Our forces arrived at the predesignated battlefield late, and we all scrambled to get our forces out and deployed as quickly as possible. Thankfully, the colonel had agreed to have the troops loaded up with their combat packages on the way to the battlefield, rather than waiting to arm up completely when they arrived. All the troops needed to do was pick up their weapons and go, with no muss and no fuss.

With absolutely no time to spare, our forces were distributed to our designated side of the terrain and none of them had any kind of briefing. Thanks to my new circuit board that gave everyone a personal and internal communications pad, physically gathering for the briefing no longer needed to be done. As long as they were within a certain distance of a signal repeater, which usually meant a tech vehicle, anyone could receive a full briefing from the colonel himself and not suffer any lag, since each and every one of the circuit boards was a signal booster itself.

“All right everyone.” The colonel said from his command vehicle. “All we have is a terrain map and a general location of the enemy.” He said, and everyone received the map instantly. “Make sure you get out there and take the enemy down! You will win this thing for our Cavern!”

“Yeah!” “You bet your ass!” “Yes, sir!”

The colonel chuckled. “I'm glad you're all as enthusiastic about this as I am, and I'm sure Hermes is going to be a huge asset to the coming battle.”

“Thank you, colonel. I'll do my best.” Hermes said, and everyone laughed.

“I'd expect nothing less.” The colonel said. “That goes for all of you. Give me your best, and show these people that no one can challenge us and get away with it.”

Everyone responded with a loud yell, and my ear receptors automatically reduced the decibels to a more manageable level.

“The mission begins in 5 minutes.” The colonel said. “May whatever god you believe in be with you.”

The colonel ended the call and I knocked on the compartment behind my seat.

“Rev it up!” I said and hopped out of the passenger side and walked around to the back, hit the button for entry, and walked up the ramp. It closed behind me and I sat in the only available chair. “Hermes, get ready to initiate the Network.”

“Yes, Handy.” Hermes said. “Pinging receivers. Pings returned. Good connections all around.”

“This is a much bigger load than last night.” I said. “Can you handle it, Hermes?”

“I won't be able to give you the split screen like during the test, since there are just too many individual views to do that; but, each squad can see the other members of their squad in the corners of their HUD so it doesn't impact their normal views.”

“Excellent.” I said. “Good job.”

“Thank you.” Hermes said. “Initiating Network communication protocols... now.”

A low hum emanated from Hermes' support structure as pretty much all of his capacity was being used at once.

“How are the processors and the heat buildup?” I asked the lab technicians.

“All in the green.” One of them said. “Having a super-cooled infrastructure was a stroke of genius.”

“It's an old idea, actually.” I said and looked at the calculations per second. “We're getting close to saturation. Bring in the backup memory buffers.”

“Yes, sir.” Someone said and then the hum died down.

“Okay, get ready for the spike in usage.” I said and watched the scouts head out onto the battlefield. “Here it comes! They're deploying the micro-drones!”

The hum from Hermes became quite loud when thousands of micro-drones swarmed over the battlefield and highlighted everything, sent that data back to their scout controllers, who instantly shared all of that information with everyone else on the battlefield.

“Wow! Look at that!” One of the lab technicians said and pointed to the large display screen on the wall. It showed the growing map of the battlefield, all the enemies that could be seen with the initial drone deployment, and every terrain feature.

“That's amazing!” Another lab technician said. “We're getting a three dimensional map!”

“It's the micro-drone data.” I said, and they looked at me. “With the communication protocols so high, two drones looking at the same object gives us a stereoscopic view.” I smiled. “With three or more actively scanning...”

“Our modelling software can build an accurate three dimensional representation and then shunt it to everyone connected to the network!”

I nodded, and then a large flare was shot up into the middle of the battlefield. It was the universal signal to start the battle, and everyone on our side raced right into the teeth of the enemy, because they knew exactly where they were.

It was a slaughter.

Just like the test I had shown everyone the night before, even a highly prepared enemy had exactly zero chance against a completely integrated squad that had instantaneous information sharing. I watched the map as our green dots moved steadily across the battlefield, and all the red dots that appeared in front of them were dispatched nearly as soon as they appeared.

“Good lord.” One of the lab technicians whispered as our forces completely wiped out the enemy troops in record time and reached the other side of the battlefield with absolutely no resistance. When they attacked the enemy's command and destroyed their vehicles, the colonel spoke.

“Well, I... I think that is the end of the battle.” The colonel said, completely shocked. “Return to your transports and... store your gear.”

Someone whispered behind him and he spoke again.

“Make sure to drop off your ordinance and weapons at the proper armory vehicles first.” The colonel said in a slightly less shocked voice. “Good work, everyone.”

The colonel ended the call and everyone in the tech vehicle sat in silence. I sat up and rested my elbows on the console in front of me.

“Hermes, battle stats, please.” I said in a calm voice.

“Of course, Handy.” Hermes said and put the information on the display and left the map in the background.

Cavern 8 (Friendlies)

Soldiers Injured 0 Soldiers Lost 0

Vehicles Damaged 0 Vehicles Lost 0

Rounds Expended 12,345 Munitions Expended 2600

Cavern 3 (Enemies)

Soldiers Injured 0 Soldiers Lost 12,345

Vehicles Damaged 0 Vehicles Lost 2600

Rounds Expended 0 Munitions Expended 0

Someone in the tech vehicle gasped as they realized what that meant. “How... how can that be possible?”

