CHAPTER 16
Retreat II
Llenn’s grenade blast gust thrust up the bus and busted her buns. Try saying that three times fast.
But it hasn’t really changed the situation that much!
She was still stuck in one place. The only difference was that it was in a burned-out building rather than under a school bus. The structure seemed like it had once been an electronics store. The interior was eerily quiet, with all the cracked and broken TV screens around.
Llenn searched for a staircase. A floor or two of height would at least give her a better view of her surroundings.
Unfortunately, there was no upward route to be found on the inside. Apparently, it was a rental space because, to deter theft, there were no side exits, either. The only way in or out was the north face adjacent to the street.
Llenn huddled in the back of the darkened interior, watching the brighter windowed side intently. If anyone came along, she was going to give them a bellyful of P90 lead on full auto.
How long after two o’clock was it? She’d lost her wristwatch, so only the Satellite Scanner would tell her, and she didn’t dare bring that out in case the illumination helped a sniper find her.
If she waited around for at least five minutes, would a monster appear inside? She couldn’t help but worry. What if she failed to kill it with her knife?
Aw…I feel so alone…
Being a lone warrior sounded cool and all, but lone was simply short for lonely.
Llenn considered just darting out into the street and testing her luck, but the thought of a silent sniper scared her out of taking the plunge. Unlike the recent playtest, Squad Jam was a one-and-done deal. If Llenn died, something terrible would happen.
“What should I do, P-chan?” she thought, asking the gun slung around her chest, but there was no answer.
“What should I do, Kni-chan?” she thought, asking the knife behind her back, but there was no answer.
“What should I do, Pla-chan?” she thought, reaching to rub a plasma grenade, but she wisely stopped herself.
Zbwoaa! There was a tremendous roar from the street, like a wild animal snoring.
A Humvee!
Llenn remembered that distinct sound from SJ2, having heard it many times. It was the engine of a military Humvee, a water-cooled V-8 turbo diesel with 6,500 cubic centimeters in displacement.
The noise was echoing between the buildings and getting louder. That meant the Humvee was approaching from the east, Llenn’s right side.
Based on the sound, there was just one of the vehicles. More than that, and it would have been a cacophony.
Ugh! What should I do? Llenn wondered.
What if that was the Humvee with the Minigun? That one should have been on the other street a hundred yards to the south. If it was the same one, she really wanted to throw a plasma grenade at it. That was why she’d left her group in the first place.
As long as the enemy didn’t know she was here, she could hurl a bomb under the car as it passed. The little bit of fortune that had brought the enemy to her would, at last, allow her to fulfill her mission.
Yet, Llenn also had another idea. What if I could jump inside when it passes?
While the roof was surrounded by armor plating, the turret itself was open. Llenn knew that because she’d ridden in one during SJ2. So she’d pop out, run straight for it, and leap up and into the Humvee. In SJ2, she’d jumped over a Humvee pursuing her, so the timing shouldn’t be too hard.
A more reliable strategy would be to set off the plasma grenade in front of the Humvee to make it stop. It might even momentarily blind any snipers waiting with sights trained on the road.
Once Llenn jumped inside the car, the Humvee’s armor would protect her from any snipers in wait. However many people were inside the Humvee, she’d just have to give them hell.
She’d spray and pray with P-chan, and when her ammo ran out, she’d swing her knife. There was no risk of killing one of her own teammates. It was the perfect situation for the same kind of fighting she’d employed in the domed jungle of SJ2.
I can do it… I can… I will! Llenn swore.
She couldn’t deny that there was an element of recklessness to the idea, but it was still far preferable to being trapped here by snipers and left behind by her friends, just to wait for them to get wiped out.
I’ll do it!
Llenn felt like she could hear the blood vessels in her brain boiling.
Suddenly, the engine’s roar got much louder. It was very close. Llenn adjusted the timer on a plasma grenade with her left hand, extending it from three seconds to four.
She was going to press the switch and coordinate it so that when she tossed it out into the middle of the street, it would explode right on contact.
The sounds of the Humvee grew even nearer.
C’mon, c’mon…
Llenn rushed up to the wall and pressed the switch on the grenade.
There was a sudden flash of light up ahead.
“What?!”
The Humvee driver slammed on the brake pedal, and the lumbering vehicle just barely came to a stop in front of the blue orb. If it had passed through the plasma explosion, the energy would have chewed the front half of the car to shreds.
The blast shook the heavy vehicle, sending dust in through the open roof.
Something else came in through the aperture, too.
“Taaa!” shrieked a small pink person who hurtled inside and landed butt-first on the metal plate in the back of the Humvee. “Yeow!”
She twisted around, baring her fangs, and pointed a P90 submachine gun at—
“Huh?”
