by Isaac Stone
“No,” the man told him. He was slightly shorter than Kurt was, but a lot darker. “They had us pinned down around a curb on the highway. Couldn’t figure out how to get out of the jam. We heard a rotor sound, looked up, and there was a big drone on its way down. The NZ’s tried to get out, but they couldn't run fast enough or something. One of them started to run and the drone shot it. It grabbed the rest with some self-closing net launchers and took off. Crazy, but I guess some of those bots aren’t working so well.”
“Yeah,” Kurt replied to him. “Doesn’t give me a good feeling. What happens if the bots we’re using right now go haywire? Then the game ends in a hurry.”
Kurt spent some more time in the lounge as he tried to figure out what was going on with the captured NZ’s. He watched a wrap-up of the games for the day, but didn’t notice the Skull Legion mentioned anywhere. No problem, he didn’t care for glory, getting the win was all he wanted right now. If he needed to split it with some of his crew, all fine. A third or less of a big chunk of money was better than no money at all. Unlike the trust fund kids who seemed to take to this game in a with a more lackadaisical approach, he needed the cash.
Kurt put the thoughts of the drone that captured the NZ’s to the back of his mind. He went in search for the rest of his crew. They needed to make plans.
“I hear they’re interrogating them,” Lavon said to Detra as he walked up to the group. She was at a table with the others. Right now, Kurt felt tired and was about to inquire how they were supposed to sleep in these damn suits.
“Why would they interrogate them?” Detra asked. Camper sat across from the two women. “If they build them, doesn’t the company have ways to find out what they’ve been up to by checking the memory on each one? I’d think all they’d have to do would be to look at whatever information was recorded. Don’t tell me they’ve forgot to make back-up copies of everything.” He was tired as well and sat with his rifle across his legs.
All of them had their helmets off. At least this was the image transmitted to Kurt’s faceplate. His eyes travelled between the four members of the Skull Legion and tried to figure out how he looked to them. Did the Ares system remove their helmets once they were inside a protective enclosure?
“So how do I look?” He asked them. Everyone at the table turned and focused their eyes on him.
“Ugly as ever,” Lavon replied. She starred at him and tried to figure out where he was headed with this line of conversation.
“No,” Kurt replied. “What I want to know is how I look without my helmet. Alternatively, do I have one on? I can’t tell without looking in a mirror and I don’t see any around here.” He waited for an answer.
“I don’t see a helmet on you,” Jesse replied. “What does everyone else see?” She turned to look at the others around the table.
“I see him without a helmet,” Camper stated. “Anyone else?”
“No helmet,” Lavon told the others. Detra nodded in agreement.
“So why the question?” Jesse asked him. “You had to have a reason.”
“I want to know if Ares and the company are showing individual gamers different things,” he explained. “It helps to know how much of what we see is real and how much is a computer simulation. Has anyone tried to eat anything?”
“Not yet,” Detra replied. “The manual said we could while in the game, but it wouldn’t make a difference. We’ll still have to take care of our physical needs when we jack out.”
“Then let’s leave the game,” Kurt ordered. “We port into the same location tomorrow morning and continue. Our mission window for today has closed, so its either hang out here at the save point till tomorrow or go get some actual food and rest,” Everyone agreed.
Kurt reached over to his belt and pulled up a small box attached to it. While he opened it with an individual combination, the rest of his team did the same. Each box had a small recall switch inside. All he needed to do was activate it. It was the best way to leave the game, since a person’s mental processes merged with it after a few hours.
This was not the only recall switch each of them carried. Game players were equipped with an emergency switch that was only known by them. It could be used only once and was to be activated only if the player felt he was in the middle of some life-threatening situation, such as a heart attack.
As the rest of the Skull Legion faded away, Kurt activated his recall switch and joined them. He blinked his eyes to find himself back in the VR room with the other women who already had their skinsuits and helmets off. Kurt tried not to look at them as they stripped down, but failed miserably.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen more of a woman than this,” Lavon laughed. “Oh my, you are some man.” Both of them snickered.
