Earth Unaware (First Formic War)

and stormed the building. The enemy combatants were exactly where the computer told them they would be. The peeker, which was still attached to the side of the house, warned them whenever new threats charged toward them from elsewhere in the house, giving Wit and his team plenty of time to seek cover or move into a position to neutralize the enemy.
    Wit made every shot count, getting up the stairs just behind the others, stepping over the enemy that had already fallen. Calinga was waiting for them in the room. The last enemy guard, who was taking his role as a terrorist rather seriously, attempted to use Calinga as a human shield. But the advancing MOPs fired in unison, and five spider rounds hit the terrorist’s helmet in nearly the same spot. The man’s suit went stiff, and he released Calinga. He didn’t even bother dropping to the floor as was the rule of the game. It was all over at that point.
    “About time you got here,” said Calinga. “It’s no fun being the hostage. I don’t get a weapon, and they wouldn’t even give me something to read.”
    When they got outside, Wit ended the exercise. He blinked the command to unfreeze everyone’s suits and had them all gather in the meadow for a debriefing, both MOPs and terrorists alike. The men sat in a wide circle all around him under the moonlight.
    “What did we learn?” Wit asked.
    “That Calinga makes a terrible hostage,” said Deen, who had played a terrorist. “He wouldn’t stop whining. We almost shot him to shut him up.”
    The men laughed.
    “I almost shot myself,” said Calinga. “Boring as hell, this crew.”
    The men laughed again.
    “Here’s what I learned,” said Wit. “Seven MOPs prevailed against twenty-four equally trained commandos. Why? Because we’re better soldiers? Because we’re smarter? Faster? No. We won for two reasons: One, you bad guys were sloppy. You weren’t taking proper cover. We picked you off way too easily.”
    “We were giving you the real thing,” said Deen. “Terrorists are always sloppy.”
    “Don’t give me the real thing,” said Wit. “Give me you, one of the finest trained, most intelligent soldiers I know. Be merciless. I don’t want realism. I want worse than realism. I want a hundred times more difficult than realism. Do everything in your power to annihilate us. That way, when the bullets are real, when our lives are on the line, we will do our duty with exactness. We will never lose. I should have seen nothing when we approached this compound. You should have been completely invisible to me and the satellite. You should have killed us before we left the trees. Why didn’t you?”
    “You were with the new guys,” said Deen. “We thought we’d make it a little easier for them.”
    “Do you think they need any hand-holding?” asked Wit. “Do you think that just because they’re new to this unit that they’re not good enough or experienced enough to take you at your best? If so, you’re in for the surprise of your life tomorrow when we do this again. From here on out, we pull no punches. If you lose, it’s because you screwed up and were bested and not because you let someone win.”
    “I was actually trying,” said one of the guards. “Chi-won jumped out of the bushes so fast, I nearly pissed myself.”
    The men laughed.
    “Good,” said Wit. “I’m glad you only nearly pissed yourself. Had you actually done so your suit might have short-circuited and given you quite the shock.”
    “Smoked sausage,” said Deen, to another round of laughter.
    “From here on out,” said Wit, “you act as if your life is on the line. No more going easy. No more pretending that the enemy is inferior or less intelligent than you. Which brings me to the second reason why you failed. We MOPs had better tech. The enemy had older rifles, no computer assistance, no satellites, no peekers, no thermal vision. This was a tech war, and we won because of our equipment. Pinetop, if I had stripped you of all of your gear, could you have taken the hostage?”
    “I don’t think so, sir.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’d be unarmed.”
    “So you’re only an effective soldier if I arm you? You’re only good if I give you better equipment?”
    Pinetop hesitated. “No, sir. It’s just more difficult. If I had been unarmed, I would have taken down one of the guards and confiscated his weapon. Then I could have picked off the others.”
    “And what if you didn’t know how to operate the enemy’s