Soda Pop Soldier (37 page)

That sounds like something she read somewhere once.

I don't ask her if it will protect us from heavily armed African mercenaries with state-of-the-art submachine guns. Outside the Skyliner, the two matte-black fighter jets hold their place just above the wide bat wing of the trade jet.

On-screen, Kiwi's Mule rolls up in a pixelated cloud of digital dust and grit, twin Hauser machine guns in the mount of his vehicle chattering away at distant targets on the far side of the bridge, keeping everyone's head down. Fever and I hit E on our keyboards and swing into the backseat of Kiwi's Mule.

“Straight through 'em, mate?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Straight through 'em.”

There's a high likelihood we'll all be killed shortly.

“All right then.” He guns the turbocharged engine and swings the fat-tired Mule around, accelerating toward the mouth of the suspension bridge. I bring up my CommandPad and order my machine-gun teams to concentrate their fire on the far side of the bridge. WonderSoft troopers are being ventilated right and left as we swerve through the first barricade. One of the WonderSoft troopers lobs a grenade at us and we roll over it. Seconds later, it explodes underneath the other Mule that's following us, sending it skyward behind us. I unload a full magazine into a WonderSoft machine gunner who stands up firing as we pass. A bullet storm ragdolls him against the walls of the entrance to the bridge.

We enter the lower level, swerving through abandoned cars and barricades. Our Mule is already smoking and down to 35 percent integrity. Still, it's moving. Kiwi's avatar yanks the wheel hard to make a narrow entrance ramp onto the upper deck. Orange cones scatter across both lanes as the wide panorama of the sky and suspension cables leaps into view. Two ColaCorp Dragonfly hunter-killer jets from the carrier group streak overhead and drop their payloads inside the far plaza. They split, as one rolls over onto its back to watch the damage done below. Green WonderSoft AA tracer fire chases after the other.

“Why the upper deck?” I ask Kiwi. “We'll be exposed.”

“They've set charges on every pylon below,” he shouts over BattleChat. “They mean to blow the bridge if they know we're crossing.”

“Aren't they more likely to see us up here on the top deck?” I ask.

“Sure, mate. But the explosives'll kill us outright down there. Up here we've at least got a second or two to react. By the way, Question . . .” Kiwi yanks the wheel hard and dodges a hail of bright gunfire screaming down around us from an inbound WonderSoft close-air-support Vampire. “What're we gonna do once we get to the other side of the bridge? We'll be outnumbered, surrounded, and cut off, mate.”

I'm still considering what he means by “reacting,” on a collapsing suspension bridge.

In the suite, Trixie touches her ear and says something. She turns to me. “They've made it to the galley. The captain says it's time to secure the suite. We might have to eject shortly.” She begins murmuring procedures softly to herself. Procedures she once learned in a classroom and never thought she'd need in real life. She opens a panel in the ceiling and detaches two oxygen masks with hoses connected to the inside of the panel. She dons one and then begins to strap the other to my head.

LOG OUT, NOW!!!!, PerfectQuestion!!!
erupts in all caps within the small chat window at the bottom of my desktop.

I ignore Mercator.

On-screen back in WarWorld, I'm telling the fire teams on our side of the river to hold position. I don't want them crossing the bridge now, in case WonderSoft does decide to blow it to kingdom come. Which they really should, if they just want a win. But what they really want is an epic victory. To do that, they'll need to cross the river and set up missile emplacements to take out our carrier task force.

I contact RangerSix.

“Listen, Six, we're going for it. JollyBoy isn't the traitor . . . it was RiotGuurl all along.” Another WonderSoft Vampire comes in low and strafes the bridge. Explosions and bright ricochets of ball ammunition chew up the roadway and bridgeworks. “Jolly's leading the reserves,” I continue once the jet streaks off to the north. “Into the center . . . from our right flank. I need you to ask ColaCorp for that roll now, Six.”

“Hang on!” screams Kiwi over BattleChat, as shape charges start exploding in front of us at the far end of the bridge, snapping looming support pylons in half. I look behind us and see that the entire bridge is collapsing in sections. Immediately, one side of the road drops away and Kiwi follows its curve.

