“Or Mapple was just giving him build advice,” Reggie muttered.
As he kept watch, player after player logged out. Even Frank headed off to his quarters for some shut-eye. Reggie was left as the lone member of Wounded Legion awake in the game.
Reggie made one last check to assure himself that Nephtali was still under Wounded Legion control:
[Green Zone]
[Schet IX]
[Alcon Prime]
[Turrim Auream Starport]
[Nephtali]
He checked their income.
[Wounded Legion - Net Income - 106,000Cr/Day]
“Five bells and all is well,” Reggie murmured, noting that it was just past 0500 hours. “Time for bed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Reggie awoke in his bunk to the sound of a grating alarm he’d set so he wouldn’t oversleep the arrival of his troops. Aside from Frank, the rest kept fairly regular hours. Odd to think that when Reggie was a kid, he’d lost countless nights’ sleep playing video games into the wee hours with the volume off as his parents slept. Now, a regular dose of Armored Souls was the perfect recipe for a full night’s slumber.
His mustache-twirling master plan to smoke out his mole had fizzled in bland and pedestrian fashion. Everyone had logged out in good order and without raising undue suspicion.
Wishing he kept a personal coffee maker in his quarters, Reggie scratched his back and retrieved a tablet computer from the bedside table.
Out of habit, he double-checked Wounded Legion holdings:
[Green Zone]
[Schet IX]
[Alcon Prime]
[Turrim Auream Starport]
Staring at the tablet in disbelief, he checked their faction income.
[Wounded Legion - Net Income - 83,500Cr/Day]
“Fuckers!”
Immediately, he backed out a menu level.
[Faction > Roster > News (14) > Rewards > Info]
Reggie tapped “News,” already knowing what he’d find there.
[Nephtali Captured by Liberty Clan]
It was right there nestled among such mundane items as production reports from Alcon Prime and trade updates from Turrim Auream Starport. Just a routine bit of getting bent over and screwed on the front lawn while the whole galaxy—and Ken Bradley—watched and pretended not to notice.
Fuming, Reggie went to the wall computer terminal and looked up the contact info for Liberty Clan. Luckily, he could just tap the faction name in his message log to find a contact link.
[Liberty Clan - Freedom Coach Napoleon]
Just the sarcastic, backhanded title made Reggie hate the guy before his face ever appeared on screen.
“Hey, buddy,” Napoleon said with a shy, unassuming grin. “You need a shoulder to cry on?” He was thin-faced and strong-jawed, with the sort of upswept hair that no guy could get without shopping in the women’s aisle at the drug store. Reggie would have given him credit for being in his mid-thirties, older than most of his gamer peers. Probably how he’d risen to leadership of a faction—he was the adult in the room.
But, as predicted, Reggie hated him instantly.
“Where you get off poaching planets the second I take them?” Reggie demanded.
“If you poach the planets instead of frying them in oil, the result is a healthier planet,” Napoleon replied without missing a beat.
“You know what I mean,” Reggie snapped. “There are a million uninhabited worlds out there better than Cagamere V or even Nephtali. Why not take one of those?”
“Have you ever been to a bar, and there are all these chicks hanging out, talking amongst themselves, minding their own business?” Napoleon asked. “How do you pick just one? But then, some guy walks in and starts making a move on the blonde in the low-cut red dress. That’s when you know—she’s the one you want. Not only do you know without a doubt that she’s going home with you, but you know that there’s not another woman in the bar who’ll touch the other guy after watching him go down in embarrassing flames. That’s a guy who’s gonna need a box of tissues when he gets home. And that’s you, King old chum.”
“You’re a goddamn bully; that’s what you are,” Reggie said, pointing a finger at the smug face on the screen. “I know your type. Liberty Clan’s big, but Wounded Legion’s not going to stand idly by while you pick away at us.”
