EQUIPMENT CHECK

The rocket exploded against the tank’s turret. Mark squeezed the firing trigger again. “T-minus 5 minutes.” The announcement in Mark’s helmet startled him. This rocket went high over the tank. Please no more birds. The rocket exploded harmlessly way way down range. Mark was unhappy, but he managed to put 4 of the five rockets on target.

“That will have to do, boot.” The DI said with a serious hint of disappointment. “Your fire team needs you.” He pointed at a door. “Through there.”

Angie had planned on giving her equipment a quick check. That was easy. Everything was missing or broken. Her heads up display just showed the outline. When she launched the menu, everything was grayed out. Status, display, targeting, inventory, map, stats, team, outline, frame, tabs or windows were displaying. Just the grayed out menu.

None of her equipment was here. She had on the standard dark gray space marine fatigues. She owned Level 5 armor and a tricked out G-78 accelerator rifle and it was missing. All of her other goodies were gone too. Her locker- the one with her name on it was locked. There was no keypad or keyhole or combination dial. It was just locked.

Mike and Heather had told her to relax. The devs probably shut everything down except for this room. They told her that flipping through menus was useless. Nothing was available. It was pointless to try and open the locker. Mike and Heather had spent 15 minutes doing everything they could to open their lockers. To open Angie’s locker. To open Mark’s locker. They had zip to show for their work. The door was locked too. That keypad blinked red with every combination they put in. No force was going to open it. No communication devices were working.

“They want us to just chill,” Mike observed.

“I’m chill!” Heather was upbeat.

“One more aggravating thing happens and I am going to scream.” The door slid open and Mark came through. He didn’t even try to hold the door open. Anything in the door should trip a sensor and keep it open. Angie tried to lunge over. “Hold it!”

Mark turned back towards the door. It seemed like he was glacially slow. The door slammed shut behind him.

Angie growled, but didn’t scream.

Mark looked at his hands. “I had a rocket launcher a second ago.”

Before he could say anything else, a chime sounded. Then a robotic voice. Text scrolled in front of Angie’s face as the voice read.

“Devil Center Challenge. Scenario rules follow:

1. No prior military experience allowed

2. All characters are set to level 1, except for 1 Lance Corporal Fire Team Leader

3. At the end of the challenge, players may choose to keep this character or revert to previous characters

4. No stat adjustments are available until after the first mission

5. Teams that fail to achieve primary objectives will be eliminate from the competition

6. Judges and industry professionals are monitoring all teams and feeds. Your setups will be visited and analyzed as well as the in-game performance of your setups.

7. Performance of hardware and software interface is paramount. However, you must survive to demonstrate capabilities.

8. Decision of the judges is final. Contest organizers, University and Space Opera Ventures Gaming, LLC, are not responsible for any damages or injuries. Players accept full responsibility for their actions as outlined in the relevant EUA and Dev User Agreements.

9. All players have 10 seconds to accept these conditions.

A green countdown clock appeared and counted down from 10. A big green button labeled accept and a big red button labeled “REFUSE” appeared. Angie pressed accept. The buttons disappeared and the words “Thus It Begins” appeared and the countdown continued.

At zero, a klaxon sounded. The lights blinked off and came back red. Everything was bathed in the red emergency lights. The klaxon stopped and a face appeared in the wall mounted viewscreens. The face belonged to the ship’s captain.

“Good morning crew! We are uh-pproaching Tu’Con territory.” The captain spoke with a southern accent. “If you look at your monitors you can see planet RX6. Right now the Federation Alliance owns it and we plan on keeping this rock.” The captain’s face was replaced by the image of a rotating planet. It looked the same as every other blue and green planet.

“We keep it by attacking the next TU’Con planet down the line. Then the cycle repeats as we fight for planets and leapfrog all the way back to TU’Con itself.” He paused. Maybe he was thinking that this was going to be a long war. Especially if each planet had to change times four or five times like RX6 did.

The captain appeared back on screen. “In 15 minutes, I want marines to start boarding the landing craft. In 30 minutes we jump with the rest of the fleet to target planet Bullseye10.”

The Klaxon sounded again and then cut off. “What is that?” The captain was looking off screen. “No! That’s impossible.”

The ship shook violently. Everybody was thrown across the cabin. Angie crashed into Mark who feel to the floor. System messages appeared warning that they were taking damage. One or two hit points gone. Their displays were working! That was the important thing. The default displays were live. It showed all of the things the game developers thought were important.

“They’re going to ram! ” Somebody on the bridge, not the captain, was yelling. There was a massive explosion and everybody was thrown around again. Mark had held on to Angie. She didn’t receive any damage notifications.” Somebody was swearing. Heather was swearing, but not with the ferocity of Mark. Mike was mumbling something.

“Marines get to your assigned launch boats. The boats will depart in 15, I say again, one-five minutes. All personnel repel boarders.” There was a third explosion. This was different. A shuttering crash and horrible grinding noise.

All of the lockers popped open. They were full of equipment. With a flurry of knees and elbows that all seemed to land in Mark’s stomach, Angie scrambled to her feet and rushed to her locker. As quickly as she could grab things, they were added to her inventory. More clicks and choices and she was wearing standard fleet armor, including helmet. Her equipment harness and backpack was on. She was holding a G-78 rifle that was locked, cocked and ready to rock.

Heather and Mike were geared up and ready to go. Mark had emptied his locker, but was slow in equipping.

Angie took the time to adjust her display. On the lower edge she put up small frames. Each held the picture of a team member with their hit points, strength and stamina. On the right edge were her own stats. Lower left corner was the map. Lower right had the system message/chat display and all of her hot buttons for inventory and stuff.

Another explosion and violent shake of the ship. Time was wasting. “Let’s move. I’ll lead. Mike, you run drag.” She turned to Heather and Mark, keep up and stay sharp.” The door open when she hit the latch plate. The hallway had swirls of smoke wisping through it. The map said go left, so they went left.

Another alarm was sounding. A robotic voice announced a depressurization alert. What the hell did that mean?

From a corridor up ahead, a Tu’Cons warrior ran out. Tu’Cons were bulky, scaly beasts with big eyes. It turned its laser rifle towards them. Before it could pull the trigger, Angie pulled hers. A burst of slugs accelerated out of the rifle with blue electrical flashes. Shots punched holes in the Tu’Cons and then through the bulkhead.

“Damn.” Now she knew what the depressurization alarm was from. The G-78s could shoot through the bulkheads.