Pop Kult Warlord

by Nick Cole

  Seems like an awfully big micro-transaction just to guard the entrance, but I’m not refusing the help. We squad up with what’s left of us and get ready to breach the inner lock.

  Inside the main hab, all is silent. Too silent. The place is clean and sterile. The Japanese clan seems organized in their approach to design. They’ve eschewed some of the public structure builds available for download in favor of their own, zen-alien design.

  I access a map of the facility after PVTHudson defeats a minigame and hacks a base terminal. It’s similar to the one Rashid had in his war room, but this one shows their sentries and kill zones. Or at least what they planned for when they first built this place.

  “Nice going,” I remark after he beats six levels of old-school Super Mario Bros.

  “No problem, chief. You just turtle sled through most of the hard parts.” I can hear him snap his gum over chat.

  Looking at the facility, it is not what I expected. Not what Rashid and his generals displayed in their underground war room. Mainly… there’s no atmo tower. There is a reactor though. Maybe.

  “That should be the reactor there, sir,” says Apone, highlighting an area. “But we’ll need to put eyes on it for a confirm.”

  So far, the Calistanis are nothing for nothing on actionable intel.

  I contact Rashid over chat.

  “Here, PQ,” he says in his ever-cheerful voice. Except I have no idea where “here” is. I’m so tired I escaped noticing what his role in all of this is. If I have to guess… Enigmatrix’s little double-cross is a setup to make him look good if they actually take the base in the frontal assault. Otherwise he can blame someone else for the loss in front of his generals.

  “We’ve secured the entrance to the city, PQ, but Enigmatrix got killed by a surprise counterattack from some–”

  “There’s no atmo tower down here,” I reply.

  “Huh. That’s weird.”

  “There is a reactor. We think.”

  There isn’t even a pause as Rashid tells me what to do next.

  “Blow it up.”

  I hesitate. I check Enigmatrix’s feed. She’s still cut off. I try to access her unit roster. Everyone’s grayed out. Including her. It does look like she’s KIA for the rest of the day, which is how Civ Craft runs their fatalities. And a hefty buy-in from the team to get you back in the game.

  “Rashid…”

  “Yeah, PQ?”

  “You can take this base now. It’s yours. We’ve cleared the defenses. There’s power. It’s on your territory. It’s set up to process resources on your own territory. Why not take it and start building stuff?”

  There’s a long pause.

  Then…

  “That’s not our strategic objective at this time, PerfectQuestion. I need you to blow the reactor.” He sounds like he’s reading from a script. Restating a party line that’s been fed and rehearsed.

  Pause.

  “Affirmative?” he prompts.

  This makes no sense. WarWorld… yes. Civ Craft… no.

  Five million.

  In gold.

  “Affirmative.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I cut the chat with Rashid and tell MarineSgtApone to get us organized. We’re going for the main reactor.

  As PVTHudson digs deeper into the base AI to determine a route, I go over to a viewing window that looks out into a massive central cavern. Beyond the floodlights from this side of the bunker entrance, there’s nothing but darkness out there. But it’s got to be there. This place has to be getting power from something, somewhere. And if the map is correct, that somewhere is in this cavern.

  PVTHudson announces he’s found a path to the reactor. Ten minutes later, we’re making our way through admin offices and airlocks, moving steadily downward. The map, with PVTHudson’s route highlighted, appears in our HUDs, which have now mostly rebooted from the EMP. It indicates a few more turns and we’ll come out on the floor of the massive cavern, near where we think the reactor is.

  In a narrow lightless hall we find the remains of engineers. Bots most likely. But they’re definitely Clan SuperMecha. They’ve been cut to shreds. Not with bullets. With knives. Or some kind of slashing weapon. Dark blood spatter decorates the walls, revealed by a lone overhead light still swinging gently in the silence. As though someone has only just moved it and then left the room in the seconds before we appeared.

  “It’s cliché, sir,” says Apone, “but I definitely got a bad feeling about this.”

  There’s a few nervous laughs from what remains of the Colonial Marines.

