Chapter 6: A Dull Blade Can Still Cut Deep

The weekend all-hands meeting was something the Blades had been expecting, especially after they learned about the ambush the night before.

Most Blades members were not looking forward to attending.

Leadership had been touchy ever since this whole thing started, and having what looked like another plan go up in flames figured to send HeyNon into another rant about how apparently nobody in the guild was competent enough to execute his perfect plans.

They expected heads to roll.

They were mostly wrong.

Mostly.

Darren had already done his ranting and raving in private early that morning. He had logged in on one of the guild’s hidden alts, stayed long enough to get the details, logged off, and spent the next ten minutes or so cursing Reforged, his own people, the state of the universe, and the Crusade, roughly in that order.

But despite his apparent instability, Darren was not stupid.

Angry.

But not stupid.

They’re tired of losing.

The plan he had come up with had been, admittedly, a bit ambitious. If he went into the meeting yelling and screaming, handing out guild kicks like party favors, all he would accomplish was accelerating the rot.

I’ll be doing those fuckers Mercer and Voss’s work for them.

So instead of planning who he was going to yell at, Darren started to think.

Really think.

About the invasion. About all the sneaky little tricks Reforged had used against them.

He pored over reports on Reforged’s presence, not only on the three worlds the Blades were contesting, but on the couple they had not yet invaded and even the surrounding planets.

There was the glimmer of a plan there.

It could still blow up in his face.

Darren had seeded single alts in small ships at planets surrounding the Crusade’s targets. Their job was simple. Keep an orbital scan running. If someone started creeping toward soon-to-be Blade territory, Darren wanted to know about it before it became yet another unwelcome surprise.

What he hadn’t expected was Reforged showing up on Collinsworld, just one jump away from Terens VI, and starting to build a new base.

Terens VI.

The very planet where the Blades had suffered their most recent defeat.

Darren actually admired that kind of chutzpah.

He understood the message Reforged was trying to send.

We’re so unafraid of you that we can spend some of our power expanding while we play tug-of-war with your Crusade and defeat you piecemeal.

He had almost panicked at first.

Had Reforged pulled some kind of magic trick? Had they managed to get a significant force off one of the invaded worlds and started a new version of tug-of-war, this time on a planetary scale instead of the base-by-base, node-by-node fighting they had been doing for days?

Then Darren came up with an answer that fit the puzzle in his head nicely.

The homeworld invasion force.

Those fuckers.

The ones who had sacked the Blades’ homeworlds and then sold them to their enemies.

They were back.

Darren resisted the immediate urge to go to Collinsworld and get their stuff back.

We have to deal with the problem in front of us.

Then those assholes would have choices to make. Keep running and give up their new base. Keep the base and pay ruinous upkeep on the supply chain supporting it.

Or fight for it.

But Collinsworld did put a time limit on things.

Darren had cajoled his scout there into staying online as much as physically possible over the next couple of days. He needed to know if Reforged stopped building.

If they did, it probably meant that force was moving.

Coming for him.

It would put the Crusade back on the defensive.

The Crusade might actually fail.

He didn’t want to admit that.

But again, HeyNon was not stupid.

We need something sharp.

Something decisive.

Something that would put Reforged on the back foot and remind them that sooner or later, a Blade was supposed to gut something.

Once again, he cursed the fact that Universe at War allowed players and their machines to disappear after they had been logged out for a certain amount of time.

It meant he couldn’t simply sweep the planet.

He might find Reforged’s hidden supply depots, sure, but their WarMACs could disappear with their pilots and remain a problem until the Blades found some way to destroy them.

He needed a vic...

Wait.

WarMACs disappeared when logged out.

Darren stopped.

There could be something in that.

Something that might actually give his pilots the victory they desperately needed.

He just had to convince them to stay the course a little longer.

And this time he could make the all-nighter considerably less miserable.

They didn’t need to stay logged in.

They just needed to be ready to.

Now he had to figure out how to make Reforged take the bait and bite down on the nice sharp hook hidden inside it.

By the time Darren spoke to the guild, he had an answer.

“Look. I know you guys are worried that I’m going to be a bit angry about last night’s defeat. Truth be told, I am angry. I am tired of losing to those fuckers.

