Armada (5 page)

In the distance, a swarm of Sobrukai Glaive Fighters streaked across the sky, banking in unison to change course, like a school of piranha in search of prey. Viewed from above, the Glaive's symmetrical fuselage resembled the blade of a double-headed axe, but seen edge-on, its profile distinctly resembled that of a flying saucer from an old sci-fi film—a detail that had worked its way into my earlier hallucination.

I'd destroyed countless Glaive Fighters during the three years I'd been playing
Armada
. Until now, I'd never found them especially frightening or ominous. But today, just seeing the background animations on Ray's screen filled me with a sense of dread, as if the ships really were somehow a threat to everything I held dear and not a harmless collection of textured polygons rendered on a computer display.

Ray power-leaped his ATHID off of the burning rooftop and onto the back of a Sobrukai Basilisk, a reptilian-looking robot tank with laser cannons for eyes. Ray power-jumped into the air again, spinning his ATHID around 180 degrees just before he brought the huge metal Basilisk down with a single well-placed missile shot to its segmented abdomen. It exploded beneath him in a huge orange fireball, and Ray had to fire his ATHIDs jump jets again to land clear of it.

“Bravo, Sergeant,” I said, using his rank in the fictional Earth Defense Alliance.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he replied. “That means a lot coming from you.”

He grinned and raised his right hand off of his mouse long enough to snap me a salute before refocusing on the battle.

According to the readouts on his HUD, his squadron had already lost all six of their hover tanks, and both of their Titans. They only had seven ATHIDs left in reserve, and the pulsing icons on his tactical map indicated these were stored inside a nearby EDA weapons cache that was already under attack by a swarm of Spider Fighters. Ray's squadron was fighting a losing battle at this point. The city would fall to the Sobrukai any minute now. But as usual, Ray kept on fighting, even in the face of certain defeat. It was one of his most endearing qualities.

Ray was, by far, the best
Terra Firma
player I'd ever seen in person. A few months ago, he'd finally managed to earn membership in “The Thirty Dozen,” an elite clan of the best 360 players in the game. Since then, I'd seen him logged on to
Terra Firma
's servers every day, playing one high-level mission after another. And since he wasn't burdened with distractions like school or homework, Ray could devote his every waking moment to the game, so he'd logged more combat time than me, Cruz, and Diehl all put together.

“Son of a bitch!” Ray shouted, hitting the side of his monitor. I glanced over and saw that the Sobrukai were currently overrunning the surviving members of his squadron and exterminating the last of their drones. A few seconds after Ray's last reserve ATHID was crushed between a Spider Fighter's vise-like mandibles, the words
mission failed
flashed on his display, and then he was treated to a cut-scene animation of the Sobrukai's forces destroying downtown Newark.

“Oh well,” he muttered, shoving another mouthful of Funyuns into his face as he pondered the city's smoking ruins. “At least it's only Newark, right? No big loss.”

He chuckled to himself as he wiped simulated-onion dust off his fingers and onto the legs of his jeans; then he gave me an excited grin.

“Hey, guess what came in today?” he asked. Then he produced a large box from underneath the counter and set it in front of me.

If I'd been a cartoon character, my eyes would have bulged out of their sockets.

It was a brand new
Armada
Interceptor Flight Control System—the most advanced (and expensive) videogame controller ever made.

“No way!” I whispered, examining the photos and stats printed on its glossy black box. “I thought these things weren't supposed to hit the market until next month!”

“It looks like Chaos Terrain decided to ship them early,” he said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “Want to unbox this bad boy?”

I nodded my head vigorously, and Ray grabbed a packing knife. He cut the box open and then instructed me to hold onto its sides as he pulled out the Styrofoam cube housing the controller's various components. A few seconds later, everything was freed from the packaging and laid out on the glass countertop in front of us.

