Multiplayer (7 page)

“We got to get out of here,” Izaak said, scarcely hearing Darxhan’s warning.

“You ain’t kidding.” Darxhan looked at him, then paused. “Where’s Vera?”

“That’s why we’ve got to go. Vera got swiped. Come on.”

“What? How?”

“I’ll tell you later. But we’ve got to go now!”

“Fine with me,” said Darxhan. “This douche is just about to get everybody killed.”

“T-Reg here?”

“She never comes to these, you know that. We can call her from your lair.”

They made for the entrance as GoreFiendHell wrapped up his speech. “… will be a great day for the Reavers!” he thundered, as a cheer rose up around them. “For today, the Athens gate will be ours!”

“Let’s go,” said Izaak. “If dickhead sees us…” The crowd closed in around them as they forced their way toward the tunnel entrance. GoreFiendHell moved into the crowd making straight for Izaak. “We’re not going to make it,” hissed Izaak, worming his way through the press, but it was no use. GoreFiendHell had already seen him.

The towering black merc stopped in front of Izaak. He was a head taller than Darxhan and each of his pauldrons, as large as a VW Bug fender, bore the symbol of the Reavers – a flaming skull head. His helmet was like the turret of a Sherman tank and on one shoulder perched an auto-tracking cannon that followed his gaze. Strapped across his back was a gigantic plasmace used for crushing enemies. Izaak could see his own gold faceplate mirrored in the reflective Mk.IV armor on GoreFiendHell’s chest. “Where’s Vera?” Gore asked in his digitally enhanced baritone, minus the English accent he’d had a moment before.

“Not here tonight,” said Izaak, wondering how he was going to get around him.

“Go get her. You’re my lead sniper.” The accent was suddenly back.

“About that…” Izaak hesitated for a second, then said, “I’m not sure I’m going tonight, Gore.”

“What?” The auto-cannon on Gore’s shoulder swiveled to Izaak’s head with the sound of tiny, whirring gears. Izaak saw it and Hector’s hands tensed on his controller. The merc had a nasty habit of turning the heads of his own clansmen into a red mist. Not that there was anything Izaak could do to stop him. But he knew Darxhan had his back.

“I can’t go tonight. My mom says I got to take out the trash.”

“Cut him some slack,” Darxhan chimed in. “Vera got swiped.”

“You lost my best sniper rifle?” thundered GoreFiendHell, minus the accent again.

“It wasn’t
your
sniper rifle,” growled Izaak, clenching his teeth.

“I
am
Reaver clan. All of this is mine.
You
are mine.”

Had Gore just claimed
him
? Izaak glanced at Darxhan. “Well, uh,” he stammered. “I guess I better get going then. I think I know where I can find Vera.”

Hector’s cell phone buzzed with a text from Deion:
Gore’s lost it!

“That sniper rifle will just have to do,” Gore replied offhandedly. “You will travel with me in the second wave.” He turned away from Izaak. “Darxhan, you will lead the initial assault against the Acropolis. As soon as you capture it –”

“I don’t think so,” squeaked Darxhan in a voice that was one hundred percent Deion.

“What?” menaced GoreFiendHell, and the auto-cannon whirred again.

Darxhan recovered his voice and growled, “I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t asking.” Darxhan and Gore faced off. After a tension-filled instant, Gore spun around shouting orders.

“Now” hissed Deion and they made a break for the door, maneuvering through the milling throng of vanguards, mercs, smugglers, and cybertechs.

Where are you going?” Gore’s voice thundered behind them before they’d reached the exit.

“Keep going,” Darxhan hissed. They were almost to the tunnel.

“I said, where are you going?” raged the huge merc, wading through the sea of characters, trying to get out of Gore’s way.

Izaak turned around but kept backing away. “You guys are going to get slaughtered.”

“No one can defeat Reaver Clan, not even the Archons!”

“The Archons aren’t even players, dude. They’re NPCs. You can’t win!”

“Non-player characters do not concern me, Izaak Ersatz.”

“You know,” Izaak said, having had enough. “You are F-ed up! I quit.”

“Bad timing!” Darxhan squeaked.

