Soda Pop Soldier (28 page)

Mr. Saxon?

Who's that guy?

Apparently, I'm that guy for now.

Someone's paying and it surely isn't going to be me.

“What do you have in the way of scotch?”

Her eyes murmur a seductive respect before she names a brand that makes top-shelf malt look and taste like gutter liquor.

“I'll have a bottle of that. And some ice.”

“Of course. My name's Candy if you'll be needing anything else.”

Is there a suggestion of something off menu? Suddenly I feel like a rube just arrived at PlanetDisney. That won't work on board a trade jet. I need to be an international spy. The kid in the limo told me that acting like all this wasn't the norm was a great way of letting everybody know I didn't belong here.

Hacked.

Another model, pixie-cut blond hair, long-legged and lithesome, leads me down a connecting ramp that jogs to the left as a large glass wall opens up onto the massive Krupp Skyliner, the largest plane ever built. It's a bat winger with eight massive scramjet engines. The fuselage rises up from the hull where the two wings jut way off to the sides. At the rear, two tail fins climb impossibly upward. Its exterior is highly polished shiny metal with a white stripe running above the third tier of windows. Within the white stripe, the name of the airline shimmers in powder blue script.
Lufthansa
. The entire plane is graceful and terrifying all at once.

On board, we pass a lounge where jazz burbles away under the soft tinkling of glass and ice.

“Is this your first trip with us, Mr. Saxon?” asks model number three.

“No, I've done this before,” I lie. “It's been awhile though. Any changes?”

“None to speak of.” She presses a button for the elevator that will take us up to the executive deck. When the kid's grandpa hacks, he really hacks. Only very high rollers make it to the executive deck. Or so I'd once read in a trashy celebrity blog.

“After takeoff, we'll serve dinner. You can take it in your room if you like, or join us in the dining salon. There's going be a beautiful moon out tonight as we head west over the continent. Once we get up to speed, most passengers sleep until we arrive over Tokyo. Then the trading starts. Then it's on to Thailand, Cairo, and Paris where we'll be landing.”

The elevator door opens on the plush white carpet of the executive level. Another model, rich auburn hair in tight, little coils that peek out from beneath her tiny pillbox hat, skin creamy and rosy but only slightly more beautiful than the others, greets me with a cut-crystal tumbler of amber scotch.

“We took the liberty of pouring your first drink, Mr. Saxon. The rest of the bottle will be waiting in your stateroom.” Her voice is a husky purr.

I take the glass, nod to her, and taste the smoothest scotch in the world. The fire starts slow and warm and finishes nicely on an oaky note that smells like fall and burning leaves and the earth on a cold day.

Red disappears down a mahogany-paneled corridor all amber swirls and chocolate whorls. Blondy leads me in the opposite direction down the dimly lit corridor until we arrive at suite 67C. She punches in a code, and the crash door scissors away. Inside, I'm greeted by a large mahogany desk with a high-backed leather chair and a small seating area of two vintage brown leather cigar chairs with a chessboard between them. The chess pieces are ornate. Martian Colonists versus Corporate Raiders. The rest of the suite looks like a rich person's library.

“Through there,” she says, indicating another smaller door, “is the bedroom.” There isn't a way she could have said that and not sounded suggestive.

Then again, maybe it's the scotch.

“In the event of an emergency,” she continues, “we will notify you of what to do. In the event of a crash, don't do anything. The cabin will fill with SafetyFoam moments before impact, after the suite has jettisoned itself from the fuselage. But don't worry, that's never happened.” She laughs lightly. “A crash I mean.” Almost a coy giggle. “Anything else I can offer you for now, Mr. Saxon?” I know the scotch is working when I think about making a crack regarding their turndown service.

Instead I bring myself back to the business at hand, the reason I'm actually here. “The terminal?” I ask, trying to make it sound like an afterthought. Nonchalant.

