Gamer Army

by Trent Reedy

  Rogan figured this whole facility was supposed to be like one of those nuclear bomb shelters he’d seen in Fallout. From here, government officials could communicate with survivors on the surface.

  He carefully checked the whole room over, searching for the Velox Mercury X, watching the clock, worrying about when the real Lieutenant Ericson would be reporting for duty.

  Jackie quickly descended to level three. In the dim standby lighting, she headed for the switch to light up another plain concrete box, this one lined with workbenches and shelves along the walls, a larger worktable in the center. Computers and other scientific tools everywhere. Instantly, her viper’s onboard scanners began identifying hardware and equipment. Microscopes, electron microscopes, burners, beakers, graduated cylinders, hundreds of different chemicals, scales, thermometers, circuit boards and electronic components of all kinds, charts with complex figures, computers in every corner, and some custom devices her own computer didn’t recognize. The lab was a scientist’s dream, but it wasn’t Jackie’s dream, because even after searching every cupboard, the Velox was nowhere to be found. She sighed and hurried to search the adjacent workshop, worried she was taking too long and the alarm would sound any moment.

  Shaylyn didn’t think but cranked back her fist and cracked the real Sergeant Benton in the jaw. His head whipped to the side and he flew back into the wall. Shay was about to send an internal comms call to the others and run to stun Captain Star in case she was watching it all on camera, but although Sergeant Benton wasn’t the biggest man, he was tough, because he came back with a hard jab to Shay’s chest.

  A sickening crunch-crack. Sergeant Benton stepped back, clutching his hand, his face twisted in pain, his thumb and fingers at horrific wrong angles.

  In all the games she’d ever played, Shaylyn had shot people, killed people, cut enemies down with swords, exploded whole buildings, but she had never been in so realistic a fight. And judging from the way she felt, punching this NPC, physically throwing her fist, her game suit putting slight pressure on her knuckles, the micromotors in her suit abruptly stopping the forward motion of her swing when her punch hit home, she never ever wanted to be in a real fight.

  The hatch to the armory was closed, but would that be enough to muffle the man’s eventual, inevitable screams? She doubted it. And though there was a chance Captain Star wasn’t watching the armory on camera right now, there would be no chance she wouldn’t hear the shouts.

  Shaylyn had no choice. She had to drop her disguise so that she could power her weapons and stun this man.

  The real Sergeant Benton’s expression changed from pain to shock as the computer-generated duplicate of Sergeant Benton digi-melted away, revealing a sleek, aerodynamic robot that raised its arm and fired one blue-white electrocrackling stun pulse.

  “All right, Murphy, you can get some sleep now.” The real Lieutenant Ericson spoke while closing and latching the hatch behind him. He turned to face his doppelgänger. “I’ll take over from—What the—”

  The real Lieutenant Ericson froze as Rogan’s digital disguise faded out to reveal the Ranger viper. In the next moment Rogan dropped Ericson with an NLEP, then sprinted for the security room.

  He made it to the end of the tunnel and cranked the wheel to unlatch the hatch to the security room, knowing it was already taking him too long, that Captain Star would have more than enough time to call for help.

  But when he rushed into the security room, he found Flyer standing over Star’s unconscious form. “Way ahead of you, Ranger. As usual. Any luck in the communications room?”

  “No,” Rogan said. “I checked every inch of the place twice. The target isn’t in there.”

  “Engineer?” Flyer said. “What d’you got?”

  “I’m still searching,” Engineer said. “There’s a lot of equipment down here. The rooms are huge.”

  One of the panels at the security station beeped. “Excalibur Base, Excalibur Base, this is tower security.” Ranger and Flyer looked at each other for a moment. “Excalibur Base, this is tower security. Captain Star, please respond.”

  “We have to answer them,” Flyer said.

  “How?! They want to talk to the captain that you just stunned unconscious,” Rogan said, panic swelling up inside him.