She only noticed just before she pulled the trigger.
The people turning back to look at her from the driver’s and passenger’s seats were technically her teammates.
Unfortunately, her understanding was slower than her reflexes.
The P90 fired a single bullet into the center console.
“Hyaaaa!” “Daaaaa!” Clarence and Shirley screamed together.
“I’m sorryyyy!” Llenn added to the mix. “But why?!” she cried, just as startled as the other two.
She’d put together this mad stunt, half expecting to die doing it, and had come face-to-face with none other than the teammates she’d split off from over an hour earlier.
“What are you doing?” Llenn demanded, still holding the P90.
“Don’t point that at us!” Shirley snapped.
“We’ll pay you back for the motorcycle we stole!” Clarence wailed.
Llenn lowered the P90 and glanced to her sides, noticing the metal ammo railing connected to the Minigun. “I’m not going to shoot you! Wait, did you steal the Humvee with the Minigun? That’s amazing!”
“Yep!” Clarence boasted. Technically, it was her lingerie performance that had done the trick, so she’d earned the right to be proud.
“Give me a ride, then! Everyone’s running west—let’s go help them!”
“Uh-huh. And is Pitohui with them?” Shirley asked, her eyes sharp.
“Ooh—!” Llenn gasped. The hand holding the P90 twitched. If Shirley happened to spot Pitohui, she might seriously drive over her with the Humvee.
Wait a second, are they really on our side? Should I be thinking of them as enemies instead?
“Should we go at it, then?” Shirley asked, glaring at Llenn. But her gun was resting sideways on her lap, not ready to fire.
“Hey, Llenn, are you good at driving?” Clarence asked for some reason.
“Huh?”
“You can go right ahead and shoot Shirley if you take the wheel. And then we can be good friends!”
“Okay, I get it. So that’s how it’s gonna be, then…,” grumbled Shirley.
“I can’t…,” Llenn admitted.
“Neither can I. So if you shoot Shirley, this big old hunk of metal is useless.”
“Got it… Setting aside the stuff about Pito, just drive! There’s a sniper around! That’s why I couldn’t escape until you showed up!” Llenn explained. Shirley did not seem particularly happy about the answer.
Gank! Gank! Sparks showered down on them through the roof from a pair of shots. That made the decision a bit more pressing. Llenn nearly caught one bullet through her foot.
“Hya! H-hurry!”
“Dammit! Fine!”
The engine roared to life again, and the Humvee carrying three members of LPFM rolled over the hole left by the plasma grenade, the tires passing around the edges. More shots collided with the vehicle, creating no small amount of noise inside.
“What time is it?” Llenn asked Clarence.
“Um…2:08!”
Roughly ten minutes had passed since they’d watched Llenn leave just before two o’clock.
Pitohui, M, Fukaziroh, and the five members of SHINC couldn’t even count the number of times they’d thought they’d die in the intervening time.
When they determined that Llenn had successfully held off the Wrong Lancers, they’d decided to leave their intersection base and move west. In some respects, it had been the right answer, and in others, it had been a terrible, terrible choice.
At that point, a trio of Wrong Lancers, including the leader, were heading toward Llenn. The remaining three were waiting calmly in place.
A few minutes later, though they’d spotted two squads moving together, they’d held their fire. It was only three snipers to the eight fleeing targets. The Wrong Lancers knew from experience that if they started firing, they’d only be able to take out two or three opponents at best.
Instead, they let Pitohui’s group head west. Perhaps, after a while, they’d feel like the coast was clear and indulge in a bit of rest. That would be the Lancers’ chance to strike.
Then the snipers left their building perch and followed on foot. They made liberal use of cover, careful not to let the rear guard spot their pursuit. The tactic was one that the Wrong Lancers employed often.
The sniping started around 2:05.
There were three of them, all wearing green camo, masks, and sunglasses, but there were two kinds of sniper rifles between them.
One had an RPR. That stood for Ruger Precision Rifle. It was a bolt-action sniper rifle made by Sturm, Ruger and Co. in America, using .308 Winchester cartridges belonging to the 7.62 × 51 mm NATO standard.
The straight-angled stock and pistol grip gave it the countenance of an assault rifle. The RPR wasn’t necessarily used in great numbers by any military, but it was popular among civilians for being very cheap for such a quality armament. It was also reasonably priced in GGO and gave a sniper everything they could want.
This man’s RPR was painted the same color as his camo, which made it hard to tell where the shooter ended and the gun began.
There were only two kinds of weapons between the three of them because the other two used the same sort of gun. Each had an Mk 12 SPR automatic sniper rifle. SPR stood for Special Purpose Rifle.
