“Just got here. Got to find Darx,” he said offhandedly, and moved on. Should he tell Deion about Mr. Zahedi? About the poison and the gun? He wanted to tell someone, but he felt funny mentioning it. Deion hadn’t been there. He wouldn’t understand.
While all the characters looked different, with variations in height, and color, and accessories, they were hard to tell apart without faces. Humans were designed to recognize faces, not helmets. And who were these people anyway? Like his mom had said they could be anybody, from anywhere in the world. Kids, college students, engineers, soldiers, bankers. For all any of them knew, a bank robber could be fighting alongside a policeman. The thought made him more wary than usual.
Finally, Izaak saw the thin steel ridge that swept over the top of Darxhan’s helmet and the short-handled plasmace slung over his shoulder. He breathed a sigh of relief and pushed through the crowd toward him.
“Izzy!” Darxhan exclaimed, when Izaak came up. “Gore’s going up against the Archons for control of the Athens gate!”
“We got to get out of here,” Izaak said, scarcely hearing Darxhan’s warning.
“You ain’t kidding.” Darxhan looked at him, then paused. “Where’s Vera?”
“That’s why we’ve got to go. Vera got swiped. Come on.”
“What? How?”
“I’ll tell you later. But we’ve got to go now!”
“Fine with me,” said Darxhan. “This douche is just about to get everybody killed.”
“T-Reg here?”
“She never comes to these, you know that. We can call her from your lair.”
They made for the entrance as GoreFiendHell wrapped up his speech. “… will be a great day for the Reavers!” he thundered, as a cheer rose up around them. “For today, the Athens gate will be ours!”
“Let’s go,” said Izaak. “If dickhead sees us…” The crowd closed in around them as they forced their way toward the tunnel entrance. GoreFiendHell moved into the crowd making straight for Izaak. “We’re not going to make it,” hissed Izaak, worming his way through the press, but it was no use. GoreFiendHell had already seen him.
The towering black merc stopped in front of Izaak. He was a head taller than Darxhan and each of his pauldrons, as large as a VW Bug fender, bore the symbol of the Reavers – a flaming skull head. His helmet was like the turret of a Sherman tank and on one shoulder perched an auto-tracking cannon that followed his gaze. Strapped across his back was a gigantic plasmace used for crushing enemies. Izaak could see his own gold faceplate mirrored in the reflective Mk.IV armor on GoreFiendHell’s chest. “Where’s Vera?” Gore asked in his digitally enhanced baritone, minus the English accent he’d had a moment before.
“Not here tonight,” said Izaak, wondering how he was going to get around him.
“Go get her. You’re my lead sniper.” The accent was suddenly back.
“About that…” Izaak hesitated for a second, then said, “I’m not sure I’m going tonight, Gore.”
“What?” The auto-cannon on Gore’s shoulder swiveled to Izaak’s head with the sound of tiny, whirring gears. Izaak saw it and Hector’s hands tensed on his controller. The merc had a nasty habit of turning the heads of his own clansmen into a red mist. Not that there was anything Izaak could do to stop him. But he knew Darxhan had his back.
“I can’t go tonight. My mom says I got to take out the trash.”
“Cut him some slack,” Darxhan chimed in. “Vera got swiped.”
“You lost my best sniper rifle?” thundered GoreFiendHell, minus the accent again.
“It wasn’t your sniper rifle,” growled Izaak, clenching his teeth.
“I am Reaver clan. All of this is mine. You are mine.”
Had Gore just claimed him? Izaak glanced at Darxhan. “Well, uh,” he stammered. “I guess I better get going then. I think I know where I can find Vera.”
Hector’s cell phone buzzed with a text from Deion: Gore’s lost it!
“That sniper rifle will just have to do,” Gore replied offhandedly. “You will travel with me in the second wave.” He turned away from Izaak. “Darxhan, you will lead the initial assault against the Acropolis. As soon as you capture it –”
“I don’t think so,” squeaked Darxhan in a voice that was one hundred percent Deion.
“What?” menaced GoreFiendHell, and the auto-cannon whirred again.
Darxhan recovered his voice and growled, “I don’t think so.”
“I wasn’t asking.” Darxhan and Gore faced off. After a tension-filled instant, Gore spun around shouting orders.
