The next stage of the war game, testing the shield against a determined infiltrator from the inside, was scheduled for four days later. Considering the upper echelon of ARES had all been involved in the first stage from start to finish, one day was allotted for rest before the three-day preparatory period began for the second stage of destructive testing on the shield.
As John had been on defense first in the first round, he would be on offense first in the infiltration round. His task was to send a single reaper team into Ceres Station to take down the planetary shield in whatever way they could. They would be given limited intelligence to simulate spy action, including the number of defenders, types of defenses, and potential routes to the shield control stations in the planetoid-cum-space-elevator.
The confidence level of the intel wouldn’t be high, but it would be generally reliable to form the framework of a plan around. The briefing John received set the confidence level in the intel package at 81%, which put it in the category of actionable intel, even if only barely.
Thus, a reaper team was handed the intel package and John wisely stepped back. He wouldn’t be participating in the infiltration itself, and a distant commander shouldn’t interfere with leadership decisions made in the field. Even though ARES had a vast advantage in real-time communications and leaders in the comfortable offices way back behind the front lines could, if they so chose, interfere in front line command decisions, the adage “train like you mean to fight” still applied. And since they couldn’t guarantee their comms would remain stable for a multitude of reasons, it was best to leave it to the commanders on the field to execute the missions assigned to them.
......
High above the North Pole in a high polar orbit was a stealthed space station. Home to ARES special forces, it was invisible to any known means of detection; even the empire would be unable to spot it if they didn’t know exactly where it was in its orbit at any given time. It was one of the most sensitive of all of ARES bases, for one simple reason: it was where reapers were made, and almost all of their tech was classified at such a high level that it would never see the light of day.
Reapers were an odd breed. It should be illegal for anyone to enjoy the suck as much as they did, and they preferred spending all of their time in the simulation, taking part in the eternal war that Athena had hand crafted. Thus, even though the station itself was made to be extremely comfortable, with plenty of park space, facilities for rest and relaxation—yes, even brothels filled with whorebots—and all the luxuries any man could ask for, it was as deserted as a ghost town.
The only facilities that were active were the clinics, where the reapers would go to get new cutting-edge tech installed whenever Lab City would release an update. Those and what the reapers jokingly referred to as the “graveyards”, as they were filled with the coffin-like extended stay VR pods that they spent almost all of their time in. Everything else was silent and dark, visited only by the occasional maintenance bot tasked with cleaning the area or performing minor repairs.
In one of those so-called graveyards was Reaper Team 22, who were in the simulation getting kitted out for their upcoming infiltration mission.
“So we get to blow up Ceres? Holy shit holy shit holy shit sometimes I fucking LOVE my job!” Master Sergeant Cuervo cheered. He was once his team’s demolitions specialist before being promoted to team leader, so any day with a big boom was a great day to be him.
“Sounds like a good day to me, too,” Corporal Cole “Snakeyes” Barrett said. Ceres Station was large, but it wasn’t big enough for him to really play his main role in the infiltration. After all, snipers were at a distinct disadvantage in tight corridors with multiple twists and turns, so he would also be carrying a heavy load of explosives.
Reaper Team 22 was many things, but subtle was most definitely not one of them.
The team dug into the intel package and spent the next few days planning, doing dry runs, and adjusting their plans before the big day. They definitely couldn’t afford another skyscraper incident; they had yet to live down the first one and were still taking shit from other reaper teams about it.
......
Three days later.
The countdown timer once again ticked over to zero, and the reapers left their stealthed station via cold coasting. The most dangerous portion of the assault would be landing on the dwarf planet, so they split into two fireteams of five people, one led by Tekillya and the other led by Snakeyes, and each of them would individually land on the surface of the station in their individual IDMOs.
But man proposes and god disposes, and Tekillya was taken out by a lucky shot from the point defenses on Ceres Station. Howling with rage and spitting streams of profanity, he was forcibly switched from participant to observer, a devastating mental blow to the explosion addict.
Still, if he couldn’t witness the fireworks first hand, he could always watch them from up close. Thus, he chose to spectate over Snakeyes’ shoulder as the two fireteams ran rampant through the station.
The intel package had been oh so very wrong in terms of the number of defenders and layers of defense they would have to get through, and around every corner was another brutal firefight against hastily prepared fighting positions filled with what seemed like an unending stream of defenders. Intel had the defense forces listed as two ARES battalions, but Nyx—their opponent for the infiltration—had armed every single person on the station and thrown them behind slipshod and not-so- slipshod defensive positions along every hallway leading to the center of the station, where the critical shield installations were located.
The reaper team’s initial plan was to go in stealthily, using their knives to take out the patrolling defenders and relying on their technological advantage to keep them hidden. But they had overlooked one glaringly obvious flaw with that plan: they were going up against people with the same tech they had.
Thus, after more than fourteen hours, the final surviving reaper made it through to the center of the station, completely out of ammunition for his weapons, out of batteries in his Pappy, and his NUTS in tatters. He was even missing his left hand, having had a grenade detonated by a lucky shot while he was still in the process of throwing it.
Still, Snakeyes had made it, and he still had his explosive satchel charges. He knew he couldn’t possibly make it back for exfiltration, so he armed the explosives and sprinted the last few meters between him and the nearest fusion reactor containment chamber.
His last words before the fireworks show began were, “SEE YA LATER MOTHERFU—”
Reaper Team 22 had accomplished the mission in a spectacular fashion, but with no survivors.
