Lazerwarz
Mark Shepherd
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright 1999 by Mark Shepherd
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-671-57806-5
First printing, May 1999
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue
Only five seconds into the game, and Joystik had reached his favorite position, a large barred window on the second level. From here he covered the arena's main alley, a vulnerable zigzag of partitions where the inexperienced usually wandered through. The position gave his vest targets good cover, while allowing him to watch the activity below. Sniping was always good here.
From this position he also covered the ramps leading to this level, and for a time he could enjoy a monopoly on the blue-yellow-red targets moving aimlessly below. As usual the prey didn't seem to notice the game had started, and from his window Joystik quickly picked off four players, favoring the ten-point chest and back targets over the easier five-point ones on the shoulders. The packs now temporarily down, he pulled back, counted to five, and resumed his position. As expected, they hadn't moved; in fact, they didn't even seem to notice they had been tagged.
I know I was never that stupid, Joystik thought, tagging the same four again. He had cupped his hand over the small metal speaker on top of the weapon to protect his position, a legit move as long as he didn't cover his lighted targets. The loud sci-fi sounds these guns made could betray one's location as surely as the flashing lights. He repeated the process, methodically taking their packs down and adding to his score three more times before one of them bothered to look up.
"There he is! Up there," the kid shouted, shooting in his general direction. The beams danced harmlessly on the walls and ceiling behind him. The four were moving towards him, and didn't seem to be firing at each other. They were obviously teaming up, an infraction in a solo game where everyone was against everyone, or was supposed to be. He could notify a judge and turn them in, but that took too long, and every second counted. And unless the judge caught them red-handed he probably wouldn't take them out of the game. Instead he kept one eye on the ramps while scanning the arena for more targets.
On the opposite side of the arena was the other upper level, slightly lower than his own. A lively exchange was taking place over there, orchestrated by Irishman, another member and this month's top player. Joystik sent one of his ten rapid fire rounds into the middle of the melee, heard the unmistakable groan of a pack or two going down. Directly below, another target walked into view, but he left that one alone. If he gave away his position to that player he would be an easy target through the metal grate he stood on, and this was too good a place to forfeit just yet. The other level was returning fire now, but just moving an inch or two to the left completely concealed him. Soon they tired of shooting at nothing and returned to their more immediate threat, Irishman.
Joystik glanced at the tiny computer screen on the back of his gun, where his rank in the game appeared. He was number one, but with Irishman in the game it was probably close. Better start looking for more points.
Irishman is still blasting away over there . . .
The points came looking for him. The four clueless ones from down below had found the ramp and were tromping loudly up it, announcing their presence before he saw them. A few paces away was another window, giving him a clear shot of their back targets.
"He's tagged me again! There's the bastard up there!" one yelled, sounding rather indignant at being tagged in a game of laser tag. While their packs were down they continued up the ramp, but Joystik was inwardly chanting the five second mantra, and resumed his previous position when their packs came back up . . . and took them all down, again. He was ranked number one, with 780 points. Not bad.
But the game was quickly becoming a matter of principle, not points. These four morons were teaming up against him, disregarding the rules and the code of ethics which Joystik embraced and honored. They even had the build of football players, a particular subspecies of high school critter that Joystik found repulsive. Maintaining a 4.0 didn't endear one to one's classmates, and when one blew the test curve in chemistry one could become downright unpopular, especially when the star quarterback ended up flunking the class, resulting in an automatic suspension from the team . . . a week before the Big Game. Life is not good for overachievers, and the fallout can reach into the next school year. Meanwhile, it was summer vacation, and in the arena Joystik could forget reality and be exceptional at something other than academics.
No physical contact was allowed in the game, but when he finally saw the four players he wondered briefly if they would disregard this rule and beat the crap out of him anyway. They certainly weren't pleased. One of them was the star quarterback. It didn't look like they'd recognized him. Yet.
In the upper level was a smaller maze, and Joystik could traverse every inch of it with his eyes closed. Another player came up the ramp, then another, distracting the original four, giving Joystik time to disappear in a hidden hallway along the back.
But he didn't leave the upper level, just waited a few seconds, then reappeared. The four had taken his sniper position, and were firing at targets below. With his speaker covered, he took out their back targets, and ducked back quietly. The plan worked; they thought they were getting tagged from below, not behind. They were too stupid to look at their screens, which showed which targets got tagged. All the better for Joystik, who continued the ruse for another few cycles, relishing their anguished moans of defeat.
This easy scoring might have continued for the remainder of the game, but one of them realized the fire was coming from behind, not below. In seconds they had him surrounded, and were firing mercilessly at him.
