by Nick Cole
Damn JollyBoy to hell!
“Incoming missile, three o’clock,” yells one of her grunts in the background of her comm channel. I hear RiotGuurl sigh as she works frantically on her keyboard to yank the now fat and stupidly vulnerable Albatross out of the streaking missile’s way. Two seconds later, a small missile trailing white smoke darts like some wispy sidewinder across the airfield and into the side of RiotGuurl’s Albatross.
I hear the engines of the Albatross strain to gain altitude, as well as the slight pump pump pump of her afterburners as she tries to raise the nose and engage them, but nothing’s happening for her.
It’s at that moment that WonderSoft springs its trap.
Faintly, far off there’s a thump. Then another. Then another.
“Incoming!” I call out over BattleChat. I open a channel to RiotGuurl, at the same time slewing back to my command menu for the platoon. I direct the platoon into the thick copse of trees for protection. Fever follows them, staying in their center. Above us, RiotGuurl’s door gunners jump out of the struggling Albatross, sprouting parachutes at a ridiculously low altitude; that’s one of the benefits of fighting in a computer world as opposed to the real one.
One of them has managed to disconnect his swing fifty cal and takes it with him.
“Get out, you’re not gonna make it!” I shout to RiotGuurl over the chat.
“Almost . . . ,” she replies, then both hover engines die and the Albatross hangs for just a moment before pitching off to its right and into a death roll. Even she knows it’s lost, and a moment later as the first mortar rounds start coming down on us, I watch her little avatar body fall from the burning wreck of the spiraling Albatross as the white flower of a parachute, thankfully, blooms behind her.
WonderSoft isn’t freaking out.
They aren’t panicking.
They had a plan, and as usual, they’re many steps ahead of us. Even though now, at this crucial point, one step is more than enough. We didn’t surprise them, they surprised us. Mortars fall directly on top of us, on their own base, right where we’d landed.
The small copse of trees shudders with each impact of the light artillery rounds, designed to kill personnel, not vehicles. Exploding foliage is disintegrating with each burst, spreading shrapnel and mayhem throughout my task force. I drop to the ground, hitting Z on my keyboard, and wait for the barrage to end. At the center of the airfield, the spec ops Albatross, spinning, slams into the ground hard and explodes.
At least that’ll prevent the bombers from using the runway to take off for now. A minor victory, if any, for what will now probably be a massacre.
I flash an urgent sitrep to RangerSix who, true to form, knows what and what not to sweat.
“What’s your current situation and plan right now, son?” says RangerSix across the CommandNet.
“Albatross down, ambushed at the LZ. No casualties yet, stand by for numbers shortly,” I say, fearing the worst.
“Are you combat effective, son?” He wants to know if I have enough grunts to take the field and finish the mission. If not, extraction really isn’t an option.
“We’re good to go, sir.” What other choice do I have? We have to take the field.
“HOO-ah, son. Now get out there and complete the mission, Six Out.”
The artillery begins to lighten up. Getting us into the trees had been quick thinking, and it was a good thing we came in near enough to get under cover. Maybe JollyBoy was thinking after all.
I radio RiotGuurl.
“What’s your status, girl?”
“Came down on the far side of the field past the fence. I’m on top of the refinery.”
I’m not sure if that’s good news.
“Afraid I’ve got bad news, though,” she says over BattleChat.
Yay!
“You’ve got a motorized battalion moving up the road. Looks like they’re staging down at WonderSoft Garage so we didn’t see ’em on the way in. They’re makin’ bacon to get to you, so get ready quick.”
It just keeps getting worse and worse.
I set my platoon up around the copse, fanning out two antiarmor squads to circle the airfield and stay below line of sight, in a small trench that encompasses the field. It’ll be their job to take care of the vehicles. The sniper teams move out toward the hangars, deploying antipersonnel mines behind them once they’ve reached their positions. The two remaining infantry squads, along with Fever and me, will slug it out here and now for the airfield, using the copse and its minimal protection as a firebase.
In the distance I can hear enemy vehicles approaching, switching gears as they gain the plateau where the airfield is.
