We were led to a dimly lit room with hundreds of chairs lined up neatly. Attached to each of these chairs were several cords that all ran up towards a console in the front. I assumed all of those gadgets had to do with the haptic VR.
Ceel told us to take a seat anywhere, so Noah and I once again took seats next to each other. Keshi, the Sabi that greeted us in the cafeteria before, caught my eye and walked over to us. He was with a couple of his friends.
“Hey, Saka.” Keshi said. “Mind if we sit here?”
I shook my head.
“Alright. These are my friends. They were mercenaries from Maralu, like us.”
Keshi’s friends began introducing themselves.
“Hi, I’m Sil.” A short, stocky Sabi woman said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She was holding onto her arm with one of her hands and stood timidly. Each of her four eyes blinked slowly. She didn’t look like a mercenary, but maybe she was just shy. She spoke softly and cast her eyes downward at the end of every sentence.
“And I’m Needle!” A scrawny, tall Aeon pointed his thumb towards his face. “I didn’t think I’d meet Saka the Togumo here!”
Needle was very energetic, apparently. He spoke very loudly and very fast. Apparently, Needle was his nickname because he was tall, thin, and spoke sharply. It was quite fitting. Even his tail was thin, which was rare among the Aeon. He looked like he would be blown away if Ceel walked past him. When I told him that, he cackled.
Noah introduced himself to Keshi’s friends as well.
“I’m Noah. I've been working with Saka for the last month or so. Nice to meet you.”
Noah was back to his timid self. Meeting new people had made him a little nervous. Soon after, Ceel started to talk, so we all quickly sat down and stopped talking.
Ceel explained how the haptic VR worked. All you had to do was grab a cord with a pad on it, and stick it to the back of your head. It’d connect with your brain or something, and you were good to go. She didn’t delve into specifics of how it worked, but using it was very easy. Ceel didn’t explain what would happen when we actually started the simulation, though. She said she would still be able to talk to us while we were in the simulation, so she was going to wait until then.
We were given the go-ahead to put the pads on our heads. Everyone in our little group got it on with no issues, other than Noah, who had to feed it up the back of his helmet. He shook his head a few times to make sure it was secure.
Technicians came by and made sure that they were on properly. It took several minutes to check all of the recruits, but once they were done, Ceel started fiddling with the console.
“Okay, let’s go!” Ceel shouted.
My vision switched immediately. Instead of being in a dimly lit room, I was inside of a transport ship. The vision switch was immediate, like changing tabs from one to another. It was jarring, and my tail spiked up in surprise. I wasn’t expecting it to be that abrupt.
I swiveled my head, trying to take in my new surroundings. I was in a dim, gray, dirty transport ship. Strapped into one of the seats that ran parallel to the walls. The seat next to me was empty. I looked down at my body. I was wearing a standard GU military spacesuit, and a bullpup rifle sat in my lap. The same handgun we used in training was holstered at my hip. I had my four arms, my tail, and my powerful legs. All of my claws were also accounted for. Apparently, the simulation copied my body over as well. I took a second look. Actually, I didn’t think it did. I was a little shorter and my tail was shorter. The simulation probably recognized me as a Togumo and put me into a default Togumo avatar, or something.
On the other side of the empty seat, two Sabis and an Aeon sat, dressed in the same garb as I was.
The Aeon waved his hand excitedly at me. “You look a little different, but you’re Saka, right?” Needle asked. “You’re the only Togumo here, after all!”
“Yeah, it’s me.” I responded. “I assume that’s Keshi and Sil next to you?”
Keshi and Sil confirmed their identities. I scanned the soldiers around me.
“Do you guys know where Noah went?” I asked.
A moment later, an uniformed figure popped into existence in the empty seat next to me. They took a second to adjust to their surroundings. Their helmet panned towards me.
“Saka, is that you?” Noah’s voice asked. “You look shorter.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” I swished my now-shorter tail in displeasure. “What happened? Why were you the last to load in?”
Noah leaned in close and whispered, “I think the simulation puts you in a template body for your race or species or whatever. And humans aren't on there, so the simulation was confused on what to do. Ceel patched in and asked what was wrong, but I managed to explain it away. I told her I was a Sabi with a medical condition that interfered with the template assignment. I’m not sure if she bought it, but she let me manually choose a Sabi avatar.”
