Multiplayer (8 page)

Darxhan stood there for a moment in silence. “I guess that makes sense. You still have pictures of your dad, right? Just never thought about it like this.” This is the last thing Hector wanted to talk about. “Does your mom know he’s still here?” Deion asked.

No. And neither did the shrink. Hector had no doubt they’d make him get rid of the vanguard and Hector couldn’t bear to simply… delete him. Like terrorists had done. “She doesn’t watch me play very often.” Hector knew it wasn’t really an answer and changed the subject, but remained uncomfortable for some time.

They accessed the mapping feature of
Omega Wars
and zoomed in on Alanya Peninsula, thrusting two miles into the Mediterranean from the coast of Turkey. Sheer cliffs fell hundreds of feet on the west side, ending in a jagged spine of steep rock that stretched into the sea; the Dragon’s Tail. Hector remembered from his vacation that the cliffs on this side of the peninsula were studded with the yawning black mouths of caves. A half mile away, the east side of the stubby finger of land sloped down to a narrow beach and harbor, where the quaint, seaside town of Alanya spread out for miles in either direction. Further inland to the north, green hills marched toward the snow-capped Taurus Range.

“So how you going find this douche?” Darxhan asked.

Hector zoomed in until they could see the line of ancient walls zig-zagging across the ground, nearly four miles of them, completely encircling the high ground at the end of the peninsula. It was a perfect defensive position in the middle ages and beyond. An attacking army would have to march uphill into the complex of walls and fortifications. At the highest point, a last, inner-loop of wall formed a final perimeter, and within it, the citadel. It was there Izaak and Mal-X had fought their battle. And Mal-X had cheated.

Izaak suggested they slip in on the top of one of the lower hills that overlooked the town to the north, just in case the fortress was occupied, as he suspected.
Omega
had several million subscribers spread out over the entire planet which meant it was still sparsely populated. So they were hoping that besides Mal-X and a few friends, the rest of the area would be virtually empty, since there was no reason for anyone to go there. There would, of course, be the usual thorks and scarobs, but there might also be an opportunity to harvest some valuable tech.

There was no slipgate in Alanya that could send them back to their lairs, or anywhere else for that matter. And if they were killed, they’d lose everything they were carrying and have to be respawned in a replication chamber, a process that could take up to a week. So, they decided to take scout characters. In just a few minutes, Deion had created a nearly naked, black, female barbarian with enormous, mail-covered breasts and shiny steel panties he named Laquisha, after a girl at their school. Hector created an awkward smuggler with dark skin and funny clothes and named him Sand-JarJar. Both were completely expendable.

They entered the coordinates of a hill just north of town into their passports, a spot that overlooked the peninsula from the coastal mountains. “You okay?” asked Deion.

Hector had grown quite still, staring at the 3D image. “It was the last place I saw my dad alive,” he said quietly.

“Are you sure you’re ready to go back?”

“I’ve already been back. And now I have to go again.”

“Is she worth it?” asked Deion. “Is Vera worth it?”

“It’s only a game,” answered Hector, with a lump in his throat. “What could happen?” And they stepped through together.

Sand-JarJar appeared on the other side and Hector quickly oriented his character. He was standing high above the coastal plain looking out toward the sea and the peninsula, which seemed to rise from the water like a turtle coming ashore to lay eggs. Between the mountain on which he stood and the peninsula, lay the town of Alanya. From a distance, it didn’t look like a ruin. The realism was staggering. Hector could almost feel the wind in his hair and smell the fresh sea breeze wafting in from –

“Uh, Hec,” said Laquisha, bringing him back to the present.

Sand-JarJar spun around and came face to face with a hoard of snarling thorks. He and Laquisha were dead in less than thirty seconds.

