SkyWake Invasion

by Jamie Russell

  “You and your brother need to swap badges. You’ve got them the wrong way round.” He pointed to the COMPETITOR badge that hung around her neck.

  Casey nodded and pulled it off, feeling her face redden. Brain was always so smart. She handed the badge to Pete, muttering, “Here you go, Casey.” She stared at the word SPECTATOR on Pete’s badge a moment, then hung it around her neck.

  It felt like part of her was dying inside.

  “That’s better,” Brain said, peering at Casey through his thick lenses quizzically. “Isn’t it?”

  4

  THERE’S NO “I” IN TEAM

  A few hours later, standing in the spectator area of the tournament zone, Casey was in the depths of despair. Watching the Ghost Reapers step onto the main stage in the centre of the hall, she realized she’d made a terrible mistake. She turned her dad’s dog tags over in her hand like worry beads.

  The eSports competition had been running all morning and the Ghost Reapers were one of the last teams to play before the break for lunch. The original fifty teams were being slowly whittled down to twenty-five in a series of tense elimination rounds. Casey had watched the clans battle it out one by one, enjoying every minute of it.

  When the Ghost Reapers’ turn came, though, her heart sank again. She watched nervously as Pete clambered onto the stage and slipped into a high-backed gaming chair in front of a monitor marked CASEY FLOW.

  On the main stage were two long tables of monitors and keyboards where the teams sat down to play. Above them hung four jumbo LED TV screens to broadcast the match to the watching spectators.

  There was a crackle of anticipation in the air as the Ghost Reapers took their seats. The rumour was that, after lunch, the winning UK teams would face off against the champions from the other shopping centres around the world.

  Pete adjusted the monitor. He was so small that one of the stewards had to come over and raise the chair for him. Even the headset was too big for him. Casey felt as though she was watching the build-up to a car crash. Deep down, she knew there was no way her brother would be able to lead her team to victory.

  Her heart sank even further when the Ghost Reapers’ opponents arrived from the other side of the tournament zone. The enemy team was Strike Force, led by Xander Kane. They strutted onto the stage wearing custom-made black jerseys branded with their clan name and a white and red logo of a fist clenched around a bloody heart.

  Xander, the team captain, was a legend in the SkyWake community. He was a brilliant player who’d set up the first dedicated streaming channel for the game. Mainly, Casey suspected, so he could show off.

  He bounced across the stage, pushing his long, floppy fringe out of his face.

  “Xander! Xander!” the arena chanted.

  The teenager crossed his index fingers in front of him to form an “X”. It was his signature move.

  Lee, the man running the event, appeared on the stage. He was the perfect master of ceremonies, brash and loud with the patter of a used-car salesman. His sharp suit glittered under the bright lights.

  “This is it, everyone,” he said into his radio mic. “The final match of the knock-out rounds. Are you ready?”

  The crowd, already hyped up, erupted with excitement.

  “We’ve definitely saved the best for last,” he continued, dropping his voice to a stage whisper as if he was letting everyone in on a secret. “Team A is the Ghost Reapers led by Casey Flow. Let’s give them a warm welcome…” Pete’s face appeared on the jumbo screens, high above the spectators. He gave the camera a dorky thumbs-up. The crowd clapped politely.

  “Team B is Strike Force. Led by the one, the only … XANDER KANE!”

  There was a thunderclap in the arena.

  “XANDER! XANDER! XANDER!” the crowd shouted. Up onstage, the Ghost Reapers looked as if they’d already lost. It was pretty obvious who were the favourites. The boys exchanged worried glances.

  “Let’s be logical about this,” Brain told his teammates through his headset microphone. “Don’t get tilted. Work as a team. Calm and methodical. Right, Casey?”

  Pete, unused to being called Casey, didn’t answer.

  “I’ve got your backs,” Elite cackled over the comms channel. “Five headshots in the first thirty seconds. We’re gonna be munching calamari tonight.” Then he burst into a rap. “Yo, yo, my name’s Elite. I’ve got sick rhymes, don’t need to cheat. I power up my rifle with a gigawatt, I take one shot and the Squids all drop. BOOM!”

