by Nick Cole
“All right, gotta go,” I say.
Iain’s mouth, unlike his lizard eyes, wishes me good luck. But the congeniality of the moment before the gun has disappeared. Almost as if it hadn’t ever been there.
I turn and walk away, hoping to make it out into the brutal cold before Iain puts two in my back. As I walk past the kid I mumble, “Follow me in five.” I hope Iain doesn’t hear.
I’m not clever enough to come up with anything else.
Outside in the snow, with barely a car passing on the ice-swollen streets, I wait under a raised track in the shadows of what looks to be a long-abandoned diner. Literally, people don’t come down to this part of town anymore. High above, on the Grand Concourse of Upper New York, I can see a train of slip cars hanging beneath the road, winding its way underneath the cityscape above. Someday I want to be rich enough to live up there and ride that car every day.
I wonder if “up there” is where Sancerré spent the night.
Maybe.
“You Wu or not?” comes the voice from below as I stare rubelike, up at Upper New York. The kid, who at first look seems oddly, if not expensively dressed, stares up at me with disgust. His short pants are a new temperature-converting material made by NikeAtlantis that I’d seen hitting the streets of late. The shoes, thin-skinned runners, obviously also temperature dominant, were HyperGear friendly, which meant the kid’s parents, or whoever, had the money for him to delve into CompuWear.
“Yeah, I’m Wu.” First karate-kickin’ John Saxon, now the enigmatic Samurai Wu. What’s next? I ask myself and then think about lighting a cigarette. Instead I fish out my plaid thermos and, cool character that I am, pat the secret pouch where my Black disk is hidden.
“Yeah, my grandfather says to give you this, chump.” He hands me a slip of paper. You don’t see that much these days, paper, though the “grandfather” would explain that little mystery.
“Okay, so cool,” says the kid. “See ya around, chump.” Then he’s off on a FlexyBoard he pulls from one of his pockets, hovering out across the deserted snowbound streets of Forty-Second. He disappears down an alley a few blocks later.
Unfolding the note I read, “Don’t give up the Samurai.”
Chapter 12
The war starts up again at 6:30 that night.
I’d met RiotGuurl an hour earlier in loadout. Our avatars now stare at each other as we text back and forth in-game. For some reason she’d rejected a visual link and after bugging her once or twice about it, I let it go. I don’t need this, whatever it is, along with everything else. I need to focus tonight.
I equip my grunts with an infantry loadout for two squads. The remaining two I mix with sniper and antiarmor teams. Our mission tonight, as outlined by RangerSix on Monday morning, is to hit the airfield in the plains beyond WonderSoft Garage. Way behind enemy lines. Meanwhile, the main body of our force and WonderSoft will be converging head-on in the hotly contested rice paddies of Eastern Highlands.
RiotGuurl and myself are tasked with striking the airfield, which, curiously, no one has ever bothered to name. Fever is going in with us, riding medic. Kiwi is attached to the main force and leading a full infantry company of heavily armed grunts near the main action. Command is hoping he’ll be able to raise his kill count and avoid any personal deaths by being near enough the action to make a difference. RangerSix likes Kiwi; it’s the number crunchers at ColaCorp who have problems with his stats. Even though his frequent deaths were often accompanied by high enemy kill counts as he ended up being the guy who covered our butts in what had been five weeks of continuous retreat, the accountants focus on the numbers they choose to focus on. They’ve scoped the numbers the way they want to see them, and that way does not portray Kiwi in a good light. If we lose Eastern Highlands tonight, then we’re down to Song Hua Harbor, our home base. If we lose that, we’re faced with elimination from WarWorld, and it’s the effective end of professional online gaming for me.
“How come you didn’t show up at the bunker the other night?” I text RiotGuurl.
On-screen, my grunts are shuffling up the cargo ramp, overloaded with weapons and special gear, and into RiotGuurl’s matte-black special ops Albatross. Everywhere tanks and troops are organizing inside the loadout hangar. Below the stubby wings, near the squat VTOL engines of the Albatross, RiotGuurl’s crew is busy loading drone gun packages on the weapon mounts.
“Didn’t feel like it,” she texts back. “Getting ‘ganked’ by that Vampire was humiliating. I will tonight, after we knock out the airfield. Promise.” She adds a leering emoticon that dies laughing, then explodes.