Kurt ignored them and headed to the showers. He needed to get some food and find a cot. It was a little weird the way you needed to leave the VR world when it was simply a feed into a helmet and sensations delivered to a suit. Someday there would be a direct signal transmitted to the brain, but he didn’t like the idea.
An hour later, he was in a deep sleep in his own bunk. The sounds of the women in their beds didn’t disturb him the least.
Chapter 8
“According to the map I bought,” Kurt said to his crew outside the save point six hours later. “We have to go clear out a bunker of hellspawn Nazi’s. Every other team has let them go, just a side quest, so we get the fun task of taking them out. Looks like while we slept several crews just kept grinding side quests after the mission window closed, so we have some points to make up. We’ll get a ton for this one.”
It was the following morning after the first day of the tournament. Several groups were already on their way to the town. Kurt had everyone assembled the moment they were ported back into the game. From what he could tell, all of them looked in better sprits. At least this is what the Ares system wanted him to think. However, he’d talked with them all and found their spirits high.
“Why do we get the job of taking out the bunker?” Detra asked him. “Sounds like it wasn’t important enough for anyone else to take out. Why don’t we bypass it too head into the town?”
“Because we can use the points,” Kurt spoke again. “Losing those two yesterday hurt our ranking, and like I said a few other groups kept at it after we logged out. We can use the bonuses to get better ammunition and weapons if we need them. In addition, no reason to leave an enemy position in the rear that can attack us later, we have to walk back out of the city at the end of it all remember? I bet Rashid will have enemies coming in to block our exit. Besides, we need the experience.” The two women nodded and understood.
The set off in search of the bunker. According to the map he’d purchased, it was a short walk away, just off the main highway and in the direction of the town. The bunker specifications weren’t in too much detail and seemed a standard military one that could be converted to civilian use if needed. There wasn’t a lot of detail on the Nazi hell creatures they were supposed to eliminate. It was one of the small irritations that existed in this game.
The first view of the bunker was a small concrete building that jutted up from the ground. It took Kurt a few minutes to realize they were in the rear of the building. He stopped and looked at it for a few seconds. This had to be the place that the map indicated. He’d also bought a diagram of it and needed to compare it to what was in front of him, but he couldn’t find it. The last thing he needed was to attack an abandoned target and waste time on a dead piece of real estate.
“You want Lavon and me to go around front and scout it out?” Jesse asked him. She curled her rifle under one arm with the strap over her shoulder.
“Might as well,” he told her. “Come back and let me know if anything looks funny on the other side. Be quick, we don’t hear anything from you in the next five minutes, we'll come for you,” Kurt grinned, as he knew both of the women could take care of themselves.
The two men with Kurt watched them go around the sid
e of the bunker. They waited until both were out of hearing range before anyone said a word.
“Where did those two come from?” Detra asked aloud. “Please tell me they’re the real deal because a man needs something to live for.” He swooned up into the sky.
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Kurt spoke. “I’ve worked with both of them before. Lavon has a husband who takes care of her when she’s not out blasting the bad guys. Jesse, I don’t know much about, but she takes shit from no one. Keep it in mind.”
“Really?” Detra started to say. “Not the usual college babes I’ve dealt with but…”
Before Kurt could cut in, there was the sound of rifle fire on the other side of the bunker. Kurt stopped his search for the bunker diagram in his pouch and ran to the other side. He didn’t check to ensure the other two were behind him. He could hear their boots on the ground as he ran with the rifle in his hands. All kinds of horrible images entered his mind.
He came around the side of the bunker with the scope up to his eyes. Through it, he could see the two women holding their smoking guns. They looked down at something and didn’t say a word. It was only when Kurt was assured there were no more hostiles that he lowered his rifle and looked at them closely.
