We Few

The screamer was nearly as tall as a Mardukan, and had similar horns, but red skin and scales that were at least partially resistant to bead rifle fire. Despite that, the point engaged with a burst of low-powered beads which went downrange with a quiet crack and caught the screamer in the chest.

Unfortunately, the screamer lived up to its name and began howling. Alarms began to shrill in the background.

"We're blown," Marinau snarled. "Plan Delta!"

The team began to move faster, but as they passed a corridor, a blast of plasma came down it, and took out the team member who'd been covering the movement element's advance. Flamers—bigger versions of the screamers, with heavier armor that could at least partially resist the team's heavy weapons—came down the side corridor, while more flooded in behind them. Then things like flowers started popping out of the walls, throwing liquid fire that burned their armor.

Raoux blinked her eyes as she came out of the VR simulation, then cursed as more of the team members popped into the gray formlessness of "between" with her.

"Well, that didn't go too well," Yatkin observed with truly monumental understatement.

"No, it didn't," Raoux agreed dryly, shaking her head.

"There ought to be a way we can mimic the flamers, Jo," Kaaper mused.

"Paint ourselves red?" Raoux said bitingly.

"You know what I mean," Kaaper replied as two more figures formed.

One of them was a humanoid, tiger-striped tomcat, a bit short of two meters tall, cradling a bead rifle. The other figure was short, overweight, and young, with mussed hair and messy clothing. It was a standard Geek Mod One, the normal first-timer's persona avatar in the Surreal Battle matrix. He wore holstered, pearl-handled bead pistols for weapons.

"Hey, Tomcat," Raoux greeted, and looked over at the other figure. "Who's this?"

"I'm Sabre," the geek said. "Can I play?"

"Great," Yatkin said. "Just what we need. For ca

"Can I play? Huh? Huh? Can I?" Sabre bounced up and down.

"Sure." Kaaper waved a hand, and a screamer appeared out of the air and turned towards the capering figure.

A bead pistol appeared, gripped in both of Sabre's hands. Even as he continued to bounce in excitement, the pistol began spitting beads. The screamer was spun in place as beads took off both arms, then the head. The rounds continued long after the magazine should have quit firing, and the head was blown into pulp before it even hit the ground.

"I got it!" Sabre squealed. "I got it!"

"Hacks are not going to help!" Yatkin snarled.

"No hacks," the human-sized tomcat said.

"Bullshit," Yatkin replied.

"No hacks," Sabre said, and changed. Again, it was an off-the-shelf mod, one styled to look slightly like Princess Alexandra. It could be used for male or female; Alexandra had been a handsome woman and made a damned handsome man. It looked very unlike Prince Roger, though, except in the eyes. The mod kept Alexandra's long, light brown hair, and now wore a torn, chameleon-cloth battle suit, patched with odds and ends of much less advanced textiles. Beside the bead pistols, which were now standard IMC military models, the figure carried a sword and had a huge chem-powered rifle across its back.

"Not hacks—experience. In a hard school," Sabre added in cold tones, and there was no trace of the excited kid anymore.

"Have to be a pretty damned hard school," Kaaper replied mockingly.

"Death planet, one each," Roger said to the VR system, and the formlessness changed. Now they were standing on a ruined parapet. Low mounds, the vine-covered ruins of a large city, stretched down the hill to a line of jungle. Rank upon rank of screamers were emerging from the jungle, and a voice spoke in the background.

"I'm sorry... scriiiitch..." the voice said, breaking up in static. "Forget that estimate of five thousand. Make it fifteen thousand... ."

A hot, moist wind carried the smell of jungle rot as the endless lines of screamers lifted their weapons and began a loud chant. They broke into a run, charging up the hill, soaking up the fire of the defenders, climbing the walls with rough ladders, swarming up the sides, pounding on the gate. Spears arced up and transfixed the firers, hands reached up and pulled them off the walls, down into the waiting spears and axes.

Through it all, Sabre left a trail of bodies as the sword flicked in and out, taking attackers in the throat, chest, stomach. Arms fell and heads flew as he carved the howling screamers into ruin, but they came on. The wall's other defenders died around him, leaving him practically alone against the screamer horde, and still the sword flashed and bit and killed... .

The scene changed again. It was dark, but their low-light systems showed a line of ax-wielding screamers, at least a thousand, charging a small group in a trench. Sabre spun in place, a large chemical pistol in one hand, sword in the other. Bullets caught the screamers—generally in the throat, sometimes the head—as the sword spun and took off a reaching arm, the head of an ax, a head. The trench filled with blood, most of the defenders were down, but still Sabre spun in his lethal dance.

A throne room. A screamer king speaking to Sabre, weird intonations, and a voice like a grave. Sabre nodding and reaching back, pulling each strand of his hair into place in a ponytail. He nodded again, his hands ostentatiously away from the bead pistols on his hips, not watching the guards at his back—not really looking at the king. Eyes wide and unfocused.

"You and what army?" he asked as the hands descended, faster than a snake, and the room vanished in blood.

"Lots of fun," Yatkin said after a minute.

"Oodles and oodles," Sabre replied.

"Yeah, but the firing had to be a hack," Kaaper pointed out. "Too many rounds. The old infinite-bead gun."

"Oh, please," Sabre said. "Watch." He summoned a target and drew the bead pistol at his right hip. He didn't appear to be trying to impress them with the draw, but it simply appeared in his hand. And then he fired, rapidly, but not as rapidly as he had.

"Not particularly hard," Sabre said, lifting his left hand up for a moment to fire with a two-handed grip.

"You just reloaded," Yatkin said, wonderingly. "You'd palmed a magazine, and you reloaded on the fly. I caught it that time. Son of a bitch."

"Don't talk about my mother that way," Sabre said seriously. Then he lowered his arm and shook it, dropping a cascade of magazines onto the gray "floor."

"Sorry," Yatkin replied. "Sir. But can you really... ?"

"Really," Sabre replied.

"So..." the tomcat said. "He in?"

"I du

"Wa

"No," Raoux said, after a long pause. "No, I don't think I want to death match."

"The VR training on the rest of the teams is going well," Tomcat told Sabre. "Can't bring in your oversized buddies very well, the sets aren't made for them, and they don't have toots, but their job is pretty straightforward, and they'll have trained teams leading them. I think our opponents are going to be remarkably surprised when we go for the big push."

"Gotta love net-gaming," Raoux said with a nasty smile. "And I've always thought Surreal Battle was the best around. How's our support coming?"

"Well, that's sort of hard to know," Tomcat said, frowning and waving a hand. "Sort of hard to know..."

"What fun," Helmut said, shaking his head. "During the Imperial Festival? Why not just put up a big sign: 'Coup in progress!' Security is always maxed during the Festival."

He sat behind the desk in his day cabin. Much as he trusted his personal command staff, this was one message he'd had no intention of viewing anywhere outside the security of his personal quarters. Now he looked across his desk at Julian with what could only be described as a glare.