“Diablo?” Reggie asked.
“My Jackal. A lot of players name theirs and forget about it. Mine’s Diablo, and I bleeping call it Diablo. Anyway, I load out for Gunnery, and there’s a series of energy management perks you can take that make beam and particle cannons cool off a lot quicker. The underlying physics is donkey bleep, but in game terms, it works fine. You should try it out. Lasers are the wave of the far-distant future.”
Reggie bobbed his head. It was a lot to take in over a short period, but one thing had just crystallized in his mind: Chase was a gamer and knew his shit. “I’ll look into that. And I’m definitely putting my weight behind making you a permanent squad member. Any interest in heading back out there?”
“What? Two man?” Chase asked, looking over his shoulder for platoon mates as he sipped his root beer.
“Maybe toss in with an NPC platoon,” Reggie suggested.
Setting down his mug, Chase put up both hands. “Sorry, boss. I’ve got a personal policy never to saddle myself with AI teammates. Bad enough doing escort missions; I won’t platoon with them. Half the advantage in this game in campaign mode is exploiting weak-bleep AI.”
“Maybe two-man could work,” Reggie ventured.
Chase snorted. “Appreciate the offer, but your Sandpiper and Command spec would only work with a missile jug for a partner. I’m gonna check if there are any solo missions I can cheese out; otherwise, I might wake up early and go to my morning class.”
Reggie raised an eyebrow. That was a strike against the kid. “You cut classes?”
“I told you. I’m a grad student,” Chase reiterated. “I’m not cutting a class I take. Technically, I’m one of three graduate assistants teaching it. But the other two bleeps can handle it fine without me. Anyway, good luck out there, and I’ll be looking forward to that platoon invite.”
Chase stood and kissed his fist, then made a V sign with his fingers before turning to leave.
Reggie puzzled over that one. He hadn’t seen anyone else perform that gesture, so he doubted that it was a House Virgo gang sign or anything of the sort. Eventually, he gave up dwelling on it and left the lounge.
Out in the halls, clarity was easier to come by. Digital alcohol evaporated from the bloodstream almost instantaneously once outside the confines of the bar. Looking both ways to confirm he was alone in the hall, Reggie looked up to the ceiling.
“Hey, doc. Any problem with me hanging out here a while?”
There was no reply.
“Doc Zimmerman? I’m assuming you can hear me. If not, I’m assuming you’ll get someone to pull me out of there before I start bleeping myself or starve to death. I just got this feeling like I’ve got to make up for lost time. Doesn’t feel right leading when I’m the lowest rank in the unit.”
Just then, the lounge doors slid open and a pilot in House Virgo colors strode through. He gave Reggie a puzzled look, which was understandable given that Reggie was staring up at the ceiling, mid-conversation.
The newcomer was heavy-set, the kind you’d never call portly to his face but who you might describe that way as shorthand afterward to someone who’d only met him once. He wore a short beard on his face and a blaster pistol at his hip.
Reggie gave the guy a nod and received one in return.
He waited until he was sure he was alone again, then considered that anyone might come through that door any second.
A couple corridors down, he found an unassigned bedroom and ducked inside. Once the door swooshed shut behind him, he resumed trying to speak through the barrier of the game code. “Doc, I’m off the chain here. Feeling like maybe you had something in mind for me here that maybe I’m not getting. But right now, I’m getting a little hooked on this safety-tanking stuff. It’s all the parts of driving a tank I love except for a real purpose behind it; and it’s got none of the bleep I hate. So, unless I hear otherwise from you or Nurse Mallet, I’m just gonna hang in here and see what’s what in this game.”
Reggie paused, listening like an ancient pagan priest for a sign from above. What would an omen look like? Reggie wouldn’t take anything short of verbal or written instructions. Let the superstitious idiots watch for cloud formations and bird flybys. All he wanted were orders.
With a shrug, Reggie addressed the glow panel set into the ceiling. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
Then Warrior King of House Virgo set off to find himself an NPC platoon to kill some time.
