Nightlife

Sergeant Syku, otherwise known as Mother, stood at attention as her boss, Captain Thompson, walked in through the door to the office. The captain didn’t look at her as she sat behind her desk which Mother was standing in front of. The captain took a second to fold her hands together before she looked up at her.

“I am here as you requested, Mother.” The captain said, breaking the silence. “I assume this is about your last mission. Am I correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The sergeant said, looking off into the distance above the captain’s head.

“I assume you wish to know why I threw that impossible mission at you?” The captain asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” The sergeant replied.

“Do you know how many times we, the Federation I mean, have had hostile contact with our alien neighbors?” The captain asked, tilting her head.

“No, ma’am.” Mother replied, getting a bad feeling from the captain.

“This will be our third in the past hundred years.” The captain replied. “Do you know how many of these contacts we won?”

“None?” Mother asked.

“No, we actually won one.” The Captain replied with a grin. “Technically we weren’t fighting the aliens. We were fighting humans with their tech. Even then, we only won that one because we were extremely lucky. It only cost us a troopship.” Mother winced as she heard that. Creating ships that could travel faster than the speed of light was extremely costly. She knew there were only so many ships that could do that, and only so many that were troopships. Losing one, she knew, was a real loss for the human race.

“We got our asses handed to us at the first battle, but one dropship pulled through and hid until another troopship could arrive. We were able to get troops on the ground before the invasion and knock out the tech. In that conflict there were only two aliens on the planet. The college has since stated that if there had been a significant number of aliens on that planet we would have lost that fight.” Thompson said. To Mother, Thompson’s tone was weirdly calm.

“I can’t tell you the complete details about the first contact, but I can tell you just how unprepared we were to fight aliens back then. The first combat contact was a clusterfuck. We thought the aliens were weak because their tech didn’t match up to ours. It really didn’t, but how they used that tech against us completely crushed us. We lost so bad that everyone above the rank of gunnery sergeant lost their jobs. I was there, and I was busted down to gunny in charge of a second division, nothing company for my next deployment. Even then, I sat on the shelf for years. To me it was less than a second, but for the rest of the universe it was ten years before they let me deploy again. They only kept me around because I got what was left of our forces out of that cluster of a mission.” Thompson said, looking off into the distance as she relived the mission which broke her.

“That means I’m the only person on this ship who has seen contact with aliens. I don’t know what will happen because aliens are alien. Their combat strategy is so alien to ours. Their objectives are so confusing that it can take years for the war college to figure them out. Even then, we usually don’t figure out their complete strategy. This will not be any different. What is worse is that we are fighting our worst enemy. An enemy that can bypass our tech and scramble data all the way up to our data storages. Not just one, but all of them - no matter where they are. And we still have no idea how they do it.” Thompson said, looking up at her.

“If you have someone die in range of their denial spheres then that person could be effectively dead forever. No data backups. No respawns. Dead. So, yeah, I threw everything I could think of at you and your people. You did well, but you need to be better. All of you need to be better, but we don’t have time. We only have two advantages in this coming fight. One will be after we complete this mission - we will know what the aliens want, and the other is the faint hope that Magic can do her thing, and keep all of us alive until we can bring that information back.” Thompson said looking down at her desk.

“Why not send us another Psyops agent?” Mother asked, looking at her boss for the first time. “Another clairvoyant maybe, or a ranged telepath?”

“First, Agent Smith, or whatever his name is at the moment, is literally our only psychic who has had any success with reading alien minds in a combat zone. Corporal O’Malley is our most accurate short-time clairvoyant. She might even be our best long-time clairvoyant as well. That is still up to debate. Still, from what I understand, she’s still so far from what she could be that they want her to stay where she's at to get more experience. We literally have the two best psychics for this type of mission.” Thompson told her.

“She’s even given us a prophecy for this mission, but PsyOps won’t tell us it.” Thompson said after a few seconds, shaking her head.

‘Why not, Ma’am?” Mother asked, frowning. “I would expect that would be something that we should be made aware of.”

