My KD is better in the Hardworlds

“Shit!” Mack said suddenly on the comms. Gradie noticed when his name lit up, that a small loading bar appeared next to it with the word “cloning...” above it.

“Did you frag yourself?” Maverick scoffed.

“Fuck no man! That bitch had flechette traps all over him. I still got him though.”

“The fuck was that bomb?” Sulphyr asked.

“That gel pack shit I looted from those jump-jet guys at the booths. Shit vaporized my guy. Oh fuck my half-moons!”

“Any reason you didn’t do that ten fucking minutes ago?” Robin said, stomping up the grand staircase from the next level.

“I was looking for an opening and I thought yall had it.”

“So which one was it?”

“Hey fuck yall, I did it didn’t I? And now my shit is gone.”

“Speaking of which,” Maverick said. “Grab a rad thrower when you spawn back. Its bug killing time.”

“And bring me that drone pallet,” Nova added.

“Aight sure, I'll just lug all this shit over. Hope yall—”

In a flash, the door at the top of the stairs erupted in deep orange sparks, and Nuke, who had been de turtling and standing up, squealed and popped back into her cacoon. Robin almost fell over laughing.

“God dammit!” Nuke squealed and morphed back into her space marine shape.

“Is that thermite?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, they’re melting down that shit. Have to find another way in. Nova, how’s the scan going?”

Gradie looked around and found Nova sitting cross-legged on the ground, screens seen and unseen wrapped around him, making frantic motions with his fingers and pivoting his head from screen to screen.

“I’m taking out external cameras right now. They’re hunting my worms. Once their outside eyes are gone, I’m gonna spinal tap their main line.”

“English, bro.”

“Stick a big skimmer on the framework up there,” he nodded up the stairs. “And pick up the vibrations coming from the tower and maybe even that big fucking transmitter they got hidden on the roof. Ok, eyes are blinded.”

He rolled onto his feet and swung his SMG around.

“On me,” Maverick said, and marched up the big staircase. The others formed up around him, guns on the elevator lobby around, and Luke nodded his helmet at Gradie.

“You ready to show these nerf or nothing mother fuckers what real shooting looks like?”

Gradie laughed silently and nodded.

“We should bring Philip next time.”

At that, Luke missed a step and almost fell to the stairs laughing. The others looked back, but something else drew their attention. A ship that looked like two Chinooks tied together with no propellers zipped by outside.

“Shit, looks like the dry dome just popped,” Maverick said.

“The what?” Luke asked.

“Dry domes a big area of no fly and no try. Cannons and satellites lock an area down and it’s a who-moves-first situation. That’s why we’re here. To get a gun emplaced before it goes hot.”

“That our shit or theirs?” Luke aimed his rifle out the window and Gradie recalled how his own rounds had bounced uselessly off the gun drone.

“Ours. We’re at the edge of the dome, and Mercat’s been—”

An explosion echoed through the window, as distant and muffled as thunder.

“Shit we gotta move,” Robin said. More booms and engine roars floated in the high empty window frame, and Gradie realized just how quiet the sky had been until now. He had assumed it was a failure of the gameworlds detail, but now the sounds were just as textured and real as the skyline.

“Goat-Head to Maverick,” a strange voice said on the group comms.

“Go for Maverick.”

“Status on the tower.”

“Cleared up to the penthouse. About to—”

“It was cleared up to the fucking penthouse yesterday. What’ve you been doing?”

“Uh, we engaged a gun drone, and a machinegun emplacement, and now—”

“Ok, ok. I need, the cannon, up, in one hour. Do you copy?”

“Yes sir it will be done in 30.” (At this Robin cocked her helmet in the universal code for “really dude?”)

“It has to be. And clear out some of the anti-air on that thing if you want any support. That fucking towers rigged to shit.”

“Yes sir, understood.” Maverick’s tone was completely respectful, but his stiff body posture said about the same thing as Robin’s head tilt.

“Goat-Head out.”

There was a pause, punctuated by more distant explosions out the window, until Luke said out loud,

“Well fuck that guy.”

Nuke and Robin laughed. Maverick shook his head.

“He’s a good dude. Got a lot of pressure coming down on him from the top. This Ops been in the works for months.”

“What no pussy does to a motherfucker,” Luke said on the private comms, but out loud he said,

“Sure bro. But if he talks to me like that, I’m switching sides.”

A piece of the wall next to the elevators shot out sparks and everyone besides Nova got about two feet closer to the ground. He just kept tapping on his unseen keyboard.

“Calm down. I’m just getting a tap.”

One of his spider drones, the kind with legs that became propeller blades when they flew, was slicing into something in the wall.

“What are our entry points?” Maverick asked.

“There’s an external staircase here,” Nova pinged it on the min-map. “And some kind of laundry service chute here. Any other entry points we’ll have to make ourselves.”

