Soda Pop Soldier (24 page)

He waves, trying to be friendly.

I've got good eyes. At this distance I can tell he's saying something out the side of his mouth. Several of them turn to watch me, each wearing a pulsing purple SoftEye.

Two questions leap to the front of the queue.

Why is a small private army staging an attack outside my apartment building?

And the second question is . . .

. . . why is one of these jackbooted thugs shouldering an antiarmor rocket and aiming it directly at me?

I fling myself away from the window, manage a fluid turn in which I grab my trench, and head straight for the door to the stairwell. I hear the aviator shades hit the floor but theres no time to scoop them up. With the door open and my body not moving as fast as my mind thinks it should right about now, I launch myself down the rickety stairs. I hear glass break just before I reach the next landing, and then brick, wood, and plaster scatter across the landing above, spilling debris and dust down onto me.

Then I hear the explosion.

Another two landings along my descent, and I hear the front door explode as someone puts a shotgun to it and destroys the lock with a special lock-breaker slug, no doubt.

On the bottom floor, their capture team chases me out the back door as I crash into the slimy, ice-laden alley. I find my feet, let go of common sense, and sprint as hard as I can. Within minutes, I'm three blocks away, and no SmartArmor-wearing thug is going to catch me as I race through alleyways and abandoned buildings.

My landlord, on the other hand, is going to evict me.

For the rest of the day, I ride the rattling subway system, wearing last night's suit and parsing the details, trying to figure out my next move. Which, when I really think about it, would be novel since I haven't really made any moves.

So Faustus Mercator is real.

He really wants me dead.

Why didn't he just space me last night?

Tatiana slithers into my head, and for a good hour I circle the city and think about her. Obviously, not that she needed it, she was wearing some sort of designer hyperpheromone that drugged me to the eyeballs. Still, she can't be all bad. Not with those looks.

Four hours later, it's two o'clock and I am devouring my third platform gyro. I have a really great metabolism, one of my parents' choices when they ordered me.

My biggest problem, other than the fact that a sociopath wants me dead, is that I have to be online somewhere as PerfectQuestion and fighting for ColaCorp later this evening. I check my Petey, waiting for a message from the Black. There's still that to consider.

I kill the next four hours looking for an Internet café I can hide out in. I'm fairly sure once I log on as PerfectQuestion, Faustus Mercator will hunt me down and kill me, accidentally of course, after the night's battle has ended. Most Internet cafés are too vulnerable. Two thugs, the scenario might be imagined, irate over a game of
Bang,
a simple online first-person shooter that most teens and gang members play, in which players hunt each other down with shotguns, get into an argument. Eventually, the two hotheads exchange gunfire over the obligatory allegation of cheating or outright screen-looking and, oops, I get killed in the cross fire. Or they make it look like a robbery gone bad. Or even a thrill kill by a bunch of chain junkies looking for the next high.

If Faustus Mercator wants me dead, I'll probably be dead in the next few hours.

I think about calling him and arranging a truce or something. Maybe all my morals and standards bravado was just the scotch. Dodging his hit squads on the streets above, and thinking about the no doubt burning remains of my apartment, is enough to make me seriously think about switching sides.

But that's not me.

If I do that, I won't just be letting me down. I like RangerSix. Though we've never exchanged a personal word, he's the kind of guy you want to earn the respect of. Letting him down, as well as Kiwi, and especially RiotGuurl—it just wouldn't be the same. Then I'd just be some mercenary looking for the next buck.

That there's a traitor on the team already seems likely. How else could WonderSoft always be just a step or two ahead of us. But who?

I thought about JollyBoy and the trap at the LZ back at WonderSoft's airfield.

I can't fall asleep in the subway, and I find myself thinking about the past. Way back, when I thought ColaCorp could win this war. Lately it's just been one long retreat. So why not switch sides?

Again, the faces of friends pass outside in the darkness, along tunnels beneath the city. Even my parents. Something deep down, something the gene engineers didn't intend, something inside me, tells me that I don't like guys like Faustus Mercator.