I grasped my helmet in frustration. “That was a close call, for sure. I didn’t think something like this would nearly expose you.” I whispered back. “Let’s be careful and hope Ceel doesn’t catch on.”
“Agreed.” Noah said.
He leaned back and started examining himself and the transport ship that we sat in. It was currently shaking and rattling, and I could hear the thrusters roar.
I heard the others greet Noah as he finally turned their attention to them. Noah explained away the delay by saying he hadn’t put his brain pad on correctly, so he had to fix it before he could load in fully. Needle laughed and poked fun at Noah for keeping his helmet on while applying the pad. Noah flinched a tiny bit when he heard that, but softened up when he realized it was a joke and not an accusation.
The speakers in the transport ship crackled, and Ceel’s loud voice came pouring through.
“Alright, everyone’s in. As you can see, you’re currently in a transport ship. Three total, as a matter of fact. When the simulation begins every ship is going to be boarding at a different location on the Haivu warship. Your objective is to fight through the defenders and reach a critical sector in the warship. Typically, that’s the reactor, the bridge, or even the fighter bays. Sabotage the reactor, take the bridge, or destroy the fighters. These are the three objectives of this simulation. Doing any one of these counts as a win. The difficulty is set to easy, so don’t get too confident when the enemy goes down easy. The Haivu are a lot tougher than this.”
“On your person you have a bullpup laser rifle, a standard issue handgun, and three grenades. Your suit has a shield pack on it, but remember, take too much fire and it’ll go down temporarily. And of course, this is a simulation, so you can’t die. But that doesn’t mean you should charge in all reckless or anything. Act like this is the real deal and do your best to protect yourself and others while still progressing through the ship. The sim starts when the transport ship bores through the Haivu warship’s shield. Get ready.”
The speakers shut off. The recruits around me exploded in chatter. Keshi looked over to me.
“Saka, let’s stick together, as the five of us. We’re all experienced as mercenaries, and we should cover each other. Might get better results that way.” Keshi said.
“Agreed,” I replied, “Watch my back.”
Keshi, and the others nodded.
Soon, the transport ship slowed, with a jolt. Then, it started straining through something on the outside. The shield, I presumed. Several seconds later, the shield gave, and we were through. The transport ship dug into the hull of the warship, and started cutting through it. The restraints on our seats lifted, and all of the recruits stood up. It was time to start the simulation.
We crowded the hatch that led out of the ship. After the sounds of the hull cutting laser faded, the boarding hatch wrenched open, and a bright light stabbed into the transport ship. The people at the front flooded out, and our group of former mercenaries followed.
There were no Haivu soldiers in sight, currently. We took this opportunity to take the hallway that our transport ship had breached. The hallway was just as organic looking as the rest of the warship. The hallway’s walls curved and twisted at random, shaped like nature made it instead of sapients.
“Yo,” Needle called. “We didn’t get any maps or anything, right? How do we know where to go?”
Sil glanced down each side of the hallway. “We have to figure out where we need to go, I guess. Eventually we’ll stumble across the reactor, the bridge, or the fighter bays, right?”
Keshi nodded. “I know Haivu warships have their bridge at the top of their ship, like ours. If we go up, we can find the bridge.”
“Whatever we do, let’s do it fast.” Noah said. “The Haivu probably already know we’ve breached the hull, and I don’t want to get swarmed this early on.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Let’s pick a random direction and start clearing space.” I shouted. “Follow me! I’ll take point!”
I rushed down the hallway, gesturing with one of my back arms. Time was of the essence in a boarding, after all. I’ve boarded quite a few ships as a mercenary, and I just chose a random direction and blitzed through them most of the time. This was just on a larger scale, though.
I figured if we ran down this hallway, which ran parallel to the sides of the ship, we’d end up at either the front or the back of the ship. Usually, there would be elevators or stairs on the ends of the ship, so we could find out what level we were on and go from there.
Some of the other recruits I didn’t know had chosen to follow our little group, since nobody wanted to be left behind. Our group in the transport ship pretty much split into halves, with half of us running down one end of the hallway and the other half going the other direction. After a few minutes of running, we got into our first firefight with the simulated Haivu.
