War in the Game

by A J McKeep

  He realized he had never heard Faith’s actual voice. But as soon as he heard her call out, “I can speak their gwialo tongue,” he knew it was her. Small, slight with dark olive skin and huge golden eyes, he ran towards her. He smile showed that she had recognized him too.

  He said, “I know you told me not to come.”

  She ran to him, straight into his arms. She searched his eyes as she told him, “We’re going to get a big lot of trouble.” He held her face as they looked in each other’s eyes.

  “Don’t worry too much.” Hershey called out, “We’re all professionals at dealing with trouble.”

  When she leaned against his chest, Hershey told him, “Hey. Garrison. Worry some. We been in here for some time and we aint out yet.”

  He smiled at Faith, amazed, but he called back to Hershey, “I didn’t hear any alarms.”

  “That’s my point.”

  Coke chimed in, “Nobody’s going to leave all of these assets totally unguarded. If they’re not here, they’re coming for sure.”

  Gwailo

  HERSHEY AND COKE OPENED the door and Garrison followed them out. Parked in the compound, a bus and an armored car were waiting. Garrison pushed Faith back behind him into the shed and he dragged the door shut.

  Six men around the door pointed short burst rifles in their faces. They wore loose fatigues and their armor was slung on, unfastened.

  The shortest and stockiest looked to be in charge. He wore a headset with earphones and a single-frame display. He stepped forward, poking his gun at Garrison. He and four of the gang shoved the barrels of their guns in Garrison, Coke, and Hershey’s faces while they took their sidearms. As they did, they pushed and jostled them away from the doorway.

  While they were wedged between Garrison and the door, two of the gang slid the door open and pointed their weapons inside.

  Garrison moved forward. The man with the headset shouted and pushed back. Garrison guessed he was shouting Chinese, but he had no idea. The weapon jabbed in his chest again. Harder. The man shouted louder. It sounded like the same thing he said before. He nodded hard. Scowling. Irritable, he poked the weapon hard in Garrisons ribs. With his left hand he made a gesture. Like the beak of a bird. Flapping.

  Quietly, Garrison said into his mic, “Translate for me when they speak.”

  He was reassured to hear back. “I’m monitoring.“

  Garrison shouted back at the gunman. “What do you want?”

  As he replied, the man’s voice was transformed into an electronic synthesis mid sentence. “Say something. Stinking barbarian gwailo.” Then a broad grin split his face. “Ah. Now you understand me, yes?” He looked around at his compatriots. They all grinned. They laughed as they nodded. “English.”

  One shouted, “You have to speak or how we know your gwailo language?”

  The gun shoved hard in Garrison’s stomach. “Oh, yeah. English.”

  The two men at the door herded the girls to the bus.

  One of the others shouted and his voice too was transformed by his electronic translator. “Good, yeah?”

  And another piped up, “Now you understand.” He laughed and they all laughed, a rat-tat-tat kind of laugh. Just as suddenly they all stopped.

  And the short man nodded again. “You come raid our hen-house, eh? You come steal all of our chickens? Is okay. Good, yeah? You pay.”

  A man at the back cackled and said, “Yeah. Is good, okay? We torture you some then we kill you real bad.”

  Then they shouted in Chinese. The exo made a simultaneous translation for Garrison, “Yeah. We have fun with their parts.”

  And, “Sell their fluids.”

  Then, “If they’re worth anything.”

  “Yeah. Disgusting food they eat.”

  “Polluted.”

  “Chemi crap. Grow in tubes to feed gwailo.”

  The leader of the gang sneered up at Garrison, his voice synthed in English, “First, you pay, okay? What you got?”

  At the bus, the girls were jabbed with rifle butts and poked to hurry them on. Faith was at the back of the line.

  It was hard for Garrison not to look at her, not to make eye contact with her or acknowledge her. If he did he would be handing her to the gang. They would use her to put pressure on him. He knew. He had guerrilla training. The short man lunged close and stretched his hand up to Garrison’s face. “Need much juice,” he stuck his fingers in front of Garrison’s nose and rubbed them with his thumb. His fingers didn’t smell particularly nice.

