Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1)

by Xavier P. Hunter

  Grief and dread warred inside Reggie. Chaz, Murray, and Davis were like brothers to him. Reggie was their commander, in charge of their safety. He pushed himself to be the best man he could be to set a good example for them. They were his responsibility, his duty… his friends.

  But if the three of them had died, it was impossible that Reggie had come out unscathed. Without waiting any longer, he tore off the blankets, ignoring the discomfort of IV tubes tugging at his veins. He didn’t know what he would find. He could have been nothing but prosthetics from the waist down, and it still wouldn’t have been fair to Chaz, Murray, and Davis that he had made it out as the lone survivor.

  All Reggie found were a few angry scars and pasty white flab from being inactive and indoors for too long.

  Reggie’s breath came in shudders. He blinked to keep back the tears that were trying to form in his eyes. “Why…?”

  Dr. Zimmerman patted Reggie’s arm. “We’re going to work through this together. I won’t promise you it will be easy. It won’t. Emotional scars fade but never go away. But I’ve got something new that will help you navigate through what you’re feeling.”

  Reggie sniffed back tears and used a burst of indignation to regain a little self-control. “I don’t go in for that touchy-feely stuff, doc.”

  A hint of a smile didn’t quite mock Reggie’s pain, but Dr. Zimmerman clearly found something amusing in that statement. “Well, what I’ve got in mind is about as far from touchy-feely as you can get.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  When he got into the pod, Reggie hadn’t known what to expect. It was as if someone had built an egg-shaped spaceship in one of the hospital’s spare rooms. It was a one-man craft, and the seat was remarkably comfortable.

  Then Nurse Mallet plunked a helmet of wires and electrodes down onto Reggie’s head. As she wiggled it into alignment, the headgear snugged against his skin, latching on firmly but not painfully.

  “What’s this?” Reggie asked Dr. Zimmerman, who stood with his arms crossed as he oversaw the process. “Biofeedback? Electroshock? I haven’t signed any waivers.” Reggie knew that in certain circumstances, the army wouldn’t give him a say in the matter. Getting him back onto the battlefield was a military decision, not a personal one.

  Nurse Mallet eased Reggie’s head back against the headrest. “Just relax. It’ll be fun.”

  Reggie would have felt more reassured if it weren’t for her mischievous smirk.

  “Yeah, but what does it—”

  The world vanished.

  After an instant of black, formless void, Reggie appeared seated in some sort of futuristic cockpit. A console with more readouts, gauges, and switches than a commercial airliner spread out before him. The electrode hat was gone, as was the hospital gown he’d worn. Instead, he was clothed in fatigues similar in style to an air force flight suit.

  “—do?” he finished.

  A computerized voice answered. “Greetings, Staff Sergeant Reginald Jackson King.” It pronounced his name stiffly, as if it had been crowbarred into a pre-recorded script. “As a new recruit to House Virgo, your duty is to defend the clan from all threats and to carry out the will of Overlord Stanos. I will now instruct you on the operation of your juggernaut.”

  “Sounds good,” Reggie replied, but the voice continued talking without pause.

  “You will guide your juggernaut with a combination of foot pedals and control sticks,” the computer said. The screen then displayed a visual guide, which Reggie took the hint and mimicked.

  “Whoa!” he shouted as the cockpit lurched. Behind the heads-up display that continued to go over the control scheme, sunlight shone through the cockpit windows, giving Reggie a panoramic view of a field of wild grasses that blew in the wind. The juggernaut rocked back and forth with a ponderous gait as it moved forward under Reggie’s command.

  He had served every role on a tank crew, including more than a year driving one. While an Abrams had a palpable power, a grumbling engine, and a sense of commanding a steel bunker through a narrow window, this was the closest Reggie had ever come to feeling like a giant. At his command, a building-sized robot was stalking the world. From three stories up, he could see for kilometers.

  After guiding him through some basic maneuvering, the voice led Reggie into a barren stretch of dirt made to resemble an abandoned farm. Around the perimeter, there were barns, a farmhouse, and a silo.

