The tactical animation showed our drone fighters handily defending the Icebreaker from the enraged enemy armada just long enough for it to finish melting its giant hole and launch its warheads through it, into the planet’s subsurface ocean. At this point, the ICBMs transformed into guided nuclear torpedoes, which quickly homed in on the Sobrukai’s underwater cave city, which looked like a high-tech hive built into the ocean’s rocky floor.
“Now I feel bad,” Diehl said. “Like we’re about to nuke Aquaman. Or the Little Mermaid …”
“Pretend they’re Gungans,” Cruz suggested. “And that we get to nuke Jar.”
They both laughed, but I was still focused on the tactical animation. It showed the EDA’s torpedo nukes closing in on the Sobrukai’s aquatic hive like a volley of squid-seeking missiles. A few of them were knocked out by the hive’s defense turrets, but the vast majority reached their target.
The ensuing detonations lit up the view screen like an old-school game of Missile Command. Sobrukai Central was obliterated, and the force of the subsequent thermonuclear explosions rocked the planet so violently that cracks spread across the entire circumference of its icy surface, making it resemble a shattered hardboiled egg. There were no mushroom clouds—only a massive column of red steam rising from the massive hole burned in the surface, which shot straight up into orbit as if the planet were spraying blood from a gunshot wound.
“It’s another suicide mission,” Cruz said. “But it still looks fun. I’m in.”
It looked as if our inept alien enemy had made another colossal tactical mistake. They had not only let their faster-than-light propulsion technology fall into our reverse-engineering monkey hands, they had then given us enough time to build an interstellar warship of our own and send it all the way across interstellar space to launch a counterattack against them.
As usual, the alien invaders’ tactics didn’t make a whole lot of sense—and as usual, I didn’t care. I just wanted to kill me some aliens, and this was the juiciest setup for a balls-out kamikaze mission in the history of the game—maybe any game.
In my headset, the admiral’s voice was drowned out by the sound of Diehl pretending to snore. “Come on, old man!” he shouted. “Less talk, more rock!”
“Yeah, I wish we could skip this storyline crap,” Cruz said. “Bor-ing.”
“See, this is exactly why you two always get killed within first two minutes,” I said. “You never pay attention during the admiral’s briefing.”
“No, we always get killed because of you, Leeroy Jenkins!”
“I’ve asked you repeatedly to stop calling me that.”
“If the shoe fits, Smack Attack!” Cruz said. “Why don’t you try being a team player for once? Just once?”
“Interplanetary warfare isn’t a team sport,” I replied. “Never has been.”
“Actually, it kinda is, if you think about it,” Diehl chimed in. “The home team versus the visitors. Get it? Visitors?” After a pause, he added. “Because they’re aliens.”
“Yeah, we got it,” I said. “Will everybody shut up so I can hear the rest of this?”
“This mission must succeed,” the admiral was telling us now. “That armada is preparing to depart for Earth, so this is our one and only chance to destroy the Sobrukai before they come here to destroy us. The fate of humanity depends on the Icebreaker reaching its target.” He paused to clasp his hands behind his back. “We’re only going to get one shot at this, people, so let’s make it count.”
“Are you kidding?” Cruz shouted, as if the prerecorded actor could hear him. “This better not be a single-play mission. It’s way too awesome!”
“He was just saying that for dramatic effect,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to replay it—just like with the Disrupter scenarios.”
“You better be right,” Diehl said. “Because there’s no way in hell we’re going to pull this mission off on our first try—or our second or third, either. They’ve got six Dreadnaught Spheres! Each one loaded with over a billion killer alien drones—and a Disrupter to boot!”
“They won’t activate one of their Disrupters here,” Cruz pointed out. “It wouldn’t have any effect. For a quantum link to be disrupted, both the transmitting and receiving ends have to be inside the sphere.” That was the reason the EDA had drones and humans stationed on the far side of the moon.
“With no Disrupter to worry about, this should be doable,” I said. “All we have to do is protect that Icebreaker for three minutes. No problemo.”
“No problem?” Cruz repeated. “Really? You think so?”
“Yeah. We just—you know—create a blockade.”
“With what?” Cruz said. “Did you check the mission stats? Our carrier only brought two hundred drones along! The admiral failed to mention that.”
“Maybe he did it when you two were snoring?” I suggested.
“Like I said before, this is yet another example of unbalanced, poorly thought out gameplay,” he continued. “The devs at Chaos Terrain are trying to piss us off now. We’re gonna get slaughtered—again!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Diehl said. “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”
I laughed. Before Cruz could reply, we realized that Admiral Vance was bringing his chalk talk to a close.