“Helen stay here and keep them from gaining back the control of their systems. Sakura, Marcus, Ana, reactivate the elevator and meet us at the C.C.” With that Paul took the lead, they moved through the decks with pirates lying dead on the ground. Their tanks were good for three minutes of air, but Helen had already started pumping air back in. Two minutes later they arrived at the C.C. doors, Sakura, Marcus and Ana were already there waiting for them.
“They sealed themselves inside.” Marcus said when the rest of them reached them.
“Helen can you open them on your side?” Paul asked.
“One minute.” Helen replied over the comms.
Even though this was a simulation, everything was built to be real, even down to hacking, defense programs designed for their ships systems were used in the simulations. Aside from providing realism it was also a way to test and later improve them, as they could see weaknesses they didn’t anticipated before actually testing them. And recruits had a tendency to find new and inventive ways of breaking through the defenses.
The doors were wide enough for three of them to pass through them comfortably. Paul ordered them to take positions in front of the door, and a minute later Helen gave the go sign to Paul over the comms.
“Open the doors on three. One… Two… Three. Go!” Paul yelled.
The doors slid opened and the team rushed in, Alex and Paul led shooting, one going left the other right, Beth and Noah were next running through the middle to take cover at the panels in front of the door, while Ana and Marcus covered them from the doors, Adrian and Sakura entered next followed by Tania, The 6 pirates that were using the controls were hiding behind their panels, leaving 6 of the pirates for them to take out. One of the pirates managed to shoot Noah’s leg, the bullet hit the armor at the right angle to push through instead of deflecting. He went down, and Marcus immediately moved from the doors to cover him, while Sakura dragged him back behind a panel, Adrian got a clean shot at one of the pirates that he saw previously yelling at the operators, Alex and Paul had managed to move far enough into the round room so that they were in position to shoot at the pirates behind their cover. A minute later all 6 of the armed pirates were down, and Paul order the rest stunned and taken captive. After they had control of the room, they took control of the ship, finishing the scenario. A moment later they got a mission clear message in their implants inboxes, and the walls around them started exploding into blue particles and they were swallowed by darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
November 2102
Team 9 walked out with yet another top score in the capture the flag scenarios, this was actually the last capture the flag scenario and one that gave them a lot of difficulties during the past month. The scenario was set on a station, and the goal was to find and steal a memory drive (flag) and bring it back to the hangar bay for extraction. The scenario was known as one of the more difficult ones among the teams, as it required a lot of skill, teamwork and luck to actually beat. And then there was the matter of trainers scoring, they only gave a perfect score if there were no casualties, meaning that they needed to use only non-lethal weapons. It took Adrian and the rest of his team a better part of the month to finish the scenario with a perfect score, sacrificing the points they could have gotten by doing other scenarios, but it paid off in the end as the perfect score on this scenario gave a lot more points than the others. They walked to their room in a great mood.
“That was awesome, I really didn’t think we could pull it off for a minute there.” Tania said excitedly.
“Yeah, Noah pulled through at the end.” Ana said slapping Noah on the back.
Noah just puffed up his chest and took in all the compliments from his teammates.
“Well, these points now push us to the second place. A few more and we will take over the top.” Sakura said brightly.
The rest of the room agreed, and immediately their attentions went to planning on how to tackle the next month’s challenges. The next month was actually the last, and the one in which they had to take as many top scores as they could if they were to take the first place. It was also the month that Bethany and Adrian were set to lead, they had agreed on doing the challenges one after the other, with Beth going first. But other than that they haven’t managed to agree on anything else. They clashed on the training arrangements, on who would lead what scenario, they even clashed on who would go first, before the others intervened and they drew straws, with Beth winning. There was a lot of tension between them, and the rest of the team, all of them were aware that they needed victories if they were to take the top spot, they didn’t know the amount of points that was needed to pass, so they aimed at being at the top, so the constant clashes between Beth and Adrian worried them. Things between Beth and Adrian were awkward at best, ever since her apology they tended to avoid each other when they weren’t in company of other teammates, there were no more pokes on the account of Adrian’s age, but there was still tension, they just didn’t know how to talk to one another, and Adrian felt like she had problem with him being there. They tried to be cordial with each other when in group, but they just didn’t mesh when they were alone, choosing to ignore one another. Their teammates noticed this early on and always put them on different assignments during scenarios or tried to limit their contact. Their relationship was something of an elephant in the room that everyone knew was there, but no one commented on.
For the first challenge Beth chose a standard, team vs. team. A scenario where the goal was to “kill” the opposing team. They spent three days watching the videos of other teams fighting against each other, formulating different tactics for each one. The teams were paired by their trainers, and unlike other scenarios wining these didn’t give a fixed amount of points, the trainers were the ones who decided how many points the winners would be awarded based on their performance. A few hours after they entered team vs. team queue they got a response informing them that they would fight against the team Viper, from room 4, currently ranked fifth overall, and fourth in team vs. team. Team 9 had a slight advantage over team Viper, as they hadn’t entered a team versus match before, and therefore team Viper couldn’t study their tactics. Adrian’s team on the other hand studied records of Vipers matches in detail. They tended to use head on attacks. Matches versus other teams were different from the rest, they weren’t held in simulators, but on physical terrain. There were many different arenas which were randomly chosen for each match. The one that was chosen for their match was, a forest setting. The arena was of course aboard the station. It was big at least five hundred meters in width and twice that in length. The terrain was dirt, brought from earth, with live trees, the celling simulated the sky. The armor they wore, or rather suit they wore was specially made, that looked like armor but in fact didn’t offer any kind of protection against real weapons, it was designed to register hits from the weapons used in versus matches, which fired a small projectile made out of a thin layer of rubber that contained an electrical charge, upon impact the rubber ball shatters and the charge is released into the suit, the suit then send a charge into the wearers body which causes pain, the suit also locks up and based on the position of the impact the wearer losses the equivalent amount of mobility to the damage done, up to being completely frozen inside the suit. The weapons they carried looked like the N22 rifle.