  “OK, OK, Stormzy!” Brain said. He was always irritated by Elite’s exuberance.

  “Like you know anything about rapping, brainiac.”

  “Poetry is closely related to mathematics,” Brain said, polishing his glasses on a lens cloth. “For instance, iambic pentameter has ten syllables per line.”

  “Boring!” Elite groaned.

  “Maybe if you could count to ten, you’d understand it.”

  Casey could see how rattled and nervous her teammates were. She knew they needed to work together to have any hope of winning. Cheeze must have been thinking the same thing because he turned on his headset and got their attention with a battle cry.

  “Who are we?” he asked into his mic. “I said, WHO ARE WE?”

  “THE GHOST REAPERS!” they all shouted in unison, except Pete, who was a moment behind the rest of them, his voice like a faint echo. He sounded scared and overwhelmed. Casey could see he was totally out of his depth up there in the spotlight. She pushed her way to the front of the crowd, trying to get his attention.

  “Pete, wait, you don’t have to do this…” she shouted. But she was drowned out by a klaxon followed by a familiar robotic voice: a voice everyone knew from the game.

  “Preparing drop pod launch. On my mark: Five … four … three … two … one … DROP!”

  And with that the game began.

  * * *

  In SkyWake, everyone had a dedicated role to play: assault, shield tank, sniper, medic, hacker. The key was to work together.

  The game’s backstory was simple. On a distant planet called Hosin, two alien races were fighting an endless war. On one side were the Arcturians, better known as the Red Eyes. They were humanoid soldiers in bulky black armour. On the other side were the Bactu, tentacled monsters with telepathic powers. They were nicknamed Squids.

  The two races had been locked in a deadly war for years. Now the Red Eyes’ army was closing in on Hosin, the Squids’ homeworld, in a final attempt to wipe them out for good.

  What made SkyWake so thrilling wasn’t its story; it was how real it felt. The weapons, the environments and the action were incredibly immersive. You didn’t need to play it for long before you felt ready to go to Hosin and join the fight yourself.

  Casey watched the match as it unfolded on the TV screens. The Ghost Reapers, playing as the Red Eyes, were launching from an orbiting spaceship onto the planet below. Their drop pods streaked through the atmosphere, their undersides charring black as they plummeted towards an alien beach of purple sand. Strike Force, playing as the Squids, were already on the beach preparing their defences.

  To win the battle, the Red Eyes would have to break through the Squids’ defences and storm their control centre at the top of the beachhead. If they captured it, they’d be victorious. To get there, though, they had to fight through fortified bunkers, dodge artillery fire and avoid being eliminated by the enemy team.

  Two alien suns, a vast pink one and a smaller red one, hung in the sky as the team’s drop pods thudded onto the beach. The metal canisters cracked open into segments and the Red Eye soldiers, controlled by the Ghost Reapers, stepped out into the Squids’ artillery fire.

  Pete led his teammates along the beach, shouting orders over his headset. As team leader, it was his job to co-ordinate the attack.

  “Fish, put your shield up. Elite, take out the sentry turrets. Cheeze, set up some radars.”

  Fish’s energy shield popped out of the baton in his hand and stretched out in front of the
m in an enormous, protective rectangle of blue light. Elite’s sniper rifle cracked as he destroyed the sentry turrets positioned in the sand dunes. Cheeze tossed out a couple of portable radars, giving them a good view of the map’s hidden dangers.

  The beach map was designed to provide the attackers with several different routes to the control centre. That gave you a chance to confuse the enemy. But if you hung around in one spot too long, the Squids would hit you hard with their artillery fire. The trick was to keep moving.

  Casey hoped Pete knew that.

  As the Ghost Reapers advanced along the sand, explosions erupted all around them. Strike Force was shelling them from the cliffs at the top of the beach. Cheeze and Elite took damage. Their screens were flashing red.

  “This way,” Pete called into his mic as he led them into cover behind a defensive bunker, half buried in the purple sand. “Let’s regroup and reload. Brain, heal everyone up.”

  “We need to advance,” Fish said. “Get behind my shield.”

