Ch: 122 Combined both parts

Unedited

Working on the next chapter to Sage tonight.

Chapter 122

What we are up against

Freya nearly ran into a female army soldier after hearing the telepath’s voice in her head. Thankfully she was able to dodge the woman at the last second. The soldier frowned at her, but then continued on to where Freya assumed was the soldier's place in the formation.  She looked back at the PsyOps agent, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He seemed to be gazing off into the distance.

Freya found her place in the formation at the left side of the quad. Behind her fifteen medium and light armored people formed up. Turning around she found herself nearly toe to toe with a scowling Navy Petty Officer. A quick count of his chevrons told her he was the same rank as Diaz which meant he was a Petty Officer First Class.

“Just so you know, Marine, there is a dress code that you are required to follow.” He told her in a furious whisper.

Freya looked down at her uniform and frowned. Her gig line was straight. Her boots were shiny as only something that came from a printer could be. She wasn’t wearing any weapons, and from what she could see the printer hadn’t mis-equipped anything. She looked up and gave the petty officer a confused look.

“Uniform regulations require you to wear sleeves with your working uniform.” He hissed at her. She noted that his face had turned red, and there were a few droplets of sweat on his nose.

“There are no such requirements for Marines.” Freya told him, getting angry in return.

“This isn’t the Marines anymore, Sergeant.” He said, stepping into her personal space.

“Hos, this isn’t the Navy, either.” A quiet, but oddly familiar voice said from behind the petty officer. Freya wanted to look for who had spoken, but she refused to look away from the petty officer. Her new rank meant that she was the same rank as he was.

“There are no regulations other than those of the operator's branch of service. Until there is, any operator in my platoon will be allowed to follow their uniform regulations.” The voice told the petty officer. “Now fall in. We are all waiting on you.”

The petty officer stared at her for a few more seconds before turning around and taking his place next to a large marine in heavy armor. Freya assumed he was the one who had spoken as he took his place as the platoon leader in the front of the platoon. The navy guy took the place of the assistant platoon leader. Freya mentally cursed as she realized she had just faced off against her future boss. Still, there was no way she was going to be stomped on like Sergeant Gawine had stomped on her. She just hoped her past would speak for her future.

She looked at her mini map to see who the marine was, but her mini map hadn’t been updated yet. It just showed that her assumption was right. He was her new platoon leader, and the navy guy was her new assistant platoon leader. Other than that she got no information on who was who except that they were listed as friendly. In fact, now that she checked, pretty much everyone standing on the quad was unlisted except for her old platoon who, she saw, were scattered all over the quad.

Looking at the back of her new boss, she wondered why he looked familiar. His working uniform was similar to most heavy armored uniforms. He colored it black, and wore a simple helmet. She didn’t recognize the make nor the model of his armor, but then again she wasn’t an expert on heavy armor either. The only thing she did recognize about the armor was that it was one of those armors that heavy assaults like to use for doing urban warfare. The kind that they used when they were first in through a door. The armor was big, bulky and heavily armored in the front compared to other armors of the type.

She broke off examining the marine in front of her as Kruz started speaking again. “Company, atten...chen! At close intervals, dress right, dress.” Freya’s new Gunny ordered. Freya snapped to attention and stood in place looking to her right while the man next to her lifted his left elbow out straight. Freya shooted towards him, adjusted her position so that she was touching his elbow. She then held this position until Kruz spoke the next order.

“Ready, front!” Kruz called out. Everyone dropped their arm to their side and looked forward. Freya noted that everyone, no matter their branch of service, did exactly the same thing. She thought it was a cool thing to witness.

Freya watched as Kruz did a smart about-face so that she was now facing the same direction as the company. She saluted Captain Thompson and spoke once more. “Company is ready for inspection.”

“At ease.” Captain Thompson replied and everyone adjusted their position to the at-ease stance with their hands behind their backs and feet shoulder-width apart.

“My name is Captain Thompson. I’m the commander of all SAS units. So far that just means you people. You have been invited to take part in a very unique unit. This unit reports directly to the director of Intelligence Services who reports directly to Joint Command. Our mission is to gather intelligence and kill Ketica officers. Gunnery Sergeant Kruz is your company commander. She is your direct supervisor after your platoon leaders.” Captain Thompson told them.

