Chapter – 10 – Locked and Loaded

"I must admit, I've never seen anything like it."

Captain Waszkiewicz shivered slightly in the cold air of the morgue. The young man they had apprehended at the border crossing now lay face-up on a metal slab, his face still frozen in an expression of rabid frenzy. A large Y-shaped incision had been made in his chest, and to the top half of his skull had been removed, exposing his brain. It was enough to make the captain more than a bit nauseous, not helped by the overpowering smell of antiseptic hanging in the air.

"The patient was admitted displaying the classical symptoms of rabies encephalitis," Doctor Nowak continued. "Agitation, frequent seizures, hydrophobia, aerophobia, altered consciousness, and hypersalivation." He then walked over to a trio of monitors on the far well, each of which displayed a black-and-white image of the patient's brain. "Although there was little question as to the diagnosis, I decided to perform an MRI scan in order to rule out any other possible form of neurological dysfunction."

"And what did you find?" Waszkiewicz asked, not sure if he'd be able to understand the answer.

The doctor pointed to one of the monitors with his little finger. "Imaging detected several hyperintensities in the pontine tegmentum, globus pallidus, collicular plate, cortical grey matter, and subcortical white matter. Over the next few hours the neurological state of the patient continued to deteriorate, and he eventually expired from acute respiratory failure. All of this is consistent with previous diagnoses of rabies encephalitis, however..." Nowak looked away, evidently troubled.

"What? What is it?"

"A subsequent examination of the patient's brain tissue did not reveal the presence of Negri bodies, nor was there any evidence of rabies antigens present in the patient's nervous tissue. In fact, there was no evidence of any infectious agents at all."

"What did the blood test show? Could he have been on drugs?"

"That was my first suspicion," the doctor replied. "But the blood came back negative for all known drugs except for trace amounts of Maricaffinol."

Waszkiewicz frowned. "'Maricaffinol?'"

"It's the active ingredient in a number of popular energy drinks, combining the effects of marijuana, caffeine, and alcohol. But I can assure you, captain, that this was not the cause of the patient's death."

"What did the patient have on him?"

Doctor Nowak picked up a plastic card from a nearby table. "Nothing but his wallet, containing a credstick, a driving licence, and a membership card for something called the 'Gamers' Alliance.' According to the licence, the patient is James D. Weiler from Texarkana, Texas. I did some investigating on my own, off the clock, and it turns out that this 'Gamers' Alliance' is some sort of policlub dedicated to various form of interactive electronic entertainment. Now, that in itself is not unusual – even stamp collectors and model railroad enthusiasts have policlubs these days – but what is unusual are the stories I've heard about a disease that appears to afflict only members of their organisation, and whose symptoms are identical to the ones I described to you earlier. Given the encephalopathic nature of the disease, I assumed that it was related somehow to the ASIST technology used by gaming hardware, but if that were the case then the disease would be far more prevalent."

"So if I understand you, doctor, this 'Gamers' Alliance', who is now loose in our country, is being stricken with a disease that is like rabies, but is not actually rabies?"

"It would seem so. But...'loose in our country,' you say?"

"Yes. They attacked one of our border checkpoints, and later another group attacked the same crossing and killed one of the men stationed there. We've got roadblocks set up along all major thoroughfares. I'm not sure what their intentions are, though from what the men have told me they appear to be in pursuit of someone. But at any rate, they are likely very stupid people, and we should no trouble dealing with them."

"I am a merchant of death. Weapons are my bag, my speciality, my stock and trade. You name it, I know it. Guns, knives, rocket launchers, grenades, flamethrowers, missiles, bombs, nuclear arms...if it makes people go from 'living' to 'dead' then no one knowns more about it than me. Take a look at this baby here: the FNG-94 'Adjudicator', one of only five ever produced. Why? Because the company was forced to stop making it. All the plans were destroyed, all the engineers were liquidated, for no other reason than the sheer fuckin' fear this beautiful piece of hardware struck into peoples' hearts. Its very existence was declared a war crime by the United Nations. Featuring a double-redundant smartlink system compatible with only the highest-end cyberware that money CAN'T buy, and utilising a blowback-shifted pulse action in combination with a tungsten-neutronium bolt carrier, it has a maximum effective kill radius of over 3000 yards. Each round is a custom-machined cartridge with a muzzle velocity of over 5000 feet per second and a total ballistic energy of approximately 20,000 joules. Beneath the barrel is the underslung rocket launcher firing either a high-explosive anti-tank projectile or an armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot able to penetrate over 30 feet of rolled homogeneous armour. It is, without a doubt, the most deadly personal weapon ever conceived by mankind. Any questions?"

