Here Dmitry went silent again and looked embarrassed, lowering his eyes. Clearly, he didn’t much believe two people could randomly meet in the endless expanse of space. When we’d reached the garden at the entrance to my residential building, the Starship Pilot finally ended his story:
“After the pirates left the Shiamiru, the old Navigator took control. We spent a long time flying somewhere, then docked at a big space station. I do not know what kind of place it is, but there are a lot of big Geckho combat ships there: cruisers, assault ships. I even saw a huge battleship. With my minimal understanding of Geckho, I believe I heard we are now waiting for Uraz Tukhsh and the other crew members to respawn and come rejoin the Shiamiru. I tried to say that you were stranded on the pirate station, and I think they understood. But I really don’t know if the Geckho want to bat that hornet’s nest again. I have learned Geckho swearing already, so I know the crew was not happy and was calling the captain names after he tried going to Medu-Ro IV in the first place... But enough about me. How are you doing, Gnat? You probably got it worse than me in that pirate lair, huh?”
I didn’t even know what to answer. Should I tell him about taking trophy tails, molding a busty fox, selling platinum and gambling in a casino? It all sounded like a frivolous waste of time, especially after his heartrending tale. Sure, Gnat also had enough problems. I really was not sure anyone else from the H3 Faction could have wriggled out of the situation I found myself in, but I still needed to carefully consider what I should and should not say. Fortunately, no one demanded an immediate reply, and we had also arrived.
We didn’t call the elevator and went upstairs. The door of my room was cracked open, and there was loud music, clinking glasses and jubilant voices inside.
“Huh, I guess they decided not to wait. I asked them not to start without the birthday boy...” Anya grumbled out unhappily, letting me walk in front.
My arrival was met by elated shouts and applause, while I smiled at the guests, answering their greetings and looking around the room. The couches and chairs were pushed into the table, which was laden with treats, including the whole contents of my mini-bar. The other half of the room was cleared for dancing, and the speaker system had been shoved into the corner. But most important, of course, was not the repositioning of my furniture. The number of guests was impressive!
Deputy leader Ivan Lozovsky had a glass of champagne in his hand and was sprawled out on a little sofa next to Svetlana the fitness trainer, who was gussied up in a glamorous evening dress. Next to them was the modest teacher’s pet Masha, graciously serving salad to the man next to her, Kisly, who I was seeing in the real world for the first time. I immediately recognized him by his powerful musculature and characteristic square proportions.
The journalist Lydia Vertyachikh was sitting in a huge armchair, miraculously having made peace with the leader of the Second Legion. When I stopped nearby, Lydia whispered something in my little floor-mate’s ear, and the usually serious and gloomy Tamara giggled like a schoolgirl. Based on their casual poses and half emptied glasses of wine, yesterday’s quarrel was already in the past, and we didn’t have to fear another scene.
On the opposite side of the table was hippie Artur, having changed his normal t-shirt and ratty jeans for a prim suit. He stepped aside and let Dmitry, Imran and Anya sit at the table. All the guests then pointed me to an armchair at the head of the table. As if by magic, just after I plopped down, a full shot glass appeared in my hand.
“So, I suggest we all raise a toast to the man that brought us all together today!” Kisly started loudly, standing up. “I can confidently say that there have never been as many incidents and protocol violations at the Antique Beach as when Gnat was on patrol! He crossed the border just once and look what it landed us! I still do not understand how Gnat didn’t get kidnapped by the centaurs! But it ended for the best, and that’s what matters! To Gnat!”
Everyone clinked glasses and drank. Imran, refraining because of his faith, gave me a salute with a cup of juice. Kisly then continued:
“By the way, Gnat, the centauress Phylira keeps asking for you. She wants to discuss something one-on-one. And she’ll only speak with you. She doesn’t trust anyone else. When you get back from outer space, drop by the Antique Beach. It might be worth your while. Phylira became top filly of her herd, so now you might say she’s something of an official representative.”