  “No!” shouted Pete. “I want everyone healed first.”

  “We’re going to die if we don’t move,” Brain said. “Statistically, our chances of surviving while standing in one place are—”

  “It’s OK,” Pete told them. “They don’t know where we are. Trust me.”

  KABOOM! An enormous green plasma explosion ripped around them. Strike Force’s artillery guns had zeroed in on them. Pete jumped out of his seat in surprise. The headset, too big for his head, dropped to the floor.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, everything fell apart.

  “Enemies ahead,” Brain warned.

  “Taking fire from the flank!” yelled Elite.

  “We need a plan!” Cheeze shouted, hammering his controls as he tried to return fire.

  “Shield taking damage,” Fish cried as his energy barrier crackled. “It won’t last for ever.”

  On the stage, the Ghost Reapers looked up from their screens at Pete. He was struggling to get his headset back on.

  “Yo, Casey,” Elite called. “We need orders.”

  Pete stared at his screen. The explosions in the game reflected over his terrified face. He froze.

  “Casey!”

  “Give me a second, give me a second,” Pete muttered under his breath. His eyes flitted over the map in the corner of his screen. He didn’t have time to think. Everyone was jabbering in his ears. The artillery shells were exploding around him.

  “Go in the bunker,” Pete ordered.

  “No!” Casey shouted from the crowd of spectators.

  But no one was listening.

  5

  WILL THE REAL CASEY_FLOW PLEASE STAND UP?

  Casey had been playing video games long enough to know what a choke point was. Designers built them into maps, funnelling players from opposing teams into areas where they’d be forced to duke it out. They could be hallways or tunnels or bridges, anywhere with plenty of different angles to defend and attack.

  Casey knew that the bunker into which Pete was sending the team was a massive choke point. It led to a maze of tunnels running under the beach and it was the perfect place for the Squids to gain the upper hand. Using their telepathic abilities, the Squids could wreak serious havoc on the Red Eye team. A blast of Mind Control would make you attack your own squad, while Confusion would temporarily invert your controls, making everything work the opposite way round. You could only navigate the tunnels successfully by splitting the Red Eye team in two. One group went into the underground maze while the other group stayed on the beach to distract the enemy. That way, you could sneak up on the Squids before they knew you were coming. What you never did was storm into the tunnel in a big group. Not unless you wanted to die.

  “Open the bunker door!” Pete shouted to his teammates. Cheeze, the hacker, ran to the computerized lock. It would take a few seconds for his electronic toolkit to unlock the mechanism.

  “I’m pinned down!” Brain hollered as he was blasted by incoming fire.

  “Elite!” Pete yelled. “We need you.”

  “On it,” Elite whispered into his mic. His eyes narrowed as he leaned towards his screen. “This is gonna be play of the game.”

  Casey watched on a huge monitor as Elite’s sniper crawled through the sand on his belly. He raised his alien sniper rifle and stared down its computerized sights as he targeted a Squid slithering towards him.

  PSSSSHHHHTTTT!

  The alien hit the deck, tentacles flailing. Casey jumped out of her seat and cheered. The rest of the crowd did too. It was an incredible shot.

  On the stage, one of Xander’s teammates shouted in fury and ripped off his headset. There were no respawns in this match. He was out of action for the rest of the game.

  “They call me the silent killa,” Elite rapped into his headset, “cos I’m all thrilla, don’t pack no filla…”

  “Stop showboating,” Brain ordered. “Not helpful.”

  “Hey, brainiac, a little respect. I just saved your butt.”

  “Hurry up with the bunker,” Pete pleaded.

  Casey, watching from the crowd, tugged on her hoodie sleeves as the hack continued.

  “We’re in,” Cheeze said as the fortified steel entrance slid open. “Throwing a tarantula.”

  He tossed something that looked like a grenade towards a Squid that was camping in the shadows in the bunker. As it landed, the grenade sprouted spindly metal legs and transformed into a tarantula-like robot, scuttling across the bunker, too quick for the Squid. When the spider bot was close enough, it pounced, paralysing the tentacled alien with a poisoned bite.

