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  “SOFTLIFE STARTS TODAY, INSIDE YOU.”

  Chapter 4

  The Sunday Night Game starts and I’m tasked with clearing out a small village of WonderSoft insurgents as the battle lines attempt to coalesce. The insurgents are players who’ve volunteered, by paying their monthly WarWorld Live subscription, to fight for WonderSoft. The insurgents crossed the Song Hua River downstream and have been ambushing ColaCorp units using a small village up in the jungle highlands as a base.

  I haven’t lost any troops because I like to play it safe, and all my grunts are fairly leveled up. They don’t make many of the mistakes the basic AI-controlled grunts often do. So we take the village and neutralize five insurgents. I check my bonus pay on all five as soon as WhippySFX, the last WonderSoft insurgent, goes down in a hail of gunfire near the village’s central raised hut. At twenty per, I make a cool hundred. Not everything I need, but every bit helps.

  “PerfectQuestion, this is Six; what’s your status?” I switch from my CommandPad to BattleChat and reply.

  “We’re finished here, whaddya got for us next?”

  There’s a pause. I wonder if the connection’s dropped, or if we’re even being jammed by WonderSoft’s electronic warfare units. Then, “PerfectQuestion,” says RangerSix in his signature matter-of-fact drawl, “I need you to order your unit to link up with ShogunSmile four clicks west of your position. Give him command authority . . .”

  I’ve been fired.

  Then, “I need you to log in to OpsDeck for a briefing, Question. We’ve had a superlab opportunity open up for us, and I need you to take command of the operation. I’m countin’ on you, son. Get this done quick and clean.”

  Not fired.

  I order my unit to pack up and move out to ShogunSmile’s AO. Three minutes later I’m in the OpsDeck screen and going through the briefing on the superlab.

  “Scouts have discovered a hidden complex up-country in the mountains near the city of Song Hua,” begins the briefing program avatar, a military admin type. The high-res photos show a small complex nestled beneath a mountain that’s more a giant oblong piece of rock erupting from the jungle than anything else. Stunted trees cling to one of its misty sides. The other side is a sheer rock face above the complex.

  “Satellite imagery,” continues the briefing, “indicates the complex is a laboratory-class facility where dangerous and illegal superscience research has recently been conducted.”

  WonderSoft will want this, but ColaCorp needs this. Whatever it is. These labs can provide bonus game-changing tech. No doubt WonderSoft will go for it, even if it’s just to deny us the asset.

  The briefing camera, mounted on a recon drone, overflies the facility revealing a night-vision look at what we’re going into. It’s an open perimeter and a jumble of squat buildings in two adjacent locations. One location has the distinct look of a dropship landing pad, but slightly different from any I’ve seen before. The other looks too industrial to be anything but a lab. There’s a construction crane on the far side of the lab complex. The complex is mostly composed of octagonal interconnected modules that lead to a main multistoried building. The briefing asks me to choose which type of unit I’ll request to take into the superlab.

  I tell it to give me the light infantry template.

  The briefing hesitates, then takes me to the unit loadout screen. I try to activate my personal unit, Delta Company, but it won’t let me. “All main force ColaCorp units engaged at this time,” it tells me in its calm, computer voice. The only option available is to pull unknown players from the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve unit.

  Great. I have to use amateurs. I stare at the facility map again. There’ll be three maps. There’re always three maps. I’m probably looking at the first one. So what’s the game?

  Death match? Domination? Infection?

  I check the ColaCorp Special Forces reserve roster. Currently there are over a hundred thousand plus ColaCorp fan-players waiting, worldwide, to join the network televised fight.

  “Isolate veteran-status players and above.”

  “Done,” replies the briefing avatar.

  “Isolate light infantry skill sets.”

  “Done.”

  I want to tell the avatar to remove the ones with poor social skills and negative sportsmanship reviews, but sometimes those ratings are just the results of complaints filed by sore losers. Sometimes being good at online combat doesn’t necessarily make you great at being human.