“I got hammered,” I text. Lame, but I’m looking for any kind of opening with her. Maybe she’s a party girl.
She doesn’t reply.
“JollyBoy’s painted the target,” she writes back.
She’s probably just received the intel specialist’s survey report.
“Says there’s a lot of infantry, no AA,” she continues. “Good for me. Bad 4 u.”
I find it hard to believe WonderSoft isn’t protecting that airfield with at least a few antiaircraft guns. We’d lost most of our air power early on, but they still had AA units and it would be stupid of them not to put ’em on the airfield. What else were they going to do with them?
“I don’t know about that,” I reply. “They might have them hidden and ready to bring out once the server goes hot. Has he marked an LZ?”
I wait as my platoon finishes loading itself onto the spec ops Albatross. Thirty-nine killer grunts armed to the digital teeth with state-of-the-art modern weaponry, ready to take the airfield. My plan is to have my infantry set up a perimeter while my snipers and antiarmor stay under cover, ready to take care of the expected enemy counterattack that will show up once we take control of the airfield. After dropping us off at the LZ, RiotGuurl will fly a figure eight across the airfield and deploy all the drone gun packages. If we can hold the airfield for an hour, it’ll be ours. Then we can start producing reinforcements locally, right in WonderSoft’s unprotected supply lines. That could stop WonderSoft cold tonight. That is, if everything works as planned. It could be the break ColaCorp is hoping for.
But then I remind myself, it’s always a great plan, until you meet the enemy.
“Yeah, he found an LZ,” she texts back. “Sending it to you now . . . listen, my life’s complicated. I shoulda been there that night but I had to work after the battle. You seem like a nice guy . . . you’re a good gamer . . .”
Fever’s avatar appears in loadout and pings us with tie-dyed emoticons crooning some old-school song about only needing love.
“It’s just that . . . ,” continues RiotGuurl in text, “I don’t have any room for a new friend. I hope that’s cool?”
Man, everybody’s so concerned about their cool rating lately.
“Yeah,” I send back. “My life’s no picnic, either, right now. Maybe later.”
In my mind I’m writing her off.
Writing her off as what, I don’t know.
I’m just trying to get to know a fellow coworker and suddenly I feel like some creepy stalker. Whatever. Let it go. And just as I’m about to finish the official write-off, she writes back, “Maybe?,” followed by a winking emoticon.
At five till game launch we’re airborne, in hover mode, waiting for the gate to open. On visual, I watch the pregame show as Doc Childs and Monty Guzman prepare to call play by play and color commentary for tonight’s battle.
“That’s right, Monty,” says Doc. “Tonight’s match could determine the fate of ColaCorp. Consistent beatings for two months have changed the face of the team. Earlier, when I talked with RangerSix, the team’s veteran tactical commander, he had this to say.” Now RangerSix’s avatar, in full dress uniform with ColaCorp’s red-and-white-striped dress beret appears in a small pop-up. He’s standing in front of a Charger IV tank’s swivel-mounted rocket racks.
“Frankly we’re going for broke tonight. Everybody knows the game; there’re not
going to be a lot of surprises,” lies RangerSix. “The battle will probably take place, as we all know, right smack-dab in the middle of the rice paddies. Their intel knows our troops hold the high ground. That’s our only advantage, Doc, and we’re not going to give it up. WonderSoft’s got a great commander in GeneralKong, and a great team with professionals like Enigmatrix and CaptainCarnage. Add to that their numbers, which my intel is putting at three to one.” Again RangerSix purposely lies. Estimates are as high as five to one as of five thirty. “And it’s going to be a real knockdown drag out fight tonight, that’s for sure,” finishes RangerSix.
“It’s going to be a slaughterhouse!” erupts a gleeful Monty Guzman.
“No two ways about it, boys,” continues RangerSix. “But we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves and everyone’s going to fight real hard and give ’em hell. Frankly, WonderSoft’s going to be fighting for every pixelated inch of that battlefield tonight, and who knows, maybe we can turn ’em back.”
