The Virtual Dead, Page 2

Federal Agent Resa Merrill pushed slightly forward on the black control yoke, nosing the sleek Piper Arrow III down toward the city lights that decorated the floor of the gray darkness. High altitude overcast blocked the white light from the full moon and concealed any stars bright enough to share the night sky. The shroud of obscurity had made for a dull, uneventful night flight.

  Pete Travers gazed passively out of the copilot window at the islands of color and tiny white headlight beams that laced the maze of roadways eight thousand feet below. He loosened his wrinkled tie further and twisted around to look in the dim cabin light at the lone passenger who was daydreaming in the back seat. He gestured downward in confirmation that there was finally something to see.

  "So there is such thing as civilization!" Don Hartman replied as he rested his head against the small Plexiglas window.

  "Not sure I'd call it that," replied Travers with a smirk.

  "Well, at least we scored big-time for once."

  "Yeah, nobody ever expected us to get our hands on a full suit," added Travers. Hartman reached behind and patted the fat, dull silver utility case that had been stuffed into the cargo area behind his seat.

  "Hey, let's have a look at that thing before the lab guys disappear with it forever. What do you think, Don?"

  "I’d like to get just a glimpse of it. I mean, after all, we went through to get the damn thing. Let's do it," replied Hartman, and he turned in his cramped seat to find the handle of the bulky container.

  The unorthodox proposal distracted pilot Merrill as she leveled the obedient airplane. The soft red panel lights highlighted the middle age lines of her face, making her look older than she was. "The higher ups would not take kindly to you guys messing with that thing," she said without turning to look.

  "That sounded like a yes to me, didn't it to you, Pete?"

  "Absolutely a yes," answered Travers and in the low light he was able to catch a half smile on Merrill' face.

  Hartman turned loose his seat belt and hunched over to pull the oversized case from the crowded space behind his seat. He bumped his head on the low ceiling and cursed. The ribbed security container was nearly too large to drag forward. He wrenched it carefully back and forth, finally freeing it and wrestling it to his lap where it came up almost to his shoulders.

  Shadowy wisps of thin gray-brown clouds began to pass outside the aircraft like ghosts. The lights from the city below began to strobe in and out as the unexpected weather quickly grew denser. The aircraft radio suddenly broke in over the steady drone of the aircraft's engine.

  "Piper eight-five Whiskey, Nemo approach, be advised, traffic at your three o'clock, heading westward, altitude unknown."

  Merrill turned her attention to the copilot window and stared into the dark-gray murk. She saw nothing. "Nemo approach, eight-five Whiskey, negative contact. We'll keep looking."

  Hartman cursed again under his breath and shifted positions in the back seat as he struggled with the chrome key locks that governed the two latches on the case. He wrenched at the left-hand lock with a small lock pick kept on his key ring.

  Merrill continued to search. Pete Travers joined her. The weather outside the airplane grew less and less cooperative.

  "Damn, why didn't they forecast this stuff? We were supposed to have good visibility all the way in. If it gets any thicker, we'll be on instruments," Merrill wiped one hand on her pants leg.

  "It's not a problem is it?" asked Travers. "I mean, you're certified on instruments, right?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I just hate single pilot IFR. There's too much to do with the damn radio and all. How much time you got in Pete? You can probably help with that."

  "I've got about twenty hours or so in a Cessna one-fifty-two, but I haven't soloed yet. My instructor says she wouldn't drive with me in a car on the freeway."

  Merrill smiled and scoffed but was drowned out by a jubilant cry from the back.

  "I've got it, it's open, turn on the overhead light," Hartman yelled, as he pushed up the lid of the fat briefcase.

  Merrill looked back over her shoulder. "No way, Don. It would blow my night vision. A flashlight will be bad enough." She leaned forward and searched under her seat. She extracted a small pocket light and carefully handed it over. With the bulky case jerked sideways against the side wall, Hartman squeezed the tiny gray light on and held its beam as steady as possible to reveal the contents.

  For the trio of agents, it was a treasure box of secrets. Packed within the oversized compartment lay two alien-looking objects. Embedded in the foam-lined case, taking up most of the interior, was a large obtusely shaped, black helmet. Six fat molded ribs ran over the crown, and where a visor should have been, the smooth molded plastic jutted outward, forming a kind of modular, binocular-like shield.

  Folded neatly in the compartment beside it, lay an equally strange bodysuit. Little of it was visible, but enough could be seen to assure its complexity. The suit's irregular surface was packed with tubes and wires that ran between the layers of the slick stretch material with intersecting rectangular shapes that appeared to be electronic sensors. One glove and a portion of one boot were visible. Each was even more densely riddled with sensory matrixes.

  "What the hell is it?" asked Travers.

  "It's a real live Sensesuit, Pete. The first one we've ever been able to get our hands on," replied Hartman. He struggled to hold both the case and light in position. "Maybe we'll be able to shove this down the throats of those bastards now."

