The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series

by Victor Deckard

  Nate shook his head. “No way. I don’t really see the point in them putting on worker clothes. Moreover, we’ve been dealing with bandits and pirates for the past six months. Did any of them give up without a fight?”

  “Only when the advantage wasn’t on their side and they wanted to get you to let your guard down so they could stab you in the back,” I put in.

  Nate nodded and said, “Most of the pirates are experienced and brutal fighters. And some of them would rather die in a battle than give up without a fight or let themselves get caught and arrested.”

  Nate shifted his attention to the girl and continued to talk to her, “Would these people have given up without a fight if they’d been pirates dressed in workers’ clothes?”

  Alyson thought about it for a moment and then shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “They would not. You are right.”

  I glanced at the door that led out of the bridge. The Russian must already have made it to the dropship. I looked at Nate and said, “We should really do something about that asshole. It doesn’t matter to him whom to kill, bandits or innocent people. He’s a cold-blooded murderer. Moreover, it’s impossible to predict what he will do next. So we should make sure he won’t hurt anybody else, guys.”

  “I agree with you, mate,” the British guy said.

  We then came up with a plan of tackling and disarming Vlad when we got to the dropship.

  When we discussed the details of the plan, Nate nodded and said, “Okay. Back to our main objective. How do we deal with it? How do we convince Echo that this mission is a mistake? Any ideas, guys?”

  However, before we could come up with an idea, something happened.

  “I—I don’t feel well,” Alyson said, her face white, her eyes wide with anxiety.

  “Yes,” I said in a hoarse voice. “It’s hard to breathe.”

  “I can hardly breathe too,” Nate said. “What is happening?”

  Echo immediately replied, “Warriors, I need to remind you that your current objective on this spaceship is complete. You have to leave the ship and return to the dropship immediately.”

  I brought up The Map and took a second to examine it. When we had started the mission, our playable zone was the whole ship. Now that all the crew members were dead and Echo had full control of the ship, there was nothing for us to do here. So the playable zone had shrunk to a very small area focused on our dropship, which floated in open space thirty or so meters away from the ship.

  While none of us still believed that it was a virtual reality video game—even Vlad no longer treated it as such—we still were referring to the green zone as the playable zone, out of habit.

  So we were now outside the playable zone. As we had found out on our very first mission where we had had to deal with a horde of giant aggressive spiders, we were only allowed to wander around the playable zone when on a mission. If we left it, the nanotrites would begin to slowly kill us, restricting our ability to breathe.

  That was what was happening now. Echo had shrunk the playable zone, forcing us to leave the ship. Intentionally or not but Echo did not give us any time to come up with a plan of avoiding doing this mission. We had to return to our dropship. If we did not do that, the nanotrites in our bodies would eventually kill us.

  So we ran out of the bridge and headed for the airlock. A couple of minutes later, we were floating through the open space toward our dropship. A little later on, we were inside the cargo hold of the dropship and could breathe again.

  Sure enough, Vlad’s spacesuit was already there. We took off ours and entered the main room of the dropship. The Russian was nowhere in sight, but we instantly saw that one of the cryogenic chambers was closed. This meant that Vlad was already inside the pod.

  It was strange. He hated those things. Even after the six months of working for The Weaponized, he still did not like being locked in those pods.

  Nate, Alyson, and I looked at one another, confused.

  Before we could say anything, Echo voice emanated from loudspeakers inside the room.

  “Warriors, let me inform you that I have just set course for the Pertlos asteroid. I have also just initiated the process to suck the air out of the room you are currently occupying.”

  There was a hiss as the air began being sucked out of the main room of the dropship. It was pretty much obvious that there would soon be no air for us to breathe.

  “Why the hell are you doing this, Echo?” I asked.

  “I am so sorry, warriors,” Echo replied, “but I have to do this. You are taking too long to complete this mission, which is why I am forced to make you hurry. That’s how I have been programmed. I am sorry for that.”

  “Great,” I muttered under my breath. It looked like we did not have much time to come up with the plan.

  “But do not worry, warriors,” Echo continued. “The air will be sucked directly in your pods, so you will be able to breathe inside them. So would you kindly get in your cryogenic chambers?”

  I was not sure how those so-called cryogenic chambers worked. If we were being frozen inside them, did we really need air there? However, while I did not know how that futuristic technology worked, I was more than sure that Echo knew what he was doing. So we had no choice but to comply with the AI’s instructions.

  We began to get in the pods. The flight to the asteroid would probably take only a couple of hours, if that. Still, we had to lock ourselves in the cryogenic chambers for the amount of time it would take the dropship to get to the asteroid. As usual, Echo did not give us much freedom of movement.

  We got in our pods, and we were soon put to sleep.

  When I woke up, I had to wait a little while until the air filled the main room of the dropship again. Then the lid of my pod slid open and I sat up.

  As I started to climb out, I heard Vlad shout angrily, “Don’t you fucking move! Freeze everybody!”

