CHAPTER 7
What They Were Doing
August 26th, 2026. Noon.
The fourth Squad Jam had just begun.
At that moment, Llenn opened her eyes in the southeast corner of the map and thought, Starting in the forest again, huh?
Meanwhile, in the northeast corner of the same map stood SHINC, whose members were all from the gymnastics team of the high school attached to Llenn’s college.
A woman with the strength and stature of a gorilla, possessing the kind of burly face and body that would make a little child cry, looked upon a vast, wide-open runway and grunted.
“Grrr…”
She turned to look around, braids swaying, but all she saw was cracked asphalt that seemed to reach the horizon. The sky was clear overhead, glowing dull red.
Boss faced her teammates. “Everyone get down and watch the horizon. Snipers, shoot enemies on sight.”
The visibility in the middle of the runway was excellent, but they had nothing nearby to use as cover. Dropping flat on the ground was their only option.
Her teammates complied immediately. Five women dressed in poisonous-looking green camo formed a circle, distanced themselves slightly, then hit the deck.
Tohma, the black-haired sniper, stood her Dragunov automatic sniper rifle on its bipod and took a peek through its adjustable scope. “What are we lookin’ at today…?”
She was scanning the southwest. Across the runway and its sight lines, very far in the distance, there was a control tower that loomed like a high-rise building, and a terminal building like a low, squat fortress. They looked hazy in the distance.
In front of the terminal was an assortment of passenger jets in different sizes, resting on their wheels, or sometimes directly on their underbellies if the wheels had broken off—airplanes that would never fly again. Their tails stuck up like gravestones.
Next to Tohma was a short and squat woman, Sophie, who muttered, “Gosh, this airport sure is big. How often does someone get to walk down the middle of a runway?”
She wasn’t holding a gun. That was because she was the carrier; the team’s strongest armament, a PTRD-41 antitank rifle, and its ammo were snug in her inventory. It was an incredibly heavy weapon, so she couldn’t also have her own machine gun at the ready.
Because the event organizer instructed them to bring a pistol for SJ4, she had an automatic Strizh pistol in a holster on her right hip, as did the other members.
Boss had ordered them to fire at will because the PTRD-41 was capable of sending one of its rounds over a kilometer away: the minimum possible distance between any two teams at the start.
They’d gone to great pains to acquire that weapon so they could destroy M’s shield in SJ2, and it had played a major role in both SJ2 and SJ3. Its 14.5 mm rounds were almost certainly the largest you could find in GGO at the moment.
It wasn’t a pure sniper rifle, so after a few hundred yards, its accuracy took a major dive, but the important part was that it still hit with lethal force, which was certainly true.
If any nearby teams weren’t paying attention, Sophie could attack them without fear of reprisal. She could also use the gun’s bullet line to push them around. While they panicked and went on the defensive, the other members could approach and finish off the targets separately.
However, despite having the capability to actually use this strategy, Tohma finished checking the vicinity through her scope and declared, “No other teams in visible range. Darn!”
The rule was that every other team would be at least three-fifths of a mile away at the start of the game, but that didn’t mean they would be exactly that distance. Since the visibility was so good here, they must’ve been placed much farther away.
“Can’t see anything here, either,” reported Rosa. She was the middle-aged redhead on the opposite position from Tohma. The woman was quite tall and solidly built, though not as much as Boss. She was holding the Russian masterpiece, a PKM machine gun.
“Are we at the very edge of the map again, ya think?” asked a boyish woman at Rosa’s side. This woman was Tanya, and she had short silver hair and narrow, foxy eyes.
She was a bit of a tomboy in real life and accentuated that characteristic in GGO. Every now and then, her real-life self poked out in speech, but that was just part of the charm. Plenty of times, her teammates didn’t even notice.
Tanya dumped most of her points into agility, so she was the fastest on the team—though not to as extreme an extent as Llenn.
She liked to use a PP-19 Bizon submachine gun for its compact size and fast fire rate. It contained distinctive cylindrical magazines that held fifty-three 9 mm Parabellum rounds for pistols. Hers was equipped with a silencer, which reduced the noise from her shots.
So Tanya made up for her lack of range and power with speed, fire rate, and a silencer that helped conceal her location.
“I suppose so. We should probably take that as a compliment to our strength,” agreed blond and beautiful Anna, who always wore sunglasses. She was keeping an eye out with her binoculars.
Like Tohma, she used a Dragunov sniper rifle, but this one only had the normal 4× zooming scope, which was how you could tell the guns apart.
Tohma handled the longer sniping, while Anna was good at the kind of sniping that involved rapid repositioning and shooting. That was something her player, Moe Annaka, could do because of her agility. She seemed soft and cuddly, but she had the quickest reflexes of anyone on the gymnastics team.
“Hmm…”
Boss was low and flat on the runway, large backpack holding her silenced rifle, the Vintorez. She didn’t put the Vintorez in a sling, preferring to keep her arms unobstructed when running. Instead, she normally kept it in her backpack when it wasn’t in her hands. And that was usually when she had her binoculars out to give orders as the team leader.
Sprawled out on the ground like a sunning sea lion, Boss peered at her Satellite Scan terminal. The little screen displayed a map of the battle arena, and a single illuminated point marked their present location in the northeast corner.
“Everyone, listen up,” she said. “We’re in the northeast corner of the map. No enemies to the north or east.”
That caused the other members to readjust their positions accordingly. They were all looking for foes to the south and west now.
“We’ll take shifts for the lookout. When you’re off, check the map and memorize the surrounding features,” Boss said, switching back to her binoculars. Everyone took turns watching the Satellite Scan, paying close attention to their battleground.
