Multiplayer (9 page)

“There,” said Darxhan, and pointed his weapon east along the road.

Izaak looked and spied two vanguards coming along the road in their direction. So Alanya wasn’t deserted after all. They came to within a hundred yards or so, then turned and went the other way.

“You take the one on the right,” said Darxhan, readying his chain gun. “I’ll get –”

“Are you crazy!” snapped Izaak. “Give it a minute. See what they do.”

After five minutes the pattern was clear. They were sentries.

“What clan?” asked Darxhan, when they were completing their circuit for the third time.

Izaak sized them up through the scope of his sniper rifle. “Not Reavers. No markings.” Darxhan pointed out that they had no markings either.

“Let’s take ‘em down,” said Darxhan.

Izaak looked over to see the big merc raising his auto cannon. So Deion, Hector thought. Always brute force. “Uh, Deion. Don’t you want to see what they’re guarding first? We take them out and the whole place will know we’re here.”

Deion agreed, so, they waited until the sentries were out of sight, checked both ways, and stole quickly across.

On the other side of the road, the flat coastal plain began to lift up. They could not see the ocean yet, but the dark fastness of the Ehmedek fortress now loomed high above them, cutting across the peninsula.

And it was quiet. That’s when they noticed they’d left the thorks and scarobs behind. Maybe the guards had already taken them out. “We need to check over there,” said Izaak, aiming his weapon off to their left. “There’s a big guard tower down by the harbor. Inside the wall. In the old city.”

They followed the road until it came to a crumbly medieval wall. There, they saw from a distance two more guards at a large, arched opening, but otherwise the wall was unguarded. Still, they both agreed the fact that there were any guards was odd. This whole area was an under-populated backwater in
Omega Wars
. What could they possibly be guarding and from whom? Maybe this was a base for whatever clan Mal-X belonged to, but that didn’t make sense with no slipgate around.

Izaak and Darxhan scaled the wall in an unobtrusive place and found no clues on the other side. They followed the stone divider back through a rubble-strewn alley, but pulled up short when they reached the end.

“What the…” whispered Izaak, looking around in shock. An exact duplicate of Alanya right down to the lively shops lining the alleyways! No rubble. No burned out vehicles. And characters everywhere.

“No one is carrying any weapons?” Darxhan questioned.

He was right. Stranger still, aside from a few mercs and vanguards, the rest, as best they could guess, were either smugglers or maybe empaths. No armor. No real tech to speak of. They seemed no more than townspeople going about their mundane, daily routines as if they lived here. A group of characters sat under an awning. Others tended stores. Like real life. It made no sense. But at least the sentries had a purpose: keeping thorks and scarobs out. But… why?

Then Darxhan noticed something else was missing – VTTs. Virtual Transfer Terminals allowed players to buy drachmas – in-game money – and transfer information between
Omega
and the real world. VTTs were always present, and some of the first things to go into a reclaimed area, since both the virtual shop owners and MegaSoft made
real
money off them.

“We need to open up a store,” said Darxhan.

“But that doesn’t explain why there isn’t one already here,” Izaak replied, growing more perplexed by the minute. Then he suddenly remembered something, turned, and stared up at the castle walls farther up the hill. “That’s really weird.”

“What’s that?” asked Darxhan.

“I fought Mal-X up there yesterday. It’s called the citadel, up at the top, all surrounded by a wall with towers.”

“What about it?”

“Ramps,” Izaak answered. “There are handicap access ramps up there.”

He could almost see Deion frowning behind Darxhan’s menacing helm. “You mean, like, in the game? Somebody filed a Terrain Change Request to build handicap access ramps?”

“Yeah,” Izaak said, as Hector nodded back on his couch, “and we’re going to find out why.”

They did two covert laps around the old town, down to the harbor, past the Red Tower, and back to the gates. The rug shop owner stayed in his store. The fruit stand dealer walked circles around his cart as if waiting for someone to buy a digital peach. Khaki-clad policemen – exactly as Hector remembered – loitered on a street corner. They all seemed… bored. It was real life without the smell!