“This is a cross-branch service. That means I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care how it’s always been done or how you do it back where you’re from. You are going to do it my way or I’ll bounce you out like the rock you are.” Thompson said in her quiet but far-reaching voice.

“We are here to kill Ketica. If you get in the way of that, I will see that you are punished to the furthest extent that I can.” Thompson told them. “Each platoon will have one PsyOps agent in their ranks. They are combat psychics. That means that they have been trained and will fight by your side. While they are in non-command positions, they can give you an order, and I expect you to obey that order. Trust me, it will save your life. If you have problems with psychics then speak up now. You will be dismissed without prejudice. If you do not then I will make sure your stay in the military is a living hell. As short as it will be, that is.”

She paused for a few seconds, but no one spoke up. “Very well.” She continued. “After you are dismissed you will get a dossier on the Ketica, but I will go over the key points right now. First, in the past four days the October has been fighting them on the surface of the planet Karma. In those four days, they have suffered over fifty percent casualties on planet.”

“Those are true deaths, not people who have been zeroed out. Also that number is misleading. Normally when we talk about casualties we are talking about combatants. This time I’m not time I’m not just talking about combatants. I’m talking about over fifty percent of all who have gone down to the planet have died a true death. This includes command and support staff. Combat personnel have taken the worst casualties, but there have been significant casualties outside the traditional combatants as well.  As of right now, if anyone dies on planet they are not coming back. Let me make myself clear. Half the invading forces have died a true, final death in the past four days. They will not be coming back.” Thompson clarified.

“We are working on this, but let me tell you right now, don’t hold your breath. Every death on the planet has had their data corrupted beyond recovery at the very data warehouses themselves, hundreds of light years away. Gone in less than a second.” Thompson told them, snapping her finger. “Let that sink into your heads. You screw up one time, get unlucky and that’s it. You’re done for. No respawns. No nothing. True death.”

“You want to know the score? Humanity, above fifty percent casualties in four days. Ketica, two deaths in four days. We don’t count bio constructs’ deaths as they can easily be replaced in a matter of hours. If you can’t do the math, let me summarize for you. We are losing, and losing badly.”

“We have six days before we will be activated. We will not be doing any sim missions. We will only be doing practice missions and we will be doing them from early in the morning to late at night. You will all have mandatory skills that will need to be trained in the training facility before we can begin. Before there are any complaints, you will be doing cross training in other branches. That means marines will have to get the Navy SEAL’s infiltration and close quarters skills. Navy personnel will have to do marine small unit tactics and advanced warfare. You army types will have to do everything. I don’t care what your job is with this company, you will all have these skills done before we are deployed or you will find yourself a new place to work.” Thompson told them with a wry smile.

“The good news about these skills is that the Federation is fronting the cost. This is not a loan. You get these skills for free. All skills that I or my command staff require you to take will be given to you for free. This is a one-time thing, so don’t get used to it.” Thompson told them.

“The fact that it’s free, and that you are here in the first place, should tell you just how important the Federation thinks our mission is. To get you people here in the first place cost millions of credits and took an amount of resources you can’t even begin to imagine. So when I say just how important this mission is, I want you to understand what I mean. If we lose this planet, all of humanity, not just the Federation, is in jeopardy. That includes every podunk planet outside the Federation as well.”

“We have six days to get into fighting shape.” Thompson told them. “Six days until you are sent into the grinder. Read your info packets, get your skills done, and pay attention to those who have fought the Ketica before and maybe you’ll come back alive when this is over. That is all. Kruz, dismiss the troops.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Kruz said and saluted Thompson. She did another smart about-face as Captain Thompson and her two aides started walking away. “Platoon leaders, take ten minutes to get to know your troops. After that we will break for one hour to get your skills done as well as get the equipment that you’re gonna need. We will return and start in on the practice missions. Expect to go late into the night, and start early in the morning. No leave will be approved. You are all restricted to the camp until training is done.”

She paused a second then nodded to them. “Company, atten...chen! Dismissed.”

Freya was immediately inundated with notifications about her rewards, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. No, what caught her attention was that her mini map had finally updated and she was able to read the name of her new boss.

“Jesus? Is that you?” She asked as the large platoon leader turned around. She pronounced his name Hay-Soos. He looked exactly the same as the last time she saw him on the Monarch, which wasn’t a surprise as no one aged in the military. No what caught her attention was the big, stupid white skull he had painted on the front of his armor.