The ability to quickly memorize a map that you might not have the luxury of looking at again soon was one of the qualifications to being a good Squad Jam player.
At 12:02, Sophie sidled up next to Boss once she’d learned the features of the map and asked, “We gonna wait here until the scan?”
“I think so… Unless they have an antimateriel rifle, this isn’t a bad spot. In fact, we might be better off just staying here.”
“What if that little pink rabbit comes charging at us through the smoke?” Sophie asked with a piercing smile. Boss flashed her pearly whites back.
“Let’s hope she does,” she said. “We’ll wait here until the ten-minute mark. Don’t get bored and fall asleep, now.”
Everyone smiled or chuckled at that—but three minutes later, they were doing anything but smiling.
Noon.
Memento Mori, frequently abbreviated to MMTM, started at the northwest corner of the map.
They were in the midst of a ruined city, a metropolis that looked like it had been picked up and shaken three times. Most of the buildings were decrepit but still stood bravely, while those that had learned how to rest had collapsed sideways.
The wide roads were littered with rubble and vehicles that would never again pass a safety inspection, but the paths were clear and visible for the most part.
Amid the urban grid was a straight set of tracks, not elevated on supports but simply laid on raised ground. It was just two parallel tracks, meaning it was a single line. Atop the tracks was a very large locomotive, sitting inactive.
It had a diesel engine, the kind built in the United States and exported to countries around the world. There was a fictional railroad’s logo on it, and the exterior paint was chipped and rusty.
But even a diesel train didn’t run entirely on its engine. First the motor had to be engaged with electric power. The locomotive was over seventy feet long and weighed 180 tons—a true monster.
“In the corner again. Well, I knew that would happen,” said David, MMTM’s team leader, as he glared at the Satellite Scanner and the scenery around them. “Kenta and Summon, climb up to the roof of the blue building on the left. Survey the area and remember the terrain. Report if you see an enemy, but do not open fire—come down at once. Jake and Lux, get up on the tracks and keep an eye on the south. If you see someone, do open fire. Bold, stick with me. Take turns checking the map.”
The rest of the team chimed in to indicate that they understood their orders.
Of course, they were a smart enough team to react accordingly regardless, but it was the leader’s job to put these things into firm words. That way, any confusion or mistaken assumptions could be eliminated for good.
Their (virtual) lives were on the line. Team MMTM worked on a professional, clinical framework: no negligence, no guesswork.
Jake the machine gunner and Lux the sniper moved in front of the train and lay down on the tracks, where they had the best visibility and firing position. They set up their HK21 machine gun and MSG90 automatic sniper rifle on bipods side by side, respectively. These two weapons were based on the same G3 assault rifle body and shot the same 7.62 mm bullets—deadly ones that were powerful while still being accurate at nearly nine hundred yards.
David and Bold scanned the horizon with their assault rifles. David used the Austrian Steyr STM-556, with a grenade launcher attached beneath its barrel, while Bold preferred the Italian Beretta ARX160.
Kenta and Summon, who used a German G36K and a Belgian FN Herstal SCAR-L, respectively, vanished through the doorway of a tall building nearby.
All four of their armaments used the same standardized 5.56 × 45 mm NATO rounds. Even their magazines were the same, so the packs they held in the pouches on their backs weren’t for themselves, but for their teammates to pull out and use when reloading.
As previously, they wore a Swedish military camo uniform, colored in various shades of green in angular patterns. On their shoulders were patches bearing their team logo: a skull with a knife in its jaws.
Their other accessories, like belts, suspenders, and magazine pouches, were almost identical to previous events, but with one notable difference: In accordance with the special rules of SJ4, they all had a pistol equipped, too.
The team was well-versed in long-range guns, so they hardly ever used pistols, which were weak, close-range weapons. They preferred an aggressive approach, fighting with their rifles indoors and outdoors.
That was purely by choice, however. David was the only exception, with an M9-A1 9 mm pistol made by Steyr, the same as his rifle.
But the special rules made it clear that these items were now mandatory. So each member carried an automatic Beretta APX on his right side, where his dominant hand could reach it. The guns fired 9 mm Parabellum rounds, with seventeen shots to a magazine.
Of course, they knew that merely having the pistols wasn’t the point. They’d taken the time to practice shooting several hundred rounds to ensure they were comfortable using the guns.
Just after 12:02, Kenta and Summon had finished climbing the stairs and gotten into lookout positions, where they soon reported that no enemies were in a visible range. All members declared that they’d had time to check the map and memorize its features.
“Good. After the first scan, we’re leaving these city ruins. I don’t dislike the terrain, but it’ll work against us if we have to deal with someone like the pink shrimp,” David instructed his team. “We’ll defeat any enemy teams as we move—clockwise from the north. We’ll move as soon as the scan is done. There’s bound to be a dangerous team in the northeast, so be careful.”
When the others chimed in that they understood, MMTM officially began the most famous of Squad Jam tactics: hunkering down on high alert until the first scan arrived.
From Bold, the team member who wore his hair in locs, came the message, “Leader! This thing can run!” He’d used his downtime to examine the vehicle, apparently.
“Ahhh… I’ll go take a look. Keep watching out, everyone,” said David, and he began trotting toward the engine.
It was pointed to the south. He climbed up the ladder on the rear of the locomotive, then used the inside passageway to proceed up to the engineer’s seat. Right there on the illuminated control panel was a fuel gauge indicating there was plenty left.
But David promptly announced, “We’re not using this.”
The tracks pointed slightly to the southeast, in fact, in a five o’clock direction that continued all the way to the bottom edge of the map. Using the train would allow them to cross that six-mile distance very quickly, but it would make them the perfect target to any nearby teams that could shoot at them.