“That shows you how uneducated you are about psychics and their abilities.” Thompson replied, with a soft chuckle. “Clairvoyants see possible futures. The more people know about what they’ve seen, the less likely it will happen. Even one person knowing about it could make the prophecy inaccurate. So all clairvoyant’s prophecies are classified at the highest levels.”

“So, I shouldn’t ask her about it.” Joked Mother.

“Most clairvoyants don’t remember their own prophecies.” Thompson replied, with a sad smile. “I doubt Magic remembers hers.”

“At least we know we win.” Mother said with a big smile.

“How's that?” Thompson asked, frowning.

“If we were going to fail, why send in the two best psychics they have?” Mother reasoned.

“They aren’t the two best psychics. They are only the two best psychics for this mission.” Thompson corrected. “And that means nothing. Even if they were, they could be sending us to our deaths to make sure Magic’s, or someone else's, prophecies have a greater chance of coming true.”

Mother opened her mouth to reply, but closed it a second later. She hadn’t thought about that. It made sense in a horrible kind of way. That made Mother think of the possibility of true death for the first time. No just getting zeroed out, but dying and not coming back. She had thought about it clinically before, but she hadn’t let it set in until that moment. She looked up and saw the same knowledge in the Captain’s eye, but there was something else there as well. Mother blinked as she realized that her boss was excited.

That made Mother smile as she realized why. For the first time in her career they were being given a fight where the chance of getting kicked out of the military was not their biggest fear. Levels, ranks, and promotions, all that didn’t matter for this fight. This was the first time she would be in any real danger. She had killed thousands, but had never been in real danger herself. This fight with the Ketica was as real as it comes. Screw up and it was not just her career that was in jeopardy. Her smile got bigger as she realized she wanted to know if she was only good because of her respawns or because she was just that good. It was suddenly like an itch she always had, but now that she was aware of it she wanted to scratch it in the worst way. It was, she realized, the same thing her boss wanted to find out as well.

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Magic looked out past the pod bay feeling the rush of a completed mission. She smiled as she basked in it for a few seconds. Then she pushed that awesome feeling away and opened the pod door. She looked around, expecting to be in the lower deck spawn bay, but she realized that she was in her camp’s spawn bay. It was so much nicer than any spawn bay she had ever been in. For one thing her pod bay was private. It looked like a bathroom stall complete with a door. When she looked to her left she realized that the stall was bigger on the left-hand side, she saw that she had her own locker. Smiling, she walked over and got dressed.

She checked out her rewards for the mission and cursed. They were horrible. She only got fifteen thousand, two hundred and eight E-points. On top of that, she only got five hundred and seventy-two skill and mod points. Her credit award was lackadaisical as well at two thousand, five hundred and eight. Her ship got investigated again, but it was very brief and only said she was not listed as the pilot. That was odd, but Freya gave it a pass. As long as she was not in trouble she didn’t really care.

Her piloting went up by four, but it was her advanced drone operator skill that went up the most with twenty-two points. While she was happy with it going up so much, she had hoped for more of a reward since she shot down another ship. She got a very good bonus, though, for shooting what the blue box called an enemy dropship down. It was where most of her points came from as she realized that her mission was marked off as a failure. The reason why it was listed as a failure was because they didn’t make it to the invasion.

She opened the door, still reading her rewards, when she got a notification telling her that she had a debriefing in two minutes. She started running, joining a few other people who were still leaving the spawn bay in running towards the barracks. She quickly found her seat beside Cannon and her friends. She looked around as the rest of the platoon, except Mother, found their seating. Mother came in a minute later closing the door to the briefing room.

“Listen up.” Mother said, once she slammed the door closed. “I just came from a meeting with Captain Thompson. She is pissed. She wanted to scrub us from the mission and get a new platoon to take our place. The only reason we aren’t is because the mission kicks off tomorrow. There is not enough time to get another platoon up to speed. So it’s us.”

