Technical Performance in Field

Destructive Potential (DP) equals the rate of energy introduced per unit volume into a volume of flesh, squared, times the corrective coefficient to account for the form of energy, further refined by a cast of secondary factors that are added or omitted at the engineer’s discretion. DP calculations assume an insignificant time of energy application, of less than one half second. Consult other text if this assumption is not met.

This is often called the Barbaric Equation.

Kinetic energy, the most ancient form of energy used in war, has a coefficient of 1. Thermal energy, the second most ancient form generally has a coefficient of 2, depending on the convention used to define ‘destructive potential’ and historical data. Laser energy, though technically thermal energy at the end of the day, has a coefficient of approximately 0.5 because charring and low volume of effect tend to dominate the heat transfer operation in weapon applications, though this varies widely based on pulsing, wavelength and tracking precision. Chemical energy, radiation energy (alpha, beta and gamma), and even obscure effects, such as yantological energy transfer to grey matter, all have coefficient expressions, though they are often non-linear and must be deduced or guessed based on even more factors. The rule of thumb is that a Total Heavy Industries Hollow-point MK112 9mm bullet delivered to the torso has a DP of 1.2, a FT-06 or GR-H1 flamethrower applied to the torso for one second has a DP of 3.4, and a fist-sized rock to the back of the head has a DP of 1.0. The engineers that wrote the training material where the Barbaric Equation was first recorded insisted that the rock’s DP was purely a coincidence, and that 1.0 was an arbitrary relative scaling number, that the biblical method used to kill Able was not the “base unit” of lethality, and so on.

But Kune suspected someone had massaged the data to make that one have a nice, clean number. After all, it was easy to tell the grunts, “Rock number is one. Gun number bigger than rock number, flamethrower number bigger than gun number,” followed by scientific sounding monkey noises.

But DP was only ever a gross metric, too coarse and opaque to apply blindly when Mitochondria decided to develop new weapons platforms, which meant that real-world testing was required.

And, every damn year, someone tried to prove that the DP on a laser gun made it just as good as the equivalent DP of a firearm, or any other sane man’s weapon. So, every year, the Acquisition Instrument Testing Committee put their neck on the line to find out just how bad this year’s crop of laser weapons was. Everyone knew laser weapons were hot shit. If the enemy has reflective armor, they don’t die. If they are too far or too close, they don’t die. If the laser moved across the target too fast to deposit energy, they don’t die. If the laser moves across the target too slowly and develops a layer of insulating char, they don’t die. If the laser bounces the wrong way, they don’t die but the person holding the laser does, or goes blind. And if the laser blah blah blah… All the other ways to fail ran into each other. But, paradoxically, he thought, all the ways to fail meant nothing to the engineers. In fact, they were a bonus; every mode of failure was an opportunity for a solution, and every solution was a chance to out-nerd the other engineers and get a payday for a new invention and, in his cynical opinion, solving problems with lasers was such low hanging fruit that some engineers spent their whole careers on laser weapons because they couldn’t hack it on a real weapon platform. After all, the 9mm bullet had persisted for centuries; it was just too good. It made the nerds uncomfortable, like trying to approach a woman who was out of their league. It was paradoxically too attractive to get any attention. But lasers; that easy, ugly technology riddled with issues, was an easy lay.

This time, the new hotness was “Adaptive-Band Ranged-Point-Focus Pulsed Multitube Concussive Burst Laser Stimulator”. Kune liked to treat all tech as black boxes, but he had been around this block enough to know monkey-speak. The grunt-speak translation was approximate; “the problem with reflective armor has been solved by making a laser that changes color. The problem with range has been solved with moving lenses that can break. The problem with char-shielding has been solved with light that explodes, sort of. And the problem with the beam reflecting off smoke or mirrors to blind people could not be solved with a buzzword and has been ignored.”

At least they were lightweight. Technically speaking, this shouldn’t matter since Kune had an exosuit to lug the laser across the battlefield but when he was sitting in a troop transport like this one, exo off to save power, he was glad he didn’t have to balance a hundred kilo power pack and flash tube across his knees.