Dmitry Zheltov tried to jump in and say it was no longer clear if Gnat would ever return from his trip to space, but I stopped his depressing interjection with a gesture and made a promise:
“Alright, as soon as I’m back I’ll drop by Antique Beach and meet with the Centaur elder female.”
After that, the feast began. I gave a very condensed retelling of Gnat’s story after the Shiamiru fled the station. The locked hangar, problems getting to the station, my two attempts to get past the Miyelonian Gladiator. Meeting the orange-furred Translator. Getting my pass. Shooting the Thief. Meeting the Morphian and prices on the space station. The Miyelonian assassin and the Morphian tearing him to shreds. The pilgrims and incarnation of the great female. The kitten. Searching for platinum buyers, which led me to the casino. The strange girl Valeri and her batty companion. Meeting the Trillian merchant. The head of the casino promising to provide a ship to come buy our platinum.
And although I skipped over many tricky aspects, not wanting to draw attention to how I had come by my platinum, cheated in the casino and my character’s psionic abilities, they were all listening with rapt attention. Finally, I finished my tale, and nerdy Masha said her fill:
“I know I couldn’t have done that. I would have immediately died of fear when I realized I was abandoned on a pirate station all alone.”
“No one else could have,” Ivan Lozovsky answered. “Gnat is a unique player. He exhibits a bizarre combination of risk-taking and pure calculation. Geckho Diplomat Kosta Dykhsh asks about his progress every time we meet and never tires of praising his gameplay.”
The festivities continued, and I spoke with all the guests. The journalist had recorded my story on her voice recorder and came to ask permission to publish a short summary tomorrow for the faction bulletin, promising a boost of Fame and Authority.
Artur, who had gotten loaded pretty fast, slurred through thanking me for the invitation to the housewarming party and said sorry he had to go. I tried to convince him to stay, but my friend admitted he hadn’t gotten good sleep in a while and was very tired. At the Prometheus, there was work to be done day and night, and he was spending practically all his time in the game, like many engineers and mechanics of the H3 Faction.
“We’re working to forge the weapon of victory. But it’s a big secret,” he said mysteriously.
I led Artur to the door and, in the entryway, Tamara came up with two glasses of wine. She handed me one and tightly closed the door to the main room.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to eavesdrop. Kirill, I wanted to say sorry for how I acted yesterday. I don’t know what came over me. And I have to apologize again because I have to go. Actually, I should have left a while ago. Honestly, I’d be happy to stay at this party until morning, but there are serious problems with the base construction in Karelia, and I need to be there. Here’s to your success, Gnat!”
She clinked glasses with me and decisively, in two big gulps, drained hers to the very bottom. Then she asked me to slightly lean in and close my eyes. I could sense the severe paladin cautiously placing her hands on my shoulders and awkwardly touching her wine-scented lips to my cheek. She didn’t even object when I extended my hands, embraced her and kissed her back. But as soon as I peeled my eyes open, Tamara freed herself from the embrace, took a step back and started looking at the floor.
“Gnat, don’t look me in the eyes! Alright, I gotta go. I really hope to see you at my birthday party!”
When I came back, there was a slow song playing. I was immediately asked to dance by Svetlana, who looked pretty in her deep-neckline eme
rald dress. She was a wonderful dancer, and her toned shoulders dipped elegantly in time to the music. Compared to her, I must have looked like I had two left feet.
“Denis refused to come to your party, saying he had important business at the Prometheus,” she whispered. “But I don’t think he’d have come no matter what. For some reason, he just doesn’t like you. It’s obvious.”
It took me some time to figure out who Svetlana was even talking about. Ah, that was it! Denis was the “gopnik” guy, who had been brought under the Dome with me and the other expelled students. Imran punished him for his rude language. Anya said that, at the Prometheus, the boorish and unsociable Denis was having conflicts with the other Engineers. I had to admit, I’d forgotten about him, because our paths had diverged on day one. But what did Denis have in common with Svetlana, and why was she telling me about him all of a sudden? I asked that with a smirk.
