Gameprey

1

Strapped into her seat, settled comfortably in the cockpit of the sleek experimental jet, Madeline Green couldn’t help smiling as she felt the jet perform. “What do you think, Matt?”

Matt Hunter occupied the rear seat of the two-man cockpit, serving as radio-equipment operator for the flight. Like her, he was dressed in a camouflage flight suit and full-face helmet. “This is a rush, Maj.”

A grin spread across Maj’s face until it was so tight she thought she was going to sprain something. “It took nearly three months of programming to get it right.”

“This is what you’re in Los Angeles to show?”

“Yep.” At present Maj was in L.A., in an implant chair and connected to a computer in a downtown hotel room above the Exhibition Center she’d be attending tomorrow morning, Thursday. Matt was in Columbia, Maryland, where he lived, also logged on to the Net through his own computer. For the moment they were in her private veeyar in the flight simulator program that was her current pride and joy.

“Mind if I try it?” Matt asked.

Fliers always shared that enthusiasm, Maj knew, even if they had nothing else in common. “Sure. Say when.”

“When.”

“It’s yours.” Maj released the joystick.

“Man, it’s got a lot of juice.”

Matt guided the Striper from side to side, getting the feel of the big bird’s movement and power. The V-shaped wings wobbled up and down over the Painted Desert scenery below. Maj loved flying out over the desert and generally ran that program even though she had dozens of other terrain sims written into the Striper’s database.

“Ready?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.” Maj breathed out and relaxed in the form-fit seat, watching as the Striper’s nose lifted and the desert dropped away below. Almost between heartbeats, the view from the canopy switched to the blue sky, then deepened to the violet of the upper atmosphere. The mounting G-force shoved her deep into the cockpit seat. “Let me know if you pass out,” she jibed.

“Right,” Matt snorted. “That’ll be me with the sudden sleepy sigh.”

“Or if you fill your mask. That will be you with the big, bubbly gush.”

“Not me. I was born to fly.” And Matt proved his point by bursting through the loop-the-loop and immediately heeling into a series of right wingovers that dropped them furiously toward the desert deck below.

Maj glanced at the altimeter, watching as thousands of feet melted away to just hundreds. “Hard deck’s coming up.”

“The bird’s doing fine.”

“It’s not the Striper I’m worried about,” Maj said. “It’s the nut behind the wheel.”

Matt heeled over to the left and slotted the jet into a valley of stone. Sunlight glimmered briefly off the stream less than a hundred feet below. “Nice landscaping job.”

“Thanks. Just make sure we don’t end up as part of it.”

“Going up.” Matt cut power to the Striper’s afterburners and rolled gracefully out of the canyon, returning to the hard deck. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Maj, this is one killer program. Probably the best I’ve ever seen you build.”

Maj squinted against the sun through the polarized canopy and helmet faceplate, trying to figure out a polite way to ask for the joystick again. Still, it felt nice that Matt was having such a good time with the jet. Maybe others would, too.

Building flight-sims was a passionate hobby of hers, one that she’d put a lot of time into. She planned on showing the Striper flight-sim to game packagers, hoping that some of her time investment would pay off in either cash for college or a scholarship or sponsorship from a software corporation. She also liked a number of the computer games available online, which was another reason to take the trip to the gaming convention in L.A.

When she spotted the black dot against the too-bright sun, Maj at first thought she was just seeing spots because the polarization of the canopy and helmet weren’t strong enough. However, what she saw was a spot, not spots, and that spot was continuing to get bigger. Matt held his heading, streaking toward the mass. “There’s a bogie at twelve o’clock,” she said.

Matt paused. “I don’t read it on the instruments. I’ll level off.” The jet tilted, following his movements with the stick. “Do you know what it is?”

“No.” And that was wrong. Maj had designed the aircraft and the environment; she should know everything in it.

The Striper leveled, turning slowly as it overcame the powerful thrust. For a moment it looked as if Matt was going to miss it.

Then the object dived, dropping down with a flap of huge, batlike wings, settling into a new glide path. In that instant Maj got a clear view of what the object was.

Huge and majestic, the dragon filled the air before the Striper’s canopy. Mottled plum-colored scales covered the beast’s back, slightly lighter in color on the huge bat wings that were wider across than the creature was long, even counting the long spiked tail that whipped restlessly back and forth. Underneath, the scales took on the hue of aged ivory, a deep buttery alabaster with occasional brown spots.