The
Armada
Interceptor Flight Control System (IFCS) contained an Interceptor pilot helmet (incorporating a set of built-in VR goggles, noise-canceling headphones, and a retractable microphone) and a two-piece HOTAS (Hands-On Throttle and Stick) rig, comprised of an all-metal force-feedback flight stick and a separate dual-throttle controller with a built-in weapons control panel. The stick, throttle, and weapons panel all bristled with ergonomic buttons, triggers, indicators, mode selectors, rotary dials, and eight-way hat studs, each of which could be configured to give you total control of your
Armada
Interceptor's flight, navigation, and weapons systems.

“You likey, Zack?” Ray asked, after watching me drool over it for a while.

“Ray, I want to marry this thing.”

“We've got over a dozen more back in the stockroom,” he said. “Maybe we can build a display pyramid out of them or something.”

I picked up the helmet and hefted it, impressed by its weight and detail. It looked and felt like a real fighter pilot helmet, and its Oculus Rift components were state-of-the-art. (I had a half-decent VR headset at home that Ray had gifted me, but it was a few years old, and the display resolution had increased drastically since then.)

I set the helmet back on the counter, resisting the urge to try it on. Then I reached out and rested my left hand on the throttle controller while I wrapped my right hand around the cold metal of the attached flight stick. Both seemed like a perfect fit, as if they'd been machined to match my hands.

I'd been playing
Armada
for years, and the whole time I'd been using a cheap plastic flight stick and throttle controller. I'd had no idea what I'd been missing. I'd coveted an IFCS ever since I heard they were coming out on the
Armada
forums. But the price tag was somewhere north of five hundred bucks—even with my ten percent employee discount that was still way too rich for my blood.

I reluctantly slid my hands off the controllers and shoved them into my pockets. “If I start saving up now, I might be able to afford one by the end of the summer,” I muttered. “That is, if my crapmobile doesn't break down again.”

Ray mimed playing a violin. Then he smiled and slid the helmet across the counter to me.

“You can have this one,” he said. “Consider it an early graduation gift.” He elbowed me playfully. “You
are
going to graduate, right?”

“No way!” I said, staring at the controller in disbelief. Then I looked up at Ray. “I mean—yes, I'll graduate—but, you're not kidding? I can have this one? For reals?”

Ray nodded solemnly. “For reals.”

I felt like hugging him, so I did—throwing my arms around his thick midsection in a fierce embrace. He laughed uncomfortably and patted me on the back until I finally let go of him.

“I'm only doing it because it's good for the war effort!” he said, straightening his flannel shirt and then ruffling my hair in retaliation. “Having your own flight control system might make you an even better Interceptor pilot. If that's even possible.”

“Ray, this is way too generous,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Ah, don't mention it, kid.”

Although I'd been worrying for years that Ray's runaway altruism would drive him bankrupt, and that I'd be forced to go find a real job somewhere, it didn't stop me from accepting his latest extravagant gift.

“Want to head back in the War Room and give it a spin?” He motioned to the small, cramped back room where dozens of linked PCs and gaming consoles were set up. Customers rented the War Room out for LAN parties and clan events. “You could work out the kinks before that big elite mission later tonight. …”

“No thanks,” I said. “I think I'll just wait and try it out then, on my home setup.”
Because I might flip out or start foaming at the mouth the next time I see a Glaive Fighter coming at me, and I'd rather be alone in my bedroom if and when it happens.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “What's wrong with you?” he said. “You sick?”

I looked away uneasily. “No, I'm fine,” I replied. “Why?”

“Your boss just offered you a chance to play your favorite videogame at work, on the clock, and you turn it down?” He reached out to touch my forehead. “You got a brain fever or something, kid?”

I laughed uneasily and shook my head. “No, it's just—I recently vowed to stop goofing off so much here at work, regardless of how much you encourage me to.”

“Why in the hell would you do
that
?”

“It's all part of my master plan,” I said. “To show you how responsible and reliable I've become, so you'll hire me on as a full-time employee after I graduate.”

He shot me the same look he always seemed to give me whenever I brought up this subject.

“Zack, you can work here for as long as we manage to stay in business,” he said. “Honestly, though, you have to know you're destined for much bigger things. Right?”

