“Half-dose this time,” said Pug.
“What? Why?” I asked, looking up at the trainer through the hatch in my sim pod.
“You’ve had a week to get used to the shunt, now it’s time to start weaning you off the drugs.”
Had it been a week already? I’d had to clean the sick out of the sim three times even with the kineto-suppressor. Sims twice a day, brutal physical conditioning, and every spare hour helping Athena in the maintenance bay made the days go by quick. I took the drug and winced at the bite of the injector, adding yet another half-moon mark to the inside of a wrist starting to look like a very limited lunar chart. This wasn’t going to be fun. But then, getting my ass kicked repeatedly rarely was.
I pulled on the goggle and shunt, cycling through the familiar list of upright classes until I found a 140-ton brawler called Jarl, with thick ballistic panels and four alternating Pinscher cannons, smaller versions of the Bulldog rail guns that Ardennes sported. I thought they might give me a better chance against Karl and Harley, which I’d started calling my two stalkers. I named them for two local brothers with a comedy duo routine; Karl who set up the jokes, and Harley who delivered the punch lines.
Pug had been steadily upping the skill level on them, like they had been learning my tricks similar to the auto-tuning at the firing range. But I’d been learning theirs, too. I wasn’t winning, but I put up more of a fight each day.
The sim powered up and dropped me into the eastern half of the city, down-slope of the governor’s palace. I held the control sticks tight and thumbed through my tactical screens while I moved toward the nearest apartment building for cover. I wasn’t sure what form my two friends would take, but I’d already been shot several times due to sitting in the open while I looked at auxiliary panels.
“Crow’s Nest, friendly garrison troops requesting direct support, four kilometers east of my location.”
“Move to engage.”
I stepped out from behind the apartment, tracking left to cover the street with my four linked-fire cannons. Moving sideways through a narrow avenue brought me onto a thoroughfare with a raised highway. I kept the highway overhead to block orbital line-of-sight while I advanced block by block. Visibility seemed pretty good this session; the streets weren’t completely choked with smoke and polycrete dust.
I could see better, but the increased visibility created more places to ambush me as well. I ran only passive sensors, not wanting to give myself away. Scanning each nook and cranny by eye slowed my advance, but it was better than eating a rail spike to the face.
I split from the overhead highway and stepped up onto a crete parking deck (I know, I know) for a clear view. Friendly forces had engaged a superior force of rebel tracked tanks with enough firepower to threaten even an upright. I stepped down, pulling my guns in tight and barrel-sighting the rear tank.
Once the tank was dead center, opening up with my cannons sent a hail of combat mix through the side armor, steel and polymer crumpling around the impact. The next volley found the tank’s magazine, and the resultant fireball blew out the windows on the north side of the plaza. The other tank’s turret twisted toward its companion, looking for threats in the wrong direction. A lethal mistake.
Before I could finish the job, rockets started to pepper my left flank. I brought my ballistic panel down to cover the sensitive joints by instinct, and turned my head, looking for my stalkers. I didn’t see them; instead, the friendly garrison troops had opened up on me while my back was to them.
Damn. They were all rebels. Pug had warned me to watch out for turncoat ambushes. I flushed a smokescreen from my tubes and stepped back through the billowing white smoke. I switched on my targeting radar and raked the rebels with rockets from a pod underneath my upright’s turret. The smoke gave me enough time to put hard cover between myself and the treaded tank before firing through the corner of the building at its last location.
Then I braced myself with a held breath and immediately twisted away from the crippled ground vehicles. My stomach lurched and my head spun, but not as bad as it would have a week prior. And it was worth the slight dissociation.
I caught Karl standing his recon mech up from the spot on the raised highway where he’d been lurking, almost on top of me the whole time. He had plenty of cover, but the dilapidated strut supporting his section of highway didn’t. And General Au’duir himself had taught me how to handle this situation.
I slammed the strut with every remaining rocket in my pods and spread my ballistic shields to either side as the polycrete fell out from underneath the recon, billowing dust and debris into the air. Karl slid down, tumbling through the cascade of crete debris and rebar.
“Crow’s Nest, hostile upright armor six kilometers east of the palace compound, request Overcast Doctrine.”
“Negative, Jarl. Too many friendlies in the area.”
Fine. Pug only gave me the jamming missiles half the time anyway, so I couldn’t learn to use them as a crutch. But I had a feeling this time was because he wanted to see how things played out with me on the front foot for once.
The other Paladin wouldn’t be far behind. A brief scan didn’t show me anything, but a flick of my right thumb stick enhanced my view with a thermal overlay. I spotted a dim heat signature behind the skeleton of a building under construction about a half-click down the way. He’d been using the rough profile to mask any sensor returns. I angled my ballistic panels to ricochet whatever he was about to send my way and shifted Jarl’s weight forward.