The big, hardy locomotive itself could withstand some gunshots, but a blast from a plasma grenade could easily destroy the rails. If they went out, the train would easily derail. Because it was so heavy, it wouldn’t be able to stop in time. And the faster it traveled, the worse the accident would be.
If this were the end of Squad Jam and there were few enemies remaining, he might have chosen to use it. That was because quickly traveling long distances in between scans was very advantageous for catching an enemy by surprise.
But now that he had decided not to use the locomotive, that left only one thing to do.
“Leave plenty of souvenirs, Bold. We get automatic refills this time, so don’t hold back.”
“Got it!”
Bold removed seven ordinary detonation grenades from his inventory and placed them atop the ladder on the back of the train, the entrance to the cab, underneath the driver’s seat, and near the wheels.
If anyone approached without due caution and hit the tiny wires, they’d pull the safety pins and detonate the grenades. The bit under the driver’s seat was especially tricky: One was placed in a visible location and would set off a more carefully hidden grenade when removed.
“Kenta and Summon, head back. When the scan comes in, we’ll move,” said David. He checked the watch he wore on the inside of his left wrist. It was 12:04.
At 12:05, another one of the game’s special rules went into effect.
Nearly every team was visited by one of the scout monsters. If they chose to shoot the creature dead, it would summon a much larger horde of them, which startled players all over the map.
SHINC was no exception.
“Dammit!” swore Tanya, who had gleefully dispatched the scout monster with her Bizon. “So this is the special rule, huh?! This is why they’re refilling our ammo!” Now the Amazons were surrounded by an invasion of monsters out in the middle of a wide-open space with no shelter.
“That sick, twisted writer! He came up with this to mess with us!” snarled Boss, aiming with her Vintorez. “We can’t get ourselves killed right here at the start! That would be pathetic! No, let’s do some warm-ups and blow ’em all away! Sophie, I want you to pay attention to the perimeter! Catch any enemies that might be trying to sneak up on us!”
The rest of the team called back. They were already in a state of open fire, so they probably wouldn’t have heard her if not for their in-ear communication pieces.
“Rah-rah-rah-raaah!” cried Rosa, her PKM blasting deep and sharp. In between shots, the two Dragunovs howled, while the two guns with silencers were completely inaudible.
This was how SHINC ended up killing monsters in a frenzy until after the scan had passed.
“I see. So that’s how this works…”
In contrast to SHINC, MMTM was very careful.
David didn’t want to shoot the scout monster and make noise, so he chose to slice it open with his lightsword.
No other enemies appeared after that. The coast was quiet.
While he wondered why a monster had shown up, David heard gunshots in the distance and quickly put the picture together for himself.
“It’s a nasty trap. If you shoot the first scout without thinking, a whole bunch of them attack. Just the sort of thing that piece of crap writer would come up with,” he grunted, figuring out the trap as quickly as Pitohui had.
“Nice one, Leader. Or ‘Nicelee’ for short. So what now?” asked Jake, who was on his stomach, cradling the HK21. He suggested, “The team to the southeast is close. Should we whack ’em?”
They could hear the fighting over the tracks, which offered a long open space to collect sound, such as a distant team shooting more monsters. That was probably the closest team to them at the start of the game. If they rushed over, they could easily defeat that team while they were occupied by the creatures.
David shook his head, though. “No. We’ll wait it out.”
“Okay. How come?” Jake wondered. Normally, David would choose the merciless option.
“Change of plans,” the leader said at once. “This Squad Jam, we’re not taking any chances at the start. Let the others wear themselves out killing monsters. We’ll attack for five minutes, starting at twenty-five after. It’ll be harder for them to fight back just before the ammo refill.”
Jake flashed his pearly whites.
“Nicelee. That’s ruthless.”
At 12:06, all over the battlefield, huge swarms of monsters were startling and vexing players who did not expect to see them—but there was one group cheering as loudly as their gunfire.
“So many enemies! So many targets!”
“This is so much fuuuuun!”
“What a crazy special rule! I love this game!”
“This is awesome! Keep firing!”
“Hya-haaa! Rock ’n’ roll, man!”
Indeed, it was none other than the All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers, whose team abbreviation was ZEMAL.
Their starting point was the southwest corner of the map. Yes, they were considered one of the top four squads for SJ4 and thus relegated to one of the corners.
But they didn’t give that much thought. They were too busy shooting away.
In the midst of an unreal landscape—a wasteland full of craters caused by bombardment or perhaps a swarm of meteors—five machine guns outfitted with a belt-loading system, which allowed hundreds of rounds to be fired in succession, were at full roar.
“Ryaaaaaa!”
Zudu-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-doom!
The merciless gunfire exhibited exactly what the automatic weapon was designed to do. A hailstorm of bullets tore through the flock of monsters besieging the team.
“Max, cover Shinohara as he replaces his barrel.”
“Yes, my goddess!”
Among the burly, manly men was a pure, feminine voice.
“Huey, there’s a group of them on the left. Those are all yours.”
“Got it! Ura-ra-raaaa!”
“Tomtom, once you’ve defeated yours, go up to the lip of the crater behind us and keep an eye on the perimeter as you change your barrel. Peter, cover him.”
“Gotcha, ma’am!”
The woman they’d carried into the bar on their shoulders was now standing in the middle of the group, giving orders. And they were sharp and snappy orders, indeed.
She had the three gunners with 7.62 mm weapons, the bulk of the team’s firepower, moving around to different positions and switching their overheated barrels when appropriate, and the two 5.56 mm gunners filled the gaps.