  I slowly turned my head to look back over my shoulder. The Russian had already sat up in his pod and was pointing his assault rifle at the rest of us.

  “What the heck is on your mind?” I asked.

  “I know what you are up to,” Vlad said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Don’t fucking pretend you don’t understand,” Vlad suddenly snapped at me. He looked downright crazy at the moment.

  “Hey, you need to calm down, mate,” Nate said.

  Vlad jumped out of his pod, covering us with his assault rifle. “Don’t you tell me what to do.”

  I was thinking hard. I could use my Active Ability to blink behind Vlad. The problem was that Vlad was not dumb. As soon as I disappear he would realize that I materialized somewhere behind him. So I had somehow to deal with him very quickly and without putting Nate and Alyson’s lives in danger.

  “I know what you were talking about back on the bridge,” Vlad said, still pointing his assault rifle at us. “You discussed how to take me down and then to sabotage the mission.”

  “How did you know about it?” Nate asked.

  “I’m not stupid, okay?” Vlad snarled. “I know that the three of you don’t like me even despite the fact that I’m your teammate. So after I got here, I had Echo transmit everything that was being said on the bridge to the dropship. That’s how I was able to overhear your conversation.”

  “So what now?” Nate asked. “Are you going to kill us all?”

  Vlad seemed genuinely surprised. “Why would I do that? You are my teammates. I have no reason to kill you. It’s you who were discussing a plan of tackling and disarming me, isn’t it? You wanted to stop me from completing our mission, didn’t you? But I won’t let you interfere with it. I’m gonna complete our mission, no matter what.”

  “Echo wants us to destroy the mining colony, Vlad,” Nate said. “He wants us to kill innocent people, not pirates.”

  “I don’t give a fuck, okay?” Came the reply from the Russian. “Thought I already told you t
hat.”

  And without waiting for us to reply, he suddenly backed up to the door behind him, still aiming his assault rifle at us.

  “Vlad, wait,” Nate cried out.

  The blond Russian did not listen to him. He jumped out of the room, and the door slid close behind him. We rushed to the door. When Nate was about to open it, I stopped him.

  “Wait,” I said. “He might be waiting for us to come through so he could ambush us in the chokepoint of the doorway.”

  “But he said he don’t want to kill us,” Alyson said.

  “Still, we should be careful,” I said. “He may be saying one thing but planning something altogether different. We shouldn’t trust him.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nate said. “I’ll deploy my shield should the need arise.”

  However, when we tried to open the door, we found it locked. It would not open.

  “What the heck, Echo,” I said. “Why can’t we open the effing door?”

  “It’s for your safety, warriors,” the AI replied. “The air is being sucked out of the cargo hold right now, so you had better not leave the main room at the moment.”

  This meant that Vlad was about to leave the dropship and we could do nothing to prevent him from doing so.

  A little later on, the cargo hold was filled with air again. When the door opened, we saw that our off-road vehicle was missing. Vlad had taken it. It was really bad. We would not be able to catch up with him on foot. Sure, we had the dropship, but we were not allowed to pilot it. And Echo was also not going to risk flying the dropship into a presumable battle zone.

  We wasted no time retrieving our space battle suits and putting them on. As soon as the air was sucked out of the cargo hold, the door opened and we left the dropship, stepping on the barren surface of the asteroid.

  Since the asteroid had no atmosphere, I could clearly see very far away, way farther than people could see on Earth and other planets that had atmosphere. We immediately saw our Humvee racing toward the mining colony.

  Also, since the asteroid had no atmosphere, there was no sky. Even despite the local sun floating far above our heads, we could see gazillions of stars scattered across the black empty space. One could never see something like that on Earth-like planets.

  I also knew that since it was an asteroid, the day-night cycle was very short here. In about half an hour, the local sun would drop and the night would fall, and then in a couple of hours, the local would rise again.

  Gravity was almost nonexistent here. We did not run toward the mining but rather floated in its direction. We kind of jumped, pushing off the ground, and then floated forward letting the gravity slowly pull us back down to the ground.

  I was really eager to get to the mining colony in time to foil Vlad’s plans to destroy it, which would result in hundreds of innocent people dying. Due to that, I was careless and a few times pushed off too hard. The weak gravity could not get me back, and I began floating upward away from the asteroid. I had to use the small engines of my space suit to get myself back down to the ground. In the past six months, all of us had become experts of moving in low and zero gravity and operating space suits.

  At one time, a text message from Echo popped up before my eyes. It read, “To do that, you can get to the main engineering room and initiate the process of overheating the main generator. Once it’s overheated, it will blow up. The explosion will be powerful enough to destroy the whole complex.”

  I knew what had happened. Vlad must have asked the AI how to destroy the mining colony. Since we were no longer in the dropship, Echo could converse with us not with voice but through text messages. However, it was impossible for any of us to send another teammate a private message. We were supposed to operate as a single unit, so there should not be secrets among us, which was why when one teammate texted another one, the rest of the team received the message as well. The same held true with Echo. So even though it was Vlad who had asked Echo the question, we all received the AI’s answer.

