Soda Pop Soldier (36 page)

It's standard WonderSoft technique. Move in fast with armor and try to locate our positions, then use the heavy infantry to pin us down and destroy us. So this time we're going to move while they focus on where they think we are.

Bullets begin to punch holes in the thin walls of the warehouses we're set up in. Smoky shafts of light shoot through the rooms like sudden lasers as we shift, grunts folding up their heavy machine guns and ammo crates and hauling them into their new fighting positions. Kiwi and his heavily armored, light vehicle strike force, the Mule platoon, appear down the road that runs alongside the canal where the Song Hua Bridge crosses over the river and into the harbor area and WonderSoft country. Mounted twin-barrel Hauser machine guns chew up the WonderSoft heavy troopers caught in the open on the wrong side of the barricades.

SMAFF erupts out of canisters attached to the back of Kiwi's Mules, as the rest of the platoon rakes the WonderSoft troops with gunfire in one quick pass.

“Scratch one live WonderSoft Player. Just got BangDead with about twenty other Softies!” calls out Kiwi triumphantly over BattleChat.

“Way to go,” I shout back.

“Woot,” says RiotGuurl.

“BangDead, I hardly knew ye,” recites JollyBoy, then erupts in a wheezing laugh. Other players sound off with their congratulations, and I have to quiet them down to get everyone focused back on the next attack.

We aren't there yet.

Look out your window, Mr. Saxon.

The words appear in a sudden pop-up chat window on my desk, inside the Skyliner suite.

On-screen I check my rifle company. Machine-gun crews acknowledge readiness to engage targets.

“Who is this?” I write back.

Look out your window now, PerfectQuestion!

I swivel the desk chair to look out the large suite porthole of the Skyliner. In the hazy late-afternoon sun, somewhere over the seemingly endless Sahara Desert, a matte-black jet fighter hangs off the wide wing of the trade jet. I think it's an F-15 from last century. Moments later a second one joins it, flying wingman.

When I look back at the screen I see
Bang, you're dead,
written in chat.

On-screen, WonderSoft armored carriers are disgorging battalions of weapon-laden grunts from behind the ruins of one of the smoking tanks and along the far side of the plaza where there's cover. Huge amounts of machine-gun fire rattle off the walls as WonderSoft grunts begin to shoot grenades into the warehouses where our machine-gun teams had been during the first assault.

“Recon has pulled back,” whispers JollyBoy quietly over BattleChat. “All clear to move forward, PerfectQuestioney.”

I turn back to the window and stare out at the two jet fighters.

A sudden knock on the suite door quickly turns to intense, insistent pounding.

“It's Carter Banks, let me in!”

I open the door and return to the desk. I signal all units to stand by. I give Kiwi operational command for a moment.

Carter Banks looms above me as I finish entering my commands. Behind him, the captain of the Skyliner in his powder blue dress uniform waits.

“We've got merc's outside,” Carter Banks says, nodding at the jets.

“They've asked me to throw you out the cargo door or they're going to board us,” interrupts the gray-haired captain in German-accented English.

Want to chat?
pops up on-screen.

I accept the video link and come face-to-face with Faustus Mercator, a.k.a. Bony Man.

“Ah, there you are, soldier boy,” he says, his tombstone teeth smiling. “Like my jets? Got 'em from a couple of witch doctors. They only cost me some NikeAtlantis Air Kicks, a few dozen SoftEyes, and a shipping container full of carbon-forged machetes. You always get a lotta bang for your buck in deepest darkest Africa, I always say that. What a deal.”

I hold up one finger telling him to wait, then I cut the mic on the desk.

“I can handle this,” I tell Carter Banks. “Give me a minute.”

“I want to assure you,” announces the Skyliner captain. “We will not throw you from this plane and . . .” He pauses. He's out of breath. “We do have sufficient security to repel any boarders, should we need to.”

I'm pretty sure the captain has to say that, as per company protocol. But the look that goes with it says,
Give me another option and I'll take it.

When Carter and the Lufthansa captain leave the suite, I toggle the mic back to live.

“What do you want?”