“We've already keyed in your bio-profile to the desk. Place your palm on the top, like this, and it will activate for you and you only. This is a state-of-the-art microframe from Bang and Olafssen. The display uses a nano-coral technology and I can assure you, the color is dynamic and very lifelike. Very easy on the eyes for long hours of trading. But it really comes into its own if you decide to watch your favorite entertainment. I love
Lavender and Croquet,
that BBC show. Every time I watch it on one of these, it's like I'm actually living in London back in the 1990s. Its processing power and bandwidth are capable of running twenty million individual applications, while handling data at a rate of forty to the tenth power luminal. All our passengers find this more than adequate for their needs.”

There wasn't a look on my face. There was no leer at her obvious beauty. No pleasant buzz from the scotch. No stunned amazement that I was going into the Black on a scramjet hurtling at almost the edge of outer space.

I'm blank.

Because it's all too much.

“I'll take that burger now, if you don't mind,” I mumble.

“Certainly. I'll be back with your burger shortly, Mr. Saxon,” I hear her say from far away. The door silently slips shut behind her.

I check my Petey. I have eighteen minutes until the Black goes live. I have to eat now because I can't have them in here serving me the burger while I'm in the Black. Plus I'm really hungry. I throw my trench onto one of the cigar leather chairs, use the nickel-brushed restroom and the softest white towel I've ever touched in my entire life, down the scotch, think about another and then think better of it. I probably need to go easy on the scotch until the Black ends tonight.

When I come back into the salon, the blonde is setting up my meal on the now cleared chessboard. Large starched white napkin, silver silverware, logoed tableware that looks expensive because it is. She turns and offers the bottle of zin for my inspection.

“Shall I pour?”

I nod. She could have asked me to light myself on fire and I probably would've just nodded to that too.

“I'm going to keep my eye on you.” She leans close, suddenly the professional company line gone. “I can tell you have all kinds of appetites.” She tugs at the top button of my shirt and bites her full lip as if trying to stop herself from something she desperately wants to do.

Then I have the dumbest thought ever. Honestly.

Maybe she really likes guys who like hamburgers.

When the door slides shut behind her without her giving a backward glance—she's fully confident that I'm watching her legs walk themselves out the door—I throw myself at the burger with seven minutes to go.

Have you ever eaten a burger that was so good, so really good in fact that you had no idea it was the best burger you'd ever eaten until the last bite, in which all the burger-cheese-sauce essence distilled itself down into the last perfect bite of cheeseburger? Unmarred by produce. Have you? Well, every bite of this burger was like that perfect last bite. Not just the last bit. The whole thing. Every bite. It was so good, I almost forgot the zin and ate the entire thing, groaning to myself each time the heady Stilton surrendered to the brash zin. Each flavor draped the grilled medium-rare burger with taste and succulence. Oh, and then there were the duck-fat fries.

Unbelievable. Hot. Salty. Crisp. How french fries should be. But better. The best. Ever.

I finish everything just as the three-minute warning sounds on my Petey. I remove the Black disk from my trench and boot up the desk, still chasing the flavor of the burger across my mouth. I down the last of my first glass of zin in one gulp as
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter
resolves across the desk. The zin perfects the burger experience as it washes over my taste buds, reminding them just how great the burger had been. I sit down at the desk. Yellow lights flash outside my window as the Skyliner taxis toward the main runway. I hear nothing outside. No engines. No wheels. No chatter. A pulse of steady acceleration and we're lumbering, then running, then shooting down the runway for takeoff. A moment of lightness, and we're airborne.

On-screen, my Samurai stands before a steel door emblazoned with a raised skull and crossbones. Behind me, in-game, the zombies of the Halls of the Damned shamble their broken bone-chime dance up the crumbling platform after me. A blunderbuss resounds distantly as I remember Plague, my mortal enemy, is closing in. I reach for the iron door and open it.

Chapter 22

T
he Krupp Skyliner is still climbing through the cloud cover over the East Coast as the taste of the burger fades and the zin finds its place inside my head.

For a moment I am just here.

What am I playing for tonight? I might be aboard the world's most elite airborne trading brokerage, surrounded by the beautiful and wealthy, but I'm still broke. Hard to imagine after a burger like that. But I am. So that's what I'm playing for. Money.

