Armada (9 page)

“Shit!” I heard Diehl shout over the comm. “I just lost my gorram shields because I'm already out of frakkin' power!”

“Dude,” Cruz said. “You shouldn't mix swears from different universes.”

“Says who?” Diehl shot back. “Besides, what if
BSG
and
Firefly
took place in the
same universe
? You ever consider
that
?”

I heard a thunderous series of explosions behind me and swung my head around just in time to see the IDC
Doolittle
erupt into a huge fireball amidst a hail of enemy plasma fire.

“What did I tell you?” Cruz muttered into his headset. “There goes the carrier, and the rest of our drone reserves.”

“Yeah, and that goddamn Icebreaker still isn't finished making its stupid ice-fishing hole, either,” Diehl added. “Game over, man. Game-the-fuck-over.”

“Not yet,” I muttered.

Clenching my teeth, I swung my Interceptor back around and returned to try to help defend the Icebreaker, targeting the cluster of Glaives attacking its aft thrusters—but I couldn't get a lock on any of the targets flashing on my HUD, because I kept having to dodge incoming enemy fire, as well as friendly fire from the sentry guns on the Icebreaker's armored skin as my drone skimmed over it.

My drone took two more direct hits, knocking my shields down to fifteen percent. One more hit and they would fail, and my weapons would follow soon after. Not good.

I jammed my flight stick forward, cutting into a sharp dive to avoid flying right into the beam of the Icebreaker's pulsing melt laser. Ignoring AVA's warnings about my drone's imminent power failure, I gunned the throttle and continued turning into a barrel roll, both sun guns still blazing.

“Shit!” I heard Diehl curse. “They got me, guys. I'm out.”

I glanced at my HUD just in time to see Diehl's Interceptor vanish off my scopes.

“Me too,” Cruz added a second later. He unleashed a colorful stream of profanity on his comm and logged out of the game completely.

The digital deaths of my two best friends distracted me just long enough to take another series of direct hits, causing my shields and weapons to fail. I immediately initiated the self-destruct sequence on my drone's power core, even though I knew it was unlikely I would last the seven seconds required for it to complete.

All of the Glaive Fighters in the vicinity began to redirect their fire at me, hoping to destroy my core before it could complete its countdown and go critical. But in doing so, they were momentarily forced to take their focus off the Icebreaker, just as I'd hoped.

Five seconds remaining on my drone's self-destruct sequence. Then four, three—

But that was when the inevitable happened—the Icebreaker finally took one hit too many and exploded directly beneath me. The ensuing fireball destroyed my drone, along with every ship within its blast radius.

Ominous music began to play in my headphones as the words
mission failed
appeared, superimposed over my now disembodied view of the Sobrukai armada, as each of the six Dreadnaught spheres began to recall their remaining drones and return to their original formation in orbit, with this minor threat to their world now vanquished.

I blindly powered off my game console and sat in the darkness for a moment before pulling off my VR helmet and returning to the real world with a sigh.

My phone rang a few seconds later. Cruz was on the line—he had already checked, and wanted to let me know that
Attack on Sobrukai
wasn't on the list of replayable missions—at least not yet. Then he conferenced Diehl in for his traditional post-mission bitch fest. After, the Mikes tried to cajole me into joining them for a
Terra Firma
mission, but I mumbled something about having homework and said I'd see them at school tomorrow.

Then I got up and went over to my closet. When I opened the door, a small avalanche of stuff spilled out onto my feet. I rummaged through the dense forest of dress shirts and winter coats on plastic hangers until I found my father's old jacket way at the back. It was an old black baseball jacket with leather sleeves, and it was completely covered, front and back, with embroidered patches, all somehow science fiction or videogame related, including several high-score-award patches for old Activision games like
Starmaster, Dreadnaught Destroyer, Laser Blast,
and
Kaboom!
Running down both sleeves were logos and military insignia from the Rebel Alliance, the Star League, the United Federation of Planets, the Colonial Fleet from
BSG,
and the Robotech Defense Force, among others.