Now it’s back to just Doc and Monty. “Tough words from a tough man,” continues Doc Childs. “But a series of bad breaks and, to be brutally honest, Monty, bad intel, and this team is facing elimination.” Doc smiles, full bright, then seems slightly concerned for our impending and, as far as everybody is concerned, assured doom.
“Cheers, mate.” It’s Kiwi, and he’s holding a FostersLunar, a not cheap and very large low-earth-orbit microbrew he’s got a line on.
“Are you drunk?” I ask.
He burps loudly then hunches over his computer, his enormous face getting twisted by a funhouse effect he keeps on his camera. “Nope, just thirsty.”
“Well, get it while you can. You’re gonna be real busy tonight.”
Now the gates are going up and the Albatrosses and other attack aircraft are moving forward. Below, ground troops and vehicles flood through the loadout server, disappearing into blinding white light. Less than a second later, the transition to in-game takes effect.
“Kill ’em all!” screams Kiwi.
The first hour is maneuver and dodge for our spec ops Albatross as we slip away from ColaCorp’s main force digging in around the fog-shrouded hills above the rice paddies. I listen in on the BattleChat channels. If we’re expecting an immediate assault, then we’re wrong. WonderSoft hangs back beyond direct fire range, on the slope below the paddies. Our forces, holding the ridgeline above the large shallow ponds of rice, are centered around a sharp green hump of a jungle-cloaked hill, lying in wait. WonderSoft has to cross the rice paddies to get at the hill. They still haven’t crossed into range by the time RiotGuurl transports our little platoon of grunts through the high-resolution canyons of green and mathematically generated lava rock above a soft brown gurgling river well away from the impending action.
For a brief moment, we track a lone Vampire on a scouting mission, far off to the west. The Albatross has exchanged its miniguns and missile launchers for a spiffy sensor package that can cloak us from most electronic detection. As long as we keep it low and slow, it can also passively detect anything that’s throwing up enough of an EM signature. We hide once we spot the streaking Vampire, RiotGuurl bringing the Albatross in nice and tight under a beautifully immense banyan tree that hangs over the shallows of the muddy river. She shuts down everything, drops the three landing skids, and settles us gently into the water. The Vampire passes, but it’s crystal clear to everyone that it’s looking for us.
When it’s safe, we power up and move on, leaving the tranquil little stream. If this were a fishing game or maybe a fantasy crawl, this would’ve been a perfect little spot to relax and enjoy the programmer’s art. But like so much of WarWorld, no one will ever fight here. There are vast tracts of unused space within the digital boundaries of WarWorld that might never even witness our digitally rendered passing shadows on this pixel bright day of physics-processed jungle haze.
We race forward toward the airfield, now five minutes out.
“I’ve got the LZ on radar,” says RiotGuurl over BattleChat.
I do a quick check of the BattleChat channels back at the main action.
The battle is on at the paddies. WonderSoft tries to cross with armor, using their light Wolverine mechs, armed with brutal coax chain guns to sweep the brush just above the paddies. Our side remains silent.
Then RangerSix, in a quiet, understated voice, gives the first command.
“Fire for effect,” we hear him say to the gun batteries behind the hill.
Our artillery begins to pound the advancing enemy with high-explosive rounds. The first strike, as I watch Kiwi’s battlecam channel, manages to take out two of the twelve Wolverines. Seconds later, another one of our gun batteries opens up with white phosphorus. Burning hot white rounds impact the water and earth berms, not destroying any mechs. Instead, the white phosphorus ignites the tall waving grass inside the paddies. Some of the unquenchable phosphorus finds its way onto a few of the mechs, smoldering as they advance through the smoke and fire beginning to build within the paddies. After a minute, the battlefield is drifting thick clouds of white mixed with intermittent oily black ropes of smoke.
Another gun battery opens up with SMAFF rounds. SMAFF rounds are ColaCorp’s secret weapon, the result of our one superlab capture at the beginning of the Eastern Highlands campaign against WonderSoft. Other corporate armies also have secret weapons. Money, time, and in-game resources such as captured superlabs and supply points allow each side to develop a special weapon. Some teams develop better rifles, specialized grenades, or even a new kind of tank such as the Bull. A relativistic supercannon mounted onto a main battle tank, the Bull renders almost all physical defenses invalid as it has the effect of pulverizing acres of terrain. ColaCorp, on the other hand, managed to capture a weapons lab back at Jihad City or what the designers of WarWorld called Karkand, and we got SMAFF technology. SMAFF is basically a combination of intense IR obscuring smoke and electronic numbing microparticles that can cloak an area in a haze both visual infrared and electronic for hours if the winds are right.
