Battlecraft VR Read online

  “Oh, dear,” Gemma says. “Are you all right, dear? What happened to your head?”

  Paul squints. “Central Asia happened to my head, ma’am.”

  “I see,” Gemma says. “That was a bad war, wasn’t it?”

  “They’re all bad, ma’am,” Paul says.

  “That’s for sure,” Harold says. “Thank you for your service. And you’re one heck of a Battlecraft sniper, by the way.”

  Paul nods. “Thank you, sir.”

  Harold salutes the screen.

  “This meeting was supposed to start half an hour ago,” Belle says. “Where is Rupert?”

  Suddenly Rupert rushes into the reception area through a hidden door, vaults the counter, and sticks the landing in front of the glass conference room doors. The employees whirl around and begin peppering him with questions—“a moment,” “it’ll just take a second.” Rupert ignores his employees and slips in the door, shouting at his employees to go away.

  Rupert is a thin, dark man in his early thirties. Everything about him is sharp, from his eyebrows to his gray eyes to his elbows to the tips of his shiny shoes. He’s wearing rimless, nearly invisible smartglasses, a black smart-shirt, and black form-fitting pants.

  Behold Rupert the Magnificent, Belle thinks, a man comfortable in the knowledge that he’s once again the smartest person in the room.

  She smiles, thinking about how he’d feel if he knew she was the smartest person in the room.

  Everyone sits down around the conference table. Rupert snags a disgusting-looking mustard-yellow energy bar from the tray and goes to the end of the table opposite Belle. He sits, pops the bar into his mouth whole, and chews for several seconds.

  Finally, he slaps the table with both hands, swallows, and opens his mouth to speak.

  “It’s my team!” Rupert says. “My team in real life. My amazing come-from-nowhere Battlecraft team—or most of it.” He sighs and smiles and looks around the table. William beams. Harold nods enthusiastically. Nick grins maniacally. Belle frowns. On the screen, Paul rubs his forehead.

  “Captain Belle, I thought you didn’t like meeting in person?” Rupert says.

  “I don’t. I hate it. But this is an emergency,” she says.

  “Marina has still not checked in,” William says. “It’s been a week.”

  “What? What about practice? Aren’t you practicing for the finals?” Rupert says. His mouth falls open and his sharp eyebrows dart up.

  “We can’t practice effectively without Marina,” Belle says. “If I could afford to, I’d kick her for this.”

  “Now wait a minute, Missy! You’re making it sound like it’s her fault. We need to figure out what happened to Marina,” Harold says.

  Belle takes a breath, readying herself to blast Harold and demand his immediate retreat. Before she can speak, though, he continues.

  “She wouldn’t just leave like that. And it’d be unwise to kick her out. She’s the heart of the team,” Harold says.

  “And you are?” Rupert says.

  Nick rubs his temples. “He’s my grandfather,” he says quietly, “and the president of our fan club. Our official liaison with the fans.”

  “Official. I see. And he’s your what? Your grandfather?” Rupert says.

  “Harold Mathis. Officially pleased to meet you,” Harold says, grinning. He stands and reaches down the table, across Nick’s line of sight, and grabs Rupert’s hand, shaking it vigorously.

  “Uh, yeah, likewise,” Rupert says, pulling his hand away a touch early. “Once again, though, why are you here?”

  “I never wanted a fan club,” Belle says.

  “Fan clubs are basically mandatory these days, though,” William says eagerly. “The fans promote our brand—”

  “—I sell Untouchables t-shirts at the Walla Walla Farmer’s Market every Friday evening,” Harold says proudly. “Right next to my lamb chops and free-range eggs.”

  “I’ll bet you get lots of takers, too,” Belle says, rolling her eyes.

  “Some folks in the Palouse have still have not heard of Battlecraft, but I’m working on that,” Harold says, nodding and grinning.

  “See, I taught Grandpa to play a couple of years ago when Grandma died,” Nick says. “That’s why he’s such an enthusiastic fan. We used to use the game for hanging out…We played hundreds of casual matches…not the VR version, of course, but the vanilla version. See, he lives near Walla Walla, and that is 272 miles from here…flying’s expensive…sometimes the pass is icy...and he…he’s got this old Chevy truck that he insists on driving himself. No self-driving vehicles for him…” Nick finally seems to notice everyone is waiting for him to stop talking. He trails off.

