Day 293 - The War Corp. - Chapter 3.1 (2133 Words)

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THE WAR CORP.

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 3.1

Gauntlet was a battle against no other army and it was designed to thin the ranks a little, an equalizer to create a balance when a team’s roster was bigger than the rest of the Teams in the League. A handicap engagement, which was a maze of traps and threats that would surprise the recruits and reduce the number to an acceptable level.

Audiences and bookies would place their money on the obstacles and the likelihood of survival rates. Unlike the CBT, which was designed to weed out the unready and unsuitable subjects, this was set at a higher level and there were no objectives other than to get to the other end. With the objective of Gauntlet came the need to complete the course, which was the pressing that each recruit would feel when presented with that goal.

Liam did not share the objective with his recruits; he just stared through the door. The hallway it led to was black and a very low level of light was available to them, the airlock providing most of what was there. A small rectangle glowed green in the far distance, some hundred meters away at the end of what looked to be an innocent corridor.

Liam knew what a Gauntlet was, knew that this was a trap and if he told the recruits that it was then they too would be cautious.

He was at a crossroads, what to do and how to proceed.

He could lead them forward and take on any trap that came up, and then he’d get the release he was dying for, for what he would be dying to receive. The objective against that was pressing him to survive, suicide was not an option no matter how attractive it seemed to him. The bones that had broken, knitted back together and healed were still there, he could feel the brittle nature of them, could sense that they set in amongst muscle and tissue awkwardly, not back the way they were. Subtle differences between the way his machine used to operate and the way it felt now, the pumping of his legs and the stretching of his arms.

He could send the recruits in with the warning, and tell them what their objective was and they would be ready for it, and the losses would be minimized.

The secondary objective was less than twenty percent, which meant he would be able to lose four men off the team. He could kill four men right now, it would not be outside of the rules, it would be unorthodox, but there it would be. The purpose of the Gauntlet was to thin the pack, even the odds on their next encounter. He could get through with them all but then they’d still be unbalanced.

The purpose was to cull the team, reduce the numbers and lose no more than four. If he shared the objective with Brodie or Sharpe they would adjust their methods and change their tack. It was possible that they would guess before long that they were in a Gauntlet and would change anyway, but Liam was still in charge.

The “Go, Go, Go.” Signal was coming through his NINE, the only information extra other than the two objectives. He was getting no assistance and plenty of insistence.

Liam stared at the door for longer, and when messages finally stopped coming through he stepped into the doorway and motioned to team to stay where they were. The first ten steps were in the relative light of the doorway, and then it tapered in to blackness fast, there was no new ambient light coming his way. He was still a long way from the end of the corridor, and so far nothing had triggered.

Liam stood still and let his eyes adjust, they had excellent night vision pre-programmed into their genetic make up when being grown for battle, but they were also not expected to think too much, just to act.

Liam Zero Six was different.

He waited a minute or two more and a shape began to form in the dark, a line that ran up the length of what he expected to be wall, but far from being a featureless corridor this blank wall had something that created a small edge, like a lip or a corner, like there was maybe a second corridor or panel set into the wall there, and he could barely make it out.

The first trap perhaps? It was time to deploy the team and trigger it.

He relayed an order back to Brodie Seven Three for a recruit to walk ahead of him and survey the corridor. He relayed a second order to Sharpe to activate ‘record’ mode on his NINE and take up a position just inside the corridor against the wall, with an unobstructed view past where Liam stood. Seconds later a recruit walked carefully past him, moving the air around him but not touching him when proceeding ahead.

Liam reached out and tapped the recruit on the shoulder; it was a Brodie Four One, similar in physical appearance to the B73 designation, but without the determination and leadership qualities. This Brodie had developed a knack for following and completing objectives, not setting or leading to them. There was no way to know how each copy of the original one hundred soldiers would end up, but the CBT usually set them apart in behavior. Liam’s NINE showed that B41 was in his range and set into his HUD.

A Team Leader was given extra options, to get information on the designations and recruits in the Team, and that was what he did now. He could get the feed from B41’s NINE cloned to his own display and set up a private command line between him and the recruit as B41 turned and looked at his Team Leader.

He flicked his fingers at his eyes then at the recruit, wanting to maintain eye contact and keep the channel open; he waved him to walk away from him, but backwards and facing him the entire time. Liam remotely set the record mode on the recruit as he sent him backwards into what he knew to be a certain death.