“You can’t quit the Reavers,” said GoreFiendHell. “We are the most powerful clan on Earth!”

Around them, the crowd started to back away, forming a circle.

“I’m going to start my own clan,” said Izaak, pushing past characters. “We’ll go on hikes. Have picnics. It’ll be fun. I’ll send you an invite.”

“Picnics,” Gore sneered, and turned to Darxhan. “And you?”

“You’re weird, man,” Darxhan answered.

“This is all your doing,” GoreFiendHell snapped at Izaak in a high-pitched sneer now reminiscent of a New Jersey twang. “You’ve been trying to usurp my throne. You want Reaver Clan for your own!”

“I really got to go,” said Izaak. They were almost at the entrance to the tunnel.

“The only place you’ll go is into a rep tank!” GoreFiendHell pulled the plasmace from his back. The end of it lit up in a ball of crackling, blue energy. Characters shrieked and scattered in all directions. He raised it high over Izaak’s head, so focused he didn’t notice when Darxhan slipped in behind him. There was a distinct
whang
and Gore spun around in surprise. “What the –”

On his back, one of Izaak’s magnetic limpet mines was beeping in synch with a flashing red light. Beeping faster… and faster.

Darxhan spun past him on the other side and he and Izaak each activated a nano-particle smoke grenade and ran back up the tunnel. They could hear GoreFiendHell screaming behind them “Get it off! Get it off!” as the beeps merged to become a continuous tone. It exploded and the screaming stopped.

Then the nano-smokes went off and the tiny particles formed a thick, opaque mass.

“You know,” said Darxhan, as they ran for the tunnel entrance, “in about ten seconds half of Reaver clan is going to come pouring out of here!”

Izaak dropped a laser-activated sentry mine at the tunnel entrance and they sprinted for the gate. The gate wardens probably didn’t know what had happened yet but Zerg would never let them through with fifty mercs chasing them. The thought of taking him out made Izaak smile.

From a quarter mile out, he saw the guards at the gate look straight at them and start his direction. “Word’s out,” said Izaak, staring through the scope of his rifle. He took aim, and fired. And missed. Vera had loved this range! The characters were growing slowly larger in the scope but were still too far away.

There was an explosion behind them. “Sentry mine,” said Darxhan.

Mercs and vanguards were pouring out of the tunnel like ants when Izaak looked behind. Bullets and rockets whizzed past. Izaak took a hit, but his fusion cells absorbed the energy. He just hoped his friendship with the other Reaver snipers would keep them at bay.

Darxhan spun around and launched a wild salvo with his auto-cannon, then wheeled and sent a half-dozen arcing toward Zerg’s group. Izaak looked back through the scope. Zerg and his mercs were still coming and he saw Darxhan’s shells explode harmlessly among them. Then he remembered a scene from the old black-and-white movie
Sergeant York
he had once seen with his father. He zeroed in on the one in the rear and fired. It was a direct hit, but he didn’t fall. He had to shoot him three times. Then he picked the next to last, who was now in the rear, and went to work on him, hoping those in front would think he was a lousy shot and not take cover.

It worked, for when they finally met, Zerg took the full brunt of Darxhan’s plasmace. It zeroed his shields, smashed through his Lorica, and sent his body spinning into the ruins of the mosque where it lodged in the tower and hung there.

“I hope he didn’t power the gate down,” said Izaak, “or we ain’t going far.”

“Shrikes!” said Darxhan.

Two of the one-man, hover-bikes appeared behind. In seconds, they would be on them. They started firing. Izaak took more damage. His shields collapsed and then his health bar dropped. Then dropped again.

“I’m going down fast!” Izaak blurted.

Darxhan stepped between him and the Shrike, absorbing the blasts. But he wasn’t indestructible either. He spun around and lobbed a better-aimed volley. The nearest Shrike exploded and its driver augured into the ground with a puff of smoke. But the other one was coming on fast. The arch was just yards away. But if the gate was down –

They passed through and stumbled into Izaak’s lair. His health bar was a flashing red splinter just a single pixel wide. They glanced back through the portal as it began to fade and watched as the Reaver clan jogged toward the slipgate. Two sets of fresh footprints went right up to it and disappeared. Without their slipgate passports set to Izaak’s lair, the Reavers could not follow them through.