Napoleon turned down his lower lip in a pout. “Aw. Sounds like someone’s got a case of heroes. Painful condition. But you are going to get your ass kicked, time after time. We’ll take planets you don’t defend. We’ll run you off planets you do. That’s a nice space station you’ve got in Turrim Auream. That’s Latin, in case you hadn’t noticed. Means golden tower. Bit overblown for how far out it is from the real commercial traffic, but hey, it’s a nice name. We’re taking it from you tomorrow.”
Reggie’s breath seethed through his nostrils like a penned bull. “You won’t get away with this. We’ll stop you.”
“No, you won’t,” Napoleon said, shaking his head in mock sadness. “I ran the calculations. There’s absolutely no way your little faction can stop Liberty Clan. We will bring truth, justice, and the Liberty Clan way to Turrim Auream and the rest of the—frankly, horribly named—planets in your little rock garden.” He gave a sloppy salute, and the screen went blank.
Reggie punched the black, featureless glass where that smug face had just been.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Reggie cleared the War Room. Only June, Chase, Lin, and Frank were allowed in. Still fuming, as soon as the doors closed behind them, Reggie unloaded.
“That sleazy, sarcastic bastard plans to keep taking planets as we capture them,” Reggie said, stalking back and forth on one side of the holograph stand as Alpha Platoon watched from the far side. “I had ASHARI run the numbers, and she agreed with ‘Freedom Coach’ Napoleon that we don’t stand a chance against Liberty Clan.”
Lin sighed. “Well, it’s been fun. Let’s sell off the jugs and go play Petty Zoo Manager.”
Everyone glared at her.
“What?” Lin asked. “I’m joking. We’ll find a way to fuck these guys right back.”
“It’s a numbers game,” Chase said. “We can’t fight them on a planet of their choosing. But we can take worlds rapid-fire. Maybe spread them out too far as they expand. Take places with negative income. Steal neutral systems next to some of the real big boys out there.”
“What if they let us keep one or two?” June asked. “What then? We swallow our own poison pills.”
Chase grinned in response. “That’s the beauty of it. If we make liars out of them, they might get sick of dealing with us. There are always creative ways to dump unwanted systems, even if we can’t just drop them.”
June called up the galactic map. She highlighted Wounded Legion in green and Liberty Clan in purple. The size disparity was daunting. “What if they manage to keep up with recruiting efforts? What if they manage to build infrastructure on the deadbeat planets we stick them with? It would be like spraying lighter fluid on a lit grill.”
“I see you’ve camped with my family,” Chase remarked.
Reggie stepped in, calming now that there were other voices laying out workable options. Anything was better than railing against the unfairness of the game universe. If Ken Bradley didn’t care, that was the same as saying that the universe itself didn’t care about fair play.
“Fine,” he said. “But if you don’t like Chase’s idea, what’ve you got to offer that’s better?”
“Recruiting,” June said. “We pitch ourselves as the invincible underdogs, down but never defeated. We’ll attract pilots looking for this kind of challenge. We get to the point where we can launch tactical strikes back on their worlds. They take one of ours; we take a better one of theirs. We counter-punch and make the war unsustainable for them.”
“Not sure how many players out there are the knights in shining armor you’re looking for,” Chase commented. “I read the forums. Most of these guys like be
ing the bullies.”
Reggie held up his hands. “I’m not going to say we’ll go 100 percent in either direction. I just want to know which has the best chance of getting us free from Liberty Clan’s oppression.”
Silent until just then, Frank snorted. “Liberty Clan. Hmph. False liberty’s always been the toughest to fight against. Tough to get a fella to sign up for sticking a thumb in liberty’s eye, especially if it’s your word against the guy banging the drum and playing the fife. Just gotta roll up those sleeves and show ‘em the fight. Can’t fight forever with your fingers crossed behind your back. Colors show true eventually.”
“Inspiring,” Chase said. “But useless. People see us get our asses kicked on a daily basis and the last thing on their minds will be signing up to get their free beatings.”
While they argued back and forth, Reggie sneaked into the player generated mission creator and assigned two custom missions to the four of them.
