CHAPTER 6: Battlefield Mainframe
I was expecting to arrive in a grimy dungeon or torture chamber, given what I'd seen of the Principal Office through the viewer. So when I emerged in a meadow at nighttime, with the harvest moon winking at me from above a line of oak trees, I was obviously baffled.
I tapped the earpiece. "Welman," I said, "I think the teleporter goofed."
"Where are you," I heard him say over the crackle of static.
"I think I'm in another sector," I said. "By the looks of it, it's not one I'm familiar with."
"Oh, User," Welman said. "The reverse waveguide must have thrown off the calibrations. I'll have to run a complete analysis and adjust the mechanism manually."
"How long will that take?" I asked.
"-could...ake...while..."
"Welman, you're breaking up," I said. There was a burst of static again. "Welman, come in, your transmission's all garbled."
"-slight malfunction...losing...'re...signal..."
The earpiece went dead as another tremor began. This one was longer and more violent. Somewhere in the distance I heard trees falling and the sound of the earth splitting open. After it passed, I tried to reestablish communication for a few more minutes, hoping Welman could fix the problem quickly. It didn't look like that was going to happen. I looked around. My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and I could see I was close to a road, so I walked towards it.
My clothing had changed again. I was wearing an oatmeal gray cotton shirt and twill khakis. Everything aside from the tremor was quiet and almost completely still. I say "almost" because through the trees I could hear movement. It sounded like someone or something was moving through the brush as slowly as possible to avoid making noise. I patted my pockets looking for the sonic serve and found it had turned into a Swiss Army knife. I kept to a low crouch and made my way toward the tree line. I listened carefully; I definitely heard movement, and whoever was moving was headed my way.
A figure appeared out of the brush, silhouetted against the starry sky. It was a binome.
"Who goes there?" I asked.
He visibly jumped and spun around. It looked like he was pointing a gun at me.
"Sound off, whoever you are," said the binome in a harsh whisper.
"Sawyer. Kevin Sawyer."
"American?"
For a moment I was caught off guard. "Yes. American."
"Military or civilian?" he asked, still keeping his gun on me.
"Civilian under military contract," I said. I recited my DoD classification, hoping the game reality would make me sound convincing. "Three-charlie-one-echo."
He relaxed and put his weapon away. He came up and shook my hand gleefully. "I thought all civilians had been evacuated hours ago."
"They must have missed me," I said. "Who are you?"
"Major Dan Wilson, Army Intelligence," he said. "You picked a helluva time to get lost, Sawyer."
"Why?"
"The Gerries are moving their front lines forward toward St. Claire," he said. "I've got tactical information for the marines holed up there."
Nobody had referred to the Germans as "Gerries" since World War II, so I figured I must have been in some kind of combat simulator set during that period. St. Claire sounded distinctly French, so using those two assumptions I tried to get more information.
"Do the French resistance have an outpost in St. Claire?"
Wilson nodded. "They've been sheltering the marines in the village for the past two weeks while waiting for me to make contact."
"In that case we'd better get you to St. Claire, major," I said. "The marines aren't known for their patience."
"This whole area is swarming with German patrols," said Wilson. "I almost got captured a few klicks back. They're gunning for me."
"Then they're less likely to suspect two people traveling together."
"How's your French?"
I grimaced. Languages were my greatest intellectual fault. "Lousy," I said.
"If we run into a patrol, let me do the talking. If they ask about you, I'll tell them you're mute."
"I don't have any papers."
Wilson said: "I'll tell them you're mute and stupid, then."
"I love this plan," I muttered.
We kept to the shadows, moving swiftly and quietly. We followed the road, but we didn't walk on it; the light from the moon made it look powder gray against the darkness of the field. About twenty minutes later we were stopped by a jeep full of German soldiers.
"Être boiteux!" one of them shouted.
We stopped as two of them, a sergeant and a private, jumped out and shined a light in our faces.
"Vos papiers," said the sergeant, extending his gloved hand. The private had his rifle pointed at us. Wilson handed the soldier a booklet with his forged documents. "Son trop," snapped the sergeant.
"Il n'a pas de papiers," said Wilson. "Il est le fils de ma sœur retardée."
The private laughed, but the sergeant silenced him with a glance and a grimace.
"If your French is as bad as your English," said the sergeant in accented English, "I'd hate to hear you speak German." He crumpled the papers and threw them on the ground.
He reached for his holster, but Wilson was already on the private, kicking the flashlight out of his hand. I sent the sergeant to the ground with a low kick to his knee. He cried out, but I silenced him with a hammer blow to the neck and a quick elbow strike to the jaw. The other soldiers in the jeep were yelling and screaming, but they didn't fire at the risk of hitting their own people with a blind shot.
