"Mom! Curt is cheating again!"

"I am not! You're just a sore loser."

"Yes you are. You reprogrammed the game! You cheater."

"How could I do that? It's an AI! Hey, leave my setup alone. House! Secure battle plan!"

"No, show me what he did."

"All right you two. Knock it off!" Veronica came out of the bedroom wearing only a nearly transparent robe. She was upset because her evening quickie had just been canceled. Larry would finish in Hazel and then she would probably suck him dry as well, the greedy gut. Veronica liked her sex and she wasn't getting enough since the pickup last year. Well, to be honest, she was getting a lot more than before actually, but she seemed to need it more as well, and girl-on-girl only counted for half in her opinion. Maggie and Tamara were both about to pop, so they were off the heavy sex roster for now or it would have been even worse. It would be another year before Hazel's thirteen-year-old, William, was ready to start really helping with her needs. Of course, Hazel had even longer to wait before Jason and Curt were old enough to help her out. That is, if Veronica didn't just kill them both right here and now. They weren't backing down from their fight.

"House! Was he cheating?"

"No! Neither player was capable of cheating. The parameters were set in advance. However, Curt did use a quite ingenious plan that has quite exceeded the prior maximum theoretical results. "

"See, he cheated!" Jason started yelling again.

"Jason, that is not what House said. Be quiet for a minute. Ok, House. What did he do?"

"I am sorry, but the Battle Plans have been secured and you do not have sufficient clearance to access them. Curt will have to release them to you." When the AI was in Game Mode, the mothers sometimes found themselves relegated to second-class citizens all over again.

"Ok, Curt, open it up."

"No, if he sees it, I can't ever use that tactic again. Although, it probably wouldn't be as much fun again, anyway."

Larry stalked out of the bedroom. He was nude and rampant. "Dammit. I just want some peace and quiet when I come home. What the hell is going on out here?"

Jason muttered something that Veronica thought started with "Wants a piece of as...." before Larry glared at him.

"You had BETTER not finish that!" He turned back to the game display. "Squad Tactics: Valley Ambush set up. House, what is so special about this?"

"Jason was on the offense with the Sa'arm side. He had the forces of one entire hive available. Curt was tasked with defending several valleys with limited troops and equipment but with two days of preparation time. The scenario is scored by relative casualty count and the time that the Sa'arm are delayed."

"Ok, What were the totals?"

"Jason lost thirty thousand troops, and never transited the passes. Curt had several of his Marines placed in medical tubes to repair the radiation damage after the Sa'arm used a nuclear weapon, but he lost no troops."

"Thirty thousand to zero? And they resorted to a nuke? What did he have? A brigade?" Larry was impressed. These game scenarios were based on real battlefield data.

"Curt had one reinforced infantry squad."

Larry turned to stare at his, sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliant, always unpredictable, eight-year-old son. He never even noticed as Hazel followed him out of the bedroom and wrapped a towel around his waist. "House, set it up again. Curt has the Marines. I have the Swarm. Jason can watch over my shoulder, but not over Curt's."

"Aye, Aye, Commander Meeker."

"Gunny, it was the damnedest thing. I was mainly watching while the AI ran the Swarm. My units would just get shot, without seeing anything. I mean, we found the occasional booby trap, but we never saw a single Marine. And this was a simultaneous attack on three valleys. It didn't matter where we were; we got attacked. Five hundred swarm in a quarter mile square area and they just start dropping with bullets in them. It took a while to attrit me down, but they were just sniping away, picking off the units, and the AI had the Swarm do the standard things. Search the area for snipers, so that set off booby traps, which killed more Swarm, so the reserves get deployed and more bodies fell. They called in the armor, but it never got hit, other than by mines. Since we were taking damage for the entire length of the valleys the Swarm gestalt figures it's not secure so it keeps searching. It was like the enemies were invisible and everywhere. I checked the after-action data. There were only 12 weapons firing. Rifles with grenade launchers. No lasers, which is important. No plasma launchers or rockets. Of course, he was using the transporters as well, and we set off a lot of buzzsaws and five-hundred-pound transporter bombs, but even using playback and watching the bullet strikes, I could not back-trace to a shooter. A few times, I caught a hint of muzzle flash. The gestalt took nearly 25% casualties and then it triggered the nuke on top of his own units. Apparently that is the AI's break point on that setting where it figures it needed to kill the 'super units' more than it needed to force the pass. The nuke, actually three of them this time, one per valley, did most of the damage."

