"... Hit, target combat ineffective. What're you going to do next?"
"Confirm that the target is neutralised… Then expand the cordon and advance onto the primary objective?"
Having done dry runs of drone fire and engagement procedures for about a week now, Tom wasn't very happy that Lisa was still not entirely sure in what she was saying, but she was still correct.
"That's acceptable, but why are you still so unsure about yourself?"
Closing the weapons manual he was currently reading, Tom focused on Lisa currently doing a plank with her aunt Mari sitting on her back.
"Because… It's hard to… Keep track of everything… In… My… Head."
"Yeah, it is extremely hard to keep track of everything based on just verbal commands, but if you fuck up you, me, or somebody else compleatly unrelated could die because of it. That's why we're training, so you don't make these mistakes when it matters."
While Lisa had been through a lot of battles for her age, Tom was still aware that putting fire support in her hands was a huge responsibility that she wasn't necessarily ready for.
"Lisa, I need you to understand this; If you make a mistake calling in fire support it will kill your friends or innocent bystanders."
Gesturing for both Lisa and Mari to get up, Tom made sure she was hearing and understanding what he was saying.
"... You sound like you're speaking from experience."
Just from Tom's tone alone, Lisa could tell he was serious, but there was also a pain in his eyes she hadn't seen before.
"Yeah, that's because I am speaking from experience… I've told you this before, but now that Mari is here it bears repeating; I'm not a good person, I'm not an honourable soldier and there isn't a single war crime I haven't carried out under orders. I've killed men, women and children, drenching my body in their blood. I have the blood of the innocent and the guilty on my hands in equal amounts so let me tell you, from first hand experience, that it fucking rots your soul; that's why I want you to do better, because you can, and you will."
There was a special kind of hurt in Tom's voice Lisa didn't quite get, Mari on the other hand realised that Tom was trying to shield Lisa from the horrors and mistakes of his own past while empowering her to seize her own future.
(This man, or monster as he describes himself, really is a better parent to Lisa than I've ever been… How did I fuck up this badly?)
"Okay, so let's go again. I want to do better."
Understanding only a fraction of what Tom was telling her, Lisa felt how much he wanted and knew she could improve.
"Then let's take it from the top."
Getting back to his stump and picking back up the Exacto field manual as Lisa got back into a plank.
"Contact, heavy weapons fire to the north and north-west, Civ's confirmed in AO, perps unknown, hostile support elements unknown, requesting fire support package delta and immediate extract south, over."
"Request acknowledged, switch to channel 3.31 and confirm package delta; mark antagonists with red smoke and prepare for CAS."
Getting back into the sim training, Tom set up quite a diabolical scenario where Lisa was forced to walk into a fight not knowing where the enemy was, how many of them there were or what kind of support they had.
"Unable, escalate. I say again: Unable, escalate."
Refusing to comply with Lisa's simple and reasonable attempts to desiquish friend for foe, Tom instead called for more support without acknowledging that he needed to switch to an encrypted communication channel. Even as little as Lisa felt she knew about the topic, Lisa still felt there was something wrong with this entire scenario, so she deviated slightly.
"Unknown element, switch to 3.31 and reconfirm grid ID, over."
"... Good job."
Having caught Tom in his act of trying to lure out Lisa, Tom stopped the scenario and praised her for getting it right.
"See? You got this, you just need to thrust your training."
"... I guess, but I don't see why I need to learn about identifying hostile agents? It's not like anyone else in this world knows about your world's way of fighting."
Although this was the first time she had caught onto it this fast, Tom had been regularly sneaking these kinds of scenarios into her training. Sometimes Tom would feed Lisa intentionally wrong parameters or data, and occasionally he would act as a hostile force feeding Lisa misleading information.
"For now we're the only ones, yeah. That's exactly why I don't want you getting a false sense of security. I don't want to be too blasphemous, but if one god can bring me here, it's not too unreasonable to expect it isn't the only one able to do so."
Mindful of how he was putting it as there was a priest of the hunt present, Tom still needed Lisa to realise that their advantage was only temporary at best.
