“They’re just … gamers,” Hector said, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut. He’d wanted to say ‘friends’ but he wasn’t entirely comfortable with Chaz either. Still, Chaz was a Spartan – part of his clan – so he had to stick up for him. And Sabrah was… well… nice.
“What would your father say about such friends?”
“He wouldn’t judge them by the way they look,” he spat back, knowing it was true. His dad always said people were all the same and what mattered was on the inside, and Hector believed him – mostly.
“Don’t get smart with me,” his mother shot back.
Hector fought to control his temper, and took a different approach. “Sabrah makes really good grades, Mom. She doesn’t use drugs. She never gets in trouble. And her tongue isn’t pierced. At least, I don’t think it is. She’s really, really quiet. Her parents just divorced and I think she uses the game as an outlet. Sort of like me.”
It didn’t work. His mother shook her head quickly. “I don’t want you hanging around her. Or that Martin boy. They’re trouble. Both of them.”
“You want me to kick them out?” Hector snapped, and moved toward the door. “I’ll go tell them to leave right now.”
“No. But they don’t have to come back!”
“I’m sure they won’t want to after I tell them about this,” said Hector, and stormed down the hall.
“Don’t you dare!” his mom warned after him. He wouldn’t tell Sabrah or Chaz what his mother said, but not for her sake, but because it would be cruel to them. No matter what they looked like or had done, they didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Nobody did. A pang of guilt shot through him, but he pushed it down. Almost nobody did.
In the bonus room, Pappous was entertaining his friends as he always did – by telling stories from his youth. Hector had heard this one about five hundred times. “Anna was holding the goat by the tail, trying to keep it from falling down the well,” he was saying. “And I could hear it echoing out of the hole, ‘baaa, baaa, baaa.’ By the time we got the goat out, her nice white dress was covered in mud. Ruined. It was a long time before she let me forget that one!” Everybody laughed as he finished the tale. Hector’s eyes lingered on Sabrah and Chaz. Sure, they looked different. They did in the game too, but it didn’t matter there. Just one more reason video games were superior to real life. You could be yourself.
“I guess everyone’s here,” Hector said loudly, and turned on his game console. He paused, taking in the arrangement of bodies. Sabrah was sitting alone on the loveseat. Tyra was on the couch sandwiched between Deion and Chaz, who were competing for her attention. Hector rolled his eyes and she shrugged with a wry smile. The contrast between Tyra and Chaz couldn’t have been more stark; charcoal and ivory. Hector gladly seated himself next to Sabrah.
“Did you get the tech?” he asked Deion.
“Yup. He’s good,” Deion replied. “You are going to like him.”
“I hope so,” answered Hector. “Because we really need one. Just wish he lived around here.”
“He wouldn’t come anyway,” Deion told him. “He plays on a computer most of the time.”
Hector would prefer to know him, but it didn’t matter. If he was a friend of Deion’s, that was good enough for him. It was well-known that all the best techs used touch screens for fabricating.
Pappous was poking around on the Earth map feature of Omega Wars. “Truly amazing,” he said with his splendid Greek accent. “I would not have believed such a thing was possible when I was your age back in Greece. But I must leave you now. Goodnight, young people.”
“Oh, are you going?” asked Sabrah.
He smiled at her. “I’m an old man. I need my rest, and it is getting late.”
“We’re headed to Alanya,” said Deion. “Phase one of taking over the world. Sure you don’t want to hang around?”
Pappous laughed. “It worked for Alexander the Great. And I will see you all soon enough,” he said and excused himself.
As he was leaving, Helen pushed in with Shah and some friends. “We’re going to watch a movie,” she said in a commanding tone. “You’re going to have to find somewhere else.”
So it was bossy sister time, Hector thought. “We’re having a LAN party,” he fired back. “Mom already said it was okay. You’re going to have to find somewhere else.”
Helen opened her mouth to object when Shah said, “We can go over to my house. We got a seventy-two incher.” She closed her mouth and shot Hector a wicked look, then snorted and walked out. But Shah lingered for a moment. “Omega Wars, huh? Ever play with my brother?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hector dismissively.
