Frank grunted. “Still better than a 162-game regular season, I suppose.”
June sighed. “Enough about the tournament format. Can we address the real issue?”
“Rather not,” Chase muttered into his glass.
The hairs on the back of Reggie’s neck stood up. “What issue?”
With a huff, Lin cut through the crap. “Your spec.”
Reggie’s chair scraped the floor as it slid back. “Oh no. It’ll cost me 10 million credits to respec again. Besides, you guys get plenty of benefit out of my Command spec.”
Lin shook her head. “Not good enough. Sure, maybe some of the scrub teams are gonna be optimizing their builds, but we’re contenders. We need to be at the top of our game.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Lin interrupted. “Wanna win? Build to win.”
“What would I even change to?” Reggie asked helplessly. He looked from Chase to Frank and then to June but found no support. “I’ve been Command spec since before there was a Wounded Legion.”
“Half your perks benefit the faction, not a platoon-sized engagement,” Lin pointed out. “Yeah, we get some bonuses, but those bonuses work best when applied to a maximum number of allies. Not to mention the fact that bonuses to Gunnery are a little pointless at arena combat ranges, especially for me and Chase.”
Reggie wanted to argue that Command was all he knew, that he would be functioning at less than maximum efficiency if he were to change at this point. He wanted to argue that 10 million credits was a shitload of money. But that wasn’t a factor for them. “Switching back will cost 100 million. Can you honestly tell me that this is worth 110 million credits out of Wounded Legion’s war chest?”
“What do I care?” Lin asked. “I’m here for the tournament, not the little space map turf war that Armored Souls turned into. If you’re not all-in here, why should any of us be?”
“Wounded Legion needs me,” Reggie said lamely.
I need Wounded Legion was more like it. The prospect of any prize being great enough to hamstring the faction he worked years to build up seemed unconscionable.
“Get over yourself,” June snapped. “It’s nearly twelve hundred players strong. Do you really think that the prospect of Vortex standing at the center of the fray, banner-waving like a beacon, is honestly going to make one damn bit of difference to anyone trying to come after us or not? When was the last time that a major victory hung on the chassis of a single juggernaut?”
Reggie hung his head. June was right, of course. The days of Vortex being a make-or-break difference on the battlefield were long past. Wounded Legion was a juggernaut of juggernauts. Sure, there were factions that could give them hell, but Armored Souls combat favored the defender in any major engagement. The rule of thumb floating around the forums was that it took about 75 percent more firepower to take a planet than defend one.
“What spec?” he asked.
Chase grinned, and Reggie didn’t like the look in his eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
An hour later, Reggie sat at his private table in the bar, staring at his new stats.
[PER: 17]
[GUN: 18]
[SHO: 30]
[AGI: 25]
[PIL: 13]
[TGH: 25]
[CMD: 5]
[Run & Gun 5]
[Demolitions Expert]
[Terrain Expertise]
[Tactical Awareness]
[One Man Army]
[Giant-Slayer]
[Tough as Nails 3]
[Zip Line]
[Eject Mastery]
[Combat Balance]
“Commando…” he said, still shaking his head.
Chase chuckled. “Yeah, just one letter makes a world of difference.”
“But I hate everything about Commando spec,” Reggie protested. “I’m barely going to see any improvement in juggernaut performance.”
“That’s kind of the point,” Lin said dryly. “You were right about one thing. You can’t adjust to a completely new paradigm and jump into professional-level competition. Vortex will handle about the same as always.”
“But—” Reggie tried to protest.
“Accept it,” June ordered. Nothing had been finalized yet. Reggie could still keep his old stats and get a refund on his Skill Reset Pill. “So help me God, if you are a half-assembled build when we get summoned for our preliminary bout, I’m forming my own faction.”
“Trust me,” Chase said. “They’re going to pull us out of our juggernauts at some point. There’ve been too many rumors floating around the office for me to believe it’s a misdirect. Frank’s Guard build works well for infantry battles, but we could use another solid foot soldier, and this is the perfect opportunity.”