"What was he doing, commander?"

"It took me a while to find out. The blasted House AI was in game mode and the enemy's battle plan was classified. I had to promise the munchkin extra ice cream with pistachios before he would unlock his unit to me. First, he has been reading, really reading, the flipping manual for the game. I mean, who reads the manual? Then he started asking House questions. Like how the transporters worked and what the limits on this and that system would be. Then he asked to AI to make something for him. In-game only, but it had to be a real world possible item." Larry looked his Gunnery Sergeant in the eye. "Wanna test it?" He tossed three strange looking devices onto the Gunny's desk.

Gunny Lewis picked one up and turned it around and around. "Bayonet socket?" he pointed at the fitting.

"Yup. That's for the rifle. That other one clamps onto the grenade launcher." He pointed to the third item. "Trigger replacement module. The Marines in the scenario had custom designed weapons that incorporate all three."

"Commander? Is this really a miniature transporter?"

"Yup, bullet sized. Pull the trigger, and the bullet exits the barrel, goes through the transporter at the same time that the transporter is activated for a fraction of a second, and then the bullets ends up coming out at the selected transporter pad with the same kinetic energy and vector. The bullets just pop out of thin air. Miles away."

"Oh, I have just GOT to try this."

"Me first. I'm the commander. That, and my kid thought it up! Can't be used with a large unit, because it really eats up AI time and it needs one dedicated transporter nexus for each weapon. Two if you use grenade launchers." He grabbed the items and collected his rifle from the armory. "Better bring a fireteam. Someone needs to lug a couple of dozen mini-transporter pads and I think we are going to use up a lot of ammo today. Oh, and we need three camo-cams per pad."

Once out on the range, they chose a particular course that was a type of Hogan's Alley, with Swarm and Marines popping up all over instead of robbers and little old ladies. Setting the pads up in various locations with the camouflaged mini-cameras set in a circle around each one, they did not worry about concealing anything today. Then they moved to a neighboring range and placed the firing position where stray bullets fired in any direction would not endanger any observers. This was easily done as the AI raised its protective force walls. Also, Truman was an airless moon and this range was below the surface in a hollowed out cavern-like area.

The commander gave the Gunny a play by play as he proceeded. "Ok, so now I use the built in vid display on the rifle. When I look from pad 1, I see in whichever direction the gun is pointing. My vantage point is on top of the transporter pad at the ambush site. As I turn, the gun points to the west and I look west over the pad. As I turn around to the east I switch cameras. There is a dickhead. I point, and as I press the trigger, the AI switches the transporter on at the same time that the round is leaving the muzzle." He pulled the trigger and the bullet seemed to go no-place, but the AI showed the holgraphic figure being hit and dieing. Another one came to investigate. Bang. Then another. Bang. Dozens of swarm congregated and the bullets kept picking them off. He fired off a grenade and took out nearly a dozen killed or wounded. The Swarm were using recon by fire, shooting into the brush and the trees, but their weapons were all lasers. The laser shots were immaterial and could not go through the transporter even if it happened to be open at the time. Larry changed his camera view to another pad and started shooting the cluster from another angle. "This is flipping ridiculous," he said as he started laughing. He quit firing. Laughing while shooting automatic weapons was very bad technique. "Ok. Your turn, Gunny. I can't wait until our next trip to Tulakat."

Thanks to Mulligan for the editing help

And of course thanks to the Swarm Writers Group for much feedback and support