FIREBASE ALPHA: REFIT

Angie breated a sigh of relief. Her team wasn’t the last one to arrive at Firebase Alpha, but close. All of the teams that accepted a quest were slow arriving. Angie found out that some teams, like PepMotion, raced here in hours. Cooling their heels for a day? That must be driving Flanni nuts. She laughed. Traitorous bastard.

Team Bloop had been assigned a hooch, a big tent really. The tents were tents setup near the perimeter wall. The outside tent walls featured sandbags stacked about four feet high. If the TU’COns or rebels got through the fence and if they ripped the tent down, it would be a great defensive position.

The Staff Sergeant who brought them to the hooch rightly assumed they needed some time to “refit and figure things out.” He was right. Skills and promotions, healing, refitting equipment. There was lots to do and an unknown about of time to do it in. Time depended on the last two teams out in the field.

There were eight cots in the hootch. Angie ticked them off when they got there- Me, Mike, Heather, Mark. I guess Miranda and Souothaven. Wo are the other two for? The rest of Southaven’s team? Would Miranda actually bunk in here? Would the Mps put her in the brig?

Right now Angie’s team, minus Miranda and Southaven were sitting on cots in the tent-hootch. Mostly they were just taking a deep breath and relaxing for a second- there were no threats here.

“TEN-HUT!” Everybody jumped to their feet. The Chief Master Sergeant stormed into the tent following his shout. An officer came in behind him. The officer was Captain Julian Bukowksi, the company commander.

“You have done outstanding work in a difficult situation. To reward you, I have some promotions to hand out.,” the Captain said.

Angie, as the president of Team Bloop, had been given a bonus and started the game as a Lance Corporal. She was now promoted to Sergeant. Captain Bukowski shook her hand and handed her a set of stripes. When she took them, they magically appeared on her sleeve. That was expected, but no notifications? Shouldn’t I get some kind of notification when I level up?

Heather and Mark were promoted to Private First Class. When Mike’s turn came, he was given his PFC stripe and then the Chief Master Sergeant handed the officer something else. Captain Bukowski held up a set of wings.

“Private, you are hereby awarded provisional flight status.” When he handed Mike the wings, the award magically appeared on the left side of his chest. “If you want to take the time to go to a flight academy, you just let me know.”

Angie hoped he’d turn it down. Going to a flight academy could take weeks. We don’t have time for that.

“Uh, Thank you sir.” Mike replied, “maybe sometime after we are off this, uh, rock.”

“Yu let me know, not sure we could have gotten you there now anyway.” The captain now addressed the group. “Get squared away and get ready. We have to get those people who did us wrong.”

“Yes, sir,” the group answered in unison. The Captain and Chief Master Sergeant left.

Now all of the notifications started popping up.

With her promotion to Sergeant, Angie was given a free skill. During the course of her mission, she had also picked up skills in: command, leadership, marksmanship- shooting and killing, rifleman- pretty much for existing, first aid- for tending to Mark, negotiation- for talking with Carmen, both strategy and tactics and the unfortunately named looting skill.

There was no guarantee that doing something, like tending to Mark’s injuries, would give you a skill like first aid. There was a random chance that doing something would lead to a skill. How hard the task and how often you did it made a difference. After you had the skill you had to work to improve it. Putting band-aids on boo-boos wasn’t going to increase your First Aid skill.

With her free skill, Angie did nothing. She was waiting to use it later. She didn’t have to select a skill, so she wasn’t going to. In the future, new skills would unlock- more choices and better skills. She also may want to level up a current skill. Who knew how much longer the space marine scenario would last or what a future task might be. Tomorrow, if they urgently needed a skilled radio operator, she could add the radio skill. If they had to repair a satellite, she could add the repair skill.

Angie had encouraged everybody else to save some skills as well. Mike was going to do his own thing and had used up his skill. Heather and Mark listened to her and were waiting to choose their final skills.

Skills and everything taken care of, it was time to eat and rearm. It was a VR game, but they still had to eat in-game. Characters could get weak, sick or even starve to death. With the advanced VR capabilities, the players would feel sluggish and weak when their characters did. In our capsules, my code makes us feel hungry. Yay for me! At least it won’t kill us if we starve. I think.

She grabbed Mark as they went off to eat.

“Sergeant?” He looked at her expectantly. Him calling her by her new rank was a little surprising, but she ignored it.

“Two things,” she said, “first...” She handed him the short barreled accelerator rifle she had taken during the base raid. “Accelerator rifle model G-80 carbine.”

He took it and turned it over in his hands. “Nice.”

“I hear lots of scouts prefer shorter barrels.”

“Less to get snagged on in the brush,” Mark just kinda knew that. Must be something from the scout skill I got.

“It’s a G-80. Slightly more advanced than the G-78.” She nodded to the rifle he had slung over his shoulder. “Get the camp’s gun smith to check it out.”

“Sure thing.” He smiled at her and then added, “Sarge.”

Whatever, she thought and smiled back. “Next, what’s up with Miranda?”

Miranda had gone off when they first got back to camp. Both Miranda and SouthHaven had other things to deal with. Southaven was probably with his team. Miranda had come back to their hootch. Right now she was walking with Mike and Heather.

Mark was on the edge of being defensive. “What do you mean what’s up with her?”

Angie started ambling forward. She didn’t want to split the team up too much. “Is she staying with us? Can we trust her? Is she playing us for fools and working for Carmen? Is she a real flesh and blood player?”

“I…I don’t know. I think we can trust her, just a feeling.”

Just a feeling? Angie wanted to rant about AI and programs and sugar spun software, but she said simply, “find out.”