"Yeah," said Dobbs. "How much did the company pay you to slobber all over their knob?"

His name was Leroy, but to everyone on the bus he was known by his online handle "LaSombra." Addressing him by his given name would result in him reflexively punching you in the face. Pointing out that he was not Hispanic nor spoke a word of Spanish would also result in a punch to the face, followed by a knee to the groin.

"Fuck you, man! I've done shit the rest of you can't even dream of! Bunch of goddamn pussies on this bus. Well I'm diamond ranked in Grunts of Glory, motherfuckers! When I see the enemy, I shoot the enemy, and I don't need more than one bullet. 20 to 1 K/D ratio, assholes! I've been hearing that a lot of punk bitches out there think they got the skills to go toe-to-toe with LaSombra! Ha! That's some funny shit! But this is about more than just games. This elf we're gonna kill, what she look like?"

"Well, uh, she's tall. And blonde," Rhodes muttered, not paying much attention to their conversation. His eyes were focussed on LaSombra's weapon, which he fondled and caressed as though it were his lover. It looked less like a gun and more like a Frankenstein-esque assemblage of scopes, sights, grips, accessory rails, extended magazines, flashlights, and laser sights, and in Rhodes' eyes it looked distinctly impractical. But what did he know? He was merely a gold ranked Grunts of Glory player.

"What else?"

"She's...uh...got a huge rack?"

"And after we kill her, what are you gonna do?"

LaSombra's questions irritated him. "I sure as shit know what I'm gonna do! I'm leaving this sinkhole of a country and going back to SoCal."

"See what I mean?" LaSombra sneered. "You're all a bunch of pussies! This is about more than just trideo games. Maybe it was at first. Maybe you just wanted to be left alone to enjoy your preferred mode of entertainment. But they wouldn't let you! They kept lying about you, about us. Someone has to stand up to them, and they are us! That fight back at the border? That was just the opening skirmish. Welcome to the war, soldiers! And this war has brought us to eastern Europe, 'cause it's nothing less than the struggle for western civilisation itself, and it's gonna take an army of millions to hold us back. Your only option is to fight, motherfuckers! Because the alternative is something you don't even want to think about. It's total war, full PvP, kill or be killed!"

"Are you, uh, ex-military?" Rhodes asked, unsure of where to steer the conversation.

LaSombra shifted slightly. "Hell no, man. I was part of a six-man High Threat Response team in one of the largest retail centres in the state of Maine-"

Dobbs snickered. "You were a mall cop?"

"Fuck you, asshole! You have no idea the kind of shit we had to deal with on a daily basis. You wouldn't have seen us if you had just gone shopping, 'cause we worked in the shadows, but if some punks started making trouble we would have been on them, man, in full tactical gear. We were fully trained in both armed and unarmed combat, and I personally know three forms of martial arts, including ninjutsu. My kit included an FN 5-7C sidearm, an HK MP5, and Ares HVAR, combined with full kevlar body armour and tactical night-vision goggles. In my line of work, we only use the best. For a while we tried using the Colt M22A2, but it proved unreliable when the Russian Mafia laid siege to the arcade one fateful afternoon..."

By now Dobbs was laughing uncontrollably. "Oh, do tell us!"

