Eric Spears

It was an Army avatar and to Eric it felt like a steam powered contraption that didn’t quite work right. Eric was almost a hundred percent sure it was older than he was, pulled out of storage for this mission. It also felt clumsy and the proportions seemed wrong, the arms were too short and legs weren’t flexible enough. The sensors were also pretty dated and were active, acting like a flashlight. He could ‘see’ but then others could see him looking around.

Looking at the other three avatars of his team, they looked almost normal but their movements did not appear as smooth or fluid. If nothing else the Republic tried hard to keep avatar appearance the same, that way the enemy couldn’t know what model they were up against and what potential vulnerabilities existed. It wouldn’t take long for the enemy to figure out though, but arcology occupants were not military and were not the enemy. Even if they were busy tearing up their homes and rioting.

Standing knee deep in sewage was not Eric’s idea of a good mission, but then the Army units, with more training on civil disobedience and dealing with riots would be located in all the more important areas. Marines were just being used to fill in the gaps while regular Army units did their jobs. His orders were to control a team of avatars, with two avatars covering each direction. Eric decided to put one in the sewage and keep one up on the platform near the hatch going up. The sensors on the avatars couldn’t see too far down the tunnels and Eric didn’t want to expose his entire force to an enemy that could.

“You waist deep in sewage?” Jefferson asked, opening a link to Eric.

“Knee deep,” Eric said.

“Army assholes,” Jefferson said. “I bet they assigned us here for fun. Why do they need sewer security?”

“Someone took out the surveillance grid,” Eric said, cycling through is avatars. He was watching over a substation for third tower, home for about eight thousand people.

“Asshole vandals I’m sure,” Jefferson said. He wasn’t really far away, maybe about a kilometer. “They just don’t want to get caught rioting.”

Maintenance robots were stacked nearby. With the surveillance grid down they didn’t know where to go to conduct repairs.

“The Army has their doctrine,” Eric said looking down at the sewage swirling around his legs.

“Yea,” Jefferson said. “Step one when responding to a riot, dispatch Marines to guard the sewers.”

“It is planet wide though,” Bass said speaking up on the chat channel. “The Army really is short staffed.”

“Why not just put surveillance drones down here? Why avatars?” Jefferson asked.

The channel remained silent.

“I’ll tell you why,” Jefferson said. “Nothing makes the Army happier than making Marines wade through shit in archaic avatars.”

Eric heard Bass chuckle. Eric wasn’t sure if it was a joke though.

“Attention all Marine units,” Lieutenant Wesley said on the platoon broadcast channel. “Be advised the shit just hit the fan upstairs. The arkies have acquired weapons and are shooting up the soldiers. Cheap printed rail guns. This may be evolving into an arcology war. If you encounter any hostiles you may return fire with non-lethal methods. Army units will be notified the second you fire and will move to assist if needed. Do NOT fire unless fired upon. Send acknowledgment.”

Eric queued his acknowledgment and had his avatars sit down with only their helmet and weapon above the disgusting water. They would be a less obvious target.

“This just keeps getting better,” Bass said.

The substation was an access port up into the arcology for maintenance crews to come down and perform maintenance on the sewage repair robots. The water flow itself was sluggish, just barely enough to move the sewage down stream. With the dark vision capabilities of the avatars Eric couldn’t tell what color it was, nor did he want to know. These avatars did not have olfactory sensors although they did have biological warfare sensors, for which Eric was grateful. He could have turned off the smells but that would have required an initial analysis. Centrally located the Army had used the maintenance hatch to get the avatars down here and while Eric could view the blueprints of surrounding areas, it wasn’t very interesting.

“Glad we don’t have to clean these,” Jefferson said and Eric cracked a smile. He had one avatar watching in each direction and then two standing by the maintenance hatch to make sure any rioters did not try to escape. Each avatar was armed with a standard Army issue rifle, a plasma rifle that could shoot both lethal piercing and super heated rounds and then electrically charged rounds that would generally incapacitate whoever got shot. Marines rarely had non-lethal options on their weapons.

Without warning Eric’s third avatar, watching to the north, exploded.

Reflexively Eric spun around the corner spraying the corridor with non-lethal rounds and at the same time he triggered his boosted reflexes and thought process. The avatar felt too sluggish though and Eric felt, more than saw, a railgun round zip past him to slam into the other avatar which was trying to turn around to face the threat.

The non-lethal rounds were like sparks as they shot down the sewer tunnel, illuminating the smooth walls and the figures that were crouching down as they approached.

A massive barrage of fire came at Eric and he ducked back. There had been at least ten figures coming down the corridor and it seemed like they were all firing at him now.

A quick inventory showed he had no explosives or anything besides the rifle, a sidearm, a stun baton and a knife.

Rail gun rounds were chewing away Eric’s cover.

The other avatar that had been guarding the hatch with Eric leaned forward and was blasted into pieces by a high velocity railgun round.

Down to his last avatar Eric popped out his rifle and fired a burst. They were getting closer because Eric could see the wall behind him getting chewed up as their angle on him improved.

A blinding flash of light and searing pain threw Eric forward in his couch.

