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

by Hugo Huesca

  What he had to do to earn the Space Medal of Honor, I couldn’t begin to imagine. More so because he was still alive, which was unusual for its recipients.

  The general had a bright smile on his face. “That dirty pest? As annoying as always, I’m afraid. The damn thing had puppies last month, so my wife and half the guards of the Center have been chasing the teleporting furballs around the place. The puppies have appeared in the most annoying of places, Cole, you wouldn’t believe it! Why, yesterday I was taking a bath when…”

  We talked for a while to catch up. Jenkins was only a year away from retirement, so the Federation barely let him out of the Station anymore—they claimed the year before retirement was the part of an officer’s career with the highest mortality rate.

  “—so then we had to deal with the dog prancing about the Admiral’s cabin and the androids threatening to go feral and overthrow the human race.”

  We left the parks without going anywhere in particular (I had to wait for Mai anyway).

  “You know, they like to say that a lot,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, quite. It’s a bit like walking into a conversation halfway through and being the target of a joke that only makes sense to them, you know?” Jenkins had a heavy accent that sounded exactly like a Hollywood butler’s would. Somehow, it was a perfect fit for a general.

  “Sure,” I told him while trying very hard not to laugh.

  “Anyway, old sport, how is business on your end of things? Space as cold as ever, I presume. You crew is doing okay, yes?”

  I’d taken off my helmet to talk to the general—not doing so would be considered rude—, so I had to make an effort not to wince. “Yes, General. They’re on leave right now.”

  “I’m getting tired of my own leave,” said Jenkins. He gestured to the glass panels of the dome that was the sky. “I swear, this damn Command Center is getting smaller by the day. Let me tell you, Cole, I miss the good old days of the Federation—when an assertive captain could get promoted to Admiral or Major-General by campaigning against the pirates, or discovering ancient ruins. Nowadays is all waiting for a more permanent kind of leave. Retirement, I mean. Not the other kind of permanent leave. Hah! You youngsters get to have all the fun now.”

  We had reached an elevated passageway that spiraled over the gardens of the Center and eventually reached the second floor, where the administrative buildings waited. We stood in the middle of the passageway, watching the people go by.

  He had a wife, then, and a dog with puppies. After we were finished talking, when no player could see General Jenkins, what happened with him?

  I knew how the Rune signal really looked. A core of raw processing energy, surrounded by green building blocks of a programming language I couldn’t even begin to fathom, and darkness.

  Would Jenkins, his wife, his dog, and the puppies go back to that very darkness when no player was around to watch them? Processing power couldn’t possibly be infinite, after all. It had to end somewhere. Right?

  “Something worries you,” Jenkins pointed out. “You told me your crew was on leave. It’s rude to go on a mission without them.”

  I’ve no idea what goes on inside that virtual head of yours, I thought. Instead of saying that out loud, I shrugged:

  “It’s not like I have any other option.”

  “Well, if you want options, you could always help me catch my puppies.”

  Sure enough, a Quest window appeared in front of me.

  You have gained a new Quest! Help General Jenkins find his teleporting dogs…

  “Sorry, General, I have to decline.” I didn’t want to think about what Derry would say if I told him I was wasting time by doing some sidequest. Besides, last time I did a Quest for him, a bear ate my arm.

  Jenkins nodded like he had expected that reaction. “I figured. Is that mission of yours something you can share with me?”

  I realized then that he must’ve known what it was already. I had told Francis, and although my friend didn’t act the part, he was very much an NPC, same as the General… And all NPCs were controlled by the same Core.

  Why act like he didn’t know then? If the mysterious instructions from outer space were so important, why not have the Signal simply help me reach them?

  It didn’t make sense, yet I had never seen NPCs like Jenkins suddenly break out of their roles.

  Perhaps they don’t even know Rune isn’t supposed to be a game…

  “Sport?” called Jenkins. I realized I’d left a long gap in our conversation, while I stared out of the rails and into the garden down below.

  “Sorry, General, I spaced out. I’m trying to track a group of player—of enhanced soldiers like myself.”

  “Are they rebels?” Rebel and renegade were the terms the Federation used to refer to players that stole and plundered their way through the game.

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” I answered honestly. “But I have to find them and there’s no clue as to where they are.”

  He gave me a strange look, like he wasn’t sure what I was talking about. “This is not a normal mission, is it? It’s something else.”

  “Let’s go with ‘something personal,’” I told him. Now that he mentioned it, Rune hadn’t given me a Quest log for Derry’s mission. It wasn’t something the game had ever missed. A year ago, my friend Kipp had asked me to search for the Signal, and I had received a Quest log along with it.

  Something must be different now…

  I had the stressful sensation that I was missing something critically important.

  “Something personal it is then,” Jenkins patted me on my power-armored back. “No use sweating about it. Perhaps I can give you a hand with your search?”

  “Can you do that?” I asked, not even bothering to hide the surprise from my voice. I was already believing the idea that the game wasn’t getting involved in this one.

