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  The problem was the strongpoints. They stuck out and up, allowing good shooting positions to rain down stingers on him and everyone else nearby. Not all of them were claimed, for the higher you got the better, so the Sabers were skipping over most of the lower ones and rushing for the mid-level fortifications. Had Rio a sniper or even a standard rifle he could have taken one of the lower ones and used it to hamper their rise, but he didn’t. Meaning he was going to have to go at it in close range combat.

  Remembering where the closest routes were that the Sabers had taken up, for there were many, he hurried his way up from one level to another, pausing where necessary to keep from running into an ambush, though he needn’t have worried, for the Sabers were climbing so fast he was still well behind them. From his vantage point he couldn’t see that, but soon he was to get additional instructions from one of the Metal Gear sniper/spotters.

  “Rio, head left four ladders, then up two levels. That should give you a flanking position on a nest of Sabers we’ve got pinned down. Hurry.”

  Rio took off running, not bothering to be cautious, and scrambled over to his ladder and climbed, crossed the flat, and climbed again. When he got up it he jogged to the right, both pistols ready, moving in and out of cover as he rounded what were essentially oddly angled corners while trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible. He was out of view of his own snipers most of the time, meaning they couldn’t guide him, so when he came up on the Sabers it was as much of a surprise to him as it was to them.

  There were four of them, two of which had their backs to him. He didn’t hesitate when he saw their blue uniforms and started firing as rapidly as he could pull the pair of triggers…

  The next thing he knew he was waking up staring at the Arena ceiling, which was a massive set of tiny light bars that he’d never noticed before.

  “You with me?” one of his Clan Metal Gear teammates said, snapping his fingers in front of his face.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he said, sitting up. “Is it over?”

  “Not even close,” the man said, tapping the ground. “Just brought you back. Take this, the Sabers won’t be needing it.”

  Rio glanced down and saw the meter-wide square he sat on, recognizing it as a destunning pad. There were several spaced around the pyramid, which meant he’d been dragged over here to be revived. He took the stinger rifle from his teammate, reflexively checking to see how many rounds he had left, which was about 50 or so, given that it looked like half a clip.

  “Which side are we on?”

  “Metal Gear side. Fighting’s up top, I was assigned to cleanup. Get up there and help where you can.”

  “On it,” Rio said, jumping to his feet and feeling the last bit of pins and needles being pulled out of them as he stepped off the pad and searched for the nearest ladder, finding instead a ramp of stone-like steps. He ran up to the next level, then the following 16 before he got up to the back lines of the Metal Gears and into one of their occupied strong points. He crawled over to an open spot on the rim ledge that three others were camped out behind.

  He pulled up enough to look out, seeing Sabers poking around the edge of the pyramid and shooting at the Metal Gears climbing up two levels ‘above’ them, but that were now even with the elevated strongpoint he was in.

  “Elsa, two on your left,” he said into his comm piece after a blink command into sunglasses, now taking on the role of a spotter.

  “Rio, you up for a tandem run?” the commando next to him said, who was also holding a mostly useless standard rifle at their current range to targets.

  “Take point,” he agreed, following the more experienced commando out and down the stairs to the level below, then over to a ladder where they began to make their way up, with Rio loving every moment of it.

  8 years later Rio was with his Metal Gear teammates, this time one of the experienced ones…well, more experienced, for they had a considerable amount of newbs with them, climbing up the Arena pyramid and near to the top with four shots left in his stinger pistol, one that he’d picked up off a stunned Clan Skystrike commando three levels down. He’d been climbing unarmed before that, with half of the Metal Gears remaining having run out of ammo. Pretty soon now and it would turn into a pure footrace…one that he intended to win.

  He wasn’t the highest up, at least four others were ahead of him, but the odds of them making it were slim. There was a fierce firefight taking place near the top, with one of the Clans trying to punch out the others by running them out of ammunition and forcing the issue by mounting a surging climb that the others had to counter. Something was about to break, and from past experience it usually meant a lot of stunned bodies being climbed over by a lucky few survivors that stayed hidden amongst the nooks.

  In order to beat them he had to get up there first, which meant running the gauntlet. Rio wouldn’t be the only one of his Clan doing so, but with a few flankers designated to guard duty he had a decent shot of making it up…or helping one of the others do the same.

  Rio scrambled as quick as he could, hearing the whiffs of stinger fire starting to wither out, and came up behind one of his Clansmen who waved him on while maintaining a specific firing line. Rio went without hesitation and climbed up the ladder, hearing the other commando fire off two shots, followed by the ‘thump’ of a body falling nearby. This close to the top each side was getting progressively narrower, meaning less of a divide between the four Clans.

  Rio made it up to the fourth level from the top before he got caught up in a firefight that left his right arm numb. Fortunately all commandos were trained to shoot equally well with both hands, and he switched over to his left and kept on climbing. When he got up to the third level he saw a Clan Thunderfist commando reach the top…then immediately get hit by three stingers from three different shooters. She dropped and rolled off the flat top down to the first level and out of sight as one of Rio’s teammates caught up to him and hunkered down by his side.