"You think this is funny, dickweed? Well, next time you go shopping, just remember that it's because of people like me that some greasy 300lb biker isn't sodomising you in the men's room! With all the moral and intellectual decay that's going on in our society, it was up to us to protect the retail environments of our glorious nation. I had five rotating routes to work every day, and during the walk to and from my car I was always under threat from snipers, improvised explosives, and anti-personnel mines. But some young punks always try to push the limit, thinking they can get away with shoplifting or loitering in the food court. If I was in a good mood I'd let them go with a tasering, but the second they got violent that's when we'd start aiming for the head. Gone are the days when thugs and gangbangers carried Colts or Cavaliers. Now they're packing Ultra-Powers or Predators, sometimes with long-range arms such as MA-2100s or G38s firing full metal jacket rounds.

"You still haven't gotten to the part about fighting the Russian Mafia," Dobbs said, still laughing.

"On that day our squad was assigned to patrol sector Bravo Charlie 08, which happened to include the arcade. Things were quiet until the evening, and it was around 9:45 PM that I saw some suspicious characters around the new Street Fighter machine. That's when I knew that we were dealing with the Russian Mafia, 'cause Russians fucking love Street Fighter. 'Code red! We got a code red!' I screamed into my radio. I ordered my buddy to perform a sweep of the right side of the arcade, and that's when I saw a perp stand up behind the air hockey table with Kalashnikov RPK with a 75 round drum magazine, while two more perps started coming around the slurpee machine with Vindicator miniguns. My buddy got into position, but then his gun jammed up and he took a round to the knee, so I dove underneath the foosball table, got the perp with the RPK in my sights, and gave him two rounds in the chest and one in the head, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. The moment I got to my feet the two thugs with miniguns started opening up, but they couldn't handle the recoil and their shots didn't come anywhere near me. Bunch of dumb kids; didn't even know how to handle their own weapons. I snapped into a roll, dropped a flashbang at their feet, and while they were blinded I put a bullet in each of their heads.

"Then everything went dark. Turns out the fuckers had cut the power, and when I looked up a saw three men smashing through the skylight and rappelling down to the upper level. But the darkness, see, it didn't affect me, 'cause my night vision was like that of an owl after spending five years in a Siberian prison. The three guys started shooting at me, all armed with MP5s chambered for 10mm rounds and featuring ACOG TA11 sights. There was no way I could get a shot in my from my position, so I scaled the wall using my ninja skills and silently approached them from behind. Drawing my katana, I screamed 'The dragon becomes me!' and launched into my attack. One of them lost his head before the others even knew what was happening, and then the two guys remaining started firing, but my blade, flickering and flashing like moonlight reflecting on an unquiet sea, turned aside their bullets. I cut one of them down with a hard, overhead slash, and he started screaming as his guts poured out onto the floor. The last guy tried to run, but he couldn't outrun my shuriken. When the smoke cleared we had six dead perps, all killed by my hand. It would have made the news, but some company suits came along in a black helicopter to cover up the situation. And since then no one in the Russian Mafia has had the guts to even speak my name, and they shudder with horror at the mere thought of an operator so deadly that he still inspires fear decades later."

"You know," said Rhodes, "the Polish army has probably set up roadblocks on the major highways. We should probably do something about that."

LaSombra laughed. "What army? They're probably-"

Before he could finish there came a loud bang from the front of the bus, followed by the distinctive thump-thump-thump sound of a flat tyre. "Spike strip!" cried the driver, who immediately slammed on the brakes.

"Shit just got real!" LaSombra said, cocking his assault rifle. "Time to rock!"

Everyone onboard grabbed their weapons and headed towards the front door, resulting in a crush of bodies near the driver's seat. Outside they could hear the muffled clattering of automatic weapons fire, and Rhodes began to shake uncontrollably. He reached for his katana, but every cell in his body was screaming at him to run. But the press of bodies behind him kept him moving forward, and before he could draw his sword he found himself forced out the door and onto the pavement.

He looked to his left and saw muzzle flares flashing in the dark, followed by the whooshing of bullets flying by. Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought, he started running, screaming all the while, until he reached the guard rail of the highway. Rhodes tried to leap over it, only for his foot to catch, causing him to fly head-first into the ditch.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" He looked up, spat out a mouthful of dirt, and watched as people continued pouring out of the bus while bullets continued whizzing past. Dobbs strode onto the highway as casually as someone going for a stroll, firing his two gold-plated Desert Eagles into the darkness.