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“If we take the external staircase, they gonna open up on us from the greenhouse?” Maverick asked, and manipulated the map.

Gradie saw for the first time that the circular cross section of the tower got smaller on the next level above them. The ceiling over the terrace room sloped towards a ring labeled “gardens” that was about half the diameter of the tower below. Satellite shots supplemented the map, showing a lush green ring of trees, landscaped gardens, pools, decks, and balconies, like a ring of island resort set atop an office tower.

At the center, the penthouses were a square with bulging rounded edges about a quarter of the size of the tower below, rising four stories above the greenery, and set atop a square of elevator lobbies wrapped around the central support shaft.

“No, I swept it. It’s clear,” Nova said, and swapped the satellite maps away. A fuzzier collage of images overlaid into a single map replaced them, snapshots taken by his drones just seconds ago, one still streaming a live feed in the corner, which revealed the greenery and everything else had been burned down to the concrete, leaving only a flat wasteland around the penthouse with dark pools of murk here and there.

“Keep some eyes on it just in case,” Maverick said. “How’s the chute situation?”

“Tight,” Nova said, which elicited muffled laughter from the team. “Schematics say there’s a services ladder in it, but they probably stripped it.”

“So it’s all metal?” Nuke said. Gradie glanced over and saw her eyes, soft black things, fluttering around in the glow of her screen, and came to the slow to get there but impossible to avoid conclusion that she was cute.

“Yeah. Oh shit, your magnets,” Maverick said.

“Guess I’m going up the scary chute.”

“God dammit!” Mack said on the comms. “I shoulda brought back up moons!”

“Sulphyr and I will give two of you our jump suits and they can go with Nuke,” Maverick said. “The rest of us will take the outside staircase and try and link up.

“Ill go,” Robin said.

“No, I need your cannon outside in case we get air trouble.”

“Shit, give me the jump suit,” Mack said. “I know how to bounce around in a fight.”

“Allright. Who else?”

Everyone looked at each other, until Gradie, knocked suddenly out of his Nuke-centered fantasies, said,

“Ill go.”

Nuke looked straight at the floor and nodded.

“Shit, I see how it is,” Luke said on the twin’s private comms. “Just leave me with these jokers.”

Gradie actually hadn’t thought of that and now regretted speaking up.

“You know how it is,” he said. “I like to go in through the back door.”

Luke chortled out loud into his helmet and Maverick scowled, but before he could say anything Mack burst through the double door on the far end of the landing, pushing a big pallet on some kind of hover lift.

“I brought yall some more ammo and shit. You’re welcome.”

“Damn bro, getting fragged was the best thing you ever did,” Sulphyr said.

The game’s “computer” alerted Gradie to extra mags and grenades on the pallet, which he grabbed and loaded onto his kit.

A ‘helpful hint’ pop up told him that he could configure his rifle into “shotgun mode”, which combined 5 to ten rounds into a single shot at the cost of reduced accuracy over range and increased recoil.

“Uh, Not-Banned, you see this?” Gradie asked Luke, and showed his gun clicking into a new configuration around the receiver. Another intel pop up told him the swap took a few seconds because the barrel had to transition to smooth.

Luke had moved his visor back, and Gradie could see his smile.

“Damn, can it talk to girls for me too?”

“God damn, they were set up,” Nova said suddenly.

“That’s why we called you,” Maverick said. “We clear?”

“I mean, I fried most of their sensors, but the ordinance is still there. I would toss a few charges and shit before stepping through any door.”

“That’s standard procedure. Anything else I should know?”

“Looks like they got plates on both entrances, so each team’s gonna need a cutter.”

“Cant we just go through the walls?”

“Nah. That parts Gen twelve residential so the walls are full of hardened data lines and element taps for the printers and shit. The plates are ironically the easiest way to get in.”

“God damn,” Mack said. “I thought you said these dudes were mostly worried about aerial drops and would have minimal defenses tower-side?”

“This is minimal!” Maverick laughed. “Notice how were sitting here talking without getting blown to pieces?”

Another explosion somewhere outside underscored his point.

“Aight, let’s move out.”

Gradie followed Nuke and Mack to a futuristic laundry room on the other side of the tower column. They let Nova’s drone blast in the door then stepped in and cleared it with Gradie on point. In the smoke and haze, his mind filled in the unseen places with fragments of the clubhouse and the Hardworlds.

“Damn GI joe, you can clear a room huh?” Mack said, after Gradie had spent half a minute stepping and pivoting around the tall washing machines and kicking in doors to the back offices and storage closets.

“You can just call my drone to check rooms,” Nova said on the comms, annoyed.