  “Sure, as long as you don’t want to do something illegal,” Jenkins said. “I have my contacts, carefully acquired across several decades of my career. Tell me whatever you know about this group. What are we looking for?”

  “Hmm… Well, for starters, they’re Alliance-sized, but not an official Alliance at all,” I told him. I remembered the confrontation with Keles and his cult. He had fielded a lot of manpower just to get at me…

  Give mindjacks to half of those guys and you have your own personal minion army.

  “Go on,” said Jenkins.

  “They’re hiding,” I explained. “But they’re also working on something. They must need a lot of infrastructure.”

  “Sounds like they need a base of operations,” he said. “In my experience, this leaves us with three possible routes for them to take. Care to take a guess?”

  I remembered Caputi’s base on the arctic planet. “The first one is a planetary base,” I said.

  “Good. And the others?”

  “I guess a space station,” I told him. I gestured around. “There’s enough space in Argus to hide a real army.”

  “We’re fielding the Federation Pacification Army in the Station,” Jenkins pointed out, clearly missing my meaning. “But yes, that’s another one. You’re missing only one.”

  “A spaceship,” I told him after a bit of thinking.

  “Indeed, Cole. There are other options, but these three have big advantages, so I recommend you start looking at each of them. Stations are more expensive than a dreadnought, and a base is cheaper than both. The base is easier to defend, though, and space is very large… so finding them at all would be a problem.”

  “What do you think?” I asked the NPC. I didn’t even know if he could think at all. He sure acted like he did, though.

  “Ships are built in shipyards,” he told me. “If this group of yours wanted a ship big enough for them, they either stole one or made one from scratch. Both would have left data that you can track down.

  “Bases and stations require a lot of resources—freighter ships, exo-armors, drones and the like. They ne
ed to build or rent those, too. You should follow the money, is what I mean. You’re not going to stumble onto their hideout by sheer luck otherwise.”

  It was like Beard and I had suggested to Derry and Panarin, then, main difference being that Jenkins could actually follow that kind of information since he had the bureaucracy on his side.

  “Can the Federation investigate any big payments into construction?” I asked the man.

  “Sure,” he told me. “You’ll owe me a favor, though.”

  “Look, if you want help with the puppies, I can—”

  “I’m afraid it’s more on the violent side of our jobs, Sport.”

  Figures. NPCs loved to trade a favor for a minor Quest, no matter how good a reputation you had with them.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I told him dubiously.

  “The… new administration,” he meant the general that replaced him,” is having trouble dealing with a smuggling ring on a base somewhere in Taren System. They don’t have enough evidence to investigate them further, but I know they’re costing the Federation hundreds of millions of databytes in losses.”

  You have accepted a new Quest! Discreetly do the Federation’s job for them. Deal with the Taren Smugglers. Good luck!

  Reward: Personal favor from General Jenkins. (Information for Personal Quest)

  Time limit: Until the end of the day.

  Well, I suppose this is as good as it’s going to get, I thought. Derry was going to have to adapt.

  “Why does it need to be today?” I asked the General.

  “Just like your mysterious group,” Jenkins told me, “the smuggling ring is well-hidden. Even a star system may be too big for you to find them, Sport. But as luck may have it, there’s someone in Argus that may point you in the right direction.”

  I began to suspect that it hadn’t been a coincidence that the general had approached me in the first place. No, that wasn’t exactly true. I already suspected the general had appeared to help me move my own Quest forward. What I began to wonder if he was using me to move his own personal Quest forward… How big a Persuasion Skill did someone needed to achieve his rank…?

  If the Persuasion Skill worked on players… it was a chilling idea.

  Did that smuggling ring exist in-game before he told me about them?

  “What a lucky coincidence,” I said, carefully leaving any hint of sarcasm out.

  “An accountant named Jarred,” he explained like I hadn’t said anything. “He helps the smugglers show a clean front to the Federation. Just finding his whereabouts cost me months of hard work, Sport, the guy is paranoid. On every trip he takes to Argus he’s followed by three android guards, all heavily armed. You’ll be hard pressed to brute-force your way around them without heavy weaponry.”

  “The Federation won’t let me carry a missile launcher inside the Argus,” I ventured.

  “No, even if it is in their best interest. But it’s better if they don’t know we’re on the case, Cole.”

  “Got it. Get the location from this accountant guy, go to the location, and bomb it to hell and back.”

  The general had the gall to act horrified. “Kill them? Definitely not my suggestion,” he told me. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to pretend we spent this day searching for my dog’s puppies. It’ll give me enough time to ask around for your guys, see?”

  I smiled. If the general saved us a day or two in our search, then getting rid of the smugglers for him was a win-win situation.

  “I’m on it,” I told him.

  “It’s good talking to you.” Jenkins offered me a handshake which I accepted. “See you around, Sport.”

  “See you around, General.”

  We went in our separate directions. The general walked away, up towards the offices, presumably to begin his inquiry into the CIL’s hideout. I went down the way we had come, but I had barely taken a step forward when a woman in a purple and white martial uniform stopped me.

  “Cole?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  My eyes flickered up to the spot in my head where anyone could easily read my username if they only looked close enough.

