The Force of Temptation - Chapter One, Page Four

Arriving at the top, he scouted the area. Each time he loaded the program, it was designed to randomly scatter a number of enemy personnel over a quarter mile section of the plateau. There were many trees around, and not many access points to the camp. The weapon on his belt would be unable to fire more than a dozen shots, and there was always more than a dozen soldiers on guard.

Slightly exhausted from the climb, Malcolm had to work hard to focus, and plot. While loosing this simulation wouldn’t kill him, the last time he had played, two of the simulated enemies had shot him at the same time, and the force feedback suit had translated that into a strong enough real physical hit that he had been bruised for over a week.

Running behind an small outcropping, Malcolm ducked down. Out of the corner of his eye, he had spotted two sentries that hadn’t seen him yet. They were armed with some sort of energy based rifles that packed a pretty strong punch. They were also a foot taller than Malcolm.

While humans had known for nearly one hundred years that they were not alone in the Universe, and that life was vastly different from their own, the aliens in this simulation were still humanoid with two arms, two legs and nearly everything else in the “normal” spots. The differences though, while small, made these simulations a challenge to conquer.

They had a natural body plate armour that made his dagger all but useless, except in a few key locations, and they were stronger than Malcolm, meaning that hand to hand combat was risky. Despite all of this, firing his weapon, or allowing them to fire theirs would alert others from the encampment to his location, and he would most likely fail.

Crawling ever closer to the simulated pair, he found his heart racing faster and faster, this was not the ideal position to be attacking anyone from. As the two guards walked past where the Captain was hiding, he sprung up and leapt onto the back of the closer of the two. He rapidly sliced at its head, throat, and upper chest, hoping to push through its thick armour-like skin, and provide a quick killing blow.

The creature flailed wildly, throwing Malcolm off his back to which the Captain did a tight roll, sprung back up on his feet, and ran towards his second target, hoping to keep both of them off balance. The second guard had already raised his weapon and turned his body to aim it at his target when he was knocked off his feet. The gun skipped away from the creature and it wailed in anger. The Captain, thinking quickly, dug his blade right into the mouth and thus spinal cord of the creature, killing it instantly.

The first guard was in shock from the various small wounds he had received and because of this, he wasn’t concerned about his gun. Instead he took out a large jagged blade and turned to face Malcolm. His eyes were enraged, his breathing was harder, and apparent to the Captain was that the creature was favouring his left side.

While he was outmatched in strength and ability to take damage, Malcolm was much faster than his rival. Rolling forward, dodging the large blade and stabbing upwards repeatedly, the creature let out a loud cry of pain. The smaller dagger had penetrated multiple times, causing a great amount of pain. The alien slouched slightly before flopping over and bleeding heavily.

“Well, that isn’t going to be good…” The Captain said breathing deeply and rapidly in response to the loud dying outburst of his simulated conquest.