Rune Universe: A Virtual Reality novel (The RUNE UNIVERSE trilogy Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  I took two steps towards him, my hands raised. “Oh, so that’s all? The Apollo isn’t for sale. Sorry to make you waste your time.”

  “I hope you reconsider,” said the mercenary, which by now I thought of as the leader of the pack. “I know you are new at Rune, so you don’t know how things work around here. But you can’t keep this ship, at least not for long.”

  “Why not?” Another step. Just a little more…

  “There are people —not us, of course— with little regard for other player’s property. They will see your beautiful ship, see how lacking you are in defense capabilities, and decide it’s easy to take it from you. One of them will succeed, and will steal your ship. We want to buy it before that happens.”

  “I think I’m doing fine taking care of myself, I just blew one of your guys to hell.”

  “We know. Very undiplomatic of you. We are willing to believe it was a rookie with a happy trigger finger and forget about it. See? We are not the bad guys,” said the bad guy.

  I took another step, pretending to think about his scam. One of the other mercenaries was instantly upon me:

  “Careful, boss! Cole here loves his close quarter combat.”

  Their boss stepped back and I froze. I knew that voice.

  “Thanks, cadet, but I’m sure our friend here didn’t mean it. Right, Cole?”

  “If you attack them, they’ll claim self-defense after blasting you to bits,” Rylena whispered, “and then they’ll keep the ship just the same.

  I ignored this. I had my eyes locked on the mercenary cadet that had jumped in front of me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him. Red coils of anger danced in my stomach.

  “I told you joining an Alliance is the best way to rank up,” he said. His visor cleared with a gesture and I could see the mocking eyes of Lance, the first player I met back on Earth. “Did you think I’d spend the entire week hunting mutants? Posse of Iron is where the fun is.”

  “Lance here has been very helpful,” explained the leader, “when we lost your trail back on the Argus, he volunteered his communicator, where he had added you as a friend not long ago.”

  “So, you hacked him,” said Rylena.

  As I turned to face Lance, he threw his hands in the air and laughed without mirth. “Hey, no hard feelings, right, Cole? Rune is just a game. You said so yourself.”

  I didn’t bother to answer that. I merely memorized every line on his face. Soon enough, he stopped laughing. His leader gestured that it was enough, so he retreated back a couple of steps and raised again his laser rifle towards my chest.

  “Time is running out, Cole,” the bounty hunter said, “what are you going to do? We are willing to offer you a hundred thousand databytes for the Apollo Wing. That’s a hundred thousand more than you’ll get if a pirate steals it from you. Or if you have an accident right here in this planet, and we have to commission your ship for protection.”

  “A legendary frigate is worth a hundred times that price,” argued Rylena.

  “What’s a newbie like him going to do with that amount of money?” spat back the Posse of Iron merc. “He’s just going to get abused by a higher-ranking player. Isn’t that what you did, Rylena? You are Diamond-ranked, right? It’s a bit weird seeing you flying with a rookie, perhaps you’re tired of earning your data-bytes the honest way? You saw him find the Apollo on accident. Then, you wanted it for yourself.”

  “You think she’s pretending to be my online girlfriend?” I exclaimed. How old were these guys?

  “Tell you what, I’ll throw in one of our fighter ships in the bargain,” he went on, “to sweeten the deal. You still have a ship, and you get rid of the trouble the Apollo is going to bring you.”

  Yeah, from people like you, I thought. For a second, Lance, this guy, his goons, they were all the same figure in front of me: the policeman abusing his authority. The school-teacher who grounded me for fighting after I dared defend myself from some older kids. The deadbeat father who overdosed before I was born.

  The Posse of Iron were all that I hated about the world. Egomaniacs, narcissistic, leeches. The kind of person who, in a fair universe, would get punished by karma almost instantly. The kind of person who almost always got what they wanted.