This was my first time actually seeing a Haivu in person. Well, since it was a simulation, it wasn’t actually real. The simulator had perfectly recreated them, however. The Haivu were small, even shorter than Noah. They had very thin limbs and torsos that looked like they could snap at any time. Their heads were angular and narrow, and compound eyes bulged out from either side of them. Mandibles stuck out from the front, clacking together in anger. Their three fingered hands clutched caustic rifles. The Haivu really liked their caustic weapons.
They mounted an attack from around a corner, at a crossroads between hallways. We outnumbered them, since we numbered at around 50. There were about half as many Haivu as us, and the simulated Haivu soldiers peered around corners and hid behind doorways. Heat seared the air as lasers flew in all directions. I scored repeated hits on a Haivu soldier, quickly depleting his personal shield and searing their skin. The Haivu dropped to the floor, and disappeared. The simulation didn’t keep any of the bodies rendered, apparently.
I watched Keshi, Sil and Needle all take out Haivu soldiers as well. Keshi got two, Sil got one, and Needle took out three. Noah, however, got five. He was a good marksman, and despite not being familiar with his weapon, was still highly accurate. Noah stayed calm as beams flew past his head, and peeked out from a doorway. One, two, three pulls of the trigger, and another Haivu soldier fell through the ground with a hole on their head. Noah’s aim really was something else.
We quickly burned through the simulated bug soldiers without too much trouble. We’d only lost a couple people on our side. Poor guys got hit by stray fire, apparently. I counted the shots it took for them to “die.” It was around four or five, depending on where you got hit. I made a mental note to get to cover if I got hit thrice. Which I would be doing anyways, because if I’m getting hit thrice I’m doing something wrong.
We kept moving after clearing out the first group of Haivu. The Haivu are all telepathically connected, meaning every single Haivu soldier on this ship knew where we were. It was a good thing we’d split up so much. It was a good strategy to overload the Haivu with several groups so it was harder for them to keep track of all of our positions.
After fighting through some Haivu reinforcements, our little group found ourselves at the end of the ship. As I predicted, there were elevators that could fit all of us. On each side, there was also a staircase wide enough for five people to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Needle lowered his rifle. “Which way are we going? If we’re to assume up means bridge, and down means reactor.”
I rubbed my chin. “Hmm, which is closer? There’s nothing that indicates what floor we’re on. If we’re on a higher floor we can aim for the bridge, and if we’re not we can go for the reactor.”
“How about we split up again?” Noah suggested. “Half of us go up, half of us go down. It’ll confuse the Haivu, and we’d have a better chance finding at least one of our objectives.”
Sil shrugged. “I think that’s an idea worth exploring. We don’t really know where we’re going, and we haven’t seen any other recruit groups yet. I think we can assume they’re on another floor. If we split up and run into them, we can group up with them, and formulate a new plan.”
“That’s true.” Keshi said. “Some of them might already have information on where our objectives are. Communication is important. I wish they gave us comms for this simulation. Anyways, I agree with splitting up and going into different floors to find other groups or our objectives.”
“That’s that, then.” Noah said. “Let’s split up.”
Noah and I were in charge of the group going downstairs, and Keshi’s gang were in charge of the group going upstairs. I would’ve liked to stay with Keshi and others, since they were experienced, but leaving a group without experienced leaders would be a disaster. A lot of these recruits were simply random Maralu residents.
Noah and I waved goodbye to Keshi as we walked down the stairs. We decided to not use the elevators because the Haivu might’ve been able to lock us in there, and we didn’t really know how to operate it.
The level below was nearly identical to the one we were just in. However, the hallways were a lot thinner. A few people could stand shoulder to shoulder comfortably, but having more was pushing it. It was a good decision to split up further because trying to rush through these hallways with more people would’ve been hell.
On this floor, the Haivu changed tactics. Instead of full on gunfights in the corridors, the Haivu resorted to surprise attacks and flanking us. It was clear that they knew the area more than we did, so the Haivu often popped out of maintenance passageways, circled around and flanked us from side passageways. Our numbers were starting to slowly dwindle.
Despite all this, Noah stayed surprisingly calm. He never lost his composure when we were flanked or ambushed, and quickly moved to cover those that were surprised. He even dragged a Maneri recruit to cover after his shield had been popped. Noah was a lot better at this than I thought.
