Downgrades: we are far from broken

8 interceptor

Trinity:

          Dimidium looked a little disappointed, but he took the news pretty well. He picked up his crawler, turned it off, took it apart, and put all the pieces back in the bag. He pressed a button on the back of his left hand, and the needles folded up again. He then slipped the glove off, and extended his arm, offering both the glove and the bag of parts back to Tat. She pushed them both back to him, “Keep them” she said, “you’ll need them soon enough.” He nodded, and put them both next to himself. Tat removed a hand held hemisphere, which I recognized as the holo-player I made for her six months ago, off her waist and placed it between Dimidium and herself. She tapped the top of it, and the view screen appeared between them, with Tat and I seeing everything in reverse. There were four icons on the display, each one had the profile view of each kind of machine used in the section nine army. “This is a program a friend of mine wrote,” Tat explained to Dimidium, “and it’s really useful in seeing what kind of machine you can pilot,” he nodded again. “Which one do I start with?” he asked. “The top right one,” Tat answered, “the one that looks like a giant bug.” He nodded and tapped the icon she said to. Immediately, the machine took up most of the screen. It was a third person veiw of the mech looking down the langth of the underside. 

          “What is this… machine?” he asked. “An ante ordo,” Tat answered. Dimidium looked at her, “And what does that mean?” he asked. Tat sighed and thought about this for a second, then said “The literal translation is ‘a front liner’, they’re comparable to ancient tanks and other similar war machines. They serve multiple purposes, but in this context, the front liner is a part of a line in front of masses of foot soldiers. Now if the foot soldiers were to just strait up clash with the enemy waves, they would be overrun very quickly. Your job is to eliminate enough of the threats so they can handle the enemy forces.” He nodded, “seems easy enough,” he said, “You couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Tat said. “You need to prioritize and think through every action you make in less than a second. One wrong move, and the enemy forces will break through.” He nodded and said “I’ll do my best.”

          Besides the machine, there was an arrow pad to control its movements on the screen. And two health meters, one for the front liner the other for the foot soldiers behind it. At first, he just paced himself, moving about and shooting at single targets. Then it began, wave after wave of enemy forces. He handled the first one with no problem, but the other waves really hit him hard. But his biggest problem was that he was focusing too much on the big targets; hummers, bushmasters, etc. Allowing too many of the smaller forces through, and losing his foot soldiers. After the eleventh time starting over Tat said, “Okay, enough, let’s move on to the Darters.” He sighed and nodded, “How do I do that?” he asked. She reached over and tapped the top of the player again, and the image of the machine vanished to be replaced by the screen with the four icons. “Press the one that looks like a miniature confederate fighter jet.” Tat ordered. He did so, this time the machine took up the center of the screen. It was a third person view looking down along the underside of the jet shaped machine. Like with the Front Liner, he paced himself. The Darter followed his left pointer finger, and its turret fired at anything his right pointer finger was touching.  “Ok,” Tat said, “you’ll be doing two jobs simultaneously. First priority is to eliminate aerial enemy forces before they attack the ground.” She paused for a minute, thinking on how to phrase the next part. “Your second priority is to eliminate specific ground targets when assigned. This is usually because their too dangerous for our ground forces to take on.”

          “Ok,” said Dimidium, “sounds easy enough, but then again so did the Front Liner.” The moment he stopped talking it began. First, it was just a few solitary enemy fighter jets, permeated by an occasional assignment to take out squadrons of soldiers that no one could get to. But the screen quickly began to fill with fighter jet squadrons, fast moving bombers, and massive flying aircraft carriers. The assignments were also more difficult; with very short time frames, and enemies armed with more anti aerial weapons. He did really well, only dying four times, and failing only two assignments out of three dozen.  However, I noticed that his thinking was very two dimensional, and this could be a problem in a real fight. He never attacked or escaped by going directly up or down.