  Few times in my life had I yearned so badly for a fight, even if it’d “kill” me. And yet…

  I turned to Rylena, hoping for a special solution. Wasn’t she a Battlemind? Planning was her job, and she’d had enough time to come up with one. She refused to meet my gaze. I could only see my reflection on her visor.

  It was so unfair. Van had taught me a couple things about streaming. The easiest way to go pro in a game is to have a big audience right from the start. The adventures of a new pilot and his legendary ship, hanging around in Rune Universe… I knew I could make it. With that ship, I’d have a real shot at becoming pro and of breaking free from Xanz, from Lower Cañitas, from everything.

  People who think you can’t run away from your problems haven’t realized you can stuff your shoes with dollars for extra speed.

  The Quantum Safeguard didn’t make you lose your items every time. It was only a possibility. I could run with that risk, fight it out. Maybe win.

  What was going to be? The way I saw it, I had to choose between two dreams. Kipp’s dream to finish his parents work, against mine.

  Sad part was, I didn’t need to think it over very much.

  “I’ll take the databytes,” I said, fighting to spit the words against my clenched teeth. “Hope you have fun with the ‘game,’ Lance.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said. The Posse of Iron must’ve loved their lets-pretend-we-are-military game, because they didn’t react. Rifles were still pointed at me.

  The leader walked towards me and offered me a handshake. I begrudgingly accepted, thinking all the while about jabbing my blaster into his eye. “Excellent decision, Cole Picard. Just offer us a transfer from your inventory and we’ll be on our way and you’ll be a rich newbie.”

  “Like hell he will,” Rylena suddenly intervened. She walked towards us, hands raised, as I had done previously. “You got what you goddamn wanted, you may as well offer him a contract.”

  “He can do that?” I asked. “I very much want one of those, actually.”

  The mercenary groaned. “You doubt our word?”

  “Yes,” Rylena and I said together.

  “Very well,” the player said, shaking his head in disappointment. He opened a screen and typed for a minute. “There. Happy now?”

  A new screen appeared in front of me.

  Posse of Iron contract of acquisition:

  I, xXxCloudBasherxXx, in representation of Posse of Iron, present the following offer to Cole Picard in exchange for the frigate ship “Apollo Wing”-

  -The sum of 100,000 databytes, to be delivered instantly.

  -The z01 Fighter “Sting”

  Do you agree to this transaction? Y/N

  “Let me take a look”, Rylena moved my screen towards her. I had been sure players couldn’t do something like that, yet Battleminds played with different rules. “This is ridiculous. At least have the decency to add a non-aggression clause.”

  Now mister xXxCloudBasherxXx seemed actually pissed off, even through his black helmet. “Christ, woman, do you take us for some pirates? Just sign the damn thing—”

  “Dude,” I said, “you fucking won already. Just add the clause-thing, don’t throw a temper tantrum over nothing.”

  Cloud Basher looked around, to his troops, and doubted for an instant. I realized these punks weren’t as bad as they wanted to appear. Perhaps this bounty hunter was fourteen or something like that. Perhaps his Mom would ground him if he played too much.

  All the fear these bullies could have made me feel disappeared like smoke. They were a fangless version of The Ferals, just with better fashion sense.

  I’m not scared of you, I thought, glancing at Lance. This is not the last time we meet, little prick.

&
nbsp; I hate bullies.

  Lance tried to held my gaze for a moment and then he looked down. I smiled and turned towards his boss, who had reached a decision.

  “Fine.”

  Posse of Iron contract of acquisition:

  I, xXxCloudBasherxXx, in representation of Posse of Iron, present the following offer to Cole Picard in exchange for the frigate ship “Apollo Wing”-

  -The sum of 100,000 databytes, to be delivered instantly.

  -The z01 Fighter “Sting”

  -A non-aggression clause between all the members of Posse of Iron and Cole Picard and Rylena.

  Do you agree to this transaction? Y/N

  “But this clause will break if you start something, too,” he warned me.