  “Use the PNC!” Engineer said. “That’s what it’s designed for!”

  “Right.” Rogan crossed his fingers and hurried to flip through the menus on his HUD. “Shay, head down there to help her.”

  “Excalibur Base, respond or we’ll be forced to declare Code Black and initiate final emergency security protocol.”

  “Hurry!” Flyer said, heading down the ladder.

  Rogan found the right section of the menu and activated his Polyadaptive Nanotech Cloak to become Captain Star. “Just go help Jackie find the transmitter thing,” he said in the captain’s British accent. “I’ve got this.”

  He hoped he had it. He searched the board for what might be the transmit button. Finally he guessed and flipped a switch. “This is Excalibur Base.”

  A sigh came over the open channel. “What is your status?”

  “Everything is fine,” Rogan said. How could he sound more official? “We just had our regular shift change. Is there a problem?” That was good, Rogan thought—pretending to be concerned about security would make it seem less likely that anything was going wrong down here. He smiled. Most of the games Rogan played were all about shooting or racing. Hardly any of them had complicated interactive voice features like this.

  “We have a breach. One of our guards didn’t check in on time. We found him knocked unconscious in the White Tower. We’re going to Condition Two. It doesn’t look like the intruder has infiltrated Excalibur Base, but protocol calls for an extra squad to be sent down to reinforce you.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rogan tried. “I’m watching the cameras, and nothing’s out of the ordinary.”

  “I know. But you know how it is. Orders are orders. And it’s better to be overcautious than unprepared.”

  “Right,” Rogan said. “Um, I’ll have some tea on for your men.”

  The man on the line laughed. “Understood, Excalibur Base. Tower security, out.”

  As soon as Rogan had clicked out of the call with security, he looked up at one of the screens and saw the armed soldiers enter the elevator. “Shay,” Rogan said. “Forget going down to level three. In less than a minute, we’re going to have a whole army squad down here.”

  “On it,” Flyer said.

  “Jackie,” Rogan said. “They’re onto us. We’re running out of time. Have you found it yet?”

  A trembling, cold fear cut up through Jacqueline. She’d searched the laboratory and workshop very carefully but had found nothing. What was this? In the entire history of the Zelda games, over two dozen adventures, there had never been a dungeon harder than this. Was she supposed to search for secret passages?

  “It’s not down here,” Jackie said to the others. “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “Keep looking,” Flyer called back. “You must have missed it. It has to be down there.”

  “I’m going to need some help,” Jackie said.

  “I’m a little busy up here!” Flyer shouted.

  Having floated down the ladder shaft from the security center on level one to the library on the second floor and then flown through the kitchen and into the tunnel to the screening room, Shaylyn arrived just as the elevator doors opened and seven soldiers in camouflaged uniforms stepped out.

  “What is that thing?!” one soldier shouted.

  A second soldier wasted no time with words but drew what Shay’s computers identified as a Glock 17 9mm handgun and pulled the trigger, the shots exploding louder than a truckload of dynamite inside the tightly enclosed concrete chamber.

  A round hit her shoulder, like someone had punched her. She fired two NLEPs, stunning one soldier but missing the other.

  The whole squad fired. Her game suit made it fee
l as though dozens of hammers were hitting her.

  “Where’s Healer when you need him?” Shay said to herself. She flew at the squad feetfirst, kicking two of the soldiers in the head, stunning another two as she passed. She zapped one of the last two standing, but the other soldier smashed right into her. He would have tackled her, but she flew up into the air, spun around, and slammed him into the concrete wall, breaking his hold on her.

  He fell to the floor and reached for his weapon, but Shay stunned him before he could shoot. She took two more rounds to the back from the two she had kicked before she whipped around to stun them as well.

  “It’s an attack! Get to the armory!” a man shouted from deeper in the compound.

  “The gunshots woke up the barracks,” Shay called to the others. “They’re on the way up to level one.”

  “Got it covered,” Ranger said.