Also . . . someone's trying to kill me.

Inside the Black, I enter the room behind the skull-crossed iron door.

Wan blue light filters down through the crumbling latticework of a broken ceiling, ceilings, above. Dusty stone sarcophagi litter a vaulted cathedral. Will there be more of the undead? Vampires even?

Plague will be here soon, and I still need to get to the top of the tower and rescue the child. That's where the real prize money is. The real goal of this weird game. My goal all along and even more so, now.

I check my character and item stats. My biggest concern is the battered
Axe of Skaarwulfe
. It's down to 20 percent effectiveness. I'd used it exclusively for seven hours of solid undead killing in the last session. It didn't have much left in it after all the blood and dismemberment. I'd need another weapon, soon. If I can find the Samurai's blade, then I might do some serious business. After that, my next concern is health. I'm down to 54 percent.

I move forward, the
chock . . . chock . . . chock
of the Samurai's wooden sandals the only sounds within the crypt over ambient. I examine some of the bas-relief sarcophagi as I pass. Intricate scroll-worked bats and fanged cartoonish demons, cobwebbed and dusty, cover their sides. Carved into the lids are runes, a horned script full of winged flourishes, stamped in black slate. Obviously something important lies within.

If one lid comes off, do all the lids come off? Some sort of trap. Are all the sarcophagi trapped? Can I handle whatever's in even one of them? And what about all of them at once? There are nineteen sarcophagi. Nineteen seems like a lot for just the Samurai. Just me. If what lies within each isn't boss level, then it, or they, must surely be just below the highest NPC monster rank. The whole dark cathedral gloom of the place seems to telegraph something important. At the far end of the crumbling space, a wide stone stairway leads up toward a mist-shrouded landing and deep shadows beyond.

I reach the stairway, leaving all nineteen sarcophagi untouched. I haven't made up my mind as to what to do next. I know I need to move fast or face Plague with a weapon that doesn't seem to have much left in it. Inside at least one of the sarcophagi, there might be a weapon I can use. But nothing is for free. Nothing's ever free.

And why is Plague so hot to kill me?

Then there's Morgax.

Whoever it was on the other end of the red phone at Seinfeld's wants him dead. After that . . . I can ask for anything. “Anything” covers a lot of rent and so much more.
Anything
is really a big word when you think about it.

And then there are other things beyond the power of the word
anything
.

Could the nameless voice get Sancerré back? Save ColaCorp from losing Song Hua Harbor and pro-team status? That's a lot to ask. Maybe he just meant five million dollars or so.

Would I ask for any of those other things instead of a big pile of money?

I move the Samurai up the crumbling gray stone steps. Thick strands of cobweb stretch across recessed shadows in dark places. A figure steps away from the wall, out of the dark and into the dim blue light. It's a bearded old man wearing dusty gray robes.

“Hail, Samurai. I'm Callard the wandering philosopher and imminent nonplayer character.”

I enable voice on the desk and see the active mic button illuminate inside the desktop display. Fancy.

“Hail,” I reply. Role-playing.

“I believe you met my grandson earlier. How was your burger?”

“So you're Grandpa?”

“Something like that,” begins Callard in his creaky old man's voice. “I'm more like the boy's great-great-grandfather. But why waste the time of the young on such meaningless details.”

“I guess . . . ,” I begin, trying to wrap my head around who Callard is and what he really knows about me. In the end, I'm not sure of anything. But it's too late, and Plague is too near for anything else but honesty. “ . . . I'm in your debt for getting me out of New York. But . . . I'm not sure what you want out of me.”

“Follow me.” Callard turns and walks up the squat stairs within the tomb. At the top, a massive circular door lies sunken into the ancient rotting wall. Leering fanged ogres in stonework relief hold dusty chains across it.

“Beyond that door”—Callard points to the large circular barrier—“lies the crypt of Kal Tum, the Ogre warlord of the Gaash Mountains. Servant of the Dark Prince.”

I check the rows of waiting sarcophagi, below and behind us. Anticipating Plague.