The fear on the skinny programmer’s face faded into cautious curiosity. “How does it do that, sir?”
“If it registers an injury, it’ll limit your vision and throw off your equilibrium to mimic your probable condition.”
“And if we’re dead?” the plump women said. Stacy something. She worked on drones.
“Your vision will go black and your ability to hear will be degraded. Don’t panic, though. It’s just the Merge projecting a solid color onto your visual cortex. I’ll use my simulation leader software to reset your unit when I’ve had a chance to evaluate the situation. Just sit there and wait until you come back online and then go back to the command tent and get a cup of coffee. Understood?”
A little of the energy had gone out of their response but he decided to ignore it and instead pointed to the older woman whose hand was up. “Yes. Carrie.”
“Sir, I think there’s been a mistake. With the exception of Corporal Grayson over here, we’re not combat people.”
Smith nodded. “But you do have Merges. And Delta doesn’t.”
“I don’t see how a fancy cell phone is going to make much of a difference,” Kent said. “I represented a Delta guy once. As near as I can tell, if you shoot them it just makes them mad.”
Grayson rolled his eyes.
“Look, I’m out here to gather some data on Merge effectiveness,” Smith said. “I want that flag, but the only failure here is if you panic or if you don’t give one hundred percent every second of this exercise. Is that understood?” No response. “Is that understood?”
“Yes sir!”
They all actually managed to say it at the same time. Things were looking up.
“Okay. First things first. I want you to take your Merge unit and throw it in the mud.”
No one moved.
“Is there a problem?”
Grayson was first to speak up. “We were told that these are incredibly expensive prototypes and that they were to come back without so much as a scratch.”
“Well, those orders have been revised. Now get them into the mud. And stomp on them until I tell you to stop.”
The four non-combat soldiers obeyed, but as delicately as possible. Grayson, understanding the point of the exercise, threw himself into the air and slammed his boot down on his unit so hard it completely disappeared into the soft ground.
Smith turned and contemplated their objective, looking for a sign of the enemy while the splashing and stomping went on behind him. It was really just a test of manufacturing consistency, since he’d already performed a much more stringent evaluation of his own unit.
“Okay,” he said, putting on an armband that designated him as an observer. “Saddle up.”
Corporal Grayson had taken de facto command of the group and was doing a surprisingly good job of adjusting to the reality of his team’s dismal abilities. He kept them on easier terrain and spread out at five-meter intervals.
There was still more than a little bit of tripping, heavy breathing, and panicked drops to the ground, but they were managing to move in the general direction of their objective and no one had yet twisted an ankle or stroked out. A minor miracle as far as Smith was concerned.
He hung back a bit, focusing on a semi-transparent overlay of the battlefield in the right upper corner of his vision. His people were shown as dots in varying shades of green based on their military records — Grayson’s was predictably dark and rich, conveying his combat experience and other achievements. The others were significantly lighter, with his skinny programmer semi-translucent.
More interesting, though were the red dots that he was privy to as the leader of this exercise — a Delta ambush that his team was unwittingly strolling into. Smith switched to vision enhancement mode and let the computer automatically calculate the optimal mix of filters as he searched the trees ahead. The thermal imaging blinded him for a moment, confused by the rain, but it immediately faded and left him with primarily the chlorophyll overlay. Combined with outline enhancement and light amplification of the shadows, it allowed him to immediately spot the shape of an arm sticking out from beneath a fallen tree.
But he wasn’t the only one.
“Do you see that?” Stacy said quietly over her tooth mike. “What is it? One o’clock.”
Incredible. Despite being about as stealthy as a herd of buffalo, they had identified a highly trained, dug-in enemy before they themselves had been spotted.
“Everyone stop and get down,” Grayson said. “Nice job, Lieutenant. That’s an arm. And we’re gonna blow it off. But first we’re gonna get a little closer. Everybody move forward real quiet. This isn’t a race. There’s no such thing as too slow. We’re looking for additional targets.”
They actually did a good job of staying out of sight, though it turned out there probably was such thing as too slow. At the pace they set, they’d overrun the Delta position sometime in January.
“I’ve got another one,” Kent said, his voice sounding shockingly clear over the Merge link. “About eleven o’clock. Next to a small rise.”
“I can’t see him from here,” Grayson responded. “Are you certain?”
“One hundred percent.”
Smith pulled up a small window that displayed what the man was seeing. Sure enough, it was another of the Delta team, so smeared with mud that he himself might have walked right past him if he’d only had his naked eye to work with.
“Okay. We’re up against a five-man team and we have two of the sons of bitches dead to rights. If we get any closer, we’re going to risk being spotted and then all hell is going to break loose. I say we take our shot now. Agreed?”
When everyone came back affirmative, Smith leaned out around the tree he’d taken refuge behind. This was something he had to see.
“Okay, I have the guy at one o’clock—”
“Negative,” Smith interjected. “I already know you can hit him, Corporal. Let someone else take the shot.”
“Affirmative. Lieutenant. You spotted him, he’s all yours.”
“But…But I…”
“Relax, Stacy,” Smith said. “Just a game, remember.”
“Yeah, Lieutenant,” Grayson said. “You’ve got this. Just line the Merge’s crosshairs up and tell me when you’re ready. Major Kent. I take it you’ve got a line?”
“My crosshairs are dead center and I’m ready to go.”
“Okay, everybody else pull back nice and easy. We’re going to go about twenty meters and set up to cover our people’s retreat. In the meantime, get a bead on that guy, Lieutenant.”
To the degree that it was possible from his position, Smith watched Grayson and two of his team members slither back and find cover that allowed them a clear view of the soldiers left behind.
“You ready Lieutenant?”
“The crosshairs are on his arm. I can’t see any more of him.”
“That’s okay. An M16 round to the arm will ruin anyone’s day. Fire on three. One…Two…Three.”
Both guns flashed and speakers on the sides sounded with the crack of the shot.
And then, predictably, it all hit the fan.
The Delta team, figuring they could terrify the less experienced force, broke cover and charged forward, firing at the two people trying to retreat back to their unit. Smith’s software registered a very near miss on his lawyer and he watched Delta’s impressive speed and accuracy pulsating bright red as they approached.
Under normal circumstances, it was a sensible strategy. These were not normal circumstances, though.
Carrie and Duane, the computer tech, were shooting wildly, ignoring their targeting system and missing by wide margins. Grayson, however, wasn’t so easily rattled. He nailed the lead attacker dead center and was lining up on another when the Delta team recognized that things weren’t going their way, dropped, and disappeared behind uneven ground.