It was a very effective, powerful, and beautiful strategy that made the most of ZEMAL’s ability—though the actual men who were faithfully carrying out their goddess’s directives likely weren’t capable of understanding or appreciating this.
“Damn, these guys are incredible…”
As usual, the crowd watching the action from the bar had a bird’s-eye view of the situation, a vista far superior to what those actually fighting could see. And what they saw was a ZEMAL at its peak. They were the stars of the screen.
The crowd was here to see action, and they spared no praise for the players who put on a show.
“When did those machine-gun idiots outfit themselves with those nifty backpack-loading ammo systems…?”
“It’s not fair, right? They can blast at pretty much anyone for as long as they want!”
“And they’ve got even more than that this time…”
“Yeah.”
The eyes of the crowd were naturally drawn to the pretty woman wearing a beanie at their center.
She hadn’t fired a single shot from the RPD machine gun hanging from her shoulder because she’d been issuing orders the entire time. She was bold, precise, and intelligent.
“She’s a brilliant tactician. I guess that when it comes to idiots and machine gunners, it’s all in how you use them…”
“They’re the same thing in this case.”
“Good point. Sorry.”
It was 12:09. After all the action and chaos, the final monster on the screen was shot and vanished.
Many teams had appeared on the monitors doing battle with the monster hordes, but ZEMAL finished them off quickest of all.
It was about to be 12:10 in Japan, in GGO, and in the battlefield of SJ4.
Only two teams succeeded in destroying all of their invading monsters by the first Satellite Scan.
The first of them was, of course, ZEMAL.
As for the other…
“Opticals are the best!”
“Dang, man, this is too sweet!”
“Fire, fire, fire!”
“Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The Ray Gun Boys, abbreviated RGB, exclusively used optical guns, and like ZEMAL, they were blasting away without a care in the world.
The futuristic optical weapons unique to GGO had a plethora of benefits: They were lightweight and fired both rapidly and accurately, unaffected by the wind, for a long duration thanks to their energy packs. But they also had one critical downside: Defensive fields in PvP reduced their power significantly.
In other words, they were the most effective weapons to use on a sudden stream of fairly weak monsters.
They weren’t fazed in the least by a wall-to-wall surge of monsters around them. They sprayed bullets of light at the onrushing creatures like water from a hose, reducing them to showers of polygonal shards.
Standing atop the frozen lake, they put on as good a show as ZEMAL did.
Meanwhile, from a prone position atop a highway bordering the lake, a man peered through binoculars, watching the fireworks exhibition.
He wore a venomous-looking original design of camo, a thin mask of green material, and a single-lens pair of sunglasses. His face was completely hidden.
The man muttered, “Those guys could be useful… I’ll invite them to the group.”
By 12:13, nearly all the teams had finished their initial battle with the monsters.
The number of total monsters spawned seemed to be the same, regardless of location, and the fights all lasted six to eight minutes.
A few unfortunate groups were unable to defend against the waves of claws and fangs, so they found themselves out of the game. It had to be very humiliating to enter a competitive event against other players and end up torn to shreds by disgusting, unthinking monsters instead.
Faster-moving competitors wiped out some other, equally unfortunate teams while they were distracted with the monsters—just like ZAT, who had been on the wrong end of a battle with Llenn’s squad.
As for SHINC, who had to fight on the wide-open runway, Boss and the others were perfectly unharmed. Not a single one of them suffered any damage from the monsters.
“That was a hardcore warm-up…”
But it did require quite a number of bullets to get through. Without any cover, they didn’t have the luxury of drawing their foes closer for a more accurate shot. They just had to keep firing until the creeps were gone.
Boss called for each member to report her ammo status. Most of them were down to about half their original stock—60 percent at the highest. It was what they had to do to survive, but this was a tough situation to be pushed into right at the start of Squad Jam.
They all kept low to the ground, watching for any sign of enemy attack. Boss pulled a fresh magazine out of her inventory and grunted. “We get our ammo back at the half-hour mark… Gotta avoid battle until then.”
Sophie scowled. “Exactly. We can’t go up against Llenn in this state. What should we do, Boss?”
Boss slapped the new magazine into her Vintorez and pulled the loading handle. With the pleasant sound of metal sliding on metal, the next bullet fit into the chamber. With its silencer on, the Vintorez fired so quietly that the reload alone seemed loud.
“I’m guessing the monsters show up if you stay in one spot for more than five minutes. It’s designed to keep you from camping. As long as we stay on the move, it shouldn’t be a problem. The actual problem is that we’re too exposed here. I want to get out of this area. We’re changing plans. Tanya, Tohma.”
The two women turned to her, and she continued, “Look for a vehicle. There’s probably something near the airport terminal. Tanya takes the lead, and Tohma follows about three hundred yards behind. If you don’t find anything by twelve twenty, come back. Everyone else, wait for now. After four minutes, we’ll move slowly to the north.”
“Roger that! Let’s go!”
“Hey, don’t get too far ahead!”
Tanya was the fastest member of the team, and Tohma was the only one who actually knew how to drive a manual transmission in real life. They rushed off down the runway.
Before long, Tanya was just a dot in the distance. Tohma and her long Dragunov followed behind at a more realistic pace.
If the two of them ran into a full enemy group of six, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
But that was by design.
If someone had to run reconnaissance, they might as well limit the potential damage in a losing fight. If Tanya got shot from her forward position, Tohma would be far enough behind that she could turn around and run back to the group.
As the point person of the team, Tanya accepted the risk of being the first one shot in any battle, and she had the duty of reporting enemy location, numbers, and gun types before she died. Whether she went down without saying anything or died after informing the team made a huge difference in how they could react.
