Multiplayer

by John C. Brewer

  “Sabrah, it’ll probably turn out to be some old lady who didn’t even know she hit him. When she takes her car to the body shop, the owner will call the cops and they’ll find her.” Sabrah paused for a moment in thought. Then agreed with a nod. “So,” Hector went on, “there is no reason we can’t go on with the quest.”

  That comment brought tears to Sabrah’s eyes. “I played my first Omega with Chaz. I can’t even pick up a controller without thinking about him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She swiped them away. “I would think you, of all people, would understand that – since you –” She paused and glared at him through her tears. “You torture Sanjar just because terrorists killed your father.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Sabrah jumped to her feet. “Everything!” she yelled in his face, then climbed down to the ground and ran off sobbing.

  Hector sat on the roof feeling at once confused, idiotic, and angry. At any moment he expected Chaz to vault over the edge, sit down beside him, and tell him women were irrational and not to worry about it. But of course he didn’t. And he never would.

  No respawn. No replication chamber. Game Over.

  Ch. 21

  Hector’s mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner. “What’s up, hotshot?” she said pleasantly, when he came in through the back door. Hector had noticed a change in her since the night on the couch, even before Chaz’s death, and far more striking after. The TV wasn’t on. Instead, soft rock music came from a docked iPod.

  “Just hanging out,” he said, and swiped a celery stick from a vegetable tray, wondering if Sabrah really was mad or just emotional. Or both. Girls could be so difficult.

  “Who with?”

  “Sabrah,” he said, crunching down on the crisp vegetable. He braced himself but his mom just smiled and didn’t say anything.

  “Mom,” said Helen, barging into the kitchen. She greeted Hector with a scowl then turned back to their mother. “Can I go out tonight?” She was holding an opened cell phone.

  “Who, where, when?”

  “Shah and I were going to get together at his house and study for an English test tomorrow.” Hector rolled his eyes and groaned, but they both ignored him.

  “Are his parents at home?” Mom asked.

  “They’re up at the store. But Sanjar’s home.”

  “He’s welcome to come over here and the two of you can study in the dining room.”

  “You’re so old fashioned!” she said, and stomped out. “You’re even worse than his parents!”

  “Thank you for the compliment,” she called after Helen, and chuckled softly, “That girl.”

  “She’s been spending a lot of time with him,” grumbled Hector.

  “He’s a nice boy.”

  “Sabrah’s a nice girl, but you don’t want her over.”

  His mom didn’t look up. She just kept stirring the pot. “Hector, don’t you have some studying of your own to do? Your history report won’t finish itself. And your math grade is still way too low.” Hector took another celery stick off the tray and headed out. “It’s time to study!” she called after him. “If I catch you playing games, I’m going to smash that game console out in the street. Savvy?”

  Hector went to his room and shut the door. He needed to get into Omega Wars to find out what Operation Scimitar was, but wasn’t sure his mother wasn’t joking. He usually accessed Omega Wars from a game console but it ran on a computer too. Hector didn’t have the computer version but Chaz had showed him how to use a computer as a terminal across a local area network. But if his mother caught him… And he did need to work on his Alanya report. It was due in just a few days.

  His mom had dropped his Omega Wars vacation when Chaz was killed, but he hadn’t been ready to go back to it before now anyway. He glanced at the notes he’d taken the night Mal-X killed Rada. Visas. Tickets. Operation Scimitar. Obviously they were rehearsing for this Operation Scimitar. But what was it? And why would al-Nib pay GoreFiendHell to keep people off the peninsula?

  He stared blankly at his computer screen thinking about his fight with Sabrah and everything else that was happening. Frustration built inside him like a boiler with too much steam. Eventually, it would explode. He didn’t know what to do. He mindlessly checked his email only to find a message from MegaSoft telling him his terrain change request had been approved. He could get into the citadel now without being seen if Alkindi’s sub was finished!