His screen was blinking “override” in red, indicating someone had overridden his control of the avatar, which was just as painful as getting killed while in an avatar.

Groaning Eric tried to make sense of his displays. Even though it had been an older model Eric had been fully emersed in the VR and getting yanked out hurt.

‘LR Army Sgt J. Winters’ was the name below the override.

Shaking his head and trying to clear it Eric still had a view. The soldier hadn’t even occupied the avatar, he had just dumped Eric and taken over remote.

As Eric watched a railgun caught the avatar and the screen went blank.

“That stupid soldier,” Lieutenant Bishop said, catching Eric by surprise.

“Yes sir,” Eric said, his head throbbing.

“Son of a bitch!” Bass yelled after lurching forward. His groan told Eric what had happened.

“Were you attacked too?” Eric asked.

“No,” Bass said looking up at his screen. Eric could see he still had four avatars. Then the link to the avatars was disconnected. Several other Marines were disconnected as well.

“What is going on?” Bass asked nobody in particular.

“Commando Spears was attacked,” the Lieutenant said. “The Army has a reserve team taking over.”

“They didn’t have to hard dump us sir,” Bass said.

The Lieutenant was quiet for a few moments.

“Looks like you got four of them,” Bishop said looking over towards Eric. It was a small consolation. “There were twelve of them. Heavily armed.”

“Hold on,” Bishop said. “Incoming link from the Army officer in charge.”

Eric and the others waited patiently. The Lieutenant was usually pretty good about passing on information.

After a few minutes the Lieutenant came back online.

“Commando Spears?” Bishop said.

“Yes sir?” Eric said, the Lieutenant’s tone not being a pleasant one.

“You are going to get a demerit from that Army officer,” Bishop said. “And may be facing charges for dereliction of duty.”

“Yes sir,” Eric said. What had he done wrong?

Eric glanced toward the back of the Marine Ops room where the lieutenant was laying in his couch. Dereliction of duty?

“I don’t understand sir,” Eric said.

The Lieutenant sighed before he spoke.

“Yea,” Bishop said. “What were your orders?”

“To guard the substation and hatch up to the arcology, sir,” Eric said.

“And how?” Bishop asked.

“Two avatars watching each direction, sir” Eric said.

“But you had one avatar watching in each direction, the second avatar was up on the platform,” Bishop said.

“Two avatars can’t see any better than one sir,” Eric said.

“Shortly after your station got hit,” Bishop said. “Three other stations got hit. Even though the other stations had warning and were controlled by soldiers they were wiped out without inflicting any casualties on the attackers. The Army lieutenant is just angry that a Marine caught by surprise did better than his soldiers did with plenty of warning. He is trying to discredit us because you had the intelligence to hold at least one avatar in reserve and not exposed to an enemy surprise attack.”

“Other stations were hit sir?” Bass asked.

“Yes,” Bishop said. “I’m also picking up chatter that Bertman Arcology is not the only one being hit like this.”

“What does this mean sir?” Bass asked.

“This is a coordinated effort by hostile forces to destabilize the Republic,” Bishop said. Everyone knew who that was.

“Why aren’t we down there then, sir?” Jefferson asked.

“Because this is the Army’s baliwick people,” Bishop said. “Just because those people are shooting at Republic military forces does not mean they all hostile. If I had to guess they have been successfully manipulated. Doesn’t mean they are right, but killing the whole lot of them won’t solve any problems. A heavy handed and violent response will just play into their hands. Standby. I have a conference call with battalion. I’ll let you know more as I learn more.”

The Lieutenant signed off the link and Eric looked around at his fellow commandos. Everyone had their helmet on and it looked almost like a morgue with most Marines motionless in their crash couches, fully armored.

“Dude,” Bass said. “That is wrong on so many levels.”

“The Lieutenant will fight for you,” Jefferson said. “Those charges will be thrown out and the demerit dismissed. The Army just doesn’t like Marines making them look bad. I’ll bet they put all their avatars in the gunk and they got shot to pieces without warning. I wonder how they did it though.”

“They might have had a drone disguised as a turd providing targeting data,” Eric said. “Or the surveillance systems were compromised instead of down. Heck, maybe the shooters had better sensors, or shot at the IR lights mounted on the avatars.”

“Wicked,” Jefferson said. “So many ways to die.”

Minutes later the Lieutenant came back online.

“Okay people,” the Lieutenant said on the platoon broadcast link. “Stand down. We are going to condition three at this time. Go get some sleep, but be ready to respond. The Army has called in their reserves and claims to have the situation under control. If they need us they will call us. Send acknowledgment.”

Eric queued his acknowledgment and pulled off his VR headset. He knew he wasn’t going to sleep. Adrenaline was still flowing through his system and his head ached.

A private link opened with the lieutenant.

“Don’t worry about that Army Lieutenant,” Bishop said. “I spoke to the colonel and he is going to crush it. You did damned good taking out four of them. Last I saw none of the soldiers managed to take out any attackers despite being warned and ready.”

“Thank you sir,” Eric said, feeling slightly better, although technically he had not followed orders exactly.

“You’re welcome,” the Lieutenant said. “Now go get some sleep.”

“Aye, aye sir,” Eric said and disconnected.