She wasn’t being overly dramatic. She knew the stakes; she’d faced them before. And the world, such as it was, was still here.
The guard stirred and his breathing changed rhythm. She froze and watched the guard’s eyes, which were moving with quick jerks under his eyelids. She relaxed a bit. He was in REM sleep. The rapid eye movement indicated a deep slumber. The guy was dreaming.
Standard operational training simply suggested that if a target was in REM it would likely take a more than a slight sound to wake him. But Ariel knew better. It was always risky to make such an assumption with a trained guard—some of them took that martial arts sleep-with-one-eye-open crap a lot more seriously than their pay grade warranted. Even if the guy wasn’t a zen master—the drool pooling on his pillow belied any such thought—the fact that he was dreaming could actually give him a more heightened sense of awareness and alertness if he was wakened. It depended on what he was doing in his dream.
If Security Guard Bob was fighting assassins in his dream state or even replaying some ridiculous first-person video shooter in his mind and he woke to see Ariel standing over him with a garrote about to slip over his head, she might just end up being the next target fixed on by Bob’s preprogrammed progression of muscle memories. In that case, she could be in for a bit of a struggle and Darla and the others would be forced to take the centrifuge facility without her backup.
If mouth-breathing Bob was dreaming of sunset beaches and an unrealistically non-gritty roll in the sand with Lara Croft or the playmate of the month or the girl (or boy) next door, well, then he might be relaxed and semi-sleepy and easy to take out. All it would take would be a quick snap of the garrote followed by a knee to the groin just to make sure Bob didn’t fantasize through his death throes thinking they were something a little bit more orgasmic and a whole lot less permanent.
Bob smiled in his sleep, displaying a gap-toothed, tobacco-stained grin that was anything but sexy in her view, but was no doubt tantalizing to the bimbos in his dream fantasy. She rolled her eyes and gave in to the logic of the optimal attack vector—the femme fatale, Mata Hari, the buxom ninja, whatever. She slipped down the zipper on her jumpsuit to show more cleavage than someone this ugly could ever hope to score in real life, tousled her hair, and gave a big bedroom smile as she sidled up to her target on the bunk. “That’s it, baby,” she cooed softly as she stroked his cheek with one fingernail, mindful of his eyelids, ignoring any movement she sensed south of the border. “I’m going to take real good care of you, baby,” she continued as she reached behind his head, pulling it toward her breasts as she slipped the garrote over it.
She tightened the garrote with a jerk. It cut into Bob’s neck, sending a spurt of blood flying onto her chest. She let the wire slack off a bit for just a couple seconds, enough so the guy could take in what was happening, but not enough so that he could scream or take any action. Bad guys didn’t deserve to die in their sleep.
“Dreamtime’s over, baby.” Ariel whispered huskily, snapping the wire tight again until it hit bone. Bob’s body convulsed in a spasm of shudders and his lifeblood flowed freely as Ariel’s jumpsuit and Bob’s pillow competed as to how much warm, red stickiness they could soak up.
Ariel retrieved her garrote and stood to go, not bothering to zip up her jumpsuit or attempt to clean off the blood. It would take time. Besides, her outlandish appearance might give her just the advantage of a fraction of a second she might need at the centrifuge facility. People, even trained professionals, sometimes hesitate when confronted with a half-naked chick covered with blood.
What could she say? Guys were horny and stupid at the genetic level.
Suddenly Ariel heard the wail of an alarm and the clatter of automatic weapons fire in the direction of the centrifuge facility’s control room. Five—no six—guns, all of them deeper and louder than the machine pistols her squad carried.
Damn it! Someone had bollixed up the intel on this op in a major way. Stacy had already paid the price. She would bet that Beth, Gail, and Darla were in the line of fire because of the same screw-up right now.
Ariel broke into a run as she headed for the others, her adrenaline surging not only from the emergency, not only from her training, not only from the killing moment she had just experienced, but from rage at the morons back at HQ that had put her in this fouled-up situation with the fate of the world on the line and no cavalry coming over the hill.
