Pop Kult Warlord

by Nick Cole

  I jump into the waters of the bay.

  And I feel alive. And okay.

  And I think of the second thing. The second reason for not leaving.

  Chloe.

  I swim for a while and think about her. And try to forget she tried to kill me. I think of the peace I felt lying her arms. I liked that. I liked her.

  You don’t even know her, I yell to myself.

  That’s thing number two. The second reason for not leaving Calistan just yet.

  After my swim, I get dressed. Casual clothes and a polo t-shirt. Sunglasses. Seems to be the look of the Gold Coast. Why not fit in if you’re going to work for the CIA?

  I drop behind the wheel of the Porsche and drive up to Rashid’s house. I’m not looking for Rashid, I’m looking for the driver.

  “Hola, señor,” he says. He’s in the driveway, washing yet another of Rashid’s playthings. He smiles. Like he’s genuinely happy to see me.

  “Hola, Juan.” That makes him smile even more. That I have remembered his name. I have a feeling the friends of Rashid aren’t big on other people. Especially people who aren’t like them. Little people. Muslim. But not rich. Not the top. At the top, then you’re someone.

  “El Jefe is gone, señor.”

  I haven’t really planned out what I’m gonna say. I open my mouth and have nothing. I stare off toward the coast and try to figure out what exactly I’m trying to accomplish. He’s holding a soapy mitt. He waits.

  “I’m not here to see him. And… in fact, I don’t want him to know I was here… if that’s cool?”

  As I say it, I realize that’s a pretty big matzo ball to float. Who says this guy isn’t Rashid’s most loyal servant? And who the hell am I to ask him to betray his boss?

  I don’t wait for an answer. It wouldn’t matter anyway. “I don’t know how to… ask… what I need…”

  “Just ask, my friend,” he says, putting down the soapy mitt and watching me. Is there a patient kindness there? Or am I just hoping there is? Because I’m too deep inside Calistan if there isn’t.

  How deep?

  Deep enough to disappear.

  There’s nothing in this that makes me believe I haven’t totally messed up. Yet. And acutely, I’m aware I’m in a foreign country doing stuff I’m not sure I should be doing.

  But it’s just the calm way he said “my friend” that convinces me I can go forward with what I’m here to do.

  No bull. Just two men talking. Mutual respect.

  “I met a girl the other night…”

  He smiles knowingly at this, his face blossoming into a grin. Like he respects me even more.

  “It’s not like that.” Except it is. It is like that. I met her in a brothel. So it’s exactly like that.

  “I’m sure you take… Rashid’s… friends there. Where he goes at the end of the night. I imagine some nights, right? House over near the bay. Blonde runs it. There was a girl there… Maybe you know her, know of her, but she’s not… Muslim.” I look around as though I’m guilty of some crime. “She’s… one of you.”

  “Mexicana?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “What was her name?”

  “Chloe.”

  He nods. “I’ll ask around. Don’t worry… it’s between you and me,” he says.

  Chapter Forty

  Back at the Cyber Warfare Center that night, I log into the strategic operations net for Calistan’s online presence in Civ Craft.

  Enigmatrix catches me on chat.

  “So your plan worked.”

  “Alexander the Great,” I reply.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He was a general back in the day. Basically, he hit cities hard by using the principle of mass. He’d bring all his forces together at the critical moment of his choosing and then he’d scatter them until the next battle. Here, the Geek League saw us coming to fight, and they thought they were choosing the battlefield—but really they were just giving us room to run amok and waste their city. And now everyone’s scattered and headed for the next objective.”

  “The Cylon Basestar,” she says. “We should be in place within two hours.”

  I bring up tactical and look at all our units. They really are scattered—all across the Martian plateau and foothills on the eastern side of the valley. If you had no idea where they were going, you’d think we were just raiding. In fact, the main elements of the Geek League’s army have broken up to chase them down. Except most of our units are now closing in along a broad crescent, targeting a new clan’s city. They call it the Basestar. The heart of the Cylon Republic.