“Hey Magic, small world.” He said with a smile. Then he looked past her to the rest of the platoon. “Alright people, on me. We are going to do the meet and greet, then I want everyone off to the training facilities or the shops for new gear. The Captain is serious about our training. For most of you, it’s going to suck.”

The company circled around him and when he motioned it, they sat on the ground with him. “My name is Jesus, I’m a SpecOps Marine with a Heavy Assault Health Template with six combat deployments and I’ve lost count of how many operations that I have been on. This is my second platoon. This is Petty Officer First Class Johnson, Navy SEAL with eight tours of duty under his belt. He is a fast infiltration and target acquisition template. He is my second.”

“That…” He said pointing at her, “... is Sergeant O’Malley, call sign Magic. She is my third, and our platoon Psychic. She’s a Marine Scout template and a hell of a good finger puller. I’ve known her since she was on her first sim mission out of boot. I’ve deployed with her on a SpecOps mission that has since been classified. This is her fourth deployment with our Captain, and she has been credited with the first Ketica kill along with being the one to uncover the intel needed to kill the second. If she tells you to do something, you better damn well do it or you will be answering to me.”

“She’s a Psyops agent?” A navy guy asked from the far side of the group sitting in front of Jesus.

“No, they don’t consider her powerful enough to be a full agent.” Jesus replied. “She’s what they call a future walker. In dumbed-down terms, she’s a clairvoyant that can see multiple outcomes of the near future. I’ve been told it’s not something she can control. Magic, if you will?”

Freya nodded to her old friend and new boss as everyone turned to look at her. “Most of the time I get what I call instincts, they are sort of urges that I need to do something right this minute. Kind of like the hair on the back of your neck that stands on it’s ends when someone is looking at you. I get that, only more often than the rest of you do. I have had one episode where I lived what felt like several real lives for a few minutes. In those moments, I died three times. Once I lived through that, I came back to myself with the knowledge that the Katica was going to attack, and how to survive that attack.”

“And PsyOps didn’t scoop you up?” The same navy guy asked.

“I’ve been told it’s too uncontrolled for them.” Freya told him.

“Back on topic.” Jesus said, before anyone else could question her. “We are a multi-branch platoon, and I know there are going to be rough spots where things are different than you are used to. I ask that you take the time to understand that this is not your branch of service. Come to me, Petty Officer Johnson, or Magic. We will sort this out. Now, I know you all want to read up on the intel that has been sent to you, but I want you to wait as we introduce ourselves to everyone else. Please, give your fellow platoon member the respect of paying attention as they talk. You know my command staff, why don’t you start?” Jesus said, pointing to a marine that was sitting directly in front of him.

Freya did her best to ignore the blinking light of her notifications as her squad introduced themselves. It was hard, because she really wanted to know all the details of her advancement. Mainly she wanted to know how she went from a level 34 corporal to a sergeant. That was sixty-six levels at the very least. All in one deployment. While real world missions gave great E-points, they didn’t normally give that many out at a time. If they did ,a lot of people she knew from her old platoons would be sergeants by now.

After her squad, the second squad started to introduce themselves. Her squad was mainly half and half with navy and marine personnel after the two army people that were also in the squad. The navy guys were like PO Johnson in that they all had the target acquisition part in their template. They just had other things like Unconventional Warfare, Reconnaissance, and Hostage Rescue along with the Infiltration that the assistant platoon sergeant, or rather petty officer, had.

The army guys were medium armored communication experts. They were both sergeants, but one was female and the other was male. According to them, they were special forces with the job to record, break, and punch through any type of jamming. The male sergeant said that if there was a way around the Ketica blackout in communications, they would find it. Freya thought it was a waste, but didn’t bring her opinion up. As she had been told before by Captain Thompson, aliens were alien. She did mentally wish them luck though. The marines were a mixture of drone, and demo guys, all in medium armor.

Second Squad turned out to be mainly marines with heavy armor. Most of them were some sort of heavy assault templates, but there were a few ambush types mixed in as well. The third squad in the platoon was a mixture of all three branches. The army transport people were there along with a bunch of Navy SEALs and Marine SpecPps people. They were, she realized, replacements for when people started dying.