"Get some! Get some! Get some!" Dobbs cried over and over, not even bothered by the bullets flying. "There's a lot more where that came from!"

Rhodes checked to see that he had not wet himself and then tried to take stock of the situation. A number of soldiers were advancing along the road and laying down heavy fire, cutting people down as they filed out of the bus. LaSombra emerged from the door, raised his gun towards his assailants, and let out half a battle cry before his body started shuddering as a dozens of bullets ripped through his flesh.

A man with long, greasy hair, wielding an assault rifle in each hand, followed closely behind. "You're gonna pay for that, you fuckers!" he screamed before opening fire. But the recoil sent his shots skyward, and a half-second later a bullet sent his brains spraying out from the back of his head.

"Let's get out of here!" Rhodes wailed as Dobbs jumped over the guard rail.

"My god!" Dobbs exclaimed, ignoring him. "Do we just suck, or is the Polish army that good?" Another individual ran out from the bus, only to be brutally cut down like the others. "Look at these morons! 'Diamond-ranked' my ass!"

By now the soldiers were nearing the bus, and without thinking Rhodes sprang to his feet and started running through the nearby field, with Dobbs following close behind. He stopped for a moment and looked back, just in time to see Heinrich exit the bus and disappear into the night, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around him.

Rhodes was running on pure instinct now. He didn't dare look back again, expecting to see the soldiers in hot pursuit. This was it, he thought. He was going to die, no question about it. He was going to die in a foreign land, having accomplished nothing of note in his miserable life, and all because of some stupid elf. But what was his existence but one injustice and humiliation after the other?

As he sprinted through the field, shafts of wheat whipping against his legs, his mind went back to his first year in high school. That was when it had all started. Isolated and friendless, he had shown his Magical Chainsaw Tentai Kansoku fan fiction to a pair of his classmates, naively expecting them to be impressed. They had asked for copies, and he had provided them, not knowing the hell he was about to unleash upon himself. His 'friends' started sharing the story with the rest of his classmates for the sole purpose of humiliating him, and overnight Rhodes had become the laughingstock of the school. He still remembered the jeers, the taunts, the pranks, the mocking graffiti on the bathroom wall, but most of all he remembered Michelle. Michelle, that stuck-up blonde bitch, she had been the ringleader of it all, the one behind the campaign to transform his existence into never-ending torrent of mockery and degradation. That woman who had trashed his apartment looked so much like her that she could be nothing less than Michelle reborn in elven form. She had the same colour of hair, the same snotty expression, the same ample bosom…

"All right, stop!" said Dobbs, breaking Rhodes from his reminiscence. "Would you just stop for a minute?"

Rhodes came to a halt and looked around. In the darkness he could see little of his surroundings; not that it would do him much good if he could, knowing as little as he did about the geography of this country. "What are we gonna do, man? What are we gonna do?"

"Just shut up and let me think!"

"Think? We gotta get out of here! Maybe you haven't been paying attention, Dobbs, but we just got our asses kicked! Those soldiers are going to be looking for us-"

"Look, would you stop freaking out?" said Dobbs, reloading his guns. "They don't know our names or what we look like. Hell, they probably don't even know we survived. We'll be fine."

Rhodes started stamping the ground in frustration. "'Fine'? 'Fine'? Dude, they just fucking wrecked us! Everyone on that bus is probably dead by now!"

"They were scrubs, Rhodes. Just a bunch of weak, useless, scrubs! Did you see their total lack of movement and aiming skills? As always, it's up to me to carry us to victory. Now let's get going."

"Go where? Do you even have any idea where we are?"

"No, but we can't be far from Warsaw. Now come on, let's find ourselves a ride."

"Are you bringing death to my doorstep? You should know that death and I are old friends."

Their bullet-riddled van made more for amusement than concern from Weles, a man that reminded Talvi of the archetypal mad scientist in an old black-and-white horror film, and she half-expected to find his clinic filled with all the accoutrements of that particular cliché – test tubes, Jacob's Ladders, beakers filled with all manner of bubbling, noxious substances, and enormous knife switches controlling gods-know-what. He looked twenty years older than Väinämöinen himself, walked with a noticeable limp, and appeared to be blind in one eye.