The SPR launched 5.56 × 45 NATO rounds, the same caliber as the M16 and Type 89 rifles. The firearm itself was a custom M16 model, so it looked similar. But the barrel had been tinkered with to make it capable of high-precision sniping, and it used special bullets. There was also a suppressor.
It had an effective range of about seven hundred meters, which was shorter than that of larger-caliber sniper rifles, but it had the advantages of precision and lighter weight. Even better, because it was based on the M16 assault rifle, it could fire semi-auto if needed.
There was another benefit to having two of the exact same gun set up the same way (scope, bipod, other accessories) on top of that.
The clone jutsu.
Not that they were ninjas. There was no in-game skill or item in GGO that made that possible.
But when you had two avatars with the same height and figure, both with their faces hidden, it was impossible to tell them apart.
Within the squadron, the guys liked to joke that these two were the “Wrong Lancer Brothers,” but they were absolutely not related and were from totally different parts of Japan. They were just a pair of gun nuts who had met in GGO and found that they got along.
As such, they always dressed themselves up the same way. Here in SJ4, they wore camo and used Mk 12 SPRs. They worked as a two-person team, but at a distance.
When the situation called for it, one would reveal himself and attack while the other remained in hiding. When the first one took fire from the enemy, he would simply turn and run without putting up a fight. Once the enemy chased after him, the other one would pop out of hiding and attack.
To the opponent who got shot, it would seem like one player had warped or used a clone technique to create a double.
These tactics made the two of them the best antipersonnel soldiers on the Wrong Lancers. They were at their most useful when the squadron was under attack by PKer hunters, as well as during moments like this.
The next member of SHINC to fall after Sophie was Anna.
She became the first target of the man with the RPR.
“Hrgh!”
He shot her through the left flank from behind, where she couldn’t see the bullet line.
The powerful rifle’s projectile took 80 percent of her hit points all at once, dropping Anna to the ground. The fact that it wasn’t an instant kill meant that she had time to warn her teammates.
“I’ll hold them back! Keep going!” she shouted to her friends. Then she threw herself behind some debris and took position with her Dragunov. She’d keep the enemy here until she died.
Everyone understood that it was the best possible move. “Damn… Everyone run!” Boss ordered.
“Shit!” swore Rosa, pulling back after giving some covering fire with her PKM. She took off running, watching Anna grow smaller and smaller.
“That’s right! Just go!” repeated Anna. She had her Dragunov at the ready, lying on the ground behind the rubble to wait for the next attack by herself. Through her 4× scope, she caught a glimpse of a moving bit of camo. “There you are!”
However, before she could take proper aim, a bullet hit her head from a different direction.
“Damn…”
She was sent back to the waiting area.
When Boss learned of Anna’s death, she gave the order to her three remaining squadmates and her other comrades.
“Next person to get shot, don’t stop! Everybody run!”
“Follow them.”
“Roger that.”
“Roger that.”
Three Wrong Lancers entered pursuit.
After they took out the sniper, the other seven enemies had stopped fighting back and focused on escape. It was easier for the Lancers to shoot them when they stopped, so it was a wise tactical decision—but it pushed the pursuers to get serious.
As a general rule, snipers did not like to sprint. The last thing you wanted to do was spike your heart rate.
However, the Wrong Lancers went to extreme lengths to eliminate their own weaknesses, which meant they practiced like Olympic biathletes, running four-hundred-meter dashes before testing their sharpshooting.
Through this grueling training, they learned how to aim and shoot with the proper timing to minimize the bullet circle even when their pulses were racing.
The man with the RPR wove his way through the rubble, then climbed up onto a flipped-over truck and aimed at the figure running at the head of the fleeing group, four hundred meters away—an avatar with silver hair.
“Gyahuh!”
The bullet from the RPR hit Tanya in the shoulder and spun her around. It was only her excellent sense of balance that kept her from falling to the ground.
“Dammit! I hate snipers!”
“You were lucky! Keep running!” urged Boss, who was delighted that it hadn’t been an insta-kill. Internally, she was considering leaving Pitohui’s squad behind.
M was the slowest out of all of them, so he was holding the group back as a whole. And if SHINC used their athletic ability to the fullest extent, they could take cover in a nearby building—leaving only Pitohui’s people as targets for the snipers.
Pitohui was fixated on running to the west. She had decided they should keep going, even under fire, but Boss had no idea why.
What to do…?
A bullet flew at her head as she pondered.
It was Pitohui who ensured that Boss tumbled over and out of the way; she’d run up alongside her at some point. When Pitohui noticed the bullet line, she threw out her foot and tripped Boss.
Boss fell to the ground in a defensive position, saw the bullet line over her head, and heard the scream of the projectile as it raced by.
“Get up! Almost there!” encouraged Pitohui, pulling Boss up and toward the shelter of a large pile of rubble.
“Okay!”
