Cold War Rune: A Virtual Reality novel (Rune Universe Book 2)

by Hugo Huesca

  To my family.

  Copyright ©By Hugo Huesca. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business,

  events, or locales, is purely coincidental.

  Thank you for reading my book. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought

  the book, or perhaps tell your friends about it.

  Thank you so much for your support.

  -Hugo Huesca

  CHAPTER ONE

  Foreman

  All was still in the frozen expanse. The compound was a speck of gray in a gigantic island of snow and mountains. The sea surrounding it was icy blue and the reflection of the sky in the water was so perfect that the ice appeared as if it were floating in the middle of the clouds.

  In the complex, an alarm blared. More followed. The stillness of the scene was shattered.

  A lone snowbike raced out of the complex just a second before the heavy, metal doors could close entirely. It spat snow in all directions as its driver fought with the controls to avoid rocks and the deep, icy crevices.

  The doors opened again and more bikes followed after the first. There were at least a dozen, with more incoming. The man they chased looked back, saw them, and accelerated as much as the engine could stand.

  The pursuers couldn’t outrun their prey, but they outnumbered him. The snowbikes spread out like a pack of wolves and chased after the lone rider with a constant roar of engines fighting against the ice.

  The man looked back once again and drove his vehicle towards the edge of the ice, still maintaining a healthy lead.

  Back at the pack of pursuers, a woman’s voice blared on the communicators.

  “You let him get away and it comes out of your pension check,” she said with a coldness that rivaled the air currents around them.

  “There’s no place to go, Madam,” said Foreman. He was the chief of security of the compound, and the one responsible in the case of an escape. “He can’t outpace us for long. He’ll run out of gas.”

  To drive his point home, he pressed on his bike’s pedal and slowly gained on his own men. He was leading the chase both physically and strategically, with the efficiency of a man who had survived several wars in a lifetime of service.

  So why was she so furious? The escape hadn’t been Foreman’s fault…

  “He obviously doesn’t think so,” she pointed out. “I suggest you order your men to begin shooting.”

  “He’s still too far away—” Foreman closed his mouth before he could fully contradict his boss. When Stefania Caputi told you to begin shooting, the best bet was to listen to her, or she might tell the others to begin shooting at you. “Men, begin covering fire. Aim at the ground in front of him and drive him towards the crevices.”

  Shooting a rifle from a moving vehicle was hard. Doing so at a moving target from a long distance while driving a jumpy snowbike was next to impossible. Foreman’s pragmatic nature made him wince at the sheer waste of ammo.

  The man they pursued saw the snow around him explode as the rounds hit the snow, without actually coming close to hitting him. He began to zigzag and shoot back at them without turning to aim. He had the right idea: it didn’t matter a damn at this distance, but it helped make people nervous. Nervous people made more mistakes.

  The volley went far over the pursuers’ heads.

  On the comms, Stefania Caputi could be heard barking a string of orders to an unseen soldier. From what Foreman could hear, she wanted to get air support over there post haste. Even artillery.

  The air support Foreman could understand. It was protocol. But the artillery was overkill. The fugitive had no possible escape.

  “He’s going to run out of ice at this rate,” Foreman pointed out. “This chase will be over long before the air support arrives.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” muttered Stefania Caputi under her breath.

  Instead of drifting, like Foreman had hoped, the man they were chasing pointed his snowbike straight at the edge of the ice. At the speed he was going there was no way he could turn around in time.

  A couple of the soldiers under Foreman’s command realized this on their own bikes and pressed on the brakes. Foreman himself began to do the same.

  “What are you doing?” blared Caputi’s voice in his ears.

  “He’s going to fall over!” exclaimed Foreman. The fall was huge and led into freezing water.

  “Then jump after him!”

  Foreman may have been a soldier, but he wasn’t a random mook. He liked living quite a lot, thank you.

  But an order was an order. He pressed the accelerator and shot forward like a bullet. A couple of the other soldiers yelled at him to stop, but he closed the channel. He needed to focus.

  The other man was almost to the edge of the ice. It was now obvious he had no intention of slowing down. Turning would be impossible, even on the special tires of the bike. Foreman decided the fugitive’s only chance of escaping was to jump sideways at the last second and hope he found a rock to grab before skittering over the edge.

  So, Foreman took careful aim. The man was now driving in a straight line. The soldier unloaded the entire weapon in the fugitive’s general direction. One round hit the snowmobile and sent a shower of sparks, black smoke, and fragments of metal in all directions. The bike lost balance.

  The man fell to the ground and inertia made him slide on the ice and drove him dangerously close to the edge.

  Foreman jumped out of his own snowbike and slid on the ice with the practiced grace of a soldier who has lived a dangerous life. He reloaded with practiced movements. He took aim. This time, he wouldn’t miss…

  The fugitive, without bothering to look back, regained his footing without trying to stop his forward momentum. Instead, he jumped. His body crossed the air just as Foreman began shooting. For a second, the fugitive appeared to fly across the air. Then, he disappeared under the edge of the ice without so much as a scream. His snowbike was next and Foreman’s own bike followed. Both of them made heavy splashes in the water below.