She was tired of this crap. She was tired of the responsibility of saving the world yet again. She longed to retire from the service (assuming they would let her) and just relax, earn a few bucks from some meaningless job where nobody got killed if you had a bad day and you could go home and watch television or play a computer game if you got bored. She wanted the good life; instead she had a meaningful life.
Life sucked, but there wouldn’t be any more of it in her homeland soon if she didn’t take out this centrifuge facility tonight.
Arnie ordered a jumbo hotdog and the largest cola the place served, tapping his foot as the food service personnel moved in slow motion to fulfill his request and take his money. Just as he finished paying and headed for the condiment station, his best friend, Dennis, tapped him on the shoulder.
“So, how’s it going?” asked Dennis, his eyes wide with expectation. “Paragon level. Gotta be exciting!”
“It’s intense, but nothing I can’t handle,” replied Arnie. He slathered his dog with a long squirt of red and a smear of yellow as he gave his friend a brief recap.
Dennis looked stunned. “You gotta be kidding, right?”
Arnie shrugged and took a huge bite of the juicy, undercooked dog. “Uh-uh,” he mumbled, his mouth full.
“So, let me make sure I’ve got this right,” rambled Dennis. “You’re roleplaying a group of gamers who get sucked into the game they’re playing and become prehistoric barbarians who kill a giant mastodon and then are saved from an asteroid-impact induced wildfire by a time-traveling scout who recruits people who are about to die so they can help save the world from time paradoxes who sends you undercover on a long space voyage where you get bored and go play a roleplaying game on the holographic virtual realizer—what a holo- deck rip-off!—where you’re a female Mossad commando raiding an Iranian nuclear processing facility?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” said Arnie, taking a long swig of his cola.
“So, whaddya do for that, switch accents from Midwestern gamer to prehistoric barbarian to futuristic time-traveling space dude to sexy Israeli girl assassin?”
Arnie rolled his eyes and popped the last of the hot dog into his mouth, but not before a huge blob of ketchup and mustard plopped onto his gaudy Hawaiian shirt, right where the triangle of chest met buttons. He ignored the mess. “That’s what some of the players are doing,” he said between chews.
“You’re not doing that? You always do accents, dude! It’s your trademark.”
Arnie swallowed. “Oh, I’m doing an accent. I’m just doing the accent of a Midwestern gamer trying to sound like a prehistoric barbarian trying to sound like a futuristic time-traveling space dude trying to sound like a sexy Israeli girl assassin. You gotta stay in character, man.”
“Dude!” shouted Dennis, giving Arnie a big high five. “Of course you are! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GenCon rocks!”
“Yeah,” replied Arnie. “Look, I gotta get back to the game. We’re just on a quick bio break.”
“No problem, dude, but wait just a second.You dripped ketchup all down the front of your shirt. Lemme get you some napkins or something. I can loan you a T-shirt I just scored in the dealer room.”
Arnie looked down at his chest, opening two buttons and smearing the glop across his pale, hairy man-boobs. “Nah, leave it there. I gotta go gack me some security guards and this look is totally in character.”
RESCUING THE ELF PRINCESS AGAIN
Ed Greenwood
The time for skulking in shadows was done. At last. “Longblade! A longblade seek
s your blood!” Shouting my battle cry, I spun my sword around my head and sprinted into the throne room.
Kraug Blood of Seven Chiefs, our battle leader, was already bellowing bloody multispecies murder and hacking his way through the stout wood of the main double doors, hewing the blue plate armor of the broad-shouldered knights guarding the doors with like ease. Ironclad arms and heads fell severed, bouncing, as his moaning, magically flickering Sword of the Dragon’s Fang sliced and danced.
Saeralil the Velvet Viper—she who jested with me daily, fondly and tirelessly, our usual yammerings echoing two snarling cats—was already leaping down from the balcony, torchlight glimmering on her glossy black catsuit as well as the knives she was hurling as they spun sharp and whirling death across the high-vaulted chamber.