  “I hope you’re working,” came his mother’s voice from the kitchen. “I’ll be up to check on you in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” he hollered back. There was just no way to do it right now.

  Hector opened up his Alanya report, a combination of word processing and slide presentation documents, and the website he’d been using for information; www.alanya-for-peace.com. Today’s main topic was the itinerary of the summit. Most of the meetings were going to take place in the resort Izaak had broken into the other night. But they were going to open the summit with the President and other world leaders in the ruins of the citadel. The ancient Byzantine church and mosque in the courtyard were to demonstrate how Christianity and Islam had peacefully coexisted.

  He read three pages, but the words didn’t sink in. He read them again. After a dozen times, he stopped in frustration, and stole into the bonus room. He removed Hello Kitty from the game console, then had to search for the Omega Wars disc which wasn’t in its case. All the while, he kept glancing over his shoulder expecting his mother to come walking in. He finally found the disc in the Hello Kitty box and swore in frustration as he inserted it into the game console. But instead of straightening out the filing system, he put the Hello Kitty disc in the case of a skateboarding game no one ever played. Let her try to find that! Hector thought, satisfied.

  Back in his bedroom, he connected to his game console in one window and minimized the Alanya presentation in the toolbar, so if his mother came in, he could click on it and it would instantly fill the screen, hiding Omega Wars. He just wanted to see what Pappous’ cave looked like. And maybe, if there was time, check out the training exercise.

  Ω

  It was the first time he’d been to Alanya in a week. But when Izaak awoke, there was a new set of armor laid out beside him. Probably from Deion, Hector thought.

  Instead of a solid breastplate, Hector recognized it as similar to a type of armor worn by Roman Legionnaires; horizontal strips of metal wrapped around the waist and stacked to form a flexible metal cuirass. And it didn’t have large, solid shoulder guards either, but more overlapping strips of metal which were flexible but highly protective. The helmet was different too, an ancient Spartan design except the crest was cropped close and the eye-slits and open face were covered with a tinted shield. It also had optics that dropped down over the right eye and the link-antenna Izaak had grown so dependent on.

  He donned the armor, which his inventory registered as Lorica-SAC and immediately discovered it enhanced his mobility without sacrificing protection. Like his old armor, it featured refractive camouflage. The helmet was also improved with a targeting reticle that not only zoomed, but featured several image processing modes that helped locate camouflaged targets and could also see infrared. As Izaak tinkered, he discovered it could be mapped to the scope of a weapon. He could fire around corners or over obstacles now and still be able to target. And Alkindi had been busy. The mini-sub sat low in the water just beside the dock. It didn’t look like a boiler anymore but had a cruciform tail at the rear, a large propeller just behind the tail, and a periscope.

  Before trying the sub, Izaak headed upstairs to see what had been happening in Alanya over the last week. Since - the thought blew up in his mind like a bomb - since Chaz had died. The last time he’d been here, Chaz had been with him. He’d been here, doing this same thing, when Rada had appeared behind him. But that would never happen again. He glanced at the monitors as he had done that night too, wishing with all his might that Rada would appear. Wishing as he’d do
ne a thousand times with his father. A million times. Sabrah had been right. Why was he here? How could he have been stupid enough to ask her to join him? His friend hadn’t been dead for a week.

  Tears brimmed in Hector’s eyes, turning the screen of his computer into a swirling wash of color. Games were supposed to be fun. Omega Wars had lost its entertainment value. How long would it be before everyone he played with was dead? What was this curse that hovered over his head, snatching friends and loved ones away? This wasn’t a game anymore. There was nothing fun about it. But something deep inside told him he had to be here. That Rada had died for a reason. Hector knew the thought was completely ridiculous, and he questioned his own sanity for letting it push him forward, but he decided that if he didn’t press on, she would have died in vain.