  “What do you think?”

  “Still hot up here.”

  “I’ll lead you up to two.”

  “Alright,” Rio said, following him over to the steps. “Go.”

  The two of them sprinted up, rounding the curve in the climb as the other commando fired off a couple of shots before getting stunned himself. Rio hurdled him and jumped head first up onto the next level, crawling up next to the wall for cover, now being two more climbs from the top…but that wasn’t his destination. He was here to help the others up, and with only a handful of meters on either side of him this was the end zone where everything got dicey, for the other Clans were almost within touching range.

  Sitting in the middle wasn’t going to offer much help, so Rio moved around a pointy section to the far left where he set up, able to snipe down onto the Skystrike side if need be, or around onto the same level to…

  His pistol came up and fired a single shot that nailed a Skystrike in the chest who noticed him a split second too late. He went down next to a ladder, then Rio made a snap decision and abandoned his post. He ran over to the downed commando and knelt next to the ladder and man, appropriating his pistol and checking the clip count. It only had two shots left, compared to his three, so he let it lay, unable to use his right hand to dual wield.

  With the area behind him being friendly territory, he took a chance and climbed the ladder, hoping not to get shot in the back, and climbed up belly first over the edge to stay low. Now there was only one climb left to get to the summit, he was ever so close…which was why he fought the urge to jump up to the top and win the challenge for his Clan. He’d be toast the moment he exposed himself, for they surely still had snipers in play, just as the Metal Gears had.

  So he played guard, watching for the next Skystrike to come up and gunning him down with a shot to the head. There were only two ways up, short of jumping and clinging to the edge…which was almost impossible to do with gun in hand, though that hadn’t stopped them from doing it before.

  “Skystrik
e side is secured,” he reported via comm. “Someone get up top.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Level 1, and I have two stingers left. Hurry,” Rio whispered.

  “On it,” Dagan answered.

  Rio held position, shooting another Skystrike that came up on his right, leaving him with one shot, then his comm line activated again.

  “Rio, Thunderfist is almost up. Go now!”

  “Damn it,” he said, dropping his pistol and jumping up directly to the top and grabbing onto the edge of the wall with both hands, forcing his right to suffer through the pins and needles that were now exploding through the denumbing process. The last climb had no stairs, so this was his only option.

  Pulling mostly with his left, he got his chest up over top of the flat ‘roof’, seeing two other commandos coming up on the left and far sides. The left one went down to a sniper immediately, leaving just the other to finish climbing up while the two corner boxes, at equal height and a gap of several meters from the top platform, watched on.

  Rio got his left leg up and rolled onto the top, then crawled forward as the Thunderfist commando got shot in the leg by a Metal Gear sniper. Keeping low, Rio got over to the pedestal a second before the other commando and slapped his left hand down on the top, pressing the finish button and triggering the blue lighting and end of challenge tone to sound.

  The Thunderfist dragged himself up on the pedestal and nodded at Rio.

  “Nice job, scum,” he joked.

  Rio laughed, and poked the commando in the chest. “Metal Gears have to win. It’s embarrassing if we get beat in our own facility.”

  “I’ll try to arrange that next time.”

  “You will try,” Rio said, slipping an arm under his shoulders to help him walk with the numb leg.

  8

  After he and the other Metal Gears evacuated the Arena to let the cleaning crews do a quick job of readying the course for the next challenge, Rio went up to the viewing area and checked out the primary scoreboard detailing the status of all Clans, Star Force mainline units, and Canderian units taking part in the trials…not just here, but across the star system.

  The points gained for winning the Arena challenge were small, but they added just a bit more to the Metal Gears’ overall count, which spanned the previous 5 years, helping to secure their position as the 3rd rated commando Clan. Neither the mainline units nor Canderous currently topped them, though the later’s top ranked trials Legion was currently in 4th and nipping away at their heels.

  The Canderians had several different tiers of warriors within the trials, which they referred to as ‘Legions’ despite the fact they weren’t structured quite the same as their standard Legions, but they weren’t spread out evenly as the Clans more or less were. They were stacked with the best they had into the Alpha Legion, and they were giving the Metal Gears all they could handle.

  They hadn’t gone up against each other for some time, and the Alpha Legion wasn’t on the Snake Pit, but their Gamma Legion was. They were familiar opponents who sought to gain points through running challenge after challenge, figuring they had little to lose so long as Alpha Legion upheld the honor of Canderous. At least that’s what Rio had been told by one of their commandos, but he may have just been making excuses for getting beat at the time. Still, he’d said the other Legions in the trials were more for training purposes, with the Alphas being the prime contenders.

  That made some sense to Rio, but given that the Legions were being given equal status with a Clan, he didn’t see how the Gammas could all be second rate commandos, for they were beating 6 of the Clans at present. The mainline units, each large enough to merit ‘Clan’ status in the trials, were currently 68 in number, with additional ones being added as the military grew. Some of them were elite units, he knew, with the 8th army ranking 7th overall in commandos and 17th in mechs, with a less than auspicious 72nd in aerial.

