[[continue to chapter one]]
“For what?” mumbled Visor, “We're Conflict gamers. This isn't our zone.”
Tom raised an eyebrow, “Good point. The Browser says this is a privately controlled zone. Where are we?”
Kelly raised her hands, “Calm down, we're not in anywhere dodgy. Let's go for the short story. A while back, a bunch of rich pricks decided to pay someone to create a Strategy engine that encompassed an entire world. Land, Sea, Skies. The Lot. The result was an amazing game, full of insane possibilities, since they essentially allowed the gamer to design and build his own units, buildings, assets... even the methods for resource acquisition.”
Visor whistled, “That's some engine...”
“Damn skippy, but the problem was, the team paid to do this could never get the AI running properly. Unsurprising really, how do you create a program that responds and adapts just as a humans would? The answer is really quite simple.”
“Get in touch with the military,” suggested Tom, “Try and get hold of some of their AI tech?”
Kelly grinned, “It's so much simpler than that. You use players. Gamers.”
Padd was frothing at the mouth by this point, “Splint, I swear, if you tell us that we won that event to become pawns in some over-engineered Strategy game, I will murder you.”
“Hold up Padd, It's not as bad as you think. Yep, we're here to serve under one of the commanders, and I do plan to make sure we'll be serving under the best group we can find, after all, but we're not just units. We're here as a special operations team. We enter enemy bases, we recon, we explore, and then we kick the living snot out of anyone there, and blow it all up... or something like that, he was pretty vague."
Tom closed his eyes, thinking for a second, “As fun as that sounds, I don't fancy being the personal pawn of an armchair Hitler.”
“I'm with Duke here, Splint. The day I do some rich brat's bidding is the day I eat my own 'nade... No offence, dude.”
Tom grinned, “None taken.”
Kel was smirking again, “Good choice of words, 'Rich Brat'. I don't know if it's occurred to you yet, but since we're kind of required to keep this world running, we'd get paid for each and every mission.”
“Yeah, and we have to use the currency to buy weapons, ammo, armour, meds...” replied Visor, scowling, “We're been around the block, Splint.”
“Who said anything about in-game currency? The brat supplies us with whatever we need to complete said missions. They don't use fake currency here.”
Padd's eyes lit up, “You mean-”
Kelly kept smirking, “Congratulations, gentlemen. You are officially paid mercenaries.”
The doors opened. Ahead of them stretched a catwalk, brightly lit from the side, leading across a massive chasm. Below them a massive cliff, almost straight, led down into a frothing bay, where water lapped against massive white stone docks. And between the docks lay wide open ships, each smothered with turrets and guns. It was a strange sight for Tom, since he was used to pure infantry combat, where even the most basic land vehicles were used sparingly, and even then only as props. They never moved, or even contributed to the fight. Now staring at a fleet of ships that looked as if they could tear through an entire land-mass, given enough time, Tom wondered if Kelly really knew what she was doing. Padd disagreed, in his usual, loud way. Splint just dismissed him, in the usual way,
"Oh grow a pair. We still respawn. What's the problem?"
"You fancy being torn apart by offshore guns, and whatever else these nut-jobs have crammed into this engine?"
Kelly grinned, "It beats being torn apart by your own teammates. Remember Chateau?"
Padd went red, "That was an accident, and you know it. You ran in front of the window!"
Splint waved her hand, "Forget it, what's done is done."
Visor waved a hand in front of Padd, "Calm down, we never blamed you for that..."
"Just for the record, we won that round... Shotgun blasts brought the rest of that squad running..." added Tom, eager to defend his trigger happy friend
Splint waved away Duke's comment, "Regardless, we're doing this."
Padd nodded, saying nothing.
"Good, any other complaints?" Splint gave off a slight grin. Nothing but the sound of water lapping against the cliff-side far below.
"I thought so, let's go." she finished, heading to the other side of the bridge, "We're late."
A few minutes later, the group were sitting outside yet another door, idly chatting about rounds past and gone. Visor was brooding, correcting the sights on his rifle to the new engine's physics. Duke was relaxed, sitting by the door, eyes closed, reading up on the headspace forums. On the other side of the corridor, Padd was on edge and despite her best efforts, Splint couldn't calm him down. Not that it stopped her trying, her squadmates mattered to her, but still... Padd was being weird. -er. Weirder, she corrected herself. Then the door opened on it's own, revealing a huge room, covered with strange markings on the walls. Split got up, and walked in, not saying a word to the others. glancing at each other, unsure what they were supposed to do, since Splint rarely actually briefed them, they followed her in. As the doors closed behind them, a very small number of the markings lit up, glowing in the dimly lit room. Then a voice came from above, below, and everywhere, "Welcome to Arteess." Ignoring her squad's instant reaction, which was to form up behind her, she looked at the ceiling, "Hello there, Player. Nice entrance."
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