Battlecraft VR

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One. It’s Theirs To Lose

  Chapter Two. Going, Going, Gone

  Chapter Three. In the Hunt

  Chapter Four. They Have To Stay Focused

  Chapter Five. You Can Feel This One Slipping Away

  Chapter Six. Throwing Up Bricks

  Chapter Seven. You’ve Got To Hand It To Them

  Chapter Eight. They’re on a Mission

  Chapter Nine. They’re Still Missing a Few Pieces to the Puzzle

  Chapter Ten. They’re Going to Have to Make Some Adjustments

  Chapter Eleven. He’s Past His Prime

  Chapter Twelve. They’ve Answered the Call

  Chapter Thirteen. She’s Taking One for the Team

  Chapter Fourteen. It’s Do or Die Right Here

  Chapter Fifteen. They Always Give 110 Percent

  Chapter Sixteen. It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This

  Chapter Seventeen. They Played Their Hearts Out

  Epilogue

  BATTLECRAFT VR

  A Battle Royale Adventure

  by Linden Storm

  ISBN (eBook): 978-0-578-44904-3

  Battlecraft VR, A Battle Royale Adventure copyright © 2019

  by Linden Storm

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.

  For Chris and Lisa

  who taught me everything

  about games, art, love, and life.

  Chapter One

  It’s Theirs To Lose

  Marina Karimova hides behind a giant sequoia in Arcania’s eastern woods and sights down her crossbow.

  She needs to move closer to her teammates, but first she needs to kill a few enemies.

  Maybe more than a few.

  Checking her inventory and her position on the game map, she grins.

  Truthfully, if she could, she’d instantly massacre all five of the arrogant jackasses who are hunting her. She’d drop a boulder on their heads. She’d strike them with lightning bolts. She’d grind them into tiny, glistening chunks.

  She can see distant movement as the Deep Secrets players deploy up the rocky hillside, headed for the high ground, sprinting between covering boulders.

  She equips her best crossbow and hits one of them in the shoulder, spinning him around, but he falls in tall grass and heals himself.

  That’s all right, Marina thinks. The shots were mostly an intimidation tactic anyway. She wants those donkey-boys to know she is coming for them.

  Marina leaves the sequoia, bends double, and catches up to Belle. Both of them lay down covering fire—energy balls and explosive alchemy—in the breach. They always play flex, moving among sharpshooter, stealth, and healing roles.

  While Marina is the best player on the team, Belle is almost as good, and the rest of the team is pretty good too. Nick Mathis plays healer but is not above attacking enemies when he has time and can muster the nerve. William James is an excellent sharpshooter, reliably focusing on explosives, mid-range fire, and coordination. He’s effective as long as he isn’t required to sustain long bursts of aggression. And Paul Boone plays sniper, a role he knows to the core—maybe too well. His weakness is that he's reckless when he loses control, and he’s been known to briefly mistake the game for reality.

  Marina shakes off her worries and focuses. She is constantly scanning and evaluating her opponents and teammates—their abilities, supplies, equipment, and cool-downs—and cataloging the terrain—the mountains, valleys, rivers, and woods, as well as the buildings and ruins with their valuable caches. Because she has an extraordinary memory, she recalls every variable that might reasonably affect the outcome.

  She’s dimly aware of the enormous cheering crowd, as well as the decisive physical movements of her four teammates, positioned in their rigs in a semicircle to her left, ten feet apart, and their giant holographic avatars, moving in synch with them thirty feet overhead. The stage rigs are state-of-the-art exoskeletons that allow complete freedom of movement in any direction. Because they’re wearing sensitive haptic suits that convey variable pressure to the body in real time, the players feel everything in the gameworld—the ground they’re running on, whatever they pick up, and whatever hits them. Their helmets are state-of-the-art as well. Players see and hear audio inputs from the game; there’s little noise leakage from the real world.

  Marina can’t see the opposing team, Deep Secrets, but she knows its players are situated in their own rigs across the stage, their character holograms dancing above them.