  Jacqueline had checked over most of the generator room. Nothing but pipes, filter chambers, and electrical conduit. She shook her head. She hated getting stumped on games. Once she had nearly thrown her Xbox at the wall when playing Halo 10 and was unable to figure out how to activate a bridge over a deep canyon. When playing at home, she could at least pause the game and look up the strategy guide online. No option like that here. Worse, the other two were handling all the hard stuff, and she was on her own, down here, accomplishing nothing. If she didn’t start doing something, and soon, she’d be going home after this round.

  “One more scan,” she said to herself, switching her vision to infrared in case it might help her recognize something she hadn’t noticed before. If the target device were transmitting, it might pop hot on her scanners.

  Giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the flood of colors in her field of vision—whites and oranges for warm objects, down through purple and deep blue for cooler temperatures—she didn’t locate the target, but she did see a big square in the wall at the back of the room. It was a yellowish green, starkly different from the blue that made up the rest of the concrete wall.

  Back in normal vision, she felt around the edge of the square, and there it was, a small piece of concrete that swung open on a hinge to grant access to a handle, which Jackie pulled, to open a door to a secret vault.

  And inside, on a shelf in plain sight, was the Velox Mercury X.

  “I found it!” she called to the others. She picked up the device and started her way back. She was in the game once again.

  “That’s great!” Rogan said when he heard Engineer’s news. He and Flyer had just stunned the last of the base personnel. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Excalibur Base, this is tower security.” The voice came over the speaker, more urgent this time.

  Rogan checked the feed for the camera covering the chapel in the White Tower on the surface. Three heavily armed and armored squads were staged there now, a few of them carrying High-Energy Armor-Piercing lasers. Even if the three vipers rushed out of the elevator, all guns blazing, they’d be melted down in seconds by all that firepower concentrated on the small elevator space. “Hey there, gamers,” Rogan said. “I think time’s up. They’re onto us. A ton of soldiers at the gate. Anyone have any ideas about how to get out of here?”

  “Excalibur Base, this is tower security. Our squad did not comply with orders to immediately check in. Standard operating procedure requires we assume you are compromised. Be advised, we are commencing final emergency protocol.”

  Rogan called to the others, “They just radioed down here, saying something about final emergency protocol.”

  “What’s that?” Flyer said.

  The piercing Oh-ooooh-gah! Oh-ooooh-gah! wail of an emergency Klaxon filled the confined chambers of the entire compound. A recording of a calm female voice came over the speakers. “Warning. This facility is compromised and scheduled for flooding in sixty seconds. Evacuate immediately and surrender to security personnel on the surface. Warning. This facility is compromised and scheduled for flooding in fifty-one seconds. Evacuate immediately …”

  “OK, I figured out what the final emergency protocol is!” Rogan said.

  “Yeah, no kidding!” Flyer said. “Everybody get to the elevator!”

  Rogan started down the ladder from level one to level two. “They have the elevator covered. They’ll blast us as soon as the doors open.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Flyer asked.

  “Warning! This facility is compromised and scheduled for flooding in twenty-six seconds. Evacuate immediately and surrender …”

  “The generator!” Engineer shouted. “Get down to level three right now!”

  “We can’t go deeper!” Flyer said. “We have to—”

  “Now!” Engineer shrieked.

  Rogan had joined Flyer on level two. He grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the library and through the barracks to the hatch in the floor in the back of the latrine. A ladder there led down to level three.

  “… scheduled for flooding in eleven seconds. Evacuate immediately and …”

  “The base is under the Thames,” Flyer said as she and Rogan reached level three. “The whole place will flood, like, instantly.”

  When they reached the final room on the bottom level, they found Engineer on top of the semitrailer-sized electrical generator. She opened a hatch on her chest, pulled out a glob of gray-white clay, placed the Velox Mercury X device inside the cavity, and resealed her chest. She didn’t waste a second but fashioned the clay into a ribbon around a large pipe above the generator. Before it was halfway around, and just as he and Flyer joined her atop the giant machine, she pulled them both down so they all lay flat and away from the pipe.