“Let’s check out the citadel,” Izaak finally suggested. They hadn’t shown themselves and remained concealed in back alleys until they came to the road leaving town.

The road up to the citadel looped all the way to the massive cliffs at the southern edge of the peninsula before curving back toward the mainland and snaking up to the top in a series of harrowing switchbacks. Hector remembered the villagers carrying loads of olives, bundles of sticks, and selling bottled water to tourists along the road when he’d hiked it with his family. It had been hot that day and he found himself missing the realism Today, Izaak and Darxhan trotted past just as many people. Everything was the same, except they weren’t trying to sell anything. A creepy feeling descended on Hector.

Izaak was just about to say something about it to Darxhan when the rumble of vehicles sounded from the road behind them. They scrambled off the road and hid among the sparse trees.

A long, black limousine, little flags fluttering from its hood, appeared, escorted by a string of police motorcycles. From their hiding place, they stared in shock as the motorcade made its way past them and disappeared around a turn in the road.

“What the heck is that?” wondered Darxhan.

Izaak’s heart raced with excitement. “Come on. We’re going to find out.”

Knowing they could cut overland much more quickly than taking the road on foot, Izaak led them across the street to a path, which headed steeply uphill among the ruined shells of what had once been luxury villas. Unlike the town, these hadn’t been rebuilt, and the destruction satisfied Hector, who had thought the mansions were out of place among the ancient artifacts when he was here last year. But it wasn’t really ‘here.’ He’d vacationed in the real Alanya. This was just a simulation.

They didn’t run into any scarobs or thorks as they hurried up the hillside and Izaak noted that the
Omega
characters handled the climb with ease though the same shortcut in real life had exhausted him and his father. Another benefit of virtual reality, he thought.

They trotted by a resort hotel and Izaak pointed out the minarets stabbing skyward from the mosque beside it. The trail passed among short trees and shrubs as it headed through what had once been prime real estate, until it came to the citadel wall. There, it forked and Izaak led Darxhan to the left until the path abruptly ended at an open field not far from the gates and the parking lot. From here, they could see the ocean. Again, Izaak had to remind himself it wasn’t real.

The limo had disappeared behind the gates of the citadel, which were now closed. Izaak took to the short trees clustered along the edge of the field and stealthily crawled along the ground to a concealed spot where he could watch the entrance without being seen. The last time he’d stood here, his father told him how the defenders would pour boiling oil on would-be invaders from the guard towers on either side of the gate. And how the attackers would just back up and wait for the defenders to starve to death or die of thirst. But now, only a half-dozen unarmored characters with small arms stood guard.

“I think we can take ‘em,” said Darxhan. “What do you say?”

“This is really weird,” answered Izaak. “A limo? A bunch of unarmored cops? Does any of this make sense to you?”

“No, but neither does bringing me here and not letting me kill anyone.”

“Mercs,” Hector laughed. “You’re all the same.”

Staccato gunfire erupted from inside the castle at that moment, followed by explosions. Smoke billowed over the wall. Darxhan surged forward but Izaak stopped him, watching intently. An instant later, a convoy of vehicles roared up the road. Figures leapt out and fought with the guards as more poured out from inside the castle.

“I’m going to go see what’s going on inside,” Izaak said, ignoring his friend’s annoyance. “There’s a tower on the west side at the top of a cliff. It’s climbable there.” Izaak paused for a moment, remembering the steep bluffs. “I don’t think a merc could make the climb.”

“I guess I’ll just wait here, then. Clean my guns,” Darxhan grumbled.

“That’s why you’re always ready. And if I’m not back in ten minutes,” Hector stammered, “you get in there and save my butt.”

Darxhan laughed. “Good luck with that one.” Izaak jogged off.

The path at the base of the cliff was exactly as Izaak remembered, too. Above him, on his right hand, the cliff rose to dizzying heights. To his left, waves crashed against boulders hundreds of feet below. The beach stretched out in the distance with the town sprinkled along the shoreline.

The sun was sinking into the Mediterranean and Izaak stopped, mesmerized, as the water turned sparkling orange. He and his father had walked this same path together, talking and throwing rocks over the edge, down into the sea.