  A moment of somber reflection passed. The steady drone of the engine dominated the cabin as they remembered their associates who had died trying to infiltrate the bizarre world of the Dragon Masters. With an angry stare, Hartman gazed at the Sensesuit in his lap and realized he was now the only agent left from the original investigation. Those assigned with him had disappeared or been killed. He thought back to all that had been learned, and the heavy price that had been paid for it. Until now, no one had been able to penetrate the binary barriers of the Dragon Masters Club. And no other entry to their strange and twisted existence had been found. What took place among them, took place within a world of bright color and limitless dimension; a place where men became omnipotent and immortal, and some even died that way.

  There was no sufferance of race or religion in the computer worlds of the Dragon Masters. The size and physical strength of a player had little impact in deciding victory in computer-physical combat. In a realm of pure syntheses, mere thought translated into Sensesuit power. An adept player could emerge quite wealthy from the contests. Funds mysteriously deposited into his account by a central computer apparently originated from nowhere and were impossible to trace. On a less successful day, a warrior might escape quite financially depleted, since the costs of failure were comparable to the rewards of victory. Credit, however, was always forthcoming, for as long as a player lived.

  But the suit of war was not for the squeamish. Its power spanned well beyond that of finance. The suit could generate impacts adequate to break any of the larger bones in the human body. And, there were temperature extremes. No area of a player's body was exempt from contact cold or heat. Were a Dragon Master to find himself displaced to a desert terrain scenario, he might indeed perish from heat exhaustion unless he solved the riddle of escape.

  It was the incendiary properties that eventually demanded the attention of Hartman's agency. An alarming series of deaths indicated that the Sensesuit did not simulate death, it initiated it. In several cases, players had forfeited their lives in a spontaneous combustion that left little trace of suit or player.

  Those who continued in the wealthy club apparently did not care to give up the potentially profitable path they had chosen. Had the players themselves been the sole victims of the new kind of underground, the situation might have caused less concern among law enforcement. Unfortunately, the carnage had begun to extend outward to innocent acquaintances of the less fortunate players. Secrecy seemed to be the lifeblood of the Dragon Masters, and anyone inadverten
tly exposed to their activities was considered a threat. Few players realized executions were taking place outside the membership. Most thought the danger to be confined only to battles within the network. Except to a handful of members, the occasional assassination of uninitiated citizens remained a guarded secret.

  But it was no longer a secret from Federal Law Enforcement. The charred remains of players had been much less intriguing than the means by which they had met their ends. The technology required to perform such instantaneous destruction had not existed anywhere until now. The scarce forensic evidence available suggested that some players had broken bones, others had suffocated, and still others had been poisoned. In all cases however, fire had originated within the suit and had destroyed any trace of its origin.

  With the start of the investigation, a morbid procession had begun. Veteran Federal agents who should have made the finest Dragon Master players of all, were cut down one by one. Their carefully concealed identities seemed to have been known all along. Some had apparently asked the wrong questions of the wrong individuals. Others, isolated from the outside world, had managed to become initiates in the system but had burned to death in the suit. Two agents had disappeared completely, possibly after becoming successful players.

  The secrets of the Sensesuit remained intact. No one knew from where they originated, or how they worked, or who was at the head of the Dragon Masters pyramid. The game went on.

  Now for the first time, three Federal agents stared intently at a completely intact suit that was not under the control of the Dragon Master central computer.

  "It's not what I expected. How much do we know about it?" asked Travers.

  "We don't know much, that's for sure. Some say the thing's partly thought-control. The lab guys will be in seventh heaven when they get their hands on this," Hartman replied.

  "Okay boys, close it up and kill that light. It's getting thick. I'm going to have to call in for an instrument approach if we're going to get into Lanier."

  Merrill's passengers quickly assumed strained looks, but could not help returning their attention to the enchanting suit.

  Reluctantly, Hartman pulled the case back into a position in front of him. He handed the small flashlight to Travers who took it and turned to look out the window by his seat. All signs of the city below had disappeared from view. Grey-black haze had taken its place. The ocean of air around the aircraft had become completely undefined. There was no longer a sense of depth or altitude, nothing but a colorless emptiness in every direction. The soft red glow from the instrument panel gave reassurance in the dimly-lit cabin. The needles in the circular gauges vibrated with life, and the panel-mounted counters clicked away in precise meter. The magnetic compass bobbed and swayed in its oil-filled bowl near the top of the windshield.

  Merrill pinched the small button on the handle of her control yoke and spoke warily into the boom mike attached to her headset. "Nemo approach, eight-five Whiskey."

  A few seconds of squelched radio silence passed. A raspy sounding controller's voice came over the cabin overhead speaker. "Eight-five Whiskey, Nemo approach, go ahead."

  "Nemo approach, eight-five Whiskey, thirty miles northwest Lanier, level at six thousand. Sir, um, it's closing in on us here. We, ah, would like to open an instrument flight plan that will get us the Lanier runway three-six ILS approach if possible, sir."

  A reply came. "Eight-five Whiskey, Nemo approach, turn right heading one-nine-zero degrees, maintain six thousand. Expect vectors to Palmer Intersection and hold. Your flight plan will be processed as soon as possible."

  Merrill shook her head. "Damn, why didn't they forecast this crap." She thumbed the button on her yoke handle. "Nemo approach, eight-five Whiskey, understand right turn heading one-nine-zero degrees, maintain six thousand, expect vectors to Palmer and hold."