Gradie found the command on his HUD and sent a nearby drone after what turned out to be a break room, and the drones feed was displayed in a little window in the top right of his vision. In the midst of his embarrassment, his thoughts wandered to EP.

Nuke squatted in front of the chute door and got it open with a retractable tool, exposing a shaft of darkness.

“You guys step back!” She hissed. Gradie and Mack took cover behind some washers as two drones flew into the shaft. Gradie’s helmet had some kind of smart nightvision that illuminated the darkness in blue tones as the rest of the room remained rendered in full color. He recalled that Philip had mentioned full color nightvision was probably less than a decade away for the civilian market, and guessed the blue tones were just a way to tell the players what was happening. Still, it let the internal mechanics of the game world peek through its shell just enough to calm him almost to boredom.

Nuke stepped inside the shaft and started moving up the back wall, her hands and feet making magnetic humming sounds along the way.

“Were at the staircase,” Maverick said on the comms. Gradie could see the other team members through the walls, and had the ability to dial the intensity of their silhouettes up or down. With a thought, he opened up one of the drone feeds observing them from the outside. They were moving up a steel staircase that had once been encased in skyscraper glass and now hung exposed and glittering in the fading sun.

“Watching you through the drone Banned man,” Gradie said on the comms. “So don’t fuck it up.”

“Fucking simp,” Luke said. “Be sure to like and subscribe bro!”

The team stopped on the staircase below the top landing and a few seconds later the door on top exploded.

“Shit!” Gradie said.

“It’s me,” Nova said. He handed his cutter off to one of the drones which flew up to the smoking doorway. Sparks bloomed in the darkness and drew a line in molten orange, then stopped dead.

“Shit!” Nova said. “Shortwave jammer. Really fucking strong, fried my shit!”

“Banned, get up there and finish cutting!” Maverick said.

“You sure? What if I lose a finger?”

“Yes! We can’t afford to lose anyone else!”

“Ok big meanie, here I go. Old useless good for nuthin luh, loser.” Luke shuffled up to the door with his shoulders hunched over, fake sniffling.

“Come on!” Maverick hissed.

“Oh my god!” Robin cackled.

“You should cut a dick into it,” Gradie said on the private comms.

“Bro I was fucking about to, but I think Master chief Maverick would tackle me off the tower and I wouldn’t be able to shoot these nerds camping inside.”

The cutter made an orange molten rectangle that fell inwards and smoldered in the dark.

“Damn. I can’t see shit,” Luke said flatly after a dramatic pause. Robin cackled again.

“It’s nano smoke! Get the fuck down here!” Maverick yelled.

Luke jogged down and took up his position.

“Looks like y’all’re stuck with me huh?”

“Moving!” Maverick yelled and marched up with what looked like a cross between a rocket launcher and a gyroscopic camera rig in his hand.

“Pulse out!”

It fired once with a soft crack, and the darkened room exploded three times in rapid succession. A wave of sparkling energy spread through the darkness and vanished.

“Nano smokes done,” Nova said.

“Frag it!” Maverick said. Angel and Sulphyr threw grenades into the darkness and they all squatted down on the staircase. The blast threw debris and a burst of strange smoke out the door.

Maverick manipulated something on his weapon and looked back at the team.

“All right, move in on me, and blast anything that moves. Nuke, the moment we start taking fire, you start cutting. I want them committed before you start the pincer.”

“Okie dokie.”

Gradie watched her climb up the wall of the chute. In the picture in picture screen, Maverick’s team moved up the staircase.

Gradie tabbed the feed to Luke’s POV, and watched Maverick and Sulphyr enter the darkened doorway. Luke’s night vision was dim and hazy from the remnants of the nano-smoke still floating through the air, and Gradie had to remind himself that none of this was actually happening, which rather than comfort him, only made it all the more incredible, and he felt the invisible massive presence of the unseen maker floating out somewhere behind the artificial satellites.

“Oh this is fucked,” Maverick said on the comms. They had stepped through a kind of framed foyer which had once been glass walled with a space age parlor of strange chairs and couches beyond. Their frags had torn it all to pieces, and now they faced a long hallway that led out of the parlor and towards a distant elevator lobby.

“That’s the private elevator,” Nova said.

“Alright Quasar and Robin hang back and the rest of yall on me,” Maverick said in a single breath and rushed towards the first door.

“Wait,” Nova said, crouched down behind Robin. “Ther'es supposed to be a big lobby here.”

The grenade blast blew out the door and Maverick and Sulphyr stepped inside.

“Clear,” said Maverick, and they moved on to the next room.

“These rooms are not on the fucking floorplans,” Nova continued. “They set them up!”

“Still gotta clear them!” Maverick said.

“That’s what they want us—” Nova was cut off, abruptly, by an explosion at the far end of the hallway. An explosion that persisted, repeated, and morphed into the roar of a massive machine gun.