“One more thing before we all go over the intel.” Jesus said, after the last member of Third Squad introduced herself to the platoon. Johnson, Freya noted, was setting up a holo screen as Jesus talked. “We are going to see two versions of the first kill of the Ketica. The first version is what you would see if you haven’t been through the PsyOps program to see through the active camo that the Ketica uses. We will go through that program when we land on planet. The second version is a computer-generated version of the enemy which you will be able to see after you've been through the program. Magic, you were there. Can you narrate what is going on?”

Freya cursed as she realized that they were going to go over the intel together. She stood up as Jesus stood back. PO Johnson did something, and turned on the holo screen. A frozen image came up of Freya leading Monkeyman and Lurch towards a hole in the ground. She froze for a second as she saw Lurch. She couldn’t see his face as the feed was coming from behind them. He was walking behind her with Monkeyman on the other side of the tunnel.

“Magic, you ready?” Jesus asked, bring her back from her memories.

“Yes, sorry.” Freya told him then turned so she could face her new platoon. “You have to excuse me, but this is the first time I’m seeing this feed. We are at a Ketica fort inside a tunnel which was found inside a dome-like building. When we arrived, the operation to take the fort was already over. My platoon was sent in to see if we could find a Ketica. Our primary objective was to capture a Ketica and have our PsyOps agent attempt to read it. We failed to capture it as you’ll see, but our telepath did get some information before it died.”

“These tunnels were big. Much bigger than the second time we went hunting them. They were about ten to fifteen feet wide. We dropped down into the middle of a passageway. We sent out drones, and found multiple caves branching off behind us, but only one in front of us. It had a hole in it that when we sent in our drone, it was destroyed. We decided to block up the entrance that led to the multiple tunnels and check out the hole as that was the most promising area according to our psychic.” Freya told them. Looking back, she noted that Johnson hadn’t started the recording yet. She mentally shrugged and continued on.

“How many people were in your platoon at the time?” A marine sergeant in the second platoon asked.

“Four in our platoon, but we also had Captain Thompson along with us and the PsyOps agent.” Freya replied.

“Magic was only a fire team leader at the time.” Jesus said when she finished her reply. “Her fire team was the only one to survive their previous missions. This mission came in too fast for reinforcement to be added so they went in with just her fire team.”

Freya nodded and turned back to the rest of the platoon. No one spoke so she continued. “We set up metal barriers with auto turrets to protect our exits. From there, we proceed to our objective. Let’s watch the clip, and I’ll explain what happened.”

Freya watched with everyone else as the events unfolded. To her surprise, the Ketica didn’t show up in the feed even for her. It looked like she was dodging and shooting at nothing. Then the hard part came. The moment when Lurch lost his life. She winced physically when she ducked on the holo screen to avoid the tentacle, but Lurch had been too slow to react. In the feed it looked like Lurch just fell over. He was in the midst of shooting his gun, then he seemed to relax right before he dropped his gun with his body following soon after.

The fighting continued for a few more moments then everyone on the screen dropped to the ground just like Lurch did moments before except for her. She watched herself as she held her helmet where her left ear would be as she pulled her pistol out and started shooting. It appeared that she was shooting down the tunnel until a denial sphere popped out of nowhere and dropped to the ground. The feed froze again not long after that.

Freya felt odd watching what had happened. It was like she was streaming some low budget show. It didn’t feel real to her even though she lived through it. She couldn’t get over how oddly disconnected she felt watching the fight.

“For those of you who joined us right now, that was a feed of the first Ketica hunt. Sergeant O’Malley, Magic, led the hunt and as you saw is credited with the first human kill of a Ketica.” Jesus said behind her. Confused, Freya turned around to see the entire company standing around and looking at the holo screen.

“This next clip…” Jesus continued, “... is with the computer-generated Ketica added in.”

Freya turned around once more and watched the same clip, but this time with a bunch of pink tentacles attacking them. As she watched, she noted that she was the only one firing accurately at the monster. Both Monkeyman and Lurch seemed to be firing randomly, almost in blind panic. Then Monkeyman got knocked back by a tentacle, and it was obvious that he was able to see the Ketica’s tentacles as his gunfire suddenly got very accurate.

“Magic?” Jesus asked, bringing her back once again from her memories. “Thoughts?”