Being a good point person in GGO meant knowing the types of guns in the game by appearance—even better if you recognized them by sound. It’s not like you could tell the bullet type or distance solely from the pain of being shot, after all.
And giving orders that might very well end in the death of one or two teammates was the job of the team leader.
Such a leader put a hand to her left ear. She temporarily switched off her comm so she wouldn’t accidentally talk over the two scouts, and she whispered, “Now we just pray that they find something.”
“Yes. It’s a hardcore setup this time,” Sophie agreed, approaching quietly and turning off her comm, too, so they could speak directly in person.
Boss glanced at her reliable partner and grinned.
“But it’s just as tough for Llenn’s team.”
While Boss was in the distant northeast corner of the battleground, smirking in a way guaranteed to terrify any small child, there was another team a few miles to the west, in the midst of a ruined city, silently making their way forward and communicating only through physical gestures.
“……”
“……”
Of course, the only team that could achieve this level of coordination was MMTM.
They were among massive buildings that had toppled over sideways without breaking apart. This was impossible in real life; if a building this tall lost its balance, it would simply crumble to the ground.
MMTM swiveled and peered not just ahead and to the sides, but toward the windows and rooftops of other buildings, wary of attacks, ensuring they had no blind spots as they hurried down the street.
They were as smooth and efficient as could be, like leaves flowing atop a river as they wove between the rocks breaking the surface.
They spoke not a single word so they could more easily hear any noises that another team might carelessly make. And of course, it was also to ensure they could hear gunfire and bullets coming their way.
With all the attacks that GGO players suffered from monsters and other players, those with skill gradually learned what distance and direction the bullets were coming from by senses alone.
The comm item that allowed constant dialogue was very convenient, but newer players tended to rely on it too much and disregard their own ears. And if the team was engaged in too much idle chatter, they could very easily miss the sound of the enemy.
Any good team had to know that in places where hostile encounters were expected, the leader would only give the necessary minimum of orders, and the other members would engage in the necessary minimum of communication.
“…”
Kenta, on point, held his G36K at shoulder height, keeping the muzzle perfectly level as he moved. A fallen building formed a wall on the right, hiding him from anyone beyond it.
When he reached the exposed foundation of the building at the corner, he deftly switched the gun to his left hand and peered around the side. Once he was certain there were no enemies present, he waved up Bold and gave a sign that it was safe to proceed.
MMTM flowed through the ruins.
Since they didn’t need to deal with the monsters, they had much more time than the others. With the barbed wire on the metal pole fencing—the northern edge of the map—on their left side, they moved quickly to the east.
They continued onward like ninjas until shortly before the 12:20 scan, and they did not come into contact with a single enemy team.
It was 12:20.
“Here we go! Time for the second scan!”
On the big screen in the bar, the squads’ locations and names appeared one after the other. If they were still alive, they would be bright dots. Gray blips were for those who’d been taken out. There were numbers to the side, too.
All told, the windowpane grid map showed that twenty-one teams were still alive. Nine were dead.
LPFM, SHINC, MMTM, and ZEMAL were still in it, which was a relief to the crowd.
“Shoulda figured that the toughest teams would pass that test with ease.”
“I don’t wanna see my sweet Llenn get killed by some worthless monsters.”
“Seriously. Also, I know I say this every time, but she’s not yours.”
“You know what? You’re right. She’s ours.”
“I won’t deny that.”
“You won’t?!”
The displayed location of Llenn’s team was at the south end of the map, prompting one of the usual arguments over her from the crowd, but that aside, the attention was mostly on the north side, where two groups were on a crash course.
“MMTM and SHINC look kinda close, don’t they?”
MMTM started in the northwest corner, and SHINC in the northeast. Both were heading straight along the north edge of the map, meaning they were quickly closing the gap between them.
At 12:20, SHINC was on the left edge of the airport, and MMTM was on the right edge of the ruins. Only a mile of distance and the highway going through the center of the map separated the two.
“They might collide!”
“I do think they might!”
“Uh-oh, watch out!”
But the men in the bar were more expectant than worried.
“So it’s MMTM…”
Boss was sitting in the passenger seat. But not in any ordinary vehicle.
It was a midsize truck about twenty-five feet long, with a large set of stairs in the bed: a special vehicle commonly known as an airstairs truck. These were the automobiles found only at airports, meant to be situated next to a plane on the runway so passengers could climb the stairs to get inside the cabin.
Slightly earlier, around 12:15, Tanya’s cannonball charge into the airport terminal vicinity bore fruit, as she almost immediately found the airstairs truck.
Of course, it was Tohma who drove the truck once she caught up. It was an automatic transmission, though, so it wasn’t that hard anyway.
SHINC regrouped and began to travel in their new set of wheels.
Two of them sat in the front seat. The other four were in the back—on top of the steps. The stairs had tall walls on either side, but no canopy on top. They rose high and tilted, to ensure they could reach the aircraft door.
Since different airplanes had different heights, the positioning of the stairwell could be adjusted up or down. Currently, they came to a height of about thirteen feet.
Having an elevation that high in a wide, flat area like this was a major advantage. Set up side by side on the top step were Rosa and her PKM machine gun along with Tohma and her PTRD-41 antitank rifle, while Sophie watched through binoculars from directly behind them. If she could spot any distant enemies, they could blast them from here.
Tanya was the one person left out of the fun, sitting at the base of the truck and singing to herself as she watched their six. “I’m the lonely, lonely leftover. All alone am I…”
The airstairs truck, which they’d transformed into a mobile gun turret complete with machine gun and antitank rifle, cruised easily to the west across the airport runway.