An hour later, fighting hard, we’ve killed the first motorized company that’s tried to dislodge us. I’m down to one sniper team at the far end of the runway, an antiarmor grunt running amok with a man-portable Genscher antiarmor system, and Fever, along with less than a squad of infantry grunts still holding the shot-to-hell copse.
Tracer rounds are coming at us from every direction, smacking into the few remaining leaves of the splintered trees in the copse. Our mobile barriers are giving us just enough room to move around and shoot back. RiotGuurl from her vantage point has watched the companies of the motorized battalion, no small expense for WonderSoft, come barreling onto the runway, hoping the smoking wreckage of the Albatross is all that remains of our ill-fated surprise attack. What hasn’t perished in the crash has probably been knocked down by their artillery, or so they could be thinking.
They’re a little surprised when my snipers knock out their vehicle commanders sitting in the turrets and right seats of the smaller vehicles. My snipers also manage to get one actual live player commanding the cleanup team. His dog tags are added to my combat knife with a small trumpeting noise made in-game for terminating a live player. He wasn’t a professional, just an amateur looking to impress WonderSoft with free combat support.
It wasn’t much, but it felt good to be making it hard on WonderSoft in some small way.
When their second assault goes down, I have the fifty cal that survived the crash set up as my primary gun. It covers the airfield, raking the incoming light-skinned vehicles with high-explosive armor-piercing rounds. Moments later, antiarmor snake trails spool out from various points of “my” airfield. One light mech explodes in a shower of sparks, and a few other AT rounds punch explosive holes in WonderSoft’s fast-attack gun-laden Mules, the standard get-about battle utility vehicle, or the modern jeep.
Next, stunned and dismounted infantry, now leaderless, are regrouping while assaulting pell-mell into our kill zone. Within minutes, thanks to RiotGuurl’s above-the-battle sitreps, we know another infantry battalion is staging itself on the far side of the refinery.
“Command,” I call out over the net. “Be advised, we are expecting another assault on the airfield in minutes. Request artillery support on standby.”
“Negative, artillery unavailable at this time.” It’s the automated fire control voice. Our big guns have probably been knocked out back at the paddies.
“Kiwi, how goes it?” I open a pop-up showing Kiwi’s POV channel. He usually keeps it unlocked.
“We’re falling back onto the hill.” His HUD doesn’t jibe with that. He’s still among the smoking mechs down in the SMAFF-shrouded paddies. There are bodies everywhere, WonderSoft’s and ColaCorp’s.
“Did you say ‘we’?” I ask.
“Oh yeah,” he laughs. “We, as in our army, are engaging in a retrograde action, designed to allow the enemy to advance into a trap, heh, heh.”
“You mean ‘they,’ the rest of the team, is retreating?”
“Looks that way, mate.”
“But you’re not?”
“No, not right now, Perfect. No, I’ve decided to die in position again.”
“Dude, that’s not an option for you this time.”
“Word option’s a funny thing, Perfect. Sometimes you got ’em, sometimes you don’t, mate. Know what I
mean?”
“PerfectQuestion!” It’s RiotGuurl. “Whale gunship just arrived and landed near the refinery. Enigmatrix just got out. Damn!”
“Hold on, Kiwi . . . What do you mean, how do you know it’s her?”
“No time to explain. It’s her! Her avatar never wears a helmet, plus she’s carrying Enigmatrix’s favorite weapon.”
“MagForce shotgun?”
“Yeah. Stupid weapon, but she makes it work.”
With the highest in-game kills and the top-ranked spot in the league, Enigmatrix could have carried a water pistol and she’d still be the deadliest soldier in the game. She moves fast, smart, and accurately. She uses cover, grunts, anything, to get close to her enemies, all the while pumping out uranium-depleted slug after slug from her MagForce shotgun. Generally shotguns are an ineffective weapon for the battlefield, but her skills combined with an overwhelmingly rapid command intuitiveness often get her close enough to start shredding groups of grunts and players alike with that vicious hand cannon of death. There was always a moment, everyone claimed in the chat rooms, when you thought you could take her, once you saw her carrying that relic of a weapon. After that, it went mostly downhill for everyone who’d made the mistake of thinking they could take her.