“Everything, PerfectQuestion. I want . . . everything. You know that already. But before I can have everything, you need to be dead. So you can either throw yourself off the cargo deck . . . I have a file I can upload to show you exactly how to override the security parameters to do it because I know Krupp-Lufthansa would never even think of doing such a thing. Or I can board the plane with my recently hired Greater Africa Coalition mercenary team, out of Djibouti, and shoot you in the head. But there's going to be some awfully messy bloodshed with that plan, I assure you. Or I can shoot down the whole plane. But apparently, that'll cost extra.”

The Fasten Seat Belts sign flashes across my desktop.

“Why don't you just fight fair, for once.” I pause, letting that sink in. Like it should mean something to him. “You'll feel better about winning. If you can, that is.”

He laughs at me. It's long, slow, and the worst, most humorless laugh I've ever heard. It goes on for an uncomfortably long amount of time. “I never fight fair,” he says on a sigh and wipes his brow. “That would be disadvantageous. To me.”

“Do what you want, Mercator, but I'm going to beat WonderSoft today.” I cut the chat link. He must have been trailing Kiwi's traffic and found me when I contacted him yesterday.

The Fasten Seat Belts sign flashes across the desktop again. The speakers in the suite are suddenly hijacked as the sounds of make-believe war and gunfire are interrupted by the very real Skyliner captain, announcing the very real situation. I hear a woman screaming as the Skyliner begins to roll side to side, and then back to level flight again. The pilot's probably attempting to keep the hijackers from establishing a connection for their boarding plane.

I return back to the desktop. Chatter and casualty counts come at me in waves above the on-screen machine gunfire and rocket rounds WonderSoft is shooting at us like there's a sale on rocket-propelled grenades and they've cleaned out the store.

Which is exactly what I want them to do. That the next few minutes will be intense is an understatement.

“JollyBoy, stand by to push their right flank. We're counterattacking with everything we've got.”

I hope Mercator doesn't know the real plan. I hope JollyBoy is the traitor. Otherwise . . . this is it.

“Moving in to pick up the grunts. Will drop them on the TV tower far side of the bridge,” says RiotGuurl over BattleChat for JollyBoy's benefit. Her Albatross's turbines whine in the background as she makes her approach to the staging LZ.

“Once that's done, come back and airlift the rest of us onto the tower, roger?” I say, waiting for a reply as WonderSoft's gunfire grows cacophonous. All around me, ColaCorp machine-gun teams are pouring unreal amounts of fire into the WonderSoft positions on the far side of the bridge. Parts of the building I'm in are exploding inward as RPGs smash into the simulated brickwork.

“Anything you want . . . ,” says RiotGuurl as an antiair alert suddenly blares in the background of her transmission. A second later, distracted, she finishes, “You got it, PerfectQuestion.” I hear the Albatross's VTOL thrusters straining above her squadron's comm traffic.

I'm frozen. All of it, everything, makes sense now.

Anything you want, you got it.

Tatiana.

RiotGuurl asking me my name. John Saxon.

The same John Saxon holding a ticket on a Krupp-Lufthansa Trade Jet.

I open a BattleCam feed to JollyBoy. In front of me, a WonderSoft grenade rolls into the building we've shifted into. I jump and throw myself behind some stacked ammo cases. The grenade goes off, killing all the grunts nearby. Two WonderSoft troopers enter the warehouse spraying automatic gunfire everywhere.

“JollyBoy, reporting for duty, sir!” he says over chat, oblivious to the gunfight on my end.

I raise my rife and fire a rapid burst into the chest of one WonderSoft grunt as the other fires, hitting me in the left arm. I'm down and bleeding, my screen red with damage.

“I say, JollyBoy reporting as ordered, fearless leader!”

I pop a concussion grenade and fling it over the distance between me and the WonderSoft grunts, spraying bullets everywhere as the entire room is torn to shreds. When the grenade goes
bang,
I empty my magazine into both softies.

“Fever, where are you, I'm hit at second position for command team, marking my position on your HUD now.”

“On my way!” is Fever's reply over BattleChat. In the background of his transmission I hear the rattle of nearby small-arms fire. I hear the rising whine of shock paddles recharging as he gets another of my grunts moving.

“Perfect, mate.” It's Kiwi. “We've got WonderSoft insurgents on this side of the river. They're infiltrating our positions.”