On the ground were the remains of nearly two dozen creatures in SS uniforms. Some carried rifles, some were unarmed. He heard the other two men run up behind him.
“What the hell?” Detra spoke as he lowered his gun. Camper stopped and kept his eyes in the scope, ready to fire off a round.
“We caught them flat-footed,” Lavon spoke as she looked out at the carnage. “The whole lot was standing around as if they didn’t expect us. That one with the gun turned around and we opened up.” Kurt looked in the direction she indicated and spotted a dead Nazi creature with something in its hands, if you could call them hands.
Kurt walked over to it and gave the gun a slight kick with his boot. The sensation of something hard was transmitted to his skinsuit and he felt the resistance in his foot. He reached down and picked up the small rifle the thing held before it was shot dead.
“Plastic,” Kurt announced. “This isn’t a real gun. Why the hell do they have us shooting bots that aren’t carrying real weapons?’
“Decoys?” Camper asked. “Could these be some kind of cannon fodder for what’s in the bunker?”
“Maybe,” he spoke up. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense either way. Why waste a bunch of mechanical forces on the pointless control of the entrance to a bunker?” He dropped the fake gun on the ground.
A few minutes later, he had found the diagram, unfolded it and looked the picture over. There wasn’t much to this bunker. It was concrete fortified, which he expected, and was equipped with a series of rooms underground. The bunker only had one way in and out, which made their job a lot easier. Still, they would have to enter the bunker and clear out the creatures from each room. Kurt had no idea how many of them were inside. He hoped most of them were outside when the two women surprised them.
“These were a lot different than the ones we encountered yesterday,” Lavon told him. “Most of them tried to run. Only one turned and aimed the gun at us. Can’t understand why this batch was programmed that way. Maybe they hope we’ll let our guard down when we go inside the bunker.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“There is enough room for us to go inside two at a time,” Kurt told them all later after he spread the diagram out on the sand in front of the bunker. He gave the observation slits at the top of the building a constant glance. It would be easy for a sniper to take them out from there.
“What about the door inside?” Jesse asked. “Do we need to blow it open?” It was a valid question.
Kurt placed the map down on the ground and walked up to the bunker door. It was made out of corrugated steel and still looked firm. He reached out and touched the handle. In one twist, it unlocked the bunker. A bit surprised, Kurt pulled the door open and looked inside. Blackness, the entrance was not illuminated.
“They left it open,” He called to the others. “Makes no sense again, but this all may be a trap. So take your time when going inside. I’ll go inside first, Lavon and Jesses will follow. You two men can follow after them.”
Gun at his shoulder, Kurt entered the dark bunker and looked through his scope. The infrared background showed green on black as he viewed a corridor that terminated into a staircase. This wasn’t a very modern bunker with electric elevators and lifts. From what he could tell about the diagram, this bunker was quite old and used infrequently, if at all. Kurt didn’t note any bullet marks on the outside, so it had never encountered a major battle. The best he could figure was that the bunker was designed to be use as practice, or it was a special one built for use in emergencies. He advanced toward the staircase.
“You see anything inside there?” he heard Lavon say behind him. She looked through her scope too, but Kurt was ahead of everyone.
“Nothing yet,” he replied, “but it could all change in a second. Maybe all the hostiles were outside in the front.” Somehow, he didn’t think that was the case.
“Don’t bunch up,” he told the others behind him. “We don’t want to shoot each other by accident. Remember, friendly fire is a definite possibility in this scenario.” He moved forward a few more steps.
Kurt could feel the tension in the air. It had a very real presence among them. It didn’t matter that he controlled a mechanical bot that appeared to be him. It didn’t matter that everyone on his side was one too. Nor did it matter they were about to shoot it out with more mechanical bots. He was in a real space this time and not some computer-generated game. The moisture on the walls of the bunker looked real and Kurt could smell it, even if he was miles away in some kind of suit and helmet.