“Hey, Shah,” said Sabrah. “Thank your mom again for helping me out the other day. She’s really nice.”
Shah smiled. “Sure. She enjoyed it, too. She said to come over any time.”
Hector looked back and forth between them thinking about what his mother had said a few minutes before. Sanjar’s mom accepted Sabrah without question. And she was the Muslim. His mom was the one who needed to grow up, not him.
“You should invite Sanjar,” Sabrah suggested when they’d gone.
“Do you remember what I told you at school yesterday?” Hector asked.
“You weren’t at school yesterday.”
“Exactly. But Sand-jar was.”
“That was your fault as much as it was his,” she scoffed.
“Then he should have gotten suspended, too. He didn’t. So no invite. Period. End of story.”
“Can we just get started?” snapped Deion. “We don’t need Sanjar.” Hector looked at him in surprise. “Wanna bag me some thorks,” Deion added, putting a grin on his face. More in character for his merc-playing friend.
Ω
Waking up in Omega Wars was the worst part for Hector. If your character had been killed while you were away, you were greeted with a grisly scene of a dead body crawling with maggots. Only then did you go into the replication tank. But their new base was fairly secluded and the Spartans had taken precautions. It was good they had. Two of the sentry mines had been tripped and there were dead thorks on the floor and in the water. In just a few moments, Izaak was waiting along with Darxhan, Veyron, Rada, T-Reg, c’Irith, and the Germans.
Deion sent his tech friend, Alkindi, a text message with the ID number of the slipgate replicator they’d moved from the basement. A moment later, he appeared from out of the darkness, a cyborg with pale skin and ocular implants over one eye. His left arm was entirely mechanical. A pointed beard covered his chin but his head was hairless and shiny, giving him a vaguely satanic appearance. All in all, Hector thought, a very cool looking character.
“Welcome to clan Spartans, Alkindi,” said Izaak, trying to act like he imagined his father would have behaved when meeting people. “Any friend of Darxhan is a friend of mine.” He introduced each of them, then asked, “Are you ready for the oath?”
“Oath?” said Alkindi. “Seriously?” Hector thought the voice was vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place it. Someone from school perhaps.
“We all took it,” said Darxhan dismissively.
“I thought it was pretty cool,” said Rada.
“It’s just for the game,” added Izaak. “Makes it more real.”
Izaak recited the oath and Alkindi repeated after him. “I will never betray a fellow Spartan or fail to give aid when a fellow Spartan is in need. I will give my best efforts to all quests of the Spartan Clan and will in return receive the same from my clan brothers and sisters.”
“Cool,” said Alkindi. “I like it! And I have something for you for inviting me to join.” He produced an object about as long as a ruler, and gave it to Izaak. It was like a narrow wedge with a small, circular disc at the point.
“What do I do with it?” Izaak asked.
“It’s armor,” said Alkindi. “Goes on your weak-side forearm.”
Hector added it to Izaak as an armor item and tapped out the button sequ
ence to activate it. Instantly, the wedge sprang open from his forearm and expanded into a half circle of overlapping plates. A half-shield. Everyone called out in excitement about how cool it was.
“Activate it again,” laughed Alkindi. This time the shield expanded into a full circle. The background was a neutral gray-green that would blend in with almost any environment, but across the front was a deep-maroon, inverted ‘V’. Not shiny or particularly eye-catching, but clearly visible. “The Greek letter lambda,” said Alkindi. “The symbol of Lacedaemonia. Sparta. They had it on their shields, too.” The same button sequence sent it folding back into the tiny wedge-shaped vambrace on his arm. “Half open, you can use it with a two-handed weapon. Fully open, it gives great protection, but you can only use one-handed weapons.” Whoever this Alkindi was, Hector was already happy Deion had brought him in.
They set about transforming the old hotel into a proper base. Alkindi sent them into the town with a scavenging list and when they returned with cinderblocks and steel, he was already up on the roof setting up cameras.