“Now” hissed Deion and they made a break for the door, maneuvering through the milling throng of vanguards, mercs, smugglers, and cybertechs.
Where are you going?” Gore’s voice thundered behind them before they’d reached the exit.
“Keep going,” Darxhan hissed. They were almost to the tunnel.
“I said, where are you going?” raged the huge merc, wading through the sea of characters, trying to get out of Gore’s way.
Izaak turned around but kept backing away. “You guys are going to get slaughtered.”
“No one can defeat Reaver Clan, not even the Archons!”
“The Archons aren’t even players, dude. They’re NPCs. You can’t win!”
“Non-player characters do not concern me, Izaak Ersatz.”
“You know,” Izaak said, having had enough. “You are F-ed up! I quit.”
“Bad timing!” Darxhan squeaked.
“You can’t quit the Reavers,” said GoreFiendHell. “We are the most powerful clan on Earth!”
Around them, the crowd started to back away, forming a circle.
“I’m going to start my own clan,” said Izaak, pushing past characters. “We’ll go on hikes. Have picnics. It’ll be fun. I’ll send you an invite.”
“Picnics,” Gore sneered, and turned to Darxhan. “And you?”
“You’re weird, man,” Darxhan answered.
“This is all your doing,” GoreFiendHell snapped at Izaak in a high-pitched sneer now reminiscent of a New Jersey twang. “You’ve been trying to usurp my throne. You want Reaver Clan for your own!”
“I really got to go,” said Izaak. They were almost at the entrance to the tunnel.
“The only place you’ll go is into a rep tank!” GoreFiendHell pulled the plasmace from his back. The end of it lit up in a ball of crackling, blue energy. Characters shrieked and scattered in all directions. He raised it high over Izaak’s head, so focused he didn’t notice when Darxhan slipped in behind him. There was a distinct whang and Gore spun around in surprise. “What the –”
On his back, one of Izaak’s magnetic limpet mines was beeping in synch with a flashing red light. Beeping faster… and faster.
Darxhan spun past him on the other side and he and Izaak each activated a nano-particle smoke grenade and ran back up the tunnel. They could hear GoreFiendHell screaming behind them “Get it off! Get it off!” as the beeps merged to become a continuous tone. It exploded and the screaming stopped.
Then the nano-smokes went off and the tiny particles formed a thick, opaque mass.
“You know,” said Darxhan, as they ran for the tunnel entrance, “in about ten seconds half of Reaver clan is going to come pouring out of here!”
Izaak dropped a laser-activated sentry mine at the tunnel entrance and they sprinted for the gate. The gate wardens probably didn’t know what had happened yet but Zerg would never let them through with fifty mercs chasing them. The thought of taking him out made Izaak smile.
From a quarter mile out, he saw the guards at the gate look straight at them and start his direction. “Word’s out,” said Izaak, staring through the scope of his rifle. He took aim, and fired. And missed. Vera had loved this range! The characters were growing slowly larger in the scope but were still too far away.
There was an explosion behind them. “Sentry mine,” said Darxhan.
Mercs and vanguards were pouring out of the tunnel like ants when Izaak
looked behind. Bullets and rockets whizzed past. Izaak took a hit, but his fusion cells absorbed the energy. He just hoped his friendship with the other Reaver snipers would keep them at bay.
Darxhan spun around and launched a wild salvo with his auto-cannon, then wheeled and sent a half-dozen arcing toward Zerg’s group. Izaak looked back through the scope. Zerg and his mercs were still coming and he saw Darxhan’s shells explode harmlessly among them. Then he remembered a scene from the old black-and-white movie Sergeant York he had once seen with his father. He zeroed in on the one in the rear and fired. It was a direct hit, but he didn’t fall. He had to shoot him three times. Then he picked the next to last, who was now in the rear, and went to work on him, hoping those in front would think he was a lousy shot and not take cover.
It worked, for when they finally met, Zerg took the full brunt of Darxhan’s plasmace. It zeroed his shields, smashed through his Lorica, and sent his body spinning into the ruins of the mosque where it lodged in the tower and hung there.
“I hope he didn’t power the gate down,” said Izaak, “or we ain’t going far.”
