Reggie followed along, taking up the rear position as the long unarmed member of the platoon. “Kinda. Yeah. I mean, it’s a giant robot game. That little pop-gun couldn’t damage an unarmored juggernaut.”
Without turning to look back, Chase called out, “Cut King some slack. Remember how he got here. He didn’t watch the pre-release trailers or catch the live-streams from E3.”
“Didn’t they have internet or TV out in Bleepistan?” Kim asked.
Reggie growled. “I was a little busy.”
“Anyway,” Chase continued blithely onward, gun held up in a remarkably accurate imitation of proper room-clearing practices. He approached open doorways with the gun aimed, checked corners, swept for ambushes. “You just hang back, and we’ll get you armed once we down some baddies.”
Barclay followed Chase into rooms with a semi-automatic coil rifle, and Reggie cringed as the barrel waved around past fellow platoon members.
At one side room, off to the left, Chase entered first with Barclay close on his heels. “Got one!” Chase yelled. His blaster sizzled shots out, and Barclay’s coil rifle rang as it spat metallic projectiles that weren’t quite bullets.
[Secondary Objective: Destroy Targets of Opportunity 3/8]
It was odd seeing the mission updates floating midair instead of integrated into a juggernaut’s HUD.
“Clear!” Chase yelled.
Kim, Iris, and Reggie filtered in. It was a security station. Video screens had wide-angle shots of the fortress from external cameras, feeds from interior hallways, and a map of the facility.
Reggie pushed his way to the front of the group for a closer look as the platoon crowded around. “If I had my guess, here’s where we’ll find our bandit leader.” He poked a finger at the screen, surprised and ever-impressed at the detail in the game when his fingertip left a sweaty print on the glass.
“Why’s that?” Chase asked. “Nothing’s marked.”
“Because that’s the most bleeping inconvenient place to get to,” Reggie concluded. “If someone wrote this place up to be a game, they’re gonna put the end boss at the last place to reach.”
“Minus the treasure room,” Kim added with a smirk.
Iris snorted. “We could be so lucky.”
“Here,” Barclay said, pressing a coil pistol in a belt holster into Reggie’s hands. “Consider it a welcome back gift.”
Much as he’d spent mission after mission salvaging juggernaut hulls for scrap and spare parts, the idea of robbing a dead soldier—even a bandit—rubbed him wrong. Reggie looked down at the body, and—
“Hey, where’d it go?” Reggie asked.
“Where’d what go?” Chase asked, not looking away from the screens as he studied them with an intensity that Reggie couldn’t explain. It wasn’t like this place was that complicated.
“The body.”
“Kinda morbid,” Iris said. “It despawned. Just left the loot behind. Not that a TesTech Mk IV is much in terms of loot. You might want to sell it when we get back; spend your credits and get a plasma weapon.”
“I’d rather not take these infantry missions at all,” Reggie grumbled, buckling on the belt.
He took the weapon from the holster and crinkled his nose at the feel. It was lightweight, almost plasticky. There was none of the heft a real weapon should have.
“C’mon,” Chase said, beckoning. Somehow, owning a tactical vest with a 1-point armor rating had put him on point. “This is still a hostile environment. Keep on your toes.”
A voice inside Reggie said that this was a mistake. Chase was a civilian playing army men with life-sized figures. Reggie had been through boot camp. He went to work with an M9 Beretta strapped at his side. He had no business letting some Call of Duty kid lead the way.
Yet he did.
Chase had an air of competence about him that the rest of the platoon was responding to. Reggie could have taken the lead from the get-go, but now it would have looked like bravado or some kind of power play. The military wasn’t a democracy, but this platoon was. Let Chase have his turn in charge so long as he got the job done.
“Clear!” Chase announced at the next doorway after he and Barclay swept it.
Reggie kept his barrel aimed at the ceiling and his finger off the trigger. He made frequent checks behind them to make sure the game wasn’t pulling any bullshit on them. The platoon had cleared every room, ducked down every side passage, eliminated every possibility that someone had been missed.
