Gameprey nfe-11

by Tom Clancy

  The Space Marines walking through the huge hole blown in the side of the castle paused. The machine gun on the battlesuit’s shoulder quivered and spent brass twinkled through the air.

  Inside his cockpit, Andy cringed and turned cold inside. It was one thing to jump into a game to blow your friends up for fun, but this wasn’t anything like that. The medieval castle couldn’t even protect itself.

  The Space Marine battlesuit in the palace bent down and plucked something up from the ground.

  “Magnify,” Andy ordered.

  The viewscreen performed immediately, zooming in on the figure trapped in the battlesuit’s three-fingered hand. Andy recognized her at once.

  “Hey, Blue Leader, look at the prize I just took.” The guy in the battlesuit swiveled, leaving his lower half locked down as he turned his upper torso.

  Andy’s hands flexed inside the cybered gloves. He watched the weapons systems flare to life within the HUD, and he marked the placement of the other three Space Marines. They were all enemies by his personal definition at that point.

  He readied the anchor attachment that fit inside the battlesuit’s left arm. Normally the anchor was only used in space battles to link back up with a friendly ship when a battlesuit had been blown free of a transport ship’s hull. He knew he wouldn’t have much time to act before the other three Space Marines turned on him.

  “Target,” he ordered. Crosshairs appeared on the viewscreen and glowed when lock was achieved.

  “Warning,” a soft, feminine voice said. “The target you have selected has registered on IFF as—”

  “Override previous identification,” Andy barked. “IFF is tainted. All controls over to ship’s personnel.”

  “Confirmed,” the computer voice said. “Safeguards are down. All systems available.”

  Andy closed his left fist and fired the anchor. A full meter of hardened steel flashed from the hollow groove of the battlesuit’s left arm. It caught the battlesuit on the right side of the torso not quite halfway up. The sabot charge fired off on impact and sent the pronged head through the battlesuit, punching out the main servos that operated the suit’s on-board motion computer.

  “What the—” the guy in the paralyzed battlesuit shouted.

  By then Andy was a blur of movement. He fired a salvo of smoker rounds into the ground immediately around him. A cloud of white smoke roiled up, filled with positively and negatively charged ions as well as burning cinders that would throw off the thermal and radar sensors of the other suits.

  He jogged to the right, taking advantage of a copse of trees and the downgrade of the hill there. Hang on, Catie, I’m coming. Normally he wouldn’t have been worried about Catie’s welfare. If she received any serious injuries during gameplay, she’d have been logged off the Net. But he still didn’t know how he’d gotten into the Space Marines game, so he wasn’t certain if a normal log-off was possible.

  He crouched down, taking advantage of the short grade of the hill. Machine-gun rounds whipped through the air above him as the other guys in the battlesuits responded to his attack. None of them had him in their sights yet.

  “Release the hatch.” Andy slipped his hands and feet out of the control boots and gloves. Pushing himself from the cockpit console seat, he grabbed the emergency jetpack from the space under the seat and buckled it around his upper body. He slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses from his jacket pocket.

  The front of the battlesuit’s head folded open as the hatch released with a hiss of compressed air. He pulled the jetpack’s control glove onto his right hand and pressed the ignition. The resulting explosion from the combustible engine fired him from the open maw of the battlesuit’s head like a rocket.

  Andy kept both hands stretched before him, his legs spread to avoid the jetpack’s fiery contrail and to help him control his flight. He maxed out his speed, hurtling toward the paralyzed battlesuit that stood still as a statue. Machine-gun tracer rounds burned the air above and ahead of him, but he was through the area before the shooter ever got the range.

  While playing the game with his friends, Andy had also spent time repairing and beefing his battlesuit up. If the game was played correctly without cheats, a battlesuit warrior spent nearly ten hours working on his vehicle to every one he or she spent operating it. As a result, he knew intimately where all the battlesuits’ weak points were.

  He also knew the battlesuit’s secondary systems were struggling to come online and restore mobile capability to the stricken suit.

