I mean, it starts with the purpose. First and foremost, a PMC is a company. It’s out to make a profit by getting paid to project force or do violence. A military, a proper military, is there to protect the nation and its interests.
In more practical terms, a PMC is a group of folks out for themselves to get a paycheck by doing harm or being ready to do harm. And their support, their leadership, wants to get the most bang from their people for the least amount of cost. That often means they have less training, worse coordination, and the cheapest equipment they can afford. This results in a high turnover rate. And let’s be clear, in a PMC high turnover rate is often due to the deaths of their people.
In the military we spend extensive time training, both for individual skills and in working together. One of my troopers goes out there knowing that his mates, that I, have his back.
If I send a squad on what looks like a suicide attack, he will go in full bore, trusting, knowing that I have a plan to get them out again that they don’t see. A PMC with the same mission and objective will half-ass the attempt and runaway at the first casualties.
Because there’s no paycheck if you are dead.
--Talk show interview of General Sorsen Khan, 2045
***
Torshan was starting to explain how the battle aspects would work when we walked into a live-action demo. In my visor, an icon appeared hovering over the trees with a number indicating rough distance. Beside the icon stood a short list of antithesis models.
“That’s a contact from the dronists. The captain should have a battle plan up in a second,” Tarkan said. Sure enough, several arrows appeared moving ahead, with one singled out to head to the side. “The arrows indicate troop movements. There’ll be a voice channel somewhere explaining more to the O-types. I don’t have access to that, of course.”
One squad slipped off to the side while the rest of us followed the road, drawing even with the icon before the aliens came into view. Each model had a wireframe tracing it and its own icon. “Target identification is handled both by an AI back in town and troopers on the scene. If we spot a target that isn’t highlighted, we can mark it. There’s bonuses and penalties for flagging or misidentifying them, and that’s doubled if you beat the AI.”
As the aliens came into view, painted triangles washed over the ground from where we stood. Troopers dropped to the ground, except one set that sprinted forward, following a new arrow that appeared. Torshan and I joined the others on the ground, taking cover in a ditch beside the road.
“We’re assigned to the yellow fire arc, which should be brighter. Other squads and companies will be more ghostly, but you can select them to see who’s firing where.” Torshan aimed his rifle but didn’t fire. All the icons in the arc had changed color.
“Icons change color when someone’s chosen to target it, and it’s wasteful to double up unless there’s a good reason, like you’re in a hurry or someone’s in danger. In a second, there’ll be fire coming in as third platoon flanks them. And if we had artillery support or an airstrike, that would show in a wash too.”
Torshan continued to explain the AR interface as the handful of antithesis were eliminated. The controls within the UI were well laid out and easy to follow. Most actions, like claiming a target, only took a single eye-click on an icon or two to complete. Even the cleanup tasks were covered with simple AR icons and tags. We continued on, occasionally interrupted by antithesis attacks, which we swiftly handled.
Since Teia had gone back to her position and Torkan didn’t know, I found a chat channel dedicated to the company’s officers to ask a question. We’d encountered antithesis every twenty minutes, more or less. Sometimes a lone Three or Four, but other times we hit larger groups.
Me: Is it normal to encounter this many antithesis?
Capt. Carlson: This is heavier than standard, but not unexpected.
Dec. Martin: The antithesis invasion of Seattle last year spawned a lot of hives.
D: The one we’re hunting should be one of the last. We think.
D: It’s had a lot of time to spawn models, which have flooded the area.
C: Clearing out all the chaff once the hive is gone will take a while.
Me: Well, it’s good points at least.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I made a game of seeing how many of the antithesis I could kill before the troopers. While my enhancements continued to grow, the improvement in reaction time they already provided shined when compared to the troopers, letting me get more than half of the kills. Private Johnson, the squad’s top shooter, started throwing me angry looks each time I stole his kills. Meanwhile, Torkan shook his head and asked for pointers. He had joined the unit recently, after the unit had rotated through my class.
The points kept coming in, and my total grew until, after a couple hours and fifteen kilometers, Tara found a new use for them.
[“Drone coming in,”] she called. [“It’s low on power and needs to be stowed.”]
My visor showed I had over two thousand points. I replied subvocally, [“Do I need to buy a replacement battery pack? Or something to charge it?”]