More knights fell, her knives in their faces. Behind them the tapestries on the far side of the hall billowed out, aglow with holy fire, as the two stout priests of our band advanced, forcing the heavy fabrics to split and yield, flooding the great room with golden light and silhouetting the evil king, Thulsrand Droum the Usurper, in his high-spired crown, as he snarled in fear and ran right at me.
Wiser for perusing the plans of Dawnspire Castle that long-dead dwarven stonemasons had left graven on their own tomb in the Temple of the Hammer God, I had come through the one door Droum had thought was secret. His way out—if he ever needed it—into the dark labyrinth of hidden passages that spread spiderweb-like through the thick castle walls.
Secret no longer.
Now, when his very life was in peril, I alone barred his escape.
His imperial face was frantic as he came, and he hesitated not an instant. His arms swept up, and his pet slayers streaked out of his sleeves.
Two deadly flying snakes came darting at me, jaws gaping.
I danced to the left and sliced back to my right, only to pull my steel back beneath an arching serpent that hissed in triumph, turn my blade’s edge upward, and slice up into the rafters, hard.
Halves of severed serpent tumbled, shrieking. Gore sprayed, and through it plunged the other flying fangs, arcing in the air to swerve in and bite at my face.
Nor was the Usurper idle. Serpent-bladed daggers were in both his hands now, their sharp curves menacing me as I rushed toward them. To the left again I dashed, to let him see freedom and choose to burst past me and head for that door.
He saw, decided, and ran on, wild hope rising.
My blood-drenched blade batted his last pet slayer aside into a swift and deadly curl in the air that brought it thrusting back at me, fangs still wide.
Where it met the edge of my sword, swung with all the strength of my shoulders in a great cleaving slash that lopped off the slayer’s head and cut on through the thrashing and the gore to bite deep into the back of the passing Usurper’s head.
The crown died in a shower of sparks, and Droum plunged headlong—and headless—to feebly kicking oblivion on the tiled floor.
He slid on his sobbing face almost as far as the door he’d been so desperately seeking before Saeralil pounced on him, her knives flashing in deft haste. Severed fingers, the magic rings on them winking into life just moments too late, spun in all directions ere she started in on the deadly magics at his belt and cod piece.
Not that I stopped to watch her fun. Though my fellow Brothers of the Brandished Bright Blade were busily wading through more knights and lesser guards than any rightful king would ever have needed, I had felled the great villain—and the rescue we had come here for was rightfully mine.
With steel clashing on steel all around me and the tiled floor running red with gore, I was past the throne and into the eerie blue glow beyond it in a trice, running hard.
To claim the prize.
She was chained to a great stone block of an altar by wrists and ankles and writhing in her gentle torment; the fell chanting had been well underway before we’d fought our way within hearing.
The elf princess, her bared body blue in the might of the flickering magic, stared up at me with eyes that were dark pools of longing and thankfulness. Her parted lips welcomed me.
Again.
I gave this new princess my best wolf-smile, and applied myself briskly to the task at hand. I leaned low over her, breast to breast, to swing my sword in two great slashes, sweeping aside and toppling the braziers that were leaking blue smoke all around her. Then I brought my blade down hard on her chains, setting my teeth as its living metal shrieked and the sparks flew.
In barely another breath I was done; she was free.
Kraug—roaring out his glee as he beheaded battalions of knights not four strides away—might have mounted her there and then, but I only gathered her up off the altar with one arm and raised my sword to the rafters in triumph with the other.
I was in armor that was the very devil to get off in any sort of hurry, even with skilled assistants, I happen to prefer my own kind—humans—and I also happen to be a straight gal who wants to feel the sweaty embraces of guys.
The watching gamers would just have to live with their disappointment.
I gave the rafters my best battle cry, because the judges love that.
Then I bent my head and kissed the princess long and deeply, until she moaned in my arms and moved against me, because a lot of the judges love that, too.
