Redback. Lindy Cameron

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      WarP was infuriating, ingenious and damn hard but then that was the point. It began life as a recruiting tool for the Australian Defence Force, but its combat scenarios and authentic military tactics had infiltrated the ranks of hard-core gamers. Always looking for sophisticated play they were drawn to the game's hyper-realistic graphics and smooth action. WarP had gone mainstream, big time, and made a truckload of money for its designers. The original online version, like the ADF's equally popular AttackSub and the US military's America's Army, now had nearly 10 million registered users worldwide.

      Gamers literally got to design their own strike team instead of choosing characters from a bank of generic animated steroid hunks. Scott had started in the program's Identikit Bank where he created his soldiers from thousands of possible features, choosing everything from hair and eye colour to height, weight, age and sex. He named his comrades, devised their personal histories, families, even love lives and, most importantly, assigned their military training and combat skills. One of the raves, to which Scott could now attest, was that the sense of losing comrades-in-arms was almost palpable.

      They were his team now and damn it if he didn't keep letting them down.

      Oh Scotty boy, get a grip. He took a moment, between keystrokes, to realign his priorities. As much as he loved the challenge, except for the guilt of regularly annihilating his crew, he was really only playing WarP for research.

      'Yes!' he cheered quietly, as his Viper Squad dealt with the island rebel scouts, finally.

      Kiwi Mark next to him grinned and then, in what amounted to game-upmanship, began piling his tray table with a laptop, 20 or so compact and mini-disks, and a TekBox - the absolute latest in portable game consoles from Nayazuki Firebolt in Japan.

      'Believe it not,' Scott smiled, switching from the game to his research notes, 'I am actually working.'

      'Oh yeah, me too,' Mark said, nodded and glanced out the window like he expected to see some flying sheep.

      Scott looked down at his notes. He really was en route to Melbourne to interview the WarP design team. It was all as part of a series of articles on 21st century recruiting propaganda and how the internet and the virtual world had been hijacked by real-world warmongers. Now that sounds as boring as a photocopier manual.

      Scott's research had started with how the West's modern enemies - the nefarious terrorist brigades and loudly visible insurgent groups - had long been using the internet to communicate, spread their various beliefs and attract human resources from an international pool.

      Now he was investigating how the good guys got their message out. And 'bizarre' was not even a strange enough word to apply to the very idea that some of the most world's powerful and legitimate military authorities had resorted to playing games to boost their falling recruitment levels.

      Scott returned to WarP and sent Captain Dash and a Viper sniper forward to take out the rebel scouts. Woops, oh shit, didn't see those innocent villagers taking refuge there.

       Where were the moral crusaders who so liked to condemn violent computer games and TV shows for breeding a generation of violent adults? Surely not silenced by the kids who actually understood they were playing at killing game monsters? And why was there no universal condemnation about this game now that their governments were advocating these same 'playgrounds' to recruit real live cannon fodder for real-world warfare? Maybe the military should be just the place for violent game-addicted teenagers? Those who don't stay home to become serial killers, that is.

      Promoting war as a valid career option was what he was really writing about. Admitting that would've got doors slammed in his face though, so his cover story was much more unassuming: he was simply writing a feature on modern recruiting techniques.

      So far his research had taken him to Washington, London and Tel Aviv. He'd interviewed one of the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon, observed an SAS recruitment program in the UK, and met a couple of Top Guns from the Israeli Air Force. He'd also been to a few very strange places in his own head - he'd discovered his own latent urge to 'shoot-em-all up'.

      'Have you tried this one yet?' Mark asked him, swivelling his TekBox so Scott could see the opening credits for GlobalWarTek.

      'Yeah, but only the online version,' Scott said. 'And I really am playing this one for work. I'm writing a thing on games, like these two, being used to recruit people to join the real military.'

      'Really?' Mark said, then tapped his TekBox. 'Oh shit. This disk is the stupid pirate version - but I didn't say that. It's not working properly, hang on, I'll find the right…'

      'Wait,' Scott put his hand out. 'Go back to the start, would you?'

      'Yeah sure,' Mark hit the return button a couple of times, 'but this version really is screwy, I can't get past Level 2.'

      'That's okay. It's the start of this particular disk I want to see again.'

      The game's preview began. Oh boy! Add Tokyo and Nayazuki Firebolt to the research itinerary; in the column marked weird stuff.

      'Where did you get this game?'

      'In a market in Cairo last week,' Mark said.

      The mini-movie prologue of Global WarTek, played by a million Japanese gamers and a growing host of westerners since its English translation, was a visual treat in its own right. Like most games it introduced the game's universe, the main characters and the battles they would face.

      But it should not feature a bearded three-eyed character carrying a rust-coloured book with the word 'Rashmana' on the cover.

      Scott felt himself go cold.

      That word should not be in this game.

      Or any game.

      Hotel George V, Paris France

       12 days ago

      Assad bin Khalid al Harbi looked at his wheezing father and fat uncle deep in conversation on the other side of the opulent presidential suite. They had summoned him to this meeting in Paris and were now ignoring him, as always, as if he was the lowest of subjects. They lived only for empire and business. Assad's long absences from the family circle had not softened their attitude. Family was for profit not togetherness.

      Assad took little comfort in the knowledge that their attitude to him was nothing personal. His father and uncle, always known collectively as 'the Brothers Khalid and Salman' or just 'the Brothers,' treated all but their first-born children with equal-indifference. They might complain about his long absences but it was not because they missed him. Cousins, brothers - also ignored - filled the room.

      The Brothers were making up for their grandfather's lack of family planning. Ahmed bin Youssef al Harbi had been a simple Egyptian builder who made his first fortune from a small construction company he established in Alexandria during World War I. He had migrated to Saudi Arabia where his construction and business skills brought him to the attention of the royal family. He had chosen the best possible time to migrate and was soon granted many and exclusive building contracts with the House of Saud.

      Ahmed's failing in life was that, despite five marriages, he only ever produced one son, Tariq. He also produced one daughter, Alia. They both did their duties as inheritors of the 'al Harbi' name, by building on the mounting fortune and producing between them 23 children - 14 of whom were СКАЧАТЬ