With each engagement, of course, the attacks became more and more regular. Each firefight was relatively short, but happened more frequently. Thanks to Noah’s sharpshooting and my quick reactions, we managed to end engagements quickly. The recruits that were with us also laid down impressive supporting fire, allowing Noah and I, along with a couple skilled shooters with us, to quickly put down any opposing forces.
Some of these fights finished with ease, but others were also close. At one point, a Haivu soldier popped out of a vent and instantly depleted my shield with a caustic pistol. I jumped back in surprise and lashed out with my tail. The soldier was knocked to the ground, and Noah finished it off with shots to the head. I watched every vent with suspicion after that.
Soon, we began hearing sounds of another clash echoing throughout the hallways. The unmistakable sounds of beams searing the air and caustic pods being launched indicated that another group was down here and fighting. The remaining survivors in our group rushed to aid the unknown group currently fighting.
We inadvertently caught the Haivu in a pincer attack as we rounded a corner into the battle. We made quick work of the Haivu and shot them all in the back while they were preoccupied with their opponents.
“Hey, you guys alright!?” I called. The other group wasn’t visible because they were around another corner.
“Yeah, we’re fine! Thanks for the assist!” A familiar voice called back. It walked around the corner. “Oh, hey Saka.”
It was Keshi, along with Sil and Needle. Their group was also their, more intact than ours.
“I thought you guys went upstairs?” Noah asked. “What made you come down?”
“We ran into another group soon after we went upstairs.” Sil replied. “Apparently, they’d cleared out the floor above us, and there was nothing there. But they saw that the bridge floor was heavily defended and was way too tough to crack. Another group went up there and didn’t come back, apparently. They couldn’t find the fighter bays either. They assumed that the floor you guys went down on had the reactor, so they sent us down here to help while they continued to look for the fighter bays.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded. “This floor looks heavily maintenance based, so it seems likely the reactor is here somewhere.”
Needle hopped on the balls of his feet, swishing his tail impatiently. “Let’s not waste more time here, the Haivu are going to show up again. Come on, let’s go find the reactor!”
Our groups merged and began to move out. Keshi guessed that the reactor would be at the center of the floor, so we tried to navigate our way there. Since Noah and I had spread havoc before Keshi’s group came down, they had a relatively easy time exploring and had a pretty good handle on the surroundings. Needle was convinced he knew where the reactor was going to be, so we followed him.
As we moved, the enemy density got lower instead of higher. Needle started scratching his head, saying, “That’s weird. There should be more as we get closer, right?” Despite Needle’s wavering confidence, we pressed on.
Soon enough, the hallway we were in opened up to a door that seemed a little more technologically advanced than the others. Needle slapped the panel next to it, but it didn’t open.
“This is the first locked door we’ve come across. It’s gotta lead to the reactor room!” Needle exclaimed.
“That’s true, but how do we even open it? We don’t know the code to open it or have the key or anything.” Sil said.
Keshi tried prying the door open with his fingers. It didn’t budge. I tried hooking my claws into it and opening them too, but I stopped because it was putting too much stress on them.
“Can we melt the door?” Noah asked. “If we all shoot it with our rifles, maybe it’ll straight up melt?”
We all thought for a second.
“Yeah, it could work.” I said.
Needle shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”
All of us hailed beams on the door for several seconds. The door made no indication that it was melting or even heating up. This idea was a dud, unfortunately. Until a stray shot hit the panel next to the door, destroying it. It slid open immediately.
Needle slapped his forehead. “Right. Easy mode.”
The door opening while we were shooting was fortunate, but it was also fortunate that it was by accident. Because when it opened, we kept shooting. And on the other side of the door were a lot of Haivu soldiers waiting for us. They had no time to react to the storm of beams pouring through the small doorway.
Several of them were immediately blasted and fell to the ground. The fortunate dove to the side and away from our lines of sight. Once they composed themselves, they began to fire back. We plastered ourselves to the walls of the hallway to avoid their caustic pods. A few recruits in the back didn’t move in time, took several shots and went down.
“What now!?” Keshi shouted. It was hard to hear him over the sounds of the beams and caustic pods. “They’re bunkered down in there pretty tight!”
“We gotta hurry!” Sil said. “Now that they know we’re here, other Haivu are going to reinforce them! We’re going to get pincered!”
We took potshots back. We traded even blows with the Haivu. We’d take out a few of their soldiers, they’d take out a few of ours. It was a stalemate, but a stalemate was in their favor. We had to take action fast.
