All In

by J.A. Miller

The new XO walked, or rather wandered through the camp. We knew he was the XO; he had that look of

someone with way too much training, and absolutely zero experience. He was fresh, like his shiny new

LI-33 sidearm strapped low on his hip, like a gunslinger. Some Top Sarge would fix him of that. A low,

loose rig like that was bound to get hung up some crazy outcropping, or worse yet, a miner comes up

from underground, and snags it, pulling you under. Yeah. We all wore our gear tight.

He seemed too proud to ask for directions, so none of us bothered to point him toward the command

hole. Not really a hole. They drop the things from atmo, and it embeds itself right into the planet’s tough

granite hide. Instant bunker. Well, we all knew that’s where he needed to be, but if he’s too proud to

ask… screw him.

All he had was that same green pack they give them at The Mill. We call it The Mill. Regalian

Military Officer’s School. We soldiers tend to shorten everything, so it became The Mill. Plus, they churn

them out like a factory, cram them with a bunch of useless courses, and then send them to us, to either

get us killed, or get killed themselves. Our group was pretty salty by now, so we let them do most of the

dying by themselves. Anyway, that pack has their officer’s training manual—still on paper, classical stuff

like that gives the brass hard-ons—, a set of dress whites—like that was ever going to be useful

planetside—and whatever else the scrub decided would be useful in a war. Oh, and that stupid chess

set.

Well, some brown-nosing grunt decided to show the kid to The Hole. That was interesting. He

got a quick idea of what we were in for. The platoon leaders all wear cams on their buckets--their

helmets—and it feeds back to the command center. Major Rannis was in there, doing his thing. We all

thought we were salty, but the Major’s boots had seen more planetside time than most of us had been

in the Army. He had come up from the enlisted, gotten field promoted so many times they put him in

charge. Most of us were still alive because of that one man.

So, the platoon leader who was up on the monitor was engaging a particular nasty-looking virus.

It had about a hundred parasites with it, some miners, bullets, grenades, acid, bile was flying

everywhere.

The Major was in there, on the radio, directing the platoon leader where to send his guys. The

XO’s eyes got huge when the cam caught the virus head on, face full of teeth—anywhere from ninety to

three hundred, depending on the mutation—dripping with that nasty juice. This one was particularly

ugly, and the XO got so white. Man, it was a treat.

The Major got the platoon leader to flank a pack of miners, and then switched to another cam,

this one on the sniper lead’s bucket. He told them to let loose, and they sure did. Skinny little bug parts

all over the place. He had the platoon leader ignore the virus and take down its support. The thing fled,

in the face of just a few joes who probably only had a handful of grenades and a couple of mags left. The

Major was magic, as usual.

“So, you’re my new XO.” The Major looked at the kid like he was examining a new firearm. He

“hmmmd” and told the kid to follow him out.

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Polland, sir.”

“What did you just see in there, Polland?”

The kid was eager to show off his training. “It looked like an Englund’s Gambit, but…”

“Yeah, but what?” The Major always walked fast, like he was on the way to a fire.

“But that would have required you to have the backing of an artillery unit. I didn’t know you had

anything that heavy down here.”

“We don’t.”

“Excuse me, sir, but, why risk the unit? There’s no strategic reason that virus should have

retreated.” The kid had to practically jog to catch up. His green pack flopped along, loose, like his

holster.

“Tighten up your gear, Polland, unless you want to spend your last minutes choking to death

fifteen feet underground.”

“Uh, yes sir.” The kid clutched at his rattling sidearm.

“Englund’s Gambit. I never went through The Mill, but I’m familiar. I wasn’t trying that tactic at

all.”

“Yes, sir. What gambit was it, sir?”

The Major grinned. “You gotta get rid of that chess board. It’s not going to do you any good out

here.”

“Sir?” The kid looked shocked, like he just found out there wasn’t any Santa Clause.

“Stow your stuff and stop by my tent in thirty mikes.”