  Another of Xander’s teammates pushed away his keyboard in frustration as the Squid hit the floor.

  “Two down, three to go,” Brain murmured calmly.

  Maybe they don’t need you after all, Casey thought to herself.

  “Inside!” Pete shouted to the team. He was beginning to get into the swing of giving orders, and was enjoying the fact that everyone was listening to him. He covered the team with his plasma rifle as they dived into the bunker one by one. Then he turned and followed them himself.

  “No, don’t take the whole squad in there!” Casey warned. But it was no use. Pete couldn’t hear her over the noise of the arena.

  Casey felt her stomach lurch. Without anyone outside on the beach to create a distraction, the Squids would slither underground after the Ghost Reapers and the tunnels would become a choke point.

  She looked up at the giant screen and saw Xander’s face filling it. The gamer legend licked his lips like a python preparing to swallow an unsuspecting goat. Xander knew he had the Ghost Reapers exactly where he wanted them. Even with only three players, his team would be able to overwhelm them underground.

  Pete led the team further into the tunnels. He had no idea he was doing anything wrong. At the skill rank he usually played in, you could get away with this kind of strategy. At this level, though, the enemy team would never fall for it.

  By the time the other Ghost Reapers realized Pete’s mistake, it was too late.

  “Hold on,” Brain said, looking around the bunker on his monitor. “Why are we all here? Who’s attacking the beach?”

  There was a collective groan from the others as it dawned on them what had happened.

  “Casey!” Fish shouted at Pete. “You total muppet head!”

  “What’s the problem?” Pete asked. “We’ll push on up the tunnel and take them out.”

  Nobody moved. This was a rookie mistake. The kind of mistake Casey Flow would never make. Confusion and fear swept over the Ghost Reapers.

  And that was the moment Xander’s team attacked.

  The thing Pete hated most about Squids was the sound they made as they moved. They propelled themselves through the tunnels like angry octopuses, their tentacles producing a sucking kind of slurp as they made contact with the floors and walls. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  The sound filled Pete’s headset as Xander and his two surviving Squid comrades slithere
d out of the gloom. Xander grabbed Cheeze first, wrapping a tentacle around him and lifting the Red Eye soldier off his feet, choking him until he was out of the match. At his monitor, Cheeze yelled as his avatar died and the kill cam popped up.

  “I’ve got this,” Elite said cockily, running forward to no-scope them with his sniper rifle.

  “Stay behind my shield,” Fish warned. But it was too late. Elite’s shots went wide and the two Squids blasted him. He was out too.

  Pete saw his downed comrades and panicked. Brain and Fish bravely tried to hold the Squids back, but Xander’s special ultimate ability was now fully charged. He hit a button on his keyboard and used the Squids’ Mind Control powers to take control of Brain’s Red Eye soldier. Brain’s screen turned white around the edges and throbbed like a migraine as his avatar fell under Xander’s power. His controls went dead.

  “They’ve zombied me!” Brain cried, looking on powerlessly as his Red Eye soldier lifted his energy sword and stabbed Fish in the back.

  “Hey! Friendly fire!” Fish shouted, incensed. He spun around with his shield up to defend himself, but that left his rear unprotected. The Squids blasted him from behind.

  “Fall back,” Pete yelled, ducking in his seat as a barrage of Squid fire flew past him in the game. He was so panicked that he was actually shaking. “Retreat!” he shouted again, but no one was listening. Brain and Fish ignored him, fighting just to stay alive. Nobody was working as a team any more. It was utter chaos.

  Casey, watching from the audience, realized her brother had done the worst thing a leader could do. He’d lost control of his squad. She pushed further through the crowd, elbowing people out of her way.

  It was time for the real Casey Flow to stand up.

  She jumped onto the stage, ignoring the shouts from Lee and the eSports officials and yanking the headset off Pete.

  “This is Casey Flow,” she told her team, talking into the mic as she pushed her brother out of his seat.

  “The real Casey Flow. We only have one shot to win this. Just do what I say.”

  From behind their bank of computers, the Ghost Reapers stared at her in surprise.