  “I haven’t had much time to research,” I said. “Who are these guys?”

  “They are like really, really into machine intelligence. Big time. They claim the Meltdown was caused by a rogue AI. Tinfoil hat stuff if you look at their website. And they’re really into retro sci-fi. Some crazy show back in the day, where machines tried to wipe out humanity, is really big to them. So all their tech trees went that way.”

  “What kind of units will we be facing?”

  “Lots of ground troops.” She sighs. “And artillery. Plus some decent air support. Nothing we can’t handle if we hit them fast. And the Geek League is likely to redeploy that space battleship if they sense us going after any targets. No doubt they’re just itching to use that thing. Good thing for us is it takes time for it to show up. So… hit hard, hit fast.”

  “What about the Behemoth?” I ask.

  “Bringing it in by heavy lifter at the last moment with lots of air cover.”

  “Roger that. That’s our key to getting inside the city. Once we’re inside we can tear through it. Everybody goes straight for the other side. Do as much damage as possible, but keep going. Then scatter. Got it?”

  “You tac commander on this one?” she asks hesitantly.

  “Sounds that way.”

  Long pause.

  “Better you than me.” And I know she means Rashid. His ego would do anything to take all the glory. Pro players, like Enigmatrix, like me, we don’t work with people like that. That type of behavior on the corporate teams gets identified, and weeded out.

  I look around, even though I’m in my own gaming suite.

  “Listen…” I say. “I know you… or I mean I don’t really, Enigmatrix. But whatever you’ve got going on with Rashid… up there. That doesn’t seem like you.”

  Long pause. Have I crossed a line?

  “Like you said… you really don’t know me,” she says. “Right, PerfectQuestion?”

  I have crossed a line.

  “This is a game,” she says, and I’m sure she isn’t just talking about Civ Craft. “Everybody plays, just like in WarWorld, for their win. Not just the team’s… but maybe your personal best. Regardless of how we run out teams and weed out the individualists, you play for your win whether you like it or not. And maybe sometimes that’s what the team wants, y’know… it lines up with a victory, and then sometimes… sometimes it’s what you want. Know what I mean?”

  Not really.

  But I tell her I do.

  “Back in WarWorld, next season… we’ll be enemies again,” she says. “Right now we’re friends. But that’s just for right now, Question.”

  “Gotcha,” I reply.

  But I don’t.

  Not until much later will I really understand just how much I haven’t gotten her at all.

  * * *

  Two hours later, all our forces are racing out of the Martian wastes like nomadic hordes. We’re aimed straight at our OBJ: the Basestar.

  On the vast arid red plain ahead of us, the Cylons’ fantastic Civ Craft city rises up like some kind of postmodern wedding cake meets fusion reactor. Like two fat discs stacked one on top of the other. Someone said it’s designed after a spaceship from whatever retro sci-fi they’re into.

  “Look at the size of that thing…” says PVTHudson over chat. I’m riding with the Colonial Marine clan once more. Tip of the spear for my assembling strike
force. Below us is our task force of mixed light infantry fast-attack buggies and APCs filled with Calistani jihadis surrounding the lumbering Behemoth tank. Ahead, an armored scout force made up of mechs is racing in, trying to draw concentrated fire from elements inside the city. The spaceship. Whatever it is. Effectively, the scout force is our cavalry. It’s their job to figure out where the enemy is, then we drive the spear in.

  “How are we looking on strategic?” I ask Enigmatrix over the chat.

  “They’re aware you’re coming in,” she replies. “And they’re trying to get players to log in like crazy for a response. But I estimate a good thirty minutes before they get their mecha response force involved. Until then you’re fighting the locals—Cylon Centurions, they call them.”

  “Hey,” chimes in Rashid from tactical. “We’re spam-jamming their players’ personal email accounts with tons of bogus emails. Hoping to clog up their inboxes so their clan can’t get ahold of them. And we’re trying to take down some of the social media channels by reporting them for community violations.”

  Rashid and the generals of Calistan are playing for keeps. Weaponizing the internet.