“Okay, so the first feed was what you’ll see without your…” She started to say but a red notification popped up in front of eyes. It told her that the mechanism for someone to see the Ketica with their eyes was classified. If she spoke about it she would be facing jail time. It was worded very harshly.

“... whatever the PsyOps are going to do to allow you to see the Ketica.” Freya quickly corrected herself. “You’ll notice that even after attacking their active camo never drops.”

“The last part where we all fell down is a psychic scream.” Freya continued. “We think it’s both a weapon and a world-wide warning to the other Ketica that they are in danger. It hurts like hell, and it’ll put you on your butt.”

“Which is why PsyOps has come up with some equipment that you all will be given to add to your armor. I was told it would dampen, but not stop, the pain. You’ll just have to ride it out and kill the land octopus as fast as you can.” Jesus said as soon as Freya stopped talking. “Now we have a clip of the second hunt. It shows some of the tunnels that you may be facing when you are on your hunts. Magic, if you would keep explaining please.”

Freya nodded and turned back to the hologram as the second clip played. “Here you see the difference between the tunnels.” She said, not turning around to face her company. “The walls are smaller, and the floor had those wavy lines. The other tunnel had a smooth floor. It struck me as odd, and it still does even now.”

“Here’s a thing I forgot to tell you guys about in the last clip. Communications are cut off as soon as we jumped down the tunnel, and at odd places down there. In this… I guess we are calling it a hunt, we came across several places where our communications failed. It’s why Seth was digging there.” Freya said trailing off as she watched the marine she left behind on the hologram.

“We had a full team squad here….” Monkeyman said from behind her, picking up her narrative.

“Right.” Freya said, burying her emotions. “I had the rest of the squad send out drones and mine the immediate area. What we didn’t know is that this cave here was just a cap over a huge pit full of bio constructs.”

“A trap?” Someone in the crowd behind her.

“Maybe.” Freya replied, still watching the feed as she seemed to freeze before Monkeyman seemed to wake her up. “Or we could have just stumbled onto them. They are aliens, so we have to be careful when we assign motives to them.”

She didn’t say anything else as the feed showed her and her squad leaving the tunnels, and then making a dash for the vehicles that were parked on the other side of the warehouse. She didn’t think she needed to say anything else as the huge Ketica appeared on the hologram with a top-down view that must have come from a satellite. Nor did she comment when the orbital strikes started to land right on top of the thing. She did note that whoever was firing the orbital strikes did not adjust their fire. Only two of the five orbital strikes hit the Ketica. After the fifth orbital strike, missing the huge Ketica by a wide margin, there was a pause where the assault ships were flying away. Leaving the Ketica behind and still alive, looking mostly unharmed as it chased after them. Then the feed ended abruptly.

“I am told that this Ketica is not computer-generated. It appears to have not had or not used it’s active camouflage.” Jesus told the silent crowd. “The feed ends with a barrage of artillery shells that sank that part of the continent. There are still crews out as we speak looking for the Ketica remains.”

“This is what we are up against.” Jesus continued after a few seconds of silence.

After that they broke up as ordered to get their skills completed as well as buying any weapons and armor that they needed. Freya was finally able to take a moment to look at all of her rewards. There were a lot of them. So much that she started skipping them, feeling embarrassed by all of the bonus mission completed notifications. All in all, she got the rewards for two missions plus she got the credit rewards for killing two Ketica and then some. She also got two medals. One for the first mission and one for the second mission.

You have been awarded the Gold Cluster with a V for valor for courageous actions taken while on mission to gain valuable information on Kerica.

Rewards for ribbon:

Five percent discount on E-points to gain citizenship on any planet within the Federation.

Discount on military supplies with approved military vendors for life.

You have been awarded the Gold Cluster with a V for valor for courageous actions resulting in the death of a Ketica Titan.

Rewards for ribbon:

Five percent discount on E-points to gain citizenship on any planet within the Federation. (Total after second award, 10%).

Discount on military supplies with approved military vendors for life.

The rewards for getting the ribbons were amazing as well. A ten percent discount on the E-points needed to gain citizenship was amazing. That didn’t include the discount on military supplies. While she didn’t know how much of a discount she would get, she knew it would set her up for life. She also didn’t know how high the ribbon was in the hierarchy, but she knew it was very close to the Federation Star, the highest reward anyone in the military could get.