“Alright, I’m tired of this!” Needle shouted. “It’s a simulation anyways, right? Charge on my signal!”
“What’s the signal?” Noah asked.
Needle ignored him and grabbed Keshi’s and Sil’s grenades from their belts. He positioned himself next to the door, and primed all of the grenades. He held three in each hand and three were still strapped onto his belt.
Needle took a deep breath, then ran screaming into the reactor room. He immediately took a couple shots to the chest, but kept running. Needle tossed grenades in all directions, towards the huddled groups of Haivu. One of the Haivu soldiers reacted fast enough to throw his grenade back, but Needle batted it away with his tail. Two more shots hit Needle. His shield was down.
“SIGNAL!” Needle screamed.
He threw himself at the nearest Haivu soldier and hugged them. The grenades that he threw, and the ones on his belt, all detonated at the same time. Needle and his hugging partner immediately vaporized, along with a large chunk of the Haivu soldiers that were nearby. The grenades that Needle threw also found their mark, and destroyed a huge portion of the Haivu defenders.
“Fuck!” Keshi said. “I know it’s not real, but it’s still really unsettling!”
The rest of us poured through the door once the grenades detonated. I was first through and finished off any Haivu soldiers that were still scrambling away. The rest came through and did the same. Moments later, all of the Haivu soldiers were gone, and the room was cleared.
“Hurry!” Sil said. “The reinforcements could come at any time!”
I looked up at the reactor. It was white, smooth, humming with energy, and spinning. I honestly had no clue how it worked. It was Haivu technology, and I didn’t understand how GU reactors really worked either. But if I had to guess, blowing it up would be a good thing.
We gathered up all of the remaining grenades that our ragtag group had, and tossed them inside of the reactor. There were tiny openings all over the reactor, so we threw grenades in them at random. Hopefully one of them would make it inside somewhere important. These grenades also had the option to detonate remotely, so we didn’t have any premature explosions. After all of our grenades were gone, it was time to blow the reactor.
All of us detonated our grenades at the same time. The sound was deafening. A series of explosions were heard inside of the reactor, and the reactor stopped spinning. The entire room turned bright red and sirens started to wail.
“I guess that means the reactor is compromised.” Noah said. “Red lights always mean that.”
“I agree.” Kenshi said. “I don’t want to be here when it goes. Let’s see if we can extract, yeah?”
We all voiced our agreement. And immediately ran. We had no clue when the reactor would blow, and our transport ship was still relatively far away. However, there was one last problem.
The Haivu reinforcements that hadn’t arrived during the battle decided to show up now. They were too late to save the reactor, but they weren’t too late to kill us. We rounded a corner and they were there, waiting for us. The poor guys in the front were killed quickly. Keshi, Sil, Noah and I quickly posted up on the wall before the corner.
The Haivu soldiers were laying down some impressive suppressive fire, creating a barrier of caustic pods that barred our way to escape.
“Alright, let’s go the other way.” Keshi said. “There’s multiple ways upstairs.”
We retreated and turned the other corner. Keshi waved at us and gestured for us to keep moving, only for a barrage of caustic pods to hit him. The fourth one depleted his shield and the fifth one scored home. He quickly dissolved before us.
“Keshi!” Sil screamed.
Yeah, watching a person dissolve, real or not, still sucked. But there was another problem. We were effectively stuck between two Haivu forces, and our numbers had dwindled a lot. There were maybe ten, fifteen of us left.
“Last stand time?” I asked Noah.
“Last stand time.” Noah confirmed.
Noah and I took up positions, covering each end of the hallway. The remaining recruits, and Sil, did the same. We put up a good fight for a while. We shot down any Haivu that got brave enough to try and get closer, but we were also losing people. Sil went down a couple minutes later after trying to drag someone to safety.
Eventually, only Noah and I were left. The Haivu were steadily closing in, and there was no way out. We didn’t even have any grenades left. In fact, we couldn’t even peek out to shoot anymore. The last person who tried disintegrated in seconds.
Noah and I were crouched and waiting for the end. It wasn’t real, but it was still nerve wracking. This was our first tiny taste of war, and we were doomed. This was the easy difficulty, too.
The Haivu reached my position first. I slid out from my cover and managed to take down a couple more bugs. Caustic pods pelted me moments after, and my vision went dark.