"I guess that's reasonable…"
Tom wasn't taking any chances, he knew fighting against the kingdom would get messy, so he was preparing Lisa for it.
"Then let's go-"
Stopping mid-sentence, Tom stood up and looked north as he accessed his neural uplink.
"What's wrong?"
"..."
Not answering Lisa, Tom stayed silent as he started focusing on something really strange a few kilometres north of his current position. From the time he had stayed in this village, Tom had gotten very familiar with his surroundings through his neural uplink and the GE-54A3 Albatros flying above, so when he noticed a cloud not moving with the wind and fringing slightly at the edges like optical camouflage, alarm bells started ringing.
"SHIT! CONTACT NORTH! 5200 METRES!"
As fireballs the size of a suburban house started getting chugged out from underneath the strange cloud, Tom realised he had been caught bending over with his pants down.
Hearing Tom's command, Lisa immediately acted and ran for her rifle and spare magazines she quickly loaded into her carrier.
"Mari, we're under attack! Evacuate the villagers and regroup with us after!"
"Understood! May her blessings be upon you."
Understanding the gravity of the situation and thrusting Tom, Mari immediately set off for the village as Tom and Lisa started running north to engage and push back the attackers.
"I will handle CAS and command, fire at will!"
"Wilco, numbers?"
Sprinting by Tom's side, Lisa loaded her M-507 and chambered a round as she prepared for battle.
"Unknown, the Albatross can't see them, so I'm getting eyes on with the Wasps!"
SYSTEM_WAKE_COMMAND_CONFIRMED
FULL_PACKAGE_LAUNCH_CONFIRMED,_STANDBY…
SYSTEM_TO_WAR_LEVEL_OUTPUT_IN_09_SECOND(S).
About a kilometre to the south of the elver village, a series of small explosions cleared dirt and debris away from the 10 hidden Wasp launch tubes as the drones inside started waking up for launch.
SYSTEM_WAKE_PROCEDURE_STAGE_2
PREFORMING_PRE-FLIGHT_CHECK_LIST.
STANDBY…
Heating up their internals, the 5 Wasp's with explosive warheads had their fuses armed while servos and mothers controlling their various flight control surfaces conducted an orchestra of pre-flight checks.
Then, they all launched out of their tubes, folding out their wings before starting to climb.
FULL_STRIKE_PACKAGE_IN_ROUTE.
ETA:_243_SECOND(S)
"We have CAS and recon in 4 minutes!"
As a group of 16 building sized fireballs flew overhead, Tom updated Lisa on the ETA of the drones right as they finally got eyes on the strange 'cloud' about 1.900 metres away.
"Okay what the fuck is that?"
Although it looked like a normal cloud from above, from where Tom was now, the 'cloud' was some kind of mushroom shaped mirage.
"It looks like illusion magic… But I'm not too sure."
Taking behind a berm, Tom peaked out with his M-909 and used its scope to find out exactly what he was dealing with.
Wearing the same kind of armour as the griffon knights and even sporting a few banners it was clear that these people were from the kingdom, but that was the only thing Tom could say outright.
"About 90 hostiles, most of them are wielding wooden staffs with some kind of jewels fastened at the tip."
"Those are mages, humans capable of using magic. Although I'm not sure how they do it, it has something to do with those jewels, I'm pretty sure they're made out of monster cores."
"Hmm, don't want to get too close then, I'll get some gear to engage them at this distance and then we can cull their leaders and break them up."
Not willing to close in on people who could summon meteor sized balls of fire, Tom was kicking himself over the fact he hadn't gotten his hands on the EXACTO kit for his M-909 yet.
(I need a exacto kit for my M-909 and a box of 8.75mm exacto mod 2 ammunition?)
Accessing his resupply, Tom felt the familiar warmth spread throughout his body, but something went wrong.
INTERFACE_CONFIRMED:_INACTIVE.
LOCK-OUT_DETECTED.