“Now, I’m not pointing fingers. I screwed up just as much as everyone else in this room.” Mother said, looking down and pacing back and forth in front of the platoon. “Before everyone gets mad at the impossible mission objectives, the Captain explained to me why she set us up like that. She is the only person on this ship who has real world combat experience against another alien species.”

Freya resisted the urge to raise her hand to say that she fought against an alien species, but then remembered that she really hadn’t. She fought against humans with alien tech, but never really had any contact with aliens. Even her time with the spec ops platoon as a sniper had been against humans.

“Captain Thompson’s words were: aliens are alien. Expect things to go very wrong. If we expect the unexpected, we will survive. It was my and my command team that failed to come up with a good strategy to fight against the unexpected. But, we are Federation Marines, the best of the best. It’s on all of us to adapt and overcome. We failed that. We failed to break outside how we’ve been training and got too rigid. If you think of a better strategy, speak up. You all are literally the best in your field. Talk to your team leaders. Team leaders, get with your squad leaders if your team has a better idea on doing things. People, we are about to face the fight of our lives. If any of us screw up then someone isn’t coming back. Die in a denial sphere and that’s it. No coming back from that. We have to be better. All of us.”

“True death is really rare. Right?” Freya thought, as Mother spoke. “The guy in the training facility said it was pretty rare. But she’s right. We should fight like if we die, it's a true death. Who knows when their odds run out, and you get hit with some kind of super denial sphere? Then, that’s it - thanks for playing, have fun telling your ancestors why you died.”

“We have twenty-four hours until we kick this thing off.” Mother told them. “I got a few updates from the Captain. First, we are not the first people here. There was a diplomatic ship that made it here before us. There is nothing left of it except for some dust. The October will not get close to the planet until they figure out what took the ship out. That’ll be our job.

“Magic, they sent out your ship already. When you spawn in, get the best reading you can and send it back to the October. For the rest of us, our mission is the same. Get in, get our VIP to an alien, then stay alive until the October comes in and drops everyone off. If we find some civilians, then we protect them. If we don't, then we hunker down until the invasion kicks off.” Mother told them.

“This is the real deal. We can’t just do our best. We need to do better. If we get out of this alive, then we are heroes. If we don’t, then it’s Valhalla for us. What are we?!” Mother shouted.

“Federation Marines!” Freya yelled, along with the rest of her platoon.

“Not even Tom wanted to fuck with us.” Mother said quietly. Freya and the rest of the Platoon laughed.

When the laughter died down, Mother spoke again. “You have twenty hours to relax. I want you back four hours before we kick this off. Do whatever you have to to get your head in the game because, people, this is the biggest fight you’ll ever have in your lifetime. I want a bunch of heroes coming back to celebrate with me. I don’t want to wait until I die to party with those who didn't make it back. Dismissed.”

“We will meet up twenty minutes before the briefing. We need to go over a few things.” Cannon told them before she left.

“I hate it when they do that.” Monkeyman said, sliding onto the seat next to Freya. “So what, I got a plan for the next nineteen hours and forty minutes. You guys are gonna love it.”

“I’m up for it, but I need to hit the training facility before we go.” Freya told him.

“That’s fine.” Monkeyman said with a huge smile. “What about you Lurch, ma man?”

“I didn’t get anything worthwhile out of that mission.” He replied, twisting his lips. “I’m up for whatever you got planned.”

“Okay, meet up in the lobby in five minutes.” Monkeyman said with a huge grin. Then he ran out of the briefing room, pushing people out of his way. Freya could only shake her head at how crazy he was acting.

She separated from Lurch at the stairs. He went up to his room while she went towards the training facility. She had to raise her health and health regen up to a hundred. They were both currently sitting at ninety-one. Then she thought she would just dump the rest into memory, raising it from 1,252 to 1,273. She was starting to see a trend in how hard it was to raise her mods now. For each point in memory she wanted to raise she had to spend twenty-five mod points. It was why she didn’t raise her other stats. At least not yet. She had a vague plan to raise her memory to 1,300 then go back to her piloting stats, which were perception, dexterity, and processing speed.

