Multiplayer (25 page)

Tears brimmed in Hector’s eyes, turning the screen of his computer into a swirling wash of color. Games were supposed to be fun.
Omega Wars
had lost its entertainment value. How long would it be before everyone he played with was dead? What was this curse that hovered over his head, snatching friends and loved ones away? This wasn’t a game anymore. There was nothing fun about it. But something deep inside told him he had to be here. That Rada had died for a reason. Hector knew the thought was completely ridiculous, and he questioned his own sanity for letting it push him forward, but he decided that if he didn’t press on, she would have died in vain.

The tears stung his eyes and he deliberately wiped them out, then cast Izaak’s gaze over the town. The Reavers had been every bit as busy as the Spartans. A row of drab guard towers stood along the main coast road. Bunkers with heavy guns, pointing outward, were scattered around the town. On the water, several small boats patrolled along the perimeter of the peninsula. But the biggest surprise was in the air.
Uber Pwn
loomed above the far side of the peninsula like an enormous pterodactyl. But thanks to Alkindi, Izaak still had a way in.

Hector paused for a moment, staring across the water where the peninsula rose up nearly a thousand digital feet over the virtual waves. Why would Mal-X and those other guys need this much security? And Gore would not have moved
Uber Pwn
without some pretty serious convincing. Hector was certain of that. Something else was going on.

Izaak found that the sub had space for four but the hatch was too small for a merc. There were no windows but a forward facing view appeared on a screen and next to it was a blank screen, a compass, and other indicators. Apparently, adding a display in
Omega Wars
was easier than adding a window. The controls were fairly standard except for one that controlled the ballast tanks. On screen, it was a lever marked UP and DOWN, and since Izaak wanted to go down, he moved it down. The submarine started to sink and kept sinking until it was resting on the bottom. The depth gauge showed twenty-five feet. Izaak moved the lever up a little and a moment later, the submarine was floating at what the depth gauge showed to be fifteen feet. He pushed the joystick forward, there was a hum, and the submarine moved ahead.

Again, Hector was amazed by Alkindi’s talents; he never could have built something this complicated. Not only must Alkindi be a genius, Hector thought, he must also have one of those expensive touch screens he had read about. And a Codex like Sanjar’s. That would be the only way to do all this. Deion had also said he played on a computer which had far better tools for fabrication than the console version of
Omega Wars
. Hector didn’t care for the computer version because he preferred using a controller, but with this kind of stuff possible, he might have to try it out some time.

The view screen grew lighter as he passed out of the cave and into the open water. The bottom was sandy and flat, but not featureless. There were rocks and some sea life, but it was not as well developed as the world above, which made sense. Not many people were playing
Omega Wars
underwater.

But Izaak hadn’t gone very far when he suddenly realized there was a problem. He could see only a short distance ahead, so he had no idea where he was headed. He could be traveling in circles for all he knew. So he raised the periscope. The adjacent screen came to life and showed a scene much like the one he was seeing on the forward looking monitor. He began slowly raising the ballast lever until the periscope just broke through the surface of the water. The depth gauge showed ten feet. But no Alanya. He rotated the periscope to the left until the peninsula came into view, then turned the sub to follow. He’d been heading straight out into the open sea!

Not only could he see the peninsula now, he could also see the patrol boats. There were two of them and Izaak was pretty sure they’d spot his periscope if he came close. And at a depth of only ten feet they might well see the whole submarine since it was pretty big. His eye landed on the compass and he smiled. The cybertech had thought of everything.

Hector brought the submarine in as near as he dared at periscope depth, maybe a mile from the peninsula’s vertical bluffs, where the compass showed a heading of southeast. He lowered the ballast lever and the sub sank until Izaak saw the bottom at sixty feet. It was dark blue outside, just like it would be in real life, so he turned on a light. Then he checked the power level. The fusion cells were already under eighty percent so he would need to conserve power to get back. All he needed was the compass anyway, so he turned the lights off and kept his eyes on the compass needle.