Well, thirty minutes later, we were set up outside the Major’s hooch. Cigars, something that

almost passed for alcohol, and the cards. The kid pulled up an ammo crate and sat at the table. The

Major gave him a handful of chips.

“How many chess pieces in a game, Polland?” The Major dealt first, two cards a piece, five in the

middle of the table.

“Thirty-two sir, sixteen per player.”

“Ahuh.” The Major picked up his cards and looked at them. We all did the same, and the kid got

the hint and looked at his.

“Do you know how many of us are here in this battalion right now?”

“Around three-hundred and fifty, sir.”

“Three-hundred and twenty-five.”

The guy to the left of the Major slid a chip forward into the middle of the table, and the next guy

put his two chip blind in as well.

The Major looked the XO in the eye. “Do you know how many of them are down here?” He

nodded his head to a giant skull nailed to a post over the Major’s hooch.

“Um, no sir. Intelligence is sketchy.”

We all laughed. I mean, we didn’t mean to hurt the kid’s feelings, it’s just that there’s that old

saying, army intelligence is an oxymoron.

“Neither do I. I do know it’s a whole lot more than three-hundred and twenty-five.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Major leaned forward, looking us all over. Then he turned back to the XO.

“Each player gets two bishops, two rooks, eight pawns, a queen, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you can corner the other guy’s king you win.”

The XO looked really confused. Surely the Major understood chess. He was a field-grade officer,

right?

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, there ain’t no kings around here. And I don’t have a bishop, and I don’t know what the

other guy has, the only thing I can do is guess.”

The XO had this look of almost realization. It was coming to him.

“Do you know this game?” The Major gestured over the table.

“A little.”

“Good, you’ll get to know it better.”

One of the guys put his cards down and slid them to the center. The next took a minute, then

slid two chips forward. It went around the table like that, to the XO. He put his two chips in.

Then the Major smiled. He slid a nice little stack of chips in. The thing is, we never actually

played against the Major, because we didn’t like losing. We were all just playing for second, and maybe,

someday, getting the best of the old man.

“See, none of us knows what the other is up to. We can see that there is a terrain.” He pointed

to the five cards, face down in the middle of the table. “It will be revealed over time. And the only way

to really know what the other guy is up to, is to pay for it.”

Most of us folded, but the XO shoved his little stack in.

The flop was a couple of eights, and an offsuit king.

“The environment can either hurt you or help you.” He put in a few more chips. We all folded,

but the XO stayed in. The next card was an offsuit five.

The Major limped in with a few more, and we all knew he was bleeding the kid. “Retreat and

attack are the name of the game here. We can’t corner them against the edge of the board. We take

them out through attrition.” He let some chips trickle through his fingers onto the board.

The kid had some guts and called. The river was an ace.

“You have to decide early if you want to play, and you have to decide quick if you want to cut

and run, or else you bleed out. All in.” The Major slid his stacks in.

The XO looked at his cards, then at the pile of chips. He put his cards down.

“The bugs can be read, they have tells, just like you. And they tend to do the same thing over

and over, like a chess player following his favorite gambit, but this ain’t chess.” Then the Major did

something that none of us had ever seen before. And it may have saved the kid’s life down the road, I

don’t know. The Major, still holding his two cards, turned them to face the table. A three and a jack.

Nothing.

“If this had a name, it’s what I would call our battle today. Just a simple bluff. The bugs got

scared and folded.

The XO took a deep breath. We were about to start another hand when the firebugs came in.

The place erupted with flame. People screaming, running around. We got a few splashes of the stuff on

us, but patted it out pretty quick. The firebugs take a long time to grow, and we’d thought we’d taken

them all out. Apparently not.

The Hole was their target, it was obvious. The place was a burnt husk. We all grabbed our gear

and headed down to the fallback position. The Major was shouting orders, and honestly, the kid looked

ready for a fight. Surprising.

We formed up, just as the viruses came in, three of them, with more miners than we’d ever

seen in one place before.

The Major, like a lunatic, was smiling. “They’re learning, but not fast enough.”

He signaled to the platoon leaders, and we all got moving. We were all in.