Now, she’s here for me.
“Kiwi,” I say over his feed. “Enigmatrix is here! You’ve got to get off that battlefield alive today!”
“I understand, mate. But my grunts and players have all been killed and the rest of ColaCorp is back up on the hill. WonderSoft is almost out of the paddies. One more push and I’m behind enemy lines. Plus I can’t move from behind these burnin’ tanks without getting picked off, so I guess it’s time for my standard grand exit.”
In Kiwi’s hand, I could see him switching out his AK-2000 for a thermite package. “I’ll scatter these around. We’ll see how it goes.”
“Kiwi . . .”
“It’s just a game, mate. Forget about it. We’ll always be pals. But today, I gotta go. Forget about me and kill Enigmatrix. I hate that Sheila. At least something good’ll come out of today. Every time she looks at her almost perfect record, she’ll know that one of the good guys ruined it just a little. And in my own way, mate, I’ll think of that as one from me.”
On the other side of the field, through the far side of the wire fence and into the refinery, I can see WonderSoft infantry moving in small groups. One group, dust-gray camo and battered armor, heavily armed with Colt 7.62 high-powered, compact urban assault rifles moves in, while another group, down in the grass or behind a wall, covers them. It’s good, calculated planning on Enigmatrix’s part, and it’s probably going to get me killed.
“RiotGuurl?” I call out.
“Yeah, Question?”
“I have a plan.”
“Yeah, me too. What’s yours?”
“I want you to steal that Whale that just landed.”
“Wow, same brain, me too. I’m already on it. Just the two door gunners right now, but I think I can get it. Then I’ll come in and pull you and the rest of the unit out from behind the copse. Then we get the hell out of here.”
“No. I want you to steal that gunship, get back to the paddies, and pull Kiwi off the field. If we don’t get to him before he gets killed, he’s out of ColaCorp. Roger?”
Silence over the chat. Simulated bullets rip up the computer-generated earth and zip through the air all around us.
“Roger?” I repeat.
Silence. “All right, if I can get there in time.”
“You’ve got to. If he gets killed, that’s it for him on pro status. You know how much that means.”
“All right, PerfectQuestion. Same brain,” she croons uncharacteristically.
Now I have to deal with Enigmatrix.
Already, my few remaining wounded and digitally gory bleeding grunts are getting chewed up heroically as WonderSoft and Enigmatrix begin their final assault, hoping to overrun our position inside the copse. Fever is doing his best to revive my downed grunts, often dodging bright hails of gunfire to get to a grunt that’s been dropped in an exposed position.
“Cover me, I’m going to get one,” he’s said several times over BattleChat.
“Covering,” I reply and then open up with short bursts from the AK-2000 spec ops mod rifle I’ve picked up. I’m engaging targets at 150 meters plus, or so my digital imaging scope tells me. I switch to thermal and scan the grass looking for any low crawlers trying to use the terrain to get in close enough. I fire a nice long burst, just something to make WonderSoft grunts get their heads down. Then Fever reaches our downed grunt, grabs him, and drags him back behind cover. Out come the shock paddles and hopefully we have another rifle back in the game. When he’s not doing that, he crawls about distributing medical packs behind fighting positions, reinforcing our health meters.
If only real battles were fought so easily . . .
Across the airfield, I see Enigmatrix with her grunts as they take up positions behind the burning Albatross, using it for cover. A few of them pop out from the sides, firing short, loud bursts that ring out over ambient in-game sound.
“Get that fifty working on the downed Albatross,” I order my grunt platoon sergeant, highlighting the wreckage as a focus point for my remaining combat effective units.
That done, I flip the selector on my rifle to single shot and scope the corners of the wreckage, hoping Engimatrix will use her grunts to look around the sides of the burning gunship.
BANG! One pokes his head out from behind the wreckage, and I take him down with a head shot. Seconds later, a grunt medic races out from behind cover, pulling out his revival paddles. I fire two rounds, catching him leg and torso, and he’s down too.
Smoke grenades come up from over the top of the wreckage, spiraling out toward our position, bouncing, rolling, and tumbling in front of us. Puffy white billows of smoke erupt, obscuring what is no doubt their impending attack.