  Thanks to that, we knew where Vlad was headed. We could only hope that we would be able to get to the main engineering room before it was too late.

  Finally, we reached the mining colony and made our way to the main building. When we reached it, we saw our Humvee parked carelessly next to the main entrance.

  We entered the airlock and soon we inside the complex. The artificial gravity was now affecting us.

  I checked The Map to get our bearings and see where Vlad currently was. A white pulsating dot representing his location was quickly moving toward the area labeled as the main engineering room.

  We should really hurry up if we wanted to catch up with him in time to prevent him from overheating the main generator.

  However, Nate’s space battle suit was too bulky and did not allow him to move too fast. Alyson could run faster than him, but she usually stayed close to him.

  As for me, I could move very fast. My space suit was not as tough as Nate’s was, but it was light and did not constrict my movements. Also, thanks to the Speed Maniac skill I had learned some time ago, my overall movement speed was increased by fifty percent. So I could move much faster than Nate or Alyson could. Moreover, my Active Ability allowed me to cover long distances in the blink of an eye.

  So it was up to me to stop Vlad.

  “We should split,” I said to my two teammates. “I can run way faster than you two.”

  Nate and Alyson did not argue with me. They knew that I was right.

  “Be careful, David,” Nate said. “We’ll try to get there too as soon as possible.”

  I nodded and burst into a race in the direction of the main engineering room.

  It was not long before I ran into two armed people dressed in security detail uniforms.

  Above each of them hovered a window with a piece of info.

  > Name: Pirate

  > Level: 30

  Those people were not criminals, but the nanotrites in my body took them for pirates even though they were dressed in security uniforms. The levels of the security guards were shown in my HUD as if they were enemies. This and the fact that we had the map of the whole complex meant that this mission was not a mistake. This mining colony had been scanned beforehand so we could have the map of the area and would be aware of how strong the security guards were. This meant that the leaders of our organization had planned to attack it from the very beginning, and they could not but be well aware that it was not a pirate base. It was a planned attack on this place.

  Why the leaders of the organization wanted us to destroy this mining colony was an altogether different question. I did not know the answer to it and neither did I have time to ponder on it.

  “It’s a pirate,” one of them shouted.

  Both of them then whipped their pistols up to take aim at me.

  “Wait,” I yelled. “I’m not your enemy.”

  They were not having any of that. They were going to open fire on me. I could see it in their eyes. However, I was not going to fight them. Despite the fact that they were represented as enemies in my HUD, I was not going to kill them.

  Instead of firing at them, I used my Active Ability and blinked forward. I materialized fifteen meters behind the two security guards, and without waiting for them to figure out where I had disappeared to, I burst into a run away from them.

  I continued to make my way through the building, headed for the main engineering room. Every now and then, I ran into workers or security guards but avoided engaging them at all costs. The recently learned skill called Spectral Protector for my Passive Ability really helped. It informed me if there were enemies nearby, so it made it easier for me to avoid them.

  I also stumbled upon dead bodies every now and then. Had to be Vlad’s job.

  I continued to make my way for the main engineering room, moving as fast as I could. I constantly used my Active Ability to blink forward to cover long distances. I hoped as hell I would reach my destination before
it was too late.

  I was not thinking about what I would do when I found Vlad. By hell or high water, I was going to stop him. Sure, he was one of us and he more often than not saved our lives. But at the same time, he was not a good person. He helped us only because we were his teammates. As to other people, he did not care about them one bit.

  And now he was going to kill hundreds of workers working in this place without having any second thoughts. So I was going to stop him no matter what. I would try to do my best to take him down in one piece. However, I was ready to kill him if it was the only way of stopping him. I would do anything to stop him from killing lots of innocent people.

  I continued to make my way to the main engineering room, using my Active Ability every now and then and avoiding security guards and workers who tried to stop me.

  At some point, Spectral Protector warned me that there was some sort of trap several meters up ahead. I slowed down, peering ahead. I managed to spot a small disk attached to the right-hand wall. The explosive device was the size of a dime. Had to be a mine or something like that. I would not have noticed it had my Passive Ability not warned me about it.

  I was more than sure that it was Vlad who had placed the mine here. It was a problem. Nate, Alyson, and I usually told one another what skills we were going to learn when we leveled up. As for Vlad, he always kept to himself and barely talked to us. More often than not, he did not tell us what skills he wanted to learn.

  So Vlad must have had some skill to put small mines. He had never used these mines before, which meant that he must have learned this skill recently. Who knows what other skills he had at his disposal. Sure, I knew of some of them since he had used them on our previous missions, but he might have had some others that he had never used before.

  The mine was small, so it would probably not do much damage to my battle suit. Still, if I left it there, a passing-by worker might accidentally trigger it and get wounded. I could not let it happen, so I brought up my submachine gun and fired off a short burst of bullets. One of them hit the mine, and it exploded. The explosion was pretty weak but at the same time powerful enough to harm a person not protected by tough body armor.