CHAPTER TEN
Across a windswept prairie, the enemy approached. Reggie sweated within the confines of his Sandpiper, and it wasn’t because the environmental controls were failing—though they were. It was more the fact that his four companions didn’t have a brain among them.
They were AI.
Non-Player Characters always got the short end of the intelligence stick. Programmers could either give them unfair advantages or leave them dumb as a feathered hat. The keyboard warriors of Valhalla West had opted for the latter option, and now Reggie was saddled with the Four Stooges, as he’d decided to call them: Mogh, LaTrie, Shen, and Jonto.
The names felt auto-generated. He didn’t feel like they were people with him, even less so than he had with the AI nurse at the in-game hospital. She was at least programmed with bedside manner. These schmucks were just someone else’s XP waiting to happen, plus some pre-programmed catchphrases.
[Primary Objective: Secure Supplies]
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 0/4]
Their target was a convoy transporting goods from a central starport to one of House Euphrates’s refineries. Reggie and his team had been inserted behind a lonely hillside that overlooked an exposed stretch of trail through the open prairie. They’d been waiting for almost an hour, and Reggie had planned it that way.
With a human platoon, it wasn’t likely they would have agreed to remain idle for so long. But this was a spot where the convoy had nowhere to run, and they wouldn’t be able to spot Reggie’s platoon without the air of aerial or satellite surveillance that the intel report didn’t mention them having.
“Power up weapons,” Reggie ordered. “Prepare to fire.”
“Lock ‘n load!” Mogh shouted over the radio.
“Git ‘er done!” LaTrie chimed in.
“Banzai!” Shen screamed.
“All outta bubblegum, so guess what’s left to do…” Jonto added.
Reggie just rolled his eyes and hoped they could follow basic instructions under fire.
2500m to target.
The hostile force consisted of three Chipmunk-class light juggernauts and a Vulture, which was about as light a medium as Reggie could find in the command ship’s databanks. The target was a series of cargo transports that rolled along on monster-truck-looking tires, kicking up a cloud of dust that could be seen from easily five kilometers.
The Four Stooges had a matching set of Chi-Ri medium juggernauts with identical weapons load-outs. Reggie had picked them based primarily on their sameness. Without any intelligence to speak of, he didn’t want to have four different juggernauts to track while under fire.
“All right,” Reggie said. He watched the convoy approach knowing that his Sandpiper would get caught on someone’s early warning alarms sooner than later. “Everyone watch for my mark. Fire on my command.”
Reggie selected Vulture[1] and highlighted it for the platoon.
TARGET DATA SHARED
Instantly, all Four Stooges fired off their LRM-2s. Propellant trails snaked off like strands of spaghetti, tangling mid-flight as integrated guidance systems fought to keep on course without colliding.
On his HUD, the Vulture took the impacts all over, yellowing the torso and leg armor and turning the left arm red in the tactical wire frame.
The Vulture and its three Chipmunks fanned out, with the Vulture taking a direct course too close to firing range on Reggie’s NPC platoon mates.
“All right,” Reggie radioed out to them. “Just keep behind the hillside an
d prepare to—”
But it was too late. Armed with a Beam Cannon-S apiece, the Chi-Ris all charged into the fray as if missiles cost their firstborn child. Reggie was flabbergasted.
Armed with two Beam Cannon-Ms, the Vulture was more than happy to close the range on the encounter.
“No, no, no…” Reggie grumbled, frantically looking for some switch or button on his console that would tell the NPC pilots where to go. But tapping on the mini-map only highlighted targets. Nothing he touched on the wire frames had any effect. Every switch, toggle, and panel on his console seemed designed—appropriately, he had to admit—to the control of his own juggernaut.
“Launch. Missiles,” he said slowly and carefully so the radio couldn’t garble it.
By now, the Chipmunks had surrounded them. It took something quite the opposite of skill to get surrounded by a numerically inferior force, but Mogh, LaTrie, Shen, and Jonto had managed it.