"By the end of the week that van will be lying in a ditch somewhere," Weles continued. "Birds sing, the sun rises, and Monika wrecks vehicles."

"As dubious as her driving abilities are," Talvi said, "the condition of our transportation is not her fault, but that of two groups of violent reactionaries."

He gave her a puzzled look, as if he were trying to suss out where her accent originated. "I don't believe we've been introduced, miss…?"

"Talvi Korpela...Doctor Talvi Korpela. Monika and I are...old associates."

"Well don't just stand there, come in!"

The interior of the clinic, while not quite up the standards of a typical mad scientist's laboratory, was not the sort of place wanted to find herself in should she ever get sick. The air was the thick with the smell of antiseptics, and the dismal fluorescent illumination was wholly inadequate in driving away the darkness. Weles had accumulated a vast array of medical equipment of indeterminate age, which was scattered about with little thought to organisation. It looked less like a street clinic and more like a chop shop.

"A crew of just two?" Weles said, shutting the alley door behind him. "You've learned your lesson from the Wrocław job, I see."

Talvi turned to face Monika. "'Wrocław job?' You never told me about any such thing."

"And I won't ever tell you about it," she replied, sounding angry all of a sudden. "Never do a run with more than a half-dozen people. Oh, and my driving skills are not 'dubious.' You don't even have a driving licence, Talvi, so you have no right to criticise."

Weles laughed. "Monika could cause a pile-up in an empty car park. And no one could ever convict her for drunk driving, because how could they ever tell?"

She began walking towards of a small table in the corner. "Speaking of drunk, what do you have to drink around here? I don't want to impose, but people have been trying to kill us ever since we left Berlin, and I need something strong."

"Then you had best make your stay a short one," said Weles, crossing his arms. "I do not want you bringing trouble to my clinic."

"We will only stay the night before we carry on to Ukraine," Talvi said, sitting down at the table, which was cluttered with paper and battered bits of electronics that she could not identify.

Weles walked over over to a nearby refrigerator and opened the door. "Ukraine? What, if I may ask, is your business there?"

"Well, I don't want to bore you with the details, but we're heading to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to-"

"Chernobyl?" Weles slammed the fridge door shut. "Why the hell are you going there, of all places?"

"I don't see why it should be so terrible," Talvi said quietly. "The catastrophe happened over half a century ago; I am sure the radiation levels have diminished since then."

"Radiation will be the least of your concerns. The Zone is wild and savage, and plays by its own rules. Not even the megacorps will set foot there. About three years ago I was approached by a group of young men who shared your particular...profession. They had made up their minds to venture into the Zone; apparently they had got it into their heads that there was something valuable located beneath the ruins of Pripyat." He opened the fridge once more and took out a half-empty bottle of vodka. "They needed medical supplies, they said, and offered me a share of the profits from their little expedition. I agreed, more out of pity than any expectation of reward."

"Let me guess," said Monika. "They never returned."

Weles began pouring the vodka into a trio of glasses. "Oh, they returned. Well, two of them did, at least. But whether they returned in spirit, I cannot say. Something about them had changed; you could see it in their eyes. When I asked them what had happened the Zone, they had no memory of it all. In fact, they did not even remember driving to my clinic." He looked down at Talvi, specifically the ukonvasara around her neck. "If you are truly a follower of the old ways, then you know that the earth remembers what is done to it and repays humanity in kind. But...don't pay any attention to me. I'm just an old man who's been around since the internet was new."

Monika's eyes brightened at the mention of that word. "The internet? What was it like?"

"What, do you think I'm going to talk about it like it was part of the 'good old days?'" he answered with a scowl. "The internet was shit. Just a big pile of shit."

Talvi couldn't help but smile at his assesment. "My mother referred to it as 'The Web of a Million Lies'."