The dragon’s rectangular head was at least twenty feet long at the end of a long serpentine neck. Horns spiraled up from its head, and thorny projections that looked like hoarfrost lined its huge eyes and crinkled mouth. Emerald eyes, intelligent and sensitive and nearly three feet in diameter, stood out on either side of the broad head.

Maj glanced at the dragon, somehow knowing if they slammed into it, the creature’s thick hide would leave only broken splinters of the Striper. “Give me the stick.” She closed her hand around the joystick.

“It’s yours.”

Maj banked the jet, kicking in the afterburners.

“No way!” Matt breathed hoarsely over the helmet radio. “Did you put that in the programming? It’s beautiful.”

Maj silently agreed that the dragon was beautiful, one of the most elegant creatures she’d ever seen. But there was a problem. “I’ve never designed anything like that.”

The dragon’s neck rolled in a serpentine motion, bringing the head around, revealing something on its back. The great wings spread and flapped, digging into the air as the right emerald eye fastened on the jet. The long jaws separated, revealing a mouthful of fangs.

Bumping the vid-cam controls with her gloved finger, Maj increased the magnification. She had only a moment to recognize the human shape seated on the dragon’s back.

Then a roiling, smoking fireball spewed from the dragon’s gullet and arced for the jet. The fireball’s impact shivered through the Striper and wrapped it in flames.

Maj’s helmet beat against the seat as the Striper blew through the swirling mass of the fireball. Blue sky filled the horizon again, but flames stubbornly clung to the Striper. She triggered the fire-suppression systems.

Pressurized jets released fire-retardant foam, creating a sudden snowstorm across the wings. A layer of frozen, dirty gray chemicals replaced the flames. Unfortunately, they also knocked out her left engine.

“Flameout,” Maj warned, shutting down the other engine as they were yanked into a flat spin like the right wing had been nailed down. “I’ve got a dead stick.”

“We can stay or go.”

“Smart money says we bail.” Maj watched the view through the canopy change as they rolled over, totally out of control. But where she expected desert landscape below, there was now a huge forest that stretched out in all directions.

“Feeling lucky?”

“No.” Maj hooked a forefinger under the engine switches. “I’m feeling mad. If somebody hacked in here, I want to know why. Even if we logged back on after logging off, there’s no guarantees that the dragon and the guy riding him would still be here.”

“Guy riding the dragon?”

“Yeah. I saw him as we went over.”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“If I get these engines to reignite,” Maj promised, “I’ll give you a close-up of the geekoid.” She gazed down at the forested lands below, close enough now to see the three large rivers that cut through them.

“If there is a guy on that dragon—”

“There is.” Maj waited for the Striper to finish flipping one more time. “And he’s crashing other people’s programs. The last time I checked, that was definitely illegal. Especially in my veeyar. Although this might not exactly be my veeyar anymore.”

“What?”

“That’s forest below, not desert. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

“I’ve been so busy searching for the dragon I missed that.”

“Hang on.” Maj tripped the ignition switches. The jets flared white contrails suddenly, then she was shoved back into the formfit seat again and the joystick became responsive. “Yes.”

“I’ve got your dragon,” Matt said. “Heading two-four-three.”

Maj brought the Striper around to the right. She raked the sky with her gaze, noticing that it held different shadings. And two suns, one a red giant and the other a spot of blue slightly above it, were close to setting or rising to the south.

She surveyed the damage the dragon’s fireball had done to the Striper. The silver paint was blistered and peeling, black in some areas. Tiny cracks threaded through Plexiglas windows that could take a direct hit from a 7.62mm rifle bullet. She didn’t know if the jet could take another fireball.

She guided the Striper onto the dragon’s backtrail, overtaking the creature swiftly as the huge wings belled once more and seized the air currents. With a gentle touch she inverted the Striper, going upside down over the dragon’s broad back.

“I see him,” Matt said.

Even though she knew she’d briefly spotted the guy on the dragon’s back, Maj was relieved. And she was close enough now to see the surprised look that filled his face. But why, she wondered, would he look surprised? Hadn’t he crashed her system?

“It didn’t work. They’re still there.” Gaspar Latke studied the polished crystal ball in his huge three-fingered hand. The crystal ball showed the images of the great dragon and its rider, as well as the jet fighter.

“Try harder,” Andrea Heavener ordered.

Latke’s fear and frustration vibrated inside his chest. Even firmly entrenched into the veeyar, he could feel his heart hammering back in the implant chair back in the office Heavener had gotten for them. He had a hard time concentrating on anything while remembering how vulnerable his flesh-and-blood body was lying in that chair only a few feet from that woman.