I studied each one in turn, running my fingertips over the embroidery. When I'd last tried this jacket on a few years ago, it had still been too big on me. But when I slipped it on now, it fit me perfectly, almost as if it had been tailor made.

I found myself itching to wear it to school tomorrow—despite my earlier vow to stop living in the past and obsessing over the father I had never known.

I looked around at the posters, toys, and models that filled my room and felt a pang in my chest at the thought of moving all my dad's prized possessions up into the attic. Despite my good intentions, it seemed I wasn't quite ready to let go of my father. Not yet.

I leaned back in my chair, stifling a yawn that did not wish to be stifled. I did a quick systems-wide status check, the results of which confirmed that my wagon was draggin'. Plutonium chamber empty. Sleep required immediately.

I took three steps toward my bed and collapsed facefirst onto my vintage
Star Wars
bed sheets, where I immediately fell into a fitful sleep.

My dreams that night were plagued by visions of a giant Sobrukai overlord constricting its enormous tentacles around a defenseless planet Earth as if preparing to swallow it whole.

W
hen I walked out to my car the next morning and glanced down to unlock it, I saw the long sine-wave gouge that now ran bumper to bumper down the driver's side.

Someone had keyed my car. I turned to scan the surrounding houses, on the off chance Knotcher was still in the vicinity. But he was nowhere to be seen, and it occurred to me he had probably done this last night, while the Omni was parked outside Starbase Ace. I just hadn't noticed after work because it was dark out, and my car's paint job wasn't exactly unblemished to begin with.

I turned back to resurvey the damage, this time in the context of the vehicle's overall condition. The long scratch Knotcher had added would be barely noticeable to anyone else. One of the few perks of driving an ancient, rusted-out shit wagon was that it took real effort to make it look any less aesthetically pleasing than it already was.

This realization allowed me to calm myself enough to heed the whispered advice of Master Yoda now on repeat in my head:
Let go of your anger.

I often tried to calm myself with Yoda's voice (which sounded nothing like Fozzie Bear, damn you) during moments of distress. Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon or Mace Windu sometimes had calming movie-quote wisdom to share too.

That was only on good days, of course. On the bad ones, I found myself drawing on equally compelling advice from Lords Vader or Palpatine.

But it wasn't their dark influence that motivated me to get the tire iron out of the Omni's trunk and place it inside my backpack. It was the voice of my friend Diehl, recounting his warning last night about Knotcher's threat to seek revenge.

I parked my car in the student lot and trudged toward my school's front entrance while counting off the numbers of days remaining in my sentence—only forty-five more to go.

But when I reached the open grassy area bordering the parking lot, Knotcher was there waiting for me, along with two of his brain-trust buddies. All three were grinning, arms folded across their chests like goons in some
Power Rangers
episode.

My gaze shot over to the school's front entrance, calculating the distance. If I tried, I could probably make it there before they stopped me. But I found that I didn't want to.

Knotcher was standing out in front. As I'd feared, keying my car wasn't enough. He'd decided that his manhood was now in question, and that he had no choice but to corner me and deliver a beating—with some help, of course.

Knotcher's two gargantuan pals were known around school as “the Lennys,” even though neither of them was actually named Lenny. They'd been saddled with this nickname after our class read
Of Mice and Men
in sophomore English. I didn't think the moniker really fit. Yes, they were both big and dumb, like the character in the book, but deep down, Steinbeck's Lenny had been a kindhearted soul. The two Lennys standing in front of me now (who I thought of as Skinhead Lenny and Neck-Tattoo Lenny, respectively) were both as mean as they were massive. But their size was dwarfed by the epic scope of their stupidity.

“Love your new jacket!” Knotcher said. He made a show of slowly circling me to examine each of the patches sewn onto it. “These are
really
impressive. Is there a little rainbow patch on there somewhere, too?”

After a few seconds of processing time, both of the Lennys chuckled—that was how long it took their reptilian brains to complete Knotcher's elegant rainbow-equals-gay equation.

When I failed to respond, Knotcher tried again.