  “Now you will practice fire control,” the voice said. “By your right hand you will find a series of switches. All your weapons systems are currently offline to conserve energy. Find the two switches labeled ‘Beam Cannon-M,’ and activate them.”

  Reggie complied. The switches had a firm, satisfying feel and made a soft thunk when flipped.

  A targeting reticule appeared. When holding his thumbs down on a switch built into the hand controls, their function switched from mobility to aiming.

  “Target the barns, and watch your aim indicator.”

  Reggie swung his crosshairs over to the first barn and watched as the hit chance quickly rose from 80 percent to 100 percent over a second or so.

  “Fire.”

  Reggie pulled the trigger and twin laser beams lanced out, converging on the barn like blue needles. Instantly the barn burst into flame.

  Reggie chuckled. “Broad side of a barn, huh? Can’t make this lesson much easier.”

  “Now target the windmill,” the voice ordered.

  “Windmill?” Reggie asked. He hadn’t seen a windmill.

  “Now target the windmill,” the voice repeated several seconds later while Reggie searched in vain.

  Then he noticed a top-down area map on his console. There was a red target indicator marked somewhere behind him. Reggie swung the juggernaut around and scanned visually until he caught sight of it. Up on a low hill, there was a wind pump. Whoever had programmed this tutorial had obviously never lived near a farm to know the difference. Perched atop a tower made from a lattice of thin steel rods, the fan blade spun briskly.

  The targeting reticule listed the range at 450m. The hit chance wavered between 11 and 16 percent as Reggie struggled to keep a bead on the fan. He fired anyway, missing by a few meters. Since the computer didn’t tell him otherwise, he kept on firing.

  Alarms blared. Indicators on the console flashed an urgent red.

  “Heat warning,” the computer told him calmly. “Heat warning. Discontinue firing until temperature levels fall to safe levels.”

  “Well, why didn’t you bleeping warn me about that?” Reggie snapped.

  Momentarily, finding the juggernaut’s temperature gauge took a backseat to wondering what he’d just said. “Bleep this bleeping bleep. What the bleep is going on? Why can’t I bleeping swear?”

  The computer voice didn’t answer. Instead, it directed Reggie on targeting, missile locks, and how to lead a target with ballistic fire and rockets.

  “I know all that bleep,” Reggie complained. “Can I like… test out on basic military concepts?” As a gunner, he’d picked off moving targets at over a kilometer. Why this juggernaut didn’t have computer-assisted fire control was a mystery.

  Actually, it wasn’t a mystery at all—it was a game. What fun would it have been if the computer did all the hard work? Reggie was used to life-and-death stakes, where competitive balance was the last thing a soldier wanted. Anyone who got into a fair fight was 50 percent likely to lose.

  As Reggie’s juggernaut lumbered to the next tutorial battlefield, he split his attention between navigating and checking out his weapons systems. Sub-menus included a lot of juicy details that would probably be crucial outside of the tame tutorial environment.

  The SRM-2 missile launcher had an optimal range of 200-400m and each missile did 2 damage. Until he saw more weapons systems, Reggie couldn’t be sure whether the ‘-2” in the weapon’s designation was for the damage rating or because the launcher fired missiles in pairs.

  The Beam Cannon-M had the same optimal range, but unlike the mi
ssiles, it had no minimum arming range. Probably just a tutorial thing since setting up a weapons platform with overlapping coverage in weapons systems was a rookie design choice.

  While his attention had been diverted, Reggie found himself on the banks of a river, maybe 100m across. On the far side were two smaller juggernauts. They looked like rejects from Return of the Jedi, just torsos mounted atop a pair of spindly backward legs like a bird’s.

  “Destroy two enemy targets,” the tutorial computer ordered.

  There were no follow-up orders.

  The HUD showed 3-D images of Reggie’s two adversaries. They were blue wire frames that rotated in unison. Each was labeled as Sandpiper[1] and Sandpiper[2].

  As Reggie was considering his options, the two Sandpipers opened fire. Sparks flashed across the windows as bullets ricocheted off the transparent surface. What appeared to have been glass must have been some kind of clear metal for the rounds to spark.