This was a game, though, after all. There was nothing preventing secret passages, drop-ship reinforcements, or the game simply deciding to spawn additional bandits behind them.
“Ambush!” Chase called out, retreating without taking his sights off the oncoming threat down the hall. A pair of bandits with laser pistols took up positions at either side of a T intersection, using the walls as cover.
Reggie ducked into a doorway alongside Kim while Barclay and Iris laid down cover fire to get Chase to safety behind them.
What had happened to the world that high school kids, mechanics, and coffee “artistes” knew how to react to a surprise attack in close quarters combat?
“Bleepin’ video games,” Reggie muttered.
Kim spared a glance between shots down the hall at their adversaries. “Yeah, man. Nothing like ‘em.”
Reggie took aim and was a little surprised to see a floating hit indicator.
[Bandit - 2% To Hit]
They were ducking in and out of cover, only exposing just enough of themselves to squeeze off a shot now and then. Reggie took a couple pot shots just in case he got lucky. After all, 2 percent wasn’t 0 percent.
The coil gun had a little kick—nothing like a real pistol but enough to know it was there. The errant shots sounded like bb pellets ricocheting off the brick walls of Reggie’s old elementary school.
“Anyone buy grenades?” Chase asked.
“Nope,” a couple of the platoon members replied in uneven unison.
“Wrong,” Chase replied. “Everyone get down!”
One of the bandits lobbed something that looked like nothing so much as a can of soda that glowed an angry red at one end. It lofted down the hall in a slow-motion that Reggie couldn’t tell between an in-game effect or the horror of realizing it was heading right for him.
There was no avoiding it except by luck. Whether Reggie ducked into the side room or dove into the hall, the grenade might careen in either direction once it struck the doorway.
Down the hall, both bandits ducked behind cover and stayed there.
In combat, the difference between a soldier and a civilian is the tendency to react in a positive manner. A civilian freezes up, cowers, calls for help. A soldier is trained to do something. He’s the help that civilian is calling for.
Reggie caught the grenade.
It was heavy, like someone had thrown a bowling ball down the hallway. If he fell on top of it, Reggie could shield everyone else from the blast. It wasn’t even such a heroic sacrifice; he’d wake up in the command ship hospital, and he knew it.
But Reggie wasn’t in the mood for giving up, playing it safe, being the hero the real world would have him be.
He threw it back.
With the unknown factor of the time left to detonation, Reggie shielded his eyes and dove back into the side room. Kim grabbed him by the back of the collar and helped drag him through just in time for the shock wave to rock the stone fortress.
Lights flickered.
Reggie could hear the footsteps out in the hallway, then the sound of Chase coughing. “All clear.”
The platoon marched forward in formation, Chase on point once again. “Nice work, King,” Chase commented without looking back. He continued sweeping for ambushes. There had been no loot left from the two bandits, just an empty stretch of stone hall running in both directions and slightly pitted from shrapnel.
From the security room map, they knew their target lay down the right corridor.
Two smaller
ambushes later, Reggie and the Cold Brotherhood blasted the door controls on a secure room at the heart of the fortress.
Laser fire greeted them the instant they forced open the door.
Chase pointed to Reggie as they stayed in cover on opposite sides of the doorway. “Your show. Take it.”
Reggie gave a curt nod, informally accepting command of the remainder of the mission. “Kason Gouge, by order of House Virgo, we are here to take you into custody. We do not get paid for your capture if we don’t bring you alive, but we do get paid as long as you’re breathing, no matter how much pain you might be in. Now, you can fire at us like an idiot, or you can slide that weapon out here and exit that room slowly, hands up where we can see them. Is that understood?”
A tense few seconds passed. If this was like most video game bosses, Kason Gouge would be rigged to explode, or the whole base would be booby-trapped to collapse when he died, or he’d have a million hit points despite looking like a normal human and would insist on going down fighting.
A laser pistol skidded across the stone floor. Chase stepped down on it and dragged it out of the way behind him. “That could have gone worse,” Chase commented.
Kim clapped Reggie on the back. “See what a couple points in Command can do for you?”