“Then I realized at least some of that anger is because there’s a core truth we’ve been missing. Those assholes have been putting our feet to the fire too often since we called for this righteous Crusade.

“Truth be told, I really wish I could call up Kelto and tell them what I think about Reforged’s bullshit tactics. They’re breaking the spirit of the game. I get that.

“And that’s why I asked so much of you the last few nights with the all-nighters. That’s difficult. I understand it. Leadership understands it.

“So while, yes, we’re angry, I’m not going to start throwing around guild kicks and promising great changes if you fuckers don’t shape up or ship out, like some of you probably feared.”

A couple of his commanders visibly relaxed.

Good.

“But I’ve been thinking about the cheap tactics Reforged has used to delay our Crusade. And I decided that it’s time to see how well they dance when their feet get a little toasty.”

Darren couldn’t pay much attention to Guild Chat and talk at the same time, but the commanders could. They were plugged into the main guild channel as well as their own unit chats.

Their faces would tell Darren how well the speech was landing.

So far?

Not bad.

“So, we do have one more all-nighter ahead of us. But it’s not going to be like the last few nights. No more sitting at a base for six hours while Reforged MACs run rings around you until your eyes go blurry.

“No.

“Instead, I’m going to ask key forces to pre-position themselves at one of three checkpoints on Terens VI. That seems to be where they’re focusing most of these predatory raids.

“But instead of sitting around all night, you’re going to stay offline.

“I don’t care what you do with your night if we don’t need you. Watch a show. Listen to music. Play another game. Hell, goon out if you want to, but please don’t tell the rest of us about it.”

That got a few laughs.

Good.

“Even nap if you’ve got a way to wake yourself up and be alert when we need you.

“We make these three locations bait. Reforged sees a token force sitting there and thinks they’re about to repeat what they’ve been doing for the last few nights.

“Then we log in and show them exactly what we think about that.

“We break them. Make them run.

“Who knows? Maybe we even find their hidey holes and do a little creative redecorating of their bases. See how they like it.”

Darren took a break from the speech and checked the Guild Chat window.

Darren felt a flash of red rage at seeing that phrase.

That damned phrase.

He didn’t remember his fingers hammering the keyboard.

He only realized what had happened when he saw the system message.

SYSTEM: <Jammy> has been removed from the guild by Guild Leader <HeyNon>

Oh fuck.

Guild Chat stopped scrolling for a moment.

Darren desperately wished it would start again, if only to get that fucking system message off his screen.

He looked at the video feeds.

Every trace of relaxation had vanished from his commanders.

Faces closed off.

Bodies went still.

Unreadable masks.

Fuck. I just blew up the goodwill I generated.

Time to get it back.

While he considered his next words, his fingers typed a private message to Reggie, Jammy’s commander.

<HeyNon> Invite Jammy back in a minute. But tell him to shut up. He just about undid what I was building by tying this directly to the last plans. We can’t have that right now.

It was a decent enough rationalization.

Then Darren spoke again.

“I want to make one thing clear. We are not ‘doubling down’ on anything.

“We’re making sure that, for once, Reforged dances to our tune.

“We have fought defensively too long. It’s time for us to attack. If that means counterattacking, fine.

“We’re going to show them that the fucking ‘Gorilla Warfare’ attacks don’t work anymore.

“We are regaining the initiative.

“This is the turning point.

“You’re sitting there saying, ‘I hope this plan works.’

“Don’t.

“Tell yourself, ‘This plan will work.’

“It will.

“And then we will have seized the first of the many victories we deserve in this Crusade.”

Darren watched carefully.

The commanders relaxed again.

Only slightly.

But enough.

The damage was still there, and they really needed this plan to work now, but Darren thought he had managed to press another layer of fresh grout into the cracks in the wall.

He ended the meeting and prepared to spend some time stroking egos among the commanders, explaining that his kick hadn’t been a knee-jerk reaction to seeing that damned phrase.

No.

It had been a considered attempt to stomp out defeatism.

About ninety seconds after the commanders’ video chat went private, a new message appeared in Guild Chat.