Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) (16 page)

The shouts in his speakers were almost deafening as he swiveled around to face them through the webcam.

“And that, boys and girls, is how it’s done!” Link howled with a quick cha-ching of his Zippo—a celebratory cigarette already hanging from his lip.

“Hey Link?” Lee asked. “How do your vitals look right about now?”

Link puffed a drag and exhaled. “Put it to you this way, Top. We were a single butt-cheek hair away from being toast with that Destroyer. But with that little stunt you pulled?” He chuckled through a cloud of smoke. “Well, my man,
you
are that butt-cheek hair.”

“Eloquently put,” Mac laughed. “By the way, boys, you can all thank me later for that little hacking clinic I put on back there in the barracks.”

“No qualms about it,” Lee congratulated. “That was some nice work, and thanks again for catchin’ my back with the engineering cover story. Granted, I’d have liked to have gotten outta there before we were discovered, but that little piece of fiction bought Hamish the time he needed, so thanks.”

“Well, as long as we’re being all honest and sharey, I guess I should give you your due for the Destroyer,” she admitted. “Pretty sweet moves.”

“See?” Danny jabbed. “How hard was that?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Mac added. “It could’ve potentially been the single stupidest idea ol’ Maverick here has ever come up with, but since it worked out for the best, I’ll give props.”

“You can be my wingman any time, Mac,” Lee said playfully.

“Yeah, well, don’t go stripping off your shirt just yet, alright?” she smirked. “I’ve seen you on a beach before, and let’s just say you’re not exactly volleyball scene material—get me?”

Link wailed in the background.

“I love ya, lass, but that was just plain mean,” said Hamish.

“Seriously, Mac, what’s up with the hate?” Danny defended his friend. “Besides, it’s been a while since you’ve seen our boy there. He’s become quite the gym rat since he left town.”

Initially satisfied to let the matter drop, Lee found himself feeling a little bit more chipper than usual, and cocking an eyebrow, he leaned into the camera and grinned.

“Thanks Danny, but truth be told, we could sit around here all night, making snide comments about chest deficiencies on this team—”

Mac’s lip curled as a hysterical Link fell out of his chair.

“But honestly,” said Lee, “where’s the fun in that?”

“I’d like to state for the record that I was in no way setting him up to make that crack,” Danny added, sensing the rising hostility in his red-faced Comm-Spec. “So please Mac, don’t spit in my drink this weekend, okay?”

She nodded grudgingly.

“Suffice it to say, nice job everybody,” Lee concluded—his exuberance quickly fading back to melancholy. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta finish preppin’ for my afternoon class before I can hit the rack tonight, plus I’ve got another early-morning faculty meeting to look forward to.”

“You’re killing me, bro,” Danny groaned. “Trust me. We’re all well aware of how much tomorrow sucks. So how about we don’t trample all over tonight to get to it, alright?”

“Fair enough,” Lee nodded. “Nice job, everyone. Seriously, out of the roughly seven billion people on the face of this planet, none of ‘em have ever been able to do what we pulled off here tonight. I don’t know about y’all,” he paused with a cynical stare at the dust-covered degrees on his wall, “but I’m pretty damn proud of that.”

“Hear, hear, brother,” Hamish agreed.

“Right on,” Link exclaimed.

“Amen,” Danny said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mac droned. “We’re the kings of the world, and all of that. First round’s on me Friday, boys. Be there, or be square.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” Lee said.

“I’m sorry?” she balked, obviously still sour over the chest crack from earlier. “How self-deluded are you that you’d think I was talking to you, flyboy?”

Lee grinned—his finger steady over the computer’s power button. “‘Night, Mac,” he smiled, pressing it before she could retort.

****

“Tori, it’s me. Get the sergeant major on the phone and instruct the flight crew to prep for departure. We leave for Jacksonville within the hour.”

Part Two

Chapter 9: Visitor

Lee rolled over in bed and slammed a groggy hand down on his nightstand, silencing the buzzing alarm clock for a fifth and final time. Rubbing his eyes for a moment, still half asleep, he glanced back over to the clock, only to spot the bright red digits, 7:32, blinking back at him.