  “Great job,” I reply. And feel a little dirty for doing so.

  CIA stuff, I remind myself.

  Ahead, the Basestar has begun to hurl hot bolts of phased energy at us from turrets along the upper rim of the top disc. One of our lead fast-attack mules—our gun-laden light-armored vehicles—is struck. It explodes and flips end over end through the Martian sand.

  I switch over to clan chat.

  “Stay on target!”

  The mechs cavalry force is coming up against an outer wall of the defenses surrounding the Basestar. One the map recon it looked small. From here on the ground, it’s an immensely high barrier to surmount.

  I tag the Behemoth and tell the Russian semi-pro running it, gamertag StreetThreepio, to take out the wall.

  “Stand by,” he replies in a nasal monotone.

  A moment later the massive tank’s relativistic gun fires. The monstrous weapon seems to literally inhale all the Martian dust around it, then expels it as the rail shot spits forth. The shot, barely visible, accelerates to incredible speed before slamming into the distant shimmering metallic wall guarding the Cylon Basestar.

  The explosion is tremendous.

  “Ground forces breaching…” comes the reply from a team leader.

  Ahead, our air assets are making runs against the defense turrets along the rim of the fantastically gleaming base.

  My plan is to keep the outer defenses busy and punch one tiny hole in the giant base, then charge through and come out the other side, ruining everything we can along the way. Then disappear back into the deep Martian wastes and return the next night to take out another Geek League city.

  “We’re through and heading for the target…” comes the voice of the clan commander who’s first through the breach, his Middle Eastern accent thick and heavy.

  “Take us over the top,” I order CPLFerro. “MarineSgtApone, this is gonna get hot… we must clear the breaching point.”

  “Got it, sir. We’re ready to move.”

  We’re flying right in under the upper disk of the Basestar, skimming above the lower disk. There’s some kind of massive flight hangar in the lower section. We just need to clear that and then our forces will flood inward.

  The sky ahead of our dropship fills with turret fire. It’s like we’re suddenly falling into a web of energy.

  “Breaking off!” cries the pilot. “No way through!”

  Their defenses are heavier closer in. I didn’t expect that. And I should have. Now we’re racing across the desert back toward our own forces. An energy bolt from one of the turrets takes out the massive Behemoth on the desert floor. The thing explodes in a spectacular display of sparks flying in every direction.

  So much for the Russian semi-pro.

  I groan. “They must’ve taken an anti-armor round.”

  Enigmatrix lets me know we’ve just lost a very valuable piece of equipment. And our key to breaching the hangar deck. As if I didn’t just see it myself.

  “We need to pull back, PQ. Today’s a no-go. They’ve got the Yamato inbound. It’ll be here in a few, and we can’t stand up to that thing.”

  I hesitate. Which I know is a bad thing for a commander to do. I give myself fifteen seconds to make a decision as I watch my forces get chewed up in front of the Cylons’ Basestar.

  Abort, or go all in.

  I…

  Rashid’s voice comes over chat. “Move forward. I’ve got a surprise for their little space battleship,” he cackles.

  My finger hovers over the group broadcast key. I could order the general retreat. Override my employer. But this is Rashid’s show, and I need a way to get him a win. According to the CIA. Who might be my only chance of getting out of Calistan, considering they’re the only ones who know I’m in Calistan in the first place.

  “What’ve you got, Rashid?” I ask. Smoking missile trails arc up and slam into the upper disc of the Basestar. Turret fire rains down on the advancing Calistani forces.

  Two wolverines go up in sudden sparks down near the breach point. Now the Cylon Centurions are out of their trenches and lumbering forward with massive rifles. The Calistanis are scattering every which way as the bots come on firing on full auto. Some units are hunkering down and actually getting into full-fledged firefights with the walking metal Frankensteins.

  All of this is not good. We’re losing momentum. And momentum is what it’s all about. Hit and run. Grab and go. We need to get through their Basestar in a timely fashion. I wait on Rashid two seconds more.

  Nothing.