  Then, from the back, a man with a bristling mustache, “They got little pop-pop gwialo guns.”

  “You got vehicles somewhere, I know. Maybe you got exos. We take exos.”

  His gang had all turned their translators on. The electric grind of their tinny voice synths said, “Some vehicle. Must have come in some vehicle.”

  “Some stinky gwailo tin-cans.”

  “Dip them in acid to get them clean.”

  “Get rid of the stink.” That got a rattling laugh from the gang.

  The leader spoke Chinese to a couple of his henchmen.

  He stood so close, Garrison’s movement was restricted and control was hard. Especially on two separate devices at once. He had to time it perfectly. The military history the Corps taught him said, ‘Your best weapon is always surprise.’ If the gang had a moment’s notice, he could blow it for all of them.

  The exo translated. “Get the fishes back to the huts. Tie them up. Then come back.” Then, “Lieu. Contact the governor. Tell him about this.” He turned back to Garrison. “What you got? What can you give me to make your deaths easier for you?” He leaned close enough for Garrison to smell his breath. It didn’t make a good advertisement for jungle food.

  Concentrating on the split screen in the visor and operating controls with only his fingertips, Garrison kept up the conversation. He acted as casual and nonchalant as he could. “What have we got, guys? What did we bring that these good men might like?”

  Hershey said, “We’ve got some state of the art gaming consoles. Ooh, I’ve got a tungsten longbow. Think they’ll like that?”

  Both the drones were out. He got them through the vents on the far sides of the two shed roofs. He wished he’d gotten them out sooner, but if he had the gang may have seen them. He shouldn’t be thinking back or second-guessing, but it was the only way he could keep focussed and stay off thinking about the danger Faith was in.

  He brought both drones down, almost to the ground.

  Coke called to Hershey, “Think they might like your Porn-U collection?”

  “Maybe. You reckon they’d prefer the girls or the boys?”

  The last of the girls, Faith, was climbing the steps onto the bus. The gang member behind her was about to climb on.

  “I was thinking about the ones with the octopuses.”

  Eyes widened, and grins spread. They had the gang’s attention.

  “I got some with snakes, too. You think they’d prefer those?”

  The drones were coming around the far corners of the sheds. Garrison was careful not to look at them.

  He called to Hershey, “Oh, have you got that immersive video, the one with all the bulls? That might do the trick.” And he nodded. Hershey nodded back.

  The gang member on the steps of the bus shouted and jumped as he pointed his weapon at the drone.

  Garrison had to fire. The tiny missile streaked at him and blew straight through his chest.

  Coke and Hershey grabbed the men nearest them. Garrison had to rush the other drone now at the gang leader. He was wily and ducked away before the drone was up. Garrison lifted his foot.

  He caught the gang leader across his chest and kicked the weapon against him. Garrison dived as the man turned. At the same time, he had to maneuver the first drone after the bus driver. He had started the engine and he was pulling away.

  Not giving enough priority to his own safety, he’d let the gang leader roll on the ground. Hs gun was in Garrison’s face. Smacked t
he gun away and jumped feet first at the man. He rolled away. But Garrison’s foot was still on the gun.

  Hershey held a gang member down with the barrel of his gun against his throat. Coke had his boot in the middle one’s back as he twisted the neck of another. The drone lined up in front of the bus windshield. The driver stopped. He raised his hands. When he ran shouting and panicking off the bus, Garrison set the drone to follow him.

  The leader ran backward toward the armored car. Garrison shot at his leg. He missed, but he was close enough to tear through the man’s fatigues. While Garrison held the gun on the leader, there was one man unaccounted for. He had a drone sweep for him. He was running, too.

  Garrison aimed in the leader’s face as he called to Hershey. “These guys aren’t paid enough.“

  “They aint trained enough either.” He disarmed his captive and let the man run.

  Coke had his two captives face down. “No motivation. A poor and sorry fighting force indeed.”