Under his guidance, they walled off their ‘bedroom’ and installed a door with a code lock. Of course, determined enemies could always use explosives to blast it down, so they disguised it to look like the rock of the cave. As another layer of protection, Alkindi booby-trapped the door to explode if battered down. After that, the cyborg helped them get the sea doors open and then rigged up some gears to open them on command. He also started making plans to convert the nearby highway tunnel into a secure storage area for vehicles.
Izaak stood back in the cave looking out through the yawning opening. In the evening twilight, across a mile of water, he could see the Alanya peninsula and the wall that ran along the western rim, high above. Somewhere up there was his sniper rifle and a portable slipgate, and somehow they were going to have to get over there undetected. Land was just too dangerous, with the thorks, scarobs, and patrols. A boat would be hard to conceal on its approach across the water, and could easily give away the location of their base. Even at night, there were a host of Omega Wars technologies that could find them. If only …
“You know what would really be cool?” Izaak said. “A submarine.”
“A submarine?” exclaimed Alkindi. “Man, I’ve never built anything quite like that!”
“Do you think you could?”
Izaak was surprised when Alkindi didn’t say no. “I’d need a large tank for the pressure hull. An electric motor. Fusion cells. Some smaller tanks and pumps to use for ballast and trim. Control surfaces. And a way to navigate. A propeller could be hard to find. So, why do you need a submarine?”
Izaak pointed through the tunnel opening at the peninsula rising in the distance across the water. “There’s a portable slipgate up there, in a castle guarded by this wacky clan.”
“Portable?” said Alkindi with obvious interest. “You mean like an InstaGate. One time use?”
“No, I mean, like, portable. Like put it in your inventory and carry it around.”
Izaak had never met this Alkindi before, but he could almost see his cybernetic face frowning and grinning at the same time. “Well, how does it do the entropy dump? Slipgates have to have entropy radiators. You can’t have that in a little box.”
“I don’t know,” replied Izaak, suddenly realizing he’d never actually seen the box moved. But he was way too deep now to bring that up. “But it works. I’ve seen it.”
“Can you take it through a portal it opened?” Alkindi’s voice was now quivering with excitement.
“I wondered that too,” said Veyron. “It’d mean you could go anywhere, at any time.”
“We don’t know, but it is portable,” Izaak added. “It’s like a small box that opens a slipgate portal you can step through. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you’re here.” And, he thought, to get Vera back. “So I think the best way to get up there would be to approach the peninsula on the water and –”
“Izaak,” came T-Reg’s voice, over Hector’s headset. “Izzy, you there?” Alkindi had configured all their com devices so they could communicate more effectively in-game. Only Veyron didn’t have a direct line, since she couldn’t use tech.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Mercs,” she said. “In the town.”
Hector and the others scrambled up the stairs. “Where did they come from?” said Izaak, staring at the monitors in their new control room. There was a row of monitors, and the grainy image displayed by one of them looked down on two mercs making their way from the restored area into the twisting labyrinth of the ruined city.
“Kind of bothers me they show up the same time as we do,” said Darxhan.
“We’d better check it out,” said T-Reg.
“Is it safe at night?” asked c’Irith apprehensively. “I’ve seen a lot of scarobs around.”
“They’re solar powered,” said Alkindi. “They gather in buildings at night to conserve their energy. Thorks tend to hang out on the fringe, so we ought to be okay.”
Izaak kept staring at the monitor with the mercs. It was an overhead view that showed two mercs moving into the city. “Where’s that camera?” he finally asked. “It looks like it’s in the air?”
“It’s on a UAV,” answered Alkindi. “Unpiloted Aerial Veh- “
“I know what a UAV is!” Izaak exclaimed, cutting him off excitedly. He’d never heard of a UAV in Omega Wars. “Where’d you get it?”
“I built it.”
“Told you he was good,” said Deion, nodding across the bonus room at Hector’s stunned expression. “But I need you to focus, Hector. Bad guys in town. This isn’t a good sign.”