  “It is cliché,” says Hudson. “But Sarge is right. This is all wrong, man. This is a message to us.”

  From here on down, through the last levels, there’s no power. We’ve rebooted some of our electronics—helmet lights, the flashes on some of the rifles—but optics and HUD targeting are all gone. They come in for a few seconds during reboot and then fritz out. We must be getting close to the reactor.

  “Stay close. Stay frosty,” MarineCorporalHicks reminds the rest of the Marines. And me. “And Frost… stay original-recipe Frosty.”

  Everybody chuckles at this. But the joke is lost on me. I assume it’s something to do with the movie.

  That’s when the turtles attack us.

  Like ninjas.

  They come from the ceiling. It’s Frost who gets pulled first. Just disappears from our column. He grays out on the HUD seconds after being yanked through a wall and into another darkness beyond.

  Everybody starts freaking out and firing in every direction for a brief few seconds because we didn’t know mutant turtles who moved like ninjas were surrounding us.

  The firing stops and one of the turtles who fights like a ninja appears as a swiftly moving shadow.

  Fire erupts from the squad.

  We’ve been crossing through a darkened office of some sort, desks and chairs scattered everywhere. All muted grays and soft blues. A massive window looks out upon the dark central cavern, allowing illumination from a spotlight that seems to be tracking something. It’s by that momentary light that we now see him. Her. It. The turtle ninja.

  “Game on!” screams MarinePvtDrake as he cuts lose afresh with the Colonial Marines’ heavy machine gun system. It barks out in staccato eruptions. The turtle jumps, cartwheels, and stays ahead of Drake’s death burst from the automatic pulse cannon. And as it retreats, it flings throwing stars and kills three Marines, including Drake.

  Just like that.

  Then it’s gone.

  We have twelve left now. And that number doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough to destroy the reactor, much less survive the next minute.

  “Yo…” says PVTHudson excitedly. He’s clearly shaken. “You see that? Man, we gotta get out of here. That was messed up. These Japanese clans go all in for this tricky ninja trickery. I’ve been surfing their web pages. Weird stuff. They’re really into ninja animals. Like really into it. They’ve got way better tech than–”

  A loud bang and a sudden flash, and we’re blind.

  Or at least my VR helmet shows nothing but washed-out white haze. I’ve been flashbanged before. I know exactly what will happen next.

  I drop prone and wait for my vision to clear.

  Meanwhile everyone’s firing at something and screaming at one another over chat.

  “I can’t see nuthin’!”

  “Got one!”

  “You got me!”

  “Sorry!”

  “Apone!”

  “Sarge!”

  “WE GOTTA BOOGIE!”

  My sight is coming back.

  I see a turtle deflecting a stream of pulse rifle fire from PVTHudson. The bright fire of Hudson’s rifle lights up the dark, but the blade-wielding man-turtle deflects every round the Marine can put on target with a dazzling whirl of steel.

  Yeah. We aren’t in the modern warfare world of WarWorld anymore. Anything can happen here. And it’s happening right now.

  I cut loose with the
HK Marksman, flipping the selector to eleven. Or high-cycle full auto, as some like to call it. In seconds I bleed the eighty-round drum dry. I’m determined to get me a turtle if just to improve squad morale. When I’m finished, that turtle is definitely dead.

  On the other hand, the other three turtles who fight like ninjas are everywhere.

  “Mag out!” I shout over chat, and swap in a new one.

  The turtles are leaping, slashing, whirling, and clubbing Colonial Marines to death. They fly from ceilings and over desks disintegrating from concentrated pulse rifle fire; they run up walls and then swing in for up close and personal attacks that are violently savage and seem extremely excessive.

  I fire at another man-turtle-ninja that just leapt in at MarinePFCVasquez and brained her with flailing nunchucks.

  Hudson screams over the chat, “It’s cliché, man… but… They’re comin’ outta the walls!” He gets the one that walloped Vasquez and sends it tumbling, ventilated by no fewer than ten pulse rifle rounds.

  “Fall back to the next room!” someone else roars. Maybe MarineCorporalHicks.