  Quickly scanning his console, Reggie found a wire frame of his own vehicle. It was labeled as “damage,” and the light arms fire from the two Sandpipers wasn’t so much as registering. Apparently, his juggernaut was a Jackal class, and just comparing the two models by the wireframes showed the mismatch.

  The two Sandpipers looked like Humvees parked beside a main battle tank. They could fire their .50 cal gun all day and just scuff the paint. And Reggie knew what a main battle tank could do to a Humvee.

  Lining up Sandpiper[1] in his crosshairs, Reggie took aim.

  He frowned at the controls. “What?”

  There was only a 3 percent chance to hit with the Beam Cannon-M. The reason why became apparent the instant he lined up his shot.

  “Those little bleepers can move,” he muttered to himself as the Sandpipers split up, fleeing like squirrels in search of the nearest tree. Except there weren’t any trees, just an expanse of rolling hills bisected by a stretch of river.

  Trying to keep a bead on Sandpiper[1], Reggie squeezed off salvo after salvo until the overheating warnings went off.

  From behind, he heard the staccato plinking of low-caliber automated fire bouncing off his juggernaut’s armor. To a tanker like Reggie, it was as soothing as listening to rain on a metal roof.

  “You little buggers don’t learn, do you?” Reggie said, throwing ‘buggers’ out there in lieu of something that would have turned into a bleep.

  But Reggie realized he was guilty of the same thing. He’d overheated his lasers again. Ignoring the bursts of ineffective mini-gun fire, Reggie looked up his juggernaut’s heat dissipation rate, cross-checking it against the temperature monitors as the Jackal cooled.

  “Designed by imbeciles…” he muttered. The units were a bit fuzzy, but whatever they meant, the Beam Cannon-M used 5 and the Jackal dissipated 8. Who the hell knew what time period they were talking about, but it was clear that constant firing of two of the beam cannons at once was going to build up heat over time.

  “Wonder if this game uses real physics.”

  Once the Jackal had cooled enough to move, he marched straight for the river.

  And into it.

  It was only at the last second that he paused to wonder whether the juggernaut was waterproof. The engine was probably somewhere in the chassis, along with its exhaust pipes—assuming it needed those. If the river was more than chest deep, he could easily flood it.

  But the Jackal seemed to be perfectly waterproof. As a test, Reggie just aimed at a hillside and fired as fast as the lasers recharged. However much it helped, the river was worth at least 2 points of cooling—continual fire of two Beam Cannon-Ms wasn’t raising the core temperature of the vehicle.

  Taking his hands from the controls, Reggie cracked his knuckles. “All right, punks. You still feeling lucky?” It was stretching his vocabulary to avoid getting bleeped, but Reggie could always fall back on a little Dirty Harry.

  The Sandpipers, however, weren’t content to let Reggie rain constant fire down on them. The two AI opponents fled from the vicinity of the river. Though reluctant to give up his free heat bath, Reggie climbed out of the river on the far bank.

  “Wish this thing had an external camera.”

  If the graphics were anything like the rest of the game, the water cascading off his juggernaut would have looked incredible.

  Though they stopped to take pot shots at him, the Sandpipers kept retreating until they reached a walled compound. It wasn’t much of a facility, but the walls were taller than Reggie’s juggernaut, and there were turrets flanking the gate.

  Reggie’s tactical readout on the turrets didn’t spin when he brought them up. Maybe it was meant to indicate that his target was stationary. Either way, it showed that the turrets were armed with flame cannons. The idea of getting fried in his juggernaut didn’t sit well with Reggie, even though the damage numbers didn’t look that threatening.

  What Reggie didn’t know about this game might get him killed in the tutorial.

  “Can I start this over?” Reggie asked, hoping that some sort of in-game help file might be available. He regretted not firing missiles at the Sandpipers while they were in range. It seemed like cheating when he was supposed to be learning how to play this game, but now it was looking like the smart call. “A little help?”

  A new voice came over the cockpit speakers, booming and imperious. “Warrior, I am Overlord Stanos. How dare you show cowardice in the face of the enemy! You are piloting a 45-ton war machine. That is a 100mm-thick wall and a pair of birthday candles. Move out!”