Heavener was a special operative for D’Arnot Industries. She worked in the real world, though, and stayed out of the Net as much as possible.

“I’m coming out.” Latke straightened, standing thirty feet tall inside the veeyar. He was basically man-shaped, but the differences between him and anything human were substantial.

Bright crimson skin stretched tight over a hard-muscled body that was nearly as wide as it was tall. The legs bent the wrong way, structured like a four-footed animal’s so the knees bent backward. The feet only held three toes, but they were prehensile and had shiny black talons instead of nails. A loincloth girded his hips, holding a massive double-bitted war ax. His head was triangular in overall shape, possessing two curved horns and a gash of a mouth filled with serrated teeth. The white-feathered wings folded neatly across his back looked incongruous, too delicate for the misshapen body.

The proxy he’d chosen was native to the veeyar environment. He was a tera’lanth, one of the evil creatures in the realm who opposed the great dragon and its rider.

“Why are you coming out?” Heavener asked.

“I want to try to trace the two people inside Peter’s veeyar.” Gaspar strode to the center of Murof’s Cavern, glancing up at the walls where nearly a hundred other tera’lanth clung to stalactites like bats. They watched him with predatory slitted yellow eyes. If they knew he was an impostor, he knew they’d try to rip him limb from limb.

“You can do it from inside there,” Heavener said.

“No,” Gaspar said calmly. She’s a killer, he reminded himself. She doesn’t know that much about the Net or computer systems. “Whatever I do inside here can be traced by Peter if he checks later. And with that jet suddenly appearing out of nowhere, you can bet he’s going to check. This is his veeyar, not mine.”

“I want this handled quickly.” The cool, crisp voice didn’t change audibly, but Gaspar recognized the threat in the words.

When he’d first met her, Gaspar had been with two friends in a small bar in Hamburg, Germany. Heavener had walked up out of the night, said, “Gaspar Latke,” and he’d turned to her, grinning slightly because she was a pretty woman, and his two hacker buddies were immediately envious of the attention. Then she’d taken out a small pistol and shot them both. Her voice hadn’t even changed when she stepped over the bodies and yanked him up from the floor by the collar. “Come with me,” she’d said in perfect German. That had been eight months ago, when he’d been seventeen, yet it already seemed like a lifetime.

Inside the veeyar, Gaspar closed his eyes, concentrating till he could see the icons of his own veeyar appear before him. Disconnection from the Net felt different to different people. Gaspar felt the familiar chill breeze flow through his body, then he opened his eyes in the lineup chair.

He pushed his skinny frame from the implant chair and stood in the dark room. He experienced a moment of disorientation as gravity kicked in. He spent so much time online that his own body felt alien to him despite the isometric stimulation built into the implant chair. The feeling wasn’t new, so he quickly adjusted and plodded toward the other implant chair in the room. The first implant chair was specially dedicated to Peter Griffen’s systems, hidden so well that Peter had never known he was there.

“Hurry,” Heavener commanded.

“I am.”

Heavener stood in a corner, comfortably wreathed in shadows. She was slender and barely over five feet tall. Her platinum blond hair was cut short and spiky, colored with two distinct red and blue stripes that ran from her left temple to the bottom of her hairline. Silver earring strands glittered, catching the green light from the computer consoles. Her skin was pale, almost to the point of albinism. Contacts covered her eyes, giving them a crescent shape and an amber color that belonged on a hungry cat. She wore tight black leather pants and a black sleeveless top. Her black leather biker’s jacket lay over the back of a nearby chair.

Gaspar made himself breathe. When he got really tense around Heavener, he forgot. He settled down in the implant chair, and the interior shrank around his slight form. He was maybe an inch or two taller than Heavener, still a couple inches shy of five and a half feet. His already sallow complexion had turned waxy over the last few months. He normally kept his dark hair razored short, but he hadn’t taken care of it in weeks. Wispy beard stubble tracked his cheeks, only shadowing the acne pits.

He triggered the chair’s implants. Then the programming seized his senses and pulled him into veeyar again.

He opened his eyes inside his personal veeyar. He’d modeled it on Ray Bradbury’s office, borrowing several props the science fiction writer had kept around him for inspiration. He’d found the clutter relaxing, making him feel as if he was always in the middle of something rather than off by himself.

Gaspar sat at the antique desk and studied the Underwood typewriter before him. Instead of the alphabet, though, the typewriter keys had icons for the various software programs he had loaded.

