“It’s a new mission,” I said. “Be optimistic. There might not be a Disrupter in it.”
“Yeah,” Diehl said. “Maybe the devs have cooked up something even worse.”
“What could possibly be worse?” Cruz asked. “A mission where you have to blow up a Death Star while being attacked by two Borg Cubes inside an asteroid field?”
“Cruz,” Diehl immediately chimed in. “I highly doubt that either the Borg or—”
Thankfully, an alert sounded in our headphones just then, signaling the start of the mission briefing. All of the data display windows vanished and I found myself seated in a packed briefing room, with Cruz’s and Diehl’s uniformed avatars Kvothe and Dealio sitting on either side of me. We had each customized our avatars so that they vaguely resembled our real selves—only slightly taller, more muscular, and less pale. The avatars of a few other last-minute arrivals were materializing in the tiered seats around us.
In the fictional near-future reality of Armada, Cruz, Diehl, and I were drone pilots stationed at Moon Base Alpha, a top-secret military outpost on the moon’s far side. They were both lowly corporals, while I held the coveted rank of lieutenant.
The lights in the virtual briefing room dimmed, and the spinning crest of the Earth Defense Alliance appeared on the view screen in front of us. As the crest faded away, it was replaced by the familiar face of Admiral Archibald Vance, the Earth Defense Alliance’s highest-ranking officer. The actor Chaos Terrain had hired to portray the admiral totally nailed the part. His jagged facial scar and eye patch might have seemed over the top on another actor, but this guy somehow managed to sell the whole look and make you believe he really was a battle-hardened military commander facing impossible odds with weary determination and grim resolve.
“Greetings, pilots,” the admiral said, addressing us from the view screen. “This evening’s mission will not be an easy one—but it’s one I know many of you have been hoping and waiting for since this war first began. Humanity has suffered countless unprovoked attacks from these alien invaders over the years, but now we’re finally going to take this fight to them.”
The corners of the admiral’s mouth turned upward in the faintest hint of a smile—the closest I’d ever seen him come to displaying an emotion.
“Tonight, we’re finally going to hit them where they live—literally.”
The view screen window displaying the admiral’s face shrank and moved to the top right-hand corner, while the rest of the screen displayed a technical diagram of a ship model I’d never seen before. Its design reminded me a little of the Sulaco from Aliens. Its elongated, armored hull made it look like a heavy-caliber machine gun drifting through the void of space.
“This is the EDA’s first Interstellar Drone Carrier, the SS Doolittle. After traveling for over two years at nearly seven times the speed of light, the Doolittle has finally reached its target—and your target for this mission—the enemy’s home planet of Sobrukai.”
“Finally!” Cruz shouted over the comm, perfectly echoing my own reaction.
All of the previous Armada missions had been focused on defense, and the game’s action had always been confined to our own solar system, oftentimes on Earth itself, in the skies over a major city or military outpost the Sobrukai were attacking, although we’d also locked horns with them out beyond the orbit of Mars, near the edge of the asteroid belt, and on the far side of the moon. This was the first mission that had ever involved an offensive against our enemy—and we’d hit the mother lode.
“As soon as the Doolittle reaches Sobrukai’s orbit,” the admiral went on, “it will deactivate its cloaking device before launching the Icebreaker, our weapon of last resort, along with an escort of fighters that will be under your control.”
The admiral began to play the tactical pre-vis on the screen. The computer animation showed the cloaked Doolittle swinging into orbit above Sobrukai, and the armada of glittering warships that encircled its equator, like an artificial planetary ring. Spaced out evenly along this ring were six massive chrome orbs—Sobrukai Dreadnaught Spheres. The players had nicknamed them “muthaships.” This was the first time we’d ever had to go up against more than one of them.
The bay doors embedded on the starboard side of the Doolittle’s bow irised open and the Icebreaker launched out of it, accompanied by a dense escort of three dozen fighters. The Icebreaker looked like what it was—a giant focused beam-laser bolted to an orbital nuclear weapons platform. The moment it began to fire its powerful melt laser down at the thick layer of ice covering the planet’s surface, Sobrukai fighters began to pour out of the six Dreadnaught spheres, streaming forth from glowing, slit-like hangar doors that had opened in their armored skins, to engage with the comparatively tiny group of EDA fighters protecting the doomsday weapon being fired directly down at the icy roof of their squid crib.
“Eat it!” Diehl cried in mock triumph. “How does it feel, assholes? You like that?”
I smiled under my helmet. Diehl was right. After months of getting our asses handed to us on our home court, this chance to strike back at the Sobrukai on theirs was going to be hugely cathartic.
“Your mission is to keep the Icebreaker operational for approximately three minutes—just long enough for it to melt through the ice and launch its warheads into the planet’s subsurface ocean, destroying the enemy’s underwater lair, an aquatic hive located on the ocean floor.”
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 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 the vast gulf of 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 the 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!”