“Aww, crap,” he muttered, launching out of bed toward the shower, and a morning which was set to begin in 28 minutes with an unfinished lesson plan on Bunker Hill.

After searching in vain for a spot in the faculty parking lot, Lee eventually pulled the Jeep to rest in the gravel beside the nearby performing arts center and jogged up the steps to the Collins history building with an impressive 83 seconds to spare. Exiting the stairwell on the second floor, he cut through the history department’s main lobby, where a young blonde sat slouched behind the reception desk, her fingers wrapped tightly around a pink, floral coffee mug as she perused her fourth celebrity gossip blog of the morning. Meanwhile, across the room, a casually dressed, middle-aged man sat silently on the sofa, his hands clasped atop a long, wooden cane, which was propped on the floor between his knees.

“Mornin’ Kim,” Lee said with a wave as he passed.

“Morning, Dr. S,” replied the blonde in her usual bubbly tone. “I just put on a fresh pot of coffee in the breakroom if you’re interested.”

Delighted, not to mention insanely caffeine-deprived at this point, he ducked left down the hall toward the glorious scent of burnt toast and freshly brewed, cheap Colombian.

“Oh, Dr. Summerston?” Kim blurted, swiveling around in her office chair to catch him. “There’s a—”

“Sorry Kim, but it’ll have to wait,” he called from the breakroom, hearing her trendy leather flip-flops clapping down the hall behind him.

“There’s a man here to see you,” she said, halting at the door. “He’s waiting in the lobby.”

Lee looked at his watch and shook his head. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I’m late to class as it is, then I’ve got the staffer with Dr. Loring after that. He’ll just have to wait.”

“Yes sir, but whatever it is that he needs to see you about must be important, because he’s been here since before I got in this morning, and I come in at seven.”

“That ain’t my problem,” Lee shrugged. “I hate to be that way, but it is what it is. I can meet with him, but he’s just gonna have to wait a little longer.”

Kim nodded and turned to leave while Lee retrieved a paper coffee cup from the cabinet overhead and tilted the pot to fill it.

“Hey Kim?” Lee called after her. “Who did he say he was with, anyway?”

She stopped in the hall and returned to face him. “You know, I don’t think he did,” Kim recalled—the freckles on her nose wrinkling with thought. “He just said he was from California, I think? Or maybe it was Arizona? I don’t know. Something about Phoenix, something or other.”

Dropping his coffee cup (and maybe even his jaw) into the sink, Lee sprinted back down the hall, arriving into the lobby just in time to hear Kim start to deliver his message to the stranger.

“It’s okay, Kim, I’ve got him,” Lee interrupted, stepping alongside to relieve her.

Visibly confused, the receptionist gave a shrug and a smile, then returned to her story about George Clooney’s alleged date with the recently (and suspiciously) divorced Julia Roberts.

Dressed casually in khaki slacks and a white, button-down shirt untucked at the waist, the slender man looked to be somewhere in his early 40s, with short, silvery-brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a narrow jaw, which was clean-shaven. Rising from his seat, he balanced his left side on the cane and extended his right hand to Lee.

“Dr. Summerston, I presume?” he asked through a cordial smile.

“That’s right, though I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Lee replied, shaking his hand. “And you are?”

“Dr. Jonathan Reiser, Phoenix Gaming Company,” he said with a subtle bow of his head. “It’s a real honor to finally meet you in person.”

Momentarily speechless as his initial suspicions were confirmed, Lee fought to maintain his professional composure over the starstruck disbelief that welled inside him.

“Honored?” Lee said through an awkward chuckle. “I don’t know about that, but I appreciate the compliment.”

“I’d say it’s well deserved, wouldn’t you?” Reiser stated. “I mean, as of this morning,
Mako Assault
has been on the global market for eight months, two weeks, and four days; and out of the 19.3 million subscribers who compete within its construct, your clan was the first to beat it. In my book, that calls for a little recognition.”

His unease subsiding with the stranger’s sincerity, Lee managed a modest shrug. “Well… we just happened to catch a few breaks along the way that kept us alive through some tight spots is all.”