  “… scheduled for flooding in five, four …”

  Shrapnel blasted everywhere.

  Engineer pointed to the shredded remains of the pipe near the ceiling. “Up the exhaust duct—”

  “Flooding.”

  White water everywhere. Flyer soared up through the narrow exhaust pipe, the raging flood shooting up right behind her.

  Room filled. Rogan upside down. Head smacked the wall, the floor, the generator. His body seized up hard, his game suit locking in position while the current bashed him around.

  Rogan fought the urge to hold his breath. The game simulator threw his body around and the images inside his VR helmet completed the illusion, but he forced himself to remember he wouldn’t drown. He was in the arena. There wasn’t really any water.

  “Can you hear me? You guys?” Flyer called to them.

  “Hang on!” Rogan called back. “Water’s rushing around in here like crazy!”

  He deployed his close combat claws and punched a steel piece of machinery as hard as he could, piercing deep and stopping his tumbling movement. He was in one piece, but Jackie hadn’t been so lucky. She’d been closer to the exploding pipe and she didn’t have the kind of armor with which Ranger was equipped. Her leg was sheared off at the thigh. Pockmarks from shrapnel scored through her back. Her right arm was twisted around and useless. Right then, Rogan missed Healer’s confident I can fix that.

  “Ro?! Jackie?!” Flyer tried again.

  Rogan spotted the exhaust vent in the ceiling above. Would his grappling cables even work underwater? There was no better time to test them out. Reaching up with his left arm, he fired the cable, making a secure connection partway up the shaft. He was anchored with the cable but knew that when he pulled his claws out of the machinery in front of him, the water would push him all around. He had to hurry. If the damage to Engineer was allowing water to get to the Velox Mercury X, the mission could be in big trouble.

  He fought the current, trying to adjust his shot with his other cable to compensate for the force of the water. He fired, and the line whipped out, catching Engineer in the back. A second later, he retracted both cables, pulling the remains of Engineer and himself up to the exhaust vent. They bumped around at the torn-up edge of the shaft before he maneuvered both of them into the narrow space. When he had pulled Engineer up next to him
, her arm locked around his neck.

  “I’m barely functional,” Engineer said. “But I can hold on.”

  Rogan looked up the exhaust conduit and spotted Flyer coming back down. “I’ve got Jackie. She has the target. Get to exfil elevation!”

  Flyer shot up out of the tube. Rogan put his exfil rockets on overdrive and blasted off right behind her. A few red-hot laser beams cut across the black of the London night sky as the three laser vipers soared up above the ring of police cars and emergency vehicles, lights flashing around the Tower of London, but the three of them were clear in seconds.

  “Good job, gamers!” X said. “The StarScreamer is inbound to recover you.”

  Woo!” Rogan couldn’t help exclaiming as he removed his VR helmet at the end of the game. His flight harness disengaged automatically from his game suit and retracted to the ceiling, and he took a moment to get settled on the solid floor of the arena.

  The girls removed their helmets too.

  Shay shook out her blue-streaked hair, almost as if she were trying to get water out of it at the pool.

  Rogan laughed. As convincing as the game illusion was, he’d expected to be dripping wet as well. Instead he was only a little sweaty from running around in the warm game suit. “That was awesome! I’ve played some flooded castles in Lost Cities and had to swim in Call of Duty.” He sidestepped a cambot that was already buzzing around him and went to join the others. “But when that room flooded?! Whoa! I’ve always wondered what it felt like to take a spin in the washing machine.” He laughed. The other two laughed with him, but Rogan noticed Jackie wasn’t as enthusiastic. He wondered if she worried about being cut from the tournament since, once again, she’d been damaged so badly at the end. He had kind of saved her, and therefore saved the mission since the target was inside her viper’s empty explosives chamber, so he was pretty sure he was safe.