  “All units…” I begin.

  And just then I see the Yamato appear in the distant sky. Maybe three thousand feet up and coming in fast. She’s already lobbing shots at us even from that extreme range.

  “Rashid,” breaks in Enigmatrix. “This is everything you’ve got. We lose here, that’s it. They’re gonna clean us up and roll all over Calistan in the next few hours if we don’t execute a maneuver to either fight or flee in the next minute. Do you copy?”

  “Executing space fold now…” announces Rashid.

  In-game sound suddenly turns into a ghost freight train crashing through reality. Then something appears in the sky to the west. It comes in hot at five thousand feet and descending, streaking straight for the mess our lines are becoming.

  “Uh, sir, what the hell is that?” asks Apone.

  Many other players are asking the same thing in that wild and uncertain moment.

  “We should get out of the way,” prompts MarineCorporalHicks rather stridently. Which is true. The thing is streaking straight at us, nose first.

  Over the command chat, Rashid is shrieking with laughter.

  But it’s PVTHudson whose game lore is deep. I’ve come to respect him as a player. But as a scholar of nerdstalgia, his kung fu is John Saxon. “That, my friends,” he brays, “is the greatest space battleship of all time: the SDF-1.”

  Ferro jerks the heavy dropship out of the way just as the massive white-hot SDF-1 rips through half of the Cylon ground defenses and tears off a huge section of the Basestar. A sudden moment of vertigo overtakes me as the forward canopy of the dropship fills with the giant spacecraft gloriously slamming into the sand.

  “Game on, my friends!” cried Rashid triumphantly. And then over private chat: “Uh, PerfectQuestion… I don’t know how to work this thing. Can you come aboard and take over so we can fight the other battleship?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “All forces…” I begin in group chat. “Form up around the SDF-1 and protect her until we can get her operational.”

  Thousands of Cylon bots are flooding out of the main superstructure of the Basestar. It’s clear their objective is to board our battleship within the next few minutes.

  I ask Ferro to take us in and dock near the command tower of our Calistani mega ship. We make a close pass ne
ar the bridge. Through the gaping window of the massive space battleship I see Rashid’s avatar inside running from control station to control station.

  Suddenly I get a personal text.

  “Need help, buddy?” It’s Kiwi.

  How? No time…

  I type back, “Definitely.” And, “Thank you.”

  “Logging in,” comes the reply.

  I’m sure he’s been watching the livestreams. Keeping an eye on me. He has to know things have gone massively wrong.

  The dropship docks alongside the SDF-1’s tall command bridge, and we disembark.

  “Marines,” orders Apone, “find a weapons station or whatever you can get your hands on. We’ve got to get this vessel into the air. But until then, we’ve got to fight.”

  We climb up two decks to the bridge. Rashid is waiting, still hustling about aimlessly through the massively overwhelming bridge filled with a variety of stations. Above us, holographic real-time displays of the engagement swim in midair.

  I note a holographic display of the Yamato. It’s just a few minutes out. The SDF-1 is already calculating a firing solution to take it out. But it still doesn’t have lock on.

  “Rashid, how do we fire this thing’s weapons?”

  Rashid doesn’t answer. His avatar hunches over a control station. Then he curses over chat.

  “Dammit!”

  “What?”

  “All the control stations have been locked out by minigames. The damn Russian developers who sold me this are screwing us and laughing behind our backs.”

  Then…

  “We’re dead on the sand, PQ.”

  I watch the incoming Yamato.

  “Enigmatrix… what’s going on out there?”

  “Forward elements breaching the Cylon city. We’re taking heavy losses but we’re moving forward. But that makes no difference. I just got an old stream of that Yamato thing in action—they used it against some clan a couple of weeks ago. If that thing fires its main gun… we lose everything.”

  I watch the incoming data above our heads. Our firing solution is now in the yellow. But if we can’t fire our weapons, it’ll make no difference if it reaches green.

  “Everyone take a station and unlock the minigame blocking access right now. Let me know when your stations are up.”