  “Isolate kill counts ten thousand and above.” Sure it’s WarWorld Live kills, the home game played on console with other amateurs, but ten thousand kills means they’re serious about the game and they’ve got some skills. That’s when I started getting noticed by professional teams.

  “What’s my pool?” I ask.

  “47,754 players meet your requirements,” replies the avatar.

  “Isolate on-target percentage. Above 50 percent.”

  I don’t even ask how many that leaves. I just want shooters now. “All right, fill all five squads from those requirements.”

  A moment later the avatar sends invites to all players fitting my requirements. The first fifty to respond and log in to the OpsDeck are going in-game during prime time with me to take the superlab.

  Within seconds the rosters are full.

  “Please choose tactical insertion method,” the avatar tells me.

  I check the map again.

  I check my options. I’ve only got one. Dropship. In the map, I set the spinning holograph of the LZ marker down on the landing pad. There are three back-blast fences that surround the site. We can use those for cover before going into the main complex.

  WonderSoft, on the other hand, can go in any number of ways. They’ve always got options because they’ve always got money.

  Next I choose my weapons. I select my standard loadout for close-quarter matches like this. I take a gray and graphite black-striped Colt M4X assault rifle with extended banana clips and holographic tactical sights. Three dots, predator style. For my sidearm I take a nickel-plated long-barrel .45 loaded with hollow points. I also take five grenades: three flash-bangs, two smoke. I take my personal avatar skin, which is okayed by ColaCorp for tactical instance maps like this. ColaCorp jungle-pattern camo cargo pants and green tank top T-shirt. Jungle boots. Shaved head and a camo pattern I call SnakeFace. My guy even has stubble. Like me. Except the avatar skin is based on some action hero from the last century. Guy named Schwarzenegger. I’m big on last-century stuff. Things were better then.

  “Going live in fifteen seconds . . . ,” says the briefing avatar as it begins the countdown to tactical map insertion.

  I switch to BattleChat. Before saying anything, I bring up the unit roster. Most of the player IDs have been set to the default position by the network. Can’t be showing all kinds of disgusting images to the entire world. I check the names. They are the usual assortment of half-thought-through, misspelled crud that marks amateurs. Some outright obscene name choices, almost half, have been changed by the network to “Player” then a random number.

  That’ll teach ’em to take this seriously. It’s their one shot at going online to fight in front of the whole world and no one will ever know who they are because the network changed their tag and used a placeholder name instead.

  On-screen I see the red-lit interior of the dropship Albatross. I pan right and look out through the cockpit canopy. We’re cutting through a thick miasma of dark blue and black clouds. Rain assaults the windshield. I try to get a look at the facility from the air, but all I catch are tiny twinkling lights and shadowy buildings.

  Moments later we’re down on the landing pad and rushing from the Albatross. Players head away from the dropship and go prone in a circular perimeter.

  So far so good, and I didn’t even need to tell them to do that.

  The dropship’s engines spool up and the craft lifts off and away from us, cutting its lights and retracting its landing gears as it disappears into the rain and cl
ouds above.

  King of the Hill appears across my screen.

  I hate this type of match. Means we’ve got to secure the access point to the next map and hold it for three minutes. A King of the Hill match always turns into a shooting gallery for the side that doesn’t want to hold the access point.

  “Listen up,” I say over BattleChat. “Name’s PerfectQuestion and this is the op . . .”

  Meanwhile I’m selecting the streak rewards I’ll receive after each kill plateau.

  “We’ve got to secure the entrance into this lab. That’s Map One. WonderSoft will try and do the same thing. Your first job, always, is to kill WonderSoft. Next, identify the entrance to the lab. Last, we’ll hold that entrance for three minutes. This is a movement to contact for now, squad tactics. I hope you took weapons you can run and gun with, ’cause we ain’t fightin’ no defense. Okay?” No one replies. “All right, now’s your chance to show ColaCorp something.”