  Pete Travers stared at Merrill from the copilot seat. "No problem, right?"

  "We'll be flying ovals awhile. You guys may as well sit back and relax."

  "Well, at least this is a nice healthy bird, isn't it?" asked Travers. "I mean this thing looks like new."

  "It's the best the crack dealers had to offer," replied Merrill. "A freebie from the last big drug bust."

  Travers started to comment on the irony of drug dealers too often having better equipment than civilian agencies when he was interrupted by cursing from the back.

  "Get back in there damn it!"

  "Are you flunking out back there as a baggage handler or what, Don?" Travers coughed up a laugh.

  "Hey, don't blame me, it's your damn briefcase in the way!" Hartman continued to wrestle the uncooperative silver case to its place among the disrupted baggage.

  Travers scoffed. "Blame Resa not me, I didn't bring a briefcase."

  "You guys will have to shut up," Merrill complained. " I've got to hear our call sign."

  "Sorry, Captain," acknowledged Travers. "Hope there's nothing breakable back there in your briefcase. We'll shut up, promise."

  "I don't have a briefcase. Pete, once I get set up here you can help with the radio, okay?"

  Before Travers could reply, the air traffic controller's voice again took priority. "Eight-five Whiskey, Nemo approach, turn right heading two-four-zero, cleared direct to Wynn intersection and hold, expect further instructions at zero-three-two-zero Zulu."

  Merrill shook her head irately as she read back her instructions to the controller. For a moment there was radio silence.

  Travers twisted in his seat and turned back to Don Hartman. The cabin light was low enough that he could not clearly make out his co-worker's expression. Travers was continuing to struggle with the bulky Sensesuit case, mumbling under his breath about women always needing to carry too much luggage.

  "Don," said Travers in a low tone. "Resa says she doesn't have a briefcase. You sure that thing isn't yours?"

  Travers halted his unproductive wrestling match and looked through the darkness at his colleague. "What? No, it's not mine. What are you talking about? Whose is it?"

  The two men stared at each other blankly.

  "Bring it out here. We'd better take a look at it."

  Hartman stared blankly at his co-worker then returned to his wretched posture over the small cargo area. He gave up on the oversized Sensesuit case and pushed it back out of the way atop the mountain of clothes and bags. He dug down and jerked a standard-size, black briefcase out from beneath the pile. It was a very plain and unobtrusive type of baggage, thin and small, completely unmarked. It looked expensive.

  "I don't get it," said Hartman as he maneuvered the case into his lap. "Where'd it come from?"

  Merrill twisted at the dials on her navigation console. "Nemo approach, eight-five Whiskey, level at six thousand, entering the hold at five minutes after the hour."

  The controller's reply was hurried. "Eight-five Whiskey, roger.”

  "It's combo-locked Pete. I need a screwdriver or something."

  "Pete," called Merrill.

  "Yeah, what do you need, Rese?"

  "Do you know what an approach plate looks like?"

  "Sorry, Captain, haven't the faintest."

  "In my travel bag in the back. I need it right now. It's a little white book. Find the page that says Lanier ILS three-six, and tear it out for me.”

  Travers leaned over sideways and conveyed her request to Hartman. The disgruntled back seat passenger put aside the phantom briefcase and angled himself to begin digging once again in the overloaded compartment. In Merrill's tan shoulder bag he found the small, white manual that was intended to guide pilots safely down to hardened runways.

  "Got it," he cried victoriously, as the airplane suddenly dipped down, turning his stomach. Travers took the booklet, hunched over and began flipping through the pages. The Instrument Landing Approach page Merrill had requested was torn out and held out to her.

  "Rese, is there any kind of screwdriver around here?" he asked, as she took the approach plate.

  Merrill nodded gratefully and c
lipped the instruction sheet to the yoke in front of her. "In the flap behind your seat. There's a tube to drain the sumps. It's got a screwdriver tip on it."

  "Thanks," replied Travers. Hartman had heard the exchange. He dug into the fabric pocket of the copilot seat back and found the clear, plastic drain tube. A second later the unclaimed briefcase was back in his lap, and he again began working on the resistant little latches that secured the cover. Poor lighting made the job difficult. He labored at the left-hand lock as Travers looked on. Finally, the well-made cast metal hook broke in two, and a small piece of it flew across the tiny cabin and bounced off the passenger window. The first latch popped up and open.

  Rain began to pelt the Piper's windshield, large droplets that hammered in loud and soft waves of intensity. Visibility had become nil. Merrill' attention was intently focused on her timer as she guided the aircraft in a continuous oval pattern, waiting for the controller's coarse voice to call eight-five Whiskey and award its pilot a chance to find the long, black runway in the rainy, black night.

  Hartman wrenched at the case with all his strength and the second of the two latches finally bent and broke. He slowly lifted open the thin, lightweight cover, holding the small flashlight down low to prevent it from interfering with the busy pilot. Hartman's eyes opened wide at the first glimpse of the case's interior. Within it lay an unfathomable nightmare.

  "My God, it's full of C4!"