  I took a deep breath, and then pressed “Y” on my screen.

  The Apollo Wing had new ownership.

  “Thank you for your business,” said Cloud Basher. “We at Posse of Iron hope you are satisfied with our transaction.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The mercenaries laughed. Now that there was a contract between them and us, they could relax. Their rifles were finally lowered, not that it was any use to me now.

  “I love doing quests with you, Cole,” said Lance. There was a small screen in front of him that he seemed to find really funny. Cloud got one, too.

  I realized with dismay the game had awarded them a quest completion for stealing my ship.

  Way to rub it in my face, Rune. If Kipp’s parents had programmed the quest system, then Patel’s brand of humor was a family trait.

  I got to see how the Posse of Iron left with my ship. They left without looking back, leaving Rylena and me standing alone atop the hill overlooking the yellow sea and the poisonous sky.

  For a moment, we simply stood there, neither of us knowing what to say. My mouth tasted of ashes, humiliation, and defeat. I finally broke the silence:

  “At least they left us a ship.”

  “Yeah, no, there’s no way they didn’t leave a bomb inside.”

  As if humoring her, the fighter blew up in a cloud of plasma and charred pieces of armor. I screamed something unmanly and fell on my ass when the wave passed right through me. Rylena suit’s shields blared and she held her ground, looking dejectedly to the side, like she hadn’t realized we had almost been atomized.

  “Ah, classic Posse,” she said, finally, as a rain of tiny, boiling pieces of metal fell all around us. “They probably rigged it from the beginning. You’d do us a favor if you managed to get killed by a falling piece, by the way. It would be a breach of contract.”

  We had no such luck. The Posse had calculated perfectly their payload. They had experience, after all.

  I stood with difficulty. Boy, this day had been long.

  “So, then it’s true, isn’t it?” Rylena told me as I limped towards her. “Kipp’s message. I mean, I never thought he was lying… but you know. His idea of a joke was very particular.”

  She trailed off, the sky and the ground stealing her attention a couple times. Then she dimmed her visor and looked at me with her cyborg eyes that somehow managed to glow a sad green light. “If this had been a sort of joke, or not as serious, I don’t think you’d have let them have the ship.”

  “So you were testing me, back then,” I realized, “that’s why you didn’t intervene.”

  She nodded.

  “I guess I find it hard to believe, too,” I said. I hadn’t realized how tired I was until then. “But we still have the map, and the key. They were more important to Kipp than the ship. So, in a way, we won today.”

  “You know? Posse of Iron has sold their Non-Agression Clause for more than what they gave you for the ship. We could make some serious bank by smuggling on their territories, since they won’t attack us.”

  “That’s great.”

  “We’re going to attack them at the first chance we get, right?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Congratulations! You have claimed a new Rival! Lance of Posse of Iron will be waiting for you, when you are ready to earn your revenge!

  Your skills have gone up: Close Quarters Combat (2 level) Negotiation (1 level) Trading (1 level)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I'm sorry, mister bus

  “Are you sure you’re not dead?” asked Steve for the second time in just an hour of work.

  I grunted back an unintelligible answer and continued my slow examination of the 2038 Xanz project to renew their investment in three shell-laboratories in some third world country. I concluded I had no idea what I was reading. It was either the sleep deprivation or the corporation’s lawyers had gotten really good at their job.

  My new corporate friend eyed me with medical worry. Had he never seen an employee with only forty-five minutes of sleep? I asked him this, irked, when he insisted on prying further.

  “I’ve been working here for a couple years now,” he explained, ignoring my irked face, “I’ve seen like three or four nervous breakdowns. Mostly new employees, but one of them was our former manager, before Manager Jimenez. They always start like this. Lack of sleep, then the hallucinations set in, then they are running around naked all over the skyscraper, trying to find the CEO to murder him or something.”

  “Sounds fun,” I mumbled, “but don’t worry. I just had to do a favor for a friend yesterday. It took a while. I don’t think I’m having a nervous breakdown. Also, the pink elephant says I’m okay, so, that settles it.”

