FSE

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IX

Katryn scratched the bridge of her nose, and placed a second engineer token on the R&D section of her map.

"Your move!" she said.

If my sister had assigned her researchers to develop a small project, such as a weapons upgrade, it wouldn't take her many turns to finish the project with two engineers. The game was eleven turns in, and already I was strapped for cash. I had spent most of my income building mines for extracting vitellium, the only currency mentioned in the game. Nowhere did the rules involve Dollars, Pounds or Euros. It was as if Duran deliberately created the game with an international perspective in mind.

"Alright," I said. A landscape of deserts and mountains populated with engineers and infantry units sprawled on the hex map before me. I evaluated my options. I could spend an espionage token to take a sneak peek into her top-secret project, but I only had a single action point left for that turn. Instead I placed another mining token on the island of Ra'gesso. The added source of vitellium would almost double my cash-flow.

We had studied the rules for Future Battalion since late afternoon. They were not overly complicated, but the description for each weapon was extremely detailed, taking up nearly half of the rules compendium itself. I felt I had played games like this before. It was a bit like playing RISK with an added layer of invention and fancy troops. It didn't strike me as overly original and I could not keep wondering why his rivals didn't just copy the idea instead of resorting to murder. Unless the murderer was not an industry rival. Maybe Duran was murdered for other reasons and the game was simply...

"My secret project," laughed Kat and turned over her secret project card. "I'm going radio on you." Her engineers had completed the development of an fmw Rifle.

Maybe that was it. Duran had infringed on a syndicated radio copyright, and now they wanted him dead. But why not file a case? FOX likes to sue people, don't they?

"Bring it on, sis" I said and got my defenses ready for her onslaught. That turn, Kat obliterated my entire force at Ra'gesso. The next round, she conquered the mainland, and finally she pummeled into my home base and left it in ruins. My forces were defenseless against her troops and the game was over in less than thirty minutes.

Confused, we looked at each other.

"Did we miss something?"

"The game was really fun until that rifle came into play."

We read the instructions again and turned to the page on fmw weaponry.

Non-FMw units have no defense score against FMws, said the manual_._

We both shook our heads. These game mechanics were just plain stupid. With so many games to his portfolio, Kendall Duran should have known better than to mess up his own game with such an obvious flaw to the game design. Confused, we set the game up again, and started a new round. This time we both focused our efforts on developing a line of fmw_weapons. I won the race by developing the cheaper _fmw pistol, and conquered her desert-based oil rigs. She responded by developing the fmw artillery, and soon we had wiped each other off the map. By the time every unit in the game was dead, we had played a full eighteen minutes and the game was a stalemate.

"This game is no fun," said Kat. "From now on, everybody's just going to make radio weapons." She was right. The _FMw_weaponry made the game so unbalanced it was almost unplayable. Kendall Duran screwed this one up real bad. Why he would even promote a game in this sorry state was anybody's guess, and a price-tag of two hundred fifty bucks was hopeless. Kat studied the pile of cards representing the weaponry.

"Look at this," she said. She compared two weaponry cards, side by side. One weapon was a standard Krag Desert Eagle. The caliber was listed along with its range and damage. Simple and to the point. The other card was a hand held an FMw handgun. It was supposed to be all sci-fi and fun, but the details were too detailed and overwhelming, listing Gauss values, wavelengths in Hertz, output in Watt and phase angles specified in degrees. Apart from being unplayable, the game design was drowning in details that were totally redundant for playing the actual game.

If it were in fact a game only.

"I don't think he was trying to sell the game," Kat said, thoughtfully. "He was using the game to promote something else."

"Like fmw tech? But it's not for real, is it?"

If Duran wasn't trying to promote his game, then what? On the back page of the manual, the developer credit was shared between two people: Kendall Duran and someone named Bill Holman. Duran had been shot and killed by the tall man, but I had a strong feeling Holman might have been the remaining person in the basement - the one who passed me a magic wand. I hadn't thought much of it, being busy running for my life, but Dr. Burris had mentioned its importance.