“Shrikes!” said Darxhan.
Two of the one-man, hover-bikes appeared behind. In seconds, they would be on them. They started firing. Izaak took more damage. His shields collapsed and then his health bar dropped. Then dropped again.
“I’m going down fast!” Izaak blurted.
Darxhan stepped between him and the Shrike, absorbing the blasts. But he wasn’t indestructible either. He spun around and lobbed a better-aimed volley. The nearest Shrike exploded and its driver augured into the ground with a puff of smoke. But the other one was coming on fast. The arch was just yards away. But if the gate was down –
They passed through and stumbled into Izaak’s lair. His health bar was a flashing red splinter just a single pixel wide. They glanced back through the portal as it began to fade and watched as the Reaver clan jogged toward the slipgate. Two sets of fresh footprints went right up to it and disappeared. Without their slipgate passports set to Izaak’s lair, the Reavers could not follow them through.
The image was fading fast. Hector turned up the volume on his headset and listened intently.
A huge merc, almost as large as GoreFiendHell, and with Mk.IV armor nearly as impressive, stopped where the footprints disappeared. “They will pay,” growled ValaRocker, GoreFiendHell’s chief lieutenant and head of his personal bodyguard. “If we have to search every city and town on the planet, we will find Izaak Ersatz and Darxhan Gideon. And they will…”
Ch. 7
The image faded away, and they found themselves staring through the arch at the tubular cryo-chambers in Izaak’s lair.
“Well, that’s just great,” snapped Darxhan, stomping around. “Now we’ve got whole dang Reaver clan out looking for us!” He cut loose with a volley of cannon shells that exploded harmlessly along one wall.
“Calm down, man!” exclaimed Izaak. “It’s not the –”
“Do you know what’s going to happen when Gore and ValaRocker find us?” Darxhan shot back. “They’ll –”
Izaak cut him off. “It’s just a game Deion. A game. Don’t forget that. Yeah, I want Vera back, but lets keep some perspective here, okay? Now, hold on a second. I got to take care of something.”
Hector flew through several menus to remove Reaver clan from his alliance list. The last thing they needed were Reavers following them into Izaak’s lair. When his view returned to the Sulako, Darxhan was raiding his cache of fusion cells. “Oh, just help yourself,” said Izaak, surprised he was still out of breath. It had all seemed strangely… real.
“I will, since I took most of those blasts saving your unarmored butt. What’s that Lorica armor made of, plastic?”
“Why’d you have to slap a limpet mine on Gore’s back?” Izaak suddenly broke into laughter. “Guess that merc of yours is good for something after all.”
Hector opened up a new menu. He’d wanted to do this for a long time and now he had a reason. “Making a new clan,” he said, to Darxhan. “Already got it set up. Just needed a name. And no, it doesn’t contain the words fart, dump, or douche.” The name appeared on his screen as he punched in one letter at a time: S – P – A – R – T – A – N – S.
“That hasn’t been taken?” asked Deion. A moment later ‘DARXHAN’ popped up on the clan roster.
“Just don’t start calling it the Fartans.”
“Very funny. What’s our symbol going to be?”
Hector hadn’t thought of that. “One thing at a time,” he said, and left it blank, glad to be rid of the flaming skull-head.
“So what happened to Vera?” Deion asked, and Hector finally told him the whole story, including that he was sure he’d find Mal-X in Alanya. Deion listened intently and didn’t interrupt.
“Mal-X, huh?” said Deion, when he’d finished. “Short for Malcolm-X I guess?”
Hector admitted he had never heard of Malcolm-X, so Deion told him about the black Muslim leader from the sixties.
Deion paused a moment. “From what you said, sounds like this Mal-X figured out the suspend-modem cheat.”
“You mean like from Halo 2?” Neither Hector nor Deion had ever been a victim of this cheat but both had heard of it. “I don’t know. I was never out of control. No blue screen.. Just there one second, gone the next.”
“Could he have been an empath? Using teleport?”
Hector laughed. Empaths were the biggest disappointment of Omega Wars. “Have you ever seen an empath who can do teleport? Or anything useful? Besides, he was using tech. Empaths can’t use a nexus blade.”