Boss gave up on her idea. At the same time, she had another thought.
Karen knows Pitohui’s player in real life. She’s got extreme destructive urges but is also a very serious and earnest person…
It made her want to know what Pitohui was like in real life, too.
The person who did the most during this retreating battle was the one typically equipped with a pair of grenade launchers and a 9 mm M&P—Fukaziroh.
Being the smallest person there, she was the most challenging target, and she scurried from one spot to the next like a little mouse.
“Here you go.”
“All riiight!”
M gave her a grand grenade that she wrapped in a cloth that she used to fling it with all her might.
It was a simple concept. She draped one end of a long, thin piece of fabric around her wrist, then put the grand grenade in the center of the cloth, activated it, and wrapped the explosive up. Once she was holding the other end with her other hand, she was ready to throw.
At this point, she would wind up and spin her arms around, then let go at the right moment so that the heavy object hurtled out of the cloth. It was a primitive but effective method of throwing; Sophie used it sometimes, too.
The explosion wouldn’t reach a distant sniper, but the azure blast would shield them from bullets and send up dust that worked like a weak smoke screen. Alas, it wasn’t enough to topple buildings.
But while this might have slowed the Wrong Lancers’ pursuit, it did not stop it outright.
“Ugh!”
They accurately read M’s zigzag pattern, and he took a shot to the thigh. They knew that his backpack was holding the modular shield, so they’d aimed lower. M continued running on his numb leg.
Pitohui was hit, too. She spotted an enemy behind her and pointed the KTR-09 that way to put down a screen of fire. No sooner had she done so than a bullet struck her from the other side of the street.
“Ugh!”
She twisted the moment she saw the line, so it went through her left shoulder instead of her chest and heart.
“Wait, no… They’re… That’s it!”
Pitohui had deciphered the secret to the clone jutsu the enemy was using.
And now it was 2:08.
They’d taken more shots, to the point that every last one of them was glowing with damage somewhere and down to between 70 and 50 percent health.
“Found it! Over here, Pito!”
The seven survivors of the retreat battle had reached the locomotive.
The direct rail line that ran southeast along the map stood out among the city’s crumbling remains. Resting atop the tracks was a massive metal object measuring seventy-two feet end to end. Its exterior was battered and ancient.
“Hide behind it! Don’t get in yet! It’s booby-trapped!” Pitohui instructed the other six. They picked up speed, hurrying to reach what was the perfect shelter from the snipers. “And pay your respects to the squatters who got here before us,” she appended after a moment.
“Huh?” Tanya wondered aloud. She ran with her Bizon readied at her waist, reached the locomotive before anyone else, and swung around the back.
“Oh! Hey…! Long time no see!”
There she found the fully armored sci-fi team T-S, already hiding.
“This is Llenn! Where are you guys? Something crazy has happened over here!”
Llenn hooked her comm back up while in the passenger seat of the Humvee so she could get in touch with her squad.
The vehicle was slowly making its way down the street with Shirley behind the wheel. She was trying to avoid the debris and dead cars in the way, but very unsteadily. And in some cases, unsuccessfully.
Clarence stood in the turret, hands on the Minigun’s grips, thumb at the trigger. She’d given it a brief test earlier, so they knew it still worked.
The incredible noise and rate of fire startled them, but the weapon was fixed to the Humvee, which made it more comfortable to use and aim than an ordinary gun. Clarence saw that the weapon’s bullet circle was calm and steady.
Naturally, the enemy could see the bullet line like a searchlight, but she didn’t care. If any enemies were ahead, she’d destroy them with her overwhelming firing speed.
“Yo, glad to hear you’re all right. Let me tell you, it’s been party time over here!” came Fukaziroh’s voice in Llenn’s ear.
She could see that Fukaziroh’s HP was currently at 70 percent. It wasn’t that long ago that she’d gotten blasted atop the building, so she had to be out of healing kits by now.
“Wh-what’s the situation? How is SHINC?”
“Anna died, unfortunately. Hurts to lose a fellow blond… She’s watching us from the great big waiting area in the sky now.”
“Oh… But everyone else is all right?”
“Banged up but alive.”
“Aw…”
“More importantly, what about you?”
“I’m in a Humvee,” Llenn started to explain, but then Fukaziroh screamed “Hya!” and there was the sound of a grenade blast on the other end.
Around the locomotive, it was, as Fukaziroh had put it, party time.
Two Humvees arrived at a point on the road with a good view of the train just after M finally got behind cover. They loosed a tremendous hail of gunfire at the locomotive; if M had been four seconds later, he would have been dead on the tracks.
The two Humvees stopped about 350 meters away, one in front of the other, in the eleven o’clock direction from the train’s nose. One came to a stop at an angle, exposing its right front side, and the other took the same angle slightly behind. That gave them sight lines while minimizing the amount of exposed armor.