Izaak shook off the surprise and turned slowly, considering his options. Not only did they need to way in, they’d need a way out. “T-Reg, you, c’Irith, me, Veyron, BayernFC, and L3r0y. We’ll go and take a look at these mercs. Alkindi, you, Rada, and Darxhan put something together to come save us. I think we might need it. Everybody cool with that?”
Before they left, Alkindi showed Izaak how to display the UAV’s signal on his HUD then he led the party into the darkness making for the last known position of the mercs.
They worked their way through the ruins as quietly as possible, c’Irith scouting ahead and the mercs trailing to avoid detection. The dark shells of buildings and cars lined the streets. Izaak’s night vision turned the dark shells into submerged derelicts and he made course corrections with information from Alkindi’s UAV. That guy was amazing!
“So, what am I doing here, Izaak?” asked Veyron, creeping through the night at his side.
“What do you mean?” said Izaak.
“I have no skills. I’m not particularly stealthy. My weaponry stinks. Why do you guys put up with me?”
Because you’re incredibly cute, Hector thought. He glanced at her sitting next to him on the couch. Despite the beenie-like neural headset and wires, his heart fluttered. She glanced back, smiled, and said, “What?”
Hector went all squirmy inside and he felt himself blush. “Because you’re smart,” he said quickly. “Without you, all we do is kill people and break things.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, and turned back to the TV. “This whole time I’ve been concentrating, trying to access something, but all that ever happens is these stupid scarobs follow me around.”
Izaak looked and sure enough, there was a row of the propeller-levitated bots perched along the top edge of a building like vultures. “I don’t think they’re here for you,” he said. “They like the mercs.”
“Got to bring in the UAV,” Alkindi’s voice suddenly crackled over his headset.
“Now?” Izaak replied. “What’s the problem.”
“Fusion cell’s almost dead. It’s about to fall out of the sky. Do you have a fix on the mercs?”
Izaak studied the view displayed on his HUD. They were still a few streets over and he could see the mercs moving directly down a dark pathway between shattered buildings. “Got ‘em,” he said.
“Go ahead.” The image transmitted from the UAV faded and disappeared. “We’re blind,” Izaak said.
“No we’re not,” c’Irith said over their headsets. “Next street over, north of the intersection. If you’re quiet, you can probably get into this building here on the southwest corner. I’m on the second floor.”
“Roger that,” Izaak responded. “Wrecking crew,” he said to BayernFC and L3r0y, “loiter here on standby. You guys are about as stealthy as a dump truck.”
“Got your back,” said Bayern, and he and his brother moved to the deeper shadows along the edge of the road.
“Loiter?” said Sabrah.
Hector glanced over at her bemused expression. “Yeah. Loiter. Military term.” She just chuckled and shook her head.
Izaak led Veyron and T-Reg down a narrow alley until they came to a small building with yawning black windows.
It was dark inside but they found the stairs and climbed to the second floor. c’Irith was in one of the few rooms that still had intact windows. Izaak smiled. She was good. The motion sensors of the mercs would be far less sensitive with glass separating them. Izaak crept to the window and peered out. The mercs were almost even with the window. He raised his sniper rifle and stared through the scope. What he saw nearly made his heart skip. On the shoulder pauldron of one of the mercs was a very familiar flaming skull. “Oh my God…” he whispered. Everyone in the room looked over at him.
“What is it?” said T-Reg.
“Reavers,” Izaak whispered, and everyone in the bonus room stared at his screen.
“What?!” hissed Deion. “Are you sure?”
“Affirmative.”
“What are they doing here?”
“We’re screwed,” said Hector, as the dots connected in his head. “I’ve been causing these guys some problems. Mal-X knew I was a Reaver.”
“No way!” exclaimed Deion, rising from the couch. “You think he went to Gore looking for us?”
Hector nodded slowly, wondering how they were going to get out of this one. “Except Gore was looking for us, too.”
“Guys,” said Alkindi. “UAV’s back in the air. I think you might want to take a look.”
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