“You know, that
sorta
looks like a varsity letterman's jacket,” he said. “If being a videogame nerd who can't get laid was a sport.” He laughed. “Then I suppose you'd be our star quarterback—eh, Lightman?”

I could already feel my anger spiraling out of control. What had made me think it was a good idea to wear my father's old jacket to school? I'd basically been inviting public ridicule on the one topic guaranteed to set me off—and of course Knotcher would be the one to take the bait. Maybe that was why I'd done it in the first place—the same reason I'd confronted Knotcher yesterday. Some angry caveman lobe of my brain was itching for a fight—and so I had orchestrated this confrontation. This was my doing.

Knotcher and the Lennys took a step toward me. But I stood my ground.

“At least you were smart enough to bring backup this time,” I said as I slipped off my backpack and took both of its shoulder straps in my right hand, feeling the comforting weight of the tire iron inside.

Knotcher's smile momentarily faltered, then twisted into a sneer.

“They're just here to make sure you don't fight dirty,” he said. “Like last time.”

Then, in direct contradiction to what he'd just said, Knotcher nodded at the Lennys, and all three of them began to spread out, forming a rough semicircle around me.

In my head, I thought I could hear the cracked-but-commanding voice of Emperor Palpatine, saying,
“Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you!”

“You're in deep shit now, eh, Lightman?” Knotcher sneered. “Kinda like your old man.”

I knew Knotcher was trying to push my buttons. Unfortunately, he'd pushed the big red one first. The ICBMs had just left their silos, and now there was no recalling them.

I didn't remember unzipping my backpack, or taking out the tire iron, but I must have, because now I had the cold steel rod clenched in my hand, and I was raising it to strike.

All three of my opponents stood frozen for a moment, their eyes wide. The Lennys threw up their hands and started backing away. Knotcher's eyes flicked over to them, and I saw him registering that his simian pals had bowed out of the fight. He started moving backward too.

I looked at the curb a few feet behind him, had a nasty thought, and followed through on it by lunging at Knotcher with the tire iron. He lurched backward and—just as I'd hoped—caught a heel on the concrete rise and landed flat on his back.

And then I was standing over him, looking down at the tire iron clutched in my hands.

Off to my left, someone screamed. My head snapped around and I saw that an audience had gathered—a handful of students on their way in to first period. Among them one girl, too young and deer-in-the-headlights to be anything but a freshman, slapped a hand over her mouth and flinched backward as I looked her way. As if she was terrified that I—Zack the school psycho—would choose her as my next target.

I glanced back at the Lennys, who were now standing among the students who had gathered to watch the fight. All of the onlookers seemed to be wearing the same expression of horrified anticipation, as if they believed they might be seconds away from witnessing their first homicide.

A wave of cold shame washed over me as the intensity of my rage faded away. I looked down at the tire iron clutched in my hands and let it clatter to the pavement. I heard a chorus of nervous laughter behind me, along with more than one relieved sigh.

I stepped away from Knotcher. He slowly got to his feet. We stared at each other for a moment, and he looked as if he was about to say something when his gaze shot upward, focused on something in the sky behind me.

When I turned around, I saw a strange-looking aircraft approaching from the east, moving at an incredible speed. The closer it got, the more familiar it looked. My brain still refused to accept what my eyes were seeing—until a few seconds later, when the craft braked to a dead stop and hovered directly over us, close enough for me to make out the Earth Defense Alliance crest stenciled on the side of its armored hull.

“No
way,
” I heard someone whisper. A second later, I realized it was me.

It was an ATS-31 Aerospace Troop Shuttle, one of the ships used by the Earth Defense Alliance in both
Armada
and
Terra Firma
. And it was about to land in front of my high school.

I definitely wasn't hallucinating this time: Dozens of other people were staring up at the shuttle in amazement, too. And I could hear the rumble of the shuttle's fusion engines and feel the heat from their exhaust buffeting my face. It was really up there.

As the shuttle began to descend, everyone in my vicinity scattered like roaches, heading for the safety of the school.