For Jobbu, though, the weight mattered a lot more because he did not wear an exosuit.

“You still wearing that lobster skin?” Jobbu called across the aisle, raising his voice above the whine of the ion thrusters, “You know that stuff will break your arms and legs if it ever glitches up? I don’t trust it!”

Kune ignored this.

“I just use Gopamine! That stuff is great, look at this!” Jobbu flexed, showing off a ham-sized bicep laced with green veins, “All natural stuff!”

“That stuff is as natural as your left foot.” Kune responded, kicking the metal prosthetic that jutted across the aisle.

“Nah! They get it from those Jellaallal trees Freshson grows back home on Lasshic. I grew up on those Jellaallal’s, I trust them. You ever climb a tree? It makes you a man!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Trees!” Jobbu made some kind of gesture that was supposed to look like a tree, “Trees, Jellaallals! they’re the real nature.”

Kune just shook his head and looked at the red clock at the end of the troop compartment. Two minutes to ingress. Jobbu traced his sight, and made a barking laugh.

“Hah! That’s what I’m talking about! You gotta read clocks? Can’t even track time without some computer doing it for you?”

Kune ignored this too.

“Sorry, just giving you a hard time. You really shouldn’t trust them. That one’s probably fine, but I know the alarm clock they issue us will change time so you wake up earlier and go to sleep later; the brass can make them change to whatever time they want so that we end up working more than we think we are.”

How the hell do you argue with that? Kune thought. The man thought time itself was a conspiracy.

“And these lasers,” Jobbu continued, lifting his own prototype with one hand, “What do you think they actually do?”

“What?” He asked before he could stop himself.

“You know they aren’t weapons, right? Everyone knows lasers are terrible weapons. I bet they’re actually mind controlling beams. You know that lasers are electromagnetic waves? Well, guess what, so are our brains! It’s all electro-signals. I bet we’re actually testing mind control beams. That’s why I added some ferrite to my Gopamine. It makes it so much easier to think, since the iron particles block the electro-signals from all this technology crap we have to wear. You should try it! And it’s natural too, just grind up some natural rust and combine it with-“

“What are you talking about?” Sarah-Ann asked from her seat beside Jobbu. Kune tried to shake his head to warn her off interacting with the meat-head, but it was too late.

“Natural rust! You ever eat rust?”

“You’re a fucking idiot, Jobbu.” She said.

“And I bet you suck Illuminati cock!” He shot back with a smile. They knocked knuckles, both proud of their witty banter.

“That rust will screw you up.” She said, “Lojack got screwed up from it.”

Jobbu shrugged, “It helps me; maybe it just messed with his inflammation.”

“No! He got tetanus!” She had to shout over a swell in the engine buzz.

“Then he’s an idiot! You have to give it a sanitation rinse before you eat the stuff! Jeez, what moron doesn’t sanitize their rust?! If you don’t know that then tetanus is the least of your problems.” Jobbu shot back.

Kune was mildly impressed at this point; he didn’t think Jobbu even knew what ‘sanitation’ was, and if he had known, he was more likely to reject it as a conspiracy to destroy his immune system than anything worth thinking about.

Before the intriguing conversation on the health benefits of eating rust could continue, Sergeant Davis appeared at the end of the compartment, “Listen up, Brain Buckets!” the Sarge saw Sarah-Ann had some recreational reading on her lap, “Sarah-Ann, put that shit away! Don’t you Buckets forget, we’re here to test these platforms! We’re not hear to sit on our asses and pick our noses! Get out there and shoot shit! Secondary objective, put the hurt on Kalter Returnerists! Those cult fuck nuts are spreading salacious rumors about our outfit, and what do we think of that?!”

The troops seated down both sides of the transport cheered, entirely unaware if an affirmative cheer supported the opinion of Davis or the Returners. Kune just gave a half-hearted fist pump. As usual, they didn’t get their real objective until they were seconds away from ingress, and even then, in their usual ‘just do it, don’t think about it’ way.