  Garrison made the leader disarm and strip down to his underwear before he let him go. Hershey and Coke did the same with their captives as Garrison went to the bus. He figured he would offer the girls the choice of the bus, or a ride with them in the claw.

  He hoped that Faith would choose the claw at least.

  He jumped onto the bus. Its ancient engine made the floor shudder. He called back the drone that chased the bus driver away. Faith got up from her seat at the back. His heart pounded. As she squeezed into the aisle of the bus, her face changed. Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open.

  All the girls on the bus put their hands to their faces and began to scream. Some of them pointed forward and shook as their faces crumbled.

  Garrison spun around. In the windshield, he saw the massive claw headed straight toward them. He turned back and smiled as he raised his hands and called out, “It’s okay!” though he didn’t know whether they could understand him.

  To check, he asked the exo, “Are you bringing the claw to us?”

  “No. I’m still here.” The exo told him. “That’s another Great China battle claw.”

  Firepower

  GARRISON JUMPED IN THE driving seat and slung the bus into reverse. He told the exo, “Get that claw here right away. We’ll need the firepower. We’re under attack.”

  He grabbed the wheel of the bus and floored the gas pedal. The road behind was nothing but a rough dirt track. The bus’ huge mirrors helped, but he had to keep turning to focus through the back window. Girls screamed and held their hands over their faces. The huge claw crawled impossibly fast after the bus.

  The length of the bus bounced, rolled, and tipped over the rocks and dips. He brought a drone to the claw. Setting it to follow one leg and surveil the inner side of it took all the concentration he had, while he drove a bus full of screaming girls backward at full speed into completely unknown territory. Steering the long bus from the front kept his heart in his mouth. He swung to dodge a tree, swerved around a pile of rocks, then almost fell out of the seat as the camber of the track lurched up to one side.

  The claw reared up. He saw weapons readying. He skidded the bus into a spin. As fast as he could he threw it into forward gear and spun the wheel. Rockets made fluttering sighs as their smoke trails corkscrewed toward the bus. Garrison steered hard. One after another the rockets whizzed by. But he had evaded them.

  His instinct was to turn the bus while the claw was reared up. Slam under and into it. Aim for the inside of a leg, maybe. If it were just him and the bus. He couldn’t do that with the seats all full of girls. Not when Faith was one of them. He zigzagged to get away. Off the road, the bus made sickening bounces.

  The drone kept track with the inside of one leg joint. It showed the mechanism exposed inside of the biggest joint. He had the drone fire everything it had at the machinery. It smoked and burned. The leg stopped moving. Losing the use of it didn’t seem to slow the claw down. It was close behind the bus. The terrain made it hard to keep dodging. The claw fired, again and an again. Shots ripped the ground, and some scraped the sides of the bus. Girls shrieked as a window blew out. Then another.

  Bumping over rough country off the road slowed the bus down, but it had no effect on the claw. The tires skidded and jammed, and Garrison had to fight to keep the bus moving. There was no way to know how far he’d have to go to find another road. He spun the wheel and the bus lurched as he swerved back the way he‘d come.

  The claw fired off rockets, but it was too slow to change direction. The first rocket went over the bus’ roof above Garrison’s head. He felt the heat of it. The second rocket ripped through the roof about halfway along the bus. He made wider turns to take advantage of the claw’s slow reactions.

  Up ahead, in front of him another claw lumbered off the road and toward him. He did all he could to keep his voice quiet and level as he asked the exo, “Please tell me that’s you, headed this way.”

  “I have you in sight straight ahead.” The exo reared their claw up. It showed the underside as it let off a barrage of rockets at the shell of the Chinese claw. Slowly, the target lifted off the ground. Rockets trailed impotently beneath it’s feet. It hung in the air and drifted around to get broadside of the bus.

