GOTCHA

When Mark finally went through the doors labeled B23 he found Angie crying. Many people were busy working with equipment and stuff. They kept stealing glances at Angie. A man and a woman were trying to console Angie.

“What’s wrong?” his “dad instinct” kicked in. This girl had been to his house on breaks. He had taken her and Sarah to the city a few times. It wasn’t like watching his own daughter cry, but close enough.

Angie looked up. “People are jerks.” Mark nodded. Angie continued, “The only people I thought would be OK players want me to pay them A LOT of money.”

“Oh.” He didn’t really know what that meant, but it was probably bad. “Anything I can do to help?” Please, please don’t ask for A LOT of money.

She made a sad chuckle-choke kind of sound. “Have you ever been in the military?”

“No,” he answered hesitantly.

The guy, Mike, answered the unspoken question. “The rules of this competition say that no soldiers or veterans are allowed.” Mike read the confusion on Mark’s face and started talking again. “The actual main game Space Opera game is different, but this scenario is special so special rules apply. It is primarily a test of equipment, so...” He left the rest of it unspoken.

“Gotcha,” he muttered unhappily. Sort of gotcha anyway.

“So you’ll do it?” What’s her name? Heather? One of Sarah’s friends anyway. She had never been to the house, but he had seen her on social media. Uh-oh. Everybody in the room had frozen and looked at him.

“Do what exactly?”

Angie jumped back into the conversation. “Mr. Smythe, will you join our team? I need another in-game player.”

“In game? Like playing one of those Star Marines?” This was out of left field.

“Exactly.”

“Uh, Angie could choose one of the team-” he swept his arm to encompass everybody standing around watching, “but nobody else has much experience playing so if she can get you, it saves her from losing another experienced technician.”

“I, I don’t know, I’ve never played the game.”

Heather chimed in. “Hey, I’m better than nothing and you can be too.”

Angie was full of hope as she looked up into his face. Mark shrugged his shoulders. “I hate being nothing, so, sure, why not?”

She ran up and hugged him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She stepped back and turned to the guy. “Mike, can you get him registered. Billy Long Hair, he’s about the size that Flanni was, use his pod.” Angie whirled to face Janet. “Janet, we need to go over the Felding Code.” Janet’s eyes flicked to the side. She did it again. When Angie didn’t respond, she add a head twitch. Angie looked and finally noticed her entire team was drifting closer.

Oh, Angie thought, I didn’t prepare anything. Standing up as straight as she could, Angie turned to the assembling team. A clock on the wall showed the time. “We have lots and lots of stuff to get done and it is T-minus one-hundred minutes and counting until...” Angie was trying to find the right words, to everybody else it seemed like a dramatic pause, “the winning team takes the field.”

The team cheered. What the hell have I gotten myself into? Mark wondered.

TRAINING

The room was your standard Space Marine compartment. The décor was gun metal grey accented with a green only seen in the military. Weapons hung in racks on the walls. The main feature of the room was a grizzled old Drill Instructor. His white hair was buzzed short and his unshaven jaw was ridiculously square.

“This is your standard issue G-78 linear accelerator rifle.” He hefted the rifle. It was a futuristic piece of polymer and metal. “This is 30 inches of portable man-made sudden death. It will accelerate a 10 mm projectile down range at a speed that would make your mama wet her pants. It will impact with enough force to punch a hole through a starship bulkhead. I’m not talking defense screens, I’m talking interior walls. It’s still more force than you can imagine.”

Mark was the only real person in the room. Once he had finished the registration setup, the tutorial started. The tutorial was being administered by a grizzled old Gunny Sergeant.

Angie could watch him on the monitors, if she wanted to. She could look across the lab and see him, his body, sitting in a chair. Neither thing was likely to be helpful. It was t-minus 30 minutes. There wasn’t much time for anything. Billy Long Hair and Billy were finalizing Mark’s pod. Meanwhile, Mark was using the an old fashion VR helmet. Once his pod was ready, he would have to disconnect and change devices.

Right now Angie and Janet were making sure the software and hardware was ready to go. The powerup sequence had worked perfectly. Actually, all of the start up sequences were working the way they were supposed to. Mostly all of the systems were working. The small problems were easily fixed. For the hundredth time Angie asked Janet “If I go into the game, are you sure you can handle this?”

For the hundredth time, Janet answered the same way, “I’m sure.” She waited long enough for Angie to start to talk again before she finished the answer. “And I would be worse than useless in the game. Same for Billy Long Hair and Lizzie and Nona and Joe and Tazuki. Our best positions are right here monitoring the system.”

“I’m not the best player in the world.”

“And as team leader you get some bonuses.” Angie frowned, Janet continued quickly, “besides, I’m the worst player in the world. So let’s stick with your plan.”

Angie’s frown deepened. “My new plan.”

“Your new plan.” Janet fixed her with a look. “Can we get to work now? We need to…” her voice trailed off. Angie followed her look to a large screen monitor.

On the monitor they could see Mark running through a combat course. Three TU’COn riflemen fired from exposed positions. Really exposed positions, like the TU’COns didn’t know they could hide behind the sandbag wall. Mark missed the first one. Technically, the enemies were shooting back, but their aim was so bad and their shots were so far off that Mark would have to try real hard to get hit. Much like the practice TU’COns, Mark missed again.

“Maybe I’m not the worst player in the world,” Janet said. She looked at Angie quickly and then back to the monitor. Mark had zeroed in and shot the first one. His second shot was amazing and took out the second shooter. “See, he’s getting it.” The slight relaxation that had passed through both Janet and Angie vanished as the next shot went so wild that a dead bird crashed to earth. Feathers fell like rain.

“Are you kidding me recruit?” The Gunny Drill Sergeant roared. “That was the worst shot I have ever seen!” The Drill Sergeant summed up what Angie was thinking.