Hot Mic

[Frozen Smoke]

Somehow, it was when he had nothing left to do, when Parker felt the most anxious. He always felt as if there was something he had forgotten, something he would have to frantically commit to at the last moment. This was why he always laid things out, had a checklist, made sure other people knew what was expected of them in advance, set up as much of it he could himself. Helped make the 30 minutes he'd alloted for people to get online and get in fleet more bearable, as the factors outside of his control - other people - began to enter the picture of his strategy. Let alone contact with the enemy, sometimes plans didn't even survive contact with your own troops. Too many times had a lack of a few crucial, niche support roles cost him a chance like this.

This one had the potential to be big, despite the small objective. The group that had moved in for a deployment had found their traditional subcapital forces ineffective against the current options his coalition had been fielding - he quietly patted himself on the back for that - and had begun to rely on their capital supremacy instead. So what they were doing today, was setting a trap for them, bringing in just a few of his own, seemingly usupported, to bait out their full capital force. Them hit them with the full might of his own force. It was a simple, N+1 equation - Whoever had more, won. All he had to do was commit hard and tank some early, bloody losses to their capital fleet firing unopposed on his subcaps, and hope to god they didn't know in advance. If they did, well-

Parker pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no sense planning for that right now - If they knew, there would be no way to act around it, so he had to focus on the task at hand. He took a few seconds, calming himself, thinking about what he had to do right now. Prioritising.

He wished he could do something more to get more people in fleet now - but he had the ping pre-written in front of him and ticking down to send automatically at the time he'd picked. It had been copied over from a google doc, so even if the website ate it, he'd have the ping ready to go out just a few seconds later anyway. He'd been bitten by that once before, and ever since then he'd taken the precaution. When that timer ran down to zero, just under a thousand phones around the world would buzz to let them know that there was a fight going down they could get involved in. Attendance wasn't mandatory, but if you were playing and not pitching into this operation, well you'd be told if you wanted to act like a renter you were going to have to pay like a renter too.

What Parker was trying to spend this time doing, however, was get into that aggressive mindset. If he was being entirely, 100% honest in himself, he didn't quite have the same belief in his abilities the other commanders seemed to have. It felt like everyone he fought felt as though they were invincible, whilst he was always looking for the escape route, how to minimise losses in the worst case. He liked to pretend he was the perfect, Chuck Yeager style ace commander with no doubt that they needed him to be, but that was the advantage of the internet. No-one could see your face, they just heard what you wanted them to hear.

He needed to feel invincible here. He needed to do the opposite of setting out a safe route for himself, he needed to cut off every escape route for his opponents, no matter the cost. And that meant he had to really, truly, believe in himself here.

That was why Mumble - the VoIP system he was using for this op - was muted, and instead he had Youtube up on his second monitor. He was listening to the exact songs one expected to listen to if you wanted to feel invincible. A mix of 6IX9INE, DMX, Eminem (Angry Eminem, not Pop Eminem or "Funny" Eminem), and anything else that hit that same vibe. Songs that made him feel like it was him versus the world. He was nodding his head along with it, trying to feel it. It was a mostly worthless ritual at this point, but even an empty ritual held the purpose of familiarity, of routine.

He took another run through the plan he had for tonight - a mental checklist, not anything he'd actually written down. The compulsion to check it off physically would be too great, or at the very least distracting, and he couldn't add to it as the fight branched out nearly as easily. But still, maybe some leap of logic would stand out to him now, with just enough time to deal with it.

[ul]
[li]Get his fleet organised[/li]
[li]Brief his sub-commanders[/li]
[li]Get everyone to the field of battle without dying enroute[/li]
[li]Force capital response w/ subcap pressure[/li]
[li]Drop a squad of long range capitals to pressure capital repairs[/li]
[li]Force hostile escalation[/li]
[li]Commit tackle onto hostile escalation[/li]
[li]Counter-escalate with everything[/li]
[li]Hopefully kill a lot of them[/li]
[li]Get the hell out before one of their allies arrive[/li]
[li]Loot the field and post on Reddit
[/li]
[/ul]

It seemed foolproof enough, but foolproof was like bulletproof. It didn't matter how bulletproof you thought your armour is, a big and fast enough bullet will get through it and mess up everything on the other side. Much the same with fools and and the plans built to proof against them.

There were decisions his opponent could make here that would invalidate all his preparations so far - His scouting team had indicated they were prepping to use capitals as per usual, with no extreme buildup being apparent, but that could be wrong. They could choose to try a different subcap strategy, which his capital trap would be useless against, or they could simply not engage - after how much hype he'd put into this, that would probably be the worst outcome for him.

He took in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and exhaled. Calming himself, his hand flicking his mouse to the centre of the youtube video, pausing it in the last minute or so of DMX's Yall Dont Really Know. He felt reasonably sure of himself now, so now he just needed to focus on getting everything done. Communicating well. Making sure everyone stayed calm. Leading by example. Internally he criticised all these catchphrases for being effectively meaningless - What mattered was getting people to do what they had to do to win. They worked as heuristic tools earned from previous successes he supposed, but they weren't given to work in every scenario. Reminding himself of that was important.

He took a sip of water, trying to make his throat feel less itchy. It wasn't dry, like most people complained of when they were nervous, just itchy. As if he needed to start the process and get this thing rolling. He turned the mute off of mumble and his ears were met with the sudden intrusion of a well spoken, if rather brusque man, speaking swiss accented english in his right ear. It was a few pearls of intel from fights past being passed from one subcommander to another.

He'd told them all that he'd gone to eat, because no-one would question that, and trying to explain what the hell he was doing was more effort than it was worth. Because of that, he declined to interrupt, letting a potentially valuable lesson be transferred between his subordinates, before hitting the key on his mouse that broadcast to all channels, his voice steady, calm - and carrying via the medium of digitised soundwaves to the 150 people who found themselves subjected to his soft but deliberate diction. His hand shook a little as a single finger held the button without saying anything for a second, and soft static of background noise hissed over every conversation.

He felt something approaching calm taking back over him, as the anxiety of worklessness drifted away, and he set his sights on the first step in his plan. "Get his fleet organised". He'd been doing this for 5 years, but the nervous excitement never left him. It was like all the energy the nameless anxiety of waiting gave him, but none of the self doubt. All he could do now was execute on his plan, and see what happened on the other side.

"Hello ladies and gentlemen, It's D Z here.-"