Total rewards: 6,001,656 E-points, 126,858 Mod and Skill points, and 2,981,836 credits.

The reward for the cyber badge, five percent E-points off per level, really helped her out. With it and the rewards for her missions she was now a Sergeant level 2. She also wondered if the Conture had rounded up because she was at exactly what she needed to be level 2. Her ‘congratulations you leveled up’ notification told her that she was 0 of 114,000 E-points needed for the next level.

Oddly enough she got the most E-point rewards on her first mission as opposed to her second mission. She got maybe two thirds of her rewards from that first Ketica kill mission for her second mission. That wasn’t to say that her second mission didn’t have great rewards, it did, but most of her bonus missions were in the first mission. She did get 1 million credits per Ketica kill. She couldn’t remember what Captain Thompson said the reward was for killing a Ketica, but she didn’t know it was that high.

She also noted that she didn’t get any pilot or advanced drone bonuses. She guessed it was because she didn’t fly a ship in either mission, and, while she did use her drones, she guessed she didn’t use them enough to get an advancement on them. She also must have not used her Personal AI enough either because that didn’t level either. Still, she found her rewards more than what she expected. The ribbons alone justified the mission.

Finding herself mostly alone on the quad,  since almost everyone had left for the training facility which was, according to her mini map, inside the barracks, she started to head that way. Monkeyman, to her surprise, was waiting for her by the barracks door. He gave her a grin as she walked up to him. She grinned at him back.

“I got a ribbon.” He said excitedly.

“I did too.” She told him as she came to a stop beside him.

“Did you get a silver cluster with a V for Valor also?” He said nearly vibrating with what she assumed to be happiness.

“Gold Cluster.” She told him, leaving out that she got two. “With a V also.”

“That is amazing.” He told her. “I bet you got it because you smoked the octopus. Hey, did you get a two million credits bonus for killing them too?”

“Yup.” Freya said with a smile, guessing smoked meant killed.

“Right on, right on, right on.” He said, nodding his head slowly for some reason. “Let's get this mandatory training done, and go for sweet sergeant’s gear.” Chuckling, she followed him.

The barracks was very similar to the last one she was in except it was much taller. It had fifteen floors, according to the elevator to her left as she walked past the quarterdeck. Her room, according to the notification she read earlier, was on the eighth floor in the west wing. She ignored it for now and followed beside Monkeyman as he walked towards a long hallway with a bunch of large doors that lead everywhere from the PX to the travel agency.

There was an actual room where the doors to the training room were located. There had to be twenty doors lining the room as Freya and her best friend walked in. There was no line, but a few of the doors had people in front of them at the console before them. Monkeyman nodded his head at two doorways which were empty, that stood side by side. Freya nodded and headed to the closest one.

After logging in, she found that she had a ton of red, mandatory training she had to complete. The good news was that all the training was listed as zero credits required.  She accepted them after scanning through the list. There were five pages worth of skills she needed to pick up from the navy, but when she looked at it she found that they were all part of two skills. The first one was basic infiltration tactics, which made sense since every Navy SEAL here had that in their template, and the second one was something called Basic Tunnel Warfare.

Once selected, the computer offered her a staggering ten page list to get infiltration tactics and advance them all the way up to Petty Officer First Class. She looked over the list, and blinked at how much the skills cost. It cost nearly forty skill points to advance it all the way to the max for her rank. It would give her the title of Infiltrator in front of her template which looked cool. Shaking her head at the expense she put it aside for now.

That wasn’t the only skill that the console asked if she wanted to advance all the way. If she wanted it, she could get the Tunnel Warfare badge which gave her a ten percent increase in E-points whenever she fought in any tight quarters environment which happened to be underground. They were pretty generous with the definition of tight quarters as the description explained what it meant. Basically as long as the environment she fought in was less than twenty feet wide and at least a quarter of the fight was in said environment she would get the bonus. It wasn’t as great as her hacker badge, but still, with where she expected to fight in the next few missions, she knew she had to get it. It cost ten thousand credits, but she had plenty to spare.