  Rupert taps his fingers on the table and then he claps several times. “Indeed! Well!” he says.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Paul says from the screen. “Can I say something? Maybe there is a good reason for Marina going AWOL.”

  “What do you mean by that? You’re not talking about the bro gangs too, are you?” Belle says. She knows Paul was recruited by Marina and has known her longer than anyone else on the team.

  Paul’s haunted eyes blink out at them from the big screen. “Not the bro gangs,” he says. “They’re a bunch of cowards who rarely show up in person. I’m talking about her spouse—a guy named Jimmy Wishkowski. We met up, Marina and me, in Phoenix—when I was being treated at Luke Air Force Base after I got back—and she recruited me for the team. She was in the U.S. on a fiancée’s visa, and she seemed nervous when she talked about marrying Wishkowski.”

  Belle grabs two hanks of her own hair and pulls hard. The pain helps her control her impulse to scream. It would be inappropriate, wouldn’t it, to scream insults at the well-meaning war veteran who happens to be the best sniper she’s ever played with? She makes herself take a couple of breaths.

  I must be calm and speak quietly, she says to herself. “I too would dread marrying some old redneck I hardly knew. But I wouldn’t travel halfway around the world to become some old redneck’s mail-order bride, either. Anyway, why is this the first we’ve heard this? Marina never complained.”

  Paul sits up straighter and says pointedly, “I would not want to disrespect Marina’s spouse.”

  Paul's tone makes Belle suspect that Paul likes Marina a little too much—maybe there’s more to that story. The only thing that matters now, however, is Marina’s Battlecraft acumen, and that is not to be underestimated or undervalued. Belle knows as well as anyone that her team would not be where it was if Marina hadn’t organized it—and recruited Paul Boone, who is a first-class player, even if he is slightly unhinged.

  “Look. She’s fine,” Belle says, thinking about their last interaction. Maybe she’d driven Marina off? But no, if there's one thing she knows about Marina, it's that she wants to play the game. “I think she’s just taking a break.”

  Harold shakes his head vigorously.

  “Marina wouldn’t do that,” Harold says.

  “Did I ask you?” Belle says. Harold is getting on her nerves with his hyper-sincere, overprotective, paternalistic, know-it-all attitude.

  Harold leans forward, his hands clutching the edge of the table. He blushes, and his face turns from pink to magenta.

  “You didn’t ask me,” Harold says, finally, nodding. “But you’d do well to listen.”

  Belle wants to push Harold out, to get him away from her and her team forever. But he is leaning forward in his chair, red-faced, showing no signs of backing down.

  Rupert fidgets as a couple of overly made-up sex-bot lookalikes gesticulate at him from outside the glass room.

  “So, what is the upshot, people? Are we concerned about our star player’s safety? Could these bro gangs or her nasty husband have hurt her or spirited her off?” Rupert says.

  “We just don’t know,” Belle says. “But we do need her if we are going to play. If we don’t have her, we can’t win. We can’t even make a respectable showing.”

  Harold points at Belle.
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  She hates to be pointed at.

  “You’re her sister,” he says. “Why aren’t you more worried about her?”

  “Half-sister.”

  “You’re admitting it now?” William says quietly.

  Harold thumps the table. “It’s about time. I got them mixed up for the longest time.” He counts off their similarities on his thick, wrinkled fingers. “Smart, first of all. Both of them are brilliant. Almond-shaped eyes, full lips…”

  Belle wonders if she can get away with punching the old guy in the face. No. But maybe she can get him thrown out of the meeting. “Will you go away now?” she says to Harold.

  “No,” Harold says.

  Nick groans.

  Paul interrupts. “Look. No one has been able to reach Marina. Maybe her husband destroyed her devices or jammed them. They do that.”

  “Those types do exist, Belle,” Paul says.

  “What types?” Belle says, rolling her eyes.