The team leader started sniping with the L129A1 from the roof of Car One. From Car Three, which had a trio of passengers, two got out and used the vehicle’s body as a shield. They added their HK433 assault rifle and M79 grenade launcher to the offensive barrage.
A grenade landed on the roof of the locomotive close to Fukaziroh, startling her while she was conversing with Llenn over the comms.
“Hya!”
The last group member set up an H&K MG5 7.62 mm machine gun behind the armor plating of the rear Humvee and fired bursts at intervals of three seconds.
“Hwaaa! Look out!” cried Pitohui with glee, shooting a descending grenade with her short shotgun, the M870 Breacher. The explosive had been on a direct course to land on them behind the engine. If she hadn’t blown it up in midair, three members of SHINC would have died.
M hastily spread out his shield in front of the tracks. He stood about three meters from the engine to draw the gunfire to himself.
Sadly, the enemy was too smart. Rather than shooting M, they scattered their shots to the train’s front and rear to keep the group from escaping.
“Hrmm…”
M fired back with his M14 EBR instead, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off the Humvees’ armor. A bullet line shone right through the seam in his shield.
“Ah!” He tilted his head away from it, and an L129A1 bullet passed through. “Very nice aim.”
Behind the engine, Fukaziroh asked Tohma, “Should I bring out the big guy?” referring to the PTRD-41 she had in her inventory.
“Yeah! We can use that on the Humvees—”
“Don’t bother! They’ll snipe you the moment you set it up!” Pitohui warned. The other two looked at each other and recognized the truth when they heard it.
“Fine…,” replied Tohma, crestfallen.
However, Fukaziroh just patted her on the back. “Hey, I’ll hold on to it a bit longer for ya. Don’t worry, I won’t shoot or sell it.”
While that part of the group was putting up a good fight, Boss was busy getting in a yelling match with T-S.
“If you’re going to shoot me, go ahead! But you’re not going to last long after that!” she screamed. Her fury was so intense that it totally shut down T-S.
Ervin, who wore the number 002, touted an XM8. The others had their Steyr AUGs and SAR 21s pointed at the rest of Boss’s ragtag party. If T-S pulled the triggers, they could wipe out the two squads in three seconds.
“Do you understand what’s going on here? We’re getting shot by crack snipers from the allied team!” she snapped as bullets panged and twanged nearby. The attackers were clearly going after the train itself, chipping away at the metal. Some of the rounds bounced beneath the locomotive, and one spiraled upward and hit one of the T-S soldiers. It did not do any actual damage.
“Th-then what should we do?” questioned Ervin, who always felt compelled to speak for the group.
“That’s obvious!”
They’d fought on the same side in SJ3 and in the recent playtest, but now the two sides were enemies. Boss knew the reason they’d stayed out of trouble so far this game. T-S had figured out about the allied team after watching the Satellite Scan. The squad must have been hoping to run around and hide until they could pick off whoever survived, just like they had in SJ2.
Boss could hardly blame them for the tactic.
“In the current situation, do you really think you’ll make it out of this without working with us? Just help—it doesn’t have to be for long!”
Kaboom! The ground behind them shook with an explosion from an M79 grenade launcher. That seemed to make the difference for T-S.
“A-all right, I guess…”
The four members of V2HG watched as a soldier in battle armor emerged from the front of the locomotive.
“It’s T-S!”
They’d studied videos of the previous Squad Jams, so they recognized that look at once. They focused their gunfire in that direction. Even if the bullets didn’t go through the train, they only needed to knock the target over.
However, T-S was not quite the same as in previous battles.
“Launcher!” some of the V2HG squadmates yelled, a warning about the M320 grenade launcher their target was holding.
Pomp!
Number 003 from T-S shot a 40 mm grenade onto the hood of the front Humvee, where it exploded.
V2HG’s leader had already descended below the line of plating on the roof, so he avoided harm. The windshield went cloudy with damage from many projectiles, and the hood itself was punctured and dented.
White smoke rose from the engine. The Humvee would not be going anywhere.
However, V2HG did not suffer any direct casualties and resumed firing. The leader aimed his L129A1 at the hands of 003, who was busy loading his next grenade, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet struck the M320 and knocked it out of 003’s grip.
“Hey, idiot! Who leans out that far to shoot?! You’ve got a good weapon—use it properly!” Pitohui snapped at 003, who slogged back bashfully.
Apparently, he was so confident in his incredible defensive ability that he’d forgotten the golden rule of gunfights: Keep yourself as covered as possible when you shoot.
003 picked up the M320 and mumbled, “Aw…”
The thick barrel had a bullet embedded in it. Pulling it out wouldn’t do much to get the weapon back to fighting form.
