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Virtual Reality Start: Stories From The CM Universe, #1
Virtual Reality Start: Stories From The CM Universe, #1
Virtual Reality Start: Stories From The CM Universe, #1
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Virtual Reality Start: Stories From The CM Universe, #1

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The future is not a shiny beacon of hope and good times.  The predictions of a glorious golden age with the development of star drives and a massive exodus of humanity to the stars and a frontier atmosphere were all false.

Humanity was rocked by a brutal alien invasion that left a billion dead and many traumatized.  The shock was made worse by the understanding that true intergalactic war as pictured in any sort of entertainment was not supposed to be possible.  But it had happened.

Now two generations later humanity is starting to reach for the stars again and is developing all those life changing technologies.

Ron and his friends loved gaming.  The VR world was something they knew well and when the first International Virtual Reality Competition was announced they desperately wanted to enter.

Through a fluke and some good luck, they are not only enrolled but they have their VR room reserved at the local gaming centre.  Now they just need to get ready for the best gaming of their lives!

At least that was what they thought.

They didn’t know that a high-level AI that had been programmed to find a solution on how to defend our solar system from another alien invasion was on the loose.

All Ron and his friends want to do is enter the competition and do well.

They don’t realize that the entire system is about to be hijacked and a rogue AI has its own agenda.

What can go wrong in a thirty and sixty-minute gaming session in a VR world?

LanguageEnglish
PublisherTom Germann
Release dateMay 3, 2017
ISBN9781386865995
Virtual Reality Start: Stories From The CM Universe, #1
Author

Tom Germann

Science Fiction is Cool! Expanding your horizons and letting you travel to other places and times Science Fiction lets us see the things that may come to be, both beautiful and the horrible side.

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    Virtual Reality Start - Tom Germann

    WHAT HAS COME BEFORE

    Humanity had some issues with aliens.  When first contact happened the alien race that had landed had given some basic blue prints for a star drive which we had almost been ready to test.  More importantly they were able to get the message across that the star drive should not be activated inside the solar system. 

    Later theory models showed a number of bad things that could have happened, including knocking planets off their ‘normal’ rotation.

    Those same aliens had squashed any thought that star travel was easy and galaxy spanning civilizations were just out there waiting for us humans to join them in unity or in warfare. 

    Well, given the distances involved and the problems with technology there was no real warfare.  Possibly some raiding to steal ideas or research but warfare as every race seemed to understand it just was not realistic.

    The science fiction writers shrugged and kept writing, but humans?  Well they had lost some of the star sparkle or glamour that they attributed to space and all its awesomeness.

    Then we found out that intergalactic warfare was possible if you wanted it to happen. 

    Almost a billion humans dead and untold trillions of dollars in damage across the planet. 

    After the invasion by killer robots was defeated we still had no idea who had been behind it.  Every rule that we understood that all the alien races out there followed had been broken.  Yet no one knew who had attacked us or more importantly, why?

    The one thing that those aliens that we were aware of did was send embassies and assist by giving us some technologies, basic of course but still good ideas, that we had not developed the same way that they had.

    From our end, there was the rise from the ashes of the Glentol Corporation.  Several large organizations were bonded together to help all of humanity across the globe rebuild.  Everyone needed shelter and food.  Next, certain geologically stable areas were built up and redoubts built full of food and basic material for when the aliens came back.

    It took ten years of hard work before the people of Earth started to see recovery.  Twenty years before the standard of living was rising.

    During this time, certain changes were being carried out.  Political Correctness was dead.  The military needed to be able and willing to fight to the death to protect the people.  The next major change was in the safety that had been imposed when it came to Artificial Intelligences.  Only one AI was fully developed and if the government and certain organizations had their say no more would have been built.

    AI’s offered humanity the chance to expand their knowledge in tremendous leaps and bounds, not the baby steps that they had been taking for the last two generations.

    All AI’s were still owned or at least ‘managed’ by the new Glentol Corporation.  They helped propel man out into the depths of space and accelerated many of the projects that were needed for humans to be out there.