[Primary Objective: Increase Wounded Legion Roster to 30 Active Players]
[Primary Objective: Increase Wounded Legion Faction Holdings to 10]
Chase was the first to comment. “So… you want us to double our headcount and triple our non-base holdings?”
“That a problem?” Reggie asked, fists on his hips.
“No, sir,” a ragged chorus answered him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
After letting Bravo and Charlie Platoons do their own thing for the day, the next morning, Reggie awoke to find himself flagged in a forum post. June had come up with an advertisement for Wounded Legion.
Looking for a challenge? Ready to step up and be all you can be?
Wounded Legion is recruiting levels 10 and up, all specs and juggernauts. Currently at war and unwilling to back down. Seeking pilots who want constant battle in a professional, tactically minded environment.
Reggie got a chuckle from that last line. Wounded Legion was nothing like professional. And how could a faction not be tactically minded in a game that was essentially 90 percent tactics?
[Faction > Roster > News (77) > Rewards > Info]
With a sigh, Reggie opened his news items, which included applications from a casting call of potential recruits.
Level 5… DELETE.
Can’t type a complete sentence… DELETE.
Level 12 with a few juggernauts… SAVE.
Level 8… DELETE.
Didn’t give any info at all… DELETE.
Swore at Reggie in every sentence… DELETE.
Applied just to taunt Wounded Legion… DELETE.
Level 10 with one heavy juggernaut… SAVE.
Asking if the Level 17 pilot who posted the ad is single… DELETE.
Reggie shook his head at the flotsam that drifted past his eyes. It wasn’t as if June had been asking for naval aviation certs or degrees in military science. She wasn’t asking them to front piles of cash or have specific juggernaut and skill builds. It was a “warm bodies please apply” ad, and it was like skimming the pool after a kid’s birthday party.
It wasn’t that there weren’t a few candidates mixed in once Reggie had flushed the ones who couldn’t even meet the simple requirements of being Level 10 and having a working understanding of electronic communication. It was that the ones who were left had been sullied by association merely being in the same list with the riffraff who’d propositioned June, insulted veterans, and typed the word “you” as a single letter.
He tapped a message to June and invited her to his quarters.
A few minutes later, June showed up with two bottles of beer from the bar. The tablet in Reggie’s hands caught her eye. “What’s up? Had a chance to browse our list of Nobel Prize applicants?”
Reggie chuckled. “So you’ve looked already too.” He accepted one of the beers as June sat down beside him on the bed.
“Only 15 percent of the server population is level 10,” June explained. “I figured if we’re running essentially an insurgent action against Liberty Clan, we would needed more seasoned players. But there are a couple level 8 and 9s that could fit in if we widened the net.”
A wider net? Was that what they needed? More dregs instead of fewer?
“They just don’t seem military.”
“No shit, Reg,” June said. “They’re not. This is a game world. They’re gamers. If it were up to me, I’d just open the floodgates until we get past this Liberty Clan thing and sort the good apples from the bad later.”
Reggie squeezed shut his eyes. “None of this seems right. Armored Souls is my whole life right now. I don’t want to wake up and deal with loudmouthed, incompetent, unprofessional thugs.”
“They’re not like that,” June assured him.
Reggie tapped his tablet and brought up the application where someone wanted to sleep with June from seeing her thumbnail as the ad poster.
“OK. That one is. But most are fine. They’re gamers, and this is a game. It’s their natural environment.”
Armored Souls was anything but a natural environment. It was a gladiatorial area on a galactic scale and a foxhole the size of a single faction all at once. And if there was one thing Reggie had gotten hammered into him, it was that the soldiers you went into combat with were closer than family.
“You don’t fill empty seats at Thanksgiving from the bus station,” Reggie said.
June squinted at him. “You sure you’re feeling all right? Maybe I can get in touch with Dr. Zimmerman. Maybe he’d be more help than me right now.”
“No,” Reggie said, catching June by the arm as she stood to leave. “I just need a friend right now.”
Glancing to the bed and back, June relaxed. “Is that what we are? Just friends.”