“Negative on that roll at this time, PerfectQuestion,” says RangerSix. “Be advised, I am inbound from the carrier group with a patrol boat flotilla. We will support you in ten from the river.”

Ten minutes is forever in the world of collapsing bridges while speeding head-on into the enemy's front line. Ten minutes is a clock that never moves.

Ten minutes.

Ace-in-the-hole time. I authorize my tagged ColaCorp Special Forces reserve unit to enter the battle via dropship. I select an LZ near the TV tower and order them to take the lobby.

Kiwi steers the whining turbocharged Mule down the curve of the collapsing roadway and onto the bottom level. We pass through a wall of flames and darkness. Ahead, I see the gray concrete sodium-lit tollbooths of the exit on the far side of the bridge. WonderSoft troopers are running from the mouth, away from us. WonderSoft has detonated the Song Hua Bridge with their own troops still inside.

Right then, for no real reason that a bookie or banker might accept as collateral, I know we have a chance to win this one today.

They'd freaked out and blown the bridge with their own troops inside.

They're worried.

Over in-game ambient, the sounds of steel supergirders bending, twisting, then finally shearing, rise above the fading clash of explosions and small-arms fire. Finally, the whole bridge starts to go over onto its side and into the river as we slam through the tollbooth barrier, sparks flying. Fishtailing, the Mule tips over onto its side and comes to a skidding stop at the bottom of the ramp, out in the open.

There's gunfire everywhere.

The space-age TV tower rises up out of the flat concrete jungle that is Song Hua Harbor on the far side of the industrial park. A WonderSoft mobile command cluster is set up at the base of the tower.

“Sir,” says MarineSgtApone over the chat. I hear the high pitch of a dropship's engines in the background. I can also hear the whoops of the other Colonial Marines, excited to get into the fight on live network TV. I can trust them. They'll go all the way. They're my ace in the hole. “We are thirty seconds out, sir. What's the status of the LZ?”

“It's practically on fire, Sergeant. Got a problem with that?”

“No, sir. That's just how we like it.” Then I hear him open the Platoon chat and shout “Lock and load, Marines! Looks like they're expecting us.”

We exit the overturned smoking Mule. Fever, Kiwi, and I. We're half a click over open ground from the entrance to the TV tower. WonderSoft is shooting at us from almost every direction.

“Cover me!” Kiwi's hulking avatar runs forward with his ever ready BrowningNox Integrated Systems 5.56 light machine gun. Fever and I take opposite sides of the overturned Mule and pour covering fire into the soft skins of the WonderSoft command vehicles.

Bullets whip past our heads and begin to ricochet off the underside of the wrecked Mule. Behind us, the few WonderSoft units that made it out of the collapsed bridge are firing at us.

Rock and a hard place.

Fever takes carefully aimed shots at the WonderSoft troopers attacking us from the rear. I concentrate on covering Kiwi with short bursts as he moves up toward the command cluster, unloading his entire belt of ammo, as brass flies away from his avatar in a steady stream over his right shoulder. Pinned-down WonderSoft support and command troopers peek out from behind command vehicles, attempting to nail Kiwi with wild, unaimed bursts of automatic gunfire.

I give them something to think about as I unload a full magazine of armor-piercing rounds into one of their light-skinned messenger Mules. It catches fire and quickly explodes, sending bodies in every direction. Soon enough, Kiwi's lobbing grenades through the squat octagonal hatches of the larger command and control armored personnel carriers.

“Go ahead and move up,” says Kiwi over BattleChat. “I'll cover from here, over.”

Somewhere in the Skyliner I hear an intense exchange of rapid, deliberate gunfire. Submachine guns. Footsteps pound past the suite door, making a muffled
thump thump thump
as they go up the corridor. Seconds later I hear an explosion.

I wonder how much longer I have and exactly what it is I'm going to do.

“You said something about ejecting?” I ask Trixie, as on-screen I scramble forward toward the smoking command vehicles, engaging WonderSoft grunts on the fly.

“Last mag,” says Fever calmly in my ear over BattleChat.

“Well . . . in theory,” Trixie begins, her voice nervous and high-pitched. “The entire suite can be ejected from the plane if the captain deems our situation unsurvivable.”

The “in theory” part bothers me.