“That was expensive…”
“Then fix it!” Pitohui yelled as a grenade from the enemy M79 flew over. It hit 003 directly and knocked him three meters backward.
While his excellent armor was unharmed, it did not prevent the impact of the blast from ripping through him. 003 was killed instantly. He fell limply to the ground with a DEAD tag over his body.
“Dammit!”
“Those bastards!”
The rest of T-S were furious. Now their plan to swoop in and seize victory unharmed was totally ruined.
“Ahhh, rest in peace,” said Pitohui. Fukaziroh prodded her in the side. “What is it, Fuka?”
Fukaziroh spoke to her in a quiet aside, acting like an elderly person with a frail voice so T-S wouldn’t hear her.
“You wicked girl… I saw that… You could have easily shot down that grenade, eh…?”
“Oh? You think so?”
“You thought that a grenadier without a working launcher…held no use to us…and whose death might liven up the scene a little…eh…?”
“My goodness, how could you suggest such a thing?”
“By the way, have you forgotten something…?”
“What?”
“I might have lost Rightony and Leftania, but I’ve still got five plasma grenades strapped to my back.”
Pitohui grinned devilishly.
“But I’m only using them if I have to,” Fukaziroh muttered before slinking away.
Tanya was in the engineer’s seat of the train engine. She opened the door and shouted, “I undid all the traps! There were a ton of them! Whoever set them was a real piece of work!”
Pitohui looked up with satisfaction and replied, “Nice job! Okay, everybody, time for escape via train! All aboard! You too, M! You’re the only one who can operate the controls!”
“All right! Coming!” M replied, putting his gun over his back and folding up the shield. He used it to block himself as he moved back to the locomotive.
“You too! Stay on the right side, and you won’t get shot!” Boss instructed her teammates and T-S. There was a line forming at the ladder on the rear of the locomotive.
On either side of the train was a narrow catwalk from the rear up to the engine room. It was long enough that all of them could line up and not be exposed.
Even T-S climbed the stairs, awkwardly bonking their bulky armor here and there. The catwalk was a little narrow for them.
Boss was the last of her team to grab the ladder. As she did so, she thought back on a conversation she’d had with Pitohui while they were making their escape.
“It’ll be fine, Eva. I can guarantee that the train there will work. So even if they trap us in the northwest, we can still get away.”
“What makes you so confident?”
“Simple! First, the design team, including that idiot writer, put extra vehicles on the map this time. All of the pristine ones placed in visible locations are going to be usable. This corner of the map is where MMTM started. If they examined the train, they would have seen that it still functions. They didn’t use it because it would have inconvenienced them.”
“Huh? In that case, why wouldn’t they just destroy it so no one else could ride it?”
“That’d be the normal choice. But Daveed’s not like that. I knew he’d booby-trap it to take out players who rushed to utilize the train during the endgame. He left it here because it still runs.”
I would never have read that far into it. I guess it’s because I have less life experience. I’m still just a high schooler, thought Boss as she climbed up and off the ground.
M was inside the cab.
Unsurprisingly, the chamber at the front of the locomotive was not reinforced with bulletproof glass, so he stayed low to protect himself. First he went to the engineer’s seat on the right side. He turned the main power on behind the chair.
The large lever thunked forward. With the electricity on, the lights—at least, those that were still working—lit up. The two monitors ahead of the seat did nothing.
Next, M pressed a black button with ENGINE START written on it in English. That was all it took for the huge turbine to begin shuddering to life. A deep rumbling issued from the rear of the train. The various tools and displays were all dead, but at the very least, the engine was working.
With luck, the force generated by the engine would run the motor.
When M had operated a similar, though smaller, vehicle in the past, that had been the case. He could only pray that the difficulty of running this train hadn’t been increased because this was a special event.
M spotted two levers on the left side of the seat. One was the master controller that went forward and back—in other words, the gas. A similar switch to its left had to be pushed forward from the rear—the brakes. To the side were numbers going up to eight that indicated intensity.
“Okay, here we go! Everybody grab on to something!” M called out, still crouched over in the seat because the windows were vulnerable.
“He says we’re about to move, everybody! This is great and all, M, but what about Llenn?” Fukaziroh asked once she’d warned everybody on the side of the train.
Pitohui glanced at her wristwatch. It was 2:12. The scan was already over.
She assumed that none of their group had possessed the wherewithal to watch for the next one, so she decided to reach out and ask directly.
“Yo, where you at?”
“Huh? No way!” Llenn exclaimed.
Shirley and Clarence had their comms turned off, so they asked her “What was that?” and “What’s up?” in unison.
The Humvee was making its way west down the large street, weaving around junked cars and occasionally scraping them. The scan minutes earlier had informed Llenn and Clarence that they were about half a mile away from SHINC. They should be coming into view very soon.