“Well, because Denis is trying to date me. He even came by and asked me out,” she said with a happy chuckle, surprised I hadn’t heard. “You should have been there, too. It was a riot! He put on a nice suit, got a bouquet, and walked up to me all dressed to the nines. But he couldn’t get a word out! I warned Denis first thing that, if I heard even one bad word out of him, I’d slap him in the face with his own bouquet! But I don’t think he knew how to express himself without cursing, so he froze up. Somehow, he squeezed out three whole sentences, but I could tell they were sincere. Denis does have brains, though. You can’t take that away from him. And he’s gifted with his hands, too! To hear him talk, leadership is nearly begging him, saying all the Faction’s hopes and prayers are tied up in some ‘Project-371,’ which he is working to test and get into production. And he needs to get it done in the next six days!”
I had to admit, this was far out of my depth. What was this “project” that the faction leadership was “praying for,” and why six days? Anyway, Artur had also mentioned constant serious work at the Prometheus, something about “forging the weapon of victory.”
The music had been over for some time. The other couples had left the dance floor, and me and my partner were still standing and carrying on this strange conversation. Finally, I was distracted by Ivan Lozovsky who came up and pointed to two armchairs and a little table in the corner topped with a bottle of brandy, a sliced lemon and two shot glasses. He suggested I join him to “discuss important topics.”
Chapter Eighteen. Political Agitation
FIRST OF ALL, just after we sat down, I asked the diplomat about the strange six-day timeframe I kept hearing about. Ivan Lozovsky immediately grew more serious, stopped smiling and answered frankly:
“In six days, the ceasefire with the Dark Faction runs out. Our enemies cannot break the understanding and attack us before then. The Geckho are serving as guarantors, so the Dark Faction will just have to wait. But our spies are all saying another attack is inevitable. Their soldiers are training intensively ‘round the clock. All their forces are drubbing away at the firing ranges, quickly levelling up and improving skills. The Dark Faction’s last attack was a bitter pill for us. We held out mostly because of the tenacity and skill of the First Legion. All of our veterans were worth five enemies on the battlefield. But during this ceasefire, our enemy is trying to level the playing field in terms of soldier quality. And they have nearly triple our numbers!”
“Is it really that hopeless?” I asked, placing an empty glass on the table, which the diplomat refilled. “I mean, our soldiers probably aren’t just sitting around doing nothing. They’re also training, right? And from what I’ve heard, at the Prometheus, there are people working constantly to put the finishing touches on something called ‘Project-371...’”
Before answering, Ivan Lozovsky took a digital notepad from his inner jacket pocket, opened a file and scrolled through a long table.
“Alriiight... Three hundred seventy-one. That means the leak came through Denis Tormashyov, an Engineer in laboratory eight... Antipov is gonna want to have a chat with that loose-lipped Engineer about the meaning of the words ‘top secret.’”
Ivan Lozovsky made a note in his tablet, stashed it and returned to the topic of conversation:
“Of course, we’re preparing to repel the attack. All our troops are working to reinforce our defenses in the most vulnerable places. And let me say this: in headquarters, we are constantly monitoring the situation in real time, moving people and vehicles from one sector to another whenever needed. We are practically sure that, by the time the ceasefire ends, our faction will be able to hold out. But the problem is that these preparations are eating up too many resources, and there’s practically nothing left to build with. We’ve had to use almost all the resources that, in times of peace, might have gone to increasing node level by building bunkers, shelters, ammunition and mine fields. And meanwhile, we cannot just sit and wait, because that’s not how you win a war!”
Here he led his eyes over the room. The music was roaring, and people were starting to shift to more energetic modern dances. Lozovsky lowered his voice:
“Gnat, given your status, you’re entitled to know more than a common faction player. Yes, there are all kinds of projects underway at the Prometheus. But Radugin has the greatest hopes for thermobaric rounds. The firsts tests have obliterated the bloodthirsty beasts in a network of caves under the Capital node.”