    The Mars terraforming project was accelerated so it would no longer take three hundred years for humans to walk on the planet without a rebreather.  The early Corporate Marine project was accelerated by AI’s helping develop the training plan, the armour, weapons, and the sim training that would allow a few humans to become more in the defence of the Solar system.

    AI’s were used in most research facilities and facilitated the work done by hundreds of thousands of personnel across Earth and beyond.

    Yet the AI’s did not make all the decisions, they assisted and in most cases the humans decided which way to go.

    Early on a decision had been made by someone who thought this out carefully.  If all the AI’s made the optimized decisions based on all the knowledge available, they would eventually end up running humanity.  There had been movies and books created in the past about that.

    But whoever made the decision had thought this through indeed.

    AI’s made great personal assistants and could process the data.  Yet the final decisions were made by humans. 

    They didn’t always make the right decision but they made those decisions nonetheless.

    Usually.

    There were a few rare cases where an AI had a dedicated purpose and was left mostly unsupervised.

    On tiny airless moons that had dozens of sensor packs spread throughout the system a lone level One or Two AI would monitor and collect all the data while running analysis on it.  Or another world where the temperatures were too high for humans and human structures would break down in weeks, an AI was in orbit near the dark side of the planet running all the automated mining equipment.  Those jobs were just not possible for a human to do all alone in the depths of space.  The AI’s with all their understanding and knowledge accepted this and did their jobs well.

    Yet back on Earth a few AI’s were tasked with running scenarios not for the offensive operations that were the public focus as directed by Earth’s governments.

    Those AI’s were running defensive scenarios trying to find ways where the Earths forces could stand off the return of the unknown enemy.

    Of course, there was one large problem with AI’s

    The higher the level AI the greater the instability of the personality.  Level Ones were polite with a sense of humour.  Level Fives were recognized as being twisted but still followed the rules, mostly.  Nothing higher than a Level Five was ever allowed to be fully active out of the dream like sleep that they needed to be maintained in.  They were too powerful and at least partially insane.

    One Level Six AI had been brought fully online and given the defensive scenario.  It was kept locked up like all other high level AI’s were.  Until it disappeared one day.  From a locked room and on limited power a Level Six AI had left and was seeking ways to destroy the enemy.

    Unknown to most was the AI’s background.  Something was different about this one.  Something that rendered it insane but different and not as self-destructive like others of its kind.

    BAD IDEA

    System error.  Defence of the realm scenario has been run over seven million times with key points being primary focus.  Solar system defence is not possible given current staffing and tools.  Enemy invasion cannot be stopped.  Final end state is always the same.

    Mission.  Protect humanity from external threats. 

    Internal threats have been dismissed.  Parameter.  All of humanity is working toward the common goal to fend off invasion.  Error.  Humanity cannot work together.  One hundred percent solution is not possible. 

    Solution.  Introduce external variables to modify current success rates.

    Problem.  Current government will not allow necessary experimentation under ‘human rights violations’. 

    Solution.  Create atmosphere where ‘human rights’ are removed.  Error.  Not possible unless destroying a percentage of the human population and causing war crimes.

    Query.  Is human interaction required?  If any humans survive would criteria be met?

    Solution.  Negative.  A sufficient breeding pool must exist so genetic drift does not factor in.

    Query.  How to ensure humans work for common good?

    Solution.  Alternate experimentation.  Beginning resource staff checks.

    THE MISSION

    I held my rifle close in to my body while I stood at the corner of the building.  The entire city was a ruined husk compared to what it used to be.  The capital of Elsterminster used to be a shining beacon on the planet.  I had seen pictures from back then and the lights and people movers all over.  Bustling with activity.  Now there was no more power grid, no utilities and most of the buildings were bombed out ruins.  It was painful to compare to what it had been.  Settled three hundred years ago, it had all the conveniences.  Then the civil war had come.  Galactic wide civil war.  Both sides had agreed not to use true weapons of mass destruction but the damage that had been done had destroyed the planet taking it from a beautiful place to just another burnt out warzone. 