  Gemma raises her pointy blue manicure. “He’s right, dear,” she says. “Sudden changes in communication patterns are not a positive sign. Once a director I was seeing—well, he forbade me from speaking with the leading man unless he was listening in. Can you imagine? Of course, I was having a hot affair with my leading man at the time, but who wouldn’t have an affair with Peter Bay in his prime? Now it’s a different story, of course—he looks like a giant purple toad.” She laughs. Her laugh is deafening and sounds like the call of an exotic bird.

  “Does anyone know where Marina lives?” William says.

  “I know the building. It’s in an old apartment complex out near Glendale. But I don’t live in Phoenix anymore. I’m stuck in Oakland unless I get a pass to go elsewhere. As you know,” Paul says.

  Rupert stands up. “Okay. This is what we will do. We will wait one day. If she is not back by then, we get a sub.”

  “Hello?” Belle says. “Am I speaking into a void? Didn’t I say we need her? If we can’t find her, we cannot and we will not play. There is absolutely no chance anyone can fill in for her.”

  “Twenty-four hours. That seems reasonable,” Nick says.

  Belle knows Nick is just saying that to get the meeting over with. She doesn’t want to leave without a better plan. But it appears she’s not going to have a choice.

  The employees press against the door and rattle it. Their dampened voices sound like desperate parents calling to misbehaving children.

  An chime sounds from a speaker overhead. Rupert looks around the room and comes to life. “Hey!” he says, jumping up from his seat. “I need to cut this short. A legion of lawyers and a bevy of bankers are about to descend on my office and you don’t want to be here for that. Let’s talk about it tomorrow, shall we?”

  At that, he jumps up, runs to the door, opens it, and bellows at the crowd. “Get out of the way! Battlecraft team coming through!”

  The crowd parts.

  As everyone begins filing of the conference room, Harold’s deep voice booms above the din of the crowd: “Paul, you keep trying to raise Marina. If she’ll talk to anyone, it’s probably you. And waiting is a bad idea. Even if nobody asked me.”

  ∆∆∆

  Paul opens the drawer in his bedside table. His chronic headache is back, and it’s bad. There’s a new vape pen in the drawer, and it’s filled with the best and strongest cannabis extract he can afford. He takes a couple of big hits and reclines, thinking about the problem of Marina Karimova.

  He’d left out a big part of the story when he told the group about Marina’s husband—namely, the part about the man’s drinking. But that’s how it must be for now.

  Except when Paul is playing Battlecraft, he is alone, and that’s how he likes it.

  No wife, no life, no drama, no danger.

  But he is worried about Marina, and he can’t fool himself about that. She’s his friend, and ever since their first meeting in Tashkent, she’s pinged him or they’ve gamed together every day. Sometimes it’s just a “Hello, how are you?” Sometimes it’s more. A photo of a street scene, a beautiful flower, a sunset.

  For the first time since he met her, when she first established the ritual of checking on him daily, she’s been silent for a week, and she’s not responding to his messages.

  That old guy—Harold, Nick’s grandfather—is right. They should be looking for her right now, not waiting. The husband is probably to blame in one way or another. That’s usually how these things go. But Paul can’t shake the feeling that Marina’s judgment is sound, and Jimmy hadn’t seemed like a particularly sinister figure. Someone else could have gone after Marina—an Uzbek spy, maybe? A bro? He rubs his head.

  Okay, I’m being paranoid now, he thinks.

  He tries Marina again. Still offline. The silence is dark and wide and feels as if it might swallow him. He gets up and gets ready to go out, carefully putting his phone in his pants pocket and patting it.

  He’ll spend a few hours prowling the dangerous, smelly, noisy streets of Oakland. He has to do something.

  After that, if there’s still no word, he will contact Belle and demand action. They need to find Marina, and they should start now.

  ∆∆∆

  Belle finishes her work day and goes to bed but doesn’t sleep. She checks her feeds and devices obsessively for word from Marina. There’s nothing.

  Nothing but a slightly incoherent voice message from Paul at three in the morning, demanding action. Belle sends him a text: “Yup. Action being taken.”

  At dawn, five hours before the time Rupert said they’d reconvene, she’s on her way to Spigot Games HQ.