The transport’s lighting switched from white to yellow, and all those wearing an exo suit flicked them on. If they hadn’t expected Davis’ final words, they would have been lost in the whine of power packs priming up.

“What are we?” Davis chanted.

“Scientists!” The committee cheered. Now the wine of power packs was keening under the subhertz rumble of ions straining to maneuver.

“What do we get?!”

“Blood and data!” Was blasted away as the deployment doors cracked open.

“That’s right! Now get out there and get some!” Davis roared and charged down the aisle towards the growing crack of true light. The chamber lighting switched from yellow to flashing green as Davis leapt out, and the twin rows of ‘scientists’ stood as one. As they trooped out, Kune caught a glimpse of Jobbu clutching the tags around his neck, then saw that his tags were still hanging down the front of his plate carrier, then he was out of the doors and into the screaming wind. Even over the roaring wind of freefall, he could hear Jobbu howl with the thrill of it.

Then the floor was gone and he was falling too. After hundreds of drops, the tedium of process numbed the thrill. First, finish priming the Exo, which gave its electromechanical whine as its powerbank span up to full wattage. His limbs trembled and flexed as they started dynamic self-diagnostic, an action that would have been awkward to go through in the cramped carrier. Then it was fixing the payload for landing, planting the heavy laser module in its lug at the base of his spine. Then, eye on the display mounted on his chest plate, he watched the ToF sensor read his altitude as it closed in on retro-range. The Exo’s power supply whined and chirped, then he felt the haptic heartbeat against this chest, signifying Exo self-diagnostic was all good. Well shit, it had better be all good, he was falling into a cement combat zone at terminal velocity. As he entered the green retro-range, he felt the machine gun pops and jolts as his retro turbines span up, then the dull roar as they ignited and kicked into sustainment and control thrust. As he fell into yellow retro range the engines were howling and his weight doubled as they fired in earnest, trying to squish him between his own falling momentum and their hundreds of pounds of upwards thrust. Then retro red hit, with urgent thumping from the haptics as the Gs fell away and he had enough control to retrieve his payload and bring the laser to bear. Just in time too, as small arms fire erupted from the squat prefab buildings all around, some of it thumping into his plate armor. He fired back.

It sounded apathetic. Just a snappy click and a pop as relays switched, then his first target crumpled, screaming. To his right, he saw Jobbu land, still howling, jutting his weapon out in all directions, as if he needed action-hero movements to catch the null recoil of a laser shot.

“Put on your damn goggles!” Kune shouted over the comms. He saw Jobbu pause and pull a pair of goggles from his carrier, then give him a goofball thumbs-up.

“Hey Jobbu, if you go blind, can I have your pornos?” Sarah-Ann added, over the radio.

“No chance in hell, a lady like you couldn’t survive my stash.” He said, turning slowly, pumping his arms against imagine recoil with each laser pulse.

“I’m already in your stash!”

“Focus, you idiots.” Kune barked, pivoting his instrument towards a new target climbing up the side of Jobbu’s landing site. His shot didn’t land with enough DP to kill, but the stunned falling body probably caught enough on landing to finish the job.

Jobbu’s voice lost some of its machismo, “No, are you serious?”

He could almost hear Sarah-Ann’s shit-eating grin, “What do you think I did for Mito before I signed up for the Committee? You know I started as an Asset myself?”

“Shit! You-“ There was a chirp of feedback and radio noise as Jobbu’s weapon shut down, taking his power system offline in the process. Kune gave him covering fire while he rebooted, giving three more tangos the snap-crackle-pop of his spread spectrum laser fire. He felt a low buzzing from his haptic feedback; his weapon was getting too hot. Two shots later and his own system shut down, just as Kol’s came back online.

Lucky asshole, he thought as he paused to open up the cooling throttle on his prototype. If I hadn’t landed up here, or if this shit had over-heated ten seconds ago, or if I hadn’t reminded you to use your goggles, you’d be packed in a casket. Then he was back in the fight with a long shot; the weapon’s onboard target tracker picked off a sniper four hundred yards away, and he didn’t even have to hold it carefully. That was one advantage of laser weapons, whatever DP they delivered, galvanometers made sure they could deliver it almost anywhere in line-of-sight.