  Their 3rd army had the best aerial rank at 18th, with the Clans claiming the top 17 spots. Canderous only had one aerial unit, which they designated as part of Beta Legion, signifying that they didn’t truly consider it a fair contest, given that they were a space-faring civilization with little aerial assets. Their naval scores, on the other hand, had Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Legions all in the top 50, where they employed their unique remote controlled starfighters in the simulated naval challenges.

  Mainline fleets, which were separate entities from mainline armies, held their own against the Canderians and maintained two spots in the top 10, though Paul’s Sabers still maintained their lock on the top spot, with Roger’s Emerald Sharks and Liam’s Neon Squirrels occasionally knocking them off the thrown, only to have the Sabers reclaim it in short order. Behind those three there was a large gap that no one else seemed capable of bridging.

  Metal Gear was currently ranked 34th in naval, 52nd in aquatics, 78th in aerial, and 82nd in mechs…which were all top half marks, making the Clan well rounded, unlike, say, Clan Aquaman who held the number 1 ranking in aquatics, but didn’t have their other four divisions inside the top 80 Clan or top 120 overall. They were what was known as a ‘specialized’ Clan, but even still they had good Regulars and Archons in their other divisions, it was just that the competition in the trials was so fierce that if you didn’t put everything you had into developing all your divisions the specialists would eat you alive.

  That was the way it was meant to be, with Clan Metal Gear striving to be a full contender, but maintaining its commando pride. As he’d learned, the recruitment process the Clans used was spread out across all disciplines, so if you bid heavily in one area, you had less to bid in others. Now, that was just to attain recruits, and didn’t affect how you trained them afterwards, but there was still a lot of strategy in making the picks, which made Rio overly proud that Metal Gear had chosen him at all, let alone as a commando.

  He’d been working hard to live up to their faith in his mettle, and like the others was always eager to monitor their Clan’s progress across all fronts…which left the scoreboard area rather congested, so once he’d taken a quick status check of everything he wanted to see he gently nudged his way past the crowd and out into the traffic flow.

  Rio, hold up.

  He hadn’t been on the receiving end of too many telepathic communications, but the existence of such things had been made aware to him when he’d reached commando level 5 a few years aback. Since then he’d only been spoken to twice in this form, and it still left him a bit shocked when he heard the Archon’s voice inside his head.

  Rio stopped walking and waited for his unseen contact, who appeared some 15 seconds later in the crowd flow and motioned for him to step off to the side. The commando took up a spot on one of the commando course observation windows in his camo green casual uniform as the Archon stepped up beside him in his white with silver trim counterpart.

  “Nice grab,” the Archon said, referring to the challenge win. “We can always use the points.”

  “Thank you,” Rio said, glancing back and forth between the man and the ongoing battle below.

  “My name is Durango-12833. I’m putting together a volunteer unit and your name was brought to my attention. I hear you’re eager for a field assignment?”

  Rio’s eyes widened. “Yes I am.”

  “Word hasn’t reached the main news yet,” Durango said, lowering his voice a bit as he watched the commandos below fighting it out across a series of fences, “but the Protovic have come under attack. They played it cool early on when the Nestafar switched sides, given that they were their benefactor within the Alliance, but once the Calavari and Nestafar bloodied themselves the Protovic stepped in and safeguarded a handful of Calavari systems along their border. They’re actively fighting the Nestafar there, trying to secure fallback points for the Calavari as the lizards push in, but now they’ve been hit by someone else and are requesting assistance from the Alliance.”

  “Not us specifically?”

  “No, but so far no one else
has been in a position to respond. Everyone is caught up fighting the lizard incursion or covering their own asses. Star Force doesn’t have much to spare, or at least the mainline units don’t. Trailblazer Kip has decided to go to their relief, but doesn’t think that Clan Protoss is strong enough on its own, so he asked Metal Gear to join him. We’ve agreed, and are rounding up as many personnel as we can spare without hurting current deployments.”

  “Do you think I’m ready?” Rio asked, a bit concerned.

  Durango nodded. “Ready enough. Several of the Protovic’s worlds are under assault, so there will be a lot of opportunities for ground combat. We won’t send you in to get slaughtered, but there should be plenty of cleanup missions where we could put you and other lower ranking commandos to use. The question is, do you feel ready?”

  “If I can’t fight lizards, I’ll happily fight their allies. You can count me in.”

  The Archon shook his head. “No. The Nestafar aren’t hitting the Protovic territories. The Skarrons are. The bottom end of Zeta Region where it borders Beta is a chaotic mess right now. The Nestafar used to be the major power in the region, and now that their strength is severely depleted other races are making a play for territory and influence. The Skarrons are exploiting the Protovic’s weakness, given that they’ve deployed a significant portion of their military to safeguard the Calavari worlds, and we intend to fill that hole in their defenses.”

  Rio nodded his understanding. He didn’t know a lot about the Skarrons, but knew they were a major force coreward of Star Force territory.