When Joystik had first started playing, being surrounded unfairly like this had enraged him to no end, sometimes to the brink of tears. It was completely unfair and prevented any kind of retribution . . . until he discovered the secret of dodging, a crude form of tai chi learned on the fly in situations like these. Being small and underweight gave him the advantage. He twisted and wriggled away from the crisscrossing beams until he got his pack back, and started returning fire. In their confusion he stepped away from the trap, and proceeded to thump them, one by one. Thumping was a particularly useful form of revenge which rendered the opponent defenseless, and required intensive recitation of the five-second mantra, times four. As he backed away he re-tagged each one of them a half second before their guns came up. One could effectively thump a group like this only when their pack cycles were spaced enough apart . . . and they were. It was precisely the tactic they had tried using against him, only now it was one against four.
Just when he thought they were going to give up on the game and come after him with fists, lights came on in the arena. On the back of the guns flashed the message, "Game Over."
Hoo rah. Let's hear it for the team.
He ducked out at the other end of the upper level, and chose a long circuitous route towards the exit. The other players would stumble about for several minutes looking for the exit anyway, and this gave him a chance to refresh his mental map of parts of the maze he usually didn't use. Under the upper level, south side, Joystik found himse
lf in a tight maze of narrow hallways and no wall openings, a strategically unimportant part of the arena, but good for some one-on-one with another experienced member.
Leading off to the right, however, was a tunnel he'd never seen before. It went directly into what he had thought was the solid south wall of the arena. Puzzling. A service hall of some kind?
He went into it.
Long and dark, the tunnel narrowed, with tubular black lights illuminating it. Probably not a service hall, but a part of the maze, maybe a new wing not opened yet? It probably wouldn't get him to the exit, but he had a few minutes to explore. Besides, he didn't look forward to confronting the football players in full daylight. His treatment would be bad enough when he returned to school the following semester.
The tunnel curved into pitch blackness. With a penlight he kept handy for special lights-out games, he shone it ahead of him, revealing only more tunnel.
This didn't feel right, Joystik decided, and turned to go back. Just then, his vest winked back to life, as if another game was starting. Was the computer malfunctioning? If so he was looking forward to a free game.
On the gun's screen flashed the message, "You have been selected."
For what? This was the kind of message you saw during special team games and role-playing stuff they did on members' nights. Intrigued, he waited for the screen to tell him more.
A thick mist began to fill the tunnel, similar to the water based fog they filled the arena with, but that had a metallic, unpleasant smell to it. Time to get out. Something's going wrong here, he thought, now afraid the stuff might poison him. But his feet wouldn't move, or his body . . . The floor rushed up to catch him as he fell over.
He figured intoxication must feel like this, but having never done alcohol or drugs, he had nothing to measure the experience by. Whatever it was had immobilized him, and a scream rose from his throat.
Someone grabbed his arm, then the other, and two someones, dark and unidentifiable in the fog, were carrying him deeper into the tunnel, away from the exit he now wished he had gone straight to, football players be damned.
Chapter One
The graveyard shift at the mostly vacant shopping mall was the least eventful gig the security company had to offer. And it was why Rick had asked for it; he had been a professional student for years, and he needed a way to earn money without actually working. Most nights were eight-hour stretches of peace and quiet, with no distractions, or interruptions besides his hourly rounds; a perfect environment for study.
According to the weather reports he'd heard in the car, however, tonight promised to be different. Two storm fronts were about to collide over Tulsa, and perhaps kick out a few twisters. At the 11 p.m. shift change he scoped out the basement, then checked the batteries in his Maglite, an aluminum club that happened to cast light. So long as the basement didn't flood, he figured he would make it through the night intact. At midnight his rounds led him to ten different clocks around the darkened mall, where he checked in by inserting his key. The key left the letter T on a tape, which his boss would read later to verify his attention to the job. Only a few lights were on, just enough so he could see where he was going, but not enough that he could really see. Lightning flashing through skylights briefly lit the darkened recesses, showing him things in the corners and doorways he had never seen before, and couldn't quite make out. A quick sweep with the Maglite's beam didn't help much. Creepy. Moving on, he laughed at his jumpiness. This was a first for this place, which until tonight had all the animation of a morgue.
The place is actually giving me the heebie-jeebies, he thought, mildly annoyed. He had a test the next day, and if he didn't get in a good night's study his grade would be doomed. By the time he had finished his rounds the storm was raging full steam, shaking the skylights and rumbling through the mall with a deep, bassy boom. His station was at the information booth at the main entrance. Most nights this gave him a good view of a crumbling parking lot; tonight it was a parking lot drenched with rain.
He turned on the fluorescent lamp under the counter and reached for a heavy tome, Early Oklahoma Law. He was looking forward to learning what mandated a hanging in this territory a hundred years ago, which he found disturbingly more interesting than torts and misdemeanors.
When he had gotten to the part about stealing horses, a blast of lightning ripped through the sky, followed immediately by a shroud of darkness. The fluorescent lamp went out, as did all the scant lighting in the mall. The emergency lights did not come on, which didn't surprise him. Hell, they probably weren't even connected, he thought, standing up.