Jobbu finally had a moment to get back to important business, “Please tell me you’re not the girl with the horse mask in-“

“You fucking perve!” Sarah-Ann shot back, “I can’t believe anyone bought those horse mask videos!”

“All units report landing status!” Davis barked as the last of the platoon made land-fall.

Kune punched the Auto-Acknowledge button on his carrier interface and went back to shooting, now focusing suppressive fire on a stack of Returners huddled inside some kind of cement watchtower. He commanded his goggles to zoom in, saw that there was a metallic instrumentation panel in line-of-sight, and focused a series of measured laser pulses on it. The first, tuned for wide divergence, ablated the paint off the console with a series of bright flashes that probably blinded the bastards who thought they had cover. The rest of the pulses, with a wavelength tuned to reflect off the metal instead of melting it, bounced around inside the tower and… lucky hit. He saw a gout of flame, then panicked motion as one of his reflections hit a target with enough power to light their clothes on fire. What was the DP of that shot? Didn’t matter, the DP of the impact after that unfortunate bastard jumped out the window was more than enough to finish him off. He pumped a few more megajoules into the tower to discourage the targets from getting back in the fight and returned his attention to his immediate area.

Scorch marks and dazzling lights were dotting the cityscape under his tower as the rest of the platoon descended to the streets for close-quarters ‘science’. Morons. Within those few meters of range to target, the reflected laser light was still strong enough to blind, maim and kill. And no sooner had he thought it, than he saw it. Coming down the lane in front of his perch, a grunt was chasing someone, man or woman, wearing the Returnist robes, carrying what looked like an honest-to-god kitchen sink. It was just unfortunate timing; the Committee Member brought their weapon to bear, to gun down the fleeing Returnist, just as the Returnist turned to see if their pursuer had caught up. Their torso pivoted, bringing the sink-thing around in time to catch the shot. It was all right-angles, a coarse retro-reflector. The person in the cloak dropped the boxy object as it flashed white hot at the same time a sunspot appeared on the shooter’s face. Kune cringed as the screaming and smoking started. Their goggles weren’t rated for a direct hit, or even a secondary hit, at such close range. Just seeing the reflection from where he stood, his own goggles reported that they had lost 5% of the sensor area in his right-side optic. The computer vision system filled in the lost data with the feed from his left side, but he got the feeling he’d have to swap sensor plates before he was done here. As for the man on the ground, clutching his face and staggering blindly towards a wall, there wasn’t much to do besides call in an injury and start moving.

Finally, almost a full ten minutes after ingress, Davis had set a rally point on a Returnist Hall of Convergence. Ironic, because there was a whole lot of Committee members converging on it now. Kune kicked on his retro thrusters, keeping them revved up so he could start traversing the rooftops. He only had enough kilojoules of fuel for a few minutes of thruster use, but he intended to use every second of it. The longer he could stay out of the cramped streets, the better. When his thrusters were up to speed, he made a half leap, half stride off the roof to coast down to a lower building, then jumped to turn his momentum into a bounce to the next one, then to the next. On the bounce, he saw Jobbu running through the streets between his rooftops. He had his goggles pushed onto his forehead, heedless of any chance he could accidentally catch sight of a laser shot. Well, screw him, Kune thought; he’d already got his one warning for the day.

Over the comms he heard a report that Sarah-Ann had caught a reflection; sounded like someone forgot what they were doing, missed a target and bounced enough laser light off a flat wall to score some friendly fire. Damn idiot; lucky she only got a DP of 0.01, or the shooter would have to report to the Committee head. Other reports were coming through of power system failures, charge chambers bursting into flames, dust on the optics cracking lenses and Committee members forgetting to wear their goggles.

And as fast as their equipment was failing, the Returnists were rallying. Faster, in fact.