  Andy powered down at the last minute, twisting in the air so he almost stalled out when he reached the battlesuit. He grabbed the clenched fist that held Catie captive.

  “Traitor!” the guy inside the paralyzed suit screamed. “I’m going to get you!”

  “Andy?” Catie stared at him in disbelief.

  “Me,” Andy said with a smile as he took in the frilly dress. “Going to a ball somewhere, Princess?”

  “You’d think so,” she replied, only sounding a little tense. “I met a real toad.”

  Andy drew the laser pistol from the cavalry holster on his right hip. “Step back.” He fired from pointblank range. The laser cut through the thinner plates inside the finger joint where they had to slide over each other. In seconds the tension cables beneath were bared. Another two bursts and the cable parted with high-pitched squeals.

  Holstering his sidearm, Andy stood and grabbed the finger that was taller than and just as broad as he was. It took everything he had to move the finger, but when it opened, Catie managed to squeeze through.

  Machine-gun rounds peppered the stationary battlesuit. Andy felt the vibrations shiver through the hardware that warned him the system was coming back online.

  The huge hand they stood on jerked spasmodically. The three undamaged fingers closed a little tighter.

  “Hold on,” Andy ordered as he wrapped his left arm around Catie’s waist and pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, making it hard to keep his head up. He couldn’t walk heavily encumbered, so he chose simply to fall out of the battlesuit’s hand.

  No sooner had they left the hand than it snapped closed, sounding like a deadly autobus pileup.

  Catie screamed as they fell twenty of the thirty feet to the ground. Then Andy tightened his fist inside the jetpack control glove. The jetpack fired and immediately provided them with lift.

  Andy rolled his body, getting them aimed in the proper direction, then fired a sustained burst from the jetpack. He ran close to the ground, no more than five or six feet off the ground. If we crash, we’re not going to have to worry about those guys, he thought.

  He flew toward the open head of his battlesuit, cutting power early. He pulled Catie to him more tightly, covering her body with his.

  His shoulder hit the upper lip of the access hatch opening, and they ricocheted into the cockpit. He skidded across the steel plate flooring and slammed into the console chair hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs.

  “We made it!” Catie shouted in disbelief as she pushed herself up from him.

  Andy concentrated on breathing again. Black spots swam in his vision. Getupgetupgetup! he shouted at himself mentally because he didn’t have the breath to speak. They’re not going to wait for you to get ready!

  13

  Dressed in his astronaut-style crashsuit, Mark Gridley jetted through the twisting maze that was the Bessel Mid-Town Hotel’s security system. Some of the time-savers he’d implanted in the system earlier had folded when the security system went down.

  A small image remained at the bottom of his vision, flatfilm reproduction of the confusion filling the convention hall. He also maintained an open window for any IMs the other Explorers might try to send to him.

  He rushed from the latest tunnel, searching for access to whatever security vidcams that might be operational after the latest attack on them. Three directions were open before him.

  Pausing for just a moment, Mark shook his right hand twice, accessing
one of the search utilities he used to crack and map a computer system’s programming. When he opened his hand, three armored butterflies streaked forward, each taking one of the optional directions.

  “Passage blocked,” the first butterfly search program reported back.

  “Passage leads to outside access,” the second butterfly informed him. “Data port presently unoccupied.”

  “Data flowing fine,” the remaining butterfly radioed.

  Mark kicked in his boot jets again and shot forward, making the hard S-turn to follow the circuitry path. He stretched out his left hand and sprayed a neon orange stripe along the entrance to let himself know he’d been that way. With the collapse of the security system and the virus that raged within it, a number of the circuits cannibalized themselves, creating endless loops as the programs tried to connect.

  The system was a total and complete mess. Mark really didn’t think he could have done a better job himself, but he hoped he could unravel some of the mess in time to provide them with a few more clues.

  “Miss Green.”

  Maj glanced down at her foilpack and saw Detective Holmes centered in the view. “Where are you?”

  “En route,” Holmes replied. “I went home and grabbed forty winks, not thinking we’d have trouble so early. Big mistake on my part.”