Ch. 8

Hector stared at the screen in disgust as Sand-JarJar and Laquisha were ripped to pieces by the snarling, orcish beasts. He wasn’t exactly angry. More irritated. He’d not been killed by thorks in a long time. The cut scene changed, and barely identifiable chunks of Sand-Jar-Jar’s head, torso, and limbs drifted in the thick, greenish fluid of the Sulako’s replication chamber. He’d take a week to rebuild, not that Hector cared. Hector brought up a list of his characters and selected Izaak Ersatz. The lid on a cryo-tube opened with a sigh, and Hector’s point of view suddenly switched to Izaak. It felt like donning a comfortable set of clothes.

Ω

Izaak pulled the flush lever of the replication chamber, and watched as the fluid and chunks drained away, eliminating Sand-JarJar permanently. He’d done his job. He glanced over to C0L0N3L W35T in cryo and wished the vanguard could join them.

“Let’s go teach those mutated creeps a lesson,” came a voice, and Izaak looked over to see a massive merc in the slipgate, toting an equally massive chain gun. An auto-cannon and plasmace were slung across his back. Deion always made Hector feel better.

Moments later they slipped in at the same place at the base of the mountains. But this time they knew what was coming, they had decent characters, and Izaak didn’t stare nostalgically out to sea. Plus, Hector had queued up his favorite slaying tunes. But this was a thork brood pit like they had never encountered. Despite Darxhan’s chain gun and Izaak’s shotgun, and one grenade after another, the creatures kept boiling out of a nearby cave entrance like evil Energizer-bunnies.

They came in all shapes and sizes. From tiny rat-like creatures that attacked legs with pitchforks, to massive minotaur-like bull-thorks wielding maces. Their attacks were uncoordinated and direct but the sheer numbers were beginning to wear down Izaak’s shields. Even the big merc absorbed a blow or two. The first song played through and they were halfway into the second when Darxhan cried, “What the crap! I’ll be out of ammo before this song’s over!”

“Bounce!” Izaak cried, and each tossed a nano-smoke grenade then turned and lumbered down the mountain as quickly as possible toward the ruins at the foot of the hill.

“We ought to be able to lose them in here!” said Izaak, darting into the crumbling outskirts on the north side of Alanya. But it wasn’t like the Alanya he remembered. The real Alanya was filled with crisp hotels and condominiums, exclusive restaurants and clubs, and open-air cafes spilling over with vacationers, families, and townspeople in a perpetual carnival atmosphere. This one was empty and in ruins. Around them were crumbling buildings and derelict cars and machines, all abandoned during the Omega Wars. But the thorks were still snapping at their heels and their numbers had swelled; dozens now, all pursuing them with but a single motive.

“Scarobs!” said Darxhan, before they’d gone a block. “All we need!”

Just ahead a swarm of the man-sized, wasp-like creatures were crawling over an old sports car on segmented limbs, cutting through metal body panels with their plasma torches to get at the tech inside. If thorks were the ubiquitous nuisance monsters of
Omega Wars
, scavenger robots were the cockroaches. Six foot-tall, carbon-fiber and titanium cockroaches that could burn through armor in seconds.

Izaak tossed his last smoke grenade into the swarm. Their waist-mounted fans roared to life and the scarobs, with their hive-mind, simultaneously lifted into the air with a drone like a squadron of B-17s. In an instant, Izaak and Darxhan were surrounded in a matrix of spinning, razor-sharp wings. Darxhan’s chain gun was useless against them and his plasmace far too cumbersome. Izaak’s shotgun and arc sword were effective, but the semi-intelligent automatons soon learned to avoid them. They kept landing on Darxhan’s back and arcing into his armor and Izaak had to whack them off, at which point he exposed his own back. The only thing keeping them from being overrun was the viscous smoke, and it was beginning to clear. More scarobs swarmed in around them, when the thorks blundered in, snapping and snarling.

Back to back, Izaak and Darxhan fought off wave after wave as their shields dropped and their ammo dwindled. Thorks and scarobs piled up around them. Before long Darxhan had to drop his chain gun and move to his autocannon which was even less effective against the scarobs. Izaak ran out of shotgun shells and switched to his pistol.