Reiser laughed and removed his glasses, cleaning them with the edge of his shirt. “Dr. Summerston, let’s be fair. It took a lot more than a few ‘lucky breaks,’ as you call them, to beat my game. Some of the strategies your team made use of were nothing if not innovative,” he continued, sliding the glasses back into place with the tip of his fore finger. “However, I must confess that once I learned you were a professor of history—with a specialty in war no less—that did take some of the suspense out of it for me.”

“Apparently not all of it,” Lee noted. “After all, we did just beat the thing…” he checked his watch, “…a little over 12 hours ago. Most folks wouldn’t exactly call that a slow response time.”

Reiser grinned. “Call it a pride thing,” he admitted. “You may not know this, but in addition to being PGC’s CEO and founder, I was also
Mako’s
lead programmer, and I went to a lot of painstaking detail to make sure that every one of its environments—many of which your team breezed through, I might add—were as thought-provokingly complex as possible. More hours than you know went into that product, so suffice it to say, Dr. Summerston, the fact that you beat my game at all is grounds enough for me to take an interest in meeting you.”

“Fair enough,” Lee said, satisfied. “So… what can I do for the CEO and founder of the Phoenix Gaming Company?”

“I’m actually here on sort of a fact-finding mission,” Reiser explained. “As you know,
Mako 2.0
is currently in development, and I was hoping that perhaps we could sit down and talk about a few of the ideas that your team made use of during your run.”

Lee felt another pang of excitement. “Sure, no problem,” he replied. “Actually, I’ve got class and a faculty meetin’ ‘til around 11, but after that we can do lunch if you’re interested.”

“Absolutely, should I just meet you back here?” Reiser asked, gesturing to the lobby around them.

“That’ll be great. If you need anything, just ask Kim here. She’ll get you whatever you need.”

Kim gave a halfhearted acknowledgement, not bothering to look up from her monitor.

“Thanks so much,” Reiser said graciously, extending his hand once more. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“As am I, Dr. Reiser,” Lee replied.

Hurrying back by his office for the last of his lecture materials, Lee darted up the stairwell toward his third-floor classroom, the magnitude of what had just happened still spinning through his mind. Odd timing or not, he still couldn’t believe it.

Rounding the corner, however, something occurred to Lee—never at any point during
Mako’
s extensive registration process had he ever been asked for his real name. That’s what call-signs were for. Furthermore, how did Reiser know where he lived, much less where he worked or what he did for a living?

Pushing the door open with his back and heading for the instructor’s podium at the front of the room, Lee shoved the question to the back of his mind in preparation for his lecture, convinced that there must’ve been some simple explanation that he just hadn’t thought of. After all, web analytics could tell a person a lot these days, and he was quite the frequent user of many of the net’s fansites pertaining to the game, not to mention an assortment of industry sites, message forums, RSS feeds, and subsequent emailing lists for
Mako
-related news and information. Reiser had probably just cross-referenced his registration info with some random survey he’d filled out or a magazine subscription he’d had at some point.

Still, 12 hours to come from California to Jacksonville was by no means a lot of time to track him down, book a flight, and get to campus in time to find him.

“Strange,” Lee thought, cueing his slideshow to begin the session.

****

Two hours later—having all but chewed his own arm off to escape another two-hour snoozefest with his department head—Lee tossed his briefcase into his office en route to the lobby, where Reiser was still waiting patiently on the sofa.

“All set?” Lee asked with a jingle of his keys.

“Absolutely” Reiser replied, dropping a six-month old issue of
National Geographic
on the coffee table and reaching for his cane.

“Any preferences in the way of food?” Lee asked as the pair headed for the elevator.

“Not really,” said Reiser. “Although, I’ve always found that it pays to lose the tourist scene and follow the locals if you want to find good food. Got any suggestions?”

“Do ya like seafood?” Lee asked.

“Very much so,” Reiser answered.

“Great. There’s a place on the beach that, for my money, serves the best grouper on the east coast. That’s assumin’ of course that you like grouper.”

“Perfect,” Reiser nodded.

As the two made their way out of the building and into the parking lot, Lee directed the doctor to the Jeep. “There’s no sense in takin’ two cars, so you’re welcome to ride with me if you like.”

“Wow,” he noted, admiring the vehicle’s pristine condition and original shade of silver. “CJ-7, right?”

“Good eye,” said Lee.