I wait, scanning for shadows in the constantly moving smoke that’s enveloping our position. To my left, I hear CrackBoom; a shotgun rings out once and then again twice in rapid succession. The fifty cal stops its mechanical sewing machine of death. Two more grunts go offline on my HUD roster. I flip the selector switch to auto and unload a full magazine into the smoke, working the gun from right to left. Quickly I slap in another magazine and empty that to the right and to the rear. And as I’m unloading, the leaping Enigmatrix, her avatar with crimson hair the color of arterial bleeding and body skinned in a tight gray CamoSkin suit and wearing thick combat boots, descends upon me, as if leaping through the blossoming smoke.
Winged Death.
I raise my rifle, not bothering to stop the deadly stream of automatic gunfire coming from its barrel, and just as she falls into my scope and the cone of hot-leaded death spitting out of its barrel, a ka-chunk reverberates through my speakers and lands in my soul.
I’m out of ammo.
She smiles. One-handed, she points her shotgun at me, pushing it into my chest.
BOOM.
A reverberating, metallic echo of thunder erupts across my speakers. On-screen she’s still smiling at me.
Her avatar is smiling.
Smiling Death.
Shotgun smile.
I pound my keyboard in frustration.
My vitals whine critically as I struggle with the mouse to slew my bloody-mist vision left and right. Looking for Fever. Looking for help. I’m on the ground, on my back, looking up at the billowing smoke and the blue sky beyond.
She’s off to finish the rest of my grunts.
I click my attack button and hear my avatar yell, “Medic, I’m hit.”
I left click again, “Medic!”
Third time. “I’m hit!” screams my avatar, screams me.
Smoke.
Time.
Fever.
“I gotcha, buddy. Clear!” yells his avatar above me.
My screen heaves and shudders. I’m too far gone this time.
“Cle
ar.” He hits me with the paddles again, and again I heave.
My vitals are too far gone. The whining shock paddles whistle as they build up another charge. I’m less than three seconds from online death.
“Stay away from the light,” laughs Fever weirdly over BattleChat. “Third time’ll do it, buddy. Always does.”
“Clear!” And the slamming shock of resuscitation revives my character. I’m back in the game.
“Follow me,” says Fever. Staying close to him, we move as rhythmic blasts from Enigmatrix’s shotgun and my HUD roster tell a tale of defeat as she methodically works her way through what remains of my task force.
We’re out of the smoke and running for the far side of the airfield. A Goat, one of WonderSoft’s fast-attack dune buggies, has been left off in the high grass, probably driven in by one of the motorized companies that attacked us earlier. It’s abandoned. Seconds later, we’re in. I’m driving. Fever works the mounted minigun as we come around our burning Albatross, tires squealing on the wide aircraft runway. He rakes Enigmatrix’s grunts, dropping more than a few as blood sprays away from them in bright misty smears.
Then there’s this thing called payback.
It starts with Enigmatrix smiling and leaping in to shoot me in the chest as she laughs. Maybe it’s just me transposing that onto her. Maybe she wasn’t laughing from the other side of her screen. Or maybe being the top player in the game gives you the right to modify your avatar to one of a laughing shotgun-wielding sociopath. Or maybe everybody else has found some hidden command menu that lets them personalize their avatars with that particular taunt. Maybe. But whatever it is, her grinning, leaping, laughing avatar runs out of the smoke on the tarmac of the runway, right in front of me. All my grunts are dead and she’s reloading.
And I’m driving.
She doesn’t even look up as I run her down and tally up an in-game player kill.
Payback.
Chapter 13
I stand up and stretch. The muscles in the back of my neck ache. My fingers feel cramped and my index finger seems beaten to numbness by all the mouse clicks. I walk to the window and look out at the night. Snow falls through orange cones of light from the few remaining streetlights that still work down in this part of town. I think about turning on the television and watching the postgame show but I don’t. I like the quiet. My building has always been quiet. Not that many people live here. But lately it’s gotten a lot more quiet. I never see any of the neighbors I didn’t really ever know.