Gamer Army Page 23

  Jackie slapped a charge on a ranger’s back and threw herself into a commando roll on the floor as she detonated the explosives, destroying the thing. “They’re slow to react! I think they’re automated, like basic video game AI.” She was back on her feet for only seconds before a tank’s heavy plasma bolt knocked Jackie back hard, sending her flying and crashing into a steel handrail. The bar broke away and she landed on a metal platform among viper parts. The blast and crash would have killed a human, but her viper body held up. Likewise, the pain from the attack was greatly reduced. Still, she didn’t want to go through that again.

  The five vipers of the Gamer Army were outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned, having destroyed only five of the fifty enemy vipers.

  “We have to get out of here!” Tank shouted. “They’re killing us! Let’s regroup and try again another time!”

  An enemy engineer leapt atop Jackie, punching hard, leaving dents in the steel platform right by her head. It was quickly aiming its laser, but Jackie was faster, grabbing its wrist and holding the weapon away. It attempted to react and change tactics, but Jackie was way ahead of it, reaching out and connecting to a programming access point on a computer control unit for one of the factory robots. “You might have both of my arms busy,” Jackie said, “but a good engineer always works around the problem.” The plasma cutter on the factory robot arm jammed into the enemy engineer’s back, burning right through the robot’s motor control center. Sparks popped out of it, and the engineer fell limp.

  An enemy ranger whipped a hard kick to Rogan’s stomach, bending him over in the middle. Another ranger punched his head with a devastating uppercut so hard he flipped end over end and crashed into Tank.

  Rogan’s head was locked into a twisted sideways position, as though something had broken in Ranger’s neck.

  Healer was by his side in an instant. “I can fix that.”

  “Good to have you back, buddy,” Rogan said.

  An enemy ranger made a rush at Healer, but Engineer jumped in at the last second, pulling a heavy electrical cable she’d freed from the factory works. She jammed the cable under the ranger’s head, and raw electric power coursed through it, the enemy robot spasming violently.

  “I’m done messing around with these guys,” Engineer said. “Gamers, you about ready to fight back?”

  Healer repaired Rogan’s neck, so that he could nod his head. He elbowed Tank. “What do you say, big guy? Remember how vicious you were on the Tianjin?”

  If Beckett hadn’t been uploaded to Tank, he would have smiled. “Oh yeah!” In the back of his mind he recognized how strange it was to be able to open his own enormous shoulders just as easily as someone might move an arm, but he mostly focused on using his HUD to target different tanks in front of him. Seconds later, six Hellfire missile roared from his shoulder launchers and exploded into enemy tanks.

  Four of them were destroyed, but two staggered and somehow remained functional, until the combined weapons of the rest of the Gamer Army put them down.

  With no time to celebrate, Rogan fired his grappling cables to grab two enemy healer mods and yank them into the air toward him. “Batter up, Beckett!”

  Tank lasered the arms and legs off one and caught the other. With an enraged scream, Beckett’s Tank engaged full motor power and ripped the smaller healer viper’s limbs off before dropping it and stomping its head to pieces.

  Shaylyn flew blindingly fast, but with full neurolytic control, her viper also responded more rapidly and smoother than ever before, and she started to pick up the flight pattern of the ten enemy flyer vipers she was up against. She grabbed one by the back of its neck with her foot to hold it in place, and unloaded NLEPs as fast as she could until the enemy was fried. An enemy ranger took a laser shot at her, but she used the dead flyer as a shield and then kicked in her afterburners to swoop down and club an enemy engineer with it, the impact so hard it messed up the engineer’s motor systems long enough for Jackie to place explosives on its back and Tank to backhand it into an enemy ranger, exploding them both.