  Foreman stood up with a pained grunt. He holstered his rifle and reopened his communications to hear the impressed voices of his soldiers:

  “Good shooting, boss!”

  “Just like something out of an action movie!”

  “If only the bikes had exploded!”

  He allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. It quickly vanished when Stefania’s voice blared on his helmet’s speaker:

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Follow after him!”

  “Beg your pardon, Madam? The fugitive just fell two hundred feet down into open ocean—” He had to stop himself before getting any closer to insubordination.

  A silence followed, long enough to make the soldier wonder if he had just lost his cozy job as chief of security. Then, Stefania spoke again: “You know what? Confirm the kill.”

  “Wh—?” Foreman coughed, then thought better of second guessing Caputi two times in the same year. “Yes, Madam.”

  He walked to the edge of the ice, glancing at the surface with distrust. Then, slowly, he peeked over the edge.

  Nothing. Just the icy waters down below, still as a mirror, disturbed only by two concentric waves in the spots where the bikes had fallen.

  “Hypothermia must’ve set in by now,” he said over the comms. “I think this is enough to confirm the fugitive’s—”

  Snow was floating atop the surface of the water. Foreman did a double take. No. It wasn’t floating. It was suspended in the air. Then it was rising. Towards him.
He clearly heard the roar of an engine far too big to be a snowbike. Too big to be a helicopter. It was the roar of an engine powered by an antimatter reactor. The sound was unmistakable.

  The air rippled in front of him, and the view of the ocean grew distorted. The soldier felt a wave of paralyzing surprise and terror travel down his spine, chilling him more than the air around him.

  The air drew the outline of a spaceship. Its outline grew clearer by the second and then colors appeared. The metallic armor of the ship shone under the light of the alien star.

  Foreman realized he was standing right in front of the ship’s nose cannons.

  “What the f—?” he muttered weakly.

  “Those,” explained Stefania Caputi over his open channel, “are two twin-linked laser cannons, starfighter-grade. A custom model made by the Terran Federation as commissioned by one Beard Ivanic. Those cannons are installed in the bow of The Diplomatic Immunity, which is the ship you’re seeing right now.”

  “But the fugitive… he jumped—”

  Stefania Caputi sighed. “And you’d be inside the ship’s cabin if you had jumped after him like I told you to, soldier. I’d fire you if I thought your replacement would be any more competent. Enjoy your respawn, Lieutenant Foreman.” The last thing he heard was Caputi ordering her unseen subordinate to launch all planet-bound fighters in pursuit of Cole Dorsett.

  I had you, the soldier thought. This just isn’t fair—

  You have died! A ship’s laser atomized you in what you thought was your moment of triumph. What a bummer! Time of death: 2:34pm. You’ve lost an item [Firedome-class Shield Generator] during your Quantum Safeguard. Don’t despair! In Rune Universe, death is part of the adventure! And the adventure… continues!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Old Drone Blues

  Crowds suck to be a part of. They don’t have enough space to move around, and they make you feel as if the air you breathe has already been used up. Like it’s a couple degrees warmer than it really should.

  On the other hand, they’re fantastic to do any discreet, not very-legal-operations. Which suited me just fine.

  I was sitting on a bench at a park situated squarely in the middle of a busy intersection in San Mabrada’s financial district. The swarm of people and the swarm of drone-cars had a symbiotic relationship. The cars cheerfully dropped off the bureaucrats and wage-slaves in the nearest street, and then kept on their way looking for any empty spot in a parking lot.

  There were few signs that things were different from a year ago. Some people looked up, to the sky, like they were going to see an alien warship appear at any second. It was a tick millions of people in the States now had.

  There was an old man with an unkempt gray beard, dressed in rags, who went around the side of the street with a cardboard sign that said: “The end times are near.” Now, not everyone looked at him like he was crazy. Some turned in his direction and seemed to shrink as they walked by, like they were trying to dodge a bearer of bad news by pretending to be non-threatening.

  A pair of members of the Church of the Intangible Lord were handing out pamphlets left and right. Their membership had grown ten-fold in the past months.

  Other than that, the Financial District was the same. The cash must flow, and all that.

  The human crowd was always in a hurry. The only reason you had to be on the street at 6:30am was if you were already late for work, or were in a management position and could afford to be late. So I got to watch a flurry of maddened activity all around the buildings and the green areas strewn around them.

  The financial district was one of the nicest zones in the city. After all, appearances had to be kept and they could afford it. The gray expressions on the wage-slaves jogging to the nearest bank entrance were the only clue of what really went on inside those buildings.

  I may sound bitter about the whole salary thing, but keep in mind, I almost lost my life (and the lives of people I care about) inside one of those very buildings, last year. In that time, my distrust for the corporate lifestyle had evolved, but it was still very much there.