Why was the hostile AI smarter than the low-level imbeciles he’d been saddled with?
Reggie watched as medium and long-ranged missiles failed to arm before slamming into the Vulture as dull, squishy projectiles. His knuckles whitened on the steering yoke.
When the Vulture fired back, its Beam Cannon-M combo took out one of Mogh’s legs.
“Just a scratch!” Mogh shouted as his Jackal toppled over. A volley of medium range missiles buried itself in the turf as he fired anyway.
“The Chipmunks. Fire missiles at the Chipmunks,” Reggie pleaded.
Reggie’s platoon could at least take basic instructions. As Reggie zeroed in the aim on his Beam Cannon-S, targeting the Vulture, a massive concentration of missiles spiraled off toward Chipmunk[2], the closest of the hostile light juggernauts.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 1/4]
Missiles continued to arrive after the Chipmunk exploded, vaporizing any salvage that might have come out intact. At best now it was base steel value as slag.
Minigun fire pocked Reggie’s Sandpiper like a woodpecker rapping at a mailbox. He winced at the annoying sound but didn’t see any damage worth bothering over.
Strike that… a few stray bullets had gotten into a vulnerable spot at the Sandpiper’s knee joint. Despite the armor being intact, Reggie’s juggernaut had taken a point of structural damage.
Crosshairs fixed on the Vulture, Reggie squeezed the trigger. Two points of damage for a clean hit on the Vulture’s torso armor. Without moving his targeting, he fired again for another 2 damage.
On the wire frame, he could see the red armor, already softened by massed missile fire at the mission outset, about to give way.
The Vulture turned.
“Oh, bleep!”
Reggie abandoned any attempt at continued fire and headed for the cover of the hillside. The Sandpiper wobbled with a pronounced limp but kept its balance. It still managed a top speed of 90kph, even hobbled.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 2/4]
“Ancestors spit on you!” Shen jeered.
Another of the Chipmunks had expired under heavy fire from the incompetent Jackal pilots. Sometimes all you needed for victory was four times the firepower of the opposing force and the will to carry on through screw-up after screw-up.
That much, at least, Reggie’s platoon had.
LaTrie’s juggernaut exploded, taking Reggie by surprise. He’d been damaged but nothing that looked serious. Had the Vulture put a shot into his magazine? Only detonating his explosive ordinance would explain the…
Reggie realized what had happened. There was an open pit mine just to the east of the battlefield. He’d ruled it out for having any tactical value, being both too far from the convoy route to hem in their target and too steep-walled to use as an ambush.
LaTrie had fallen in.
Reggie took slow, steady breaths to calm himself. This wasn’t happening. This was a game. There were no lives at stake besides his own digital self. But he couldn’t escape the impression that his AI charges were more of a boon to the enemy than to him.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 3/4]
“Woo!” Jonto hooted.
“Great shot,” Mogh congratulated him. “That was one in a million.”
With the Vulture alone against two of Reggie’s allied Jackals, he felt safe enough to come out from cover—at least enough to get a bead on the Vulture with his Beam Cannon-S.
Reggie took a shot and shaved the last 2 hit points from the Vulture’s frontal torso armor. One more carefully placed shot and he might have himself a discount Vulture. All he’d have to pay was the cost of repairs to the cockpit.
When his adversary swiveled to bring its lasers to bear on Shen, Reggie lost his shot at the Torso from the front. Circling around in his limping Sandpiper, he knew he had to act fast. “Stand down. Repeat, do not—”
But it was already too late. Shen and Jonto had spread far enough apart that for the Vulture to engage one, the other was in optimal missile range. Jonto opened up his missile batteries and launched salvos of both long- and medium-range missiles.
Reggie took a desperate shot at the Vulture’s leg, hoping to down it and topple it out of the line of fire. Despite a clean hit, though, the Vulture’s leg armor was still intact. It kept on its feet, putting a twin blast of medium laser fire into Shen before exploding in a gout of flame as Jonto’s missiles tore it apart and ruined any salvage value it might have had.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Enemy Juggernauts 4/4]
“Woo!” Jonto hooted again.