Reggie scowled. It hadn’t been his Command skill. He’d laid out a reasoned set of outcomes and made Kason Gouge understand his limited options. That was all him.
Wasn’t it?
As Kason Gouge came out, fingers laced together atop his head, a system message popped up.
[Bonus Objective Complete: Enter Bandit Fortress and Capture Kason Gouge]
Reggie blew a relieved sigh and shook his head. Free will versus skill points wasn’t a question he was going to get answered right here, right now. “All right. Pack it in. Tag anything you want to salvage, and let’s head home.”
[Mission Successful - 4400 XP - 18,800Cr]
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The rest of the platoon logged out shortly after getting back to the command ship. They’d already been out for one mission, at least, before Reggie arrived, and the bandit raid and subsequent bonus mission had added up to a long time out in the field.
A few beers, a few stories, and a few farewells was all the time the rest of them had left to spend.
Reggie wandered out into the command ship’s halls without a sense of what he wanted to do next. The sheer competence of the Cold Brotherhood made the prospect of taking the Four Stooges back out into battle with him sour in his mouth. Who wanted spoiled ice cream as dessert after a fine steak dinner?
Not Reggie.
“Hey,” he said to a member of the command ship crew as she walked by, short-brimmed cap pulled low over her eyes.
It was always easy to spot the NPCs; they hid their personality because most of them weren’t programmed with one. Players always seemed alive. The woman crewman snapped a perfunctory salute in Reggie’s direction and kept moving.
According to rumors around the bar, there were ways to interact with the crew that elicited pre-programmed responses. They’d answer questions about directions aboard the ship, explain basic game mechanics, laugh at obvious jokes even. Play your cards right, those rumors said, and there were “adult” options as well—if your account had that sort of thing enabled.
Reggie didn’t want a fling with a random NPC officer of House Virgo. He just wanted to find out just how much rope Dr. Zimmerman had given him.
But checking on that either involved flexing his rusty pickup lines on women who—odds had it—weren’t a damn bit like they appeared to be in game or flirting with pixels until he unlocked the magic combo that led to a little action between the sheets.
Both options were distasteful.
Online dating was a time-honored tradition. Reggie had met Daisy that way, back when she’d seemed like a good idea. But online dating had still meant flesh-and-blood people and actual bodily fluids back then. This whole idea of digital screwing around wasn’t his cup of java.
Reggie pressed his thumb to the door panel of the room he’d reserved aboard the command ship. At 10Cr a day, it seemed like a bargain. Just another way to slowly leech money back out of the players, he supposed, a few credits at a time. He’d reserved it with the idea of storing odds and ends—trophies, knickknacks, spare gear, mementos—but he had yet to leave anything behind.
He unbuckled the coil pistol from his belt and set it on the bedside table.
Kicking off his shoes and pulling off his shirt, Reggie collapsed onto the bed, head hitting the pillow with a fuff. “Well, doc. Guess this is as good a time as any to get a little logging out done.”
He closed his eyes.
There was no option to exit the game.
Reggie’s eyelids snapped open. He squeezed them shut again.
Still no option to exit.
Logging out had been a lark. He hadn’t planned on much more than grabbing a soggy hamburger from the cafeteria and maybe having a chat with Nurse Mallet to limber up his game. After that it would have been straight back to the pod.
This wasn’t funny.
Practical jokes were common in the army. Reggie had been on both ends. But there was a difference between shaving a drunk corporal’s eyebrows off and locking a staff sergeant in a video game. Even if it was a damn fine piece of programming, it didn’t mean Reggie liked the idea of there not being an exit door.
For the first time since arriving in Armored Souls, Reggie felt trapped. The digital universe reputed to span real-life-equivalent light-years suddenly had a strangling claustrophobia that he had never experienced even in the close confines of that old M4 Sherman he’d gotten to drive once.
That thing made a Smart Car look like a Humvee—at least from the interior.
But Reggie had never gotten the yips in closed spaces. Any soldier with notions of becoming a tanker either had to get over that shit or never had issues with tight spaces in the first place. Reggie King had always been in the latter camp.