Their debate was interrupted by shouts from the bar. The rank and file of Wounded Legion were gathering to get a good view of the video screens. “Odds are up!”
“Where are we ranked?” Lin asked hurriedly, already tapping away at her tablet, presumably relaying information to her publicist.
Chase stood on his chair and peered over the heads of the crowd. “There are four ahead of us.”
“Any from your fancy-pants list?” Frank asked.
It was a moment and some squinting before Chase nodded. “All of them. There are a couple in the top twenty I don’t recognize offhand, but the gamblers seem to be on my side, by and large.”
“Good,” Frank grunted.
“Fifth place…” Reggie mused. “Just like Wounded Legion, fifth ranked on the server. Seems like that’s just where I belong.”
“Fifth place in the platoon too,” Chase joked.
“Least he’s level 50,” Frank sniped, taking Reggie’s side.
“Currently, he’s level 1,” Lin said with an arched blue eyebrow.
“Right,” June said, getting back to the business of putting the screws to Reggie. “Finalize that build.”
An alert popped up.
[Ragnarok Showdown Battle: Ghost Platoon vs. Blood Typhoon]
5:00
4:59
4:58
“Just do it!” June barked.
Reggie hit “Accept.” Instantly his nameplate switched to read, “King, Commando 50.”
“Who are these guys we’re up against?” Reggie asked quickly. “Blood Typhoon.”
Frank made a sour face. “Vivid image.”
“Nobody,” Chase said. “Twelve thousand to one odds. Let’s get ready to wreck.”
4:40
4:39
4:38
Reggie sank back in his seat and closed his eyes. From the bar, he could hear cheers and hoots. Pairs were being slapped up on the screen, spurring a flurry of conversation. As best he could, Reggie blocked them all out. But even with his eyes closed, the ticking countdown persisted in his peripheral view. He steadied his breathing and let his quickening heartbeat slow.
0:05
0:04
0:03
0:02
0:01
Go time.
Chapter Eighteen
Reggie appeared suddenly within the cockpit of Vortex. He hardly had time to get a sense of his surroundings before an announcer’s voice boomed from all around him.
“And the battle commences!” The voice was suspiciously similar to the one from Close Quarters Combat.
[Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/5]
“Well, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for side missions,” Chase observed.
Reggie scanned outside the cockpit window. It was reddish, blasted plain with rocky slopes rising up on all sides to create an inescapable bowl for the combatants. “Crater map,” he radioed out. “Just like the trailer showed.”
“Who’s the man?” Chase asked grandiosely.
“Cork your noise hole,” Frank snapped. “This is probably being techno-spewed all over the interwebs.”
“Not voice comms,” Lin replied. “This is all private. The announcer will take care of telling the audience wh
at’s—”
TARGET DATA ACQUIRED.
“Cut the chatter,” Reggie ordered. “Eavesdropping millions or not, there are five enemy juggernauts out there waiting for us.”
Artemis was already scouting ahead. June’s voice came over the radio as the rest of Ghost Platoon fanned out in a formation they’d been practicing before taking a side quest to power-level Lin. Reggie was on the left flank; Chase was on the right. Frank and Lin had the center, ready to support either side if the enemy showed up suddenly. The craters-within-craters landscape left plenty of options for ambushes.
That was unless a platoon had a tactical recon specialist with them.
And Ghost Platoon did.
“OK, we’re up against two Wyverns, three Dragons,” June reported. Detailed targeting data was already flowing into Reggie’s computers.
“A flying reptile full house,” Chase joked.
“We’re outgunned,” Reggie informed the platoon. “Chase, cut across the formation. Join me and Frank to intercept the Wyvern at the edge of their formation as it leaves cover at Golf-One-Seven. June, have you been spotted?”
“Affirmative.”
“Withdraw to a position to support an ambush at Papa-Two-Five. Full evasive if you get intercepted. Really sell it, though. We want them believing you’re really going over there because we’re following.”
