“It’s time. Mr. Tanner, fill them in, please.”
Jase clears his throat.
“Well, uh, we backtraced the, uh, shipping manifest you guys pulled out of Industan, and, uh, after cracking through some shell corps, we found the parent corp. That’s, uh, that’s the good news.”
I blow a tuft of blue hair out of my eyes. Need to trim my bangs soon.
“Good news means there’s also bad news. Let’s have it.”
Jase replaces Sawyer’s face with a massive schematic, wireframe lines crossing like a bowl of Johnny’s tastiest.
“Bad news is, uh, the parent corp trail dead-ends in this arcology. Neo Frisco.”
I suck on my lower lip. Neo Frisco isn’t one of the biggest arcos in silkie territory, but it’s not some small corp park either, and, more importantly, it’s one of the oldest, built around the still-glowing craters of the former silkie holy ground, Norcal Bay, which means it’s going to be heavily defended. Scouts aren’t going to stand a chance. This can’t be what has Jase so worked up.
“Specfuckingtacular. Probably an entire battalion of corp private security guarding that arco. Guess we’re done here.” I stand up. “Have fun starting a war, Sawyer, because it’s going to take a battlegroup to break into that.”
“Not so fast, Ashley.”
Sawyer doesn’t sound amused.
“We, and by that I mean I, need to know if the trail ends here, or if it extends all the way to one of the Big Three, and if so, how deep. You and your team, whether you realize it or not, have been training for this your entire lives. There is a reason we allow Ditchtown its autonomy. I am calling in the marker. This mission cannot fail. To that end, the Theocrophant has approved the use of additional materiel.”
The spaghetti tangle schematic disappears, replaced by a rapidly expanding list of drones, blue outlines surrounding them. The last two glow red. Slend’s low whistle is the only sound in the silence. What feels like an hour later, I pick my jaw up off the floor and sink back into the sofa, trying to process.
“What the shit, Sawyer. This isn’t ‘additional materiel,’ this is a fucking ’pocalypse.”
Wind’s voice is low, awestruck as she reads down the list.
“That’s two full companies of Hercs, a squadron of Ravens, an entire complement of Shredders, three EM platforms, an offshore railgun cruiser with assorted screens, and, and, and…”
She trails off, coming to the last item in the list. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, low, steady, and I have to moisten my suddenly dry lips.
“That’s… that’s an orbital, Sawyer. Those are kinetics.”
“Correct.” His voice is dry, inflectionless.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Mr. Tanner, please explain to the team why such resources have been made available.”
Jase swallows, his throat bobbing, sweat now visible on his forehead. Suddenly, he looks his age, and I remember just how young he is. How young we all are.
“Last night, a team of eight Gamers in the new haphoods assaulted the, uh, Theocrophant’s residence. The Gamers started unarmed. The, uh, the Theocrophant and, uh, the, uh, the—”
Sawyer cuts in.
“The Theocrophant and two guards made it out, all heavily wounded. The detail for his residence was over a hundred of our best security personnel, along with local swift-reaction drone forces.”
A brief clip of shadowy violence unfolds, uniformed figures threshed before reapers, suddenly materializing blood a constant motif. Sawyer continues.
“We were utterly outclassed, and only the last-ditch sacrifice of the guard leader, a Captain Banks, thwarted the final attacker, allowing the Theocrophant to escape. Preliminary autopsy analysis puts all eight assailants as members of the Game guild IonSeal. None seemed aware that they were fighting in the real at any point in time. Their losses were total, but not before inflicting more than thirteen times their number of fatalities against the finest soldiers we have to offer.”
I clench my fist.
“And why isn’t this all over the socials?”
“Don’t be naive, Ashley. You think we would let something like an almost successful assassination on the Theocrophant get out?”
“Goddammit, Sawyer! You’re talking about warshit! We didn’t sign up for this!”
“And yet here you are.” Cold, so cold, that voice. “My responsibility is to protect the Church of Christ Ascendant, the ‘gummies’ as you so brashly call them, from all foreign threats, and I will do anything to meet that goal, because if I don’t, then we will die.” A brief silence. “Yes, Ashley Akachi, this is war, but right now, it is still a small war, it is still a conventional war, and it is our job to ensure it stays that way.”
“With kinetics?” Wind squawks.
“Correct, Fatima bint al-Hajj. Preferably with conventional drone forces disguised as a rival corp we can plausibly deny. If necessary, with a railgun and orbital kinetics that will likely cost me my position. Ultimately, without atomics.”
The room falls still, all of us remembering the lessons from school, the news reports, those terrible pinpricks of starlight broadcast across a burning planet. The Green Mountains, the Bowl of Ash, the Pits; Dead Zones littering the length and breadth of the continent. The burnt black shadows engraved across concrete walls; the hairless withered dead, curled in on themselves like spiders, silkie and gummie alike; red skies beneath dirty brown clouds. A moment when it seemed everything must fall apart, everyone breathlessly waiting to see if other countries would follow our lead and end it all.
Unbidden, my mind drifts to a wooden box filled with medals, tortured sobs from a broken woman, a grimy three-by-five covered in filth.
A hushed voice breaks the silence. I realize it’s mine.
“But won’t the silkies escalate even further? If we hit an arco? With kinetics?”
“There is a significant chance, yes, but it’s one we’re now forced to take. We can negotiate if it turns out this was a rogue effort from beneath C-Level in the Big Three, some overeager executive making a power grab, but we must bring a stop to these haphoods before this turns into something unstoppable. As it is, it took a considerable effort to talk the Theocrophant down from the nuclear option. He was fairly hysterical.”
I catch something in Sawyer’s voice in that last sentence, a hitch on the faintest edges of hearing.
Is he… afraid? Is it just as hard for him to confront this as it is for us? With everything he’s done, that he made Mom do?
“Therefore, Ashley, Fatima, Brynn, Jason, it falls on you to bring me back my answers. You will have the support of an entire battlegroup, all tasked with ensuring you achieve your goal. Command them as you see fit.”
“Why us?” I whisper.
“Why you? Why you?”
Sawyer’s laugh coughs out like a death rattle.
“I have no drone pilots better, no scientists smarter, no one I can turn to in this terrible hour more useful than you; you children who’ve gloried in strife for over ten years and proven yourselves the greatest warriors on the planet. You think we don’t force our people to play the Game, and other countries the same? You think it’s a coincidence that Game assets are functionally identical to the most widely used military equipment across the world? The Game is what we use to train our elites, it’s what everyone uses to train their elites, and none of them ever make it to the endgame ladder because they aren’t obsessed.