If they spotted any enemies, they were ready to pummel them with a hail of lead—but until 12:20, they did not spot anything moving across the wide-open asphalt.
“They must have escaped to the terminal. Or outside the airport entirely,” said Boss.
They stopped the truck with ten seconds to go before the scan—at which point they learned that MMTM was close.
Boss asked her teammates up above, “MMTM’s supposed to be at the edge of the ruins a mile to the west. Can anyone see them?”
From the very top of the stairs, Sophie said, “Nope. I can see the highway and the buildings, but not any people.”
Tohma chimed in, “I don’t see anything through my scope, either.”
“Got it. Don’t expose yourself to danger. But if you see them, you can fire,” ordered Boss. Then she stopped to think, murmuring silently to herself.
She didn’t expect to fight MMTM so early. Honestly, it wasn’t something she wanted to get into now.
The ultimate goal of the battle royale was to win it all, of course, so MMTM was a foe they would clash with eventually and need to fight—but there was a foe they wanted to fight and beat more than them: Llenn.
However, according to the scan, the little pink bunny was on the south edge of the map. She was very far away. More time would have to pass before they could trade shots with her.
Before that, what to do about MMTM? As long as they were on the runway, the airstairs truck was a great advantage. They could aim from a height over flat land. What’s more, there was still plenty of fuel.
But MMTM was too savvy not to figure that out quickly and respond with a counterstrategy. They might attempt to pop the tires first. Their leader’s grenade launcher might shoot a smoke grenade to block their visibility so the enemy could pull closer. Maybe they’d aim for the fuel tank. Perhaps all of these at once.
If she could come up with these plans, she knew that MMTM would be capable of them—and perhaps be capable of something even smarter.
After several long seconds of consideration, Boss told the group her plan.
“We’ll avoid combat with MMTM. This is the end of our leisurely drive for today,” she said, then added, “Tanya, get out the duct tape. Rosa, change the PKM barrel. And I’ll…”
At 12:20, learning that SHINC was their closest enemy via the scan, David grinned fiercely.
“We couldn’t ask for a better opponent. Let’s go and introduce ourselves—before we kill them.”
He mentioned the introduction because, in the bar before the start of SJ2, Boss had told him, I do hope you gentlemen will introduce yourselves before you get killed.
David came off as the coolheaded type, but after his experiences against SHINC and Pitohui, he had a tendency to hold on to grudges.
“Roger that!” said the rest of the squad. They were pumped up to face off against SHINC.
According to the scan, a number of teams were gathered toward the center of the map. If they were in a melee rather than a team-up, joining the fight was an option, but they chose to ignore the clump for now.
“Leapfrog to the highway. Go,” said David, referring to an alternative movement strategy.
While three members stayed at the ready to fire at any target, the other three advanced quickly past them before they switched positions. It was an alternating pattern of pausing and rushing, movement and standby. Obviously, if anyone came into contact with the enemy, combat would ensue.
MMTM used this tactic to break through the rest of the ruins and reach the highway. There were no hostile squads.
Before their eyes was a wide, massive highway structure.
The game’s design was based on the United States of America, so it wasn’t a raised highway. In Japan, such capacious paths would often be elevated so that intersecting surface roads could run beneath them, but it was typically the other way around over there.
The street was made of finely cracked gray concrete, four lanes for each direction. And each lane itself was quite wide, so when you added the shoulders and everything, it was a good hundred yards to cross the entire structure.
There were cars all over, some burned, some flipped over, some cut directly in half somehow. But for the most part, it felt pretty empty. There was plenty of visibility in every direction.
The center divider was a block wall of white concrete, about three feet tall and maybe a foot thick. Here and there, parts were missing, like a child’s mouth full of teeth.
It was easy to see a depression running along the opposite side of the highway through the missing teeth. It was deep enough that a person could stand inside it without being seen. And after a slope of damp earth was a fence with holes here and there, beyond which you could see the airport.
“Okay, go!”
As the machine gunners and snipers watched the vicinity, speedy Kenta crossed first. He moved in a sprint, not bothering to look or ready his gun. If he got shot, so be it. He’d just have to pray that his teammates backed him up with maximum firepower.
And in the end, he was untouched. Nothing from the road; nothing from the airport.
Kenta hid in the depression, took a quick look around, and called, “All clear! No hostiles!”
“Bold, go!”
Bold was the next to proceed. The entire team sprinted across the highway, one at a time.
There was a variety of ways to cross dangerous open territory like roads and shallow rivers. They could have gone two at a time, or more—even the rest of them at once.
It made the crossing quicker, but at the risk of a single machine-gun sweep or well-placed grenade wiping out the entire team. It all came down to personal preference.
“Summon, go!”
MMTM chose to run over one at a time.
When they saw MMTM crossing the highway, the audience in the bar began to predict what would happen next, as was their wont.
Two men standing at a tall table with their drinks conversed. “A showdown between the skull team and SHINC. Exciting!”
“If the airport is the battlefield, the Amazons have the advantage. You saw them in that airstairs truck, right? They can shoot down from above.”
“But the truck sticks out from a distance. If it’s moving, they’ll know SHINC’s riding it. It’s the perfect target for MMTM to hit. And you know a team that talented will find an easy way to win that battle.”
“But that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“The Amazons can simply stop the truck. If they hide behind a stationary vehicle, the other guys will think it’s abandoned and come over, right? Then SHINC can blast ’em.”
“That’s pretty optimistic of you. What makes you think the skull team will goof up that badly?”
“Oh? You wanna bet on MMTM, then? I’ll take the Amazons. How about we go big? I say a thousand credits.”