  As the five members of the Gamer Army began to work together, defending and assisting one another as a team, more and more enemy robots were destroyed. But none of the Gamer Army’s robot soldiers worked as hard, fast, or accurately as Takashi. He hadn’t been totally satisfied with his performance as Healer when he thought the final challenge was a video game, and with so much more at stake fighting in real life, he was determined to do better. There were certain automatic repair programs stored within Healer, within himself when he was uploaded to Healer, so that he could start his left hand and the various repair tools on his left arm to fixing a section of Tank’s armor or Engineer’s leg, while he fired hundreds of NLEPs at lightly armored flyers with his right. He took down at least three of them himself, while keeping his friends operational. Parts weren’t a problem, as he could harvest replacement components from the supplies in the enemy healers or from the other disabled and destroyed vipers.

  There weren’t many operational enemy vipers remaining. Shaylyn cheered as she shot another flyer out of the air. Rogan connected two CHEL beams to shred another flyer that had been on Shay’s tail. Four DEMPs from Beckett were enough to scramble the armor and confuse the computers of the last enemy tank. Jackie leapt to that tank’s shoulders and connected to take over its onboard computer, turning its weapons against the enemy, Hellfire missiles killing the remaining rangers, plasma cannons cutting the last of the engineers to pieces. Takashi not only fixed his friends, but used the battle as an opportunity to practice several new fighting techniques, helping him destroy plenty of the enemy robots. Five of them had destroyed fifty, and though the battle was fierce, leaving the factory in ruins, the entire fight was over in less than ten minutes.

  “Yeah!” Tank slapped Engineer a high five, metal clanking on metal.

  Flyer landed next to Rogan and threw her arms around him, picking him up in the air and spinning him around. “We did it!”

  Healer and Engineer didn’t join in the celebration. Healer hurried with the remaining repairs to his fellow vipers. He’d found six unfired missiles in the wrecks of enemy tanks and used them to reload Beckett. He patched Ranger’s armor. He swapped Flyer’s nearly burned out NonLethal Energy Pulse emitter for a more powerful laser and the power upgrade to run it, asking Engineer to check his work against her own preprogrammed technical knowledge. He also asked Engineer’s help putting together a new weapon from some of the defunct viper power cells and some factory components in case they faced more trouble. Now he had his own plasma cutter mounted on his right arm, a useful weapon, if the improvised power system mounted on his back held up.

  “This isn’t over,” Jackie reminded the others as she ran final checks on Healer’s new system. “There’s a lot more to do, and by now all of Atomic Frontiers knows we’re here. Police … maybe even the Army are on their way right now. This whole fight was probably covering Culum’s escape.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Mr. Culum’s voice came over speakers from somewhere. All five gamers whipped their heads up, searching the room.

  “But I did need to buy time for my loyal associates to move to safety.” They raised their arms, ready to shoot at whatever was about to attack them. But no attack came. Culum’s voice continued. “And to see the technology you stole from me in action. I’m most impressed by your performance. It’s good to have you back. You’ve returned to Atomic Frontiers because you think you want to stop me. Join me in your old gaming arena, and I’ll explain why you should really want to help me.”

  “The old join-the-evil-mastermind trick?” Flyer said. “Do you really think we’ll fall for that?”

  Culum’s old friendly laugh echoed through the dark room. “There’s no trick to fall for. I promise you. I’m only trying to help people, and you can be a part of that. You’ve undoubtedly been sent to kill or capture me. So you must come to the game arena anyway. I’ll wait for you here”—he paused, and then spoke with an icy ir
ony—“gamers.” A door at the far end of the giant factory room slid open, inviting them to whatever new horrors Culum had in mind.

  Half a continent away from the gamers’ struggle in Washington, DC, United States Air Force General James Hide, commander of US Strategic Command, headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, was shaken awake by Captain Hillary Hess. His first response was to prepare to fight an intruder, his second to yell at his subordinate for waking him at such an insane hour. But many years of training led him to resist those impulses and cut to business.

  “Time,” said the general.