By the time Wilson started scrambling for cover, they had turned a searchlight on us and opened up with a volley of automatic weapon's fire. We made it to the trees and kept running for at least a quarter mile. That's when I noticed I'd lost the binome somewhere behind me. I turned around and tried searching for him by backtracking.
"Over here," he whispered hoarsely.
He was laying against a tree, pressing a wad of clothing over a wound in his lower cube.
"They got me," he said. "I can't feel my legs."
"I can carry you," I said.
"Forget it," he said. "I'd slow you down. I'm done for." He handed me a sheaf of papers. "Get these to the marines in St. Claire. Rendezvous point's a tavern called Den du Renard. Use the code phrase 'Les jeunes filles françaises sont douces en avril.' The correct response is, 'Mais ils sont amers en hiver.' Tell them you're OSS. Got that?"
"I got it," I said. What about you? I can't just leave you here."
"You're gonna have to, Sawyer," he said. "There's a lot on the table with this. Here." He handed me his gun, a hammerless FN Model 1910 pistol. "Now move. I don't like to die in front of an audience."
I looked around for any sign of the Germans. "You're not going to die."
I grabbed him by the arm and threw him over my shoulder. He groaned pitifully as more of his blood-energy leaked out of his wound and onto my shirt.
"Don't be a fool," he groaned weakly.
"Shut up."
I moved in the general direction of the road. By the time we made it back to the meadow I needed a minute to catch my breath. I laid Wilson down only to find him limp and unresponsive. I thought cyber-beings were supposed to pixelize and vanish when they died. Apparently, the mechanics of this game didn't allow that to happen, and I felt myself get furious for no apparent reason. My father rarely spoke about his combat experience, but when he did it was like torture for him. Now I understood why, and I hated it.
I left him there in the bushes. I hated that, too, but I couldn't be caught hauling a dead body around with me. My only consolation was that the system restore would fix everything. Or would it? Welman said it wasn't a fix all. Did that mean if someone died in one of these realities, they were dead for good? Deleted files were retrieved all the time; surely that was the case here.
I followed the tree line parallel with the road until I came to a stone marker. I assumed it meant I was getting close to my destination. My answer came about fifteen minutes later when I approached the village of St. Claire. It was one of those simple places you'd find on a travel brochure, something idealistic, simple and tranquil. There must have been some kind of curfew in effect because I didn't run into another soul. The gas lamps along the streets were lit, casting flickering shadows across the buildings around me.
After wandering the town for ten minutes I found the tavern I was looking for, Den du Renard. I walked inside and got a table. A female binome greeted me.
I didn't even wait for her to speak. I blurted: "Les jeunes filles françaises sont douces en avril."
She gave me an odd look then replied, 'Mais ils sont amers en hiver.'
She turned away from me and headed back over to the bar. A sprite and a binome got up from another table and joined me at mine. One was Matrix, his enormous bulk poorly concealed within clothes that looked two sizes too small. I had never seen the binome before, but he reminded me of William Shatner for some reason.
"Name and rank, sailor," Matrix said quietly.
"It's Army. Sawyer, Kevin T. Major. OSS southwest region."
"You took your sweet time getting here, major," Matrix said.
"Couldn't be helped," I said. "I ran into a patrol on my way through the woods. They made me."
"With lousy French like yours, I'm not surprised," said Matrix. "We need to get you outta sight. Micky."
"On it...boss," said the binome.
Wow, he even talks like Shatner, I thought. The binome led me into the back of the tavern and down into a brick cellar. It was cold, and the smell of mildew and damp earth was everywhere. In the cellar we were surrounded by racks of wine bottles and crates of beer. The binome tapped on one of the shelves against the wall. It slid back almost an inch and swung open a tiny crack just big enough for us to fit through.
There was a hidden room on the other side lit by a single lightbulb; small metal beds were pushed against all four corners and two empty barrels with a piece of plywood on top made a table in the middle. There were four people in the room, three binomes and one other sprite whom I'd never seen before. I assumed he was a game sprite already emplaced within the game.
Matrix closed the secret door with a deaf thud. "Boys, this is Major Sawyer from intelligence," he said. "I'm Lieutenant Reznik, Easy company CO." He gestured to the Shatner binome: "This is Master Sergeant Kinsey."
He then pointed out the other people in the room; the game sprite was named Corporal Davis and the three binomes were privates: Farman, Shumaker, and Dolan. Private Dolan I recognized as Specky, the lab tech who was always working in the War Room.