"Just a million? You...you have no idea, do you? Imagine, for a moment, that you are the sort of person who believes the earth is flat. In the old days, people would have called you an idiot and had nothing more to do with you. But with the internet, you could find other idiots who thought the same, and the more time you spent in their company the more convinced you became that it was the rest of world who were idiots. Instead of building bridges, we built islands. No one trusted the other, no believed anything anyone said. Our very own Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues. They never found out who or what caused the crash of '29, and I don't think anyone ever will. I like to think that it was an act of divine retribution, punishing us for our stupidity. At any rate-" He stopped abruptly, locking eyes on Talvi. "Wait, I know you! You're the one who sang 'The White Death,' aren't you? The song about the Finnish sniper?"

Talvi frowned. "Yes, that was one of the songs my old band wrote, but...why do you bring this up now?"

Weles shrugged. "I thought I recognised you from somewhere, and it kept bothering me. I must say, you are a very good singer...but I could never understand a word you said."

"Speaking of words," she said, looking down at one of the newspapers on the table, "I don't wish to insult your country or its language, but every time I see Polish writing, I cannot help but feel as though some nefarious villain has come along and stolen all your vowels."

"Ha! I've seen your language; it was probably you Finns that did it. Or maybe it was you that did it? You don't reach my age without learning to spot someone who's trouble...and you look like trouble."

Monika seemed to treat the whole thing as a joke. "Oh, you should listen to one of her 'stories.' They're always about the same thing: 'Me and my fire-worshipping friend from Iran decided to ruin someone's day, and somehow we got away with it.' I don't think even half of them are true. Why don't you tell him about the story about the battleship, Talvi?"

"You mean the Yamato?"

"No, the other one."

"The Russian cruiser?"

"No, the American one."

Talvi took of a small sip of vodka, carefully evaluating its quality. "I suppose there is no harm in it. Very well. It began when my band was touring along the eastern UCAS coast, and I was in quite an ill-humour for much of it on account of my...irritation...at the behaviour of Americans. I had nothing but respect for our fans, of course, but there was something about American culture...something intrinsic...that displeased me greatly. Between their grasping, avaricious nature and their democracy of cupidity, I sensed a terrible vacuity within them...a vacuity they papered over with what I can only describe as a sort of pathological extroversion. Whenever I went to a bar or a restaurant, the poor souls employed there would always act as though they were a friend of mine, as if they cared deeply about what I thought of them, and that they were utterly and hopelessly desperate for my approval. People there talk about nothing, all the time, they have no respect for silence or solitude; their whole cultural milieu is a noisy blur of total nonsense. When you talk to an American, you are not talking to that person, but to a salesman for that person. And a salesman embodies a pattern of behaviour intended to deceive, to sell you something and profit from you. So as you might imagine, I was soon eager to return to my own country.

"Anyhow, near the end our of tour I learned that the UCAS Navy would be reactivating four battleships that had previously been relegated to museum exhibits. These ships were over a century old, dating from the Second World War. I had no idea why they would waste so much effort and money on this endeavour, but the Navy was planning to hold a concert onboard the USS New Jersey as part of their efforts to increase recruitment. The ship would sail around the waters south of New York, and at certain moments during the concert they would fire the main guns. I considered all this quite stupid and idiotic, but I did not think much about it until our drummer informed me that a certain nameless individual was offering quite a substantial amount of money to anyone willing to 'disrupt' the concert. Since our band was in need of extra funds at the time, we all agreed to take the job. The question of how, exactly, we would disrupt the performance was soon answered by our bassist, who had somehow come into possession of four exceedingly ill-tempered chimpanzees during our stay in North America. Our plan was to unleash the primates on the New Jersey's lower decks with the hope they would engage in general mayhem. Imagine, if you will, that you were a commanding officer onboard that ship, and all of a sudden you got word from one of the crewmen that a band of chimpanzees was wreaking havoc. You would not believe it; you would assume that it was some kind of joke. That was our hope, at least.