He hit the ground when four of the creatures ran outside the nearest room, blocked the corridor and proceeded to fire. From the ground, Kurt opened up with a burst that took out one of the things, while the semi-automatic buzz of the Skull Legion’s guns took out the other three in a blistering firefight that lasted only a few seconds. This time a notice popped up in his scope and let him know they’d scored four kills. It also showed the points accumulated.
“Cease fire!” Kurt called out again and the guns stopped. He was glad the sound of the guns was muffled in the corridor. In real life, they would’ve lost hearing, even with the mounted suppressor mods.
“Anybody hurt?” he called back to the crew behind him, although he never took his eyes off the front of the corridor.
The only affirmative was Camper. “I’m showing eighty percent,” he called to them. “Appears my bot took a few slugs. Nothing that threatens the entire system. I can have it looked at later.”
Kurt had the rest of the fire team check out the room where the creatures emerged. They walked into it with care. The others stood outside, ready to back them up should they run into any heat. However, they didn’t find a thing. After a few minutes of poking around a few old desks, Camper and Detra emerged from the dark room and shook their heads.
“Nothing in there, boss,” Camper announced. “Some old junk. They were waiting for us, that’s all.” He looked over at the stairs down. “You want me to take those and see what’s at the bottom?”
“You can go down with Detra,” he approved. “We’ll stay up here and wait for you to call down. You run into anything, give us a yell.”
Both of them nodded and walked down the concrete staircase, their boots quiet on the floor. The sound didn’t matter much. If anyone else were in the bunker, they would know who was on the way down. The muzzles of each gun had a flash suppressor on them, but in the darkness, it would still show up. If anyone down there had IR equipment, it would shine like the sun. Kurt and the others waited and watched them descend down the staircase.
“Nothing down on the landing,” Camper called up to them. “You can come down here and check it all out.” The sound of his voice echoed all the way to the top of the staircase and carried thr
ough the bunker.
In seconds, Kurt and the women were down on the bottom level. It resembled the top one from what he could see through the scope, with at least three rooms that led off from a single corridor. He made up his mind quick about what to do.
“I’ll check the rooms,” Kurt told them. “The rest of you back me up.” Gun at his shoulder, Kurt walked into the first one.
It was filled with abandoned desks and other junk. Whatever had used this bunker before hadn’t come back. He knocked over a few boxes and saw nothing other than spiders, which scurried away. Kurt decided it was abandoned and left the room.
The second was much the same with some camping supplies on the wall. Someone had used it recently. Since the enemy didn’t need to eat, this had to be from some other visitor. Kurt prayed the company had inspected this bunker before the game began and evicted any bums. Shooting a person for real was not something he wanted on his resume.
Detra was behind him when he entered the final room. This one was occupied.
Four or five creatures from the depths of a nightmare, each in a black SS uniform, starred at him when he entered it. They stood there and did nothing, which Kurt found odd. He was about to drop his gun when someone opened up on them from behind him.
Guns fired at once, all except Kurt, who knew he didn’t have to fire a shot with the crew behind him. First one assault rifle buzzed, then another, until the room was filled with blood and parts of the ghouls. Smoke from spent shells filled the enclosure as pieces of concrete flew in the air from the shells which tore chunks out of the walls. He saw the points meter flicker briefly to show the additional hits they’d scored. Hopefully, it would be enough to account for the loss of ammunition.
There was a moment of silence as everyone took stock of what took place. Bloodstains and fluid began to fade in and out in front of Kurt. Ares was trying to figure out what it should show and settled for a small amount of red blood as opposed to the rivers it first used to mark the carnage. It didn’t matter; Kurt no longer needed a reminder that the team used too much firepower on a small target. The points he’d briefly seen on the hit counter inside the rifle’s scope told him what he needed to know. Suicide bombers, dropped before they could detonate. No wonder the points were so high. This was a deathtrap meant to draw in players and wipe out whole units. If they hadn't been desperate for points, the Skulls would have avoided it along with the other player groups.