[“Corie and I have been discussing it. We have replacement drones picked out and a charging solution. I waited to bring it up, because she says it will be expensive.”]
[“How expensive?”]
[“We’ve selected two types of drones.”] Corie was back to her cheery child soprano voice today. [“A long-range model, and a more local one. Both have a longer flying range than the Chibats and better sensors. But the big purchase will be the command node. It will act as both a communications hub and a charging station. It’ll even do some pre-analysis of the feeds to improve search functionality.”]
--They cost one hundred each for the long-range drones and fifty for the smaller ones.
--Six hundred and a Class I catalog, which I will note you’ve already earned today, and you aren’t even at the big haul.
I stumbled on the dirt road and had to scramble to catch myself. [“That’s a big jump. More than any other single expense so far. Why is it so expensive?”]
[“The Emerson & Yant Roving Inductance Engine (E.Y.R.I.E), Mk IV uses a blackbox communication device that is a planetary non-EM communicator similar to what the other Vanguard AIs use to speak to their people. It’s only technically Class I since Emerson & Yant (that’s not their real names; it doesn’t translate well) purchased the box from external sources. The cost of the box is what drives up the price so much. It also has an internal power supply that’s good for a hundred years, ports to speed charge multiple drones, can propel itself, and has a limited AI trained to preprocess drone data and highlight probable threats.”]
[“If the communications method is so good, how is Tara going to talk to it from that far away?”]
[“We’ve got that covered,”] Tara said.
Ginny added, [“We have a temporary make-do workaround kludge that required the ritual sacrifice of your other Carrier Pigeon. And you need a new microwave. It will work for a day or two, but you and Corie will need come up with a better long-term solution.”] She sounded a little annoyed.
[“Why do I think you three already have that workaround in place?”]
[“Because we had to be sure it would work,”] Kaitlyn said, sounding like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
A Chibat flew in, almost hitting me on its approach. I reached out and caught it, collapsed the legs and wings, and then stuffed it in a pouch. [“Okay, we can get the drones, but push that big one back as long as you can. I should keep a buffer of points in case of emergency.”]
[“If we buy three now, we can do the rest in one hundred point stages as the Chibat’s batteries drain,”] Tara said.
[“Do it. And I’ll need a nutrient supplement, and do you have some kind of energy bar? This is going to be a long day.”]
--Three drones and some food incoming. You’ll need to launch the first drone manually.
"Purchased: Albatross Surveillance Drone
Cost: 100 Remaining points: 1,932
"Purchased: Dragonfly Local Area Scout Drones
Cost: 100 (qty:2) Remaining points: 1,832
"Purchased: Energy Food and Drink
Cost: 10 (qty:1) Remaining points: 1,822”
The first drone had long, thin wings stretching farther than my armspan and a thin fuselage. I grabbed the body and threw it high like a paper airplane, and the integral propeller kicked in and off it flew, making long elegant circles as it gained altitude. A pair of tiny quadcopter drones took off and chased after it. The little Dragonflies despite having all the aerodynamic grace of a brick, used their overpowered fans to run ahead, beating the Albatross to treetop height.
Task done, I caught the food out of the air and continued down the road. Troopers all around me stared for a second before a sergeant cleared his throat and their eyes snapped back to the surrounding forest.
The day pushed on along with the troop. Just before noon, the skies dumped on us, and I learned that my armor held the water like a wetsuit but did nothing for the cold wind that followed. After shivering through the lunch break, I splurged on an integrated thermal layer for it, which warmed or cooled me, depending on the environment. The fifty points for comfort were well spent. That it extended my armor down my arms and legs another few centimeters was a nice bonus.
At the end of the clearing, Carlson stood a short ways away, looking out over the valley. He lifted his binoculars several times, only to lower them again. He continued this, even after I stepped up beside him and looked down on the valley below.
We had been following a ridgeline above the valley where the lead antithesis force should be, using logging roads to make time. Those roads were in terrible shape, often little more than a pair of ruts with small trees growing between the tracks.
A long slope dropped to the north into a broad valley before the next ridgeline rose sharply on the far side. In the valley, the remains of the roads cut through the tall underbrush that had overtaken abandoned farms.