“I know,” I reply. “They just tried and died at my loc. Order all units to keep an eye out for them.”

“Jolly, you there?” I call out over a private chat link between the two of us.

“Yes,” he says, theatrically bored. “Proceeding with counterattack through the isthmus, meeting little or no resistance.”

“I thought you were the traitor . . .” I don't have time for anything else. The Skyliner is banking so steeply that suite decor is falling from the bookshelves. Then we level out. A moment later, a dull metallic clamp reverberates through the hull of the massive trade jet.

“Security teams stand by to repel boarders,” says a monotone military voice over the intercom, interrupting the suite speaker's broadcast of the end of the world warfare going on inside WarWorld.

“Frankly, PerfectQuestion . . . I am shocked and hurt. A murderous psychopath, yes, of course. But I have standards, and one of which is: a friend in need is a friend indeed. I'd have to be a sociopath to be a traitor. I'm a psychopath. There's a difference, believe me. Psychopaths believe in something, even if that something's not actually real.”

“Where's RiotGuurl's Albatross?” I interrupt, cutting off his rising monologue on the nature of mental illnesses. My screen is pulsing red and I have no time to waste.

I've got seconds left before I bleed out without medical attention.

Outside, in-game, the gunfire along the bridge and warehouses is achieving rock concert levels. Everyone is using everything they've got to kill everybody.

“Her Albatross is approaching the staging LZ . . . ,” says JollyBoy.

“Listen to me, Jolly, I want you to shoot her down, right now. Do you have an antiair kit nearby?”

“Do I have rockets? I've got loads of 'em, my boy. Now where did I put that rocket? Brass knuckles. Whoopee cushion. Sniper rifle. Ahhhh . . . rocket. Shoot her down, you say? Remember, as a court-certified psychopath, I can't do it without a reason. See I'm a psychopath not a sociopath. If I were a sociopath . . .”

“She's a traitor! She's been selling us out to WonderSoft!”

Over the BattleCam feed, I hear the lock-on whine of Jolly's antiair kit, and a second later the missile shrieks away distantly with a sound-ripping
whooosh
.

“ . . . it wouldn't be a matter for discussion,” continues JollyBoy. “I'd just do it. As a sociopath, that is. Now why am I shooting her down?”

In my command management screen, I watch RiotGuurl's status move from Active to KIA.

Killed in Action.

“Jolly, I need you to lead those troops right into the center of the battle here at the bridge. Forget the right flank and head for the bridge! You shouldn't meet any resistance. They're expecting those troops somewhere else.”

“No resistance!” erupts JollyBoy. “I like those odds.”

Switching to BattleChat I ask, “Kiwi, what's the situation at the bridge?”

Fever crashes through the shot-to-hell warehouse door and throws out a health pack near me.

My health meter starts to rise slowly.

“Kiwi, it was RiotGuurl all along. She was the traitor. What's your status?”

“Uh . . . doesn't look good, mate,” says Kiwi. “We've got WonderSoft heavy infantry buttoned up all over the far side of the bridge. Good news is, they're not getting much farther than that. It's a stalemate, for now.”

A stalemate means a loss, for us.

“Do you think you can punch through their line? JollyBoy's going to attack from our right flank straight into their center. If we can link up with him, we might be able to turn this around.”

There's a pause, then, “I'll do it.”

“Pick me and Fever up and order all units to follow us across the bridge. We're going on the offensive. Set the overall objective to the palazzo on the far side of the bridge near the tollbooths.”

I hear machine-gun fire, hard and metallic, nearby.

It isn't in-game.

“Palazzo?” asks Kiwi.

This is real. The boarding party is inside the Skyliner.

“The big open area between the warehouses and the bridge on the far side.” The palazzo was back at the tower in the Black. The plaza is on the far side of the bridge in WarWorld near the space-age TV tower. My gaming lives are beginning to overlap.

“Oh . . . that's what that's called,” he says.

Trixie the sky hostess opens the door to the suite and closes it behind her quickly, leaning on the door as if that might help stop the bullets.

“The captain is telling the lower decks to hit the escape pods,” she pants breathlessly. “I was told to come to your suite and tell you to remain here. The Hindenburg Class Survival System will protect all the occupants of all the executive suites in the event of a crash.”