"We've got twelve more people scattered across the village in different places," Matrix said. "The Resistance has been keeping us up ever since we air dropped in two weeks ago. They've also managed to get us guns and ammo, automatic Thompsons from the Brits and Browning Hi-Powers in .45 ACP, concussion mines and grenades from stolen German arms transports."
"Sounds like you guys are pretty armed up," I said. I reached into my pocket and opened up the packet of papers Wilson had given me. One was a large map of the local area showing troop movements of Nazi commandos.
It occurred to me that I had no idea what this meant or how to read it. Luckily, the other pages were notes handwritten by Wilson explaining the significance of the map. We spread the field map across the makeshift table and, reading the notes, I explained how the Germans were pushing their lines forward past St. Claire, which would cut off the French Resistance in the south of France from established supply lines.
"We need to cut off the fifth and sixth infantry regiments in the southwest from the ninth artillery brigade in the north," I said. "The Germans will wait for reinforcements before they try and make a final thrust past St. Claire, but in the meantime, we'll get our own reinforcements from the first Marine division. That's over two thousand troops, more than enough to push back the Nazis."
Matrix studied the map and nodded. "It looks good on paper," he said. "Unfortunately, there's been a few...complications."
"What complications?" I asked.
"The Germans are reevaluating their attack strategy," said Matrix. "Apparently, something's already got them stalled."
"Do you know what?"
Matrix nodded to Specky. "Tell him," he said.
"I've been monitoring Nazi radio traffic since we got here," Specky explained. "Ever since those earthquakes started, the Germans have been on the horn non-stop with Berlin. There's something strange going on that's got them scared. Then, just a little while ago, I intercepted a transmission between the commanders of the ninth artillery and the fifth infantry. They were being attacked by..." He stopped short, clearly hesitant.
"Attacked by what?" I prodded.
Specky huffed. "They said 'woodland savages' were attacking them."
"Woodland savages? You mean like indians?"
"That's the Kraut translation," Specky said.
"I didn't believe it either," said Matrix. "Then we all heard gunfire in the background, so it was obvious they were being attacked by something."
"Could it have been the Resistance?" I asked.
"Negative," said Sergeant Kinsey, the Shatneresque binome. "We...checked with the locals. Nobody from the Resistance has been active since we...parachuted in."
There must have been some connection between the earlier quake and what was going on behind the German lines. I had to find out what it was.
"Lt. Reznik, how do you feel about doing some recon?" I asked. "If the Germans are being attacked by a third-party, we need to know who it is and how much damage they've done."
Matrix grinned. "I've been looking for a reason to stretch my legs," he said. "Kinsey, you hold the fort here. I'll take three others along with the major. Boots and saddles in ten mike."
By the light of the moon, I could make out the shapes of my companions as we slowly made our way through the woods and into German territory. In my hands I held a Thompson sub-machine gun with a drum magazine while a leather shoulder holster hid a Browning Hi-Power inside my leather peacoat. I changed into a black turtleneck and navy combat pants before arming up.
I tried to ignore the déjà vu I felt as we crept from tree to tree, keeping to a low crouch and moving with careful precision. Unwillingly, I was taken twenty years back in time to when I was about nine or ten. It was a moonlit night just like this. Me, my brother, Kyle, and our father were on a camping trip in the Smokies. Armed with paintball guns, we three set off into the woods. We had done this countless times before that week; two of us would give the other one a five minute head start and then begin pursuit. The objective was to evade being shot for a full hour while making it back to camp unscathed. This time it was Dad's turn to be pursued by me and Kyle.
I was too young to know just what Dad was really doing. It was preparation for a life of combat and survival, a childhood full of worst-case-scenarios and backup plans. He wanted his sons to be ahead of the curve when they finally found themselves in the seat of an F-16, after blowing through the Air Force Academy like a breeze through an empty building. At that age, it seemed like the highest calling in the world to me.
"Colonel Sawyer's kids," people would say in awe, "yea they'll fly higher and faster than anybody else...They're hardcore Air Force...They don't make them like that anymore...That oldest already has a full-bird with his name on it."
As I got older I stopped seeing things in black and white, and I realized my whole life had been one big indoctrination course. It took Kyle dying over Bagdad to make things crystal clear for me. Now, as I let all that experience and training come back to me, I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed at how easily I took to it again, at how every sense seemed amplified and at how the adrenaline soaking my blood should have reduced me to a quivering, shaking mess but didn't. I was calm and ready, excited and more alive than I had felt since being a kid. I felt like I could take on anything this game grid could throw at me.
I was a soldier now, just like my father wanted. I hated that he'd finally gotten his way after all these years. I couldn't dwell on that, though. People were depending on me, people I cared for. I had to remind myself I wasn't doing this for Dad, I was doing it for Mainframe. That made it easier to cope with.