He kicked a loose stone over the side and watched it plummet toward the sea. Looking down gave him a surprising, peculiar tingling in his stomach. In some ways,
Omega Wars
was all too real. If only real life were just a simulation. He just needed to figure out how to respawn in the real world. Or go back to the last save-point. But not now. He turned to the cliff and began his ascent.

Vanguards and smugglers were optimized for climbing. One of the reason’s Hector played vanguards. Mercs were huge, powerful, and armored, which made them formidable in melee, but limited their mobility. Going from one handhold to the next, listening to the gunfire coming from above, Hector inched Izaak upward as the ground below him shrank. The realism was staggering, making Hector’s palms sweat. More than once he let go of his controller and fanned his hands in the air.

It wan’t long before Izaak crawled over the edge of a wide platform made of large, tan flagstones. His memory overlaid the virtual experience and gave him a disturbing sense of déjà vu. He had actually been in this very spot. But there were differences. There had been birds the last time and, more importantly, there had not been two dead vanguards lying on the ground in front of him. The shooting had ceased a moment ago and it was now quiet, so he crept across the tower and peered over the other side down into the courtyard.

This was as he remembered, too. The ruins of a tiny Byzantine Church, the ruins of a slightly-larger mosque, walls, guard towers, and handicap access ramps. It was the same place he’d battled Mal-X the day before; the same place he’d visited with his family, now littered with bodies. In the center, the limousine was burning. The gates were open and people – or rather characters, he realized, were all headed toward the exit. It was as if the gamers who’d been fighting had simply stopped and become friends. Vanguards and smugglers, all together, but no mercs. Not a single merc among them or lying on the ground. A firefight without mercs? It would be like going to war without tanks. Without air cover.

Baffled and curious, Izaak activated his refractive camouflage and jogged down the ramp. He finally caught up with the characters at the gate where they filed casually along the edge of the wall and used the same path he and Darxhan had taken earlier. He was close enough now to see that many of them wore turbans and Middle Eastern style robes like Mal-X had worn. He glanced toward the stand of trees where his merc friend was hiding, but didn’t see him. Ducking back behind the gates for an instant, Hector turned off Izaak’s refrac and quickly typed out a text message to Deion:
C me going in @ end of line.

A moment later he got a reply:
:-/ When do I get 2 kill someone?

Izaak reemerged and jogged casually to the end of the line, where he joined them. There seemed to be enough of them, and their outfits varied enough, so that he didn’t stand out. It only took Hector a moment to realize that not everyone was speaking English. Not that they should be.
Omega Wars
was worldwide, but English was by far the number one language of cyberspace. These people sounded like Turks. And with the Middle Eastern decorations it began to feel like somewhere Mal-X might, in fact, hang out. Hector’s heart sped up as he realized that Vera could be within his grasp in just a few minutes.

They passed the resort hotel, which had been carefully restored like the town below, with the citadel wall now to this left. And when they rounded a last loop of wall, Izaak could finally see where everyone was headed. Maybe twenty characters or so had already lined up at the door to the mosque. Mostly vanguards and smugglers in light armor but there were also policemen in khaki uniforms and caps. But why log on to a game to stand in a line, Izaak wondered? The only lines in
Omega Wars
were at slipgates, but the mosque wasn’t large enough to hold one. And there were no entropy dissipaters in the area, at least none he could see. He would have to get inside and –

“Hector,” called his mother from downstairs, and he jumped in surprise. “Time’s up.”

“Okay,” he yelled back. “Got to log out. Five minutes.” He had to see what the characters were lined up for. And he couldn’t leave Izaak just standing there.

The line inched forward slower than an amusement park queue and Hector began to sweat. His mother got really mad when he pushed his gaming. She already thought he took it all to seriously, but he knew perfectly well it was just a game. The only real danger, he laughed to himself, was his mother. But it had been more than five minutes already and was getting close to her second warning. He wasn’t quite inside yet.

“Hector…” she called a second time.

His heart jumped. If he logged off, Izaak would collapse on the floor as if he’d passed out. He felt beads of sweat break out across his forehead. “Almost done. One more minute. Trying to get my character put away.”