  Steve then introduced me to the marvels of office coffee. It was a super strong blend, he explained, genetically engineered right here in Xanz. After that, he had to assure me the coffee wasn’t about to grow me a third arm or make me spit out my liver.

  It turned out to taste very good, actually. A sip made me perk up real fast. It had hints of cinnamon and hazelnut. A slight aftertaste of lab-made ammonia, to add spiciness.

  I downed an entire mug, hoping medical science was advanced enough in a decade or two to help me cure the damage I was probably doing to my organs. I was still sleepless, but now I had a small battery pack connected to my empty power reserves if you don’t mind the Rune metaphor.

  Even with the coffee, I couldn’t focus very much on the Xanz’s reports. All I thought about was getting back on Rune. I had a ship to recover and a friend to avenge. The office’s clock moved slower than ever.

  “Do you think I can bring some of that coffee home?” I told Steve, as we powered through some obscure transactions Xanz had made three years ago to a local government in South America.

  “You plan on bringing work home? I mean, that’s great initiative and all, but I don’t want you getting your hopes up. No one has been promoted in Manager’s Jimenez time here. You’re better off biding your time until you can get transferred to another company in the building.”

  “I just like the taste,” I lied with an innocent expression.

  Steve didn’t buy it at all:

  “You know that shit is highly addictive, right? It’s to normal coffee what a kick in the balls is to a kiss.”

  “C’mon, have some faith in me.”

  I kept going at it for the next couple hours, in a slightly manic way, trying to ignore the chest palpitations and the slightly blurred vision. I wanted the extra punch of energy so I could play without getting tired so soon into the night. Perhaps if I’d been better rested last night, I could have seen the ambush the Posse of Iron had prepared.

  Manager Jimenez found us almost drowning in an ever-growing pile of papers and sent me on errands runs for the rest of the work-day. All the companies in the skyscraper had the same policy: no digital tech for communication, not even for a memo. Not even email. Nothing that could be hacked and leaked later to the press. They called it “protecting company privacy,” and since Steve was serious when he mentioned it, employees actually believed it.

  Instead of memos, they used people like me. Navigating the hundred or so offices was like being lost in the most boring maze imaginable. Eventually, as the coffee’s p
unch tapered off, the numbers in the elevator stopped having any meaning. I delivered hand-written notes about a dozen times. Secretaries began to look alike. The names of the different companies got mixed in my mind, along with their business: did Lightex sell high-tech lamps or low-calorie Texan food?

  The only name that caught my attention was the last one on my route. Their offices were at the skyscraper’s second-to-last floor and they looked the same as all the others. But the name on the plaque right on top of the wooden doors was “Nordic.”

  It was the company that made Rune Universe. The one Kipp’s parents had created. Along with the man who, according to my friend, had poisoned him and his entire family.

  “I don’t want you to seek revenge,” Kipp’s golden avatar had told me.

  It’s interesting the things you notice when your state of mind changes. I had walked corridors just like this one for several days now. But now, I could see from the corner of my eye at least three sensor-detecting cameras hanging from the ceiling. Those were the obvious ones, so at least another three had to be nearby, hidden from view.

  I could also see two different drone-hatches dissimulated on the walls, behind flower pots. The frail-looking wooden doors had reinforced hinges and were covered in sensors to confirm my identity.

  This building wasn’t nearly as low-tech as it wanted the employees to believe.

  I delivered the memo to the nearest Nordic secretary and made an effort to leave without looking around.

  Would I recognize Seitaro Ogawa if I saw him, here? What would happen then, was I supposed to just let him walk away?

  The best way to get payback is on Rune, I thought, trying to convince myself. Going against a billionaire in the real world is only going to land you in jail.

  Still, when I got back in the elevator to return to Xanz, I made a point of remembering Nordic’s floor-plan.

  Just in case.