  Reggie scowled. Forty-five tons was a lot less than the 68.5 of his Abrams tank. Then again, 100mm was only about 4 inches, not much of a barrier to a tank.

  There was nothing to do but give it a try. “You only live…” but Reggie wasn’t sure that “once” was the right answer anymore. This was a game, after all. He probably had a bunch of lives—if there was even a limit.

  Jamming the controls forward, Reggie’s juggernaut lurched out from behind the cover of a low rise. The flame turrets swiveled to track his approach, but they were short range.

  The speedometer raced upward.

  15 kph…

  20…

  35…

  50…

  The readout pegged at 54 kph, which was still city driving back home in a car. On the broken, uneven terrain, his Abrams probably could have matched the pace.

  As Reggie closed in, the flame cannons on the towers blasted him. The front window was awash in burning gel in an instant. The temperature gauge rose, but the external heat was on the safe side of the chassis’s insulation this time, unlike the reactor and the power feed to the beam cannons. His heat sinks would keep up if he wasn’t also firing.

  Just before impact, Reggie found the controls for the arms and pulled back one fist to lead with a punch. The juggernaut leaned into the blow and nearly overbalanced.

  The wall shredded like a football team’s paper logo as the team charged through onto the field.

  On the far side was a small compound obviously set up just for the tutorial. There was an ammo dump and a small hangar that was probably a repair bay—too small for Reggie’s Jackal to even fit inside. There was nothing practical about the setup at all. The lone gate was just beside the hole Reggie had punched. The flame turrets couldn’t rotate to fire inward. There was no place for the two Sandpipers to run.

  Reggie took aim and watched as the cowering juggernauts froze in place. The hit indicator rose to 75 percent as Reggie took aim.

  “For bleep’s sake,” Reggie grumbled. He hoped there was a more accurate weapons system somewhere in this game, or he was going to go bonkers.

  Switching targets, Reggie focused on the ammo dump—stacks and stacks of missiles and shells of unidentifiable manufacture. The hit indicator shot to 100 percent, and Reggie fired.

  The screen flashed brilliant white, and the Jackal shook. Reggie held tight to the controls as he was jostled in his seat. Red indicators on the console showed the wire frame of the Jackal with damage to t
he armor in all forward-facing sections. It appeared that even at 200m range, the ammo dump detonation had caused 20 points of damage to the juggernaut’s armor plating.

  The Jackal had enough armor to weather the blast.

  As the smoke dissipated, it became clear that the Sandpipers didn’t.

  [Primary Objective - Destroy Enemy Juggernauts: 2/2]

  The objective displayed on the HUD in green. Reggie had completed his primary—and for this mission only—objective.

  The juggernaut and the rest of the game world faded away as Reggie was auto-logged out of the system.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Reggie snapped back into his body with a shocked gasp. He tried to stand up in the pod but slumped back to his seat in a wave of dizziness. It felt as if he’d ridden a roller coaster with too many loops.

  “Easy does it,” Dr. Zimmerman coaxed from the sidelines as Nurse Mallet unhooked the mind-scanning equipment from Reggie’s head. “The transition to and from the game takes some getting used to. The tutorial is kept short to limit the stress the first time. Most new players just shoot those Sandpipers with missiles instead of playing hide-and-seek for an extra half hour.”

  Extra half hour? Reggie blinked and rubbed his eyes. He allowed Nurse Mallet to help him to his feet and over the edge of the pod. “How long was I in there?”

  Dr. Zimmerman checked his phone. “About an hour and a half. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

  Reggie shook his head to clear it. “It was a fun little game and all, but I don’t see the point. I mean… there’s nothing wrong with me. When do I get discharged?”

  Nurse Mallet and Dr. Zimmerman shared a glance.

  The nurse put a hand on Reggie’s shoulder and gave him a condescending smile. “Let’s just focus on your recovery.”

  “Listen,” Reggie said, starting to lose patience with this whole ‘recovery’ business. He wasn’t a mental case. If his body was sound—and he sure felt up to snuff—he needed to get back to active duty. “Get me a phone. Or at least put in a call to Major Michael Belushi, US Army out of—”