We reached the location of the fifth infantry. We approached slowly under the cover of darkness, dropping to a low crawl now. We stayed in the shadows near the bushes, lest the chalky white of the moon expose our position. Through a pair of field binoculars, Matrix surveyed the scene from our location seven hundred yards away.
"Looks quiet," whispered Matrix. "No movement. No light. The whole place is dead." He signaled for two binomes to move forward two hundred more yards for a closer inspection. "This doesn't feel right," he whispered to me. "There's supposed to be over a hundred storm troopers in that camp. Should be some activity, but there's not even a man on perimeter watch."
We waited for the two binomes to return.
"There's nothin' goin' on in there, boss," said one of them. "I mean nothin'. Not a livin' soul. It ain't natural."
Matrix seemed to consider this a moment. "Any bodies?"
"None what we could see."
"Let's move in and take accountability," he ordered. "We need to find out what happened here. If the Krauts have been flushed out we may be headed home early."
We walked the rest of the way into the German camp as if we were strolling through the park. Large field tents had been erected and vehicles were parked around the inner perimeter. Sandbags had been used to construct barriers and huts for defensive posts. The only remains of any human activity were several small smoldering campfires that had burned themselves out.
"This is weird," said one of the binomes. "How could a hundred soldiers just disappear?"
It was odd. There were no bodies, which contradicted what I already knew about the mechanics of the game; dead bodies did not disappear here. I bent down and picked up several spent shell casings.
"They were fighting something," I said, showing the brass shells to Matrix. "At least it confirms what you heard over the radio."
"Who would attack a whole unit of Nazi storm troopers and leave all the weapons and equipment behind?" asked Matrix.
"Excellent question," I said. "Let's see if we can find the radio tent."
It was obviously the one with the big antenna sticking out of it. I sat down in the chair and began manipulating the dials on the heavy metal cabinet in front of me.
"What are you doing?" asked Matrix.
"I'm trying to raise one of our listening posts," I said. "Go see if the antenna was damaged, would you? I'm just getting static."
Matrix nodded and left me alone to fiddle with the radio. I kept flipping through the frequencies, adjusting the gain and bandwidth on the shortwave, probing the ether as it were.
"Kevin, come in," I heard Welman say over the interference. "Can..ou read..? Over."
I pressed down on the "Talk" button and spoke into the microphone. "Welman, this is Kevin. Over."
There was a burst of static then: "...adjust...sixteen...egacycles." I adjusted the radio again and the transmission cleared up. "Kevin, can you hear me?"
"I read you, Welman," I said. "I'm glad I got you back."
"The feeling's mutual. Listen, we've got a serious problem."
"Great," I said, exasperated. "What now?"
Someone outside screamed: "Contact!" There were several bursts of automatic weapons fire.
"Is that gunfire?" asked Welman.
"I'm in a war zone, Welman," I said. I could hear Matrix shouting orders.
"Kevin," said Welman, "the game zones, they're expanding. They're beginning to overlap and merge in certain areas."
"What's causing it?" I asked.
More gunfire, and now people were screaming.
"The virus, he's consuming the game energy at a fantastic rate," Welman said. "It's causing the separate game realities to break down and feed on each other to compensate. We're looking at a total system crash in a matter of milliseconds."
"Major!" Matrix yelled. "We've gotta get outta here, now!"
"I need one more minute!" I said. I asked Welman: "Have you fixed the teleporter?"
"We've almost got it working," he said. "Mouse is going to retrieve Dot and bring her here to The Citadel. I'll try and get communication back on the earpiece."
Something crashed into the tent and destroyed the antenna. I cursed under my breath and grabbed my Thompson. Rushing outside, I tried to find Matrix. He was behind a fifty-caliber machine gun on top of one of the German trucks. He was firing full blast at a large, four-legged creature that looked like a giant bear, but instead of fur it had glistening skin like a salamander that was glowing amber red.
A similar beast reared up behind me from the ruined remains of the radio tent. I stepped back and raised my gun, holding the trigger down and letting loose a hot copper spray of bullets. I wasn't doing anything; the creature was taking the shots like they were rubber pellets.
I turned to run, but before I could even spin around I felt one of its large paws clip my legs. It felt like having the rug pulled out from under me. Before it could crush me with its front feet, I rolled away and tried throwing a grenade while it chased me. The explosion knocked it off its feet, but it barely slowed it down; it got right back up, shook it off and resumed its pursuit.
What happened next is kind of a blur. I remember being whacked in the head with a wooden staff while I was running. Then the world exploded in a barrage of colors, and I lost consciousness again. I could only hope this wasn't becoming a habit.