“Sounds good to me. You’re on!”
Since the laws of Japan didn’t apply in this virtual place, the two began a friendly wager.
In a few minutes, both of them would be very disappointed.
At 12:25, David and the rest of MMTM waited on hands and knees atop the slope in front of a rusted, tattered fence. They stood before a vast open space of runways, taxiways, and the dirt tracts between them. The horizon was faded in the distance. More clouds hung in the sky now, and the wind was picking up.
From their position on the ground, they began observing the terrain.
The area ahead was so exposed that they couldn’t move through it without a plan. Especially because SHINC had that antitank rifle. If they were carefully lying in wait somewhere, that would be very dangerous. In fact, it seemed like it might be impossible to spot them, if that were the case.
But then Lux, looking through the scope of his sniper rifle, reported, “East to southeast! There’s a car on the move!” Apparently, it wasn’t that hard after all. “It’s an airstairs truck. Distance of twelve hundred yards. Approaching slowly from the right, up ahead. Crossing to the left side.”
David followed this report by setting his scope’s zoom to the maximum. Then he placed it along the slope and peered carefully through it.
“Got it.”
It was hazy, being a very long distance away, but he could see them.
A truck with a large set of stairs on top of it was rolling along over the runway from the east-southeast, sticking out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t going much more than five miles per hour.
Based on the locations of all teams in the last scan, it was almost certainly SHINC behind the wheel.
David kept watching. There was no visible figure in the driver’s seat. They were probably leaning low and out of sight to avoid being shot through the windshield, and very slowly operating the pedals and wheel. It was probably quite awkward, but with a teammate spotting you, it wasn’t impossible to do.
As for the top of the stairs, they were elevated, and the car was on a diagonal angle from here, so the wall blocked the view of the steps.
Even still, he could make out a narrow rod extending just a little bit. That was the barrel of one of SHINC’s PKMs. And it meant they were using the top of the stairs as a machine-gun turret.
David grunted to himself while Lux described the vehicle to the rest of the team.
The last thing they wanted to do was get too close and have that weapon blasting at them from a secure spot up top. Battle would be very difficult on this flat runway with nowhere to hide. And SHINC had that antitank rifle, too.
Even worse, they had the mobility of a vehicle. If the tide of battle turned against them, they could easily put more space between the two teams with a little added pressure on the gas pedal.
The circumstances were against MMTM. But David didn’t want to give up on combat and simply run away, either. This was a chance to fight against a worthy opponent without anyone else getting in the way. Plus, it wasn’t a smart move to leave that set of airstairs in enemy hands.
Worst of all was the thought of finishing up Squad Jam and having those Amazons say, Oh? You had a chance to fight us, and you ran away? That was a brilliant idea. You’re savvy when it comes to self-preservation. We applaud you.
So how did a team conquer a moving fortress on flat land without any cover while receiving a minimum of damage? David’s mind raced to find the answer.
When bullets started flying in GGO, combat was like a game of fast chess. You had no time to think. The only thing you could do was act.
In three seconds, he asked, “Lux, can you hit that truck’s fuel tank?”
“Nope. I looked for it, but I can’t see it. Must be on the other side.”
“Can you snipe the tires, then? I want to slow it down.”
“Maybe if it gets down to six hundred yards. It’s at eight hundred now!”
“Okay. Once it travels another hundred to the left, let it close within five hundred, then pop its tires at will. Bold, stick with Lux and watch for bullet lines from the staircase.”
They replied affirmatively and began to run through the depression to the left-hand side where SHINC was going: north.
David continued, “If the car stops, I’ll shoot a smoke grenade in front of it. But we’re not all charging it—just making them think we are. Jake, you lay down covering fire near the car through the gas. I’ll be the only one getting closer, and when the smoke clears, I’ll shoot all the ordinary grenades I have. Kenta, Summon, if the car gets destroyed, I’ll order you to rush it, depending on circumstantial factors. Be on the lookout until then.”
His explanation concerned Kenta, who asked, “Why are you the only one undertaking all the danger?”
David grinned fiercely. “So I can hog all the glory.”
12:28.
“Distance, five hundred. Here we go.”
From his prone position immediately behind the fence, Lux began to snipe with the MSG90.
With a sharp report, it sent a 7.62 mm bullet flying over the wide-open airport runway at low altitude. It crossed the distance to the target in eight-tenths of a second, striking the front left tire of the airstairs truck and blowing it out.
Lux steadied his breathing, trying not to let the adrenaline rush of success send his aim askew, and pointed the crosshairs over the rear tire of the plodding vehicle. When he placed his finger on the trigger, a bullet circle appeared through the lens, shrinking with his pulse.
Aside from firing unassisted without a line, the only time a bullet line would be invisible with regular shooting was the first shot, when the target didn’t know where you were. So at this point, SHINC could see Lux’s bullet line from the airstairs. They’d be shooting back at him with machine guns or that antitank rifle any moment now.
But Lux triumphed over his urge to run away, aimed the circle—which wasn’t quite at the center of his crosshairs—over the tire, and pulled the trigger when it had shrunk to its smallest size.
Getting the knack of the timing required the kind of reaction speed demanded by rhythm games. Lux had plenty of practice, and he did not miss.
Another gunshot. A golden cartridge flew through the air.
The bullet hit the pair of parallel tires in the rear. He spotted the fragments of rubber flying loose as they burst.
“Yes! Nice shooting. Now let’s watch,” said David, who was situated a hundred yards to the south.
The truck, now running on two flat tires on one side, began to list toward that direction. It turned left from its original route and started curving toward them.