With the uncanny synchronicity that could emerge from chaotic pitched battle, the Returnists lit up the rooftops with kinetic weapons. Plumes of dust impact peppered Kune’s next roof, forcing him to turn the landing into a slide, then a thruster-cushioned fall into the street below. Shot-tracing in his heads-up-display pointed at the steeple of the church, but he was too deep in the streets to get a line of sight. He pushed a couple keys on his equipment to call in the threat so that the rest of the committee would know, then began his deliberate walk to the congregation point. No running for him; it just burned energy and convinced his brain to act fast. With a weapon that could kill its user at lightspeed, he needed to be slow and deliberate.

But Jobbu had no such need. He charged around a corner hollering “Get ‘em! Behind me! Get those fuckers!”

Kune had his gun up as a horde of Returnists followed, and squeezed the button. A gout of flesh-fire burst off the first in line, then danced across the rest, saccading from one to the next as the weapon’s tracking system automatically delivered 5 DP and moved to the next target under its own discretion. Unfortunately its discretion sucked. By the time the last grey robe was lighting up, the second one, who was not as dead as he was supposed to be, was shooting at Kune, raising sparks and ceramic fragmentation across his exo’s chest. And the damn gun was too locked onto its current target to shoot him, even when Kune yanked the gun towards the guy trying to fucking kill him. Jobbu span, got a sight picture, and lit him up, turning the man’s head into a candle. Then another one, who’s nerves had cooked so fast he didn’t realize he was an amputee, opened fire. He shot Kune’s weapon at the same time Jobbu shot his.

It was too fast to track; Kune felt like a supernova had gone off in his arms and had one frame of pure white before his goggles went totally dead, and all he could hear was a tinnitus ring and Jobbu screaming. For a dizzy moment, between the heat, blindness and pained howls, he thought he’d finally gone to hell. Then he pushed his goggles up and saw that his gun had, in his stead. He shook it as if it just needed a little bump, but that only caused scorched plastic and expensive glass to fall out of every burst seam. Then, in a bolt of panic, he dropped it hard and held up… two perfectly healthy hands. At least the designer had done one thing right. The husk that stank of burning plastic rolled on the ground, revealing a steel plate that had ballooned, but not cracked, when the weapon failed. A few millimeters of steel was all that had saved his flesh.

“Shit.” He hissed and stowed the junk on the lug on his back. The nerds would want this one back to see how its life had ended. Fortunately, it had stopped his life from ending. That bullet was meant for him. He swapped in his back-up goggle sensor plate and scanned the Returnist bodies for anyone playing dead. All were cooling rapidly. Had it been his last burst, or that exploding gun? What would he write in his report?

A heavy hand fell against his shoulder, he span to this new threat, but saw it was Jobbu. All life and joviality was gone. He was looking through Kune like a ghost.

“They- they got my eyes.” Jobbu said.

Kune stared, with numbed horror.

There were goggles on Jobbu’s forehead.

“They got my eyes!” Jobbu gasped, he tried to reach out for Kune, but he stepped back on instinct. Jobbu heard the servos whine, and stepped towards the sound, “I can’t see! Kune, you there?! I can’t see! It’s dark!”

“You’ll be fine.” Kune said, but he found himself stepping away again, “They can fix you up.”

“No! They got me. Just like Jespa.”

They had to move. This place was crawling with Returnists and they had a rendezvous to make.

“Get it together! Set your suit-“ he started, but Jobbu wasn’t wearing an exo like his, “I’ll guide you. Follow me.”

“I can’t bro, I’m- I don’t think I’m going to make it. They finally won.”

Now rage was filling him like ice water, “Jobbu, cut that shit. We have to get moving!”

By now, Jobbu had felt his way to a wall and slid down to the ground, “Nah, they won. The tech. The system. I’m done man.”

“What are you talking about?!” Kune held a button on his controls, “I’m reporting a-“

“Stop!” Jobbu shouted at the world, “Leave me!”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

“I’m done man! What’s gonna happen now? They stuff robot eyes in my skull? What kind of sight is that? Only see what they want me to see? I’d rather see Jespa.” He said. His hand had found those second dogtags around his neck.

