terrorist rather seriously, attempted to use Calinga as a human shield. But the advancing MOPs fired in unison, and five spider rounds hit the terrorist’s helmet in nearly the same spot. The man’s suit went stiff, and he released Calinga. He didn’t even bother dropping to the floor as was the rule of the game. It was all over at that point.
“About time you got here,” said Calinga. “It’s no fun being the hostage. I don’t get a weapon, and they wouldn’t even give me something to read.”
When they got outside, Wit ended the exercise. He blinked the command to unfreeze everyone’s suits and had them all gather in the meadow for a debriefing, both MOPs and terrorists alike. The men sat in a wide circle all around him under the moonlight.
“What did we learn?” Wit asked.
“That Calinga makes a terrible hostage,” said Deen, who had played a terrorist. “He wouldn’t stop whining. We almost shot him to shut him up.”
The men laughed.
“I almost shot myself,” said Calinga. “Boring as hell, this crew.”
The men laughed again.
“Here’s what I learned,” said Wit. “Seven MOPs prevailed against twenty-four equally trained commandos. Why? Because we’re better soldiers? Because we’re smarter? Faster? No. We won for two reasons: One, you bad guys were sloppy. You weren’t taking proper cover. We picked you off way too easily.”
“We were giving you the real thing,” said Deen. “Terrorists are always sloppy.”
“Don’t give me the real thing,” said Wit. “Give me you, one of the finest trained, most intelligent soldiers I know. Be merciless. I don’t want realism. I want worse than realism. I want a hundred times more difficult than realism. Do everything in your power to annihilate us. That way, when the bullets are real, when our lives are on the line, we will do our duty with exactness. We will never lose. I should have seen nothing when we approached this compound. You should have been completely invisible to me and the satellite. You should have killed us before we left the trees. Why didn’t you?”
“You were with the new guys,” said Deen. “We thought we’d make it a little easier for them.”
“Do you think they need any hand-holding?” asked Wit. “Do you think that just because they’re new to this unit that they’re not good enough or experienced enough to take you at your best? If so, you’re in for the surprise of your life tomorrow when we do this again. From here on out, we pull no punches. If you lose, it’s because you screwed up and were bested and not because you let someone win.”
“I was actually trying,” said one of the guards. “Chi-won jumped out of the bushes so fast, I nearly pissed myself.”
The men laughed.
“Good,” said Wit. “I’m glad you only nearly pissed yourself. Had you actually done so your suit might have short-circuited and given you quite the shock.”
“Smoked sausage,” said Deen, to another round of laughter.
“From here on out,” said Wit, “you act as if your life is on the line. No more going easy. No more pretending that the enemy is inferior or less intelligent than you. Which brings me to the second reason why you failed. We MOPs had better tech. The enemy had older rifles, no computer assistance, no satellites, no peekers, no thermal vision. This was a tech war, and we won because of our equipment. Pinetop, if I had stripped you of all of your gear, could you have taken the hostage?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I’d be unarmed.”
“So you’re only an effective soldier if I arm you? You’re only good if I give you better equipment?”
Pinetop hesitated. “No, sir. It’s just more difficult. If I had been unarmed, I would have taken down one of the guards and confiscated his weapon. Then I could have picked off the others.”
“And what if you didn’t know how to operate the enemy’s weapon?” said Wit. “What if it was tech you had never seen before?”
“Then I’d be in a pickle, sir.”
“So you would have given up?”
“No, sir. I would just have a harder time of it. I’d need to devise ways to beat my enemy using what little resources were at my disposal.”
“Such as?”
“The forest could supply me with spears, for example.”
Deen laughed. “Spears? Against twenty-four armed men holding a defensive position?”
“Does that seem unlikely to you, Deen?” asked Wit.
Deen saw that no one else was laughing. “Forgive me, sir, but that sounds a touch impossible, doesn’t it?”
Wit stared at him for ten long seconds. “Are you a MOP, Deen?”
“Yes, sir. To the core, sir. Absolutely.”
“Then I expect you to take down twenty-four armed men, using only a spear. I expect you to take down a thousand men with a toothpick. We are not soldiers until we know how to go stark naked against a fully armed enemy and kill him.”
Deen nodded, humbled. “Yes, sir.”
Wit turned to the others. “We have become too reliant on our tech. Who’s to say we will always have the technological advantage? What if there were an enemy with capabilities and weapons far beyond our own? Do we give up?” He waited for a response. “I said, do we give up?”
The men shouted in unison, “No, sir!”
“This is an inevitability, gentlemen. Sooner or later we will face a threat whose tech surpasses our own. Or we will face an enemy who figures out how to completely neutralize our tech. Weapons, communication, GPS, drones, rifles, explosives, everything. Let’s figure out how to fight them no matter what they do and no matter how hard it is.” He paused, coming to a decision. “From here on out, we will also train for missions without tech. Zero. Then we’ll train for missions without gunpowder. Then we’ll train for missions in which the enemy can always see us. Whatever the situation is, we will always be at the severe disadvantage. It’s time we reminded ourselves what makes us PCs and MOPs. It is not the chips inside our rifles. It is the gray matter between our ears. The enemy may outgun us, but they will never outthink us.” He turned to the six MOPs with whom he had taken the compound. “Gentlemen, leave your rifles and tech here. Carry only a pouch of spider pads. These will serve as your spears. Wear only your dampening suits. No helmets. Head into the hills, no farther than three miles. In two hours, twenty- four soldiers equipped with all the tech we possess will come hunt you down and kill you unless you kill them first.”
The six MOPs stood and began removing their gear.
“And Deen,” said Wit, turning to the man. “I’d like you to go with them. You may doubt your own abilities, but I don’t. I will be coming for you personally. Take me down before I find you.”
Deen stood and smiled, pleased for the chance to redeem himself. “Thank you, sir.”
The MOPs ran away from the group at a sprint into the forest. Deen ran after them, hopping over the underbrush at the tree line and disappearing under the cover of trees.
CHAPTER 13
Files
Lem looked through the mining reports in the cargo bay and tried his best to appear pleased. The crew chief was beside him, smiling, waiting for Lem’s praise. By the look of the reports, the man deserved plenty of praise indeed. The numbers were impressive. The scoopers were bringing in so much metal from the dust cloud that the men couldn’t smelt it into cylinders fast enough. Iron-nickel, cobalt, magnesium, all the big-money metals. Thousands of tons of it already. It was more than Lem could have hoped for. Yet Lem’s mind was so plagued at the moment by El Cavador and the files that they had stolen from the ship’s computers that he couldn’t even enjoy the good news.