  I target one that just put two Marines down with its staff. The turtle points right at me to let me know I’m next, then comes at me, spinning its stick wildly, an evil grin plastered across its cartoony turtle face beneath masked eyes.

  I fire wildly, and the thing dodges away and off into a corner twirling its staff. Then one of the Marines comes in with a flamethrower, which is all but useless in most WarWorld matches and yet is somehow still a required piece of unit equipment relevant to their cosplaying. The Marine sends burning fuel all over the turtle.

  “Flamethrowers don’t care about karate,” mutters Hicks over chat.

  I see PVTHudson fireman-carrying the wounded Vasquez from the room. Two other Marines have secured the door and are firing into the dark shadows in short clipped bursts.

  Then they’re gone. The ninja-turtle-men. Nothing remains but drifting barrel smoke and ruin from the short and intense firefight. Whatever is left of our alien attackers… has vanished.

  We move forward to the next room. Glass fills one entire wall, giving a view into the massive cavern. And right there, mere meters away, is the looming reactor.

  We made it. I can hardly believe it. We’re actually going to get the reac–

  Thirty-millimeter rounds shatter the glass and swiss cheese the walls around us in a sudden typhoon of bullets. The Marines come apart in gory pieces, as do the walls, along with probably everything in the cavern. I take a round and zero out as everything turns to ruin and chaos inside the bullet storm.

  As I lie waiting for a medic that will never come, I now know where Rashid is. He’s in the Behemoth. He’s the source of this bullet storm. That’s why he air-dropped the beast. Not to cover our rear. But to make sure the job got done once we located the reactor.

  The base AI indicates, in Japanese, that there’s been a breach in containment chamber number four. Our HUDs translate this a second later. The breach is in the reactor, I have no doubt.

  “Cascade meltdown imminent…”

  But it doesn’t matter. I’m dead by the time the entire base goes kaboom.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Sorry about that,” says Rashid as he slaps me on the back a little too hard. I still ache from being stuck in my gamer suite couch. Gone are the days when I could crouch over a PC for days on end.

  I’m getting old.

  “We had to take out the base, PQ buddy. Hundred percent. Aaaand it didn’t look like you were going to get through all those weird Jap animal skins.”

  The mutant turtles who did ninja stuff.

  “So I had to fire up the Behemoth and make sure the objective got done right. Ever use one?”

  I haven’t. But I’ve had once used on me. Twice now.

  “It’s a blast. You know how much that thing fires…?”

  I do.

  I lost a battle to one once. I mean twice. Including just a few minutes ago.

  “So,” says Rashid sheepishly, “it was the only way left to take out the reactor and be sure. Y’know how it is?”

  He seems genuine. Most sociopaths can pull this trick a time or two before you figure it out.

  I haven’t figured that out. Yet. Later—tonight in fact—while I’m getting good and drunk, it will occur to me that Rashid has the ability. To be likeable despite himself. Despite being the sultan’s son. Despite being spoiled and a rich pretty boy. You just want to like him.

  That was what I thought about him at first. That you wanted to like him despite the obvious. Later, I’ll think other things.

  I’m already starting to.

  “Okay, now it’s time to cut loose and really party!” he says triumphantly as we walk to a brand-new sports car. A Porsche Excalibur. Creamy white. Tan leather interior. He tosses me the keys.

  “It’s yours,” he says, and watches for the look on my face.

  I look at the keys. Real keys. Not a fob. Very retro chic. Or so I’ve read.

  “Listen,” I begin. “Rashid, I…”

  His expression gets serious. “Don’t say no to me,” he whispers intently. “No one ever says no to me, okay, PQ?”

  He seems very resolute about this. Like he needs me to believe this if the world is going to go on.

  Suddenly and desperately, I have to know that he’s telling the truth. And not because it’s some game he wants to play to manipulate me. But because there are ways accessible to him inside his own Islamic totalitarian fascist state that could be used to convince me of whatever they want me to think is the truth. And doing that would mean… we’d no longer be friends. I’d no longer be his idol. Or accessory. I’m not quite sure of which one of those I am. But I’m sure that I’m one of them. Which isn’t as comforting as you might think.