  She remembers how they’d looked strutting in, wearing their black haptic suits with yellow accents and sponsor patches, black opaque headgear covering their eyes and ears. Even with most of their bodies covered, they’re of a type.

  They’re all young men, confident and fluid, almost blasé. Most of the fans think they have every right to be relaxed. Deep Secrets is, after all, a great Battlecraft team.

  Unlike the Untouchables, Deep Secrets has played in dozens of semifinal matches.

  No one believes the ragtag Untouchables have a chance.

  No one but me, Marina thinks. Not even Belle, who owes me trust and support, if anyone does.

  Marina, who rarely allows herself a moment’s doubt, feels sweat trickle down her back. As competent as we are, she thinks, how can we win? How can we unite when my co-captain won’t acknowledge the most important thing I will ever tell her—that we have the same father?

  Belle is the most aggressive, stubborn, angry person Marina has ever encountered.

  If Belle doesn’t cooperate, if the team doesn’t win today and keep winning, Marina will likely be deported. And if Marina gets deported, she won’t survive a week.

  ∆∆∆

  Belle Morris is exasperated with Marina’s sister-obsession. Belle has never known who her father was, but she can’t help being skeptical that a prominent Uzbek scientist had traveled halfway around the world twenty-five years ago and impregnated her homeless, drug-addled mother.

  Still, why would Marina claim such a thing when one DNA test would tell the tale?

  Considering how much we look alike, she probably is my sister, Belle thinks, admitting the truth to herself—but only to herself, for now.

  At least Marina can play Battlecraft. God, can she ever. Belle has never encountered a better player, not in her tens of thousands of hours of play. For that reason and that reason alone, Belle is glad Marina clawed her way out of Tashkent to form the team. Even if she did have to marry a crusty American hillbilly to make it happen. Embarrassing, but Belle has seen worse life choices.

  Anyway, the proof and the justification of Marina’s presence is right here. Twenty thousand rabid fans in Seattle’s Key Arena, millions viewing the match on their streams.

  For once, Belle stands smack at the nexus of a cultural phenomenon, and she possesses exactly the skills and connections to take advantage of her position. Battlecraft has been her game of choice since its kludgy beginnings, its alpha release. Now she’s poised to pounce on the opportunity the sport offers exceptional players.

  For once in her life, the murky currents that drive fate are carrying her along.

  Reasons for Battlecraft’s upsurge are murky and complex, but nobody’s seen anything like it since Fortnite back in 2018 or Code of Justice in the late twenties.

  Like those games, Battlecraft is a Hunger Games-type survival battleground, a battle royale. Unlike those games, it’s wrapped in a
beautiful fantasy setting and fully optimized for modern state-of-the-art VR equipment. Players are fully immersed. Spectators can see the action from any player’s point of view or get a view of the whole battleground.

  It’s incredibly fun for players, and millions of people play at some level.

  Plus, now that the streaming producers have finally figured out how to broadcast live matches, focusing on the action and switching point of view rapidly from player to player, spectators are going wild for it.

  It also helps that, while it’s easy and fun for beginning players to try, it’s devilishly complex and difficult for advanced players. Beginners can have fun with basic characters, skirmishing against others with similar capabilities. But experts have earned access to hundreds of abilities, spells, skills, aromor sets, and weapons. Because every feature in the game can combine with or influence scores of other features, players who study and practice can exploit hundreds of ways to do damage or avoid it.

  The equipment drops, maps, and objectives change with every match. Pro players need prodigious memories, fast reflexes, excellent plans and strategies, and long hours of preparation.

  Belle reflects on all this with satisfaction and determination. Satisfaction, because she knows the game inside and out—what changes, what stays the same, what’s possible, what’s not. Determination, because she knows what the fans and commentators are thinking. That her dubious collection of players shouldn’t be here, in part because it’s led by two females, and female players are still rare in any VR sport, much less any playoffs, and in part because their billionaire sponsor, Rupert Jones Jr., doesn’t do right by them. They don’t have top-quality haptic suits and peripherals to practice with. They certainly don’t have a team house to live and practice in. Most of them survive on day jobs because their terrible contract with Rupert lets him suck up nearly all the winnings.