Once she allocated all of her stats, she only had twelve mod points left. She chose to save them. That only left her skill points, of which she had a huge amount. With her rewards from the mission, she had 58,264 skill points waiting to be used. She skimmed through the skills page, looking for things to use it on.

The first thing that caught her eye was medical training. It was an off-template skill so she’d never be as good as Maddog, but she would at least have some training. To complete the off-template skill she had to pay a staggering 2k in skill points. She didn’t hesitate and bought it - she had more than enough skill points to burn.

The next thing she saw was she could upgrade a bunch of her old stuff, like spaceborn vessel systems, along with hacking. There were a bunch of new updates which, if she got all of them, would only cost her 1.5k points. Shrugging, she accepted the updates and moved on. There were also some more general rifle and shooting skill updates that she picked up for 900 points. She knew better than to let those get stale. She had picked up a few pointers on shooting the last time she took the skills that she used in all her shooting now.

She also had a bunch of vehicle skills updates as well. She decided to get a bunch of other vehicle skills that she didn’t have. She got everything from how to drive a supply truck in combat all the way up to driving an APC in combat. It cost her nearly 6k in points, but she knew it would be fun to learn how to drive all those vehicles.

Seeing as how she was looking under vehicles, she checked out spaceborn vehicles. She got a few updates on the ships that were listed under her advanced drone operator, but the biggest thing she saw was space and high-atmospheric ship warfare and tactics. It was buried under a lot of other tabs, but, when she found it, she nearly squealed in glee.

It had a lot of prerequisites before anyone could take them. The two biggest were piloting and advanced drone operator at twenty-eight or higher. There was also the requirement of having perception, dexterity, memory, and processing speed above 1,250, which she had. To get all of the skill maxed for the enlisted rank or lower would cost her a staggering 20k in skill points. She didn’t even hesitate and clicked it.

Then she saw her dream skill pop up. It asked her if she wanted to learn weapons officer, second seat, small combat craft. Under, it had a bunch of ships listed, but the biggest one was a two-seater close support ship. While most close support ships were single-seater, she knew there were a few two seaters. It was the last in the list, so she would have to max the skill out before she could get qualified to fly in her dream ship. The entire skill tree popped up under her piloting skills. It also cost 20k in skill points. Again, she didn’t hesitate and clicked yes. With only 6.8k skill points left, she finalized her selection. With what might have been called a mad giggle, she skipped over to the door and walked into the light.

Stepping out of the light she found herself at the gun range. She met a familiar instructor and they got down to training. Most of it was completely useless. There was a bunch of new tech out there, but she already had the best for what she needed. It was interesting to see what the tech out there was, but she really didn’t need training on auto-aiming weapons or the like. She did like the new weapon they were issuing recruits - they were doing away with iron sights and giving them holographic sights that they could upgrade to auto or manual zoom scopes.

There were a few new techniques for firing a weapon in zero G, but it was nothing that spectacular. She had been doing something like it for a long time now. They simplified what she was doing, but weren’t a game changer. It was fun to shoot the guns though, so she couldn’t complain.

Next was the medical training. That required a lot of lectures on the study of the human body. Six classes later on human biology, she finally got to learn how to patch up a trauma injury. Mostly, it was about finding all the injuries and what to use on them. She learned that, if she wanted to use the skill, she had to buy a bunch of stuff. Luckily a lot of it was pretty small. She did learn what Maddog had used on her during the sim mission. It was a medi pen stabilizer. It was designed to quickly fix a broken bone while healing soft tissue injuries that the broken bone might have caused. There were two types. The first was a disposable one, which was the only thing she was qualified to use, then the non-disposable one, which real medics like Hospital Corpsmen used.

The upgrades on the shipboard systems were interesting, but, again, nothing groundbreaking. She noted that the skill she used to hack the space station by using the door was being taught. She was a little annoyed that she wasn’t getting paid for it, but, after seeing that it was much more than just using a door to get access to the station's systems, she had to admit she would never have thought of it herself. The hacking update was about some new programs which were interesting. Not amazing, but she could see some uses for it.