I don't like guys who think they can just run amok while the rest of us let them. The photographer Sancerré ran off with, he's probably a lot like that. Maybe that's why I felt the way I did about Sancerré. Not that she chose someone else over me . . .

. . . but that she chose someone who would just use her. Tell her everything she wanted to hear. Give her the big break she was always working so hard for, then cast her aside one day because he didn't really, actually, love her. Like I did. Do. That innocent, wide-eyed, taking-in-the-whole world look in her eyes would die a little that day. Maybe the guy on the street wouldn't notice, or the next guy who came along, but if you knew her, if you knew it had been there once and that it was gone now, that was what broke my heart about her the most. That the good inside her would die someday.

If I couldn't stick it to the wonderful Mario, the world's greatest photographer, at least in his own opinion, then maybe I could just stick it to a world-dominating madman like Faustus Mercator.

Just once for all the little guys in life. Guys like me.

I call RangerSix and plead rats in my building.

He arranges for me to get access to a terminal inside ColaCorp corporate headquarters in order to be able to participate in tonight's battle.

Everywhere, or so it seems to me, people inform on my passage through the city to ColaCorp headquarters, remarking on my journey, a little too interested in which way I'm going to get to ColaCorp.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Later, I get through lobby security at ColaCorp and manage my way onto an elevator that's playing something forgotten over the speakers. The workday has ended, and now I have an entire floor to myself. In the back of my head, I'm already wondering if somehow I'm betraying my team, turning my back on RangerSix and the rest.

Why aren't I telling them about Faustus Mercator?

Outside, the snow begins to fall into the early New York night. Every so often, I hear an announcement for the next shuttle departing for the concourse above. Most of the executives must live up there. Finally the last shuttle departs for the night, and I sit in the offices of ColaCorp amid a dense quiet that feels almost comforting. Other than security, I am alone in the building.

I find a break room and use their expensive coffeemaker to brew up a truly wonderful cup of coffee.

Cream and sugar.

Silence.

Night outside.

I webcam my apartment building from a nearby city camera. It's gone. When I go onto the city services site, I find a note posted indicating the building had been scheduled for demo months ago and that it's uninhabited as of today.

All my stuff is gone.

Except for my trench, the Black disk, and my sawed-off broom handle. All gone.

Even the things Sancerré left behind.

It's hard to believe I was on the Grand Concourse just last night. Up there where things are different, better even. Or at least it was one of those nights that seemed that way.

I'm in loadout, adjusting my grunt's tactical settings and weapon kits when RiotGuurl pings me. Not in the mood, I almost ignore her. I can only take so much in one day.

“Hey!?,” she texts.

“What?”

She sends me an invite to live chat with her avatar.

“Hey, I just wanted to say I'm sorry,” she says in the form of her in-game, mirrored-sunglasses-wearing combat pilot avatar. Her hair is a red spike. Her avatar always wears a smirk.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” I reply.

“No, I was severely not cool. I threw up a wall once I sensed you being . . . kind . . . to me. Sorry, it's . . . that was wrong of me.”

“Forget it. I was just grasping at straws. My personal life is crashing like a South African hard drive. I had no business inviting anyone into it right now. It's me who should be sorry. So I am. I am sorry. I apologize.”

“Hey . . .” She pauses. Then, “Sounds bad. What's going on?”

“I can't get into it right now. Let's win one tonight and then have a drink in the bunker.”

“It's a date,” she says, and then her avatar makes a pistol with one hand and fires.

The conversation ends as RangerSix broadcasts our assignments.

“Kids, tonight's a retreat. And it's no treat. ColaCorp has ponied up enough assets to buy us a carrier relief force if we can make it back to Song Hua City on the other side of the bridge. That's it. They want us to hold Song Hua Harbor, this side of the bridge, tonight. We get all our field assets off the map and onto the carrier group, we get to fight next week, but we're looking at a death match if that's the case. Effectively, that's it for us in the league. Last week was our must win. As of now, WonderSoft corporate is asking to be declared the winner of Eastern Highlands. This gives them the AtomMall advertising for the next quarter. In short, we lost.”