  It tried to outmaneuver him, but only reactively. Garrison figured that meant he was dueling with a mech AI, not a soldier. He hoped so. He now had the exo on one side and himself on the other, against what he hoped was just a fast abacus. The road was ahead. He turned again, just in time to avoid gunfire. He felt the bus shudder as a line of bullets punctured the back. The wheel felt fine though, as he bumped back onto the firm tarmac.

  The Chinese claw landed on the road in front of him. The girls shrieked as they swayed in their seats. They buried their faces in their bunched wet hands. The claw was rearing up to fire at them but the exo put their claw between the bus and the enemy. The two huge claws reared up at each other. They fired into each others’ bellies.

  Their thick fingers batted at each other. They rolled into one another, then they rolled over on the road like wrestling tortoises. Garrison couldn’t tell which was which. He backed the bus up fast. There wasn’t a patch of road wide enough to turn, so he drove in reverse up all the back to way to the compound. It seemed harder reversing now than it had been before.

  As the sheds came into view in the bus’ big mirrors, a claw descended to land right behind him. Over the screams of the girls, he was going to call up the exo, but he spotted the busted leg. It was the enemy claw. He accelerated toward it. It backed up, leaned to one side. As it began to fire he ran the bus forward, turned the bus around hard. The claw was by the edge of the road as it reared up and fired tracer bullets. Garrison felt the back of the bus rock as he drove straight at the underside of the raised claw.

  He covered his face with his arms for the impact. The claw was balanced on the smashed leg. It topped and rolled. Off the road, it landed on its back. Stopping the bus and jumping for the door, Garrison yelled to the girls and waved his arm. “Off. Get off.” He saw smoke thicken from the back of the bus as he leaped down onto the black underside of the claw. Yanking the door open, he fell inside the mech and made straight for the server racks.

  Scrambling in the rocking, upturned dome while it was upside down, he slipped a few times on the slick sides of the hull. From the captured claw, he knew enough to find the kill switches. When he snapped the main switches off, the server lights went out and the beast was still.

  In the dark, it was hard finding a way to the hatch. There were grab rails inside the dome, but he couldn’t see any on the floor. He didn’t remember any from their claw, either. ‘Their claw.’ It seemed funny.

  He called the exo. “I’m inside the claw. Can you come and get me?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  It was only a couple of minutes before the exo flew in, straight down through the open hatch. It drifted to where he was and turned its back so that he could slip into the frame. He felt powerful, like a conquering hero
as he rose in the frame, out of the hatch into daylight.

  By the bus, Hershey and Coke were with the line of girls. Faces turned to him and then turned back. Everyone was subdued. He waved as he flew over. They must not have figured out that he’d shut off the enemy claw.

  He landed, smiling, by Hershey and Coke. They had their arms on the shoulders of some of the girls. All the girls were looking down.

  “All the girls are out,” Garrison put a hand on Hershey’s shoulder. “Right? They’re all out? All safe?”

  Coke’s eyebrows steepled as he looked up. “Nearly all.”

  Meds

  IN THE BAY OF the claw, Coke helped Garrison get Faith into the pod’s sim-stim med suit. Garrison carried her tenderly into the pod, laid her in the couch and connected the suit up. The screen flicked straight into diagnostics. Most of the lines were close to straight.

  “She was in the back of the bus, man,” Coke leaned in the pod door. He was saying, “We got her out as fast as we could,” but Garrison wasn’t really able to listen. She was unconscious. He stroked her face. Her skin wasn’t warm enough. He put a quilt over her.

  The exo stood outside. Over the headset, Garrison asked it, “Tell me what the med kit says. I need to know what it’s going to be able to do.”

  “The patient’s condition is stable. Tests will take from two to six point five hours to complete.”

  Hershey put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, we need to get back to our side of the lines. I could probably fly this thing but not without your headset and visor.” Garrison looked round to see the concern in Hershey’s eyes. “What I’m saying, it might be good for you to have something to be doing.”

  “The exo can fly us.”

  All of the girls had chosen to come along. They sat quiet in a huddle on the deck at the far side of the dome.

  Garrison crouched in the pod next to Faith and watched her shallow breath.