  Rupert Jones Jr. may be a tech genius and a rabid Battlecraft fan, but he should win a prize for being the stubbornest, stingiest billionaire in the world.

  Yet, as smoke billows from vents on the stage, as the game’s explosions blend with the crowd’s surging clamor, the Untouchables are still very much in the game.

  Above the din, the derisive boom of the announcers' commentary leaks into Belle's headset.

  Belle is glad she can’t quite tell what they're saying. Her rage, which had helped her survive her difficult childhood as a foster kid, is not helpful here. She’d love to throttle Lane and J.T. into silence. They are, after all, a couple of the most obnoxious bros out there. But that would only get her disqualified or arrested, and one thing she’s sure of is that she’ll never end up in jail again.

  She smirks as she thinks of Nick’s Grandpa Harold's reaction to all this. No doubt he's busy on the feed, flinging insults at Lane and J.T. He’s incredibly annoying—an old coot with a Santa beard and body to match—but he’s the Untouchables’ biggest fan, outshining even Rupert in that department. It’s possible that his focus on the team is motivated by the fact that he doesn’t have much else going on in his life, but she doesn’t think that’s the main driver. She suspects that his love for his grandson Nick is really what’s behind his love for the team. She guesses it’s sweet, but she doesn’t understand it. There’s never been a man in her life who offered her that kind of love and support.

  ∆∆∆

  Harold Mathis watches the match from the front row of the arena. He's wearing rented smartglasses so he can watch while contributing commentary to the fan club's stream. As he speaks, his comments insert text into the stream: Get a bigger shirt, J.T. Yours is cutting off circulation to your pea brain.

  As if on cue, J.T. adjusts his collar around his bulging neck. Harold injects a stream of laughter into the mix, repeatedly punching the LOL button that floats in the air in front of him.

  “And Doggy is sneaking up on Marina! You rarely see a player so far from her support, even a well-armored one,” J.T. says.

  “For good reason, too, J.T.,” Lane says.

  Harold comments: Lane looks like one of those hairless cats whose mommy makes him wear a sweater. He’s thrilled to see members of the fan club show their approval of his comment with lightning-fast postings of hairless-cat memes. Too bad Lane and J.T. are too busy to see how cleverly they're being humiliated.

  Harold gets a huge kick out of his grandson’s newfound fame and his own role as uber fan. Becoming a widower had leveled him, and Nick had turned out to be the most supportive member of his family. Nick had taught him to play the game and appreciate it, and as Nick’s team had risen in the ranks, Harold’s pride and excitement had blossomed. The game and its fans had offered him new life and new energy in his seventies.

  Not that he’s taking the whole thing too seriously. He’s lived long enough to believe you’ve got to laugh, no matter how things are going for you. And laughing at jackasses like Lane and J.T. is some of the best fun he’s had in a while.

  “Because when you’re as important to this team as this girl is, getting too far from your protection is stupid, Lane,” J.T. says, waggling his unruly eyebrows and bugging his eyes out at the camera.

  “It’s stupid all right, J.T.,” says Lane, nodding his small, bald head and patting the gold crest on his purple sweater.

  You’re stupid. Harold is running out of quips, but he feels he has to say something.

  Several cameras are trained on J.T. and Lane. Their images appear in a window on the upper-right corners of the Jumbotrons.

  “But are we going to be proved wrong, J.T.?” Lane says, shifting his attention to the gameplay. “There goes Marina, escaping to the west, heh heh…just like she escaped Tashkent earlier this year.”

  Oh, that's just low. Harold adds his booming baritone to a loud chorus of boos.

  J.T. guffaws loudly. “She may be a mail-order bride, Lane, but you’ve got to admit, she’s pretty good for a girl.”

  “Yet she’s almost dead right now,” Lane says smugly.