Ahead, a WonderSoft trooper in urban-camo body armor, carrying two pistols, walks away from a smoking vehicle, intent on the oblivious Kiwi who's engaging a WonderSoft machine-gun team in a warehouse window overlooking the plaza. Kiwi is prone, spitting out copious amounts of lead with his light machine gun. I let the pistol-carrying trooper have it center mass, with a burst from my auto rifle. It knocks him down onto one knee, but he turns and starts blazing away at me with both auto mags. I close the distance between us and recognize the WonderSoft trooper as a live player.

UnhappyCamper. Twin auto mags, jungle-stripe-camo T-shirt with a smiley face. Crossed-out eyes on the smiley face and a cartoon bullet wound to the head. Details I remember from another time in my apartment when I studied the enemy and everything I could learn about WarWorld for just such an occasion.

Things slow down. I feel my heart pumping hard back in the trade jet suite. I hear more real-world live gunfire. Close.

Above me I hear the hovering jets of an Albatross braking, screaming as it comes in for a hard landing.

I dive forward, hoping to get out of the way of UnhappyCamper's thundering auto-mag pistols as they eject a stream of shells upward and outward in front of his avatar's fierce grin and crazed eyes.

I hit the ground.

In the moment it takes me to get my rifle back up, both his guns dry-click. Empty.

I cut loose with the rest of the magazine, dropping him in front of the burning hull of one of the command vehicles. On my CommandPad I see Fever has been moved into the KIA column. I look back and see his avatar sprawled out across the concrete just behind me.

He'd followed me into the firefight. Even though he knew he was going to run out of ammo.

“He's gone, Perfect; move forward now!” yells Kiwi over BattleChat. Ahead of me, he stands up and heads for the shot-to-hell lobby of the TV tower, unloading belt-fed light-machine-gun rounds in short bursts at dim silhouettes inside the lobby.

An OD green Albatross with the words
Bug Stomper
in white paint on the nose sets down outside the TV tower. Colonial Marines rush down the cargo ramp and onto the wide front steps of the lobby, taking cover alongside Kiwi. WonderSoft machine-gun teams are holding the lobby, shooting back at us with everything they've got. You can almost see the bullets because of their sheer number zipping through the air around us. Exploding concrete and grit contribute to the stress and urgency of our position. We're being shot at from every direction. The transport lifts off from the LZ, peeling away over the open plaza as WonderSoft gunfire ricochets off its armor.

There are spent shell casings everywhere.

“Apone!” I shout over the blur of cacophonic gunfire. “We're taking that lobby and holding it until reinforcements arrive.”

I barely get a “Roger that, sir” as I switch over to CommandNet. “RangerSix, we're entering the TV tower, what's your ten?” I say, asking for his location.

Over BattleChat, I hear the patrol boat's quad fifty guns ranting away over the twin motors. Grunts and live players are calling out targets and screaming death and curses.

“I have the bridge in sight,” says RangerSix. “Once we secure a beachhead, we'll come up from the river to support you. Hang in there for just a few more minutes, son.”

We charge the lobby. Marines are being cut down within the first few feet, but we push through with frag grenades and rifles on full auto at close range. I even see one small female avatar go up close and personal with a WonderSoft player, flip him, and get a hand-to-hand kill as she plants a long, serrated combat knife into his prone chest.

When she stands up, ready for whatever comes next, I see AwsomeSauce15 has joined the Colonial Marines.

“Hey, Perfect,” she says, snapping her gum.

“Hey back,” I say and give her a quick salute.

Computer-rendered bullet-shattered glass and the programmer's vision of lingering blue gunsmoke fill the once extravagant lobby. Oh, and there's all the dead WonderSoft grunts.

“So what's the plan now, mate?” asks Kiwi as he reloads the massive light machine gun. Once the new ammo belt is inserted and the ammo pack strapped to his hip, he racks the first round, ready to rock and roll once more.

MarineSgtApone approaches us as he orders the surviving marines into defensive positions around the shot-up lobby.

“Apone, I need you to hold the lobby. Kiwi here and I are going up to the observation deck to provide intel for what's going on out there. Hold them off from here, and I'll get some mortar support on order. They're going to come at you with everything they've got. So lay down suppressive fire until our relief gets here, keep their heads down, and prevent them from moving around a lot. Can do?”