  In the dim blue light of the storm, a wild collection of jungle combat warriors rises from the tall grass near the LZ. I use my CommandPad to organize five squads of ten. Sure, we’re all wearing the same faded ColaCorp jungle green so that we look like a team and are only slightly different than WonderSoft’s standard digital gray jungle-camo pattern, but the similarity ends there. Some avatars have shaved heads. Some are wearing boonie hats. One guy even has a K-pot from World War Two. It’s all stuff they’ve either bought through WarWorld’s online store or earned as achievements. I couldn’t care less how they look. I’m just hoping they’ve leveled up their weapons. I’d hate to be going into this with someone using the basic unmodded AK-2000 you start WarWorld Live with. But I quickly notice many of the weapons are skinned with high-tech paint jobs and scoped with state-of-the-art targeting systems. That bodes well for impending current events.

  The network feed goes hot. Right now the game director is cutting in to watch the action. This superlab objective is critical, but not to today’s battle. That’s happening, win or lose, somewhere else. But the tech the lab might yield could be a game changer later, if ColaCorp pays to develop it, in the strategic outcome of the ColaCorp campaign against WonderSoft for Eastern Highlands. But we have to get it first.

  I break the first three squads off into a group and form a wedge. The other two squads I put in reserve behind the main body and order them not to move until I tell them where the action is. With First Squad on the left flank, Second leading the tip of the wedge, and Third Squad on the right, we move out from the LZ, heading through the wet mud and dark for the dimly outlined facility. Low-hanging mist shrouds the tops of the high mountains. Over ambient I hear nothing but the slap of rain as it sluices down from the tops of buildings and into the muddy streets below.

  “Move forward,” I say over BattleChat. “Watch for targets; call ’em as you get ’em.”

  “Lock and load, rock and roll!” screams some hillbilly named SonnyJim over the chat. Another player, LilStreet, opens up his feed. Hard-core drum and bass rap starts pouring out across BattleChat. The first spoken lines are about murdering hoes who cheat and being pushed down by white “so-sigh-et-tee” while someone chants “Monee- Monee- Monee” over and over. I cut his feed.

  It’s so far so good as we move beyond the back-blast fences and onto the main street of the complex. The pouring rain begins to let up as a small breeze shifts the grass and some hanging industrial heavy tow chains nearby. They creak and jingle while our boots suck at the wet mud. It’s only a matter of time before we engage WonderSoft and then all bets are off on whether I can keep everyone under control long enough to find and hold the access point.

  “Hey, Question?” says a player tagged AwesomeSauce15. A girl’s voice. Sounds young. I can hear the bubblegum snap in the background of her mic. “Sign over here says this is a bioweapon research facility. Weyland-Yutani. Never heard of ’em.”

  Smart. She’s looking for clues. That’s the other half of this type of match: solve the puzzle. Most people think WarWorld’s all about shooting at one another. It is. But smart players use everything they can learn about the map to then shoot each other.

  “Noted,” I whisper over the chat. “Tighten up, Third.”

  We move farther down the main street of the complex. There are a few abandoned construction vehicles on the street. Their wheels are sunk in the mud.

  “No sign of any Softies,” whispers Bronco24, point man for Second Squad. We pass the first two buildings guarding either side of the small muddy street leading up to the main hub of the complex.

  That’s when it goes down.

  “Comin’ in from above,” says AwesomeSauce15 as she cuts loose with three short bursts from her HK Mini submachine gun. I check the sky and see nothing but cloud cover, then, drifting down through the mist, I see WonderSoft troops with night-gray parachutes blossoming above their avatars. They must have had the Base Jump option and gone off the top of the rock that overlooks this place. Bullets begin to strike at the wet mud all around us.

  “First Squad, take that alley on the left. Third, go to the right. Secure both ends of the alley and set up a base of fire. Second, on me!”

  I actually hear someone say, “What squad am I in?” But it’s too late for that.

  “Squads Four and Five, hold the entrance to the landing pad. Stand by, I’ll advise you shortly on where to concentrate your fire.”

  I go wide right behind the building. I check my CommandPad as we hustle into the dim wet alley. I’ve already lost two out of Second. The kid playing hard-core gangsta rap got it first. Probably for the best.