Reggie could feel his pulse throb in his neck. How did Valhalla West do that? He shook his head. Not the time for that sort of thought. Blood Typhoon was out there somewhere, having disappeared off of June’s scanner feed at Golf-One-Niner. If they kept on course…
TARGET DATA ACQUIRED.
There it was. Popping up on Reggie’s radar was the Wyvern Ghost Platoon had planned to ambush. Reggie’s thumb brushed the trigger for his Plasma Launcher, and the reticule locked on.
[Wyvern – 65% To Hit]
Reggie guided the stick as Vortex pounded the crater floor at a jog, hovering the reticule over his target to get the accuracy to settle into some percentage that made squeezing the trigger more than a crapshoot.
[Wyvern – 75% To Hit]
[Wyvern – 83% To Hit]
“What the hell?” Reggie grumbled. The numbers weren’t getting any better, so he fired anyway. Despite his misgivings, 83 percent wasn’t actually that bad. His plasma blast caught the Wyvern right in the cockpit.
Wyvern Head: 33/40
No critical hit.
Reggie’s angst had gone unnoticed over an open mic. Chase snarled as the Wyvern pilot twisted and managed to dodge two of his lasers. “These guys aren’t the sitting ducks we’re used to shooting at. They’re not AI, and they’re not ground troops for some bloated faction.”
No sooner had he finished that thought, but Lin tagged the Wyvern with her Anti-Matter Projector. “BOOM! Headshot.” After a pause, she added, “Sorry.”
Chase wasn’t one to scold over a little exuberance. “Just like that, you can talk all the trash you want.”
Frank was already closing the gap at a full charge. He fired off laser blasts but clearly wasn’t aiming like he meant it. The Wyvern pilot made an effort to dodge the laser fire coming from Gremlin. That was his mistake. What he should’ve been doing was turning tail and diving for the nearest cover because a 110-ton Tiger with a sword the size of an eighteen-wheeler was bearing down on him.
“Falling back!” June shouted.
Writing their ambushed Wyvern off as a dead man, Reggie checked the tactical map and saw that Blood Typhoon had fallen for their ruse. Three of the other four juggernauts in their platoon were bearing down on June, and despite her speed advantage, she couldn’t outrun the incoming fire. The wireframe of Artemis flashed with the hits she was taking.
[Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 1/5]
Frank had done his job. Gremlin’s sword had cleaved the Wyvern’s head down the middle.
“Circle around,” Reggie ordered. “Backtrack the path of the one we just killed. It’s got a friend back there somewhere. Lin, lay down cover fire for June’s retreat.”
“Roger that. Heading for Fandango-One-Four,” Lin acknowledged.
“Foxtrot, you ninny!” Frank scolded. “It’s a dance. You’re too young to know what that is, but look it up on your computer notebook someday.”
“Cut the chatter!”
Despite his annoyance, Reggie found himself smiling. It was feeling like the old days. There just wasn’t enough cantankerous Frank commentary with Roger around. Roger was too much one of the boys. Lin provided the necessary counterweight to keep the platoon chatter from getting stale.
But what Lin couldn’t provide was sufficient cover fire to keep June alive. Artemis kept flashing in Reggie’s tactical display as the hits kept coming. Of course, the whole idea of cover fire was the assumption that the one providing it could dissuade enemy forces from pursuing. Sufficiently motivated enemies could simply ignore the incoming fire and the threat to their own safety, and that’s just what Blood Typhoon did in this instance.
It wasn’t that Lin wasn’t getting her hits in. It just wasn’t enough. Before June could reach the shelter of the crater ridge, Artemis disappeared from the tactical display. He could still see the flaming remains of the juggernaut’s chassis, but June was no longer alive inside.
It was 4 on 4 now.
“Those bastards,” Frank snarled. “We’ll teach them a lesson!”