"Did it contain anything?" He'd asked.

Kat shrugged. "The weapon reference mentions something called MAL -a_Microwave_ Accelerator Lens, that can be fitted into every standard weapon, to turn it into a FMw one."

We dug through the pile of cards and pulled out the one describing the _MAL_accelerators. You could buy them individually to fit onto your existing weaponry, or you could buy the blueprints and mass produce your own, but it would set you back a small fortune.

"Are you alright?" Kat asked concerned. "You've got that look on your face."

"I think I know what Kendall was selling," I said. "But I hope by God I'm wrong."

I left mom and Kat and headed off. We'd played the game. But like Mike Ayers had said, one piece had gone missing. And I was convinced I was one vital piece away from solving this case. That piece had to be the magic wand I had been given by Bill Holman. Of course magic wands don't exist in the real world, but I had perceived it as such when I was freaking out. Whatever it contained had to be important. I had held it in my hand, and I had thrown it away.

On my way out the door I thought I spotted a black Lexus Sedan pulling out and speeding away. I could not see the driver, but a nagging sensation told me I was being watched closely. I knew the tall man drove a car just like this, but a black Lexus could be driven by anyone. Someone wanted me to find the missing piece, and someone wanted me dead. This was no longer a game played for fun. I was playing a real life game of survival or death. A beige army versus a gray army. And I didn't know which side I was playing.

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X

I drove back to the convention center, where the maintenance crew was busy cleaning up after the attendees. Bin-bag upon bin-bag was being filled with game pieces, broken plastic militia and napkins - the ketchup-stained casualties of conventions. Pretending to be a crew member, I grabbed a waste-bag and followed the cleaning personnel to a growing pile of refuse, next to the fire exit. This was the place, where I'd crawled around on my hands and knees two days earlier, with a chunk of lead in my leg and a magic wand in my hand. I had no idea what I was looking for, but it had to be here somewhere. Two days ago, I could not trust my eyes, but my fingers had felt the magic wand, and my mind traveled back to the seconds after Holman gave it to me. My eyes had seen the object as a short wooden rod, but my tactile memory disagreed: the object was too large for my fingers to wrap around. I remembered touching a cool metal cylinder with a screw top at one end. The top was slightly narrower than the bottom, which was flat and probably meant for standing up. My fingers had rubbed a slightly rough surface, as if a coat of paint was peeling off.

What did you do with the damn thing? I wondered. I must have held the object for less than a minute before the security guards helped me to my feet. I dived into the pile of trash like a starving raccoon, and worked my way towards the wall. Whatever the item had been, I had thrown it away in a moment of panic and it would not be inside a bag. I dug through discarded coke cans and food scraps for the better of an hour, before I found an object that was familiar to the touch. It was a simple aluminum drinking flask with a gray plastic screw-top; the type you carry along on a camping trip. The flask was decorated with the laughing face of Mickey Mouse, but the paint was flaking off. Was this my magic wand? At first, I thought the flask was empty. It was much too light and nothing poured out. But when I probed inside with my fingers, I found a single photographic negative curled up against the wall of the flask.

So, this was what all the killing was about?

The lettering was too small to read, but I was pretty sure I held the schematics for the FAP generator mentioned in Future Battalion. Duran and Holman never intended to sell the game on its own, but used it as a decoy to attract investors. Investors who recognized the value of the invention. People with money, and loads of them. People who meant to win any war they pleased, at any cost. I grabbed a coke-bottle from the refuse pile and smashed it against the wall. I selected a curved shard of glass that would serve as a magnifying glass and knelt down to study the photo in the sunlight. The drawing was too technical for me to understand, but I knew I was on the right track. I was about to put the negative into my wallet, when a single line if writing on the lower right corner of the sheet caught my eye.

Slide 1 of 6.

Duran and Holman were no fools. They knew they were taking a deadly chance, bringing the blueprints to the con. So, they'd brought only the first part of the schematics and left the remaining five somewhere safe, as a life insurance. Only, their insurance policy hadn't paid off, and now I held one sixth of that puzzle.

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