Unfortunately, the driver was very slow—er, make that safe. Llenn thought she’d have reached her group by now if she were running, but she didn’t mention that because Shirley was trying her best.
Instead, she reported, “Pito and SHINC—oh, and T-S, too!—are about to escape south on a train!”
“What?! To hell with that!” fumed Shirley.
She had a right to be angry. She’d rushed from the lower right corner of the map up to the top left. On motorcycle, foot, horseback, and even terrifying Humvee, she’d given chase, but now her target was about to zip out from under her nose. It felt like a blood vessel in her brain was going to burst.
“Pito! Wait a second!” Llenn shouted into the comm. “You won’t believe what’s going on over here! I’m riding in a Humvee!”
“Oh? How?”
“Shirley and Clarence! They stole the Humvee with the Minigun! We’re heading your way!”
“What? You’re in a car? How have you not caught up with us?” inquired Pitohui.
That was an excellent question.
“Well…it’s slow for a car, and we’re driving carefully!” Llenn explained.
“Oogh!” Shirley made a sound like someone had stabbed her in the heart. “Yeah, my driving sucks… All I do is hit other cars…”
Her green-haired head hung low as the trauma of her past flared up.
“Aaah! Eyes up!” Clarence screamed.
Grak-crunk! The Humvee scraped against an abandoned car sitting in the road.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to get there, Pito! Just wait a bit longer!”
“Sorry, won’t be in time. If anything, Llenn, why don’t you just make a break for it in that Humvee instead? The scan will show you instead of us, but it’s way better to stay in the car, as long as you’ve got gas.”
That might be true… It’s good to have company here…and we still have about a third of a tank, Llenn considered. She was on the verge of agreeing when she stopped and shook her head.
“No! Then we’re not a team! And Squad Jam is about fighting as a group! We live together and die together! As much as we can, at least!” she insisted.
“…”
Shirley listened in silence. She was supremely annoyed at the way Clarence crouched, patted her shoulder, and said, “She’s got a point, doesn’t she?”
However, Llenn’s words had given her an idea, and she decided to put it into action. “Fine, then—leave this one to me!”
Shirley stomped on the gas pedal, sending the Humvee ramming into the burned-out frame of what had once been another car in the road.
“I swear I’m going to kill Pitohui before the end of this Squad Jam!”
The Humvee picked up speed like an enraged bull, and soon it was going three times as fast as before. Shirley deftly spun the massive vehicle around a toppled bus.
“What are you doing there?! Die!” she yelled when she spotted a man in camo who had been lying in wait with a plasma grenade. He panicked at the Humvee’s abrupt charge and tried to run away, but she smashed him from behind.
Clarence watched the man fly into the air, DEAD tag already floating above him, and exclaimed, “Whoo! That’s the spirit, Shirley! That’s the kind of game this is!”
There were four Wrong Lancers left.
“M, get the train moving!”
“You got it…”
M reached out with his left hand and pulled the controller back, all the way to the side notch that read 8.
There was a deep, loud rumbling noise, and a beat or two later, the 180-ton, seventy-two-foot locomotive began to move.
On the right-side catwalk, SHINC and T-S raised a hearty cheer.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! That thing works?!” shouted the members of V2HG in disbelief.
Their targets had stopped shooting back from the train, so they’d decided to stop wasting so much ammo and wait for their allies, the Wrong Lancers, to arrive. They hadn’t expected this development.
The man with the M79 grenade launcher sighed. “Even in that state, it’ll still run. They must have someone who knows how to run it. What a sight. I wish I could drive it. Or ride on it.”
“What are you whining about…?”
“Nothing. I got this!” he answered, firing the M79. The grenade exploded against the side of the train. “How d’ya like that?! Huh…?”
The locomotive was slowly but surely picking up speed. The 180-ton hunk of metal wasn’t bothered in the least by an antipersonnel shrapnel grenade. Shooting it with a gun would do even less.
“We’ll need an antitank cannon for this,” commented the machine gunner. He asked the man next to him, “Why didn’t you buy any plasma grenade rounds for that thing?”
“I’ve never seen those in any war movie.”
“This is why I keep telling you to watch some sci-fi.”
The locomotive leisurely but unquestionably gained speed. At the front of the right catwalk, Fukaziroh clung to the rail, feeling the breeze on her face, and cheered, “Whoo-hoo, I’m on a steam train escapade! How far will the rails take me?”
“…”
The members of T-S were silent, seeing off their dead comrade. Their faces were hidden behind their helmets, but they were probably looking grumpy.
Boss clung to the rear of the line with Rosa, paying close attention to possible enemies chasing after them.
“Humvee!”
There they were.