“Great shot,” Mogh congratulated him. “That was one in a million.”
“No,” Reggie muttered to himself. “That was two for two bleeping us over.”
[Mission Successful - 250 XP - 1,400Cr]
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Reggie looked at the four juggernauts lined up two to either side of him. They were all repaired and reloaded—all managed by the NPCs themselves or some automated script that took care of it for them. Reggie had taken his share after the -50 percent penalty for using a House Virgo rental.
Last mission had been a disaster in the heat of the moment, but a success when he’d gotten back to the command ship. All that had shown up was a 100 percent mission success—albeit an easy one—with 2 casualties. Mogh losing a leg had counted, it turned out, since he couldn’t extract under his own power.
“You boys gonna bleep things up again this time?” Reggie asked them.
“Lock ‘n load!” Mogh shouted back.
“Git ‘er done!” LaTrie added.
“Banzai!” Shen screamed.
“All outta bubblegum, so guess what’s left to do…” Jonto said, finishing up the litany of catchphrases Reggie was already growing to hate.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Reggie said, careful to have his radio off lest the Four Stooges reply to his observation.
This next mission was a hit on a supply depot. By Reggie’s calculation, it would provide enough XP to get him to level 3.
Their drop ship touched down with a booming thud that echoed all around. A ramp lowered, and a beach loomed beyond.
Reggie sighed and revved the engine on his Sandpiper. “Fall in. 50m spread. Do not fire until I give the order.”
The chorus of inane replies at least implied the order had been received. Gritting his teeth, all Reggie could do was focus on the goal: to level up before his real platoon logged back in.
Sunlight glinted off the Sandpiper’s windshield, stinging Reggie’s eyes before he hit the dimmer switch. Able to stare up toward the planet’s two suns, Reggie made out their target on a bluff overlooking the sea.
Once more, unto the breach…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Reggie was waiting at a table in the House Virgo command ship lounge amid a scattering of empty beer mugs. He’d found that by ducking out into the hall to sober up, he could drink as much as he liked. That had been his pastime in the gap between the last mission he felt he could safely be back from
in time and the arrival of the first of his platoon to log in for the night.
“Kim!” Reggie shouted, spotting the Gunner from his booth. Waving him over, he poured a mug from the pitcher at the table and slid it to the spot where Kim scooted in across from him.
“Hey, you’re bright and early,” Kim said, bobbing his head. “You always an early log-in? I might be able to grab a quick dinner some nights and—hey, you leveled up?”
“Twice,” Reggie said with a satisfied smile. He angled his chest to make the nameplate easier to read. It now read: King, Gunner 4. “Wanted another even level so I could take the Heat Management perk.”
Reggie waved to Chase Cooley as he entered the lounge. The kid held up a finger and swung by the bar.
“Wow, King,” Kim replied wide-eyed. “You been using your early hours to scout for some high-level platoon or something?”
“Nah,” Reggie replied. “Nothing like that.”
Chase slid into the booth with a foaming mug of root beer. “Hey, King. You leveled up. Grats-o-rama, man.”
“Twice,” Kim added.
Chase nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, yeah. I was more looking at the Gunner tag than the number. Who’d you bleep to get carried on some big-time mission?”
“Nobody,” Reggie said, hiding a smirk. “By the way, I’m trying out that laser spec you explained to me. I think I’m gonna like it.”
Chase snorted. “Not gonna do you much good. That laser-pointer on your rental isn’t going to do bleep bleep to any bleepers you come across.”
Reggie furrowed his brow. He was getting used to filling in the bleeps from context, but Chase had lost him there.
“C’mon. I want to show you guys something…”
Reggie led them out into the corridors beyond. Reggie’s mug dispersed into atoms at the doorway. Chase hung back long enough to drain his before walking through and letting his mug disintegrate.
“Where we going?” Kim asked.
“The hangar.”
Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1) Page 9