“Leader, I can aim at the front right tire soon. Shouldn’t we immobilize it entirely?” Lux asked, but David didn’t answer him.
Instead, he wondered aloud, “Why aren’t they shooting back…? Why is there no response at all…?”
And then he hit upon a theory.
“Jake!”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Shoot that truck about a hundred times or so. Doesn’t have to actually strike it.”
“You got it!”
Thirty feet away from David, Jake began firing his HK21, steadied against the ground with the muzzle pointing through a hole in the chain-link fence. It spat fully automatic rounds at the airstairs truck.
A machine gun wasn’t going to be as accurate as a sniper rifle, but with as many bullets as it fired, and with a target this big, some were bound to hit. The bullets smacked the truck and stairs at the speed of sound, sending up flashes of yellow sparks.
But the truck just kept trundling along. No one shot back at them.
“Aw, dammit! I should have known! They got us! Jake, hold your fire!” David swore, ordering them to stand down. The roar of the machine gun came to an abrupt halt.
As his teammates listened for the answer, David announced, “Well, gang, the Amazons really got one over on us. The truck’s empty.”
Bold watched the airstairs truck approach to a distance of about four hundred yards. With his eyes pressed to the binoculars, he reported, “It’s true! The barrel on the top of the stairs is just a spare barrel sitting there…”
Even without intact tires on its left side, the truck slowly rolled onward toward MMTM. If they let it go, it would probably swing around toward the right again, carving a very lazy circle across the runway, until it eventually ran out of fuel.
“The Amazons probably escaped to the south or the center of the map by distracting us with this target to shoot at. They made us waste ten whole minutes doing this,” David told them.
“Not bad,” said Jake. “We’ll have to thank them for this later.” He exchanged the ammo box on the HK21.
Lux and Bold returned to the group from their spot a hundred yards to the north. It was 12:29. Four minutes had passed since they’d reached this area.
“I don’t wanna play with the monsters, so let’s move. We’ll go through the airport, hugging the north boundary line. That way, we can check the scan as we go,” said David. They all stood up and made their way through the fence.
Once through, they spread out to a mutual distance of a few dozen feet and, wary of the surroundings, slowly walked across the asphalt.
They were going north. Much like Llenn’s group, they’d decided that if they moved along the northernmost edge of the arena, the enemy couldn’t ambush them. That also meant there was no escape from an advancing squad, so this was a tactic only advised for teams with the firepower and fortitude to stand their ground and fight.
After a little while, Summon asked, “What about the airstairs truck, Leader?”
“Guess I could blow it up. The rest of you, get ready to check the scanner.”
It had flat tires, but that wasn’t stopping the truck from running. They didn’t need another squad using it after they abandoned the vehicle. So David decided to destroy it instead.
It was about a thousand feet from MMTM to the airstairs truck at the moment—within his grenade launcher’s range. If he didn’t act now, it was going to drift farther away.
David stopped and aimed the Steyr STM-556 on a diagonal. He could puncture the fuel tank, but there was an easier method to doing it.
He grabbed the extended magazine as though it were the gun’s grip, then rested his finger against the trigger of the grenade launcher below the barrel. When the bullet circle appeared for him, he placed it over the ground in front of the truck’s path.
The time was 12:29:55.
The airstairs truck exploded.
A blue-white surge billowed around it, reducing the vehicle and its steps to dust as a huge azure orb swallowed them whole.
“What the—?! Get down!”
David removed his finger from the grenade launcher just before he was about to fire it and practically kissed the tarmac. The others followed his lead a beat later.
The blue explosion rattled their eardrums with a tremendous boom.
“Hya!” “Dwoah!” “Ooh!” “Gaaah!” “Hyeep!”
A number of additional spheres appeared, overlapping like bubbles and spreading. The entire diameter of the blast grew to over fifty yards.
It obliterated the airstairs truck, gashed a huge hole in the asphalt, and sprayed the chunks at the edges outward at the speed of sound. Those pieces shot toward the players like bullets, cracking the air over MMTM’s heads in succession, even at a distance of a thousand feet. A few of them struck the ground, twanging off the ground like ricocheting bullets.
A few seconds after the blue explosion had finished and the flying bits of rubble had settled, David glanced up into the left corner of his vision at the hit point bars for his entire team.
“Everyone’s all right, then…”
Fortunately, none of them had taken an unlucky hit from a random chunk of asphalt.
The airstairs truck had been completely melted away by the plasma surge. There wasn’t so much as a little chunk of it left. The ground at the center of the explosion had been scooped out into a hole about a hundred feet across.
On top of that, everywhere within a radius of 250 yards was littered with chunks of asphalt somewhere between the size of a fist and a head. A hit from one of those would be serious trouble. If they’d been fifty yards closer, they could have all been in mortal danger.
David growled, getting slowly to his feet. “Dammit… They packed all of their plasma grenades in there… From what I remember, the gorilla-woman had a bunch of grand grenades. The ones she gave to the pink shrimp in the last Squad Jam to split the cruise ship in half…”
He’d watched the entirety of SJ3’s battle scenes in preparation, so he knew the armaments, gear, and combat styles of just about everyone who had appeared in the previous tournament.
Surprised, Jake said, “Are you serious? What a waste of a good weapon… Oh! It’s because they get refilled…”
“That’s right. They got one over on us… The special rule refills their ammo, and the trap worked on us because they knew we wouldn’t run from a fight. Shit!” David swore, his avatar’s handsome face seething with fury. “And now they’ll have all their plasma grenades back. But…”
“But?”
“They also know we’re still alive. It’s too early to be laughing, Eva.”
It was thirty seconds past 12:30.
The third scan was already running.
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