Kune was about to ask again, but Jobbu had more on his mind “She was all I had man. After I got picked up, you know? They got us both. She was an asset of course.” He sighed, “I was- fuck, I was so mad. I fought them all the time. Then you know what they told me? ‘Jobbu, your sister moved up! She’s having a great time. If you stop fighting, you get to see her again!’. I knew it was shit, I tell you. I could see it in their faces.”

Kune scanned up and down the street. Davis would kick his ass if he made it to the egress late, if he made it to the egress at all.

“Then let’s move so you can see- so you can meet her again! Come on!” He reached out. Jobbu protested and tried to push him away with the animal strength of a desperate man. Servo joints whined as Kune batted his hands aside, and without the sight to fight back, Jobbu was no more effective than a toddler against Kune’s machine.

“Let me go! Let me die!” Jobbu protested, trying to strike Kune, but his fist landed on a mounting lug jutting out of Kune’s shoulder, “Fuck!”

“We’re getting out of here!” he shouted back, “If you want to die so fucking bad, then why didn’t you eat a laser?”

Instead of answering, Jobbu started pawing at the suit controls, but he didn’t find anything before Kune rolled him back to the ground, “If you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I am going to knock you out and drag you back to the ship to face whatever the hell you’re freaking out about.” He hissed.

The impact with the ground, and Kune’s threat, finally cut through Jobbu’s hysterics.

“My sister.” He said, “They put me on a call with her. I hadn’t seen her for over a year. Said if I kept cooperating, I could keep talking to her. I thought she was dead, but when I heard her voice I knew I could make it. You know how it is for assets; they behave, do- do their thing, they get out, same as us.”

Kune had picked up Jobbu’s gun and fired a test pattern at the opposite wall as Jobbu talked. Self-diagnostics were shit, since Jobbu probably never set this thing up properly, but it was might just be good enough to get them to egress.

He continued, “But I knew she would never make it easy. We’re from Lasshic, we don’t fit in the system, we can’t ‘behave’ for these assholes. They probably shot her before she even got to a Home. But then I heard her voice! Dude, you have no idea, it was like… like the best Gopamine in the Galaxy! As soon as I heard that, I knew I could do it. Just serve my time and I’d be good. Even if Jespa gave them hell, I’d go to her and break her out, or die trying.”

“Get to the point!” Kune said. Now he was finishing a rough calibration routine to keep the gun from overheating again.

“Well… You know me. I was kind of suspicious. I just had to pry.”

Kune had a cargo hook on his belt, which he snapped onto the drag handle on the back of Jobbu’s vest and started hauling him towards the church. He didn’t even know why he was dragging the man back to the extraction site. Cynically, he thought that Jobbu’s huge body would act as cover for his legs, or so that he couldn’t be blamed for leaving the man behind. But this was Mito. No one cared if someone was too weak to keep up, and no one would blame him for thinking the same. At this point, he might even be dressed down for not shooting the man as punishment for losing his nerve, or to close a potential leak, or to treat him as a run-away. And even with his exo suit, the body was heavy, it slowed him down and made it harder to evade detection. But this… empathy was as strong as it was mysterious. Damn. He wished he was like this stupid laser gun, coming into the field with a suite of self-diagnostics, and a back-up team of brainiacs to figure out the solution to every idiosyncrasy.

But he had gray matter instead of silicon, and he had to do what it said. With sick irony, he realized Jespa was not so lucky. Jobbu was still talking.

“She wasn’t even one of the good models! They had just prompted some shitty sexting AI to act like her! It didn’t even know what a Jellaallal tree was anymore! They just-”

Jobbu was still babbling and pawing at his eyes, but Kune cut him off.

“So they used a machine to copy your sister to keep you in line!” He growled over his shoulder, “Don’t be a pussy about it. Yeah, sucks she’s probably dead, sucks you didn’t get to make a suicide pact with her, sucks you both got pulled into the Mito ‘family.’ Either give up or don’t, stop making it my problem!”