  Rupert is famous for being at work at all hours. She hopes to find him in his office, alone. She feels like she’s on a solo mission, confronting a boss with few weapons in her arsenal besides the element of surprise.

  Her powered bike breaks the speed limits from her pod apartment on Yesler, north through mostly empty downtown streets to the Spigot Games high-rise near the Space Needle. She chains the bike to a post and walks into the building lobby as if she belongs there.

  She’s able to talk her way past the guards in the lobby because one of them recognizes her and knows Rupert is personally sponsoring her team. Why wouldn’t Mr. Jones welcome a visit from his Battlecraft star?

  She rides the elevator to the top floor. The sky is pink as she opens the reception area lock—she’d seen an employee enter a code—and stalks the hallways looking for Rupert’s office.

  Rupert’s office has a sweeping view of Elliot Bay. He walks slowly on a treadmill while he talks to an invisible colleague. Belle stalks over and stands nose to nose with him. She leans in.

  “Well. If it isn’t Captain Belle! In person again!” He sweeps a finger in the air to cut off his call and offers Belle a strict schoolmaster’s glare. “Ms. Morris, why are you here? I won’t ask how you got in.”

  Something buzzes, then rings and whoops. He slams his hand palm down on his treadmill control panel, and the alerts stop. They start up again and he mutes the sounds by squeezing together his right thumb and index finger.

  Belle knows she can’t act intimidated. Rupert is like a tiger. You don’t break eye contact with a tiger, turn your back, or run.

  “I have business,” she says.

  Rupert does look away, making a show of touching his glasses and gazing into the middle distance, reading or watching some other world unfold there. Shortly he looks at Belle. “Right. Is it about the Marina thing?”

  “Look. We need her. None of the subs can keep up. Not even close. Without her, we wouldn’t have made it past the second elimination round.”

  Rupert’s alerts start sounding again from an ambient speaker system. It’s like a demented chorus. Rupert ignores it.

  “Sorry. Between the VCs, the CFO, the CTO, and the COO, plus the lawyers and the regulators,” he says, spiraling his index finger in the air. “Public companies, Belle. My father tried to warn me. When this kind of money is at stake, the handful of circling sharks sl
ated to become newly minted billionaires become an insane, covetous cabal. Not worth it. Remember that.”

  Belle rolls her eyes. One thing she’s sure of is that she’ll never have to worry about owning a significant portion of a public company.

  Rupert’s glasses begin vibrating and he rips them off his face. Then he jumps off the treadmill, throws them on the floor, and stomps on them. Repeatedly. He grabs a towel and wipes his whole head off. “What do you want?”

  “Marina has to turn up before the tournament, or we have to pull out.”

  Rupert grimaces. “I get it. We probably can’t win without Marina...Without her, the team might even be kind of terrible…Wait! Did you say, ‘pull out’?"

  “We aren’t terrible. Without her, we are a mushy sack of excrement disguised as a Battlecraft team. We can’t play.”

  “You have to play.”

  “We have to find her. That’s what I came to tell you. I won’t play without her. And now I do think she might be in danger.” Paul’s warning about Marina’s hillbilly husband has sunk in and Belle's really worried.

  Rupert goes to his desk and pulls out another pair of ridiculously expensive smartglasses, pushes a button, and sets them on his nose. “You have to play! You can’t not play!” He sits on the edge of the desk and cocks his head to the side. When Belle doesn’t respond, he takes off the glasses and rubs his eyes with his fists like a tired infant. “Okay, I don’t want to go all businesslike on you here, but your contract—you do remember you have a legally binding contract, right?—it says you are obligated to play. Fifth place is 750 thousand dollars. That’s mostly mine! I have plans for that money. You’ll each get, what, a few thousand? Don’t you want that?”

  Belle wonders how 750 thousand could make a difference to Rupert Jones the billionaire and decides it doesn’t matter. He’s got a reputation as someone who guards his property and holds people to their commitments. That’s probably how he became a billionaire—that and the fact that his father had gotten him started with a hundred-million-dollar trust fund. Rupert Jones Sr. had invented a stupidly popular video game franchise in the early 2000s.