“So what's the purpose of tonight?” asks Kiwi over the ether.

“Good question, son. And I don't have an answer for you. Other than that they weren't declared the winners in the last match, as the league felt their victory wasn't dynamic enough. You made 'em pay with a lot of tanks, and we got our artillery out of there. Thus, Song Hua Harbor tonight. Their assault begins at in-game twilight and should last well into the night. The town's lit up like a Christmas tree and the league wants us to put on a big firefight for the viewers.”

“So when WonderSoft rolls all over us, it'll look like a victory parade,” cuts in RiotGuurl. “Worth showing, huh?”

“That's the thinking,” answers RangerSix.

“That sucks,” she says.

RangerSix doesn't respond. But his silence seems like some kind of agreement.

“So here's the plan,” continues RangerSix. “WonderSoft will prep with arty and then come down hard on the only road out of the highlands and into the port. RiotGuurl, you're on station at Song Hua. There's an airbase there and I want you on CAP and ready to fly close air support.”

A 3-D map of the city appears on-screen. Three main avenues run north-south down to the harbor. Smaller side streets cut across the dense urban areas. The bridge leading to Song Hua City waits on the far side of the map.

“Our amphibs will be loading and artillery has priority, so we'll have them loaded by the time I expect to see the first ground units. Armor goes next. Don't plan on any stand-up fights, 'cause they won't be there to back you up. Stick and move. It's an infantry battle, so take lots of body armor and antitank. Finally, Kiwi, since you like explosives so much, I want you to demo the easternmost and westernmost north-south avenues. I suggest bringing down the buildings I've highlighted on your map. Hopefully this will channel WonderSoft into our little shooting gallery down the main street. If they want a big game, they might take the bait and try to push on through regardless of resistance. If we can get into some good fighting positions we should slow 'em down in time to get off the beach. In no way, shape, or form can they reach and cross the Song Hua Bridge. That is an immediate victory condition for WonderSoft tonight. No ifs, ands, or buts about that one. That's it, kids; you have your section briefings and code files. See you in the streets.”

Chapter 19

W
onderSoft artillery comes in high, whistling through the twilight overhead, ranging in on the harbor where our heavy armor and artillery are waiting to load back onto the amphibs. Near the outskirts of a Southeast Asian cityscape lit up like a Christmas tree, the rest of us are dug in. I've set up around a construction site near the main road leading to the highlands, the direction in which WonderSoft should be coming from with all the armor they've got. Every so often Kiwi calls out “Timber!” over BattleChat as a series of shape charges ignite and explode, signaling the demise of another digital building as it crashes down into the streets, blocking the other two large roads that lead down to the harbor.

My grunts are spaced out across the construction site, dug in behind Dumpsters and tractors, with heavy-machine-gun teams covering the most likely WonderSoft avenues of approach. I have a mortar team set up to the rear of a factory about two clicks behind our position. Going over the map for the last time, I believe, or at least it appears to me, that I'm going to meet the tip of WonderSoft's spear. If they come in motorized columns with tactical air support, as they usually do, then they'll be coming right through this construction site. Once they get past it, they'll be in the outlying suburbs, and it'll be house-to-house fighting for them to get to the harbor. RangerSix has indicated that if I can tie them up here, we'll make this the focal point of the battle. But first I've got to get them to commit to wiping me out.

I'm on top of the half-built building, exposed girders and open framework, surrounded by sandbags and sniper teams.

“Any sign of 'em?” It's RiotGuurl. I can hear the Albatross's turbines straining in the background of her mic. She's high above us, orbiting the battlefield, ready to drop ordnance on target.

“Nothing yet. Any sign of the scouts?” WonderSoft recon should be out in the heavy forest beyond the construction site gathering intel, trying to find the best approach into Song Hua. “I'm surprised they're not here by now. Nothin' on IR. So if they're coming in, might be on foot-running stealth camo.”