The image was fading fast. Hector turned up the volume on his headset and listened intently.

A huge merc, almost as large as GoreFiendHell, and with Mk.IV armor nearly as impressive, stopped where the footprints disappeared. “They will pay,” growled ValaRocker, GoreFiendHell’s chief lieutenant and head of his personal bodyguard. “If we have to search every city and town on the planet, we will find Izaak Ersatz and Darxhan Gideon.
And they will…
”

Ch. 7

The image faded away, and they found themselves staring through the arch at the tubular cryo-chambers in Izaak’s lair.

“Well, that’s just great,” snapped Darxhan, stomping around. “Now we’ve got whole dang Reaver clan out looking for us!” He cut loose with a volley of cannon shells that exploded harmlessly along one wall.

“Calm down, man!” exclaimed Izaak. “It’s not the –”

“Do you know what’s going to happen when Gore and ValaRocker find us?” Darxhan shot back. “They’ll –”

Izaak cut him off. “It’s just a game Deion. A game. Don’t forget that. Yeah, I want Vera back, but lets keep some perspective here, okay? Now, hold on a second. I got to take care of something.”

Hector flew through several menus to remove Reaver clan from his alliance list. The last thing they needed were Reavers following them into Izaak’s lair. When his view returned to the Sulako, Darxhan was raiding his cache of fusion cells. “Oh, just help yourself,” said Izaak, surprised he was still out of breath. It had all seemed strangely… real.

“I will, since I took most of those blasts saving your unarmored butt. What’s that Lorica armor made of, plastic?”

“Why’d you have to slap a limpet mine on Gore’s back?” Izaak suddenly broke into laughter. “Guess that merc of yours is good for something after all.”

Hector opened up a new menu. He’d wanted to do this for a long time and now he had a reason. “Making a new clan,” he said, to Darxhan. “Already got it set up. Just needed a name. And no, it doesn’t contain the words fart, dump, or douche.” The name appeared on his screen as he punched in one letter at a time: S – P – A – R – T – A – N – S.

“That hasn’t been taken?” asked Deion. A moment later ‘DARXHAN’ popped up on the clan roster.

“Just don’t start calling it the Fartans.”

“Very funny. What’s our symbol going to be?”

Hector hadn’t thought of that. “One thing at a time,” he said, and left it blank, glad to be rid of the flaming skull-head.

“So what happened to Vera?” Deion asked, and Hector finally told him the whole story, including that he was sure he’d find Mal-X in Alanya. Deion listened intently and didn’t interrupt.

“Mal-X, huh?” said Deion, when he’d finished. “Short for Malcolm-X I guess?”

Hector admitted he had never heard of Malcolm-X, so Deion told him about the black Muslim leader from the sixties.

Deion paused a moment. “From what you said, sounds like this Mal-X figured out the suspend-modem cheat.”

“You mean like from Halo 2?” Neither Hector nor Deion had ever been a victim of this cheat but both had heard of it. “I don’t know. I was never out of control. No blue screen.. Just there one second, gone the next.”

“Could he have been an empath? Using teleport?”

Hector laughed. Empaths were the biggest disappointment of
Omega Wars
. “Have you ever seen an empath who can do teleport? Or anything useful? Besides, he was using tech. Empaths can’t use a nexus blade.”

“Then why doesn’t he just meet you in a multiplayer matchup. Why’s he tell you where he is so you can do it in the MMOG?”

“Easy. He kills me in multiplayer-mode and I come right back. He kills me in MMOG quest mode and he gets all my stuff and Izaak has to go into a replication tank for a week. Bigger consequences. You know how it works.”

“There’s not a gate there,” said Darxhan. “We’ll be stuck.” There was a pause. “Who’s this guy? Colonel West?”

Hector heard a quick intake of breath and looked over to see Darxhan standing in front of his dad’s vanguard. “Deion Get away from there!”

“Your dad’s old character is still ali – “

“Yes, he’s still alive – active.” Hector liked Deion, but the kid could be so nosey at times.