He touched the triangular blue icon, and another gust of cold wind filled him, tightening his skin and prickling his scalp. He blinked and was on the Net proper.

Multicolored datastreams passed below him, flashing lights that carried information and encrypted data all over the world. Various symbols and shapes represented the online businesses, each linked to the other by the datastreams that flowed in both directions constantly.

Floating above the Netscape, Gaspar triggered the trace-back utility he’d built for Peter’s Griffen’s veeyar. Since it operated outside the veeyar and merely ferreted out connections, Griffen had never realized someone was spying on him. It helped that Gaspar had also been able to program blind spots into Peter’s operating system when he’d had access to it.

Gaspar targeted the hotel where Peter was staying. On the Net the hotel looked very much like it did in real life.

The Bessel Mid-Town stood thirty stories tall, topped by a helipad for corporate executives on the go. The fourteenth floor was open on three sides, providing a pavilion that included an Olympic-sized pool, a banquet area, and an open stage carefully sectioned off from each other by a plethora of plants and exhibit cases.

Gaspar dropped through the Net and automatically chose a nondescript proxy. By the time he landed on the carpet and stepped onto the canopy-covered area, he looked like a businessman.

A uniformed concierge braced him at the broad double doors. The proxy looked young, polite, and earnest. “May I help you, sir?”

“Just going up to my room,” Gaspar replied. He flashed the faked hotel PIN card he’d mocked up.

The concierge glanced at the card, electronic pulses flashing in his eyes, then back up at Gaspar. “Of course. Thank you, sir.” He reached back and opened the door, disarming some of the security measures that prevented uninvited visitors from gaining entrance to the hotel’s online facilities.

Not all of the security measures were dismissed, Gaspar knew. The rooms each maintained unique safeguards. Getting the master override programming right had taken him some time because the Bessel Mid-Town had beefed up security for the software convention.

He accessed a pull-down menu in the hotel’s veeyar with the master override. A window opened beside him, staying within sight as he crossed to the main desk. He touched the icon that brought up the list of employees currently working.

Ted Sheppard was the manager currently on duty.

Closing the window, Gaspar accessed the security programming protecting the building, got through with the crack he’d developed, and accessed employee files. When that menu appeared, he selected SHEPPARD, TED, then downloaded the information. The file included a picture and Sheppard’s passcodes.

Not even breaking stride, Gaspar grafted the information into his proxy. The proxy shimmered, and he knew in the next second that the hotel computer’s security systems wouldn’t be able to tell him from SHEPPARD, TED. He continued toward the main desk.

An atrium filled the center of the huge, cavernous lobby, stretching all the way up to the fifteenth floor. The elevator drew the eye to the parade of plants and birds inside the atrium. Statues of ten-foot-tall Chinese dogs flanked either side of the main entrance.

Gaspar stood behind the desk, feeling better than he had in hours. Stealing into places where he didn’t belong, that was what he did best, what he lived for.

He logged into the internal security systems through the icon-laden touchscreen built right into the hotel desk behind the countertop.

The icons cleared and the prompt printed, ID, PLEASE.

Gaspar laid his palm on the touchscreen, feeling a little giddy with excitement. He trusted the proxy and the programs he was using, but the uncertainty was always a thrill.

The touchscreen pulsed violet light in a bar that ran from top to bottom. WELCOME, SHEPPARD, TED. HOW MAY I HELP YOU? A new list of icons formed on the touchscreen.

Gaspar tapped the yellow telecommunications icon, bringing up another menu. He passed over the HoloNet and vidphone connections, choosing the icon representing Net access feeds. He entered Peter Griffen’s room number.

GRIFFEN, PETER. STATUS: CURRENTLY LOGGED ON. COMMUNICATE?

Gaspar entered NO.

LEAVE MESSAGE?

NO.

TRACE OUTBOUND?

NO.

TRACE INBOUND?

YES.

The touchscreen blinked, then a name and computer access number floated to the top. HUNTER, MARISSA & GORDON.

Gaspar downloaded the information and closed out the security access on the touchscreen. Then he logged off.

“I’ve got a name.” He gave it to her when he forced himself up from the implant chair.

“Get back into Griffen’s veeyar,” Heavener ordered, taking a foilpack from her hip pocket. She opened the ultra-thin silver-metal device and punched the power button and the vidphone configuration. The foilpack instantly reconfigured itself into a cell phone. “Find out if Griffen has communicated with those people. If he hasn’t, prevent it.”