  Maj trotted at the heels of the convention-goers who flooded into the Eisenhower Productions booth. Her eyes roved over the beautiful artwork lining the walls. Concept art for the Realms of the Bright Water decorated the interior, and the center of the booth contained a miniature model of the forest they’d seen on holo.

  The lack of light and power made the interior of the booth almost creepy. But it didn’t slow the convention-goers, who oohed and ahhed over the displays of art, action figures, and clothing. Evidently Eisenhower Productions had kept their marketing staff busy.

  “Even if you’d been here,” Maj said, “I don’t think you’d have managed to affect the situation very much.”

  “Always loved a vote of confidence.” The sound of Holmes’s siren screaming echoed over the telecommunications connection. As he glanced over his shoulder, the traffic through his back window was briefly visible. He barked orders over his police wristcom.

  Maj gazed through the quasi-twilight that filled the booth. Thankfully, the fans weren’t in total riot mode. They weren’t tearing things down or open, contenting themselves with investigating what there was available to see.

  “I’m also assuming you called for something other than to let me know the bad news.”

  “Peter Griffen disappeared in the middle of the crisis,” May said. “I got the feeling it wasn’t planned.”

  “That’s not the impression I got when my sergeant told me about it,” Holmes said. “She thinks this was a publicity stunt that got way out of hand.”

  Maj silently disagreed. She glanced back at the interior of the Eisenhower Productions booth, noticing the security lights hanging above it. All of them were dark. Something’s wrong.

  “My people have orders to pick Peter Griffen up,” Holmes went on. “I want to have a little chat with him about some of the civil ordinances he fractured today.”

  “Do you know what room he’s in at the hotel?” Maj forced her way through the crowd, then spotted a door on the right. She crossed toward it.

  “Yeah,” Holmes said. “I’ve already had a couple uniforms check it out. He’s not there.”

  Then he’s got to be here, Maj told herself. She hopped onto the wraparound booth in front of the door and walked across. Piles of plastic-wrapped shirts lay scattered across the floor. They all held pictures of Sahfrell the dragon. She tried the door at the back and found it open.

  Stepping through, she found herself in a small room with an implant chair. “I found the room Peter probably did the holo from.” She walked to the implant chair, drawn by the dark stain that covered one side. Even in the darkness the pool of liquid held a crimson gleam. Her stomach turned. “There’s fresh blood in this room.”

  “Hold your position,” Holmes ordered. “I’ll have a uniformed officer there in just a moment.” He broke the connection.

  Maj scanned the room. There weren’t any other doors, and she really didn’t think Peter had enough time to get out of the booth without someone noticing him. They’d have mobbed him if they’d seen him. And there was enough blood that she knew he couldn’t be in terribly good shape.

  She turned her foilpack over, using the scant light from the vidscreen to illuminate the shadows covering the carpeted floor. A trail of blood drops led from the implant chair.

  Five feet farther on, they disappeared abruptly.

  Maj dropped to her knees and studied the floor, passing the illuminated foilpack vidscreen only inches from the top of the carpet. It took her three tries to spot the seam in the carpet.

  She hooked her fingers under the edge and lifted, exposing the square mouth of a utility passage that had probably been set up to allow egress to the various power outlets set into the floor around the convention center floor. Darkness filled the utility tunnel.

  Using the light from the foilpack viewscreen, Maj located the ladder set into the side of one wall. At the bottom the tunnel stretched out in two directions, bending immediately in both. Small emergency lights burned with dim wattage, barely illuminating the underground hallways to near-twilight.

  Something gleamed on the floor, catching her eye. She knelt and used the foilpack light.

  The tiny drop of red blood glistened, and it was only the first of the intermittent trail that led through the access tunnels.

  Maj followed, reconfiguring the foilpack to send an IM to Mark.

  Winded and hurting, Andy pulled himself to his feet and stumbled into the cockpit command chair. He pulled the jetpack off and tossed it to the side, then thrust his hands and feet into the gloves and boots just as a missile slammed into the battlesuit’s side. The big machine rocked and came close to overturning, but the on-board gyros kept it upright.