After that, a new screen appeared, this one in blue. It said it was mandatory for all fire team leaders and above, but optional for those in non-command positions. It was an army training package with a page worth of training. The package would give her Basic Small Unit Ground Armored tactics. It was basically an add-on to her vehicle skills except that she wouldn’t be driving the vehicles, she would be both commanding them in combat and the soldiers inside. It also suggested as a squad leader that she get the advanced version that went all the way up to sergeant. They didn’t make it mandatory though. Still, she put it off to the side because, while it was costly to get, she thought it made sense to have it in the field. That and she had a ton of skill points to spend.

The console also suggested she upgrade all of her marine tactics up to Sergeant, which, while costing an insane amount of skill points, she knew she needed to if she wanted to ever become a platoon leader. She watched sadly as her skill points slowly drained away when she selected them along with the skills she had been thinking of getting.

Once her screen was clear, she searched for more skills that she would need as a sergeant. There she found a bunch of sergeant-only skills that she thought she would need. They were skills like platoon level communications, platoon member tracking, and administration up to platoon level. That one she knew she needed as she was now third in charge of her platoon under Jesus.

Even after all the skills she took she still had a bunch of skills points left. Maybe a third of what she had after this past mission. She decided to keep them just in case she needed some kind of skill later on before they left on this next mission. She promised herself, if she did have anything left over, she would return to the training facility before she left to look through her other options. She ended up with forty-nine thousand six hundred and ten skill points left.

The next part was fairly simple. She had over a hundred and sixty-eight thousand mod points to spend. Looking at her stats she raised all of her primary five: Perception, Agility, Dexterity, Memory, and Processing Speed. Once they were all at two thousand four hundred and fifty she found herself with six hundred and sixteen points left. After doing the math, she added twelve more points to Perception. She did it mainly to see if it would help her psychic skills. She’d already raised it by six hundred and fifty-nine mods so the extra twelve wasn’t all that much, but still she hoped it would give her more control over her gifts.

That left her with twenty-eight points left over. Not wanting to waste them on her lower stats like Strength or Health she decided to keep them for the time being. Once she was finished, the console asked her to confirm her selection. Once she was done the door opened and she stepped into the light.

She stepped out of the light to find herself standing before a small hole in the ground with a Navy Chief standing off to the side. The tunnel combat training she received was mostly based off of human opponents. She learned how to spot and find all sorts of traps from the very crude sticks buried under a layer of dirt and leaves to taking out advanced combat drones. She found that most of the training was geared towards finding and killing one or more specific people or rescuing hostages. It was not what she normally trained on, but she found it fun most of the time with a few annoying stages here and there. She started as a simple tunnel rat, as they were called, and progressed all the way up to a leader of a tunnel rat platoon.

The Infiltration training was odd. Basically, she learned how to be a spy. Not the cool ones that she used to stream with the expensive suits, but the non-uniformed military ones. It focused mainly on how to blend in with other poor human locals and how to gather intelligence. It was a more intense training than her marine sniper training and combat awareness had been.

While the training wasn’t completely focused on finding a specific person or a group of people, most of it was. She was coming to realize that the SEALs were either into hostage rescue or assassination of high value targets in protected areas. While the marines like to either snipe them from afar or just blow up the city block, the SEALs seemed to like precision targeting. Get in, get your person or persons, and get out without leaving a trace. It was a much more challenging job which Freya found that she really liked.

The army training was odd. She first found herself in a classroom learning about basic and advanced vehicle tactics then in said vehicles using what she learned. It was both exciting when the action was happening, but very boring the rest of the time. It fit well with her scout vehicle training, but more thinking than doing. She still got to fire her gun, but it was more about watching what her people were doing, and making sure they were doing it right. Kind of like babysitting her cousins when she was younger except more lethal.

The administration training was the worst training, in Freya’s opinion, that she had ever had to do. There were all sorts of reports she was required to do that she never thought her past bosses did. There were action reports, after action reports, planned action reports, and so on. Some of the reports went to the platoon leader if she wasn’t one, but was still in the chain of command above squad leader. Some went to the company commander, and some went all the way up to the battalion commander. There were so many reports that Freya found it surprising that any platoon leader had time to actually fight. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was the platoon war chest and platoon loans she had to worry about. It was a nightmare that seemed to never end.