The ground vehicle skills were fun. Driving trucks, while at times a little intimidating, was fun once she got into the combat parts. She learned to drive pretty much everything except a tank. Even then, she thought she could figure it out if she had to. It wouldn’t be pretty, but she could get the job done.

Space and high-atmospheric ship warfare and tactics started off, to her surprise, with a lot of lecture-type classes. She learned that energy was the most important thing in dogfighting. The ability to outmaneuver your enemy while keeping your speed up was huge. There were all sorts of tactics to do that in space, like scissoring - the ability to move back and forth to keep your speed up, while being tracked by an enemy ship. It was the most fun Freya had had yet in the training facility.

The weapons officer second seat skill took a very long time to complete. She had to learn all sorts of small ship weapons systems, from manual guided missiles to shooting ship-based auto-cannons, with extreme accuracy. She had to reach eighty percent target accuracy before the instructor let her move on. She didn’t have a lot of freedom in the cockpit, as she had to ask permission to do pretty much anything, but by the time she got to close-support ships she was having the time of her life. Too soon, the training ended. With a tired sigh she left the training facility.

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“So where are we going again?” She asked Monkeyman, as she stared at the travel door.

“You’ll see.” Monkeyman said excitedly, as he palmed the door lock and motioned for them to go ahead of him.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Lurch said, looking at the white light in the doorway.

“I’m paying, so who cares.” Monkeyman said with a laugh.

“That’s what scares me.” Lurch said, before stepping into the light.

“You’re next, ma shiv.” Monkeyman said with a big grin.

Shrugging, Freya walked into the light and stepped out into a world of darkness only lit up with neon lights. She looked around at holographic advertisements to all sorts of clubs shone across the sky. She turned around as Monkeyman walked out of the travel building. He had a big grin on his face.

“Welcome to the planet Nightlife. Where the nights are eighteen hours long and there is a club every five feet.” He said as he walked past Freya and Lurch. He spread his arms out wide and yelled, “I love you!”

A female voice yelled back, “I love you too!”

Freya looked at Lurch, who looked back with the same expression. “Come on, give this place a chance.” Monkeyman said running ahead of them to prevent them from going back into the travel building. “I’ll cover all the club fees. Except alcohol. You pay for your own.”

Freya looked back at Lurch, who shrugged. She tilted her head and nodded. “And you buy the first round at each club.”

“We take turns. I buy the first round, then we take turns.” Monkeyman said, with a manic smile on his face.

“You’re on.” Freya said with a smile.

“Get the hell out of the way, Monkeyman’s gang is coming through.” Monkeyman yelled, putting his arms around her and Lurch’s shoulders.

The night went by in flashes. There were a bunch of dancefloors then she found herself in her sports bra and shorts, looking out of a giant cage that lacked gravity. She could see Monkeyman holding up gambling stubs screaming at her to fight as she slowly drifted in the center of the cage. She looked around and saw her opponent move in to punch her. She did a graceful back flip over her opponent setting herself up with a powerful kick. It hit the guy in the back of his head sending him into the cage wall. He bounced off as she forced her body into a tight spin. He came in swinging. She dodged and hit him with the back of her fist. She used the rebound to angle her body so that she was moving towards the ‘ground’ while her opponent was left slowly traveling towards the far wall. She used the ‘floor’ to bounce up and hit the guy with a flying side kick to the left side of his jaw. He was knocked out immediately and drifted past her. The crowd went wild.

Then she was sitting next to Lurch who was talking to a pretty AI girl. He was trying way too hard for someone like her. Then Monkeyman was back with huge glasses of green liquid. He made a toast. Something about gangs and life. She cheered him and clinked glasses with both him and Lurch before downing her glass. Then she was trying to teach the basic punch in her discipline, Líng Zhònglì Zhàndòu. Lurch came stumbling out of the building with a big grin on his face.