“It's the result of introducing a ground-breaking technology to only one side of a battlefield.” I said and sat back. “An unprepared enemy cannot survive in such an unbalanced environment.”

“It was an amazing victory.” One of the lab technicians said. “A complete landslide.”

I didn't voice what I actually thought it was, and called the colonel directly. “Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes, Jack?”

“I would appreciate it if you could send out the proper people to harvest and bring back all the plasma weapons that are sure to be scattered out there.”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes. Thank you for reminding me.” The colonel said and ended the call.

“You're welcome.” I said to dead air, then called Alyssa. “Hey, how are you doing?”

“I'm fine.” Alyssa said in a slightly off voice. “My squad is also fine.”

I brought up the view through her eye implants and a window appeared on my HUD that showed her walking back towards our side of the battlefield.

“How's Ranger?” I asked.

Alyssa turned her head to look at Cali. The woman had a shocked look on her face, and she must have felt Alyssa looking at her and looked back. I added Cali's view to my HUD and saw a similar look on Alyssa's face.

“How are you, Ranger?”

“I'm fine.” Cali said and looked back forward, as did Alyssa.

“She's fine.” Alyssa said to me, and I nodded, even though she couldn't see me.

“I'll see you when you get back.” I said. She ended the call without saying goodbye, just like the colonel had. I sighed and turned to Hermes. “Can you assess the current danger to the troops?”

“Yes, Handy. The troops in the current deployment are in no physical danger.”

I nodded and sighed, because he couldn't assess the non-physical damage they may have suffered. “You can drop most of the troops from the Network, but keep the colonel's retrieval squads connected to him.”

“Already done.” Hermes said.

I folded my hands in front of me and thought about the battle with the enemy. Or rather, the extermination of the enemy. Their squad deployment tanks had worked like a charm, but it wasn't a surprise at all. They were all targeted and eliminated before any of them could return fire. Knowing exactly where the enemy was and how they were deployed was a massive advantage. Being able to see their movements in real-time was so devastatingly powerful that the whole battle was like shooting fish in a barrel.

If the enemy had known what was going to happen to them, I think they would have surrendered. I thought to myself. Actually, if I had realized that the battle was going to be so one-sided, I might have warned them myself. I looked up at the display and the numbers there, and a piece of my heart wilted. I did it again. I clenched my hands into fists. One simple idea! I've killed so many people, and it was just a stupid circuit board!

The lab technicians turned and stared at me when my fist hit the console in front of me and the sound rang through the tech transport. I had used my normal hand and it bounced off the hardened metal. One of my knuckles tore and some blood came out, but I didn't care. I stood up and walked to the back of the transport and hit the button for the door, walked down the ramp, and hit the button again.

I stood outside and tried to calm down, and after what seemed like an eternity, I saw Alyssa in the distance. She was at the front of the returning troops, and she still had that shocked expression on her face. I let my gaze roam over the other soldiers, all of them combat veterans of several battles, and every single one of them had the same shocked look on their faces. I returned my gaze to Alyssa and her squad, and waited for them to come over to me.

“Hi, Jack.” Alyssa said. “I'm fine.”

“I'm not.” I said, and she blinked her eyes at me.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I said. “Do you mind if I ride with you?” I asked, and she looked at her squad. No one said anything, so she shrugged. We walked over to the proper armory transport and they unloaded their weapons, then we headed over to her squad's transport and climbed aboard.

When Alyssa went to sit down in the squad leader's position, I sat in the seat right beside her and cut off Evilin. She looked at me for a moment and sat in the next seat, then Alyssa's hand found mine and squeezed it as she held on. I was glad she was on my synthetic side; but, that was just an afterthought. At the moment, it could have been my flesh hand and I don't think I would have noticed.

The ride back to The Fall was as quiet as a library, and the only sounds were of the vehicle and people's breathing. It was all even and almost in sync with each other, and I was tempted to break up the communal breathing by sighing loudly. I didn't, and let it continue instead. I was sure it had a calming effect, because even I felt better about what had happened. We rode down to the bottom of The Fall and waited for everyone, then the entire mass of vehicles drove back across the cavern to the military base.

It seemed to take forever, even though the time on my HUD only said it had been a couple of hours, and the transport stopped at the barracks to drop us off. We all received a notice that told us to report for a post-battle review and debriefing first thing in the morning. I was pretty sure as a civilian contractor, I didn't have to be debriefed; but, I knew I probably should go, if only to placate the higher-ups and to stop them from hunting me down later.

The squad split up and went to their separate rooms, and Alyssa and I went up to the top floor to our room. We removed our combat harnesses and took off our camouflage unitards, then climbed into bed. Neither of us said anything as we cuddled each other under the blanket, and after a few minutes, the both of us started to dry sob.

What had happened today... what we had done... was remove a very significant portion of a rival Cavern's military force. Something like that had never been done before, and we had done it so easily. I had thought that reintroducing plasma weapons was going to change the way combat was handled in the future. I had no idea that making a better way to communicate was going to do the exact same thing, only in a much more devastating manner.

The funny thing was, that wasn't the circuit board's true purpose. The communication protocols were just an add-on, a present for my AI, and this was not what I had intended it for. It was supposed to be used as the interface for the L.I.F.E. program I had found and repaired on my father's old server, which was now collecting dust in my apartment.