“Thanks, Ray,” I said, struggling not to roll my eyes. If today was any indication, the only thing I was destined for was a straitjacket. Maybe a padded helmet, too.

“ ‘You cannot escape your destiny,' ” he said in his best Obi-Wan. Then he collapsed back onto his stool and fired up another
Terra Firma
mission with a click of his mouse. Chaos Terrain manufactured a wide variety of
Terra Firma
controllers, including the bestselling Titan Control System, a dual flight-stick rig that we sold right here in the store. But Ray never played with anything but a keyboard and mouse. He also still preferred a two-dimensional computer monitor to VR goggles, which he claimed gave him vertigo. Like a lot of gamers his age, Ray was set in his ways.

In spite of what I'd just said to him, I walked back over to Smallberries and clicked the
Terra Firma
icon on its desktop. The game's opening cut scene began, and I almost hit “Skip Intro” out of habit. But then I let it play, rewatching it for the first time in years.

The intro's somber opening voice-over (performed by Morgan Freeman, killing it like always) briefly laid out the game's basic storyline. It was set sometime “in the mid twenty-first century,” roughly ten years after Earth was first invaded by the Sobrukai, an aquatic race hailing from the Tau Ceti star system, a popular point-of-origin for aliens since the dawn of sci-fi, due to its close proximity to Earth. The Sobrukai somewhat resembled the giant squids of Earth, but with an added mane of spiked tentacles and a vertical shark-like mouth ringed by six soulless, black eyes.

The game's intro segued into a video transmission the invaders had sent to humanity on the day of their arrival, containing a threatening message from the Sobrukai overlord, whose Weta designers had gone way too Giger in my humble opinion. The gray translucent-skinned creature was shown floating in its dark underwater lair, its tentacles splayed out behind it, addressing the camera in its grating native language, which sounded sort of like a whale's song, if the whale in question was into death metal.

Thankfully, someone turned on the English subtitles just before the overlord began to make his evil alien species' somewhat clichéd intentions known.

“We are the Sobrukai,” it said. “And we declare your pitiful species to be unworthy of survival. You shall therefore be eradicated—”

There was more to the overlord's message, but I hit the space bar to skip over it. I remembered the highlights. These malevolent unfeeling inkfish had traveled twelve light-years across interstellar space to wipe out humanity and then knock down all of our Pizza Huts, so that they could seize our rare blue jewel of a world as their own. It was my mission to use my baller videogame skills to stop them. Boo-yah. Press
fire
to continue.

The whole convoluted backstory behind humanity's ongoing war with the Sobrukai was available online, but gamers had to piece it together by digging through an elaborate network of Earth Defense Alliance websites—an alternate-reality game element meant to help players immerse themselves in the game's narrative. According to the information buried on those sites, at some point during the onset of the Sobrukai invasion a decade ago, the EDA had somehow managed to capture one of the aliens' ships undamaged, and then they had reverse-engineered all of its incredibly advanced weaponry, communication, life support, and propulsion technology—seemingly overnight—and then used it to construct a massive global arsenal of combat drones that were capable of going toe-to-toe with the Sobrukai.

Of course, the developers never bothered to explain how the EDA's scientists managed to accomplish these amazing feats in such a short time span while fending off constant attacks from the Sobrukai's vastly superior technology—but the way I saw it, if you were willing to suspend your disbelief enough to believe that a race of anthropomorphic extraterrestrial squids from Tau Ceti had been using an armada of remote-controlled robots to wage war on humanity for the past decade, it was pretty silly to nitpick over plot holes and scientific inaccuracies. Especially if they justified evil alien overlords and dogfighting in space.

I closed the
Terra Firma
client and opened a web browser; then I pulled up Chaos Terrain's website. I clicked through to their website's “About Us” page and scanned it. As a longtime CT super fan, I already knew quite a lot about the company's history. It had been founded back in 2010 by a Bay Area videogame developer named Finn Arbogast, who quit a lucrative job working on the Battlefield series for Electronic Arts to venture out on his own. He founded Chaos Terrain with the lofty goal of “creating the next generation of multiplayer VR games.”