“It’s the system!” Jobbu wailed, “The system is all artificial! It’s mechanical! It ain’t humans keeping us in line, it’s-“

“It’s not real!” Kune shouted back.

“It’s killing us!” Jobbu retorted.

Kune saw a large courtyard ahead, with one broad avenue leading to the extraction sight, a tall spire of the church poking above the small, square buildings. They could try to sneak around the alleys, hope they connected, didn’t get ambushed, and still made it on time, or they could make a dash across the open ground. If he didn’t have three hundred pounds of useless junk strapped to him, it wouldn’t even be a question.

Jobbu had moved past pathetic wailing into pathetic rambling, “Once I realized it wasn’t Jespa anymore, I knew. The system isn’t here to help us, it’s here to control us. It’s here to make us into machines, so we can turn calories into profit, so we can put DP where they want it and stop it being where they don’t want it. We’re just fucking machines, man. When they turned Jespa into a computer voice, they didn’t even change anything except stopping her heart.”

Kune still had his laser up and ready, but he spared a moment to glare down at the man, “You are a moron. You don’t even know what ‘the system’ is. You actually think it’s real.”

Jobbu started to reply, summoning indignation as he was sat on his ass, but Kune was just getting started.

“There is no system. There are only cowards, morons, try-hards and egomaniacs trying to get what they want. They don’t care about you, they literally made your sister into a number, which to them and you, was barely a difference. The only difference between you and ‘Them’ is that you dealt with your problems by acting smart cause you eat rust and hate clocks, while they dealt with their problems by applying 1.2 DP to your sister and turning her into a vocaloid. There is no system, there is only taking whatever shit you have in front of you and making the most of it, and hoping it doesn’t tick off anyone so much that they leave you for dead in the middle of the battlefield.”

Jobbu finally shut up, but Kune had one more thing to say, “You know my gun just blew the hell up? That’s what blinded you. Boo-hoo, the system gave me a crappy gun. But there are two differences between us, besides the fact that I’m not a total retard. First is I’m not so blinded by fear that I don’t take basic fucking safety advice, which means I’m not literally blind like you. And second, is just because one thing went wrong one time, just because this shitty gun went nuclear in my hands, I didn’t give up, sit down, and wish someone besides me had the balls to finish the job. I picked up another shitty gun, because it’s the only way I can get myself, and three hundred pounds of idiot and rust, out of this godforsaken place. You got that?”

Jobbu turned his head away, but Kune saw the obstinate set in his jaw.

Kune had said his piece and Jobbu had heard it. Now it was time to get back to work. He did one more check to make sure there weren’t any Returnist snipers on the roofs around their lane, then unsnapped Jobbu.

“Can you see anything at all?” He said

“I- I can see a bit. Bright lights.”

“Can you see my silhouette?”

“No way. It’s all dark.”

Dammit, that’s what he was worried about.

“I’m going to strike a flare. Follow that. It’s a hundred yards straight ahead to the exit point. Just follow me, and we’ll be out of here and you can keep telling me your sob story, and I can tell you how stupid it is.”

Jobbu got to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall with one hand, grabbing dogtags with the other. He nodded in Kune’s direction, “Let’s get out of here.”

Kune looked down at the flare in his hand. Make himself as obvious as possible, crossing an open field, surrounded by blinds, in enemy territory. Just to get one rust-eating asshole back to a company that would send a hundred men to die just to prove that lasers are stupid weapons. But this was what he had in front of him. And if he left Jobbu to die, if he struck this flare and threw it the other direction, or didn’t even strike it at all, then he would just be another cowardly, moronic egomaniac, taking what was in front of him to screw the other guy.

Jobbu stared blindly, waiting for the mote of light that he might follow to another day. He could hear the drop-ship approaching, the last sound he’d often heard before extract, signaling the last half-minute of heads up before their last chance left them behind. One of the many choices the system gave them; get on, or stay behind. And it was time to get on.

