Now there were four of them up top, two on each side of the pipe, and the entire tunnel was a sword-swinging, gun-blasting, Selenite-spider-splashing cacophony.
By the time Mickey and Maud made it up top, the battle was almost won. Below them in the pipe, curls of stinking blue smoke suggested that there was little left alive to hound them.
When the last Selenite fell, Angelique was horrified to see Sharmela leaning back against the wall, her hands clutched to a gaping wound in her midsection.
“Maud!” Angelique called. Maud was a primary psychic, with secondary healing powers.
Maud knelt by the wounded girl and ran her hands over the gash. “I don’t know, I truly fear, that Sharmela’s damage is severe.”
“There are healing forces here,” Sharmela gasped. “My powers tell me that”-she paused, probably listening to prompts in her earpiece-“a glowing fungus in the next airwell might… might help.”
She reached out with a bloody hand and gripped Angelique’s arm. “Please, don’t. I think it’s a trap.”
“I-”
And then the lights went out. The glowing fungus in the tunnel just died. The darkness that had been a mere inconvenience was now deep enough to swallow them. This wasn’t the game, it was a major power failure of some kind.
“I’ll be damned,” Angelique laughed. “Never seen this happen to Xavier before. He must be hopping.”
Their laughter had an odd, nervous edge. This was an occasion for genuine amusement. In a few minutes the backups would probably kick in, and then “Angelique,” Wayne said. “Someone’s coming.”
She stood and looked down the tunnel to her left. The darkness was parting now, and three… four flashlight-sized lamps were bobbling as the newcomers approached. What in the world was this? God, sounded like a major breakdown if they were inserting repairmen into the game.
“What a bleedin’ botch,” Mickey said under his breath. “Seen nothing like this since Bizarro World back in ’sixty-eight.”
“Well,” Maud said. “Considering the venue, I suppose you have to make allowances.”
“Stay where you are,” a male voice said. “And listen closely to what we say. If you follow our orders to the letter, no one will be hurt.”
She couldn’t quite place the accent, but understood the message instantly. “What’s wrong? Is there a breach?”
“You might say that,” the man said, and now, finally, she could see him. A huge man with flowing blond hair and a flat hard face. A fan of scars creased the left side of his throat. “All you need to know”-he said. His voice was pure gravel-“Is that your little game is over, and a new one has begun. The stakes are quite a bit higher.” He smiled, and by some unfathomable transformation became handsome. Dashing. The sudden change was quite disturbing. “In this game you win by not dying.”
23
1125 hours
“What is this?” Ali asked. “Are you…” He searched for words. In the intense, bleaching light he looked young and lost. “Did Professor Cavor…” He was trying to work it out, make sense of it all in the framework of the game. “Who are you?”
Scotty Griffin’s nerves were burning. He put a hand on Ali’s shoulder and pulled him back, warned him to silence with a shake of his head.
“Very good,” the leader said. “I don’t mind you knowing my name. Before this is all over, everyone on Earth will, and I’ll never be able to use it again anyway. I am Shotz.”
Confusion, not panic, was Scotty’s dominant emotion as their attackers herded the gamers into a room perhaps twenty meters across. This bubble had no Wellsian motif, just a domed space littered with boxes, equipment and costumes.
Prince Ali tensed as the intruders ordered them about, seemed about to swell up like a frog. The wrong damned time to be imperious. Scotty gripped his arm until Ali winced, gave him a quick, warning shake. Not now.
“Move! Move!” The blond woman who looked like a biker angel said the words calmly, but there was a kind of frenzy under the surface, well-leashed. For now. She held some kind of jerry-rigged air gun, and Scotty didn’t want to test her speed or accuracy.
He thought he heard this “Shotz” character call her Celeste.
Even though the gamers, NPCs and techs were herded efficiently, their captors missed one. Just one.
Darla Kowsnofski, killed out right on schedule, had been creeping through back passages, avoiding gamers on her way to an NPC holding area, when the intruders showed up. Now she crouched in a shadow, prying at the edge of a hidden hatch. Muttering a prayer.
Darla cursed herself for a coward. Should she try to help someone else escape? Or just take care of herself, and consider that victory enough? Even as an awkward honor student at Oklahoma State, Darla had always thought of herself as a good person. She had always had more confidence in her mind than in her generous, well-cushioned body… and that mind had taken her all the way to Heinlein. But at this moment all she wanted was to be somewhere dark, and alone, and away from the people with guns. And God help her, there was no part of her that felt guilty about it.
“Please, please, please,” she whispered, prying at the panel. Just before she gave up hope it slid open an inch. She got her finger under it, levered it up, slipped in and was gone.
In Heinlein base’s nerve center, Kendra found herself juggling a dozen conversations with two dozen different people. Her assistant buzzed her. “Ms. Griffin? We have a call on two-nine-nine.” A pause. “It’s from inside the dome.”
For a moment Kendra was taken aback, but then she jumped on the communication. “Hello?”
She was looking at a mask: not a game mask, a diver’s mask. The voice on the other side was gravelly, almost as if it had emerged from a machine, or a damaged voice box. “Ms. Griffin?”
“Yes. Who is this?’
“Call us Neutral Moresnot.”
She blinked. “I can’t pronounce that without being rude. Who are you?”
“We are the very serious people who control this dome, and every human being within it.”
That she accepted without another thought. “What do you want?”
“At the moment, what I want is to put your mind at ease. I have no wish to kill our hostages. In fact, if my demands are met, they will all be released unharmed.”
“Does that include Chris Foxworthy, my assistant?”
“I trust so. I seem to have lost contact with my man. Would he be in custody at this time?”
“No. There was an accident. Your man is dead.”
“Dead?” She couldn’t read that damaged voice, but her best guess was that his response was one of surprise. And not mild surprise, either. Anger?
“Oh, my,” he said. The mild words and flat vocal quality concealed hidden emotional currents. “I wasn’t aware of that. Well, that is regrettable, and unexpected. But he can be the last, if you follow my directions.”
“And what directions are those?”
“You will send over a Scorpion transport vehicle. Twenty-eight seats, if it matches spec. There will be no weapons on board, and no one in the transport. We will be scanning.”
But of course he would. By this time, the intruders were probably tied into every communication line they had. “And you are using this transport to…?”
“Evacuate twenty members of the gaming staff, professional and volunteer.”
“From the kindness of your heart?”
“Madam, under the current conditions, do you truly consider antagonism the wisest course? Until you can demonstrate such restraint, I suggest you listen more than you speak. And please have the Scorpion here in ten minutes.”
“If I don’t?”
“We’ll send them out walking… without suits.”
And with that, the visual field dissolved.
Foxworthy drummed his fingers against the console. “What do you think?”