Pickman did not reply.
Taylor said, “We’d like to see one of your training playbacks.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the specialist. She retrieved two sets of large VR goggles, which looked familiar to Brodie from photos and videos he’d seen of people looking like idiots. The goggles were attached by long cables to a computer in the corner of the room. “There’s a head strap you can adjust.”
Brodie put the goggles on and did his best to adjust the strap. The headset was heavy and uncomfortable. The future was here, and it sucked.
He could see through the goggles, though everything looked dim.
SPC Christiansen Blair said, “Give me one sec,” then flicked a switch, and all the structures on the table glowed neon green. Brodie noticed blacklights shining from the ceiling onto the model village, which must have been coated in blacklight paint.
Brodie turned and looked at Taylor, who was exaggeratedly looking around the room from behind her goggles. Maggie Taylor looked good wearing almost anything, but even she couldn’t pull these things off.
Pickman said, “Cue up the most recent exercise.” He said to Brodie and Taylor, “Our Rangers gave them hell. I mean, up to a point.”
Up to the point when they all died, he meant.
Brodie heard the woman punch some keys, then a stream of floating red text popped up in Brodie’s viewfinder. Most of it was gibberish to him, though he did make out a date: May 20.
He focused on the model of the village as dozens of bright objects popped up all over—blue human-shaped icons dispersed around the town. In the road, on rooftops, entering buildings. He saw now what the specialist had been talking about with the obstruction of virtual objects by real ones. As a blue human icon went into a building—there were no complex animations, just a drifting shape—the icon disappeared, and then partially reappeared through a window. Brodie stepped to his left a few paces to get a different perspective and saw the blue “person” through the doorway. It was actually incredible, and lent realism and dimension to these digital avatars.
He kept rounding the table until he was around the backside of thehigh sand berm. Twelve inverted red triangles were lined up behind it, motionless. The tin men.
Brodie now noticed a timecode ticking forward by the millisecond in the bottom right of his field of vision. He watched and waited as the seconds passed. Then, in an instant, the red triangles crested the berm and moved swiftly toward the village.
The little model village lit up with what looked like tracer rounds, bursts of red and blue dashes punching through the air.
A blue figure on a rooftop scored a kill with a mounted machine gun, and a red triangle blipped off. Return fire from the advancing triangles immediately wiped out the blue guy, plus another gunner on a hilltop.
The blue icons moved frantically around the village as the triangles rapidly advanced, while simultaneously hitting the village with an unending barrage of red rifle fire. The Rangers got another kill, and then three of them were shot through the open windows.
As the D-17s entered the village, the battle intensified. Three bots began scaling a tall building. Two more fired down the roadway with precision, taking out three more Rangers. The red rounds only grew in frequency and intensity, while the blue ones grew sparse as the Rangers took cover. Which was natural and expected. It’s hard to aim and shoot while someone is firing directly at you trying to kill you. Unless, of course, you’re a tin man without a heart.
A streak of blue light arced out of a window and missed its target in the roadway. A grenade round. More grenades flew out of windows and off rooftops, as the Rangers attempted to saturate the narrow roadways with detonations. If the Rangers’ targets had been human, the slim roads and alleys would have been ideal kill zones. But, Brodie imagined, the SIMRES training system was programmed for the intended target, meaning the grenades being launched by the Rangers had a smaller kill radius for the armored bots than they would have for a human. Therefore, round after round rained down on the red triangles, and only two blipped out.
It was over quickly after that. The red triangles breached every building and took out the Rangers. Even as little red triangles versus blue stick figures, the superior speed and dexterity of the D-17s was obvious. They reacted faster and got off more shots and fired with perfect accuracy every time.
The little blue people blipped out one by one, until there was only a single Ranger left, running along the roadway toward a three-story building with a mounted machine gun on top.
The Ranger made it to the gun and blasted away into the village. He was unable to score a hit. Then Brodie noticed the remaining red triangles—seven of them—congregating on a road far away from the machine gun nest. They remained motionless, waiting. Brodie didn’t understand what was happening.
Taylor, who had situated herself on the opposite end of the table, said, “Look.”
Brodie walked over to where she was standing, and from that vantage saw a single red triangle scaling the tower toward the sole surviving Ranger as he blasted at the village below with the mounted gun. The bot reached the top and the blue icon immediately vanished. Shot in the back. He never saw it coming.
Then the red triangles all blipped out, and a floating scoreboard appeared in front of Brodie:BLUE TEAM: 4. RED TEAM: 36. VICTOR: RED TEAM.
The score faded away, and then SPC Christiansen Blair flicked off the blacklight and the model village grew dim.
Brodie and Taylor removed their headsets, a bit bleary-eyed and disoriented. For a moment no one said anything.
Captain Pickman, feeling the need to contextualize the Rangers’ performance, said, “Four kills is a good day. Not their best, but better than average.”
Brodie asked, “Do the Rangers have comm links?”
“Yes.”
“You wouldn’t know it by the way they were moving once the bots reached the village perimeter. Total chaos. Unprofessional, especially by the standard of Rangers, frankly.”
