Urma and Rod, you have to make your way to the wreck of the tripod. It’s on its side, so get the Gumai out of there. Have Gina hack the controls. The thing can’t run anymore, but if Rod uses his power to point the gun and Urma pulls the fire and runs around, then Gina could shoot at the other two.«
»But that’s pretty vague, Leena.«, said Gina.
»In combat, tactics are often vague, but you have to trust the strategist, so get going! I’m thinking of something else. I think I just came up with a plan B if that doesn’t work.«, Carter announced resolutely.
He had a natural ability to lead because unlike Leena, no one doubted his commands, but they set off immediately. He waved Kelly and Tom to him. The fallen tree was a typical jungle tree, so thick green lianas hung from it everywhere.
»If we cut these things off and use them as ropes, we could knock over the tripods!«