Now SMAFF rounds are falling onto the paddies, and within moments the entire area is obscured in a cream sauce of distortion. On Kiwi’s battlecam, I see him glance left and right, checking his company’s position, then his troops are up and moving. He orders them to form tight squad-based formations, and armed with thermite charges, they move into the smoke to search out the temporarily blind mechs and destroy them by hand.
I watch as Kiwi low-crawls toward the vicious snub-nosed beast that is WonderSoft’s Wolverine light battle mech. The gunner is spraying wildly in all directions as the SMAFF begins to disorient his targeting and order receiving capability; he’s probably a grunt. A round or two manages to splash wetly into the muddy water near Kiwi. Stopping, Kiwi raises his AK-2000, aims through the iron sights, and drops the grunt with a brutal burst of short barking gunfire. The coax gun continues to swivel on its turret as the grunt ragdolls backward. Kiwi leaps up and scrambles forward. He exchanges his assault rifle for thermite and plants it on one leg of the mech. His green-and-black-gloved fingers come into view as he enters the arming code, and the bomb is soon counting down to Independence Day. Kiwi hustles back into the soupy gloom of SMAFF and seconds later . . .
“Visual on the LZ,” says RiotGuurl over chat. “Seems nice and cold.”
Ka-blaaam! The first thermite charge explodes on Kiwi’s battlecam. Half a second later, a connoisseur of destruction can detect the ka-voosh of the Wolverine’s fuel tank igniting in a secondary explosion.
We’re off to a good start.
“Ten seconds to insertion.” RiotGuurl’s door gunners open up with the swing-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns, firing short controlled bursts into the hangars and control tower surrounding WonderSoft’s airfield. I kill Kiwi’s cam just as he knifes a WonderSoft infantry trooper in the back. I bring up the Albatross’s camera and replace Kiwi’s channel with its visual feed.
I start my ’Nam Battle Surf playlist with “Somebody to Love,” by
a band once called Jefferson Airplane. Inside the Albatross, the ground lurches upward off to our right as RiotGuurl brings the gunship into a tight turn. Small-arms fire starts coming up at us. WonderSoft’s rear echelon troops are scattering across the airfield, leaving three bat-winged gray SkyCamo heavy bombers queued up on the taxi apron.
“Looks good,” calls out RiotGuurl. “Stand by for insertion.” She toggles the attitude thrusters, bringing us in behind a small copse of trees near the north end of the field. Nearby, empty concrete squares serve as landing pads for WonderSoft’s own absent version of the Albatross, the Whale hunter-killer gunship, just like ours, only lumpier and more heavily armed.
JollyBoy’s marked LZ shows up in a candy-cane-striped box on our individual HUDs. This is JollyBoy’s hilariously funny, at least to himself, trademark tactical highlighter.
“Go, go, go!” screams RiotGuurl over BattleChat. We’re down a second later as the rear cargo door flops open into a grassy field. The grunts hustle down the back ramp as the door gunners rake the airfield with suppressive fire. Most of the enemy troops disappear into a small refinery on the far side of the airfield beyond a high wire fence. An alarm Klaxon can be heard dimly above the Albatross’s whining hover jets and whispering turbines now set to idle as we disembark.
Fever and I are the last out, and already the platoon has formed a half circle facing the most likely enemy positions. An occasional round zips through the trees at us, but that’s most likely the scattered WonderSoft support grunts taking random shots while waiting for orders from above. “Above,” in all likelihood, should be freaking out with incoming sitreps about our incursion into WonderSoft’s unprotected rear.
I squawk my own sitrep to Command as RiotGuurl pushes the throttle forward and lifts off above the tree line of the copse.
“Good hunting, Perfect, I’ll start . . .” She’s cut short by the most urgent of modulated tones, rapid and emphatic. An antimissile alert is screaming relentlessly inside her cockpit.