Harley didn’t disappoint. My threat panel registered the spin-up of rotary cannons, and a torrent of slugs pounded my shell. I backpedaled, flushing more smoke heated by my reactor to fool thermal scans as well, then shifted right. Harley almost always shifted to the right himself when I broke line-of-sight. I wasn’t sure if it was just a sim quirk or if he’d actually been programmed to favor his right side. But the gambit bought me enough time to move up on Karl.
I found Karl trying to regain his footing and push himself out from the pile of polycrete that had half-buried him. A recon standing in one place is a dead recon, and I reminded him with a shrieking burst from my Pinscher cannons. The rounds cut through smoke, dust, polymer, and hip joints. Aim for the blue circles, I thought, as I kept my guns trained on the sensitive linkages. Don’t just aim for the upright, aim for the things that will take the upright out of the fight.
I wanted more. Karl had been hounding me for a week, and that left me feeling vindictive. I started aiming for the pilot module. Petty and spiteful, I know, and in combat doing so would have had me brought up on charges for violating the honorable rules of engagement and the Chevalier code of conduct. But I thought Pug would let this one slide.
The cockpit, affectionately called the “bathtub” is the most heavily armored section of an upright, for obvious reasons. It’s a thick titanium shell that offers a jockey protection from any direction, even if their upright is disabled any number of ways. But in the interest of weight and mobility, it’s not as thick on a recon upright. I pounded through until the tank fell limp, puppet strings cut, all the while keeping my panels angled toward the smokescreen. I barely even registered that had this not been a sim, I’d have just taken another jockey’s life.
Focused on the fact I’d lived past engaging both Paladins and taken one down, I still wanted one more. The number of times I’d gotten this far in decent condition could be counted on one hand (even if you were missing a finger). I retreated underneath the highway, firing into my own smoke screen. The belch of high RPM rotary cannons answered, carving out the facade of the building behind where I’d been standing. I immediately shifted directions and spat back a volley of fire slightly to the left of the source of the cannon rounds, assuming Harley had continued moving the same direction.
No return fire issued this time. I didn’t buy it. Harley had tried to lure me in before by playing dead. Audio sensors still suggested an active upright, but at this point-blank range they were too unreliable to pinpoint the source. But I had gotten a look at Harley, and today he was jockeying a monster that looked at least twenty tons heavier than mine.
“Crow’s Nest, request immediate fire support mission at my location, anti-armor protocol.”
“Request denied, Jarl. All friendly air assets are tasked.”
Bastard. I could see Pug grinning in his control room, watching me duel his creation and wishing he had someone to bet on results with. I sent a volley of bright flares skyward anyway, hoping Harley would expect an incoming fire mission from above, then barreled through the smoke screen.
It worked. I bulled through the smoke just in time to see Harley’s ballistic shields angling upward to intercept an attack run from sub-orbital fighters. I opened up with my Pinschers. Ultra-dense rounds slammed into his hull, bucking his aim off center. But that wouldn’t put him out of the fight. Not this time.
Harley had brought a heavy MBU today. It had thick armor at the front, and his cockpit sat completely protected from all but the heaviest penetrators. Instead, I trained my guns on the root of his right-side ballistic panel before he could drop it. My penetrators sheared through the actuator and left that flank exposed as the shroud dangled, limp and useless (and hopefully obstructing his sensor).
Now his favored side had become his vulnerable side, and I stalked left, forcing him to keep his own left-side ballistic panel facing toward me and in the way of his own guns. Despite his reduced field of fire, Harley still had options. He fired a salvo of short-range seekers from his tubes, but my point-defense array cut the lion’s share down on their climb-out, reactive armor bursting to take care of the rest.
I had Harley out-gunned, out-flanked, and it was just a matter of seconds before my depleted uranium augured through his left shroud and my explosive follow up hit something vital.
The simulation ground to a halt, freeze-framing the point of my upper-left and lower-right Pinchers spitting a gout of flame and a pair of 24x280 millimeter penetrators riding the wave of barrel pressure toward my target.
“No!” I shouted. My heart pounded and sweat soaked the sides and back of my uniform. I was so close. I looked around and didn’t see any obvious threats that I’d missed.
Karl still smoked and twitched in his pile of rubble, while behind and above me looked clear. I couldn’t see what had killed me.
“Excuse me Crow’s Nest, but what the fuck?” I asked. No response.
The simulation dissolved around me, the ambient noise of the Tyunta capital dissolving with it. Another sound rose in its place, warning chimes on the Winter of Discontent’s alarm circuit.
We’d been called to battle stations.