  “Zero three fifteen hours, sir,” the captain answered. She was also well trained and quickly explained the situation. “Sir, there’s some kind of global cyberattack. Systems are being disrupted everywhere. Everything. The electrical grid. Financial. Communications. Defense. Source of the attack is unknown. We’re working on it. The president is on the line to speak to you.” General Hide reached for the red phone next to his bed, but the captain shook her head. “The last secure line we can keep open is in the command center. Car and driver are waiting.”

  “Set condition one throughout the base.”

  “Already done, sir.”

  The electricity in the general’s house and across the base winked out for a moment, emergency generators taking over almost without interruption to maintain power for critical systems. The little light that spilled into the general’s dark house left half his face in shadow. He paused for just a moment. “You’re shaking, Captain. Get yourself under control.”

  “Sorry, sir. This thing … it’s bigger—worse than anything we’ve trained for.”

  The general leapt from his bed and sprinted from the room, wearing only a T-shirt and athletic shorts. “Let’s go! Have someone bring me a uniform.”

  The five laser vipers ran through the empty hallways of Atomic Frontiers central command, hurrying through an office area with scattered papers, overturned desk chairs, and even some of the computers still on.

  Tank shoved a desk out of the way to make room for his bulky body. He switched to internal comms. “Maybe you should hack the computer system from here, Jackie.”

  “These are just access terminals,” Jackie replied. “There will be a ton of lockouts between here and the Atomic Frontiers mainframe. I need to physically access the heart of their data storage if I’m going to find what we need.”

  “You all need to hurry,” X said on their channel. “Those glitches and outages that have been going down more and more over the last year are spiking. The entire game credit economy in Virtual City has crashed. Riots in VR and IRL. It’s like the whole hypernet is breaking down. And this surge started right after you arrived at Atomic Frontiers CentCom. Whatever is happening there is bigger than we thought. Move it!”

  They entered the atrium with the model of Sun Station One. Before, when they thought all this was a game, the space station looked like a symbol of hope. But now, they all imagined the thing as a giant cannon, floating in space, with the power to destroy whole cities and no weapon being able to counteract it, no missile capable of reaching it before being destroyed.

  Jackie pointed down one of the six hallways that met at that juncture. “Their central computer is down there,” she said internally. “Should I go for it now, or come help you with Culum?”

  “I don’t think we’ll need that much help to capture an old man,” Beckett said.

  “He’s a billionaire genius with endless weapons at his disposal,” Takashi said. “Who knows what he’s capable of ? You don’t think he’s simply going to surrender, do you?”

  “I’ll go with her,” said Shaylyn. “There may be guards, more vipers, or other security in the building. She may need protection.”

  “Right,” said Rogan. “Then let’s move fast and finish this.”

  While Engineer and Flyer went to infiltrate the Atomic Frontiers main computer, Healer and Rogan ran as fast as Tank could go, the big guy out front as a shield in case Shay had been right about more vipers.

  But when Tank kicked down the doors and the three vipers rushed into the game arena, they found not another army of lethal advanced combat robots, but one old man in black clothes and a lumpy gray cardigan.

  “See?” Tank said. “Told you.”

  “Welcome back to the arena,” Mr. Culum said calmly. “Though all five of you might as well have come see me. Miss Sharpe won’t be successful at infiltrating my computers. After all, I designed both the engineer viper and the mainframe she’s trying to hack. Anyway, she needn’t bother trying to steal information about my ultimate goal. I will simply tell you, especially since the entire world will soon know of the complete change I am bringing.” He pushed his hands deep into his sweater pockets. “I must admit your interference has forced me to take ultimate action before the time was ideal.”

  Tank stepped forward, his giant feet clanking hard on the black arena floor. He raised an arm, readying enough laser and plasma power to vaporize the man. “Forget this! I say we take him to the police right now.”

  Mr. Culum laughed. “In a matter of hours, the police won’t be able to help you. The world is about to move beyond the need for such brutal, adversarial, punitive forces like police.”