He steered like this for another twenty minutes, listening for any sign of movement on the stairs outside his room as pricks of sweat emerged on his brow. Life shouldn’t be like this, he thought. Living in constant fear. And now it had come here, to his refuge; the only world he understood. Why had he ever agreed to that duel with Mal-X? His own arrogance had started of this, he realized. His own anger.

The scientific papers Pappous had written placed the opening of the underwater cave at twenty-five feet deep, directly beneath the citadel. Izaak continued on until a cliff rising from the seafloor filled the screen and he brought the sub to a halt. He raised the ballast lever, letting the submarine rise until it got to a depth of about thirty feet. Bringing the submarine’s path parallel to the cliff pointed out to sea, he turned the periscope sideways and watched the stone wall creep by.

The nearly featureless gray expanse slid by with agonizing slowness. One minute faded into another and still there was no tunnel. It had been nearly an hour since he pulled out of their base and the green bar that indicated fusion cell power fell past seventy percent then began to close on sixty. When it got to half, he was going to turn back or he might not be able to make it home. Had he missed the tunnel? Had he started in the wrong direction? Was he too deep. Too shallow? Hector had seen a submarine movie once. All he really remembered from it was a bunch of guys hunkered down in a dim room filled with pipes and gauges, sweating in anxiety as they watched their battery indicators slowly drop. Exactly like he was doing now, complete with a damp forehead.

Just as the fusion cell power dipped below sixty, a yawning black hole emerged in the periscope screen. Izaak felt a hole just as black open in his stomach. He swallowed heavily and coaxed the sub into the inky darkness. Izaak could see nothing ahead of him, but at the sides of the screen, the cave walls rolled slowly by. They were smooth and gray, almost completely unadorned. In real life they would probably be crawling with crabs and other creatures and encrusted with corals. Finally, the image ahead turned gray as the cave wall came into view. He cut the motor and surfaced.

Izaak emerged from the hatch into utter darkness and switched on a light. The beam fell on broken columns and statuary and steps leading out of the water. MegaSoft, as always, had done a great job replicating the images from the old reports. Their stated goal was a perfect replica of Earth, and they were pretty darned close. The beach area was narrow and rocky and a set of rough-hewn steps twisted up into the darkness like something from the Mines of Moria. Hector shuddered as a thought came to his head. Pappous had been the first person to see this chamber in over a thousand years. And now Izaak was the first to see it in
Omega Wars
. Goose bumps raised on his arms. He climbed out of the sub and tied it off to one of the columns. There was only one way to go from here – up.

The steps seemed to go on forever. First steep and straight, then level, then steep and twisting. The cave was close to sea level. The peninsula was over seven hundred feet at the summit. It was a good thing Izaak never got tired. But his fusion cells did. One of them drained completely just by powering the light and Izaak had to stop and replace it.

He finally emerged into a wider, flat passage and followed it until it ended at a metal grate. Izaak used his PlasmAll to cut the bars away, then crouched and shuffled quietly out. He was inside the citadel walls but something was wrong. Pappous had told him the passageway from his cave came out under the tower at the southwest corner of the citadel. This was under the northwest tower. They had gotten it wrong!

For an instant, Izaak burned with anger at the blunder, then stopped. A quick glance around the corner of the guard tower told him the south end of the courtyard was teeming with vanguards and smugglers. He’d already observed that most of the training went on down there by the gates. Thank God for mistakes!

Izaak activated his refractive armor and worked his way around the courtyard, keeping close to the wall. The closer he drew to the southern gates, the more characters filled the digital space. They were almost all guards. In fact, there were almost none of the turban-wearing characters at all. Just lots of police milling around like they were waiting for something. Time after time, he stopped and held his breath as characters passed above him on the wall. By the time he reached the old Byzantine church, his fusion cell was running low again, so he slipped inside to replace it under the dome. He had only one more. Bitterness tightened Hector’s stomach as he looked around. His family had prayed here, in this same church, that his father might return safely from Iraq. It hadn’t worked. Hector shook away the thought as Izaak focused on switching the fusion cell. Then he climbed atop the crumbling dome and leapt across to the wall so he could watch.