Oh, Lord. Reggie had stepped on a mine before realizing he was in the minefield. See? This would have been a perfect spot for say, 10 ranks in Command to come with the ability to rewind an awkward conversation with a subordinate and try again.
“That’s not what I meant,” Reggie said. “I just don’t need a shrink right now. This isn’t a mental problem; it’s a staffing issue.” An inkling of a plan wafted somewhere in the words he’d just spoken. “On second thought. Yeah. Tell Doc Zimmerman to meet me at my apartment.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Dr. Zimmerman arrived at Reggie’s Seattle Lite apartment bearing a six-pack of beer and wearing a Saints jersey. Though Reggie didn’t have the television on, he was vaguely aware that in the real world, it was Sunday and the middle of football season.
“Hi,” Zimmerman said with that forced smile of his that Reggie was beginning to suspect was the only kind he knew. “Thought you might want some company for game day.”
“Hey, Doc,” Reggie said, allowing Zimmerman inside. “Not what I brought you here for, but I appreciate the offer. I can’t even keep track of the standings with all the other shit going on right now.”
Zimmerman set the six-pack on one of the side tables and helped himself to a bottle. “Nurse Mallet informed me of your faction’s plight. It must be an awkward position, knowing that you can’t just log out and forget it all.”
If that was supposed to be an opening to vent his true feelings, Reggie saw right through it. Popping the cap on a beer of his own, Reggie made his counteroffer. “I need your help, Doc. And I don’t mean tinkering with my noggin. I’m talking about actionable, in-game effects here.”
Zimmerman cocked his head. “You need me to bring in a Level 20 Commander with a remote neural link and an army of zombie juggernauts?”
Reggie blinked. Goddamn it! He’d forgotten the connection entirely. He had only been thinking of Zimmerman the doctor, not Zimmerman the Mechromancer, scourge of shut-in players who only wanted to talk to NPCs.
“Um, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you,” Reggie stammered. “I wasn’t. I mean, don’t—”
“Good,” Zimmerman replied crisply. “Because I don’t like mixing my personal and professional lives. Plus, my build isn’t really meant for teams. I spend my whole day solvi
ng people’s problems. At night, I prefer to relax, sit back, and let my mindless army do my bidding.”
“Great,” Reggie said with a sigh of relief. As much as having Zimmerman on board might have helped, he didn’t know how he’d handle trying to manage his therapist as a commanding officer. “Then maybe you can help me with my real problem.”
“You have a problem more pressing than a larger faction intent on keeping you under their jack boot?” Zimmerman asked.
Reggie took a long drink of the doc’s beer before answering. “No. It’s all part of the same puzzle. I’m outgunned. I have some folks I can’t completely trust. I can solve two of those problems with one simple bit of info from you.”
Eyeing Reggie cautiously, Zimmerman backed a step toward the door. “I don’t have any special pull with the Valhalla West people. We’re on friendly terms, but I don’t ask them to violate game rules on my behalf.”
“Nothing like that,” Reggie assured him. “I just need the names and in-game contact info for the other patients like me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The next day, Reggie scrolled to the bottom of the Wounded Legion player roster and took satisfaction in the additional names Dr. Zimmerman had helped him add. These fine fellows had been more than happy to tag along with someone in the same boat—or in this case, hospital bed—as them.
They were waiting for him in the hangar, lined up and at proper military attention:
[Chipz - Scout L4 - Chaser]
[SwampFox - Gunner L8 - SwampThing]
[Monty - Commando L5 - Tallyho]
[Spike - Gunner L7 - Nails]
None met the level requirement he and June had agreed on for the advertisement, but all of them had been wounded in the line of duty and brought into the Armored Souls universe as part of Valhalla West’s veteran charity initiative.
“Welcome to Wounded Legion,” Reggie said to them. “You are all aware that we are in a state of war. The Liberty Clan is an affront to the name they’ve taken. They are petty thieves and thugs. We are outmanned and outgunned, but we’ve got something they can’t match. Do you know what that is?”
Wounded Legion: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 2) Page 10