  Takashi stepped forward. “What are you talk—”

  “Singularity is near!” Culum’s triumphant voice echoed through the shadows of the dark arena.

  In London thousands of people panicked as financial records of various kinds, from savings accounts to major stock holdings, were suddenly wiped out.

  “Do you mean your computer is down?” one concerned man asked a bank employee.

  “No, sir. It all appears to be working perfectly. But I’ve checked and double-checked. You have no money in your account, sir.”

  “That’s impossible!” the man shouted. “There were over ten thousand pounds in that account only this morning.”

  The nervous bank man nodded. “Yes, I saw it myself. But then it changed to zero. If you’ll allow me to check …” He frowned. “Well, the account into which you wanted the money transferred reads zero as well.”

  “Now see here! I want to talk to your supervisor!”

  The man behind the counter already had the phone to his ear. “Yes, sir. One moment.” He frowned and pressed another button on the phone. Another. He hung up and tried again. He let out an exasperated breath. “And now my phone’s dead,” he said to his customer. “I swear, every machine is rubbish today.” Both men exchanged a worried look as the electricity in London winked out.

  The chief air traffic control operator at Hong Kong International Airport nervously paced his darkened tower, fighting the urge to tell his technicians to hurry up. He knew they were working as fast as they could, and yelling at them would only make them more prone to mistakes. His was a business of careful precision, and no one was helped by panic.

  His computers had just scrambled, and most had shut down. Communications weren’t working. All of his radar was out. All of it. Hong Kong International was the eighth busiest airport by passenger and the world’s number one busiest airport for cargo traffic. And it was blind. His screens showed nothing, but even though he had sent security to every gate and to the tarmac in order to ground all traffic that hadn’t yet departed, he knew he had dozens of aircraft up there. Hundreds, maybe thousands of passengers. And he had no way to direct them.

  “We’ve tried everything, sir,” one of the technicians said. “We’ve power cycled each computer. We’ve brought in new units. This doesn’t make sense. But we better do something soon or—”

  An enormous explosion shook the sky outside the tower, and the burning remains from the collision of two large jet planes fell to the runway.

  “Get me an independent radio transmitter. Something not connected to the network!” the chief said. “We must start talking to our planes, or that won’t be the last crash.”

  The CEO of a major online retailer screamed at his technical people.
“What do you mean, the site is down?! That’s impossible! You mean some products are unavailable?”

  His lead technical advisor swallowed nervously. “No, sir. I mean the entire site, every page, from product descriptions to help pages. All of our stores in Virtual City, their records. All of it is gone. We don’t know how. Our VR employees can’t even access their store-issued avatars.”

  The CEO wiped his sweaty brow. “Backup servers.”

  “I don’t know,” said the advisor. “We can’t access them. I can’t even get anyone on the phone over there.”

  The CEO slumped into a chair. “We’re a ninety-billion-dollar company. If we don’t have a site or our digi-space stores—”

  “We still have some of our brick-and-mortar operations,” the advisor said. “And of course all our people are working to restore everything else, but there’s some kind of computer virus—”

  “We’re worth nothing!” the CEO screamed, his mind whirling with the money they were losing, with the losses the shareholders would suffer, some with their entire retirement portfolios invested in his company. Over a quarter of a million employees whose livelihoods depended on him. How many would he have to lay off or fire? “Get it back! Get it back now or this company and the whole country are in serious trouble!”

  Jackie had connected Engineer’s onboard computers to the enormous Atomic Frontiers central mainframe. Engineer came equipped with multiple redundant superprocessors, and a hyper-fast artificial intelligence that could blaze through trillions of combinations a second, changing the form of its attack on a foreign computer faster than most firewalls could adapt. It didn’t seek only one point of entry to a system but came at the enemy computer from many directions at once, and its attacks were constantly changing. Most commercial antivirus software didn’t stand a chance.