Kune twisted the top of the cigar-sized tube, pressed it in, and ripped it off, opening a near-blinding fountain of pink light. As he darted out into the courtyard, he clipped it to his belt, brought his gun up, and started firing deadly flashes at any window that seemed to have a body, at any thing that poked above a roof. His heart and servos were pounding as he ran like a bat out of hell across the exposed space. Now shots started ringing out, shooting geysers of dirt around his feet, some even thumping against his armor. His laser flashed again and again, sometimes causing gouts of fire to spew out of Returnists that were caught by the auto-target, sometimes just leaving sunspots behind where he only imagined a threat. As they finished crossing the courtyard, he risked a glance behind, and saw Jobbu, arms pumping, chest heaving, veins stood out so far they looked green, racing to keep up with him. And he charged forward those last hundred yards as the drop-ship swooped in at the end of the street. Their last chance to exit, but they were too far away. Between violent breaths, Kune cursed Jobbu, cursed himself for talking too long, cursed the damn company for sending them here.

Then Davis peeked around the edge of the ship, “Kune! Get your ass in here! Double-time!”

For the first time in his career, the ship waited. It was only ten seconds, but that was as good as the rest of his life. He didn’t even slow down, one mechanically assisted hand latched onto a hydraulic struct, swinging and pulling him into the crew bay, while his other reached out for Jobbu, ready to help the blind man into the ship.

There was no blind man there.

The ramp was closing already, and through the thinning gap he saw the ground fall away with a lurch of vertigo. Kune couldn’t even get a glance outside to see what happened. He felt a burn start on his back and ripped the flair off his suit before it could do any damage. It filled the crew bay with white-pink light as he threw it aside.

“Where’s Jobbu?” He asked Davis.

“How the hell should I know?” Davis said.

“He was right behind me.”

“Guess he didn’t like what he saw. Good, you got his gun. Check in your gear and take some Slondrium, we’ve got a long flight back to the ship.” Then Davis moved on to berate someone for leaving their busted prototype behind.

Kune glanced behind him, confused that Jobbu wasn’t there. But by the time he got to the armorer at the end of the crew bay, he was livid. He had practically stuck a flair up his ass just to give that guy a fighting chance. He had hauled him a hundred yards, and had carried his gear, just because Jobbu didn’t the nerve to own his mistakes.

The armorer recognized Jobbu’s weapon and absence.

“He bit it?” the armorer asked.

Kune could only give a tight nod.

“Bad luck.”

“Idiot.” Kune spat, “Coward”. The armorer glanced up, and saw that Kune wasn’t talking to him.

The armorer scanned the code on Jobbu’s gun, and squinted at the charred mess where the code would be on Kune’s gun.

“The idiot got himself killed, after I dragged his ass right up to the drop ship.” Kune said.

The armorer decided to look for a component serial number so he could figure out the ID for the hunk of slag Kune had given him. As he unscrewed a blanking panel, he said absently, “Why’s that got you ticked off?”

“Cause I stuck my neck out for him. I gave him a chance and he threw it away. Couldn’t face it. Thought being blind was worse than being dead, after I nearly got shot in the ass pulling him back here.”

The armorer shrugged and used an optic probe to scan the internals for a serial number so he could log the gear into the system.

“Wouldn’t that piss you off?” Kune demanded.

“You get mad, he gets sad-“

“So, I should just be a rock?!” Kune glared at the lump he brought back, as much rock as tech.

 The armorer broke into a smile as his scanner finally found something to identify Kune’s gun, “Ah, there it is. You’re Kune? One of the brass asked to get you back.”

Kune’s chest was still raging against his breastplate, but his mouth had stopped in confusion.

“They wanted to make sure you got back.” The armorer said again, then called back to Davis in the crew bay, “Kune made it back!”

“Damn straight he did,” Davis shot back, “I had to hold up this whole shit-rig for him!”

“Who wanted me to make it back? What do they want?” Kune asked.

“No idea, I guess the system likes you. Maybe you’re useful. Haha, like this thing!” the armorer slapped the blackened mass.

The DP calculator fell out of a mote of ash.