CONNECTION_NOT_SECURE
TRACE_DETECTED.
54360_POINT(S)_AVALIBLE.
"Wha!-"
Remembering way too late that the humans had some way of detecting his resupply, Tom realised he had just given his position away and acted instantly.
"Scatter!"
"Roger!"
Also feeling something flare up the second Tom had tried resupplying, Lisa didn't hesitate and broke into a sprint away from Tom as their previous position was pelted by shards of rock the size of her arm.
Taking cover behind a tree, Tom felt the dull shocks of rock shards burying into his cover before he attempted to peek out and return fire.
"Shi-"
'Attempting' being the key phase as the second he tried to get a bead on the mages, his entire area was pelted with more rock shards.
(Fuck, this is like being pinned down by an HMG!... In that case!)
"Lisa, suppress then bound!"
Knowing with almost absolute certainty that there was a fireball a few times his own size on the way, Tom turned to Lisa for aid as he needed the mages to worry about something else to unstick himself.
[Roger! Setting up.]
Receiving the order from Tom, Lisa immediately slid to a stop behind a small boulder as she got her breathing under control and switched her M-507 to fully automatic and let out a few bursts towards the general direction of the mages before ducking into cover. As Lisa started shooting, Tom's suppression quickly broke up as the mages jumped for cover.
"Bounding!"
Putting his ass in gear, Tom burst out from behind cover and sprinted to another low berm where he took up a firing position.
"Suppressing!"
Opening up with fully automatic fire, Tom didn't care that he barely hit anything and suppressed the mages that were now focusing on Lisa, giving her a chance to move.
[Bounding!]
Getting her chance to move, Lisa left cover and started sprinting to her next position, but she barely made it 4 steps before she was forced to hit the dirt as rock shards started flying in her direction once again.
"FUCK! They caught on pretty quick!"
Crawling into a small stream with barely any cover, Lisa made herself scarce as shards of rock flew right above her head.
"Hold on, we have CAS in 90 seconds!"
Creeping out from behind cover, Tom opened fire in an attempt to lessen the pressure on Lisa as a rock shard flew right by his face, cripping off a part of his ear and forcing him back in cover.
"SHIT!"
Wishing he had gotten his hands on some smoke grenades before this attack, Tom got the distinct impression that whoever he was fighting against already knew most of his tricks. If not for the fact that they caught onto his fire and manoeuvre in under a minute, then their knowledge of suppressive fire definitely made these mages a force to be reckoned with.
"They're preparing to roast me alive! What the fuck do I do!?"
Sensing the massive mass of mana moving towards her, Lisa was struck with desperation as she tried to move from her cover but was immediately scared back into it by the intense and constant stream of rock shards.
"Hold on for just a second, I'm going to do something!"
Preparing to take a few rock shards in order to at least hit some of the mages currently suppressing his pupil, Tom didn't get the chance as a massive wall of compressed rocks suddenly emerged right in front of him.
"What the!-"
[Move now!]
Recognising Mari's voice over the radio, Tom didn't want to waste this chance he was offered and switched position before popping out and getting a few shots off.
"Cover for Lisa too!"
[Understood!]
Having run ahead of the other warriors, Mari arrived just in time to aid Tom and Lisa and immediately followed Tom's order as she focused her internal mana, weaving together a spell she injected into the ground. Travelling through the ground, Mari's spell burst up a metre in front of Lisa to create a massive rock formation which blocked the fireball in route.
[PACKAGE_ON_STATION;_READY_FOR_TASKING.]
Right on time Tom got word that the Wasp drones had finally arrived on station, so he immediately started tasking them for strike missions.
TARGET(S)_PAINTED_FOR_TASKING.
IMPACT:_20_SECOND(S)
"20 seconds!"
Continuing to move behind the massive piece of cover Mari had created and popping out to shoot as the buzz of the Wasp's became more apparent, Tom dropped back into cover as the 5 block 2 Wasp's detonated in an airburst directly above the mages.
"... Hit, hostiles combat ineffective, move to clean-up."