“It’s an arena battle,” Chase said. “We’re not gonna come out of this smelling like roses every time.”
“You said these were creampuffs!”
“Not my exact words…”
Reggie ignored the superfluous chatter. So long as they kept shooting and following orders, he was just going to live with it. “Watch out there is going to be—”
There it was. Given that it was two Dragons and a Wyvern that had done in June, the remaining hidden member of Blood Typhoon had to have been the last Dragon.
Reggie locked on.
[Dragon – 75% To Hit]
[Dragon – 77% To Hit]
[Dragon – 76% To Hit]
Reggie gritted his teeth. Why wouldn’t this thing lock on any tighter?
[Dragon – 74% To Hit]
Reggie squeezed the trigger, but this time his luck wasn’t with him. The shot missed. Fortunately, Chase had better luck this time around. The tactical wireframe for the Dragon flared twice, and when Frank arrived with his sword, an arm flared from green straight to red.
[Dragon – 67% To Hit]
FRIENDLY FIRE WARNING
If he fired again, there was a not-insignificant chance of hitting Gremlin instead. His finger twitched on the trigger, but he couldn’t do it. “Chase, break off. Frank, I’m counting on you to win this!”
Melee combat was Frank’s specialty, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a risk. Plenty of heavy juggernaut pilots liked to mix it up now and then, and anyone aspiring to win a Valkyrie should count themselves among that number. Reggie and Chase could have flanked the melee encounter and picked away at the Dragon, but that would have meant feeding Lin to the wolves.
Or, in this case, the Typhoons.
“Don’t!” Lin warned as Chase and Reggie broke off from their engagement and headed her way. “Take care of business.”
Reggie saw what she meant. Yulong was already badly damaged, and yet Lin kept poking out from cover with her Anti-Matter Projector to prevent an all-out rush of her position. So long as Blood Typhoon was picking away at her armor and subsystems, they’d be in no rush to advance.
But it was too late. Vortex and Diablo were caught out in the open, too far from Frank to circle back to him and not close enough to Lin to prevent her position being overrun.
With sensors and scanners of their own, the players on Blood Typhoon knew about Reggie and Chase’s efforts. They took their brave pills and charged. One of the enemy Dragons took a critical hit to the torso that sent plumes of smoke rising out a hole that went through front-to-back at a shoulder joint. On the tac
tical display, the part was so deep red it was nearly black, showing a mere 2/110 hit points remaining.
That couldn’t have been all from a single shot… could it? The mental math sounded wrong from what he knew of Lin’s build and equipment. If only he’d taken a more detailed assessment of the Dragon beforehand.
Lasers lanced out from Beam Cannon-Ms. One of the enemy Dragons—the one Lin hadn’t nearly turned into a donut—lurched as it unleashed a Mass Driver mid-stride.
At the last second, Lin drew Yulong’s sword and got in a final swing, cleaving into the arm of the Wyvern for a solid 10-damage blow.
And that was it.
Yulong went down. Lin disappeared from the tactical view.
“Ooh,” Chase’s wince was audible over the radio. “That looked painful.” Indeed, the three Blood Typhoon juggernauts fell on Yulong like pack hunters. This was less a battlefield than a giant street shootout and brawl combination where anything was fair game.
“Um, Frank?” Reggie asked, suddenly keenly aware that a Wolverine and a Jackal weren’t going to last long alone against two Dragons and a Wyvern. “You about done back there?”
Chase didn’t need to be told. Diablo was already following Vortex around the rise of a crater that put solid rock between them and Blood Typhoon.
[Sole Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 2/5]
“Yep,” Frank replied. The sound of him dusting his hands carried clearly over the mic. “Had a wee bit of spunk but nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Double-time,” Reggie ordered. “Get back here and even up these odds. NO CHARGING!”
“Aww,” Frank whined. “Why you gotta—?”
“Because we can’t afford to lose you!” Chase snapped. “It’s 3 on 3, and we’re outgunned.”
Ghost Platoon Page 8