  The tears stung his eyes and he deliberately wiped them out, then cast Izaak’s gaze over the town. The Reavers had been every bit as busy as the Spartans. A row of drab guard towers stood along the main coast road. Bunkers with heavy guns, pointing outward, were scattered around the town. On the water, several small boats patrolled along the perimeter of the peninsula. But the biggest surprise was in the air. Uber Pwn loomed above the far side of the peninsula like an enormous pterodactyl. But thanks to Alkindi, Izaak still had a way in.

  Hector paused for a moment, staring across the water where the peninsula rose up nearly a thousand digital feet over the virtual waves. Why would Mal-X and those other guys need this much security? And Gore would not have moved Uber Pwn without some pretty serious convincing. Hector was certain of that. Something else was going on.

  Izaak found that the sub had space for four but the hatch was too small for a merc. There were no windows but a forward facing view appeared on a screen and next to it was a blank screen, a compass, and other indicators. Apparently, adding a display in Omega Wars was easier than adding a window. The controls were fairly standard except for one that controlled the ballast tanks. On screen, it was a lever marked UP and DOWN, and since Izaak wanted to go down, he moved it down. The submarine started to sink and kept sinking until it was resting on the bottom. The depth gauge showed twenty-five feet. Izaak moved the lever up a little and a moment later, the submarine was floating at what the depth gauge showed to be fifteen feet. He pushed the joystick forward, there was a hum, and the submarine moved ahead.

  Again, Hector was amazed by Alkindi’s talents; he never could have built something this complicated. Not only must Alkindi be a genius, Hector thought, he must also have one of those expensive touch screens he had read about. And a Codex like Sanjar’s. That would be the only way to do all this. Deion had also said he played on a computer which had far better tools for fabrication than the console version of Omega Wars. Hector didn’t care for the computer version because he preferred using a controller, but with this kind of stuff possible, he might have to try it out some time.

  The view screen grew lighter as he passed out of the cave and into the open water. The bottom was sandy and flat, but not featureless. There were rocks and some sea life, but it was not as well developed as the world above, which made sense. Not many people were playing Omega Wars underwater.

  But Izaak hadn’t gone very far when he suddenly realized there was a problem. He could see only a short distance ahead, so he had no idea where he was headed. He could be traveling in circles for all he knew. So he raised the periscope. The adjacent screen came to life and showed a scene much like the one he was seeing on the forward looking monitor. He began slowly raising the ballast lever until the periscope just broke through the surface of the water. The depth gauge showed ten feet. But no Alanya. He rotated the periscope to the left until the peninsula came into view, then turned the sub to follow. He’d been heading straight out into the open sea!

  Not only could he see the peninsula now, he could also see the patrol boats. There were two of them and Izaak was pretty sure they’d spot his periscope if he came close. And at a depth of only ten feet they might well see the whole submarine since it was pretty big. His eye landed on the compass and he smiled. The cybertech had thought of everything.

  Hector brought the submarine in as near as he dared at periscope depth, maybe a mile from the peninsula’s vertical bluffs, where the compass showed a heading of southeast. He lowered the ballast lever and the sub sank until Izaak saw the bottom at sixty feet. It was dark blue outside, just like it would be in real life, so he turned on a light. Then he checked the power level. The fusion cells were already under eighty percent so he would need to conserve power to get back. All he needed was the compass anyway, so he turned the lights off and kept his eyes on the compass needle.

  He steered like this for another twenty minutes, listening for any sign of movement on the stairs outside his room as pricks of sweat emerged on his brow. Life shouldn’t be like this, he thought. Living in constant fear. And now it had come here, to his refuge; the only world he understood. Why had he ever agreed to that duel with Mal-X? His own arrogance had started of this, he realized. His own anger.

  The scientific papers Pappous had written placed the opening of the underwater cave at twenty-five feet deep, directly beneath the citadel. Izaak continued on until a cliff rising from the seafloor filled the screen and he brought the sub to a halt. He raised the ballast lever, letting the submarine rise until it got to a depth of about thirty feet. Bringing the submarine’s path parallel to the cliff pointed out to sea, he turned the periscope sideways and watched the stone wall creep by.