  In fact it’s a little scary if you think about it too much.

  And that’s exactly what I do.

  I think long and hard about who I’m dealing with in this half second where I have some kind of choice in the events that are about to unfold. The choice to turn and walk away from all the bad I sense is about to happen. Because I’m feeling more and more surrounded by the minute. Like I’m slowly drowning.

  I could choose to just blow my top right this very second. But I know that isn’t possibly the wisest move I can make. I’m not in America anymore. I need to remember that, because that’s important and becoming abundantly more so with every minute that passes. This is someone else’s country, and I’m acutely aware that I can just disappear here and never be seen again. I have the suspicion that that’s very possible. And that there are fates worse than death.

  And it’s kind of creepy the first time you ever really have that particular feeling. I’ve been around the world enough to know what can happen in certain… seedier places. People got panel-vanned all the time. And no one much cares.

  The more I think about it, the less I feel I have a choice at all. Or if I do… none of my choices are good ones.

  “It’s not the car, and you don’t need to…” I begin, feeling my way forward. “It’s…” I try.

  I pause. The sun is going down behind the houses across the water along the channel. I can smell the salt in the ocean. Little children on the beaches over there are running back and forth in the water. A big old dog is chasing them around as they laugh and squeal.

  “I feel like I’m being rewarded for losing,” I say finally. It’s a lie. But one that seems perfect to let me go on not being panel-vanned. “You know we didn’t win in there, Rashid. We lost. We got killed. Even you got killed by the nuclear blast. That Behemoth must have been a ginormous micro-transaction. I’m sure that went up in the blast too.”

  I watch his face. Watch him trying to comprehend what I’m saying. He nods like he’s way ahead of me. Like I’m someone just catching up and processing the grand scheme only he can see. Like he’s noble and patient enough to let me catch up.

  “We lost today,” I say again. Making it sou
nd like it was really more my fault than his.

  And then I add, “Rashid,” to make it more… what? I don’t know. I’m just feeling my way forward through a minefield in the dark. Delicately. Which is the only way through a minefield in the dark. Or the light.

  “Yes!” he exclaims enthusiastically. “But we really didn’t. We took the Japs out. That’s a win any way you look at it. And there’s more I can’t tell you right now. Big-picture stuff. But we had to get rid of that base. Now I’m really free to move about. To do what I really want to do. Get things done finally!”

  He grabs my shoulders. He’s slightly taller than me.

  “You got us through the door. That giant robot would’ve made short work of the Behemoth. Once we got to the back door with it, I knew it was going to end either with you lighting that reactor, or with me just vaping it. So I vaped it. It’s all part of Calistan’s grand strategy. And I assure you, my friend, there is a grand strategy at work here. And it’s genius. And you’ve played a part in that success.”

  I suspect the grand strategy is genius because he came up with it. Wisely I choose not to voice this observation.

  I leave that for never.

  “This is yours!” He indicates the beautiful convertible Porsche once more. “Enjoy it,” he says genuinely. “Life’s short, PQ. Have fun while you still can.”

  Sure, that isn’t ominous. Or a warning. No. Not at all.

  It’s the “life’s short” part that makes me really start to worry in earnest. He said it as though he knows something about me I’m not aware of.

  Or maybe it’s just this totalitarian Islamic state I find myself surrounded by and working for. I’m definitely on the ride now. They don’t stop rollercoasters in the middle. Unless there’s been an accident.

  Unless someone’s been killed.

  Chapter Twenty

  We head back to Rashid’s place. He’s still calling it the shack as he gives directions and I drive the new Porsche.

  I try not to wreck it, treating it like it really is my own. It purrs smoothly as it runs up through the gears, and it’s got a deconstructionist style that’s all the rage lately. No HUD on the windshield. No interactive monitors and displays. No auto-drive features. You just drive this little kitty-cat and watch all the real needles in the real display fall and rise depending on what you do with the pedal and gearshift. It’s amazing, and once again it causes me to think the past was way better than the present.