The marine small unit tactics as a platoon leader were fun. Both the ones where she fought humans and the ones she fought aliens. She found it funny that when it came to aliens, she mostly commanded platoons against the Ketica. They were the enemy of the month it seemed. The Ketica in her training, she found, were pretty realistic. The military high command obviously was gearing up for a long war, just from what she saw in her training. She must have fought on ten different worlds during alien tactics training in both small and large unit combat.

Finally, after her unit combat training, she was free to go. Stepping out of the light she nearly fell and puked. Her body seemed to move way too fast for her, yet everything around her was moving so slowly. She was able to move off to the side so she wouldn’t be in anyone's way and sat down and meditated. She chastised herself for forgetting about using the training facility to get acquainted with all the mods she had placed in her body. It took her awhile to get her bearings, but one moment she was fighting the dizziness and the next everything seemed to snap into place. Cautiously opening her eyes, she found that everything was back to normal.  Sighing in relief, she opened her Status screen.

Status Screen

Name: Freya O’Malley

Rank: Sergeant Level: 02

Template:  Infiltration (Scout) Sniper

Enlisted points:  6,001,656

Credits:            2,981,936

Skill points:            49,610

Mod points:     28

Weapons:

E.S.I. Multi Heavy ASO

• 3 shot option
• Duralogistic shock absorbers with Nexus sound reducers
• Mega Colax purified battery pod (x4)
• Twenty heat sinks
• LNG rod ammo
• Angler 57 rifle scope with MAS vision
• High intensity lens

Armor:

Wrath EC Tier 5

• Massimio Strength & Friction assistance
• Mega Colax battery pod (x4)
• Cloudforge
• Sensor alert
• Seven drones
• Memory Expansion Module
• Ove Standard Battery
• AIT Stealth boost

Side weapons:

Irish Nester

• Mega Colax purified battery pod (x2)
• NG explosive rod ammo

Wingols 90-90

• HPSG ammo rod (20 rounds)

Asy Minor short barrel energy rifle

• Colax purified battery

Basic combat knife

Vehicles:

Dropships:

• Goozden 501 Medium Armored Respawn Dropship
• Goozden 127 Light Armored Respawn

Adav two person Scout Quad

• Stealth suite

Wetware mods

Health

Level: 100

Health Regen

Level: 100

Strength

Level: 150

Perception

Level: 2,462

Agility

Level: 2,450

Dexterity:

Level: 2,450

Memory

Level: 2,450

Processing speed

Level: 2,450

Personal AI

Level: 174

Skills cont:

Zero G Maneuvering

Level 5

Advanced Shipboard Tactics

N/A

Spaceborn Vessel

Systems

List

Martial Arts:

Líng Zhònglì Zhàndòu

Level 5

Master

Awareness Skills

List

Dropship Deployment Tactics (Single ship)

Level 15

General Rifle skills

List

Shooting skills

List

Advanced Targeting

N/A

Small unit tactics (Human)

List

Small unit tactics (Alien)

List

Government and Cultural training (Human)

List

Space and high atmospheric ship warfare and tactics

(Enlisted)

List

Navy Skills

*Template skill included*

List

Army Skills

List

Skills:

Enhanced sensing

Level: 2

Tracking

Level: 5

Acrobatics

Level: 5

One time infantry Drop ship

Level: 1

Special Warfare

N/A

FTL Communication

Phd.+ Postgrad

FTL Communication

Alien Engineering

Phd.

FTL Communication Corporate

MS.

Alien Behavior and Culture

BS.

Engineer

Master

Advanced Drone Operator

Level: 56

Piloting

Level: 29

Silent Walking

Level: 5

Silent Combat Running

Level: 5

Hacking

Level: 5

Zero G. Combat

N/A

Bomb Making

*Non template skill*

Level 10

Driving Skills

List

First Sniper training

Complete

Government and Cultural training (Alien)

List

Leadership

(Platoon level)

Level 20

(Completed)

Medic

*Non template skill*

Level 10

Weapons officer Second seat small combat craft

(Enlisted)

List

Combat leader

(Up to platoon leader)

List

Administration

(up to platoon leader position))

List

Hardware mods: Suicide mod

Medals: Gold E Sharpshooter, Silver Cluster (With Honors), Gold Cluster (With Valor)x2

Badges: Cyber warfare, Heavy Resistance Environment Warfare, Tunnel Warfare (Navy)