Hugging his arms to his body, Reggie paced the rented bedroom as his breath quickened. Every few turns, he’d glance over at the rumpled spot on the bed where he’d tried to log out.
“Doc, any time you want to reconsider letting me out of here…”
The glint of the computer terminal in the wall caught Reggie’s eye. It blended so seamlessly into the glossy black surface of the bedroom’s walls that it was easy to overlook. Catch the light just right, though, and there was a subtle change in reflectivity.
It didn’t matter where Reggie put his finger; his first touch awakened the console. “Log out,” he said to it, counting on the fact that the same AI ran the NPCs as the rest of the game’s systems. If a barkeep could answer character creation questions, the wall knew damn well how to log out.
A message scrawled across the screen beneath the House Virgo logo plastered across the interface.
UNABLE TO PROCESS REQUEST
“Bleep you! Log me out!”
UNABLE TO PROCESS REQUEST
Reggie gritted his teeth. There was no bullying a computer. He had to think of a way around it.
“Logout help.”
MAIN SCREEN ACCESS IS AVAILABLE AT ALL BEDS AND SHOWERS
FOR EMERGENCY LOG OUT, PLEASE CONTACT AN ADMIN
A deep breath cooled Reggie’s impending reactor fire. “Fine. Admin.”
UNABLE TO PROCESS REQUEST
“Then why’d you tell me to contact an admin?” Reggie demanded, pounding the butt of his fist against the wall beside the console.
FOR ADDITIONAL ASSISTANCE, PLEASE CONTACT AN ADMIN
This was getting him nowhere.
“Account settings.”
UNABLE TO PROCESS REQUEST
Maybe there was a real technical issue. “Server status?”
SEVER UPTIME 121D 09H 27M 57S
The seconds ticked as Reggie watched. The game had been running non-stop for four months.
“I’d like to report a bug.”
<
br /> A menu popped up. Reggie had options for Account, Login, Items, Zones, Juggernauts, Character, Interface, and Graphics/Sound.
Reggie tapped Login. That wasn’t quite what he wanted, but the game seemed to have an opinion on what might be buggy and hadn’t included a logout option.
It ran Reggie through a list of Yes/No questions relating to common login problems ranging from password resets to improper use of the brain scan headset. It even included a handy, 3D-animated rendering of the proper manner to hook yourself up to the game.
At the end, there was finally the option for other. Reggie tapped the microphone icon for a voice input of his “Other.”
“I can’t log out of the game.”
MAIN SCREEN ACCESS IS AVAILABLE AT ALL BEDS AND SHOWERS
FOR EMERGENCY LOG OUT, PLEASE CONTACT AN ADMIN
Snarling in frustration, Reggie turned off the console before he did something to it that he might regret.
Or would he?
Was Reggie even capable of vandalism in this world? Was the wall computer programmed to take damage like an NPC or a juggernaut? Could he drag a Beam Cannon-S in from the juggernaut hanger and fire it point-blank into the computer with no effect simply because Armored Souls wasn’t programmed with what to do if he tried?
Mind spinning, Reggie collapsed onto the bed. He stared up at the glow-panel in the ceiling, letting the white rectangle burn an afterimage into his retinas.
An electronic trill signaled that someone was at the door.
“Go away,” Reggie said with a weary huff.
“Sergeant King? May I come in?” Dr. Zimmerman called through the door. There was no mistaking that prim, pushy voice of his.
Reggie jerked upright like he was on cables. “One sec.” Bursting across the room, he touched the door release.
The door slid open, and a House Virgo command ship grunt stood outside. Dr. Zimmerman had on the uniform every NPC on the ship wore in some flavor. The doctor’s was plain cut, with the same short-brimmed cap worn all over the ship to the point where he hardly paid attention to anyone wearing one. His nameplate read “Zimmerman, Medic 1.”
Reggie grabbed the doctor by the collar and dragged him inside.
Dead Mech Walking: a mech LitRPG novel (Armored Souls Book 1) Page 12