Like most Medieval walls, it was crenelated and had a broad walkway along the inside. From his perch, he could not only see the entire courtyard and everybody in it, but much of the hillside down the slope toward the town. Close at hand were the domed mosque that had foiled him last week and the resort where he’d heard about Operation Scimitar. Both remained heavily guarded. Farther away lay the road and beyond that the harbor far below, glittering like a sapphire lake. He could see Reavers in the distance, patrolling the shoreline. It was odd that there were none anywhere on the peninsula. They were only guarding access. But they had missed one spot.

Hector remembered his father telling him about how one of the key tactics of Middle Eastern warriors was to dig tunnels under the stronghold of an enemy and emerge suddenly inside their camp. The entire Middle East was riddled with tunnels from Israel to Iraq, Egypt to Afghanistan, some of them dating back to before the Romans. And now Hector had used a tunnel his grandfather had discovered to gain the advantage. It gave him more than a little satisfaction.

Every now and then, he peeked through the slits in the top of the wall down to the road below.
Uber Pwn
was patrolling the junkyard like some kind of huge, prehistoric bird, searching for prey. Every now and then, a gun would open up on the ground below, raising dust and fire. Trigger-happy as always. He’d manned those guns, too, and knew how much fun it could be. But they better get busy. His mom would be calling him for dinner soon.

Below him in the courtyard, a small stage set up and a bunch of characters milled around like they were waiting. But nothing was happening. Still he had a nagging feeling there was something obvious he should be seeing.

At the sounds of his mother’s feet on the stairs, Hector minimized the
Omega Wars
window, leaving his report windows open. His mom opened the door and came in. “What do you got there?” she asked, looking over his shoulder, and stroking his hair with her fingers.

“Summit itinerary. The President’s going to the same place we went.” His mother sat down on the edge of the bed and asked about the report. It was all Hector could do to answer his mother, knowing Izaak was just standing out in the open waiting to be found. Refractive camo was
not
invisibility. And there wasn’t much to his presentation, so he had to make it look like more than it was.

Then he noticed a tab at the bottom of the screen clearly labled ‘
Omega Wars
’. He tried to drag a window over it, but the windows didn’t cover the toolbar. So he moved the mouse to the other side of the screen and pointed out some photos. His mother kept nodding and asking more questions. He could feel beads of sweat breaking out across his scalp. After what seemed like forever, a timer went off downstairs and she left to check on it.

As soon as she was gone, he changed the toolbar to ‘autohide’ and re-opened the Alanya window. He breathed a sigh of relief. Izaak remained undiscovered.

Motion caught Izaak’s eye. Down below, a group of vehicles was moving along the road. The characters in the courtyard jostled to take places according to a predetermined plan. But still, no Reavers. The vehicles flashed in and out of view until they came to the broad S-turns. Police motorcycles and limousines just like before, circling around to the main gate. Except this time, there were more limos and a lot more characters. It was just like the President was coming to –

Hector’s heart seemed to stop and he stared in sudden terror. He clicked the tab at the bottom of the screen. The summit itinerary popped up. The President would first be visiting the citadel. He’d be riding in a limousine… He minimized the itinerary and stared in mounting horror at the
Omega Wars
window. A row of black limousines were approaching the citadel. Chills swept his body. His mind tried to deny what he was seeing, but Operation Scimitar unfolded before him like a train wreck in slow motion.

Operation Scimitar, he thought. A scimitar was a sword. A long, curved sword. Medieval swords used by knights were straight. The thin, curved Samurai sword was Japanese. And the scimitar, Hector knew very well, was strongly connected with the Middle East, where they still used it for beheading. And all these people were here to practice for Operation
Scimitar
. Cutting off the head… of America.

The motorcade drove up to the gates, which swung open to receive them. The limousines pulled through. They stopped just inside and figures emerged. Suddenly, the gates slammed shut. Characters poured into the courtyard. There was shooting and explosions. More attackers came over the wall. One of them nearly stepped on Izaak as he watched in spellbound horror.