She was glued to me, her tongue deep in my mouth, and sucking at me like she wanted to swallow all of me, right down her throat, when the lights came up.
It took most of my strength to break free, but the grins we gave each other were real.
Victory to the Brothers of the Brandished Bright Blade!
Nicely done, all around. When we’re playing, it’s all about the game. Yet when the world blazes up bright white to tell us the scenario is done, it’s all about getting every last point.
So the game you get to play will be even better next year.
“Once again, Lady Laurautha Longblade resists the charms of an elf princess,” Rularion murmured. “Just think how much more we’d get, if just once—just once—she did not.”
Emyndriel shrugged, her great dark eyes intent on the shifting glows rising from the spellwebs she was manipulating so deftly. “Humans are . . . humans. One works with what one has. Greed, Rularion, is what—”
“Got us here in the first place,” the younger male elf chanted in unison with her, exasperation strong in his voice. “I am well aware of that, Emyn. I merely express a strengthening desire—”
“Your desires,” the older elf observed calmly, “are swayed all too readily by those of the humans. You’d best go back to the tables where they roll dice and try to dream and leave the real dreamhelm stages to older, jaded, more decrepit elders.”
Rularion’s dark and immediate flush brought the faintest of smiles to her lips, though she did not look up.
“Oh, yes,” she added meaningfully. “The spellwebs hear everything, and even old and foolish ears can hear what they pass on.” Both of her own delicate, long-pointed ears turned toward him then, as if to underscore her reproof.
“Besides,” a voice that thrilled him with its throaty music said from just behind Rularion, making the young elf lordling stiffen and flush a rather different hue. “Rularion Indlithel is our best table venturemaster by far. Oh, elves will always sing of the glorious dead, of the shining moments of yestereve, but what matters is the now—and here, at this convention, and the last two DancingDellCons before it, your acting and the adventures you ran made human eyes shine around your tables, and human tongues wag eagerly in eager reminiscence after all was done. You are the master of the tables, Rularion. Go now and rule them all—and fret not over the foibles of one she-human just being a human. She can’t help what she is, know you.”
“Even as we can’t help what we are,” Rularion said softly, and strode out, head high, cloaked in the childish satisfaction of reducing a chamber full of his elders to somber silence.
“Lady Laurautha Longblade,” a disgusted voice said out of th
e crowd of gamers peering up at the glowing board. “Again.”
“Oh, lose it, Cliff! You like to watch her sweat—you know you do—and she has to shuck that armor off sometime!”
“Yeah,” one of the stoutest of the bearded men with fragments of potato chips adorning their T-shirts leered. “And I brought a can opener, just in case she needs help!”
Amid some short barks of half-hearted laughter, everyone stared up at the board again. More points were appearing, the glowing letters racing across the angled darkness above them like fire.
More scores, and higher totals, though the usual names topped the rankings, with the Brothers of the Brandished Bright Blade above them all.
“Cool effects, this year,” someone commented. “Love the new board.”
There was a murmur of general agreement, before someone else quoted the slogan even nongamers knew. “Elf Incorporated has the magic!”
The murmurs sounded either weary or sarcastic, this time—but not one of them sounded a note of disagreement.
“Who won the Long Crawl?” someone asked. “Don’t see it up there.”
“Still not done. The Dwarf Toss is just coming, in, see? Huh. Chris and Lisa took it.”
“Oh? What happened to the team that always—”
A brazier above the board suddenly gouted green-and-yellow fire, flames that were greeted with eager oohs from the clustered gamers.
“What’s that mean?” a young newbie asked inevitably.
“Another round of Storming the Castle done and they need reinforcements,” someone explained, pointing at the sudden rush of overweight men toward a certain doorway. “Ever played dreamhelm games before? They’ll rent you a sword!”
“Battleaxe!” Another gamer suggested loudly. “Swords get all tangled up in tentacles, and there’re always tentacles in the late rounds!” He sounded blood- thirstily gleeful.
Gamer Fantastic Page 5