  Mai—at least I assumed she was Mai—caught my meaning and shook her head. “Well, it’s not like you’re the only Cole Picard running around Rune.”

  I shrugged. “Half the copycats are trolls, though. The real deal is right here.”

  She looked around, then behind me, with a confused expression on her face. “Where?”

  At least she has a sense of humor. Her avatar was clad in end-game gear, just like mine. Her power-armor was a different model, built around speed and scouting, with less armor plating, but with heavy-duty sensor arrays. Her hair was a bright orange and she carried around a pair of goggles on her forehead. It seemed a tad redundant, since she was hauling her normal helmet around. I guessed she had built her character as a scout or an infiltrator.

  “Yeah, a real comedian. Let me know when I can buy tickets for your next show, alright?” I said with fake annoyance. “Been waiting for you and Derry for a while now. Where’s he?”

  “Our super spy friend didn’t know you needed special permission to access the Command Center,” she explained. “When he tried to brute force his way through customs, he was fried to hell and back by the androids. I think he’s back on Earth, trying to pitch a ride on the shuttles again.”

  “Oh, pity. Seems like he’s not getting the hang of this yet, is he?” I summoned a window to the real world and caught a glimpse of Derry. He was softly rattling his fingers on the table, with a blank stare on his face. His mindjack somehow had ended in a corner by the bed.

  She nodded. “I was thinking it was a bit strange that you chose the Command Center to meet with us. I mean, you had to know the man isn’t a videogame kind of guy—”

  “Pfft. That’s ridiculous! The mere idea! Why, I would never…” My lips twitched while she eyed me with suspicion.

  “Well, you seem awfully cheery, given the situation.”

  “You see, while Derry wasted our time on customs, I was getting closer to Keles and company.”

  A wistful part of my brain had almost said “to Irene” instead of Keles, but I managed to stop it in time.

  I explained to her my deal with General Jenkins.

  “It seems awfully convenient that you found him in the ten minutes you were alone in here,” she told me after I was done talking.

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. To be honest, I think he was already on the lookout for someone outside the Federation.” Technically speaking, all players were part of the Federation, but it was a minutia that wasn’t enforced in-game. “So he could sic them on the Taren smugglers.”

  “Or something out there is looking out for you,” she said. She had a grim expression on her face.

  “I really don’t like the sound of that,” I told her. “The Church of the Intangible Lord may believe something of the sort.”

  “I’m just saying it’s one hell of a coincidence. Surely you don’t think whatever happened to you last year was entirely random? Something could’ve chosen you to get the Signal operational on Earth.”

  I had thought the same thing a couple of times before.

  You’ve changed, Stefania Caputi had told me a year ago. This game does that to people, you know.

  There was always the chance—the terrifying chance—that all of us, Keles, Caputi, Derry, Irene, and I, were merely playthings of whatever mind was behind the Signal.

  Keep thinking like this and you’ll believe you’re an NPC, too, I told myself. I shook my head.

  “Doesn’t change anything. We’ve work to do.”

  A screen appeared in front of her. It was a Quest line just like the one I’d accepted.

  “Well, at least it’s straightforward. Get the accountant, interrogate him, blow shit up.”

  “It’s the little things, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Kidnapping for Great Justice

  As
luck would have it, Jarred was hidden somewhere in the Command Center’s residential zone, since he was a well-connected member of the Federation. General Jenkins had already sent me a small digital file with the accountant’s data. Jarred was a plain NPC. True to all videogame players everywhere, I forgot what he looked like the second I wasn’t looking at his picture. Wouldn’t matter, since I loaded my visor with his coordinates and ID.

  The residential zone was the third floor of the Command Center and was heavily guarded. Several patrols of androids covered every square inch of the place, scanners much like the ones at customs made sure no one came inside without an invitation, and invisible laser grids could be activated at any time to fry anyone who managed to bypass the androids.

  This meant Jarred was physically closer, but would be a hard target for us to extract.

  “Derry, how are you doing back there?” I asked the ex-Director, in the real world.

  He was sitting on the edge of his mattress, mindjack on. “I got killed again.”

  “Don’t worry, buddy,” I said sarcastically, “your girlfriend and I are taking charge of the situation while you play.”

  To his credit, he didn’t even come close to taking the bait. “You do that.” He fell silent again.

  Picking on the old man while he was down wasn’t as fun as I had thought. Instead, I focused back on Rune.

  Mai and I were surveying the residential area. Without our weapons, we weren’t going to get in there anytime soon. It was the futuristic equivalent of a gated community, with avant-garde construction blocks of different sizes, but all a tad smaller than what was usual for the rich and powerful. Made sense, since real estate was a premium inside a space station.

  Every block had its own security system, connected to the Command Center’s mainframe, which controlled all of them at the same time. Hacking into it was out of the question.

  “Any ideas?” Mai asked. “This is not my area of expertise, you know?”

  “What are you good at?” I asked. I realized my question wasn’t phrased very tactfully and corrected myself. “As in your character’s build, I mean.”