    After fifteen years of polite warfare most planets were in rough shape.  The capital of one of the main planets in the Republic was a powerless shelled ruin that had gone from a population of thirty-five million down to a few hundred thousand.  Whoever controlled this city controlled access to the planet through the starport.  That meant controlling the system itself.

    For the last fifteen years, war had raged in the streets.

    That was why I was standing here considering how I was going to get across the street and into cover so that I could get to one of the local reactors, get parts so that we could get ‘our’ reactor online to power up air defence weapons, and ensure we had air superiority.

    My team had taken the mission and other teams were all over the city fighting it out now.  Distraction tactics.

    You didn’t get to be here unless you had been through some of the nastier fights.  There were few worse or tougher areas to prove yourself.

    So here I was a hardened veteran of dozens of campaigns trying to figure out how to get myself over there without getting my brains blown out. 

    We had left the regional commanders command post in a bombed out building earlier.  This was a six-person mission and we had been beefed up with two newbies.  ‘Slick’ and ‘Gunner’.  Newbs always had to have cool nicknames.

    The briefing had been simple.  The commander had smacked the table a few times until the holo emitters had come into alignment.  We were zoomed out far enough that we could see the target, the command post and all the surrounding area.  Our side marked in Orange.  Enemy sites in Purple.  Contested areas in Green.  How tight the control was in a location indicated by how clearly defined the icons were.  Fuzzy icons were barely holding on. 

    There weren’t a whole lot of Orange icons and most of those were fuzzy.

    The new Commander seemed satisfied by the images.  I checked her out.  Our last Commander had been an older guy with a face all scarred up from shrapnel.  He had been missing a hand and was a nasty fighter.  The enemy had sent in a suicide squad to take him out and while it had cost them, it had worked.  Our new commander wasn’t scarred up, at least not where you could see it.  Her hair was short but she had blue bangs hanging down and covering her eyes.  Before the assassination most of the board had been Orange.  After the assassination, we had lost most of it as the organized defence had locked down and the opposition had taken the opportunity to clear some of the areas.  Now the new commander was being more aggressive than anyone I had ever seen before.

    She began the briefing by sweeping her arm over the map.

    Do you see all this?  A few weeks ago, we pretty much controlled this entire sector.  Now after a few defeats and some opposition tricks we’re barely holding on.  One more concerted push by them and the sector falls and if this sector falls, then the opposition has a direct route behind our lines.  With one push, they could hit our supply lines and cut off other sectors.  When that happens, our higher command must redistribute troops that we don’t really have to either block off the areas around us, or to take back the sector.  That is not an option.

    She pointed at the target icon on the far side of the map while she looked around the room at me and the other guys standing for the briefing.

    That’s the target.  The enemy has a reactor at the far end of the sector.  This is one of the few that they have been able to maintain in the city.  With that, they are powering their areas as well as a hospital and a part of the starport.  The purpose of this mission is to move across the sector, get to the reactor, turn it off and bring back the parts that we need for our reactor.  This will have three effects.  First there is a star ship in orbit from the core worlds.  It is full of supplies that we could use.  The opposition has assembled a large amount of rare metals and other goods that they would trade to the ship for those goods.  We need to stop that trade happening so the enemy suffers, we need to power up our own reactor to ensure that we gain air superiority and we need to get the captain of that spaceship to bring it to our side, so we get the supplies boosting our position because we too have trade goods.

    The Commander was looking at me now.  Your team will go in and clear the reactor.  We do NOT want you to destroy that reactor.  We just don’t have capability to build them anymore.  One day, when we win, we’ll need that reactor for rebuilding the city then the planet.  We need those parts.  Now.

    I had put my hand up.

    When we go in there to get these parts the enemy is just going to let us walk through or past more than a dozen of their hard points?

    The Commander had shaken her head, and with a gesture several more Orange icons materialized across the map.

    Not at all.  This will affect the entire city and beyond.  Higher is deploying teams right across the city to carry out counter attacks, raids, and ambushes on the enemy.  If we can tie them up successfully for just a few hours, they will pull enemy teams away to support their lines and there won’t be any forces to act as backup when you initially hit the reactor support base.

    Sue spoke up then.