  Sensory feedback from the gloves and boots already had Andy hooked into the battlesuit. He threw one of the battlesuit’s big hands out and caught himself, pushing hard to maintain his balance. The head-up-display helmet descended over his head.

  “Belt in or log off,” Andy advised Catie as he sprang into action.

  “I’m staying.” Catie spotted the restraining straps on the wall where passengers could tie down. She fit her arms through the loops and pulled the straps tight.

  “There’s a crash helmet in the locker beside you.” Andy moved the battlesuit into a run.

  “You’re planning on crashing?”

  Andy grinned. With the HUD in place, he knew she could only see his lower face. “You don’t plan those things in Space Marines. They just happen.”

  “Nice game. Those seem to be your friends.”

  “They like to play rough.” A salvo of short-range missiles tore the ground up behind Andy as he ran across the broken terrain. The battlesuit’s big feet sank a half-meter into the ground while he mowed down small trees and brush.

  “I think I saw Maj’s dragon.”

  “I didn’t.” Sudden movement on the radar screen drew Andy’s attention. The radar tilted, spinning, showing that the most aggressive movement had gone airborne. The battlesuits were also equipped with short-range boot jets that allowed navigation in space and limited flight. “Were you bumped off another game?”

  “No. I was in this one when the dragon arrived. Then the armored trolls showed up.”

  “Space Marines,” Andy corrected automatically. He paused and turned, locking his feet down to the ground to brace for the recoil from the short-range cannon.

  “We’ve stopped. Is that good?”

  “Going on the attack,” Andy replied, tracking the crosshairs onto the flying battlesuit. “These guys aren’t as experienced as they act. Man, you don’t give up the ground to go flying around. You’re not locked down to fire your heavy artillery, and you’re n
othing but one big…fat…target.” His finger twitched inside his right glove.

  Three missiles fired from his shoulder-mounted weapon. They left curving contrails as they rushed toward the airborne battlesuit. All three missiles slammed into the battlesuit’s chest area, ripping a huge crater. A moment later the limited-nuke power plant detonated, ripping the battlesuit to shreds.

  Andy opened the comm. “Blue Leader, this is designate Blue Thirteen. My advice is to disengage and log off. Playtime’s over.” He got the battlesuit moving again, flipping up the laser sights and taking out two missiles that streaked for him.

  The missiles exploded and rained fragments against his steel hide, but damaged little except the exterior. Blue Leader’s response was way less than gentlemanly.

  “Guy’s going to need his mouth washed out with soap,” Andy commented. He moved deeper into the forest and away from the castle grounds. Mounted men had ridden into the inner courtyards, but he knew they wouldn’t stand a chance against the heavily armored and armed Space Marines.

  He opened a leg hatch and spread an arc of anticavalry mines. Trees bent and cracked, pulled free of the ground as he thundered through.

  Less than a minute later one of the pursuing Space Marines stepped on the group of mines. “I’m hit! I’m hit!” the pilot squalled. “My legs are gone!”

  “You’re a sitting duck, pal,” Andy said grimly, tracking the action in his rearviews. He swiveled the shoulder-mounted cannon and fired. Two missiles hammered the battlesuit’s neck joints, triggering the automatic eject sequence.

  The battlesuit’s head twisted into position, the chin cutting a deep furrow into the earth. Then the top of the head fragmented, releasing the cockpit inside and shooting it skyward.

  “Kind of like a skeet trap,” Andy said, grinning tightly. He brought the arm laser online and got target lock. His initial burst slagged the escape pod before the parachutes ever popped.

  Mark paused in his investigation of the circuit paths of the Bessel Mid-Town Hotel’s computer paths. He’d ended up tracking dozens of dead ends and was getting more than a little frustrated. Data wasn’t flowing in any direction, totally stalled out now, and gave him no reference points at all. But somewhere in there, he knew, there had to be a virus that allowed whoever had popped strands on the security system access.