  But people-watching wasn’t the reason I had taken a bus here wearing my former work suit and briefcase. I was looking for a specific person, in a very specific situation.

  Actually finding him was a problem, though, since everyone looks mostly the same in a gray or black suit. The man I was after was a middle-aged manager, Caucasian, graying hair, not too tall, nor too short, and rounding-up around his edges.

  I was lucky, though, because I knew which building he was supposed to get into and at what time.

  A drone-car stopped in the middle of the road and the cars around it stopped too. It wasn’t far from the building I was watching. Just perfect.

  A man hurried out of the car. Middle-aged, graying hair… yeah, that was my mark. He hurried towards the bank he worked at and I sprang into action.

  I didn’t work in Xanz Corporation anymore. Being a notorious criminal-slash-public hero will do nasty things to corporate reputation, so I got fired.

  Instead of carrying a bunch of papers inside my briefcase, this time it was filled with a burner Berry loaded with a nasty firewall-cracker script and a keylogger. It was also hiding an old radio-emitter and a battery strong enough to last a week. I kept more scripts and Berries in my backpack, as a sort of insurance. With a bit of creativity, they were more useful than any gun. Brick a drone, for example, or order a thousand pizzas for a guy who pissed you off, using his credit card.

  Today, both Berry and emitter were very useful for a long-term spy operation, which was more or less what I pretended to do.

  The plan was simple. Get Mr. Manager’s phone signal with the Berry and put the keylogger in. Toss the briefcase in the bushes and let the emitter tell me all about the guy’s conversations for an entire week.

  Illegal? Yes. But on the other hand, he was a spy and I had earned his information.

  I jogged, like he was doing, towards the same building. Jogging didn’t get anyone’s attention at this hour of the morning. Most of the crowd was jogging, too. Those were the grunts. The bosses all went around merrily in one of those collapsible motorized-scooter-thingies that were all the rage in 2041.

  Mr. Manager was nearing the entrance to his bank when I reached him and matched his pace a few steps behind him. The Berry only needed a few seconds to do its trick and I had already set it up to look for this specific man’s profile before turning the script on.

  The man turned around suddenly, a worried expression on his face. Had he caught me, somehow? I flashed him my best innocent smile before realizing he wasn’t actually looking at me.

  “Those damned things,” he muttered. “The police should really do something about them.”

  I followed the direction of his gaze and saw three little flying drones scanning the crowd with their array of sensors. People looked at them with mistrust, but most just kept on their way. Drones like those had been scanning crowds all over San Mabrada and other parts of the States for the last six months. People had grown used to them and assumed they were part of a new government surveillance program.

  They were wrong. I knew what those drones were looking for, because they were looking for me.

  You always appear at the most inopportune moments, I thought. Their sensors were strong enough to easily detect me at this distance… But I’d taken precautions.

  My trusty phone felt warm in my pocket, in a way that made clear it was draining battery like a motherfucker.

  “I can keep you hidden for about three minutes, Master Cole,” came Francis’ voice from the tiny wireless headphone in my right ear. It was a bit like the Rune communicators and that was the point, since I’d come up with the idea. Of course, most of the actual hard work, like modding my mindjack, was Roscoe’s doing.

  My trusty AI wasn’t actually stored in my phone. The phone was simply streaming from my mindjack using a function originally meant to watch replays. The mindjack itself, of course, was stored s
afely in my room and connected to a power source.

  Since Francis wasn’t actually in my phone, he was quite limited in what he could do, and he ate batteries like they were candy. But as it turned out, he could hide me better from the security drones than any script, for a while, at least, and only if they didn’t close in.

  I clenched my jaw and passed a hand over my razor-shaved head. The Berry might have finished installing the keylogger into Mr. Manager’s phone by now, but there were no guarantees.

  On the other hand, I had avoided finding out what those drones wanted with me for the last six months and I wasn’t about to let them catch me now.

  The drones were already moving on into other parts of the crowd, searching for interesting patterns, or faces that looked like mine. If I started running or acting in any way suspicious, they would see me.

  Why couldn’t Francis stop them up close? They used different tools. From a distance, they scanned security cameras, smartphones, our shoes’ GPS… all that. Francis could block me from appearing on those. Up close, their little drone-brains were actually seeing me. Not an Internet issue, so I couldn’t AI my wait out of it.

  Tossing a briefcase into a bush was the kind of suspicious activity that a human in a hurry would easily miss, but would gain you the attention of a drone.

  Just turn away and try another day —wait until they move on to another district.

  But Mr. Manager’s security protocols could change at any time. And risking another bout with Crestienne wasn’t something I was looking forward to.

  I walked parallel to Mr. Manager, making sure the Berry had enough time to crack his information, and then stopped under the shadow of a tree planted in a tiny fence in the middle of the street. I let the briefcase slip out of my grasp and it fell with a hollow thud into the bushes around the tree.

  I resisted the urge to turn around and see if the drones had caught anything suspicious about my behavior. Mr. Manager definitely hadn’t, since he went about his business with his hurried pace and sweaty brow.