“Then why doesn’t he just meet you in a multiplayer matchup. Why’s he tell you where he is so you can do it in the MMOG?”
“Easy. He kills me in multiplayer-mode and I come right back. He kills me in MMOG quest mode and he gets all my stuff and Izaak has to go into a replication tank for a week. Bigger consequences. You know how it works.”
“There’s not a gate there,” said Darxhan. “We’ll be stuck.” There was a pause. “Who’s this guy? Colonel West?”
Hector heard a quick intake of breath and looked over to see Darxhan standing in front of his dad’s vanguard. “Deion Get away from there!”
“Your dad’s old character is still ali – “
“Yes, he’s still alive – active.” Hector liked Deion, but the kid could be so nosey at times.
Darxhan stood there for a moment in silence. “I guess that makes sense. You still have pictures of your dad, right? Just never thought about it like this.” This is the last thing Hector wanted to talk about. “Does your mom know he’s still here?” Deion asked.
No. And neither did the shrink. Hector had no doubt they’d make him get rid of the vanguard and Hector couldn’t bear to simply… delete him. Like terrorists had done. “She doesn’t watch me play very often.” Hector knew it wasn’t really an answer and changed the subject, but remained uncomfortable for some time.
They accessed the mapping feature of Omega Wars and zoomed in on Alanya Peninsula, thrusting two miles into the Mediterranean from the coast of Turkey. Sheer cliffs fell hundreds of feet on the west side, ending in a jagged spine of steep rock that stretched into the sea; the Dragon’s Tail. Hector remembered from his vacation that the cliffs on this side of the peninsula were studded with the yawning black mouths of caves. A half mile away, the east side of the stubby finger of land sloped down to a narrow beach and harbor, where the quaint, seaside town of Alanya spread out for miles in either direction. Further inland to the north, green hills marched toward the snow-capped Taurus Range.
“So how you going find this douche?” Darxhan asked.
Hector zoomed in until they could see the line of ancient walls zig-zagging across the ground, nearly four miles of them, completely encircling the high ground at the end of the peninsula. It was a perfect defensive position in the middle ages and beyond. An attacking army would have to march uphill into the complex of walls and fortificatio
ns. At the highest point, a last, inner-loop of wall formed a final perimeter, and within it, the citadel. It was there Izaak and Mal-X had fought their battle. And Mal-X had cheated.
Izaak suggested they slip in on the top of one of the lower hills that overlooked the town to the north, just in case the fortress was occupied, as he suspected. Omega had several million subscribers spread out over the entire planet which meant it was still sparsely populated. So they were hoping that besides Mal-X and a few friends, the rest of the area would be virtually empty, since there was no reason for anyone to go there. There would, of course, be the usual thorks and scarobs, but there might also be an opportunity to harvest some valuable tech.
There was no slipgate in Alanya that could send them back to their lairs, or anywhere else for that matter. And if they were killed, they’d lose everything they were carrying and have to be respawned in a replication chamber, a process that could take up to a week. So, they decided to take scout characters. In just a few minutes, Deion had created a nearly naked, black, female barbarian with enormous, mail-covered breasts and shiny steel panties he named Laquisha, after a girl at their school. Hector created an awkward smuggler with dark skin and funny clothes and named him Sand-JarJar. Both were completely expendable.
They entered the coordinates of a hill just north of town into their passports, a spot that overlooked the peninsula from the coastal mountains. “You okay?” asked Deion.
Hector had grown quite still, staring at the 3D image. “It was the last place I saw my dad alive,” he said quietly.
“Are you sure you’re ready to go back?”
“I’ve already been back. And now I have to go again.”
“Is she worth it?” asked Deion. “Is Vera worth it?”
“It’s only a game,” answered Hector, with a lump in his throat. “What could happen?” And they stepped through together.
Sand-JarJar appeared on the other side and Hector quickly oriented his character. He was standing high above the coastal plain looking out toward the sea and the peninsula, which seemed to rise from the water like a turtle coming ashore to lay eggs. Between the mountain on which he stood and the peninsula, lay the town of Alanya. From a distance, it didn’t look like a ruin. The realism was staggering. Hector could almost feel the wind in his hair and smell the fresh sea breeze wafting in from –
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