“We’re going to die here!” cried Darxhan, as another scarob tried to breach his armor.

Izaak knocked it away at the last second as Darxhan targeted and destroyed a thork rushing up at them. “Sorry I brought you here, man.”

They were almost completely surrounded now, as the beasts and flying robots herded them into a clearing amidst the ruined buildings to finish them off: an abandoned square that might have once been a park. Thorks and scarobs never worked together, but these seemed to be doing just that. Or maybe it was just that they were all fixated on the invaders.

“Tank!” Izaak heard Darxhan exclaim. “A friggin’ tank! Come on!”

Izaak whirled around to see the big merc jogging through the one remaining gap in the enemy swarm. Izaak followed and caught a glimpse of a
Marauder.
His heart leapt at the sight of the massive steel tank sporting a long, wicked cannon. His health bar was showing all red when they climbed into the tracked dreadnought and pulled the hatch shut above them.

Relief coursed through him as they took their places: Darxhan in the driver’s seat, Izaak on the main gun. “I hope this baby still works!” Izaak said, as they waited for the controls to come alive, but nothing happened. There was a long pause. Perhaps there were no fusion cells? Maybe it was damaged?

“We’re screwed!” groaned Darxhan as the sound of the thorks and scarobs came muffled through the digital hull. In seconds, the scavenger robots would start cutting through the plate.

Izaak glanced around, desperate for any way to save them, when the targeting screen in front of him sprang to life, to show thorks milling around outside. Just after it, the engine rumbled and a surge of energy shot through him. Izaak swiveled the main gun and fired one blast after another as Darxhan drove around the square crushing thorks beneath armored tank treads and mopping up with the heavy machine-gun. By the time the scarobs breached the armor, all the thorks were dead and Izaak was able to dismount and kill the last of the mechanized wasps with his pistol.

As Izaak surveyed the oozing piles of thork carcasses and heaping mounds of scarob shells, he felt little sense of victory. A mess like this could mean only one thing. Even in the digital world, the first thing people do is clear out the vermin. This was the heaviest concentration of thorks and scarobs they’d ever seen. There could be no doubt: the town of Alanya was empty. They’d come to the wrong place and there was no way back except walking to the nearest slipgate, 350 miles away in Istanbul. Practically out of ammo and low on fusion cells, Izaak recommended they kill themselves to get the replication process started right away.

But Darxhan convinced Izaak to wait, and after only a little exploring, they’d replenished both their ammo stores and their fusion cells. Better still, they found a well-concealed basement to store everything in, and left a slip-gate transponder behind so they could slip back in any time. Izaak no longer thought he’d find Mal-X here, but was curious to see the rest of Alanya, so after Izaak repaired their armor, they set out across town for the coast, about a mile and-a-half away.

Traveling through the shattered city was slow going, killing vermin as they went, but they found no more heavy concentrations. As they marched south through the town, the mountainous peninsula rose up above them, the angular stones of the fort-like Ehmedek and the wall that snaked along the cliffs now peering down from on high. Attacking such a place, his father had told him, would have been suicide. The peninsula was exactly as Hector remembered it, even if the town wasn’t.

When they came to the edge of the main street they stopped. The broad avenue was littered with broken down, rusted out cars and trucks as well as armored vehicles from the Omega Wars. The equilateral triangles, symbol of the Triad Alliance
∆
, and inverted horseshoe-like Omega symbols of the Archons
Ω
, were still clearly visible on much of the equipment, but the scarobs, picking their way over the sprawling tech, didn’t seem to care about political allegiance. This place, Izaak noted again and again, would be a cybertech’s paradise, though it also made him kind of sad. He and his family had really enjoyed their time here. Seeing it like this was sobering, even knowing it was from inside a game.

They were about to cross the main street when Darxhan hissed in alarm and jumped back. Izaak instinctively followed him. “What do you got?” he asked nervously. The weirdness of this place was getting to him.