The unknowing recruit crossed the line where Liam had seen the line on the wall, something he could not quite put his finger on until there was a definite and very loud click as one final step backwards landed on some kind of pressure plate, a trigger that spring the trap on him.

The black line was a doorway, an opening that snapped open and lit up the entire corridor in red and white light, a field of fire filling the hole and punching against the wall on the opposite side, taking the recruit fully into it’s intense heat for the one second it was on.

The recruit never took his eyes off his commanding officer, even as he blinked and screamed in pain he kept his gaze turned towards him and fell backwards to land with a crackly thud. His uniform kept the bulk of the damage off his skin, but it was the exposed extremities that were seared and scarred with blackened, blistered flesh from the unavoidable flame.

Liam’s NINE registered the recruit as critical, blinking red and seconds from death, the B41’s NINE showed the objectives and the record mode was flickering but actively watching the Team Leader who was watching him.

A knife came from Liam’s pocket, a small blade with just enough depth to push through the skin and tissue above the recruit’s heart and end his life. The resistance offered by the uniform was minimal, and it popped through the material made brittle by the heat. As the knife punched through the skin and into the recruits heart there was the briefest flicker of relief in him, knowing that the searing heat and pain surrounding his charred skull like a halo, was ending.

The light in his eyes died as the knife twisted, stopping his heart and letting him go. The body and mind gave no struggle and the lights in his NINE all came to and end.

Liam watched it all happen, stored the recording of the B41 NINE in his own memory and then stood up to look down the corridor, it was as black as before and no more could be seen. Now there was a stench of burned flesh and material in the space, but they could not even see the body of the fallen recruit on the ground.

“Objective.” Came a message from Brodie Seven Three and though Liam was not facing the Two Eye See, he knew that he would have been raised and angry at the death of a Team Member. He did not understand the need for the loss; he did not understand the gift that Liam had imparted at the very end. Brodie was objectives driven and all he wanted to do was make them and get out. The directive to save the Team, and the need to save yourself was a prime motivator and pushed at him constantly.

Liam on the other hand had a new perspective, one that fought against his programming and made him do things in ways that he though would get him to server both of these unceasing needs within. He had to meet objectives, but he wanted to find the abyss and dive in like B41 had. He could see the recruit in his memory feed, standing on the edge and then falling forever into the nothing as the sensation of the knife popping in the space between his ribs gave way to an irreversible action. That moment on the edge, the letting go of your life and the responsibility of the relief lying with someone else, not challenging your own self-preservation needs, that was the gift. The end of life was end the end of a journey that started with letting go.

Liam had felt it back in CBT, coming over that wall in Brodie’s arms and seeing everything in his NINE come to a halt, he was not conscious of it except at the level of the pain that assaulted him. He could not see it with his eyes and could not feel it with his limbs, but beneath it his entire mind sat on the edge and when he felt it give way he surrendered to it and was free.

Only to wake up in prison again, alive and without pain sure but trapped in the plane of existence when he could have been safely in the black.

“Mapped.” Sharpe announced and the corridor came up as a schematic in everyone’s NINE showing the three more fire traps that were set in the walls up to the end of the corridor, and where the floor triggers were. He had recorded the death of the recruit in his own field of vision and then played it back, slowed the speed and mapped a small wireframe of the corridor in his own NINE. In the one second of intense light he got all the visual data that Liam would need to traverse the rest of the first obstacle in the Gauntlet.

He had sacrificed one recruit to map the corridor and stay within the objectives. There was just the matter of being able to get to the end without setting them off or by setting them off with no risk to the team.

“Deploy the body at waypoint two.” Liam brushed a hand across his face as Brodie carried out the order, taking the charred corpse of B41 and carrying it towards the second trap, stopping a few meters away from it and then launching the ex-team member forwards through the air.

The body hit the switch and once again the flames arced from the wall, this time in the opposite direction to the first trap, but still as deadly and still as intensely hot as the first fire wall.

One step at a time the team progressed to the final doorway and the corpse of B41 was at it’s end of being useful, the charring and the reduction of mass meant that it was a shadow of it’s former self and was not quite heavy enough to fully trigger the final switch.

A bulkhead plate was wrenched from the corridor wall and thrown on top of the body, setting off the last of the fire walls and adding a metallic tang to the smoke than emanated from the burned section of wall and the ball of charcoal that represented the first loss in the A.C.E. Team since they had joined the League.

Liam pressed the green button to open the door at the end of the entryway to the Gauntlet.