Then they were at another club where they were drinking something that was overflowing with white smoke. Then Freya found herself in a tiny car, racing her friends, laughing as Monkeyman tried to pass her. Her next memory she found herself telling Monkeyman about her mother and how she died. Monkeyman hugged her as she told him how she was a bad daughter. He gave her some advice, but she was too drunk to remember what he said. It helped, even though she had no idea what he had said.

Then she was standing outside the travel building back on the October, completely sober. “Dammit!” Lurch muttered, as he came walking up to the both of them.

“I’m never going drinking with you again!” He whispered loudly, as the other marines from their platoon walked past them. Someone chuckled overhearing his comment. Freya pulled Lurch into a hug and dragged him towards the briefing room. She reached out and grabbed Monkeyman’s shoulder and pulled him close to her.

“Get out of the way.” She said, loudly. “Monkeyman’s gang’s coming through.” She didn’t say it as loud as Monkeyman always did, but for her it was loud.

“Right on, ma shiv.” Monkeyman replied as they walked towards the debriefing room.

Status Screen

Name: Freya O’Malley

Rank: Corporal Level: 14

Template: Sniper

Enlisted points: 3,410,656

Credits: 222,685

Skill points: 6,864

Mod points: 12

Weapons:

E.S.I. Multi Heavy ASO

3 shot option Duralogistic shock absorbers with Nexus sound reducers Mega Colax purified battery pod (x4) Twenty heat sinks LNG rod ammo Angler 57 rifle scope with MAS vision High intensity lens

Armor:

Wrath EC Tier 5

Massimio Strength & Friction assistance Mega Colax battery pod (x4) Cloudforge Sensor alert Seven drones Memory Expansion Module Ove Standard Battery AIT Stealth boost

Side weapons:

Irish Nester

Mega Colax purified battery pod (x2) NG explosive rod ammo

Wingols 90-90

HPSG ammo rod (20 rounds)

Asy Minor short barrel energy rifle

Colax purified battery

Basic combat knife

Vehicles:

Goozden 127 light armored Respawn Dropship

Causnix Mac 127 Recurve Engine Active camouflage Six respawn pods Vehicle dock Mech reloading printer Shand’s Auto Cannon

Adav two person Scout Quad

Stealth suite

Wetware mods

Health

Level: 100

Health Regen

Level: 100

Strength

Level: 150

Perception

Level: 1,500

Agility

Level: 1,500

Dexterity:

Level: 1,500

Memory

Level: 1,273

Processing speed

Level: 1,500

Personal AI

Level: 151

Skills cont:

Zero G Maneuvering

Level 5

Advanced Shipboard Tactics

N/A

Spaceborn Vessel

Systems

List

Martial Arts:

Líng Zhònglì Zhàndòu

Level 5

Master

Awareness Skills

List

Dropship Deployment Tactics (Single ship)

Level 15

General Rifle skills

List

Shooting skills

List

Advanced Targeting

N/A

Small unit tactics (Human)

List

Small unit tactics (Alien)

List

Government and Cultural training (Human)

List

Space and high-atmospheric ship warfare and tactics

(Enlisted)

List

Skills:

Enhanced sensing

Level: 2

Tracking

Level: 5

Acrobatics

Level: 5

One time infantry Drop ship

Level: 1

Special Warfare

N/A

FTL Communication

Phd.+ Postgrad

FTL Communication

Alien Engineering

Phd.

FTL Communication Corporate

MS.

Alien Behavior and Culture

BS.

Engineer

Master

Advanced Drone Operator

Level: 38

Piloting

Level: 29

Silent Walking

Level: 5

Silent Combat Running

Level: 5

Hacking

Level: 5

Zero G. Combat

N/A

Bomb Making

*Non template skill*

Level 10

Driving Skills

List

First Sniper training

Complete

Government and Cultural training (Alien)

List

Leadership

(Squad level)

Level 10

(Completed)

Medic

*Non template skill*

Level 10

Weapons officer Second seat small combat craft

(Enlisted)

List

Hardware mods: Suicide mod

Medals: Gold E Sharpshooter, Silver Cluster (With Honors) Badges: Cyber warfare