I just stood there like a statue, unable to look away. The ship was identical to the troop shuttles I'd piloted while playing
Armada,
right down to the EDA crest and identification bar code stamped on the underside of its hull.

The Earth Defense Alliance can't be real, Zack,
I assured myself.
And neither can that shuttle you think you're looking at right now. You
are
hallucinating again, only it's much worse this time. This time, you're having a full-on psychotic break.

But I couldn't make myself believe that. There was too much evidence to the contrary.

Okay, then you might be trapped inside a lucid dream, like Tom Cruise in
Vanilla Sky
. Or maybe your reality is really just an incredibly convincing computer simulation, like in
The Matrix
. Or maybe you just died in a car accident, and this is all just an elaborate fantasy playing out in your brain during the last few seconds of your life—like in that one old
Twilight Zone
episode.

As I continued to watch the Earth Defense Alliance shuttle land, I told myself that I had no choice but to roll with the situation as best I could—at least until I woke up, ran into Agent Smith, or heard Rod Serling begin his closing voice-over.

The shuttle lowered its landing gear and touched down softly on the broad sidewalk leading up to the school's main entrance. I glanced back at the school and saw faces filling the windows in every classroom while hundreds of students poured out of every school exit, eager to get a better look at the strange ship and find out what the hell was happening.

It was easy to tell which of them recognized the Earth Defense Alliance shuttle. They, like me, were the ones looking the most shocked right now. To everyone else, it probably looked like some new kind of military aircraft, a slightly futuristic cross between a helicopter and a Harrier jet, like the drop ships in
Avatar
or
Edge of Tomorrow
.

The shuttle's automatic doors slid open, and three men wearing dark suits jumped out. They looked like Secret Service agents. Our principal, Mr. Wood, stood there frozen for a few seconds, then rushed forward to greet them, his hand outstretched. After he shook hands with all of them, the shortest of the three men removed his sunglasses, and I heard myself gasp. It was Ray Wierzbowski, my boss at Starbase Ace.

What the hell was Ray doing here, dressed like one of the Men in Black? And where the hell had he obtained a working Earth Defense Alliance tactical shuttle?

I watched in a daze as Ray flashed some form of ID at Principal Wood. They conferred briefly and shook hands again; then Ray raised a small bullhorn and used it to address the growing crowd.

“We apologize for interrupting your morning, everyone,” Ray said, in an uncharacteristically commanding voice that echoed across the school grounds. “But we desperately need to locate Zack Lightman. Does anyone know where he is right now? Zack Lightman? Please look around and point him out if you see him. We require his assistance with an urgent matter of national security. Zack! Zack Lightman!”

I realized Ray was saying
my
name about the same time I realized that everyone within my field of vision was now staring and pointing at me—including Knotcher and both Lennys. It was like that scene from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. Eventually, my public school training took over and I raised my hand and shouted “Here!”

When he spotted me, Ray grinned and started running across the grass toward me like his life depended on it. It was the fastest I'd ever seen him move.

“Hey there, Zack!” he said when he reached me, only slightly out of breath. Then he rested a hand on my shoulder and nodded at the gleaming shuttle behind him. “Wanna go for a ride?”

It's finally happening, Zack. The Call to Adventure you've been waiting for your whole life. It's standing right in front of you.

And I was scared shitless.

But I still managed to nod my head and mumble, “Yes.”

Ray grinned—proudly, I think—and squeezed my shoulder.

“I thought so!” he said. “Follow me, pal. There's no time to lose.”

As the entire school looked on, I followed Ray back across the lawn and over to the waiting Earth Defense Alliance shuttle. As the crowd parted to clear a path for us, I spotted my ex-girlfriend, Ellen, staring at me in disbelief from amid the sea of faces. The crowd swelled forward and I lost sight of her. I spotted Cruz and Diehl a few seconds later. They'd managed to push their way to the front of the crowd and were standing a few feet away from the two Secret Service types, who were now standing guard in front of the shuttle, holding the throng at bay with the force-field-like power of their buzz cuts and Ray-Bans.