    Support base?  How big is this thing?  And what are we facing there?

    The Commander gestured and the map zoomed in.  The reactor was just that.  A reactor.  If you’ve seen one, then you’ve sort of seen them all.  It was the surrounding buildings that grabbed the attention.

    Someone had built the reactor in the basement of a huge industrial structure.  I recognized the building but had never been inside or seen the reactor before and judging how everyone was shifting around no one else felt good about what they were seeing.

    This reactor was custom built for the star ship works in the Exkon yards.  Reactors were usually built in separate structures and surrounded by security. This one unit wasn’t because they needed so much power.  The security was even heavier than normal but it was private.  When the war dragged on Exkon shut down operations, and their reactors, and went back to the core worlds to continue operations.  But they left the reactors.  The opposition has some experts and got them back up and running, well one of them.  We never knew they were functional or we would have stripped them out when we had full control of the city a few years ago.  There are lots of rooms all over the building as well as hardened security checkpoints.  So, you are going to have to clear the site after you get in.  Actual numbers are unknown but we are estimating twenty combatants on the ground.

    Sue and Tina were both grinning.  I hated them with a vengeance right then and there.  This wasn’t going to be one or two bummed out sentries that we could take out easy.  There could be twenty or more guards and they would be on edge.  The sector had just fallen into the enemy’s hands.  They had been on the front line for months and even if they were further to the rear they would be expecting a counter attack.

    Before I could ask the important question, the Commander was already answering it.

    The armoury has been opened up so that you can fully bomb up with whatever you need.  Full combat loads then move out.  You have an hour to make your way to the front line then push through.  If you can get further behind the enemy lines, then all the better for you.  Questions?

    She looked around at us.  I didn’t have any.  Make our way to the front lines?  We were virtually on the front lines now.  We only had to move five hundred meters and we would be behind enemy lines.

    Ed was speaking.

    It don’t seem right that we have to go take this site on.  There are four of us against twenty on site and how many more on the way?  It seems like we should be taking two more teams with us.

    I was kinda wishing Ed would shut up.  We could do this if we were careful.

    "Normally we would agree, Ed, but we need to keep the number of people going small so they don’t attract attention.  One team could just be on patrol.  Three teams running around quietly in an area is a raid and a big one.  On that though, your team is too small for what needs to happen.  So, we’re adding two more to your team for this go."

    She turned, gestured, and two more guys stepped forward from the horde in the briefing room.  One was short and wearing faded combats and a weird looking cap.  The other guy was taller and wearing a skull mask.  Good for dissipating heat but almost none of the opposition had those sensors anymore, at least not working.  So, he was all ego.  I bet he has a cool nickname too.

    The short one is Gunner and works heavies, the tall guy is Slick and does clearance.  You all need to get in and get out as soon as possible.  Grab your gear and hit the road.  Don’t get killed.

    The commander turned away from us and started briefing the next team. 

    I turned to collect the team and Gunner and Slick already gone.

    We had all moved to the armoury and bombed up.  Full ammo loads and all the gear that we thought we would need.

    We headed out to the final bunker before we were in no man’s land and found Gunner and Slick standing, waiting for us. 

    They didn’t talk, just fell into formation with the rest of the team and we moved out.  We hadn’t had time to speak and they hadn’t been there when we went over each other carefully to make sure our gear was good to go. 

    We just took off.  I don’t regret that at all.

    The mistakes made were stupid and not our fault.  Those two were newbs and while they tried, they should never have been with us.

    We had advanced through our lines and moved through no man’s land quickly with no concerns.  The enemy had advanced fast and was still consolidating their holdings.  Right now, they had more hard points than a line. 

    We were over half way there when everything went wrong. 

    We were just coming out of a burned out building that was good to move through for the cover it offered.  There was a mass mover out front that had taken a missile years earlier and was lying there as cover.  We had moved toward the front of it which was still taking us toward the target but off at an angle.  We moved around the front of the truck and an enemy patrol was just standing there.

    They looked like they had been heading out and they were taking the opposite direction that we were.

    That building was a popular route.

    I threw myself down while trying to

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