  The nearly featureless gray expanse slid by with agonizing slowness. One minute faded into another and still there was no tunnel. It had been nearly an hour since he pulled out of their base and the green bar that indicated fusion cell power fell past seventy percent then began to close on sixty. When it got to half, he was going to turn back or he might not be able to make it home. Had he missed the tunnel? Had he started in the wrong direction? Was he too deep. Too shallow? Hector had seen a submarine movie once. All he really remembered from it was a bunch of guys hunkered down in a dim room filled with pipes and gauges, sweating in anxiety as they watched their battery indicators slowly drop. Exactly like he was doing now, complete with a damp forehead.

  Just as the fusion cell power dipped below sixty, a yawning black hole emerged in the periscope screen. Izaak felt a hole just as black open in his stomach. He swallowed heavily and coaxed the sub into the inky darkness. Izaak could see nothing ahead of him, but at the sides of the screen, the cave walls rolled slowly by. They were smooth and gray, almost completely unadorned. In real life they would probably be crawling with crabs and other creatures and encrusted with corals. Finally, the image ahead turned gray as the cave wall came into view. He cut the motor and surfaced.

  Izaak emerged from the hatch into utter darkness and switched on a light. The beam fell on broken columns and statuary and steps leading out of the water. MegaSoft, as always, had done a great job replicating the images from the old reports. Their stated goal was a perfect replica of Earth, and they were pretty darned close. The beach area was narrow and rocky and a set of rough-hewn steps twisted up into the darkness like something from the Mines of Moria. Hector shuddered as a thought came to his head. Pappous had been the first person to see this chamber in over a thousand years. And now Izaak was the first to see it in Omega Wars. Goose bumps raised on his arms. He climbed out of the sub and tied it off to one of the columns. There was only one way to go from here – up.

  The steps seemed to go on forever. First steep and straight, then level, then steep and twisting. The cave was close to sea level. The peninsula was over seven hundred feet at the summit. It was a good thing Izaak never got tired. But his fusion cells did. One of them drained completely just by powering the light and Izaak had to stop and replace it.

  He finally emerged into a wider, flat passage and followed it until it ended at a metal grate. Izaak used his PlasmAll to cut the bars away, then crouched and shuffled quietly out. He was inside the citadel walls but something was wrong. Pappous h
ad told him the passageway from his cave came out under the tower at the southwest corner of the citadel. This was under the northwest tower. They had gotten it wrong!

  For an instant, Izaak burned with anger at the blunder, then stopped. A quick glance around the corner of the guard tower told him the south end of the courtyard was teeming with vanguards and smugglers. He’d already observed that most of the training went on down there by the gates. Thank God for mistakes!

  Izaak activated his refractive armor and worked his way around the courtyard, keeping close to the wall. The closer he drew to the southern gates, the more characters filled the digital space. They were almost all guards. In fact, there were almost none of the turban-wearing characters at all. Just lots of police milling around like they were waiting for something. Time after time, he stopped and held his breath as characters passed above him on the wall. By the time he reached the old Byzantine church, his fusion cell was running low again, so he slipped inside to replace it under the dome. He had only one more. Bitterness tightened Hector’s stomach as he looked around. His family had prayed here, in this same church, that his father might return safely from Iraq. It hadn’t worked. Hector shook away the thought as Izaak focused on switching the fusion cell. Then he climbed atop the crumbling dome and leapt across to the wall so he could watch.

  Like most Medieval walls, it was crenelated and had a broad walkway along the inside. From his perch, he could not only see the entire courtyard and everybody in it, but much of the hillside down the slope toward the town. Close at hand were the domed mosque that had foiled him last week and the resort where he’d heard about Operation Scimitar. Both remained heavily guarded. Farther away lay the road and beyond that the harbor far below, glittering like a sapphire lake. He could see Reavers in the distance, patrolling the shoreline. It was odd that there were none anywhere on the peninsula. They were only guarding access. But they had missed one spot.