Wind howled against the quadruple pairs of glass doors, shaking the half inch-thick plate glass as if it was Saran Wrap. The Maglite cast a single white finger on the floor as he stepped from behind the information booth. He regretted not having his weather radio, which he'd left in the car.
He considered wading through the soaking rain to retrieve it. If he had to go to the basement, it had better be for a good reason. Surely, a tornado warning in his vicinity would justify being late for a round, or missing it altogether. He had never had cause to test his boss's tolerance for lateness or absence from his post, and he didn't really want to now. Maglite in one hand, building and car keys in the other, he went to the glass entrance.
At the inner wall of doors, where a thin pool of water was seeping in, he peered into the storm, mildly alarmed at the swaying light poles. If one snapped and fell on his Subaru, it would destroy it, a monumental disaster in any college student's world. Sloshing through the foyer, he put his hand on the outer doors, and hesitated.
The storm had stopped, totally. No rain, no lightning, no thunder. Nada. To a nonnative, Rick mused, this might mean the end of a storm. Yet to a native of Oklahoma like himself such an abrupt cessation in hostilities meant a tornado might be about to land on your head.
To hell with it, he thought, I'm going to the basement.
As he turned to retreat, a deep blast of lightning struck somewhere out there, nearby. The blast thundered through his diaphragm and shook him down to his toes.
Still, the rain hadn't resumed. He suppressed an urge to run to the mall's comforting depths, and turned around. Gradually, his eyes readjusted, then widened as he perceived something tall and menacing, a narrow object, or a group of objects, in the parking lot. Something that hadn't been there before.
My eyes are playing tricks on me, he figured. It was the only explanation.
Tall, immobile, the large objects were blocking the view across the street to a newer mall, where a few parking lot lamps struggled to stay on. The silhouette reminded him of broken teeth, with random spaces between.
Then fear gripped him.
My car.
All possibility of a tornado forgotten, he went outside to inspect this new phenomenon.
Not only had the rain vanished, the pavement was starting to dry. Thunder rolled in the distance, sounding like it was coming from the next county. His light passed over the objects, but they were too far away to see well. The sight of the towering structures was eerie enough to encourage him to turn back, but the threat to his car kept him moving. This is stupid. Nothing happened to the car, he reasoned, but reason didn't seem to have a place in his world right now.
His foot met soft, grassy ground where he had expected pavement. Then a knoll that took a bit of effort to walk over. His flashlight passed over grass, with bare patches of light soil.
Did a bolt of lightning blast a crater here? No, that was stupid. Did the grass spontaneously grow?
Over an extensive stretch of grass he walked, the flashlight confirming what his feet felt: soft, but dry, ground. He reached down, patted the grass, a blanket of velvet unlike the native prairie grass of Oklahoma, or even of the ubiquitous Bermuda.
He stopped before a large stone arch, easily three times his height. Other arches, and single, standing blocks of stone, joined it in a circle. I know what this is. Where have I seen this before? he thought. Beyond
the first few megaliths, the light's beam diminished. More shadows.
The car . . .
Back towards the building he found his car. At least he found half of it. His spirits sank as he studied the remains of his Justy, parked where he had remembered parking it. The front half of it lay precisely at the grass's edge, neatly severed behind the driver's seat. Bare cross sections of steel body glinted back, shiny and polished under his flashlight. He touched it; still warm.
Still warm from what?
An enormous circle of turf had landed on the parking lot, complete with stones, taking out half his car in the process. Also, a light pole was missing, from about where the stones stood. He suspected it was wherever the hindquarters of his car had ended up.
Wherever the hell that is. He reached down and touched the distinct division between turf and pavement. Perfectly level. He dug his fingers between the grass and asphalt, found the pavement cross section smooth, as if cut by a laser. Just like the steel body of his car.
Now I know where I've seen this, Rick realized, staring at the megaliths. His high school band had traveled to Europe one summer, and one of the stops was the Salisbury Plain in England. He recalled the balmy afternoon he had stood at the famous archeological site. Then, it was perplexing to his seventeen-year-old mind how a civilization from the stone age could move the slabs of rock from a quarry twenty miles away.
If that was perplexing, he thought. This is downright un-fucking-real. What the hell is Stonehenge doing in a parking lot in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
* * *
Sammi McDaris breathed a sigh of relief as the Boeing 727 rolled to a stop at Tulsa International's gate 22. Through her tiny window the thunderstorm continued to rage, buffeting the plane with stiff gusts.
Now we're down. Thank the gods! she thought as she pulled her carry-on out of the overhead compartment. Passengers had stood the moment the unfasten seat belt light came on, clearly grateful the flight was over. She was too tired to fight the rush for the door, and instead let it carry her along at its own speed. She didn't much care for using human technology to travel, but when concealing her origins from her new employer the FBI, she didn't have many options.
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