"Now, the problem lay with getting onto the New Jersey with the chimpanzees in the first place. We immediately ruled out disguising ourselves as members of the crew; our lack of military bearing and ignorance of navy jargon would have given us away for sure. Instead, we presented ourselves as stage crew, with the chimpanzees contained within a number of loudspeaker enclosures. In the great bustle of activity setting up the stage, no one noticed us moving the 'loudspeakers' down into the lower decks. Once we found an isolated quarter of the ship we released the chimpanzees, but to our total dismay they were wholly uninterested in any form of havoc or mayhem. It was as though they considered themselves passengers on some pleasure cruise and not the agents of destruction we required them to be. So our bassist gave them some chemical encouragement – some potent form of methamphetamine whose name I can't recall – and then we fled as quickly as we were able. We expected the chimpanzees to go berserk and attack everything in sight, but instead they made their way up through the decks with almost military efficiency, as if they were guided by some higher purpose.

"I don't know what happened next, since we had to make ourselves inconspicuous, but according to later reports the four chimpanzees made their way to the bridge and attacked the crew and officers there in a wild frenzy. They subsequently took control of the ship, something we became aware of when it made a sudden turn to starboard. At the very same moment the concert was nearing the point when the New Jersey would fire its main guns – the climactic moment of the singer's performance – but none of the gunnery crew were aware that the ship had changed course. So when the guns fired – and I must say it was quite a spectacular sight – the shells did not land harmlessly in the ocean, as was the original intent. Instead they flew across Upper New York Bay and right into the Statue of Liberty. Now, the shells were not explosive, being merely inert ordnance, but they left several large holes in Lady Liberty's head. To my great relief no one was killed or injured. Indeed, the greatest damage was to the UCAS Navy's reputation; I imagine it was quite embarrassing for those in charge of the event to explain to the brass how a quartet of chimpanzees suddenly seized control of a World War II battleship. At any rate, we used the proceeds from the job to purchase a new set of amplifiers."

Monika leaned back in her chair. "Are you going to believe that? I swear, she just makes this stuff up on the spot."

"Everything I have said is the truth," Talvi replied, "with no exaggeration or confabulation."

"I believe it," said Weles. "As I told you before, I know when someone is trouble. And your friend, Monika, looks like trouble. You should reconsider your association with her."

"Ah, Mr. McGee. How goes the development of Age of the Wyrm III? I understand a large portion of your development staff recently departed your company. My condolences; I'm sure it had nothing to do with your gross incompetence."

Seeing Chawncy's face turn red with barely-concealed rage was almost enough to make Lord Swedish giggle like a schoolboy. It did not help that whatever piece of vidphone hardware Chawncy was employing created a distinctive fish-eye effect on the image, making Chawncy's head look distinctly rotund.

"Age of the Wyrm III is going to be the greatest RPG the world has yet seen!" Chawncy declared. "It is not just merely a game, but 'THE GAME!' And THE GAME will transcend all boundaries – RPG, strategy, wargaming, and countless other subgenres. All will be welcome at Chawncy McGee's table of gaming delight."

Lord Swedish puffed on his cigar, endeavouring to convey an image of absolute smugness. "Mr. McGee, considering your past performance as a game developer and your struggles with tax liens and bankruptcy proceedings, I do not think you are even remotely qualified to assess your company's chances of success. The total absence of any successful or even functional game in the past twenty years of your so-called 'career' tells me that you really ought to pack it in and go home." He leaned in closer to the vidphone's camera. "I know you've hired a number of agents to infiltrate our studio. And I've been in contact with the individual who calls himself 'Chernabog,' the one whose been keeping your sorry excuse for a company afloat. He's even been so generous as to provide me with the names of the...mercenaries...you've chosen to employ. So I'm going to make you an offer, Mr. McGee. Either you recall your agents, or I will destroy you. Your employees, your finances, your assets...I will annihilate them completely. Do you understand?"

"You don't want to go to war with me," blustered the distorted face on the screen. "You think I don't know how competitive this industry is? You say you 'know' that I hired people to go after you. But what do you really know? Maybe this is all part of some elaborate deception on my part. Maybe there are no shadowrunners. Maybe it's all in your head. This is three-dimensional chess I'm playing here. No! Make that seven-dimensional chess! I'm going to-"

"Oh shut up," he said, terminating the conversation. Lord Swedish then paged his secretary. "Ms. Li, send in Murphy and the others. I have a mission for them."