  “Right, Lane. Unless her healer—that’s Nick Mathis—catches her soon, she’s out for sure,” says J.T. “And he’s looking a little sluggish. Soon, very soon, I predict, it’ll be over for the come-from-nowhere, upstart Untouchables.”

  ∆∆∆

  Nick watches as Marina uses her long-range bow to repeatedly attack the enemy’s breach sharpshooter. She flees, leaving behind a volley of fire arrows. He registers a muted chorus of boos from the crowd, but he doesn’t know why they’re booing. Best to ignore it, he tells himself. Be calm.

  Nick is always telling himself to be calm.

  “Wait for me,” Nick says. “I’m coming.” He’s already out of breath, his rig is chafing his ankles and wrists, and the last thing he wants to do is run through the clearing, exposing himself to sniper shots, but he pumps his arms and legs faster, running to get within range to heal Marina.

  Before the Deep Secrets sharpshooter expires, he gets off an impressively strong, vertical javelin throw that wounds Marina. She lands heavily in tall brush. Nick crawls up and administers a healing potion.

  While her health had dropped quickly, she hadn’t been in much danger of dying.

  In retrospect, Nick thinks, her move had been a good risk to take. He wasn’t sure he’d have done it in her place, but she is fearless. Sometimes too fearless. And she moves so fast. She’s hard to keep up with.

  “That was a great play, Marina,” Paul says.

  “I don’t like to see anyone dip below half health,” Nick says, breathing hard.

  “She was barely below,” Belle says.

  “Thirty-nine percent,” Nick mumbles.

  “I’m fine, but stay alert,” Marina says. “With one player out, they’re weaker, but they will not relax.”

  Nick spots two Deep Secrets players in the distance, closing in on the fortress.

  “They’re beating us! It’s just like before...” Nick says, instantly regretting his words.

  “Remain calm, Nick,” Marina says. “We practiced this scen
ario, and we are on plan.”

  “I know the plan, but it makes me nervous to bunch up. No one bunches up on purpose,” Nick says. He hates being a naysayer, but in the heat of the battle, their strategy feels crazy. Deep Secrets’ sniper is somewhere barely within range—in a tree in the forest to the northeast?—and he’s getting potshots off and scoring nonlethal hits in spite of their evasive maneuvers.

  So far, Nick’s healing is keeping up, but that could change with one good headshot.

  Focus, he says to himself, as he runs within range of his slightly wounded teammates, frantically directing healing rays and shield bubbles at them.

  Focus. Focus. The map is going to shrink again, and he can’t get caught outside the contracting walls or break cover and get killed.

  He remembers his audition for the team, meeting everyone for the first time. They were each playing remotely from their homes. He’d stood sweating in his sad collection of second-hand gear in his tiny room. He’d had to move his tattered office chair into the hallway to make enough room for his rickety old rig—a broken thing he’d repaired himself—just a stand, a suspension arm, and a frame barely sturdy enough to support his weight. He remembers the pizza boxes piled on the floor and on the unmade, narrow bed.

  How had he, a chubby, shy, nascent social scientist, made it onto a championship Battlecraft team? How had he stayed on it? His disposition, temperament, and physical condition had not predicted this success.

  And, despite his accomplishments and the team’s win-loss record, his parents disapprove and don’t hesitate to tell him so. Constantly.

  At least Grandpa Harold is on his side.

  Man, does Grandpa Harold love the Untouchables. He loves the team so much, he makes Nick anxious. But then Grandpa Harold is such an all-in personality, he can’t help but show his enthusiasm at every opportunity. Nick grins inside his helmet. He’d brought all this on himself. He’d created the Grandpa Harold fan-monster by introducing him to the game and playing it with him during the long, lonely nights after his grandmother had died. They’d become closer than they’d ever been, and now Grandpa Harold wouldn’t think of missing a day without talking to Nick—whether Nick has time or not. Yet, despite the discomfort Grandpa Harold often inflicts on Nick, he’s grateful for their closeness. Grandpa Harold is one fierce ally.