Ah, I’d heard of these caves. They were planning to send me there as a Prospector, but leadership had a change of heart and I went to the Geckho space port instead, after which my “space saga” began.
“Eventually, we will also have heavy rocket launcher systems like Buratino and Solntsepyok, enhanced bombs, and infantry flamethrowers, even high-caliber thermobaric shells. But that’s for later. Our technicians can already make the shells, although they’re pretty rough now and too big. But they’re more than capable of taking out enemy manpower. There is the delivery problem, though. We don’t have any rockets or aircraft. For now, we can use new these weapons only as radio-activated land mines. But when they blow, they destroy everything alive in a six-hundred-foot radius. Well... Try not to laugh, but we also have a catapult mounted on a Peresvet that can launch a barrel of napalm eighteen hundred to twenty thousand feet.”
I wasn’t even thinking of laughing. Sure it sounded weird, but a range of eighteen hundred feet was a significant improvement on nothing. There was one part that tickled me, though:
“That’s all well and good, but the leaders of the Dark Faction are not idiots,” I said, interrupting the verbose man who had gotten carried away with his monolog. “Even if we suppose that the existence a cache of large mines does not leak, and our soldiers do not blow themselves up because an enemy mage is controlling their mind, this tactic will only work once. Then the enemies will just respawn and attack through a pass they’ve already cleared.”
The diplomat filled his glass with cognac again, and I immediately warned him it was the last for me. I was not a lover of strong alcohol, and my head was starting to buzz.
“Good choice, Gnat. You have the whole night ahead of you,” the deputy smiled mysteriously, then returned to the previous topic. “Well, we don’t think they’re naive or stupid, either. We see the new weapons as a way of maintaining the status-quo on the front lines while we are weak and vulnerable.”
“And what’s next?” I cringed, barely having finished asking the short question because the alcohol, as they say, went down the wrong tube.
While I coughed it out, Ivan Lozovsky launched back into his expansive explanation:
“We have decent growth potential. For starters, our new base in Karelia is practically ready to go. That will give our faction another eighty-seven players. We need people desperately and, believe you me, eighty-seven players will give a serious jolt to our development. Although it isn’t all smooth sailing in Karelia. We still haven’t gotten our oil production in the Eastern Swamp back online and have run into a fuel deficit plus another few unexpected difficulties. What’s more, we can
see the Dark Faction preparing to expand into the node neighboring Karelia, the Poppy Fields. The day after tomorrow, their agreement not to station military forces there will expire, and we expect them to start building a base as soon as possible. And much to our chagrin, they will be able to finish building it before the end of the ceasefire, and we have no way to stop them.”
I imagined the node map in my head and immediately realized how much worse our position would become after the enemies built that new base:
“The Dark Faction doesn’t even need the Poppy Fields node so much as the ability to control the Harpy Cliffs from there and fully block our route to the space port, cutting off our trade with the Geckho!”
“That’s exactly right, Gnat. You’re making great strides in strategic planning,” the diplomat praised me. “Yes, the Harpy Cliffs are a linchpin, and there are sure to be fierce battles for them. After all, if we take that territory, it will mean hard times for the Dark Faction. Their road to the space port will be cut off and, together with it, their source of currency and technology. And the Dark Faction has no sea port, so they’d be even harder up than us. They would either need to go the long way through four nearly impassible nodes full of aggressive NPC’s or come to us and kowtow for the right to pass through our land.”
Alluring perspectives, although I personally didn’t have much faith that we could beat the Dark Faction to the key Harpy Cliffs node. Also, both Ivan Lozovsky and Gerd Tamara had mentioned hardships with the unfinished base in Karelia. We had no fuel and a profound deficit of resources because all building materials and manpower were tied up rebuilding the Eastern Swamp. After all, beyond a central citadel, we would also need to build roads, supply lines and a lot of other stuff...
External Threat (Reality Benders Book #2) LitRPG Series Page 18