  The firefight begins in earnest as WonderSoft gets onto most of the roof of the main complex. It’s not the worst scenario. I can handle that as long as we control the ground. Sometimes coming in the boring old way, out of a dropship and then in on foot, is the best way. I can control my troops and keep the unit cohesive for a time before it gets all “tag with guns.” WonderSoft’s arrival had some surprise value in it, but they didn’t get much out of it. Now they’re strung out all over the rooftops. We, on the other hand are still together, which allows us to work together.

  “Who’s got sniper rifles?” I say over the chat.

  Bucklebee and IrishRogue tell me they’re each carrying. “Good,” I say. “Fall back and circle wide through the jungle. Get up on to that construction crane at the far end of the facility and get us some cover fire going. Anyone with a heavy, watch the road ahead.”

  I scan the other side of the street and see Third Squad already moving into the other buildings and engaging targets.

  So they’re useless to me.

  “First and Second, bound up the left side of the street and try to sweep this end of the complex. Watch the rooftops. Second Squad, moving now. Follow me.”

  I push out into the muddy alleyway running alongside the main street. I take a couple of shots at a WonderSoft grunt on a nearby platform and hit him in the legs. He goes forward off the roof and falls into the mud farther down the street with a wet splat. Most of Second has followed me, and while someone uses a couple of grenades on a nearby roof, I check the dead WonderSoft player in the mud and realize we’re facing a Special Teams unit. The guy’s wearing a grinning skeleton motorcycle mask over his avatar’s face. WonderSoft must’ve spent some dough to get this unit involved in the fight, which sucks because it means, yes, they’re amateurs, but they’ve also trained together.

  “Question,” says AwesomeSauce over BattleChat, “I can see a couple of guys from Third on the other side of the road. They’re about even with us.”

  So maybe they are useful, jury’s still out.

  The gunfire from both sides is deafening.

  Ahead, there’s a small street and then what looks to be some kind of garage or hangar across the way. I check the CommandPad and see that Third Squad is down to half strength.

  “Okay, First,” I call out over BattleChat. “Poppin’ smoke. Get ready to move up the street. We’ll cover you from here.” I scroll my mous
e and right-click a smoke grenade. I toss it out into the main street to cover First’s movement. WonderSoft begins to fire into the thick, erupting smoke. Everyone with me begins to unload on the rooftops.

  I get a head shot on one.

  Now I have two. I need one more for my first streak reward.

  “AwesomeSauce,” I call out over the chat. “Check that garage across the road and tell me if it’s clear.”

  I watch as her avatar, a lithe, young, impossibly perfect-figured female soldier wearing standard-issue fatigues, oversize boots, and a cocked jungle hat with a black feather in it dashes across the road and into the hangar. A second later I hear the tight braaap of her lethal HK Mini.

  “Clear now,” she says breathlessly over the chat.

  “Good work. Get ready to move into that hangar, Second, as soon as First says they’re in position.”

  I check the CommandPad and see Third’s now completely decimated. I’ve lost two with Second Squad, and First hasn’t lost anyone.

  “Four and Five, stand by to move up,” I say over the chat.

  “Covering,” screams someone from First. Then, “Suppressive fire on that two-story at our one o’clock.” Someone’s got leadership skills. I make a mental note to watch the replay and find out who took charge of First.

  “Move, Second, into the hangar!”

  The gunfire from First is cacophonic, but we still lose a guy, Player9000177, as we cross the street firing and race for the low dark mouth of the hangar entrance. Once we’re inside, I tell what’s left of Second to watch the exits.

  I bring up my CommandPad, watching as my avatar exchanges the smoking M4X for the battered CommandPad with the nicked and camouflaged edges. Game designers like to make things look frontline authentic. The satellite feed shows me where my squads are and any known WonderSoft positions that have recently fired weapons or been observed by any of my troops. WonderSoft appears strung out across the complex. We’re concentrated in three areas—First on the street, Second with me in the hangar, and the rest back at the LZ. Good. Now it’s time to find the “hill” and try to be king of it for at least three minutes.