The armored car with the detestable Minigun came roaring toward them, screeching into a hard left turn to pursue the train.
“Rosa!”
“Got it!”
Boss let Rosa take her place. Even if they couldn’t puncture the armor, they at least had to try to keep the enemy at bay.
Rosa rested the PKM against the railing.
“Raaaaah!”
Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. The bass of her gun augmented her battle scream.
The bullets hurtled toward the Humvee and produced a shower of sparks upon collision.
The attack prompted Llenn to cry out, “Stooooop! Don’t shoooooot!”
Ultimately, the three girls were subjected to constant gunfire until Fukaziroh finally sent word down the crowded catwalk of who was in the Humvee.
V2HG piled into their one working Humvee to chase after the locomotive. That’s when they saw the lost third Humvee already in pursuit.
“It’s them! They did come!”
“Minigun thieves!”
“Let’s get ’em!”
The rearmost of the two Humvees was the one that still ran. Three members of V2HG filled its seats while a gunner stood in the center turret space with an MG5.
Just then, a voice came over the comm. “This is the Wrong Lancers. We finally caught up. Let us on, if you can.”
V2HG’s team leader took his foot off the accelerator. A glance at his right-side mirror revealed four men in camo with rifles in hand, sprinting for all they were worth down the street. They were a hundred yards away.
He was impressed with their tenacity but hurriedly shouted, “No! Stop! Hit the dirt!”
From their angle, the Wrong Lancers could only see the train. The building in front blocked their view of the Minigun Humvee.
By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late; even diving to the ground wasn’t enough to save them.
“Four hostiles on the left! Light ’em up, Clarence!” said Shirley, hands on the wheel.
“Got it!” Clarence rotated the turret forty-five degrees. There was a large flat button near the base that used a motor to turn the entire thing.
As the gun rotated, so did the bullet circle. Taking only a moment to adjust her arms on the Minigun’s grips, Clarence started shooting even before the circle was trained on the four men.
“Let ’er rip!”
Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Fire and sound erupted from the rapidly rotating armament. Every bullet the Minigun loosed also expelled an empty cartridge and belt link from the bottom of the weapon; they spread throughout the Humvee’s interior in no time. Like all debris of this kind in GGO, they rapidly turned into light and vanished. However, the constant source of momentary light gave the interior of the military vehicle an unearthly glow.
The barrels continued to spit fire, hurling dozens of 7.62 mm bullets every second toward the Wrong Lancers like a deadly whip of lead. All four snipers were instantly split in half.
“Aw, shit!”
The leader of V2HG and another member of his squad in the front passenger seat watched it all happen in the side mirrors.
The deadly Minigun, whose power they knew all too well, sent a stream of bullets, glowing red with tracer rounds, through the quartet of Wrong Lancers.
They’d already gotten reports of two of them dying in battle, so this spelled the official end of the Wrong Lancers in the fourth Squad Jam. The elite team of snipers, who’d done their best to carry out Fire’s orders for the sake of victory, who had scored many kills and were second to none at sharpshooting, were gone.
“Shit!”
The man in the turret fired the MG5 machine gun. His aim was true, and the bullets struck the enemy Humvee, but of course, none of them punctured its thick skin.
Then he saw an undulating red light that resembled an aurora. It was the bullet lines of the Minigun. He was aware that when a gun with such a high rate of fire shot while moving, the lines overlapped so that they looked like a carpet of crimson in the air.
That cardinal blanket was now passing through him.
“Tch!”
The man willingly let go of his gun and kicked his legs up into the air, dropping his body down inside the car. The Minigun roared again, showering the Humvee with bullets. They chipped and scratched the car’s armor plating, but it held firm. V2HG’s leader shifted into reverse, so they were only exposed to incoming shots for a moment.
However, the man’s machine gun was heavily buffeted and toppled back inside the Humvee from where it had been left atop the turret stand. He reached out and caught it in both hands. A quick check showed that it wasn’t totally destroyed, but several marks were on the barrel, and it didn’t look safe to use anymore.
“Aaah! Nooo!” the man lamented. Reluctantly, he stowed his gun back in his inventory.
From the back seat, the man with the M79 said, “Damn, that Minigun is strong!” with more than a little delight. He handed over his HK433 to the guy who’d lost his MG5, who accepted it gratefully.
“No kidding! I bet Grant must be pretty damn happy with it!”
The Minigun’s owner was either in the waiting area or back in the bar by now. The members of V2HG were too busy at the moment to recall the satisfied smile on Grant’s face when he’d first gotten the Minigun or the gleeful way he’d carried himself.
As the enemy Humvee crossed to their left nearly 350 meters ahead, the man who’d been in the turret smirked to himself and muttered, “Still, they aren’t unstoppable.”
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